Tropes of the State

The research project focuses on figures of thought of the state in films, literary texts, and theoretical writings on the state. The tropes, including metaphors, metonymies, and allegories, employed to describe the political community, shall be explored. The years between World Wars I and II define the research period, in which the reflection on different forms of statehood in Austria and Germany exhibits great ideological as well as aesthetic variety. The project aims to develop an interdisciplinary research approach which facilitates an analysis of various textual forms of discourse on state and which also meet the epistemological interest of literary and film studies as well as political science: the represented forms of political community will be analyzed as contributions to the discursive and gendered construction of the state. The research interest thereby focuses on the rhetorical constitution of dominant topoi such as mass society, revolution, parlamentarism, democratization processes and capitalism, which shall also be discussed in regard to current debates on state and statehood. The newly developed research approach will expand the focus by a comparative dimension: Poetologies and ideologies of conceptions of the state will be compared in Austrian and German texts. The scope of contemporary modes of thought and representation of the state which condense in a constitutive discourse on state, shall be identified. Furthermore the limits of thought and representation intrinsic to genre and ideology will be examined. The project thus aims to provide groundwork for interdisciplinary research to be expanded upon in transnational follow-up projects, particularly with regard to current questions concerning the political community of the EU.

The research project focuses on figures of thought of the state in films, literary texts, and theoretical writings on the state. The tropes, including metaphors, metonymies, and allegories, employed to describe the political community, shall be explored. The years between World Wars I and II define the research period, in which the reflection on different forms of statehood in Austria and Germany exhibits great ideological as well as aesthetic variety. The project aims to develop an interdisciplinary research approach which facilitates an analysis of various textual forms of discourse on state and which also meet the epistemological interest of literary and film studies as well as political science: the represented forms of political community will be analyzed as contributions to the discursive and gendered construction of the state. The research interest thereby focuses on the rhetorical constitution of dominant topoi such as mass society, revolution, parlamentarism, democratization processes and capitalism, which shall also be discussed in regard to current debates on state and statehood. The newly developed research approach will expand the focus by a comparative dimension: Poetologies and ideologies of conceptions of the state will be compared in Austrian and German texts. The scope of contemporary modes of thought and representation of the state which condense in a constitutive discourse on state, shall be identified. Furthermore the limits of thought and representation intrinsic to genre and ideology will be examined. The project thus aims to provide groundwork for interdisciplinary research to be expanded upon in transnational follow-up projects, particularly with regard to current questions concerning the political community of the EU.