Institutional issues in the literary system

Abstract

The essay intends to offer a reflection about the conditions of emergence, in the literary system, of a self-reflexive discourse centered on testimony of intellectuals who participate, in an institutional way, on paradigm shifts in the domain of literary studies, in specific politic moments. In the second part of the essay the arguments developed will be exemplified by a lecture of an “autobiographic historiography” that discusses the changes in literary studies simultaneously to the university reform, the students’ revolts of 68 and the political project of democratization in Germany. The ego-document by Hans Robert Jauss, “Historia calamitatum et fortunarum mearum or: A Paradigm Shift in Literary Study”, idealized in the late 80s by demand of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, as a chapter of a history of literary scholarship in Germany, will be the basis for a discussion about the complex articulations between particular convictions and theoretical and political projects to legitimate, or not, determined paradigm shifts.