Intimate Readings: Literary Negotiations of Affective and Gendered Belongings

Cooperation partner in Graz: Assoz.-Prof. Dr. Silvia Schultermandl, Institute of American Studies
Junior Fellows: Si Whybrew, Dijana Simić

Incoming Senior Fellow: Prof. Heike Paul, Department of English and American Studies, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Incoming Junior Fellows: Jana Aresin

Period: March 2020 to February 2021
Symposium: 14-15.1.2021

Publication: Silvia Schultermandl / Jana Aresin / Si Sophie Pages Whybrew / Dijana Simic (eds.) (2002): Affective Worldmaking. Narrative Counterpublics of Gender and Sexuality. transcript.

Content:

The cooperation project, which in addition to a scientific symposium and specialist publication will also include a series of broadcasts on the local Graz radio station "Helsinki" as well as a reading at the Literaturhaus Graz, has a literary-scientific orientation and examines contemporary literary texts from the English-speaking and ex-Yugoslavian regions with regard to the affective and gendered relations of belonging negotiated in them. By this, we mean affective structures through which social coherence is established, consolidated and transported. Following Sara Ahmed, we characterize affects - in contrast to the common understanding - as a socially mediated, emotional experience, as a result of interactions with the social environment and not just as an expression of inner emotions.

Literary texts make use of these affective patterns in order to describe the literary characters and their relationships to one another. On the other hand, they can lead readers to identify with specific characters and forms of identity. Recognizing oneself in a literary character, feeling sympathy with the suffering they portray, experiencing their arrival in a self-determined subject position as positively moving - these are all aspects of reading that are generated by affective forms of "be/longing". In this way, they also open up space for the emergence of so-called "intimate reading publics", whereby several readers constitute themselves as a public through the aesthetic and affective experience of the same literary text. Our focus on literary texts aims to take the idea of intimate readings further.

In addition to gender- and affect-oriented text analysis, the approach described above allows us to place the examined text examples, which place the experiences of female, transgender, queer and other protagonists marginalized in social discourse at the center of the narratives, in a social context and to ask about their transformative potential for impact. Here, we follow on from ongoing debates emanating from the renowned affect research group Chicago Feel Tank. Their idea of a so-called "public feeling", which understands emotions within the power structures in which they arise, proves to be extremely productive for our interest in the affective dynamics of individual and collective affiliation relations.

Central questions for the individual sub-projects as well as for the joint publication include:

• Which affective structures and patterns connect the literary figures in terms of the aforementioned affiliation relations and to what extent do they serve to create potential for identification between readers and the text?
• Which formal and aesthetic textual strategies are used in the sense of an affective and aesthetic experience of such often autobiographical fictional worlds and how does this relate to prevailing literary traditions, genres and canons?
• What general statements can be made - apart from the specific identity constructions of the respective example texts - about affect-based constructions of gendered affiliation relations in literary texts and what unique insights can reading literary texts open up here?
• Which (counter-)publics are invoked in the selected paradigmatic examples and which affects of belonging are thereby transported?