"Law, Economics and Literature". A New Interdisciplinary Approach

Literary studies and their paradigms and models are always constituted in relation to other arts as well as to cultural, political, legal and economic systems. It is this interaction between asthetic and non-aesthetic systems and theories which makes literary studies appealing for other scientific disciplines as is proven by the appearance of a number of interdisciplinary research fields such as Law and Literature, Economics and Literature and others. In a first step the planned project aims to reflect on the potential and boundaries of interdisciplinarity especially within the above mentioned fields of Law and Literature and Economics and Literature, which connect aesthetic with non-aesthetic disciplines. In a second step we propose to widen the binary interdisciplinary field of Law and Literature into a triadic field of Law, Economics and Literature. Within this interdisciplinary triangle, literary studies are considered as, to use Foucault`s term, "science intermédiaire" which have already an intrinsically mediating approach in so far as they are able to handle both object- and metalevels of law, economics and literature. The new interdiscipline can then be determined according to methodological, interest-based, conceptual and/or theoretical intersections between the individual disciplines in question. The "meeting point" and thus most common denominator of all three disciplines is that they are textual and thus hermeneutically oriented sciences, operate to a large extent with texts and language and are concerned with structuring social and cultural systems. In the theoretical part the project therefore aims to define the interdisciplinary field of Law, Economics and Literature by carefully differentiating the field into meta- and object-level on the one hand and by elaborating on a concept of text which can be successfully applied within all three disciplines on the other hand. In the pratically oriented part we aim to practically apply the theoretical results. Therefore, we will firstly evaluate and investigate the already existing transfer of concepts between the disciplines, mainly the use of concepts of literary studies within law and economics, by carrying out a corpus analysis built on online database research. Based on this empirically collected data we will then secondly examine the applicability of certain asthetic concepts for non-aesthetic disciplines as law and economics in order to define the common conceptual ground on which the disciplines can meet. Thirdly, we will try to apply the theoretically elaborated interdisciplinary concept of text by addressing the question in which way the literary function prevails over the referential function. In a comparative analysis we will thus examine texts from law and eonomics as far as their aesthetic dimension is concerned in order to evaluate the applicability of a transdisciplinary concept of text.

The project "Law, Literature, Economics. A new interdisciplinary approach" focused on the connection between the three named disciplines. The main focus was on the interdisciplinary cooperation and conceptual transfer between the disciplines, from both a historical and contemporary perspective. The project was divided into four main parts: Interdisciplinarity, applied interdisciplinarity, conceptual transfer, and the concept of text. Basic questions on the forms and functions of interdisciplinarity were addressed: How does interdisciplinarity work?; What does it need in order to succeed in interdisciplinary cooperation?; What are the advantages of interdisciplinarty?; And above all what is "real" interdisciplinarity other than an academic buzzword? Thie epistemological knowledge was then applied to a potential interdisciplinary exchange between the disciplines law, literature and economics. Possible interdisicplinary approaches were outlined and evaluated. The question on how conceptual transfer works proved to be particularly fruitful. In a thorough analysis of already existing conceptual transfer between the disciplines it was found out that most terms from literary theory end up being used only metaphorically in the other disciplines. In a last step the concept of text was analysed in detail as the conceptual basis of all three disciplines in question.