Central Tasks (Z)

• Subject Area: Humanities
• Term: from 2013 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 197396619

Acceleration, compression of time and efficiency are among the most dominant tropes of our age. Their effects change our workplaces, contribute to the global reallocation of economic resources and turn unrest into a sign of modernity. This, however, does not transform Muße (otiose leisure) into an obsolete category; to the contrary, it gives new meaning to a concept that might have seemed outdated some decades ago. As the pressure of efficiency becomes tangible in more and more domains, Muße once again returns to the focus of debates about spaces of freedom in society in general and in the arts and sciences in particular. It becomes a heuristic concept to discuss the potentials for creativity and innovation that such spaces of freedom can set free, and to rethink the fundamental anthropological question of the relation between productivity and freedom. Muße is transgressive. It transgresses such opposites as work and leisure, acceleration and deceleration, activity and inactivity. Experiences of freedom that are characteristic for Muße do not remain isolated within the times and spaces allocated to Muße. They generate a scope for reflection and enable us to practice new modes of experience that feed back into our everyday life. The very incongruity between limited experiences of autonomy in Muße and the social determination by purposefulness that characterises our everyday life can enable critical reflections on our everyday roles. Through Muße, therefore, and the spaces for Muße assigned to different groups, societies negotiate the relation between individual freedom and social determination.Within the CRC 1015 cultures of Muße are systematically analysed from literary, historical, and sociological perspectives. In the second project phase, the CRC puts an even stronger focus on the social and socio-political aspects linked of the topic. Through the analysis of different social practices, their histories, discursive mediations and aesthetic interpretations, we intend to sharpen the fundamental anthropological questions linked to it and thereby to refine contemporary debates on the allocation and use of temporal resources. In clearly defined projects, we analyse the Borders (Projektbereich G), the Temporal and Spatial Character of (R) and Practices (P) of Muße using disciplinary specific approaches anchored in Art History, Classics, English Philology, Forest History, Human Geography, Medieval Studies, Modern and Contemporary German Literature, Music Studies, Psychology, Psychosomatic Medicine, Slavonic Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology and Theology.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1015: Muße (Leisure/Otium). Concepts, Spaces, Figures
• Applicant Institution: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
• Project Heads: Professorin Dr. Elisabeth Cheauré, from 8/2016 until 9/2019; Professor Dr. Gregor Dobler, since 10/2019; Professor Dr. Burkhard Hasebrink, until 10/2013