Scenarios of Post-Sovereignty in Contemporary, German-Speaking Literature

• Applicant: Dr. Matthias Schaffrick
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 383473643

The research project examines shifts in constitutional and international law from the perspective of literary studies and cultural narratology with a special focus on scenarios of post-sovereignty in contemporary, German-speaking literature. The corpus specifically includes texts that engage with the destabilization of political and legal frameworks and of how literary techniques work within those parameters. Classical self-descriptions of a society that deal with politics and international law are grounded on the sovereignty of states and a clear distinction between war and peace, state of exception and normality. These traditional models of world order are, however, collapsing as a result of new geopolitical constellations and new forms of war and terrorism. In literature, we find forms and techniques of post-sovereign narration that deal with the transformation of the political. Literary texts present epistemically informed narratives without sovereign narrators, without spatial framings, and without coherent plots. As such the texts seem to reflect more adequately these new globalized political structures. In terms of language and narration as well as the topics that literature turns to, the contemporary transformation of political sovereignty appears in these works, which in turn bring to light the social, individual, and aesthetic consequences of post-sovereignty.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants