Reading for Democracy

Guest Lectures in American Studies Münster (GLAM)

Prof. Dr. Laura Bieger (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

Is literature of political use, and if yes, how might this use be defined? Laura Bieger's new book, Reading for Democracy, addresses this question in a series of essays, with topics ranging from reading as a political practice to literature as critical infrastructure, from the public sphere as a space of appearance to the art of the essay in the digital age. This talk zeroes in on her understanding of literature as a social practice, in which literary texts are shape-shifting agents in a dynamic web of relations, created through literature’s linking and bonding capacities. She contends that, in trying and institutionalizing collective forms of judgment, these agents are essential to negotiating the shape of the world. Which is what the political is all about.

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