American Literature and the Transformation of Privacy

研究项目“美国文学和隐私的转变”构成了海森堡美国研究、民主和美学教授职位的研究领域2。长期以来，隐私一直被视为自由民主的支柱。然而，目前，隐私的未来——以及民主的未来——似乎不确定。这个研究项目调查了19世纪和最近的美国文学，以便在当前美国民主转型的背景下深入了解隐私的概念和功能的变化。“美国文学与隐私的转变”由两个相互交叉的子项目组成。在过去两年中，这两个次级项目的方向或范围都有所改变，以便公正地对待它们的初步调查结果。目前的提案旨在为该项目提供额外两年的资金。这一扩展将使研究领域2能够充分为海森堡教授的目标做出贡献，即探索当代民主变革过程的美学维度。在此建议中附上了正在进行的两本书手稿的草稿。博士后研究员德斯·斯蒂芬·库尔博士正在撰写一本为文学隐私研究领域提供理论框架的书。这种方法是开创性的，因为它将文学理论置于隐私研究的中心。他的项目有两个好处：首先，它将填补文学隐私研究领域的空白，到目前为止，文学隐私研究的概念是从政治理论或社会学等非文学学科借鉴来的。其次，通过将文学理论方法引入到关于隐私的更广泛的辩论中，它将有助于在非文学语境中与隐私的美学维度达成协议。本研究以艾米莉·狄金森及其从南北战争前到现在的接受史作为理论概念化的范例。在第二个子项目中，Johannes Voelz教授正在撰写一篇专著，通过对当代文学的分析来探讨“网络社会”中的隐私问题。他的研究调查了当代文学写作的三个领域：监视小说、“新真诚”运动和文学回忆录。对这些不同类型的分析有助于理解“网络隐私”的美学。这里的隐私被用来挑出产生强烈自我体验的人际影响。不再居住在空间或精神领域免受公众监督，私人目前正在重新安置在网络结构中。借助媒介社会学和情感理论，这本专著揭示了当代文学美学如何通过自我的延伸巩固了一种新的私人概念。

The research project “American Literature and the Transformation of Privacy” constitutes research area 2 of the Heisenberg-Professorship of American Studies, Democracy, and Aesthetics. Privacy has long been regarded a pillar of liberal democracy. At present, however, the future of privacy—and hence of democracy—seems uncertain. This research project investigates American literature of the nineteenthcentury and the recent past in order to gain insights into the changing conceptualization and functions of privacy in light of the current transformations of American democracy. “American Literature and the Transformation of Privacy” consists of two intersecting subprojects. Over the course of the last two years, both of these subprojects have been altered in their orientation or scope in order to do justice to their preliminary findings. The present proposal aims to fund the project for an additional two years. This extension will enable research area 2 to fully contribute to the Heisenberg-Professorship’s objective of exploring the aesthetic dimensions of the transformative processes characterizing contemporary democracy. Draft versions of the two book manuscripts-in-progress are enclosed in this proposal. Dr. des. Stephan Kuhl, the postdoctoral researcher, is at work on a book which supplies the field of literary privacy studies with a theoretical framework. This approach is pioneering insofar as it puts literary theory at the center of privacy studies. His project promises two yields: First, it will fill a lacuna in the field of literary privacy studies, which so far has borrowed its conceptualizations of the private from non-literary disciplines such as political theory or sociology. Second, by bringing a literary-theoretical approach into the broader debate on privacy, it will help come to terms with the aesthetic dimensions of privacy even in non-literary contexts. The study takes Emily Dickinson and the history of her reception from the antebellum period to the present as the paradigmatic example for its theoretical conceptualization. In the second subproject, Prof. Johannes Voelz is writing a monograph that approaches privacy in the “network society” through an analysis of contemporary literature. His study investigates three areas of contemporary literary writing: surveillance novels, the “New Sincerity” movement, and literary memoirs. The analysis of these diverse genres contributes to an understanding of the aesthetics of “networked privacy.” The private here is invoked to single out interpersonal affects that generate intense experiences of selfhood. No longer residing in a spatial or psychic sphere protected from public scrutiny, the private is currently being relocated inside network structures. Drawing on media sociology and affect theory, the monograph brings to light how contemporary literary aesthetics consolidates a new concept of the private, and by extension of the self.