The Upsurge of the Manifesto in Contemporary Debates on Diversity in the United States

该项目旨在通过对美国及其他地区不平等情况下人口多样性和社会团结的当前有争议的辩论的形式化，特别是通过询问社会政治宣言的用途及其在这些辩论中定位主题和群体的功能，为跨国美国文学和文化研究的基础研究做出贡献。以最近宣言的热潮为线索，该项目询问宣言作为一种通用形式如何突出对人口多样性的容忍度下降与对其承认的迫切要求之间的紧张关系。作为公开反驳的一种具体形式，人们从不同的角度、不同的途径对宣言进行了研究。需要仔细研究的是它作为一个重要工具的功能，为宣言者的话语定位，尤其是在后奥巴马时代的两极分化的景观。为了在宣言中对多样性进行主题性的辩论，并更好地了解体裁的功能，以定位话语行为者，有必要将联合收割机的最先进的方法与多样性研究领域的创新概念和方法相结合。该项目将与一般形式相关的问题与近期行动主义动态及其授权策略相关的问题联系起来，从而有助于更好地理解主体和群体如何通过战略性地使用体裁在多样性辩论中定位自己，并有助于建立一种认真对待历史特殊性以及权力的结构和话语关系的形式理论。

The project is designed to contribute to foundational research in transnational American Literary and Cultural Studies by working through formalizations of current controversial debates on demographic diversity and social unity in scenarios of inequality in the US and beyond, especially by interrogating the uses of the sociopolitical manifesto and its function of positioning subjects and groups in these debates. Taking the recent upsurge of the manifesto as its cue, the project interrogates how the manifesto as a generic form highlights tensions between a decreasing tolerance for demographic diversity and urgent calls for its recognition. As a specific form of public refutation, the manifesto has been researched from various angles and through different approaches. What requires close examination yet is its function as an important instrument for the discursive positioning of manifestors, not least in the polarized landscape of the post-Obama years. To thematically map debates on diversity as carried out in the manifesto and gain a better sense of the function of the genre to position discursive actors, it is necessary to combine state-of-the-art approaches from a politicized theory of generic form with innovative conceptual and methodical approaches from research areas in Diversity Studies. The project relates questions that pertain to generic form with questions concerning recent dynamics of activism and the authorizing strategies associated with it. It thus aims to contribute both to a better understanding of how subjects and groups position themselves in debates on diversity through the strategic use of a genre, and to a theory of form that takes historical specificities and structural and discursive relations of power seriously.