Work on Concepts. The History of Controversies within the Research Group Poetik und Hermeneutik (1966-1984)

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This project examines the work of the research group POETIK UND HERMENEUTIK, which was organized as an interdisciplinary dialog and wanted to introduce a new form of practice in the humanities. Because of its interdisciplinary work that includes the international discussion, the group is credited with being largely responsible for modernizing the discourse in the humanities in Germany in the second half of the twentieth century. The project analyzes the conditions, work forms, and effects of the research group in order to check whether this communis opinio is really valid, and to explore where its limits are. An essential precondition for this is the rereading of the 17 volumes of conference papers in connection with newly available, extensive archival materials to develop the history of POETIK UND HERMENEUTIK as an exemplary case for research in the humanities. In order to clarify how theoretical interests relate to their institutional framework as well as wider politics of scholarship, the work of the research group will be examined under four aspects.(1) Using the example of controversies about conceptual history, the project will look into the conditions of the interdisciplinary dialog that led to new directions in theoryor failed to do so. (2) Essential for this is the analysis of the personal networks, communicative standards, and the constitutive rules within which this work continued for more than 30 years, ensuring the groups outstanding reputation. (3) In this context, the project asks how the process of the groups research and its results relate to the contemporary discussion in literary studies at certain points, which basically took place within the disciplinary orders of the national literatures, orders that were confirmed by the university reforms of the 1960s. A special focus will be the examination of the mutual perception and exchange between members of POETIK UND HERMENEUTIK and literature scholars at the Zentralinstitut für Literaturgeschichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR [Central Institute of Literary History at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR], which took place continuously for as long as the group existed. The project will explore whether hitherto unpublished material supports the groups view of itself as a circle that modernized the humanities in Germany, formed an influential school of followers, and caused a paradigm shift.In order to do so, for the first time, basic research on the history of the humanities, supported by extensive published and archival material, will be linked with methods of modern science studies, and the usefulness of these methods for literary studies and the humanities in general will be tested against a concrete case. The results of this research will lead to a detailed study on the history of POETIK UND HERMENEUTIK.