Writing on the Edge: Literary Transgression and Resistance around 1900

Literary change can be understood as the continuous renegotiation and transgression of the borders between core and periphery, making ‘edginess’ a significant driver of literary innovation. Authors have worked with and against boundaries of various kinds, whether to obtain a more central position in the cultural field, in appropriating and subverting established literary traditions, or in scenarios of resistance and calls to arms against the centre from the margins. Are the edges of literature where the in- and outside are renegotiated and subverted? Or can edginess reinstate such boundaries? In the most literal sense, the margins of individual literary texts themselves have, especially in manuscripts and notebooks, furnished a space for cross-medial experiments that in their own ways resist or transgress established concepts of text, genre, or form: notes and doodles are usually removed from final or published versions (think of Franz Kafka’s drawings or Robert Walser’s eccentric notational practices). On a more political level, edginess refers to attempts at provoking strong affects and reactions, at unsettling and causing discomfort. Edginess can also refer to a tense state caused by uncertainty about what comes next. To be edgy is to provoke, irritate and take risks – in behaviour or aesthetics – and is associated with offensive, subversive and even violent gestures. Having edge is asserting a position of authority for a project; losing edge signals a loss of relevance. The edges, then, can be seen as a space in which cultural and political resistance is imagined, shaped, and enacted. Does ‘edginess’ open up new ways of understanding the more subtle stages between convention and outward shock? Can edginess help us write alternative archeologies of the radical aesthetic and political experiments of the twentieth-century avant gardes? 

Against this background, this symposium aims to explore the edges of literature – in a general as well as concrete, i.e. a literal as well as figural sense – in the long nineteenth century, a period characterised by literary experimentation (e.g., different iterations of realism, the avant gardes, workers’ literature…) and socio-political tensions (e.g., political and military conflicts, social unrest, revolution…). We invite presentations (max. 20 minutes) that examine how literature challenged poetic and aesthetic norms, engaged with marginal or outsider positions, and experimented with form and genre to question established modes of representation, cause discomfort and unsettle readers. How did literary works defy conventions, blur boundaries, or disrupt dominant narratives? What strategies did writers employ to push against the limits of genre, authorship, or artistic legitimacy? What affective responses do such texts provoke?

Two keynote speakers will address these questions in their keynote lectures. Prof. dr. Anne Fuchs (University College Dublin) will deliver a lecture on the margins of literature entitled “From Steel Nib to Pencil: Robert Walser’s Entry into the ‘Bleistiftgebiet’”. Other speakers will explore the concept of 'edginess' through a wide range of topics including authorship and genre; gender, race and queerness; performance and politics. Click here for the full programme.

This event is sponsored by the Beate Schuler Fund.