Institute of World Literature SAS
Topic
Remembering and Forgetting as a Subject of Life Sciences and Literary Studies
PhD. program
Literature Studies
Year of admission
2025
Name of the supervisor
Mgr. Roman Mikuláš, PhD.
Contact:
Receiving school
Filozofická fakulta UPJŠ
Annotation
Memory constitutes our personal identity. While most literary studies focus on the aspect of remembering, forgetting remains less of a research focus. Forgetting significantly disrupts our sense of identity. Many contemporary German language texts deal with neurobiological illnesses that generally lead to memory loss and a disturbed sense of identity. In many texts we can observe literary strategies based on the reflection of the disintegration of personal identity directly in the process of writing. The boundary between discourses, that of literature and that of biomedicine or neurobiology, is crossed in various ways. Based on this thematic orientation, the concept of interdiscursivity is applied, which we want to link to Ottmar Ette's concept of life sciences. The proposed dissertation project will deal with the literarisation of processes that are primarily discussed at the level of specific scientific disciplines such as neurobiology and biomedicine. However, the scope of the dissertation project is broader. It will focus on the issue of personal identity and its disruption or loss through various disorders. Finally, it will analyze examples of how an interdiscursively conceived concept of memory can help to link memory processes to notions of identity and individuality. Against this background, narrative strategies that reflect these very processes of experiencing the inner world will be made visible.