Forms and Functions of Relations to the World
The project negotiated correlations between literary concepts of form and world views from various perspectives, including models of wholeness and with regard to (eschatological) concepts of time and history. It thus contributed to the discussion of the concept of the world beyond the debate around research program’s discussion of world literature. Under the premise that historical conceptions of ‘world’ are to be explored on the basis of concrete ways of thinking, the project explored artistic and literary representations as well as literary theory. While the focus of the overall project was on the early 20th century, individual projects updated discourses of the 18th century for the period around 1900.
Here, the world-shaping potential of art and literature was understood not as worldliness, that is, not ‘realistic’ content or a mimetic depiction of the world, but rather the self-reflexive constitution of ‘art’ or ‘literature’ as an object of the avant-garde and literary theory. The project assumed a connection between the detachment from a concept of the world, regarded, in crisis-ridden modernity, as the epitome of a meaningfully structured whole, and the destruction of traditional work and other concepts of wholeness, which also evoked totality and harmony.
The project was divided into several sub-projects covering the period from 1900 to 1930. The sub-project Messiah of Mischief: The Oberdada Johannes Baader (1875-1955) was dedicated to the Dadaist Johannes Baader and thus opened up the context of the early avant-gardes and their messianic conceptions of history at the interface between Christian tradition and secular modernity (Lutz Greisiger).
The subproject Formalism and the Materialist Tradition. Literature, Politics, Ontology dealt with Russian formalism with regard to the relationship between literature and ontology. As an extra-academic theory of literature, Russian formalism dealt with both the avant-garde and Marxism (Siarhei Biareishyk).
The project The Work as World - The World as Linguistic Field. The Concept of ‘Inner Form’ in Early 20th Century Literary Theory examined tensions between genre and the theory of form, especially with regard to temporal concepts important for the concept of form and world (Eva Axer). The subproject Aggregate, System, Nexus: Theory of Aesthetic Modernism dealt with mereological questions or new concepts of a morphological context in the theory of aesthetic modernism, namely with Schönberg, Kandinsky and Döblin (Ross Shields).
Publications
Eva Axer
- Die “Jedesmaligkeit” der “Einfachen Formen.” André Jolles’ Goethe-Rezeption im Umfeld der Leipziger Sprachwissenschaft, in: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft (forthcoming in 2020)
- Verkleinerte Zeit. Über ein zeitphilosophisches Motiv bei Benjamin und Bergson, in: Momentaufnahmen – Augenblicksaufzeichnung, ed. by Annegret Pelz and Birgit Erdle (forthcoming in Paderborn 2020)
- [Article] Modell, in: Formen des Ganzen, ed. by Eva Geulen and Claude Haas (forthcoming in 2020)
- [Article] Weltzeit, in: Ästhetische Eigenzeiten. Ein Wörterbuch, ed. by Michael Gamper et al. (forthcoming in Hannover 2020)
- (with Werner Michler, Marjorie Levinson): Die ‘Neuen Formalismen’ – Form, Geschichte, Gesellschaft. Drei Beiträge, in: ZfL Blog. Blog des Leibniz-Zentrums für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin, 21 Jan 2019
- #KleineFormen. Ein Sammelband eröffnet neue medien- und wissensgeschichtliche Perspektiven, in: ZfL Blog. Blog des Leibniz-Zentrums für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin, 16 Jan 2018
Siarhei Biareishyk
- [Article] Transindividualität: Spinoza – jenseits der Dialektik von Teil und Ganzem, in: Formen des Ganzen, ed. by Eva Geulen and Claude Haas (forthcoming in 2020)
- Rethinking Romanticism with Spinoza: Encounter and Individuation in Novalis, Ritter, and Baader, in: The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theorie, 94.4 (2019), 271–298
- Die Überdeterminierung des Ganzen, in: Brochure on the Annual Topic of the ZfL Forms of the Whole (2018). In english translation published: The Overdetermination of the Whole, in: ZfL Blog. Blog des Leibniz-Zentrums für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin, 26 Nov 2018
Lutz Greisiger
- “Und der Wolf wird beim Lamm weilen und der Leopard beim Böckchen lagern”: Selbst- und Fremdbilder in Gesprächsprotokollen aus den Reisetagebüchern der Missionare des Institutum Judaicum und deren Interpretation in der Forschung, in: Mission ohne Konversion? Studien zu Arbeit und Umfeld des Institutum Judaicum et Muhammedicum in Halle, ed. by Grit Schorch, Brigitte Klosterberg (Hallesche Forschungen 51), Halle 2019, 87–98
- From “King Heraclius, faithful in Christ” to “Allenby of Armageddon”: Christian Reconquistadores Enter the Holy City, in City of Caesar, City of God: Constantinople and Jerusalem in Late Antiquity, ed. by Konstantin Klein, Johannes Wienand (Millennium), Berlin (forthcoming)
- “Apokalypse,” in: Wörter aus der Fremde: Begriffsgeschichte als Übersetzungsgeschichte, ed. by Falko Schmieder, Georg Toepfer, Berlin 2018
Ross Shields
- [Article] Aggregat, in: Formen des Ganzen, ed. by Eva Geulen and Claude Haas (forthcoming in 2020)
- “Nonsense, wherein there is Method”: Wittgenstein on Music and Language, in: The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theorie, 93.4 (2018), 394–413
Events
Lutz Greisiger: Ein zu Unrecht vergessener Zehlendorfer. Der Dadaist Johannes Baader
Heimatmuseum Zehlendorf, Clayallee 355, 14169 Berlin
Politics – History – Eschatology. Functional, Inter(con)textual, Structural, and Comparative Approaches to Gog and Magog
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Bismarckstraße 1, 91054 Erlangen, Room C 202
Dynamic Form
ZfL, Schützenstr. 18, 10117 Berlin, Aufgang B, 3. Et., Seminarraum 303
Literary Morphology. Theories of Dynamic Form before and after Goethe (organized i.a. by Eva Axer und Siarhei Biareishyk)
Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown, 600 Commonwealth Pl, Pittsburgh 15222 (USA)
Die ›neuen Formalismen‹ – Form, Geschichte, Gesellschaft
ZfL, Schützenstr. 18, 10117 Berlin, Seminarraum 303
Siarhei Biareishyk: ›Materialism without Matter‹ between Jacobi and Marx
University of California, Los Angeles, Kalifornien 90095 (USA)