Writing the present. Reflections on time and literary techniques after digitization

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Eckhard Schumacher
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 426792415

The research project will explore the interdependencies of reflections on time and literary techniques in the digital age, hence responding to a new focus on the present in literary texts and cultural criticism that has not previously been the subject of intensive research. Whether blogs, Facebook or Twitter are used as the publishing medium, as a topic or as a structural element of a text, digital media changes the way it is written, how and what is narrated – and how the present is thought. The goal of the project is to study literary techniques that are used to reflect on, illustrate and conceptualize the present and modes of presence in the digital age. Following the assumption that the concept and realization of the present are a result of specific forms of writing, contemporary cultural criticism and literature will be analysed and correlated against the backdrop of time concepts in media and cultural studies.With the notion ‘after digitization’, the project proposes a new periodisation to evaluate the reaction to the consolidation of digital technology since the mid-2000s, which began with the establishment and the popularization of web 2.0, social media and mobile internet. In this period, there is a remarkable amount of texts in the field of cultural and media theory that connect digitization to a change in the conceptualization of time, focussing, in particular, on the notion of the present. These texts frequently use literary techniques, but generally don’t reflect on the field of contemporary literature for their diagnoses of time and usually use examples from the field of audio-visual media or other forms of online communication. In this regard, the research project concentrates on the potential of contemporary literature as a means of reflection on time. On the one hand, the research project will make a comparative analysis of the rhetorics, images and metaphors, as well as the narrative patterns found in literary texts and cultural theory that are circulating both online and offline. On the other hand, the project will explore the conceptual potential of literary texts and show how literary techniques outline or produce the present in a new way when dealing with digital media and culture.By linking close readings, metaphorological and discourse analytical approaches, supported by digital corpus analysis, the research project will 1.) analyse concepts and rhetorics of the new discourse on the present in cultural criticism, 2.) investigate the changes in perception, portrayal and reflection of the present in exemplary studies on contemporary literature and 3.) reveal a void in the current discourse on concepts of the present by connecting contemporary literature to cultural criticism and fill it. With its results the project will produce an innovative contribution to the studies of contemporary literature and establish important new perspectives for contemporary cultural theory.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants