Volume 5, Issue 2 - Special Issue: Standards and Norms of Literary Studies

This article analyses the reasons for the near complete absence of standards in evaluating research in literary studies. It points out two shortcomings: First, literary studies employ an unclear distinction between concepts and phenomena. Concepts become independent and are being analyzed instead of phenomena. Debates about concepts cannot be decided in the light of concrete findings, and therefore scientific competition does not aim at providing proofs and findings, but is restricted to formulating ›arguments‹ that remain inside of language. The phenomena, which could be translated into clear cut questions about objects in the world, move out of focus. Literary studies have to be enabled to formulate questions. At the moment, literary scholars do not even debate which questions would be worthwhile, but make do without questions, and thus without an orientation towards phenomena in research. Second, literary scholars notoriously keep confusing theories and methods. Theories, which provide no guidelines on how to read a text or about questions of general rhetoric, are declared to be methods, although they do not yield concrete practices for testing results. This is how Kleist can be read ›with‹ Freud, or Joyce can be read ›with‹ Latour, without it being clarified what it is that such ›theory driven‹ readings do. The article shows that all phenomena that literary scholars are interested in circle around an understanding of understanding. This holds true for questions that point towards general (›generic‹) forms (like narratology), as well as for those that address unique, special (›idiosyncratic‹) forms (like when reading an unruly, ambitious text). Understanding the understanding is concerned with the analysis of rhetoric characteristics as well as with interpretation. This research interest, which is here called ›hermeneutical‹, has only been pursued marginally, despite attempts in philosophical hermeneutics, analytical philosophy, sociological communications theory and post-structuralism. It is suggested to develop a theory of literary studies in answering hermeneutical questions, which is outlined here as a pragmatic hermeneutics ( gebrauchsbasierte Hermeneutik ). However, it can be shown that such a theory would not lead to concrete practices with which to evaluate the analytic content of its results and thereby describe binding standards. Only the methods as crafts remain: processes that describe the concrete and detailed handling of texts, which can be termed ›philology‹.

From its beginning as an academic discipline in the post-WW II years, the study of American literature ( Amerikanistik ) tried to distinguish itself from approaches to the study of English literature ( Anglistik ) by the promise of a new methodology, conceptualized as a combination of literary and cultural analysis. In order to justify American Studies' institutionalization as a separate discipline, American literature had to be read as an expression of American society and culture, but this had to be done on the basis of a close reading of literary form as propagated by the New Criticism . In the first part, my essay describes the problems arising from this linkage of cultural and literary analysis, leading, in the end, to the increasingly implausible claim that the cultural insights of major American works reside in the very quality that distinguish them as literary texts according to the New Criticism , namely their organic unity. In the second part, this essay traces the consequences of a growing critique of new critical formalism and the foundational myths of American Exceptionalism that provided the basis for cultural readings of American literature. The claim that literary texts can and should best be understood as an expression of national character was submitted to a scathing critique by the new social movements and their insistence on the key role diversity plays in American culture. This has led to new theories of literary effect, a redefinition of the relation between reading and identity formation, and, more generally speaking, to a pluralization of interpretive approaches that have undermined any attempt to define methodological standards and norms of the field. In their place, ›powerful‹ rhetorical performances often remain the only criterion for distinguishing literary interpretations.

This essay compares the geographic norms of contemporary comparative literature to those operative in the related disciplines of history and area studies. Surveying the standard anthologies in the field, especially the recently revised Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2010), it asks why the discipline of comparative literature continues to look most frequently to Europe, even and especially when positioning itself within postcolonial frameworks, while historical studies evince greater institutional and empirical openness to non-European archives. Particular attention is paid to the contributions Arabic and Persian literary critics and theorists from c Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani (d. 1078) to Muhamad Ghunaymi Hilal (d. 1968) have made to comparative literary studies and to contributions that might emerge from these regions in the near future as contemporary Arab and Persian authors critically engage with European legacies. The reflections of Franco Moretti and David Damrosch concerning the past and future world literature are employed to critically engage the programs for comparative literature proposed by Gayatri Spivak, Emily Apter, and Stanley Corngold, which conceptually privilege the untranslatable dimension of literary knowledge without fully realizing this ideal in practice. This essay concludes with two proposals. First, for a differentiated geography of the disciplines more attuned to the spatial provenance of literary theories. Second, for greater attentiveness to the cultural, temporal, and political inflections of the varying literary objects that constitute the discipline's archive. Discipline-specific challenges to the globalization of comparative literature are examined in conjunction with the barriers to global inquiry intrinsic to modernity.

