Margins of the Modern: Converging Conceptions of the Subject between Pre- and Postmodernity.

• Applicant: Dr. Stephanie Béreiziat-Lang
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 524540055

Pre-modern concepts of subjectivity and contemporary theoretical approaches to subjectivity are necessarily separated from each other by an epistemological distance. However, this distance does not necessarily imply a fundamental disparity. With its focus on literary studies and cultural theory, this interdisciplinary network explores the question of possible affinities between concepts on subjectivity at the two margins of modernity that legitimize an entanglement of historical texts and contemporary subject theories. In order to do so, it examines theoretical and fictional/literary subject designs in texts before and after 'modernity' determined by the Cartesian concept of Self (ca. 1400 to 1650 as well as ca. 1960 to the present). Fifteen young (mainly post-doctoral) scholars in Comparative literature, Romance studies, German studies, Jewish studies and Philosophy bring together approaches from the fields of cultural theory, literature, history and media studies and illuminate the problem of the subject from a transhistorical and intercultural perspective. The network thereby assumes that precisely the liminality to the modern paradigm favors affinities in the modeling of subjectivity and corporeality, and that the common category of the 'non-modern' offers a convergence space for subject conceptions located in different historical and epistemological contexts. Beyond artificially establishing a 'contemporaneity of the non-contemporaneous', the network will discuss the constellations in which anachronistic bridge-building can be particularly legitimate and productive in order to gain insights into both epistemic contexts. The network aims to discuss the epistemic potential of an asynchronous literary criticism on pre-modern text, and thereby to critically question the ideological implications of appropriating pre-modern subjects through the anachronistic gaze of the present. However, the collaborative work also aims precisely at exploring the potential of historical configurations and pre-modern fictional modeling for current theory building through the mutual interpenetration of pre- and after-modern concepts. In this way, the network wants to raise awareness of transhistorical theoretical entanglements in the humanities and to contribute to current research on the subject.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Privatdozent Dr. Michael R. Ott