Organitechnoscience

Invective Dynamics of a Paradigm Shift in Literary Discourse

7-9 October 2020, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle | TU Dresden, SFB 1285 "Invektivität"

Online-conference in English and German.

Acces and participation on registration. Please send an email to: organitechno@sciencesconf.org

Since the second half of the 20th century, a fundamental paradigm shift can be observed in the scientific discourses of various disciplines: The separation between the organic and the technical, which has shaped the "Western" history of ideas for centuries and has structured their imaginations continuously, seems to have been abolished.

This paradigm shift - from separation to hybridization - turns out to be a multifaceted process and becomes the scene of a contested terrain of epochal naming practices: Previously unthinkable associations such as "naturecultures" (Haraway 2003) or relations such as "écotechnie" (Nancy 2007), which emphasize a hybridization of the organic and the technical, also replace the era of "technoscience" proclaimed in the last quarter of the 20th century (Latour 1987, Angerer 1999).

The fact that Literary Studies marks a central place for these negotiations is due to its fundamental nature. For its part, Literary Studies has always been inter- and transdisciplinary, fed by figures of thought from Philosophy, Sociology of Science and Cultural Studies. A large number of the newer and newest approaches in the discourse on literature work on the basis of technical and organic figurations such as the hybrid (Mecklenburg 2008), but also the swarm (Horn/Gisi 2009), the diffraction (Kaiser/Thiele 2017) or the grafting (Wirth 2011).

Technicity and organicity are increasingly becoming interrelationships of complex associations, scandalous intersections and closely interwoven entanglements, which are summarized in the international conference under the era of an organitechnoscience. From this point of view, the violent and invective dynamics that scientific critique in general and claimed paradigm shifts in particular produce constitutively should also become negotiable.

The discussion will focus on organic-technical figures of thought in German-language texts that deal with literature in various ways (literary theory, literature on literature, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, essayism) and their integration into processes of degradation with regard to other positions of knowledge, disciplinary practices and social contexts.