Scholarly practice requires moving beyond the canon, and therefore standards are constantly being revised. Since the total of 18 departments of Scandinavian Studies ( Skandinavistik ) in German speaking countries differ quite noticeably, it is even harder to pinpoint a common ground for this discipline. It could even be questioned whether Skandinavistik is supposed to be considered one of the philologies. Its historical roots lie with the Germanistik , which comprises linguistics, medieval studies and literary studies. But only few Scandinavian departments today include linguistics, and the greater part is mostly focused on literary studies. The discipline of Scandinavian studies differs from Germanistik in two aspects: It is concerned not only with language and literature, but has been a cultural studies even before the cultural turn. Besides, it usually takes a comparatist viewpoint. While Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are standard, countries such as Iceland, Greenland, Finland, the Faroe Islands or the culture of the Sami are not necessarily included in all Scandinavian departments. Consequently, only Danish, Norwegian and Swedish language competence can be regarded as a norm within Scandinavian studies. Which countries and cultures Scandinavian studies researches changes with the standards in theory. E.g. the inclusion of Greenland only resulted from concepts of postcolonialism. In comparison to its modest size, the theoretical advancement of Scandinavian studies is quite remarkable. Since there is a pluralism of advanced methods and theories, the diversity is multiplied again. But there is also a standard that can be derived from this diversity: the presentation and application of theories has to be plausible and comprehensible. Although it encourages diversity, Scandinavian studies is too small to tolerate hermetic or esoteric concepts. As for its subjects, usually not only literature in a narrow sense is being studied, but cultural phenomena on a broader range. With the exceptions of the knowledge of specific regions and cultures as well as their languages, most of the standards of Scandinavian literary studies are similar to that of other literary studies. An attempt to explicate these standards in detail faces three problems: 1) Competences, like the knowledge of a certain canon, are gradable. It can be disputed what should be considered ›fundamental knowledge‹. Especially a small discipline like Scandinavian studies calls for a certain amount of universality, which can stand in the way of in-depth knowledge. 2) Standards of theory and method change dynamically throughout time. 3) To fix a set of standards and norms would not only require some form of authorization, but might also hinder the potential for innovation. Ideally, all research positions its own standards, on which subsequent researchers can take their bearings.

The essay opens with a preliminary note on why the author decided to contribute to this issue ( Slavica non leguntur ), why the German language was chosen (in the context of German's culture of law, standards and norms are especially problematic) and about the genre of the text (an essay, in order to avoid the habitus of a legislator). The necessity to discuss standards and norms is interpreted as the symptom of a crisis, a signal of which is the growing importance of brain physiology for the humanities and social sciences. Norms and standards are ascribed to a presupposed collective subject as agent. Recent problematizations of norms, the normal and the production of normality within sociology are acknowledged. Norms of literary studies, which can be defined as binding rules of conduct, should be embedded within a theory and be made practical by methodology. Minimal standards have to be reflected with regard to the subjects who pose them and their areas of application. This is where problems specific to Slavistics have occurred since the end of Real Socialism, after which the number of agents and regions multiplied: individual regionalization is the other side of a generalizing globalization. Moreover, there is the difference between Slavistics as individual national philologies and as foreign language philologies. The specifics of language as a medium attribute normative importance to literary studies even within Slavistics understood as cultural studies, which itself prefers pluralist focalizations. Interdisciplinarity, intermediality and interculturality have become standards in Slavic studies. The essay considers the succession of the linguistic and iconic turn as well as the displacement of the Socialist Realism doctrine as consequential for the formation of standards and norms. In addition to an emancipation from linguistics (e. g. Russian Formalism) and a more relaxed relation to social sciences, now there is a competition with media studies. Media research can be pursued within literary studies in several ways: first as drama or theater studies, second as deriving from the internal differentiation of literature into poetry, prose and drama, and finally as research into intermediality. Specifics of gender studies, postcolonial studies and historical models (chronology vs. periodization) within Slavistics are discussed. Several aspects render the transfer of Middle and West European norms and standards problematic: strong profiles of the motherland, the integration of the Orient into parts of Slavic cultures' territories (e. g. Bosnia, Russia), questions regarding the ongoing existence of Russia as a colonial power, and the colonialization of the Balkans by Turkey. The current reluctance to historically remodel the discipline into several Slavic Slavistics, fostered by breakings of norms and crises of canon, can be overcome by creatively connecting chronology and periodization. In doing this, any abuse of literature in order to illustrate (even historiographic) discourses of truth has to be avoided: Literary artifacts are in themselves documents of the history of knowledge, since they unlock knowledge, hand it down and criticize it. Especially the perceptible changes in the norms and standards hold the promise of a productive future for Slavic studies.

