ABSTRACT:

This projects investigates a wide range of aesthetic phenomena involving the performative generation and display of gender and sexuality from the turn of the century until present times. It chooses three major approaches: historical analysis, media aesthetics and identity politics. Performance and performativity, as central terms to the construction and deconstruction of sexual identities, will be differentiated in a non-essentialist analysis with respect to historical, anthropological, aesthetical aspects as well as media- and culture theory. The projects, though focused on literature, establish strong references to other figurative arts and media dealing with the complexety of the phenomena in view.

Subproject 1 - "Problem history with exemplary late 19th and early 20th century texts” (provisional title)

Erotic-aesthetic phenomena of transgression in literature and art will be described and analysed from the perspective of performativity, challanging directly or indirectly the notion of culture as centered on text and writing, as accomplished by the anarchical body avant-gardes since Nietzsche. Case studies will be the result of intersections between various perspectives on the history of artistic forms, theories of the arts, the sociology of diverse aesthetic movements, the historical anthropology of the body, gender studies and the analysis of liberation movements of sexual deviancy, including the history of Nietzscheanism.

Subproject 2 - "Aesthetics of Presence. Performance, Media, Gender” (provisional title)

The constitutive link between media aesthetics and performative practices in anglo-american art, photography, literature, electronic media from the 70s to the present is the central topic of this project. Text- and body-oriented practices, media differences, phenomena of intermedia and hybridity will be discussed with a special emphasis on gender and sexualities displayed in the work. The exemplary studies of art and performances will not only focus on use of media and its discursive implications, but is also looking at the specfics of performative practices within the framework of time and space, aiming at developing a theoretical inquiry of an aesthetic of presence.

Subproject 3 - "Coming Out and Subculture – Technologies of the Gay Self. Narrative Practics and Inscenation Strategies” (provisional title)

This subproject examines novels, photographs, films and communication structures from the internet, inquiring their specific contribution to a culture of the Coming Out. Two different performative phenomena and practices are focal points of this study: the discursive construction of a gay identity, and the transfer of subcultural icons and lifestyles into hegemonic culture. Working with largely autobiographically informed material, the project aims at a comparison between erotic, theological and political discourses based on Foucault's technology of the self. Changes of social conditions and the use of media in the cultures of the Coming Out since 1969 mark the starting point of examination.


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