Consumers, Female Consumers and Consumer Objects: On the Establishment of New Actors and Their Fields of Action in 19th Century German Literature

该项目旨在创造一个多视角的文学史，了解消费者是如何被发明和描述的，以及他/她在漫长的19世纪世纪德语国家的行动领域。这个发明和剖析有两个不同的含义：在这一时期，消费者首先发展成为经济周期结构中的独立行动者，其次发展成为一个想象中的人物，作为一个位于经济学和文学之间的界面。工作假设分为三个阶段：在世纪早期（1），可以观察到一种趋势，在这种趋势中，消费者仅仅被认为是他或她的极端，即富人和穷人的消费习惯。从世纪中期起（2），消费者越来越多地从生产者的角度作为一个想象的主体产生;类似于历史学派的立场，它将销售置于其考虑的中心。在19世纪末（3），消费者（男性和女性）的形象在经济学中得到进一步巩固和扩大，在这种情况下，在边际效用理论中，它使产品的价值相对化，也使其主观化。尽管消费者日益成为19世纪世纪经济模型的中心，但令人奇怪的是，消费者作为一个数字仍然被低估了。到了世纪末，文学作品填补了这一空白，用真正的文学手段来填补这一空白，根据这些工作假设，子项目A提出了一个问题，即设想消费者的经济理论在多大程度上也能够抓住女性消费者。历史经济学派和边际效用理论没有对此作出解释，但文学作品清楚地描绘了一个女性消费者，从而有力地填补了经济理论的空白。文学作品可以构思出想象的结构，补充经济消费概念的抽象性，作为对想象设计的挑战。针对这一问题，本研究将在比较研究的框架内，对本研究计划中重新命名的男性和女性写作进行研究。在子研究计划B中，将重点放在消费者与文学文本中的事物或消费对象之间的关系上。基于事物和人物的（部分）同一性的浪漫主义思想，这种思想形象在19世纪文学中的发展将在上述消费、消费对象和消费者的建模的背景下进行考虑。其目的是要证明，经济学中所阐述的商品主观价值理论因此具有了一种激进的、甚至是隐喻性的意义。

The project at hand aims to create a multi-perspective literary history of how the consumer was invented and profiled as well as his/her fields of action in the German-speaking countries of the long 19th century. This invention and profiling have two different meanings: during this period, the consumer develops firstly into an independent actor in the fabric of the economic cycle, and secondly into an imaginary figure as the one situated at the interface between economics and literature. The working hypotheses differentiate between three phases: in the early phase of the 19th century (1), a tendency can be observed in which the consumer is merely perceived in terms of his or her extremes, i.e. the consumption habits of rich and poor. From the middle of the 19th century onwards (2), the consumer is increasingly generated as an imaginary subject from the perspective of a producer; analogous to the positions of the historical school, which places sales at the center of its considerations. At the end of the 19th century (3), the figure of the consumer (male and female) is further consolidated and expanded in economics, in this case in the theory of marginal utility, which relativizes and also subjectivizes the value of a product. Although the consumer is increasingly at the center of 19th century economic models, as a figure the consumer nevertheless remains curiously under-determined. At the end of the 19th century literature deals with this void and fills it with genuine literary devices.Based on these working hypotheses, subproject A poses the question to what extent the economic theory which conceives the consumer is also able to capture the female consumer. It is not explained in the historical school of economics and theory of marginal utility; literature, however, clearly depicts a female consumer and thus imaginatively fills the blanks of economic theory. Literature can conceive of the imaginary structure, complementary to the abstractness of the economic consumer concept, as a challenge for the imaginary design. In response to this, male and female writing, which will be recanonized by the project, will be examined in a comparative research framework.In subproject B the focus will be placed on the relationship between consumer on the one hand, and the thing or consumer object in literary texts on the other. Based on the romantic idea of a (partial) identity of things and figures, the development of this figure of thought in 19th century literature will be considered against the backdrop of the aforementioned modelling of consumption, consumer objects and consumers. The aim is to demonstrate that the theory of the subjective value of goods formulated in economics thus takes on a radicalized, even metaphysically charged meaning.