The humanities have difficulties with the discourse about quality. And, insofar as they do not dissociate themselves from it entirely, those who speak for the humanities insist on having a special role where quality assessment and the criteria, indicators, and procedures for it are concerned. However, an increasing number of voices are also emphatically reasserting that robust appraisals of quality are possible even in the humanities and calling urgently on the community to take an active part in the development and application of corresponding standards and procedures. Against this background, the present article considers the problems and possibilities of checking and assessing quality as they present themselves from the point of view of research funding in the humanities in a German-language context. In the process, particular attention is given to literary studies, where the search for generally acceptable quality standards is particularly difficult due to deep-seated controversies about its aims, objects, methods, and audiences. For checking quality in the context of research funding, the article proposes, peer review remains the procedure of choice. It does have weaknesses, though, and in view of these it is frequently embedded in communication processes in which the ›peers‹ have to set their opinions against one another and argue the case for them. It turns out that, in the process, even when the starting positions are widely separated, the dialogue between the assessors remarkably often leads to a consensus about the decision – in the humanities too. This in turn not only indicates that, even in these fields, there clearly are standards about which a consensus can be reached; it also underlines the significance of discussion, which holds out the possibility of agreement even where not only the aim, theme, methods, and audience of a project but also the criteria of assessment and their relative importance appear to be contentious. The article then looks at some special features of research in the humanities that should also be considered in the context of assessment processes: the general lack of shared ›research frontiers‹, the curious way in which research themes and lines of enquiry become associated with individuals, the tendency to stress differences of opinion regarding details rather than agreement regarding fundamentals when communicating about projects and publications. Against this background, the various levels of evaluation, the controversial arguments that result from them, and the competences on which a justified appraisal of quality depends are considered. If it is increasingly expected of the humanities that they pass on their findings and insights not only within the academy but also to a wider audience, this too adds to the complexity of the assessors' task, for in that case communicative achievement must enter into the assessment alongside scholarly accomplishment. The question remains, though: how and in what ratio? It is clear that considerable effort is needed to come to a consensus under these conditions, and that such agreement can be reached only in a dialogue guided by the maxims of willingness to recognize the better argument and readiness to reach a settlement. Seen in this way, assessment in the humanities is indeed to a large degree a ›matter of interpretation and negotiation‹ (Manfred Nießen) in which, fundamentally, everything is up for discussion: the evaluation of a proposal on the various levels (suitability of the primary figures involved, expected results and consequences, relationship between effort and outcomes, chances of success, status in competition with competing projects), the relative weighting of the levels of assessment themselves, the plausibility and weight of the arguments put forward, and not least the competence of those involved in the assessment process in forming a judgement. Thus, ›communicative reason‹ is needed if such ›forming judgements in a social context‹ (Nießen) is to lead to results that have a clear argument, are well justified, and can be presented with unanimity. It is not least experiences from funding allocation that show that this is, even in the humanities, exactly what happens again and again. What is true of the humanities in general is also true of literary studies in particular: when communicating its results and insights, it stands out as being expected to consider those who, as readers, share its object of study – literature – with it, who want to be addressed, instructed, entertained, stimulated, inspired by it. Comprehensibility therefore takes on particular importance as a criterion for evaluating work in literary studies. This presents an additional challenge for the debate about quality in literary studies: it is a matter not simply of developing a sufficiently complex concept of quality and bringing it to bear on research practice, but also of fundamentally reconsidering what professionalism means in this subject – and how it can be cultivated in teaching and learning. To this extent, the debate about quality leads to the basic question of what precisely it is that makes literary studies in a German-language context a scholarly discipline ( Wissenschaft ). To this, too, it will be possible to find a convincing answer only in a discussion characterized by openness and a fundamental readiness to reach a consensus, in a communicative process of self-analysis whose results will depend for their quality above all on whether the discussion is pursued with the professionalism required.

