IPP KNL | Dr. habil. Michael Basseler (JLU): "Resilience as an Emerging Concept in Literary and Cultural Studies"

Over the past two decades, resilience has become a hotly debated concept in various disciplines, and it has also started to gain some traction in literary and cultural studies. In the first part of the lecture I will sketch out some of the scholarly positions that run the gamut from embracing resilience as a desirable goal in an age of risk and uncertainty to rejecting it as the ultimate expression of a neoliberal reduction and depoliticization of the subject. In the second part, I will provide some thoughts on how resilience can be conceptualized and operationalized within literary studies, and how it relates to more established concepts (e.g. trauma). This will also entail the discussion of some exemplary “fictions of resilience”, i.e. narrative texts that contribute to, renegotiate, and critique the cultural meanings of resilience.

// Dr. habil. Michael Basseler 

Please, register here for Dr. habil. Michael Basseler's Keynote Lecture (in person or online)