British Studies

The English Studies Project seeks to assess and develop the position of hermeneutics within the expanding field of cultural theory. It brings British and Anglo-American approaches to cultural studies into dialogue with the German/continental tradition of philosophical hermeneutics. We aim to theorize and analyze various processes of differentiation, globalization and hybridization subsumed under the notion of ‘transdifference', exploring various dimensions of the collective construction of meaning. Areas of interest include textual and symbolic aspects as well as socio-political processes and the history of mentality.

The current phase of the project emphasizes literary representations of phenomena of transdifference, that is, of overlapping and interacting markers of difference like class, nation, race, religion, gender, and sexual preference. These categories are both important determinants of the formation of identity and social hierarchy, and privileged sites of (the play of) différance. Especially with regard to literary representations, we envisage a ‘cultural narratology', or ‘narrative hermeneutics', that combines classic narrative theory with those cultural aspects which are usually at the centre of contextual approaches and Ideologiekritik. The ‘interaction between narrative form and social identity' must be analyzed, for instance, as it surfaces in the work of contemporary female authors (project Walz). Equally, we will look at literary scenarios of demarcation and discrimination to be found in the context of colonialism – for instance in English literature of travel and adventure (project Frank) or in the texts of J.M. Coetzee, whose conceptualizations of bodies and voices are analyzed from an aesthetic, ethnic and political perspective (project Sharif). The body and its position in discourses of power constitutes another focus of interest. We will investigate how the classic literary motif of the artificial body relates both to historically specific discourses of science and to recent aesthetic representations of bodily or man/machine-hybridizations. An analysis of the cultural myth of the artificial body also enables a promising comparison of the function of popular texts and elite literature (project Mohr).

The diachronic level is addressed through investigations of pre-modern cultural markers of (trans-)difference. One study looks at deviant forms of masculinity (project Karremann) as they appear in texts around 1700 with a view to introducing finer differentiations into a category often used in generalizing and ahistorical ways. Another study combines systems theory with cultural history in order to analyze the communicative function of dress in the 18th century and illuminate the structures of meaning inherent in fashion in an emerging consumer society (project Huck).

Research undertaken by the supervisors is concerned with the scope and compatibility of various concepts of identity and alterity (informed, for example, by poststructural psychoanalysis) within cultural studies. There is an emphasis on modes of interdisciplinary inquiry as they have been established by gender studies, both in terms of methodology and on the level of concrete case analyses. The cultural ‘translation' of the literary canon into contemporary popular culture provides another thematic focus of inquiry, also taking into account a culturalisation of economic structures as well as a commercialisation of culture in consumer societies (simulacra, ‚images', cultural capital) which is intrinsically connected with new forms of (inter-)mediality.

The interrelation between English studies and the other sections and projects of the graduate seminar is mainly effected through the discussion of literary and theological hermeneutics as well as of cultural hermeneutics as it has emerged in the context of cultural comparison and analyses of socio-cultural structures conducted in the fields of sociology and political science. Discussions of transdifference have profited from English studies' insistence on attenting to the aspects of gender blindness and narrativity, thus providing a continuous critical commentary on universalizing and objectifying tendencies as they appear in endorsements of traditional canons and empirical research. Participants from English studies have also contributed their expertise in dealing with overlapping categories of difference gained in the fields of postcolonial, gender and media studies, which has created synergy effects in the workshops on ‘frontier', ‘globalisation', ‘gender' and ‘cyborg'. In general, English studies are ideally placed to promote interdisciplinary perspectives within the whole project since the British tradition of cultural studies has always looked beyond textual and semiotic approaches to a cultural practice of the everyday as well as the material conditions of the production and reception of cultural artefacts.