It is not only the current restructuring of German universities that contributes to the necessity for comparative literary studies the reconsider itself. In Germany, comparative literary studies have existed only since 1946. It bears different names at different universities and encompasses different concepts. In contrast to other philologies, comparative literary studies is not combined with linguistics or regional studies. It focuses on literature and generally employs a specific concept of literature as world literature. Literature is understood as an international concept that includes a common set of forms, practices and topics. Research interests focus on concrete interrelations between specific texts and aim towards a systematic theory of literature. Since this is an ambitious goal, individual projects generally are more modest. Additionally, there are research questions guided by thematic interests that relate to our reality of life, adopting aspects of cultural and media studies. A basic operation of comparative literary studies obviously is comparison, but also analysis, interpretation and generalization. Standard competences include reading abilities in two, more usually three literary languages. This is why it is so hard to adapt comparative literary studies for B.A. students with a six semester curriculum. The fact that literature is no longer a privileged medium also has consequences for an academic subject that does not educate future teachers, but this should not lead to a rush into interdisciplinary compensations with media or cultures studies. Comparative literary studies should keep focusing on being literary studies, which does not preclude collaborations, even with neurological sciences. It will remain indispensible for analyzing aspects of literary internationality, which include translation, literary mediation, poetic reception, and aspects of exile and migration.

Practice in academic study ( Wissenschaft ) is guided by norms and standards that direct behaviour so that it is possible to scrutinize the way in which knowledge is generated, structured, evaluated, and distributed, and to configure the structures and functions of the system in which this study takes place. Such guidelines are associated with various scopes and sanctions that allow them to be enforced. Norms generally tend to be positioned above the level of individual disciplines and to affect the production, shape, and validity of academic knowledge, and the organization of scholarly communities – they are parameters of good academic practice. In the current debates about academic research, standards are discussed particularly often with reference to the assessment of quality. What the hell is quality? Qualitätsstandards in den Geisteswissenschaften (2008, edited by Elisabeth Lack and Christoph Markschies; the subtitle translates as ›Quality Standards in the Humanities‹) can claim to serve as a model in this respect. In the philologies, subjectspecific standards for the generation, verification, and communication of knowledge are represented and communicated in what are known as codifying publications (e. g. reference works and handbooks) and in introductions to the study of literature, as well as in curricula and course schedules and in examination regulations. In literary studies, such standards (in the combination of literary-theoretical assumptions, methodological parameters, methods of work, and forms of presentation) have always been particularly apparent where practice in the field of textual editing and commentary is concerned (German Editionsphilologie ). It is also easy to see here how standards compete and are changed as a result of internal developments in scholarship and external processes and situations (such as, for example, the editorial possibilities opened up by techniques ranging from conventional typesetting, to photomechanical reproduction, to current electronic representations). Reference is made to publications in this area since the 1970s. Finally, current German practice in the philologies for reaching a decision about who should be offered a professorship is described as an example of the interaction between general academic norms and discipline-specific standards in the sense of evaluation criteria and assessments of quality.

This statement describes current classical philology, as it presents itself in the German-speaking countries in particular, as a subject that has entered a crisis almost without noticing it. Never before since World War II have the philologies of ancient Greece and Rome experienced such popularity, and yet there is no sign that the subject has secured its position in the canon, of the university disciplines at least, to such an extent that it would be ready to meet future challenges. Above all, we have no indications that it has properly reflected on the categories and methods of modern approaches to language and literature. Instead of advancing confidently to meet the great demands of modern scholarship, it has, in repeated apologetic episodes, drawn attention to the timeless significance of the ancient texts. All too often, this philology has failed to provide a philological demonstration of that significance. There are several indications that modern literary studies and linguistics have accepted the conservative self-image of classical philology without any pause for thought. At any event, they do not appear to expect scholarly innovations from it. Ancient philology today is reminiscent of a land that, though rich in resources, has given up the right to rule over its own kingdom, has mislaid or lost the keys to the storehouse of cultural memoria . If this philology is to move beyond the role of an outsider, the guardian of a store of pan-European motifs and subject matter, it needs to undergo a fundamental renewal in decisive fields of academic competition: it must interrogate itself and find ways and means of presenting the supposed excellence of its objects of study in a manner that is appropriate to them. It must fully explain how it contributes to the expansion of knowledge – of the ancient as well as the modern world. And it must do so in a searching engagement with the texts , which only then, when they are treated on the level of our time, will reveal why they have not long since ceased to be part of time at all . In the end, this philology has to organize itself in a way that its structures of teaching and research converge with the structures of scholarship ( Wissenschaft ) in other subjects to such a extent that cross-subject dialogue is no longer the exception but the rule.

In this essay, carrying out work in literary studies is viewed as a creative and individually shaped process whose strength lies not primarily in its methodologically secure analytical competence but in its production of a diversity of critical thought that is subjectively grounded and, furthermore, addressed to a reader – and thus written in anticipation of a reply. The positive valorization of a subjective approach to literary material is accompanied by a sceptical attitude to the attempt to introduce norms and standards into literary studies in order to qualitatively improve the latter. This scepticism stems from the conviction that standardizations can never be enforced without a loss of diversity – but diversity is necessary if scholarly chauvinism is to be undermined and new ideas are to emerge beyond the mainstream. With this thesis, the essay picks up Paul Feyerabend's remarks on the theory of science; with the phrase ›anything goes‹, he called for an acceptance of the idea that innovative engagement with certain problems or phenomena does not necessarily emerge from intentional and scientifically objective consideration but is borne »by a vague urge, by a ›passion‹ (Kierkegaard)«. If spontaneous, seemingly absurd ideas are permitted, that is to say, or if a ›counterinductive‹ approach is taken, results can be obtained that would not have appeared had a rational route been followed. Here, therefore, Feyerabend raises spontaneity, subjectivity, and irrationality to the status of integral parts of the production of knowledge. A literary studies that draws on Feyerabend can make these ideas productive and free scholarly work from the narrow limits of a self-understanding that is directed toward objective propositional insights, and place the thought of the individual in the foreground instead. With Kierkegaard, moreover, this subjective thought can qualify as artistic thought that feeds on the self 's own experiences – a thought that cannot be isolated from actual circumstances in real life, emotions, reading experiences, aesthetic principles, and so on. Understood in this way, a literary studies anchored in subjectivity would be a literary studies that – without immediately introducing conceptual frameworks and the like to cover its back – seeks out what it was that resulted from contact with a literary text and works what it finds into a self-sufficient textual statement, thus giving to an idea of one's own a form of its own.

Literary studies is a scholarly discipline that is characterized in theory and practice by a diversity of diverging approaches, methods, intended aims, and definitions of its object of study, and it is, in one of its main sectors, concerned with the analysis of meanings that are not fixed but have still to be worked out in the first place. This article considers the question of how it can be possible for such a discipline to reach agreement regarding shared criteria for distinguishing between high and less high quality in its products – publications and research plans. By way of introduction, it reviews the awkward status of literary studies as a scholarly discipline ( Wissenschaft ), and the specific conditions in which meanings are determined and assigned in literary texts or in literary communication processes. They tend to make the identification of objective quality criteria in this field seem improbable or inappropriate. The article then confronts the epistemological reflections of the subject-specific discussion with the fact that the latter is taking place in an academic and political context that brings with it the obligation to justify decisions and provide evidence of achievement, and to this extent does not give us the choice of whether we want to define and recognize quality standards. Instead, we need to ask ourselves what quality criteria are most suitable for literary studies and what the appropriate ways to determine and use them are. With this in mind, the article presents a report from the shop floor of how evaluation takes place in the DFG ( Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft , Germany's largest research funding organization), discussing the theme of quality criteria in the context of defined principles of assessment and some remarks on the interpretation of these principles. In the process, it becomes apparent that the tried and tested quality criteria in the field of literary studies are largely congruent with those that apply to other academic fields, with the special features of work in literary studies being taken into consideration when these general criteria are applied to individual cases. In order to make the points of reference comparable, voting and debate in group discussions among subject-specific representatives chosen by their scholarly communities or inspection groups invited by the DFG are necessary. In general, it is the case that, even in such discussion-based processes of arriving at assessments, there still remains a ›non-objective element‹ that should not be overlooked – premature conclusions about the topic when forming judgements or one-sidedness in assessors' positions. This feature does not immediately indicate a limitation of or failing in quality assessment; it corresponds to the openness and creativity of literary communication processes, and to this extent reflects more a surplus than a deficit. Putting the corresponding quality criteria into practice places a high demand on the assessors involved. It demands a considerable readiness to debate, consistency and clarity of argumentation, and integrity, as well as a willingness to approach the application of the quality criteria in such a way that it becomes, for all concerned, a transparent part of a process of scholarly discussion.

