Para-Societies. Parallel and Alternative Social Formations in Contemporary Cultures and Literatures

• Applicant: Dr. Agnes Bidmon, since 10/2020
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 392619243

In the last 20 years, terms like and have become increasingly present in political and medial discourses and have recently turned even more relevant in the course of the and right-wing populism. They indicate a longing for social normativity and cultural homogeneity, being revealed in the reaction to processes of social differentiation as a consequence of globalization, neoliberalism, and migration. or oftentimes perceive the growing complexity of daily lives as threat or disorder, which leads to calls for supervision, cultural stability, and social coherence.Paradoxically, aforementioned desire for transparency now causes an increasing heterogeneity, which becomes manifest in the perception of a social splitting: It does not only favor the segregation of social margins not fitting into preconceptions of the (cf. migrant camps or gangs), but also the sealed-off retreat into ones own social ideas (cf. gated communities or sects), as well as the formation of intentional societies making an utopian claim (cf. communes or ecovillages). The current social experience of a crisis does not only favor the development/creation of that is that function as space for the negotiation of normativity and of the tension , , and , in Germany, but in many European and non-European countries.Since the 1990s, a growing thematization of these social formations can also be found in contemporary literatures. In doing so, the works serve the recipients longings for evasion and entertainment; they mirror discourses linked to that in an affirmative or critical way; they discuss central issues of living together, or they offer alternative suggestions of sociality through the construction of ideal societies. In this respect, literary texts and movies of represent virtual spaces of reflection and experimentation for the discussion of current and social controversial questions.The interdisciplinary conceptualized network analyzes the cultural significance of in contemporary cultures and literatures and deals with the hitherto only limited researched phenomenon and its forms of depiction in texts and movies in a theoretical, systematical and critical way. It brings together scholars dedicated to cultural, literary, and media studies from the departments of German studies, Romance Studies, British and American Studies and furthermore, scholars from the departments of political science, sociology, cultural studies and history, gathering for a comparative cultural analysis of the currently highly controversial issue.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Professorin Dr. Teresa Hiergeist, until 9/2020