Recht und Literatur in Europa

Die Konferenz findet vom 17. bis 19. Oktober 2022 in Münster statt.

Den Call for Papers finden Sie auch hier auf der Homepage des SFB 1385: https://www.uni-muenster.de/SFB1385/news/callsforpapers/index.html

(English version below)

Der politische, gesellschaftliche, kulturelle und insbesondere der rechtliche Europäisierungsprozess der letzten Jahrzehnte gehört zu den bedeutendsten und wirksamsten Veränderungen sowohl innerhalb Europas als auch in globaler Perspektive. Der als Motor zu bezeichnende Prozess der Einrichtung und Entwicklung des europäischen Binnenmarktes führte nicht allein zur Übertragung erheblicher Souveränitätsrechte der Einzelstaaten auf die europäische Union, sondern auch zu deren politischer Regulierung und Vermittlung. Begleitet bzw. konterkariert werden diese Prozesse der europäischen Integration von Tendenzen der rechtlichen, politischen und kulturellen Regionalisierung und Re-Nationalisierung, die nicht nur zu dem europaweiten Aufstieg rechtsnationaler Parteien und Gruppierungen führte, sondern zur Erosion rechtsstaatlicher Grundlagen auf den Feldern der Gewaltenteilung und der Freiheit der Presse. Der Jugoslawienkrieg der 1990er-Jahre, die Finanzkrise von 2008 sowie die Flüchtlingskrise von 2015 haben diese kontroverse Konstellation von europäischer Integration und Desintegration noch verstärkt. Der Brexit und die Klimakrise sowie die weltweite Digitalisierung werden die Notwendigkeit der europäischen Integration sowie deren politische Grenzen noch deutlicher hervortreten lassen.

• Europäische Integration; Europäische Identität und ihr „Anderes“
• Regionalisierung und Re-Nationalisierungsprozesse
• Narrative Europas; europäische Narrative
• Die Imagination Europas
• Die Rechtskultur Europas
• Digitale Selbstbestimmung
• Migration und Citizenship
• Übersetzungskulturen
• Rechtliche Autonomie der Literatur und deren Einschränkungen
• Europäische Bestseller und deren Vermarktung

Themenvorschläge mitsamt einem kurzen Exposé sollten bis zum 31. Mai 2022 eingesandt werden an Julius Noack (juliusnoack@uni-muenster.de).

English Version:

Law and Literature in Europe

The process of Europeanisation that has happened in political, social, cultural and especially legal form over the last decades, may duly be considered one of the most important and powerful changes within Europe, but also beyond. The process of instituting and developing a European
internal market as a catalyst did not only lead to the transition of important sovereign rights from individual states to the European union, but also contributed to the latter’s political regulation and standing. Such processes of European integration are si multaneously embedded in and countered by tendencies towards legal, political and cultural regionalisation and re-nationalisation, thereby enabling not only a Europewide resurgence of right-wing nationalparties and factions, but also leading to the erosion of constitutional premises in terms of the separation of powers and the freedom of the press. Further elements, such as the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, the global financial crisis of 2008 or the refugee crisis of 2015, have contributed significantly to t he conflictual positioning between European integration and disintegration. Brexit and climate change, as well as worldwide digitalisation, also signal towards the need of the integration of Europe and its political borders.

National literatures both on the Continent and in Britain have reflected these disintegrating crises critically, but they have also focused on periods of European integration in less critical times (eg. Menasse, McEwan, Houellebecq). Consequently, there are obvious processes of how law and literature connect each other as well as insights into the reasons why the legalisation processes in Europe have not been accompanied by a similar cultural and literary integration on a European level – although the institutionalisation and legal guarantee of translations supports the phenomenon of European bestsellers. At the same time, such processes of Europeanisation and European integration need to be considered in their historical dimension, as scholars across Europe during the Enlightenment, for instance, also saw themselves as one community and acted as such. Questions of natural law as well as the importance of literature for the developing Enlightenment necessarily focused specifically on a European context, which can be seen in Lessing’s posit ion on tolerance as represented in Nathan, for instance, since Lessing conceived of such considerations in an imagined dialogue with theorists such as Locke and Voltaire. Even tendencies towards nationalisation in the 19th and 20th centuries reflect critically on the political and economic internationalisation of law and literature.

The conference will focus on culturally connected and comparable processes of Europeanisation in law and literature as well as their correlation since the early modern period. The organisers therefore invite papers on topics such as

• European integration; European identity and its Other
• Processes of regionalisation and re-nationalisation
• Narratives of Europe; European Narratives
• Europe imagined
• Legal culture in Europe
• Digital agency
• Migration and citizenship
• Cultures of translation
• Literature’s legal autonomy and its limits
• European bestsellers and marketing
• Non-European /Global Perspectives on European Law and Literature

For updates on the Conference, please refer to the Centre's website: www.uni-muenster.de/SFB1385/en/index.html
Please send a short abstract (300 words) to Julius Noack (juliusnoack@wwu.de) by May 31st, 2022.