FOR 593:  Beginnings in/of Modernity: Theoretical Concepts, Literary Figurations, Historical Constructions

• Subject Area: Humanities
• Term: from 2006 to 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 12590533

Focussing on different concepts and constructions of beginnings, the interdisciplinary Research Unit explores the cultural dynamics of modernity, working on discourses, genres and texts from the 18th to the 20th century, including exemplary investigations of beginnings in pre-modern and ancient times. The general approach is to consider the semantics and discursive strategies that have, in specific situations, been employed to define, defend or delegitimise the notion of beginnings and so determine its function for the ways in which the discourse of modernity has described itself. The group comprises twelve research projects, each of them working on a case study to investigate how the question of beginnings is a formative and productive issue for key cultural practices. At the same time, several cases also suggest how struggles or disputes over such a question can account for the specific tensions in modernisation narratives and processes otherwise not often grasped.
The twelve projects cooperate across the larger research field in view of five central questions:
(1) How is the modern fascination with origins related to the modern narrative of disenchantment and demythologization of the world?
(2) In how far can contingency be considered a key trope of beginning(s)?
(3) In what ways are the modern concepts of innovation and invention, and its paradoxical entanglements with the old and the new, with tradition and innovation, connected to the problem of beginning?
(4) What is the temporal structure of beginnings, and what are the specific concepts of time they are based on?
(5) Finally, are there specific characteristics of beginnings in literary texts, and is literature, compared to other orders of knowledge, endowed with an epistemological privilege concerning its aesthetic performance and its perception of beginnings?

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Anfang der Philosophie und Philosophie des Anfangs: Selbstbegründung und Selbstbegrenzung in der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (Applicant Zöller, Günter )
• Anfangsorte: Topographien der Erneuerung in der amerikanischen Romantik 1820-1870 (Applicant Benesch, Klaus )
• Anfänge von Sprache, Geschichte und Gesellschaft am Übergang zur Moderne: Vico und Montesquieu gegen Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Applicant Teuber, Bernhard )
• Autochthonie: Ausprägungen einer Denkfigur in der griechischen und lateinischen Literatur (Applicant Hose, Martin )
• Der Fall des Anfangs (Applicant Mülder-Bach, Inka )
• Die Anfänge von 'Littérature comparée' und 'Weltliteratur' (Applicant Birus, Hendrik )
• Gottes Uranfang - Politische creatio continua. Urszenen und Sprachen der Schöpfung im deutschsprachigen theologischen Diskurs der 1920er und 1930er Jahre (Applicant Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm )
• Landnahme als Abenteuer. Narrative Anfangskonzeptionen in skandinavischen Entdeckungsphantasmen um 1900 (Applicant Heitmann, Annegret )
• Ossian und die Erfindung schottischer Nationalliteratur im 19. Jahrhundert - Scheiternde Anfänge (Applicant Döring, Tobias )
• Produktives Weiß - 'La page blanche' als Figuration des Anfangs in der französischen Dichtung der Moderne (Applicant Teuber, Bernhard )
• Verheerende Anfänge: Brudermord und Bürgerkrieg (Applicant Vinken, Ph.D., Barbara )
• Versetzte Anfänge: Text-im-Text als Konstruktion des Anfangens (Applicant Greber, Erika )
• Zentralprojekt (Applicant Mülder-Bach, Inka )
• Über das Vorgestern zum Übermorgen: Die Neoprimitivistische Kulturrevolution im Rußland der 1910er / 1920er Jahre (Applicant Hansen-Löve, Aage A. )

• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Inka Mülder-Bach
• Deputy: Professor Dr. Aage A. Hansen-Löve