Belarusian literature, whose sheer historical existence could be called into question for certain reasons (apart from the brief phase of self-constitution as 'national literature' in the first third of the 20th century), brings the constructed nature of 'national' literatures into focus in a special way. Traditional Belarusian literary historiography (most recently and especially the post-Soviet 'History of Belarusian Literature of the 20th Century' in three volumes (five books)) exemplifies that the creation of a narrative of 'national literature' aimed at coherence goes hand in hand with the construction of continuity, the smoothing of breaks, the levelling of distortions, the suppression of ambiguities and the reinterpretation of 'incompleteness'.

The project attempts to reconceptualise Belarusian literary history. It is about designing a model that does not ignore, level or reinterpret the aporias and distortions associated with the changing disjunctions of state space, cultural space, language and ethnos, but rather focuses on them as central categories of literary development in the transitional space of Belarus. Such a model promises a double benefit: On the one hand, it offers a systematic approach to the literary history of Belarus that takes up and utilises the recent theoretical discussions on literary historiography; on the other hand, the transfer of theory thus achieved makes a concept of post-Soviet literary history conceivable in Belarus itself that goes beyond the mere exchange of signs.

With this in mind, the authors of the literary history have agreed on a common concept within the framework of various workshops, which combines various current approaches and is essentially based on three central categories:

Cultural space: as a history not of 'Belarusian literature', but of the 'literature of Belarus', the narrative is conceptualised as a history of literature in the 'space of Belarus', understood not as linear or even constant, but as historically changeable both in its territorial extent and in its nature, i.e. in terms of the parameters that characterise it (cf. Zeyringer/Gollner 2012).

Chronology: A flexible chronology is pursued. It is pragmatically based on a division into centuries, the boundaries of which are understood as 'fluid' and are to be determined in detail. This allows large-scale conceptualisations in the sense of a 'long 16th century' (Braudel 1972). (Braudel 1972), a long 18th century (Baines 2004) and 19th century (Hobsbawm 1964ff) or even a 'short 20th century' (Hobsbawm 2004) as well as the modelling of shorter periods, individual events or even blank spaces. In addition to the 'great linearity' at the macro level, non-linear progressions, condensations, repetitions, overlaps, leaps, breaks and 'breakpoints' can be depicted in this way (cf. Hollier 1993; Bertrand et al. 2003; Wellbery 2004).

Institutions: The operative access to the material to be transferred into a 'narrative of ruptures' is carried out from the perspective of field theory (Bourdieu 2001) and is based on the institutional approach developed in the wake of Bourdieu (van Rees 1983) and already tried and tested in literary history (Grüttemeier/Leuker 2006). Objectivity and comparability between time periods can be established and discontinuities and gaps can be diagnosed via the transformation of literary institutions. At the same time, institutional history can also be used to depict and plausibilise poetological developments.

Coordination and scientific direction: Gun-Britt Kohler, Pavel Navumenka

The third workshop of the authors' collective will take place from 24 May to 27 May 2017 as part of the Oldenburg-Minsk project "Literary History of Belarus", in which renowned scholars from Belarus and other countries are involved.

The workshop "Literary History and Institutions" deals with the question of the historical variability of literary institutions and their functions in Belarus from the Middle Ages to the present day. The lectures by the authors of the planned literary history will be contextualised by short presentations of relevant theoretical texts and case studies from other literatures; in addition, lectures by several guests, including Dr Marie Vrinat-Nikolov (INALCO, Paris), will provide an opportunity to discuss general current issues in the literary historiography of 'smaller' literatures.

For the programme in German please click here - in Belarusian please click here.