Perpetrator perspectives. Emotionalization as a narrative strategy in contemporary French and Latin American novels about politically and ethnically motivated violence

• Applicant: Dr. Lena Seauve
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 462382284

The aim of the project is to define the emotionalization of readers trough narratives from perpetrator perspectives as a narrative strategy. This strategy will be analyzed using a corpus of contemporary French and Latin American (Cono Sur) novels from the turn of the millennium onwards, which fictionalize historical cases of politically and ethnically motivated violence from the 20th/ 21st centuries. As a literary study of narratives from perpetrator perspectives, their emotionalizing strategies and their function, this project, based in the area of romance studies, is making a contribution to a field of research that is currently taking shape in a new way. On the one hand, it is breaking new ground in terms of the corpus and its historical and geographical delimitation by conducting comparative studies of French and Latin American narratives of perpetrators. Fictional texts on violent conflicts worldwide (Europe, North Africa, Asia and Latin America) are thus viewed in a mutually illuminating context that opens up global perspectives on perpetrator literature. On the other hand, the project offers possible starting points that go far beyond the corpus of investigation: Other narratives from the perpetrator's perspective can also be examined for strategies of emotionalizing with the help of the methodology developed. Investigations of examples from other media (film, series, game) are also conceivable, as are investigations of narratives that differ in terms of their geographical location (Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, Congo etc.). A historically derived definition of the concept of the perpetrator with special consideration of fictional constructions of perpetrator figures forms the basis for the design of a historical-narratological analysis model for fictions from the perspective of the perpetrator, which defines and differentiates narrative strategies of emotionalization. However, the project does not only inscribe itself into the paradigm of emotion research, but also contributes to the clarification of questions of the aesthetics of reception and effects, trauma studies and certain aspects of memory research. The delimitation of the corpus refers to the concept of counterinsurgency, which allows us to establish a connection between perpetrator figures in the context of the Shoah, the wars in Indochina, Algeria and Vietnam up to the military dictatorships in the Cono Sur. Narrative strategies of emotionalization are considered in close connection with processes of strategic stabilization and destabilization of ethical attitudes; strategies of generating ambivalence play a central role here. The individual analyses, which make up the second part of the project, serve firstly to examine the definitions and analytical tools developed with regard to their applicability. Secondly, they offer detailed interpretations of a corpus of texts that have so far been little explored and not in the context of the question of perpetrator perspectives.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants