Contested Solidarities, Implicated Subjects: Agency and Victimhood in World Anglophone Literatures and Cultures

If Anglophone literatures and cultures worldwide once sprang from a contested terrain of solidarities emerging in the shadow of colonialism, many of them have been struggling with the legacies of these solidarities, with ideals of liberation that turned into new forms of oppression, and with the clamorous or muted appeal of old and new victimhoods for more than half a century now. While the 21st century has seen the exhaustion of ‘enchanted’ or ‘unconditional’ solidarities rallying around idealized images of oppressed ‘postcolonial’ or ‘third world’ collectivities, Anglophone literary texts and cultural productions themselves have long since engaged in self-reflexive encounters that have undermined trite formulations of perpetrators and victims and have explored the tribulations of what Michael Rothberg has recently called ‘implicated subjects’ (2019): all modern subjects are involuntarily implicated both in the history of oppression and victimhood, often simultaneously –  not only in the formerly colonizing, but also in the formerly colonized regions of the world. More often than not, these implications, which call for a ‘disenchanted’ or ‘conditional’ solidarity that holds the abuses of victimhood in the name of agency accountable, cut across habitual East/West or North/South divides.

The seminar will take a critical look at recent debates on the past, present and futures of solidarities and at Rothberg’s notion of the “implicated subject”. The main part of the seminar will explore the manifold implications of English as a medium of literary and cultural expression in anglophone literatures, cultures and media and focus on novels and films that engage with the uses and abuses of victimhood and different forms of agency. Students will have the unique chance of actively participating in an International Conference on “Contested Solidarities: Agency and Victimhood in World Anglophone Literatures and Cultures” that will be held (possibly in a hybrid format) in May 2022 in Frankfurt.