Third Party Funds Group - Sub project
Acronym: GRK 2806
Start date : 03.10.2022
End date : 30.04.2026
Extension date: 04.04.2026
Website: https://www.literaturundoeffentlichkeit.phil.fau.de/faudir/noran-omran/#projekt
The dissertation project is based on the observation that, between 1971 and 1986, a serially materialized German-language Beat literature emerged within the German-speaking subcultural counter-public sphere, constituting itself less through individual publications than through its own processes and practices. In journal formats such as Klacto/23 International (1969), UFO (1971), Gasolin 23 (1973–1986), and Boa Vista (1976–1983), but also in publications oscillating between journal and book formats such as Jörg Fauser’s Aqualunge (1971), Tophane (1973), and Die Harry Gelb Story (1973), German-language Beat literature takes shape as an interdiscursive formation that simultaneously positions itself as a counter-model to existing publics and aesthetic formations. In the course of its constitution and construction, this interdiscursive formation develops the conditions of possibility for its own consecration, enabling it, from the 1980s onward, to become conceivable and articulable within established publics and cultural fields such as pop discourse.
While German-language Beat literature has thus far rarely been discussed in scholarship as an autonomous discursive formation and has primarily appeared either as a German-language adaptation of the US-American Beat Generation or as Pop or Pop avant la lettre, the dissertation examines its constitution, construction, and consecration both within and beyond the subcultural counter-public sphere. Combining discourse analysis and material philology with a culturally informed perspective in literary and media studies, the project is concerned not with why German-language Beat literature achieved consecration, but with how those processes and practices operate through which it continues itself despite repeated exclusion and, in doing so, secures long-term discursive and cultural connectivity.
The dissertation project is based on the observation that, between 1971 and 1986, a serially materialized German-language Beat literature emerged within the German-speaking subcultural counter-public sphere, constituting itself less through individual publications than through its own processes and practices. In journal formats such as Klacto/23 International (1969), UFO (1971), Gasolin 23 (1973–1986), and Boa Vista (1976–1983), but also in publications oscillating between journal and book formats such as Jörg Fauser’s Aqualunge (1971), Tophane (1973), and Die Harry Gelb Story (1973), German-language Beat literature takes shape as an interdiscursive formation that simultaneously positions itself as a counter-model to existing publics and aesthetic formations. In the course of its constitution and construction, this interdiscursive formation develops the conditions of possibility for its own consecration, enabling it, from the 1980s onward, to become conceivable and articulable within established publics and cultural fields such as pop discourse.
While German-language Beat literature has thus far rarely been discussed in scholarship as an autonomous discursive formation and has primarily appeared either as a German-language adaptation of the US-American Beat Generation or as Pop or Pop avant la lettre, the dissertation examines its constitution, construction, and consecration both within and beyond the subcultural counter-public sphere. Combining discourse analysis and material philology with a culturally informed perspective in literary and media studies, the project is concerned not with why German-language Beat literature achieved consecration, but with how those processes and practices operate through which it continues itself despite repeated exclusion and, in doing so, secures long-term discursive and cultural connectivity.