Literature, the Arts, and the Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1715-1815 (Bonn, Universitätsclub, 6.-8.12.21)
Drawing on social philosopher Charles Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary, our project analyses the profound changes that transformed the public spheres of post-enlightenment societies in Europe. Following the emergence of the modern public sphere in the mid-C18, a deep-seated transformation of its parameters is already discernible by the 1780s, and becomes even clearer in the course of the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic Wars. Increasingly, debates conducted in accordance with rational principles are giving way to irreconcilable conflicts of opinion; an inclusive notion of cosmopolitanism is threatened by a reduction of the public sphere to members of one’s own ‘nation’; and an appeal to the emotions eclipses rational discourse. We intend to analyse this change as a transformation of the way the public sphere is imagined – the tropes, forms, images and narratives which allow to conceive of the public sphere as a unified virtual space.
The project analyses the transformation of the public sphere as a transformation of the social imaginary in the period between 1770 and 1815 in France, Germany and Britain. It takes different levels of investigation into account:
- theoretical approaches to conceptualise the public sphere as an agonistic sphere that is nationally restricted (with a special emphasis on the political philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment and its influence on German literature around 1800)
- Tropes, images and metaphors that allow us to conceptualise such a national and agonistic public sphere as a unitary whole;
- the new literary genres and forms that support the nationally coded social imaginary and implement such rhetoric;
- literary texts that explore and reflect the possibilities and limits of such a public sphere in fictional/experimental arrangements.
Montag, 6. Dezember
17.30-18.00 SEÁN ALLAN/CHRISTIAN MOSER: Einführung
PROF. DR. BIRGIT MÜNCH (Prorektorin für Internationales): Grußwort
18.00-19.15 HEINRICH BOSSE (German Literature, Universität Freiburg): Abendvortrag
“Vom Nachleben der gelehrten Republik“
Dienstag, 7. Dezember
9.00-10.00 GEOFF BOUCHER (Philosophy and Literary Theory, Deakin University): “Articulating Habermas with Taylor: Notes on the Public Sphere and the Social Imaginary”
10.00-11.00 CLARE SIVITER (French Theatre and Performance, University of Bristol): “’Une et indivisible?’: Constructing and Deconstructing the French Nation via the Theatrical Public Sphere, 1789-1815”
11.00-11.30 Kaffeepause
11.30-12.30 STEFANI ENGELSTEIN (German Literature, Duke University): “Race and Civics: Du Bois and Wagner”
12.30-14.00 Mittagspause
14.00-15.00 HUI LUAN TRAN (Art History, Universität Bonn): “Experimentieren mit dem Habitus. Eine Typologie des Betrachtens in Darstellungen (halb-)öffentlicher Schauräume”
15.00-16.00 BIRGIT MÜNCH (Art History, Universität Bonn): “The Shop Sign as Manifesto: Artist’s Self-Image, Audience and the Public Spheres of Art between High and Low”
16.00-16.30 Kaffeepause
16.30-17.30 HENDRIKJE SCHAUER (German Literature, Universität Viadriana Frankfurt/Oder): “Gegenöffentlichkeiten im 18. Jahrhundert”
17.30-18.00 Pause
18.00-19.15 RITCHIE ROBERTSON (German Literature, University of Oxford): Evening lecture “’There is no such thing as society’? Imagining Civil Society from Locke to Schiller”
Mittwoch, 8. Dezember
9.00-10.00 CHRISTOPHER BUSCH (German Literature, Universität Bonn): “Der Safe space als Produktivitätsregime. Romantik (Alternativmilieu, Gegenwartsliteratur)”
10.00-11.00 ELKE DUBBELS (German Literature, Universität Bonn): “Stimme des Volkes, Bienenschwarm, Leuchtkäfergespenst: Theorien und Metaphern der ‚öffentlichen Meinung‘ um 1800”
11.00-11.30 Kaffeepause
11.30-12.30 ANNA ANANIEVA (Cultural History, Leibniz-Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung): “Die Imaginäre Gemeinschaft der ‚Eleganten Welt‘ und ihre Medien um 1800”
12.30-13.00 Abschlussdiskussion
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