The debate about the ›return of the author‹ (Jannidis et al., Möglichkeiten eines Begriffs zwischen Text und historischem Kontext, 1999) or the return of the author as an author-function (Spoerhase), which has become increasingly nuanced over the last ten years, is in a sense analogous to the efforts to give a scientific foundation to literary studies in the 1970s. Both have to face the reproach that their anticipations about research have not (yet) been realized. The early calls for an increased scientific element ( Wissenschaftlichkeit ) in interpretive argumentation in literary studies must in retrospect be treated as having failed completely. It seems, however – not least according to a study by Winko (Zur argumentativen Verwendung von Autorkonzepten in der gegenwärtigen literaturwissenschaftlichen Interpretationspraxis, 2002) – that the re-theorization of the author cannot be confined to propositions within theory but finds its real legitimation in the practices of interpretation that are specific to literary studies. Building on this, a corpus of forty interpretations of Lenz's drama Die Soldaten (›The Soldiers‹) was analysed with reference to the functionalizations of the author-concept in the argumentation through which meaning is ascribed. These functions identified in practice are compared with the authorfunctions previously postulated by the theories in question. It is intended that this comparison should result not in a tirade that exposes misguided interpretations or criticizes theoretical positions, but rather in a productive praxeology that could make the way in which interpretation functions in practice relevant to the formation of theories. An introduction to the problematic field at stake, defined by theoretical debates on authorship and the relationship between theory and practice, is followed by necessary remarks on the definition of concepts that are familiar from the debate and the distinctions between them. ›Author-construct‹ is a term grounded in theory and describes – as does the synonymously used ›author-concept‹ – the totality of the interpretive operations with which the author can be functionalized on the basis of particular theoretical premises. ›Author‹ here does not mean the historical individual but always takes into account the fact that in interpretive arguments it is only the mental construction of the historical individual, as performed by the interpreter, that can be meant. Taking this further, ›author-function‹, as a shorthand for ›author-concept function‹, stands for the functions that the author-concept acquires in interpretations. The term therefore, because it always describes functions that are ascribed by the interpreter, necessarily refers not to the real author but to the author-concept of that interpreter. The theoretically postulated author-concept/-construct is in turn to be distinguished from the author-figuration. Whereas the former describes the sum of the functions that can be legitimately used in a theory, the latter consists of the author-functions that are actually employed in the interpretive practice of that theory. Both are composed of the particular relationship between individual functions in which the author is employed in the argumentation that ascribes meanings to texts. This terminological clarification is, granted, somewhat laborious, but it is unavoidable. It is followed by a description of the method of analysis employed. Two analyses of author-functions from the corpus are reviewed in detail as models; in the process, the arguments of their interpretations are examined and their ascriptions of meaning through the author-figuration are reconstructed. The authorfunctions identified in this way form function-clusters specific to each individual interpretation – bundles of functionalizations that are combined in interpretation and are compared subsequently with concisely reconstructed clusters from other analyses in the corpus. The analysis of an interpretation grounded in social history and discourse analysis is paired with an interpretation in which Lenz's poetological and literary works are examined by means of, on the one hand, a concept of genius based on authorial intention, and, on the other, an approach drawn from systems and action theory. Finally, in addition to an attempt to categorize the types of functionalization and a presentation of their problems, which follow at least in part from inconsistently designed theories, a hypothesis regarding the relationship between theory and practice is formulated. The hypothesis results from the finding obtained, which is that interpretive practice has seen the development of conventionalized standards of author-related argumentation that have to date been considered only insufficiently in the theoretical discussion with its normative character, but whose practical concept of authorship supports the theoretical legitimacy of author-related approaches.