The project is based on the observation that, since the 1960s, critical ‘theory’ has developed internationally into a textual genre with its own unique effects, which can be described as interventionist. The RP aims to use the concept of intervention to analyze the dynamics of ‘theory’ in a new way and demonstrate how ‘theory’ transforms when it intervenes, and to what extent theory becomes ‘theory’ in the first place through intervention.
To this end, the following research methods will be developed and applied: a stylistics and rhetoric of ‘theory’ will identify the argumentative procedures of intervention in individual texts; a philology of ‘theory’ will trace interventions through textual alterations, genre shifts, compilation, translations and paratextual framing; a scenography of ‘theory’ will examine the convergences of heterogeneous elements into performative interventionist constellations; a mediography of ‘theory’ will analyze interventions in intermedial contexts, including digital media.
The subprojects (SP) address these research questions through specific problem areas: SP 1 deals with theory, intervention and political practice in the context of the journal konkret. Politik und Kultur around 1989; SP 2 explores non-dichotomous concepts of the topos of ‘intervention’ in the history of ‘theory’; and SP 3 examines collected editions of texts associated with ‘theory’ and their interventionist practices.

Head of Project

Prof. Dr. Michael Gamper (SP 3)

Doctoral Researcher

Lisa Bechtold (SP 1)