Project L: American Studies
"Pop-Cultural Poetics and Politics of the Invective. The Invective Mode in Contemporary US-American Television"
Vituperation, (self-)debasement, mockery, humiliation, embarrassment — representations and performances of disparagement abound in American popular culture, to such an extent that they seem foundational for several popular genres, e.g. of comedy or of contemporary reality tv. While disparagement culture appears to enjoy a particular currency at the contemporary moment, it looks back on a substantial history in the US-American context.
This project is interested in the form(s) that disparagement takes in American popular culture and in the cultural work that it does. It has begun to conceptualize disparagement as a distinct mode of popular communication — an invective mode which is marked by its own repertoire of representational strategies, its own affective regime, its own historical resonances and political valencies. This invective mode has played a key (and yet unexamined) role in the development of American popular culture — its media, its genres, its aesthetics, its social functionalities. In its first phase, the project's work focussed on the invective mode in contemporary American television culture.
The researchers of project L are (from left to right): Stefan Schubert (Grundausstattung), Prof. Katja Kanzler (Principal Investigator), Anne Krenz, Katja Schulze, Gesine Wegner (Research Associates).
