CRC 1385: Law and Literature

Basic data for this project

Description

The proposed research thus aims at the foundations of two powerful "cultural value spheres" (Max Weber). Literary and legal scholars come together here in a collaboration, which is unprecedented in its magnitude in the German academic field. In order to harness the complexity of the relations between law and literature, the project group has established the categories of materiality, comparativity and constitutivity. Those provide a conceptual structure for the whole research field. They also furnish the basic structure of the research programme presented here in three project areas: A (materiality), B (comparativity) and C (constitutivity). Project area A thus deals with law in literature and with literature in law. It explores how literature turns into an object of the law and how the law turns into an object of literature. It inquires what regimes govern or limit the selection of materials and what transformations result from such ‘objectifications'. Research area B (comparativity) focuses on (historical) forms of comparisons between law and literature, and further widens the perspective on various lines of research involving comparisons in legal and literary studies. The projects analyse similarities and differences between law and literature and highlight the strategies and disciplinary specifics of comparisons (comparison of comparisons). Finally, project area C investigates not only in how far literature reflects on or arises from certain legal constellations, but also in how far literature might constitute, complement or substitute law, and, vice versa, in how far law can engender, enable or shape literature.The proposal is based on the expectation that the research results will further elucidate central aspects of law and literature and empower the two disciplines, so that they may live up to the challenges of the coming decades. Current, often acerbic debates on fact and fiction (fake news), the people's law versus judicial law, the wane of conventional mass media coverage and the rise of forms of communication beyond the reach of the law, and on national sovereignty versus overriding standards of international law and morality require fundmental reflections on the contents, processes and expression of normative as well as aesthetic values. This research programme pursues, the further development of a new understanding of law and of literature over the course of twelve projected years. It takes on the challenges of fundamental and highly topical questions about the relationship between law and literature, about the future of Europe, migration and globalization and about medial transformations and innovations.