Doing Theory. Towards a History of an Epistemic Practice, 1960 - 1990

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Philipp Felsch
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: from 2013 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 231315392

From Critical Theory, Marxism and (Post)Structuralism through to Media and Systems Theory, the phenomenon subsumed under the name of "theory" has experienced a remarkable ascent inside the Humanities as well as outside the academy. Today however, the genre seems to have arrived at the point of its possible historicisation. After a decade of emphatic theorising, the social and human sciences are performing a return to "reality", expressed in empirical case studies and narrative reconstructions. While the leading German theory publishers Suhrkamp and Merve have decided to finally archive their materials, the theory-boom is notably declining on the book market.The project takes its cue from this assumption and sets out to develop a "history of theory" from 1960-1990. In this, a classical history of ideas has proven insufficient. The project instead adopts a methodology modelled on the history of science and on laboratory studies and consequently focuses on the practices, institutions and media formats that generated "theory" in the first place. In order to understand the theory-boom between Suhrkamp and Merve, Paris and Berlin and between academy and counterculture, the texts themselves are less important than their conditions of emergence, their content less relevant than their historical uses. Paraphrasing Alexander von Humboldt, the project thus aims to "hover above the theories" in order to grasp the specificity of theory in the collective singular. Which epistemic and political motives propelled the theory phenomenon? Was theory necessary to cater to a rapidly expanding academic industry? Which reading practices did theory develop? Which role did publishers and journals play and how did theory situate itself as a genre in its own right between science, literature and art? The project sets out to examine these and other related questions through two case studies drawing on a wealth of abundant source material.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants