The Invention of the Impossible

The project seeks to reconstruct aesthetical logics of innovation in German language prose of the twentieth century through three case-studies of prominent literary figures: Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht and Elfriede Jelinek. Taking the methodological instruments developed by Pierre Bourdieu in The Rules of Art I will show not only that the twentieth-century `rules` of artistic production also operate in the literary field, but will also describe their concrete functioning and analyse the `generative formulas` of the named authors. By choosing three of the most innovative, distinctive and influential authors of the twentieth century the project examines significant paradigms for various states of the literary field, and different historical, national and cultural contexts, which can claim to cover essential developments in the literary field of the last century. The analysis of Kafka will shed light on the early decades of the century to the aftermath of the First World War and the first half of the 1920s; that on Brecht engages with the context of the interwar period of Weimar and early National Socialism; while the section on Jelinek will include the period from the cultural revolutions of the late 1960s to the beginning of the twenty-first century, but also reflect the context of the 1950s and early 1960s (the `Wiener Gruppe`, Bachmann, Celan etc.). The project is based on the notion that innovativeness cannot be identified by focusing on a single aesthetic, but only by placing it in relation to concurrent aesthetic positions. Such aesthetic positions define in their entirety a historically differing `realm of possibilities` ("Raum der Möglichkeiten"), against which an innovative positioning situates itself, intentionally or otherwise: indeed, against which it has to place itself, if it aspires to recognition. The reconstruction of the relevant aesthetic-cultural contexts and their correlation to the individual authorial positionings are therefore an integral part of the project. Its specific approach consists in combining the questions for textual and contextual characteristics of the three authors: close readings of representative prose texts will enable a precise analysis of their aesthetic practices; at the same time extra-textual forms of authorial `posture` such as public appearances, presence in the media and so forth, are taken into account to answer the question as to what made Kafka become Kafka, Brecht become Brecht and Jelinek become Jelinek.

The project sought to reconstruct artistic generative formulas (Pierre Bourdieu) in German language prose production of the twentieth century, drawing on Pierre Bourdieus concept of literary fields. The research focussed on a detailed analysis of the authors individual positionings within the contemporary literary field: Only when considered within this context can we perceive the inherent distinctions of the authorial positionings. While the early stages of research centred on Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht and Elfriede Jelinek, the main focus soon shifted onto the works of Jelinek, with the addition of her key dramatic texts, as she displays the greatest desiderata of research. Moreover the complexity of the relative literary fields, and the differences between the authors made it increasingly clear that they could not be reduced to a common determinator.The research outcomes on all three authors showed, however, that the understanding of literary texts and of the paratextual statements, such as in interviews, was differentiated and sharpened by the theoretical field perspective. This applies to Brecht and Jelinek, in that they both intensively and extensively adopted the literary production of their time while modifying it in the form of a double distinction; and also for Kafka, whose uvre neutralises central literary currents and places them at distance. As it was necessary to relinquish the fellowship one year before schedule, the research is not fully completed at present. The results to date are published in form of several articles. A monograph on Jelinek is in the process of completion.