Small-scale sovereignty. Personal forms of rule in everyday life and their representation in the Latin American novel of the 20th and 21st century

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jan-Henrik Witthaus
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 505161841

The term ‘small-scale sovereignty’ refers to the infiltration, decentralization, and fragility of modern state sovereignty, which has been discussed in recent publications in the fields of political science and cultural studies. Based on Latin American prose literature, the project will analyze in how far crises and weak political institutions facilitate the emergence and establishment of small-scale sovereigns. While being part of everyday social life, these individuals generate their own, local hegemony and, in doing so, usurp any governmental exercise of power. Preserving social views and collective memory, novels may provide insight into hegemonic constellations in everyday life; taking advantage of their representative function, the focus will be lain on three specific subgenres of epic literature: (a) office literature and (b) narcoliterature. This approach allows for the development of a corpus containing relevant literary sources, including selected examples for the previously mentioned subgenres, and to identify specific patterns within Latin American political tradition.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants