Handbook Literature and the Public Sphere

An Interdisciplinary Handbook

Edited by Karin Höpker, Antje Kley, Dirk Niefanger and Antonia Villinger

Metzler/Springer Nature

Without a public sphere there is no literature, and literature, in its many forms of publication and
its various addresses, remains an indispensable pacemaker for the formation of public opinions.
This chiasmus indicates the timeliness of the handbook, shapes its articles’ methodological
choices, and explains its cultural and theoretical relevance. It seeks to make the interdependencies
between literatures and public spheres tangible for a broader audience (scholars, students,
teachers). In doing so, it relies on a concept of literature that encompasses socio-cultural
contexts, political frameworks, (inter-)mediality and media competitions, cultural institutions
(libraries, reading circles, academies, etc.), and the literary scene as the environment and object of
analysis of literary products. Our understanding of literature sees the book as one possible mode
of literary mediation among others; it also considers digital, oral, visual, and other performative
literatures. The handbook adopts a reflexive cultural studies approach and a comprehensive
concept of literature.

The handbook is not bound to national languages, but it focuses on literatures of different
cultural areas (mainly English-, German-, French-, Spanish- and Russian-speaking), including
minor literatures and minority cultures that have adopted former colonial and settlement
languages as well as their publics on different continents. In doing so, the handbook relies on the
diverse disciplinary expertise of its authors. In a comparative and transnational perspective, we
consider praxeological, social, medial, material, ethical, and economic aspects of literary
communication. The handbook’s focus lies on literatures that could hardly be more diverse. All
of them, however, are characterized by an increasingly determining globalization, specific but
interrelated political constellations, media transformations, the mechanization of everyday life,
and changing public spheres.

The handbook seeks to present the enabling conditions and the impact of literary production in
different public spheres. Our scope of interest is the present. The articles will focus on literature
that has been published since 1945. Where relevant, historical references will reach beyond that.
An exception is made for the global-historical dimensions in section four. Literatures will be
understood in terms of their specific characteristics, potentials, and functions, first as
seismographs of often contradictory cultural, media, and social developments, second as
generators of a vocabulary for articulating multi-layered experiences of the respective present,
and third as forums for the debate of publicly relevant issues. The effects of different publics on
different literatures are also addressed in the individual contributions to the handbook.

The contributions to the handbook Literature and the Public Sphere deal in different ways with the
fundamental question of what constitutes literature. The editors assume that publicity – to
whatever extent, in whatever form, and in whatever media – is and has always been one of the
fundamental constituents of all literature. In general and in specialized articles, the contributions
to the handbook show how, under what conditions, and with what consequences literature can
be perceived as a form of representation that is always public even if not necessarily accessible to
all. Economic, linguistic, or political aspects determine access to and the reception of literatures.
On this basis, the articles explore what the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion of public
spheres mean for different societies and sociocultural milieus.

The handbook seeks to establish a heuristic connection between systematic and global-historical
perspectives as well as current discursive contexts. The second section – Basic Principles – is
devoted to the systematic unfolding of the relationship between literature and the public sphere.
The third section – Perspectives – develops selected approaches and methodologies that promise to
be particularly productive for the elucidation of the interdependencies between literatures and
publics. A systematic, culturally and theoretically ambitious analysis of the relationship between
literature and the public sphere makes limited sense without global-historical relativizations and
current discursive standpoint epistemologies. Therefore, in Part 4 – Global Historical Dimensions –
different historical constellations of literature and the public sphere will be outlined, and in Part 5
– Literary Positionings in the Present – recently momentous thematic fields will be paradigmatically
mapped out.

Outline

I . Introduction

The Public Sphere as a Constituent of Literature

II. Fundamentals

1. Attention (Dirk Niefanger)
2. Literature as Infrastructure of the Public Sphere (Laura Bieger)
3. Major and Minor Literatures (Alexander Wöll)
4. Communication Control (Svenja Hagenhoff)
5. (Cultural) Difference and Universality (Azyza Deiab)
6. Reading, Seeing, Hearing (Charlotte Coch & Torsten Hahn)
7. Literature and Ethics (Antje Kley)
8. Literature and Political Institutions (Nicolai Busch)
9. Literary Market (Christian Meierhofer)
10. Literary Events (Hartmut Hombrecher)
11. Literary Criticism (Christoph auf der Horst)
12. Literary Scandals (Christian Schicha)
13. Materiality and Literature (Axel Kuhn)
14. Media Systems (Matthias Künzel)
15. Political Literature (Antonia Villinger)
16. Writing (Carolin Amlinger)
17. Translating (Jekatherina Lebedewa)
18. Publishing (Annette Gilbert)
19. Circulating (Svenja Hagenhoff)
20. Censorship (Eyk Akansu & Henrique Bordini)

III. Perspectives

21. Anthropology (Katja Mellmann)
22. Digital Humanities (Svenja Hagenhoff / Maximilian Würz)
23. Environmental Humanities (Evi Zemanek)
24. Gender und Queer Studies (Franziska Bergmann)
25. Global Studies (Claudia Lillge)
26. Interculturality (Patrick Graur)
27. Intersectionality (Lisa Seuberth)
28. Comparative Literature (Monika Schmitz-Emans)
29. Sociology of Literature (Aida Bosch)
30. Medical Humanities (Mita Banerjee)
31. Media Ethics (Christian Schicha)
32. Postcolonial Studies (Annette Becker & Arunima Kundu)
33. Public Humanities (Zoe Hope Bulatis)
34. Translation Studies (Alla Paslawska)

IV. Global Historical Dimensions

35. Ancient World (Therese Fuhrer)
36. Middle Ages (Sandra Linden & Christiane Witthöft)
37. Early Modern Times (Dirk Niefanger)
38. 18th Century (Nicola Glaubitz)
39. 19th Century (Annette Keilhauer)
40. 1st half 20th Century (Andrew Gross)
41. 2nd half 20th Century (Gerold Sedlmayr)
42. 21st Century (Chrisian von Tschilschke)

V. Literary Positionings in the Present

43. Age (Nicole Haring & Roberta Maierhofer)
44. Anthropocene (Karin Höpker & Antonia Villinger)
45. Work (Iuditha Balint & Henning Podulski)
46. Poverty (Katharina Fackler)
47. Bioethics (Davina Höll)
48. Energy (Victoria Herche & Antonia Villinger)
49. Cultures of Memory (Christiane Zauner-Schneider)
50. Fake News (Sabine Friedrich)
51. Fandom (Anastasia Glawion)
52. Violence (Maciej Jędrzejewski)
53. Identity (Chiona Hufnagel)
54. AI / Digitalization (Ruxandra Teodorescu)
55. Childhood / Youth (Hartmut Hombrecher)
56. War (Camilo del Valle)
57. Migration (Marina Hertrampf)
58. New Right (Jonas Meurer)
59. Ecology (Hanna Eglinger)
60. Pop (Noran Omran)
61. Postmigration (Laura Sturtz)
62. Law (Peter Schneck)
63. Shoa/Holocaust (Susanne Rohr)
64. Social Media (Johannes Franzen)
65. Death and Life (Antje Kley)
66. Surveillance (Sabrina Huber)
67. Virtuality (Wesley Moore)
68. Aesthetic Resistance (Danijel Katić)