DFG-funded research project “The Upsurge of the Manifesto in Contemporary Debates on Diversity in the United States,” starting October 2022

The manifesto project is designed to contribute to foundational research in transnational American Literary and Cultural Studies by working through formalizations of current controversial debates on demographic diversity and social unity in scenarios of inequality in the US and beyond, especially by interrogating the uses of the sociopolitical manifesto and its function of positioning subjects and groups in these debates. The project relates questions that pertain to generic form with questions concerning recent dynamics of activism and the authorizing strategies associated with it. It thus aims to contribute both to a better understanding of how subjects and groups position themselves in debates on diversity through the strategic use of a genre, and to a theory of form that takes historical specificities and structural and discursive relations of power seriously. It is funded by the German Research Foundation from October 2022 onwards.