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Fabian Eggers

PhD Candidate

Address
Lansstraße 5-9
14195 Berlin

Research Interests

  • Anglophone Literature during and after “the postmodern experiment”
  • Immaterial dimensions of the contemporary condition: ‘Emotional’ / ‘Cognitive’ / ‘Affective’ Capitalism
  • History of rationalization
  • Affect Studies & History of Emotions
  • Critical Theory
  • Psychoanalysis & Marxist Theory

Relevant Academic Experience

10/2021– Member of the Research Group "Model Aesthetics: Between Literary and Economic Knowledge" (PI James Dorson)
09/2021–10/2021 Visiting Scholar: Department of English University of California, Santa Barbara 
04/2021  "Verabschiedungen der Postmoderne," (virtual) workshop by Humboldt Universität Berlin. Presentation on: US-Amerikanische Literatur(wissenschaft) unter den Bedingungen des Postfordismus: New Sincerity trifft Postcritique
01/2020 Ruhr PhD Forum of Ruhr-University Bochum and TU Dortmund University; presentation and discussion of PhD project
2018–2019 Co-organization of the 12th Graduate Conference at the Graduate School for North American Studies (May 22-24, 2019): "American Ambiguities."
04/2019 chair and speaker at the conference “Posthuman Economies: Literary and Cultural Imaginations of the Postindustrial Human” at the University of Basel. Presentation on “The Emotional Economy underlying David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King.”

03/2019

Spring Academy” of the Center for American Studies at Heidelberg University
04/2018 Spring School” at the Collaborative Research Center „Affective Societies“ at FU Berlin. Theme: „The Power of Immersion: Performance, Affect, Politics.“

Education

10/2018 - 2022 PhD Student at Graduate School of North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin
10/2014 - 11/2017

Freie Universität Berlin, John-F.-Kennedy-Institute, Master of Arts in North American Studies (Literature and Culture).

Thesis on David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King and its links to Eva Illouz’s concept of “Emotional Capitalism”.

08/2015 - 05/2016 Indiana University (Bloomington), Direct Exchange/DAAD
10/2010 - 10/2014 Freie Universität Berlin

Bachelor of Arts in German and English Philology as well as North American Studies (Literature and History)

Thesis on the discourse surrounding the “neuro-novel” and a German–language equivalent in Thomas Melle’s Sickster.

09/2012 - 01/2013 Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

ERASMUS Exchange

The Aesthetics of Intimacy in Contemporary American Literature (Dissertation Project)

Dissertation in Literature

Mentoring team:
First supervisor: Prof. Dr. James Dorson
Second supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ulla Haselstein
Third supervisor: Prof. Dr. Sabine Schülting

My dissertation project focuses on a recent shift in American literature: Signified through an increased focus on (and trust in) inter-subjective communication, numerous literary texts by authors such as Jennifer Egan, Tao Lin, and David Foster Wallace engage with questions of subjecthood, interiority and (un)reliable communication. This regained interest in language’s connecting abilities, revealed in what I propose to call their texts’ “aesthetics of intimacy”, stands in clear contrast to the playful and ironic challenge of human subjectivity—and, indeed, of language’s representational capacity in general—in canonical works of postmodern literature. Furthermore, I argue, it resonates with today’s shifting communicative standards in private and professional contexts.

Scholars propose various labels to categorize these texts and debate whether they should be thought of in terms of, for example, posthumanism or a contemporary form of ‘revised’ humanism. Conversely, I suggest extending this discussion through a reading that highlights the texts’ embeddedness in the social, cultural and political forces of contemporary capitalism. Given the links between the communicative emphasis of the concerned texts and the demands of emotional self-management in a period shaped by neoliberal paradigms of perpetual self-rationalization, I argue that sincerity and similar affective constellations performed in and by these texts should not be accepted as ahistorical sentiments. Instead, I analyze them as forms of “emotional labor” (Hochschild) against the backdrop of the interdisciplinary turn to affect (e.g. Berlant, Ngai), reader-response criticism (Iser’s Rezeptionsästhetik respectively), the genealogy of emotional norms and practices (Stearns), and sociological insights into today’s processes of (affective) subjectification (Sennett, Illouz).

Publications

2022

together with Sonja Pyykkö (guest editors): Fictions of Distance in Recent American Literature. Special Issue of AmLit - American Literatures 2.1.2022. (open access)*

therein (together with Sonja Pyykkö): “Intimacy, Detachment, and the (Post-)Postmodern Novel: Imagining Distance in Contemporary American Fiction.” In: Fictions of Distance in Recent American Literature, Special Issue of AmLit - American Literatures 2.1.2022, edited by Fabian Eggers and Sonja Pyykkö, Universität Graz, 2022, pp. 4–18. (open access)*

2022

US-Amerikanische Literaturwissenschaft Im Postfordismus: New Sincerity Trifft Postkritik.” In: Verabschiedungen Der “Postmoderne”: Neuere Historisierungen Von “Theorie” Zwischen “Post-Truth”-Narrativen Und Generationengeschichte, edited by Florian Scherübl, transcript, 2022, pp. 45–66. (open access)

2021 ‘Quality Time’ with David Foster Wallace: The Pale King’s Emotional Economy.” In: Work: The Labors of Language, Culture, and History in North America. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 40. Edited by Jesse Ramirez and Sixta Quassdorf. Tübingen: Narr, 2021, pp. 35-52. *
2018 Book Review: “Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South, by Talitha L. LeFlouria.” The Black Scholar, vol. 48, no. 2, 2018, pp. 69-72.
2017 Book Review: “A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, by Allyson Hobbs.” The Black Scholar, vol. 47, no. 2, 2017, pp. 73-76.

* peer-reviewed

Dahlem Research School
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
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