Consumers, Female Consumers and Consumer Objects: On the Establishment of New Actors and Their Fields of Action in 19th Century German Literature

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Maximilian Bergengruen
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; History of Science
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 469960373

The project at hand aims to create a multi-perspective literary history of how the consumer was invented and profiled as well as his/her fields of action in the German-speaking countries of the long 19th century. This invention and profiling have two different meanings: during this period, the consumer develops firstly into an independent actor in the fabric of the economic cycle, and secondly into an imaginary figure as the one situated at the interface between economics and literature. The working hypotheses differentiate between three phases: in the early phase of the 19th century (1), a tendency can be observed in which the consumer is merely perceived in terms of his or her extremes, i.e. the consumption habits of rich and poor. From the middle of the 19th century onwards (2), the consumer is increasingly generated as an imaginary subject from the perspective of a producer; analogous to the positions of the historical school, which places sales at the center of its considerations. At the end of the 19th century (3), the figure of the consumer (male and female) is further consolidated and expanded in economics, in this case in the theory of marginal utility, which relativizes and also subjectivizes the value of a product. Although the consumer is increasingly at the center of 19th century economic models, as a figure the consumer nevertheless remains curiously under-determined. At the end of the 19th century literature deals with this void and fills it with genuine literary devices.Based on these working hypotheses, subproject A poses the question to what extent the economic theory which conceives the consumer is also able to capture the female consumer. It is not explained in the historical school of economics and theory of marginal utility; literature, however, clearly depicts a female consumer and thus imaginatively fills the blanks of economic theory. Literature can conceive of the imaginary structure, complementary to the abstractness of the economic consumer concept, as a challenge for the imaginary design. In response to this, male and female writing, which will be recanonized by the project, will be examined in a comparative research framework.In subproject B the focus will be placed on the relationship between consumer on the one hand, and the thing or consumer object in literary texts on the other. Based on the romantic idea of a (partial) identity of things and figures, the development of this figure of thought in 19th century literature will be considered against the backdrop of the aforementioned modelling of consumption, consumer objects and consumers. The aim is to demonstrate that the theory of the subjective value of goods formulated in economics thus takes on a radicalized, even metaphysically charged meaning.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants