SFB 1385: Law and Literature

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This Collaborative Research Centre has examined the relations between law and literature in its first funding phase and will continue to do so in the second. The connections between law and literature – “risen from the same bed” (Jakob Grimm) – prove to be highly productive in the complex mutualities of the respective disciplines, of their key concepts and methods, but also in their social and cultural importance. The first task which the Centre has set itself in establishing an essential cartography of this field of research has meanwhile made substantial progress as documented in apposite publications. The subdivision in the three project areas A (Materiality), B (Comparativity) and C (Constitutivity) has proven most useful for the internal structuring of the project and for guiding its research, but it could also be positioned in the international research community as a widely accepted ordering principle. Set squarely and beyond this structure, further networking platforms have been put in place: the three Fora (Theory, Europe, Form); the Centre’s own Open Access Online Encyclopaedia; or the numerous Dynamic Clusters. The reorientation for the second funding phase as proposed in this application moves the focus on the already incipient anchor themes of Europeanisation and Globalisation; and it also takes in issues of Medialisation envisaged as central for the final, third phase. This combination of continuity of current research foci with a substantial reorientation already shows in the project’s overarching structure. While the current project areas (A) to (C) remain in place and are further developed, they will now be complemented by three conceptual fields, which reflect, expound and guide this reorientation: (1) Limitation and Transgression, (2) Identity Formation and Othering, (3) Universalisation and Relativization. All projects relate to at least one of these fields and make their project-specific contributions. Not least in view of the fierce debates on fact versus fiction, on people’s law versus law of the judges, on the shrinking of the influence of classical media and the rise of communication spaces beyond legal control, especially on a global level, and finally on overriding standards defined by international law versus political and moral directives, a fundamental examination of contents, processes and forms of articulation of both normative and aesthetic values appears as an urgent need of our time, and it remains the specific aim of research at this Centre.