Literature as a Space of Debate: Artistic Freedom and the Limits of the Sayable in Contemporary German Literature (2020–2025)

The dissertation project examines how contemporary German-language literature (2020–2025) aesthetically negotiates the tensions between artistic freedom, representational responsibility, and the limits of what can be said. It takes as its starting point a current transformation in the German cultural sector: the understanding of artistic freedom is shifting from a legal guarantee of protection against state censorship towards a culture of moral and aesthetic responsibility negotiated within cultural institutions, publishing houses, literary sections of the press, and literary prize committees. Under the pressure of identity politics, postcolonial critique, and expectations of “authentic testimony,” the autonomy of the literary sphere is increasingly being called into question.

The project combines political-philosophical theories with narratological and postcolonial approaches in order to conceptualize literature as a “laboratory” of plural and non-appropriative forms of speech. Drawing on selected exemplary works of contemporary literature, it examines how formal complexity can function as a form of resistance to simplistic categorization and labeling. Literary techniques such as polyphony, multilingualism, autofiction, and narrative unreliability generate a specific form of “aesthetic vulnerability.” The central thesis is that the defense of artistic freedom does not lie in asserting unlimited autonomy, but rather in the aesthetic enactment of ambiguity and vulnerability as conditions for democratic communication. In addition, paratexts such as interviews and award speeches are incorporated into the analysis as framing discourses.

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Eric Achermann

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