Dr. Sandra Janßen

Dr. Sandra Janßen

 

Dr. Sandra Janßen                                                                 

Ammerländer Heerstr. 114-118
26129 Oldenburg
Building A3, Room 1-102
Phone: +49 441 789-2350

sandra.janssen@uol.de

Research project

The Totalitarian Subject. On Psychology, Political Theory and Literature in the 1930s and 1940s

The question of how the totalitarian, collectivistic regimes of the mid-20th century were able to gain affirmation by those subjected to them has been answered differently in recent times: Either it was supposed that even non-individualistic self-models represent a form of subjectivation, or that these regimes allowed for more individualism than their current representation would suggest. A common feature of these positions is that they conceive of subjectivation as being dependent on power. This research project proposes a different perspective: It presumes that subjectivation is, as a historical phenomenon, linked to contemporaneous conceptions of subjectivity and can therefore be analyzed with respect to a history of knowledge. The project correlates subject models conceived in psychology and philosophy of the 1930s and 1940s with forms of subjectivity implied in political theory of the same period, thus aiming to corroborate its hypothesis that it is only through a specific conception of subjectivity that totalitarian forms of power were able to be perceived as desirable. Against the backdrop of a history of knowledge, it is indeed possible to conceive of political rule as an effect of subjectivation rather than its premise. The project intends to demonstrate that psychological and political subject form an epistemic unity; it will do so, in particular, by analyzing literary authors of the 1930s and 1940s (Georges Bataille, Gottfried Benn, Maurice Blanchot und Hermann Broch).

Research Areas

  • German, French and Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries
  • Literature and knowledge, Historical Epistemology
  • History of Psychology
  • Theory / History of the subject
  • Literature and political thought
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