Let´s Talk About Death: 21st Century Narratives of the End of Life in the US
Antje Kley
In frequently uncanny ways, ageing, illness, death, dying, and mourning have been and continue to be both constant companions and threatening future `others´ we have little knowledge of (Eagleton 2003). A growing awareness of death scares people anytime and anywhere, and it intercepts culturally specific convictions supporting individual and collective everyday lives, in particular notions of able-bodied `normal´ life and progress. In modern Western societies, the void of meaning created by illness, ageing, dying, death, and mourning is tentatively covered up by medical and insurance protocols, legally and socially regulated care work as well as self-help markets, and by religious rituals which, even though they have lost their appeal for many, often seem the only ground to fall back on.
Drawing on the internationally growing field of Age and Disability Studies, “Death becomes us” seeks to investigate how, at the intersection of discursive frameworks attempting to administer a future of loss, literary writing and other cultural practices and media, particularly in the US, narratively trade in uncertain and threatening futures under the sign of death.
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RTG Literature and the Public Sphere
What are the social, political, economic and media conditions under which literature emerges? And what effects does literature have on its immediate environments? These are the issues addressed by the Research Training Group “Literature and the Public Sphere in Differentiated Contemporary Cultures.” It aims to examine contemporary literature since 1945, in different languages and cultural contexts, and with regard to changing and fragmenting public spheres. It is characterized in particular by its praxeological concept of literature, which includes socio-cultural contexts, political frameworks, institutional conditions, the literary world and literary life in its analysis. (spokespersons: Prof. Dr. Antje Kley and Prof. Dr. Dirk Niefanger)
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