07.09.2020
"Our truth standards are anything but given."
In Conversation with Research Alumnus Dr. Raphael Zähringer, Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer in the Institute of English Languages and Literatures at Tübingen University.
What is your connection with Tübingen and the University?
I started here as a student of English and German in 2005 and received my PhD in English Literature in 2015.
Where are you based?
I am still in Tübingen, where I work as a postdoc in English Literatures and Cultures, working towards my postdoctoral thesis of qualification for the professorial level in Germany (‘Habilitation’).
What is your latest publication about?
My latest publication is about the structural conditions of postfactual politics from a literary studies point of view. It takes its cue from a Tweet by Bavarian prime minister Markus Söder revolving around the ‚Kreuzerlass‘ from 2018 (a federal state-level decree demanding the mounting of crucifixes in Bavarian civil service and other agencies). The publication sketches the contemporary processes, discourses of Bavarian cultural self-constitution against the backdrop of mythical structures and contextualizes Söder’s Tweet within this structure. Furthermore, it also demonstrates how socio-cultural processes – along the lines of contingency and convergence culture – oppose such plotting.
What fueled your interest in this topic?
I find it fascinating how politicians use social media for self-promotion and for spreading their political agenda, unfiltered by any traditional gatekeepers; I initially got into the topic due to Boris Johnson’s and Donald Trump’s media presence, and due to the resulting struggles of academic disciplines to come to terms with them. What I find particularly interesting is how such political agents can be positioned as storytellers, how they toy with notions of fact and fiction – and how other agents (the press, their followers, scholars…) react to them.
Fun fact: The creative output of users
Picking up on the reactions of audiences to the content produced by politicians, it is worth checking out the creative output of users. Beyond simply criticizing Söder, many of his critics re-contextualized the Tweet by drawing upon popular culture, or replaced the crucifix in the photo with various other (oftentimes hilarious) items. Take a look here.
COVID-19 shows us that our truth standards are not objective
Söder’s tweet itself is part of my larger research interest in how texts of all kinds may or may not pass as truthful and/or fictional in different contexts. Governed by the paradigm shifts in fields such as science, art, politics, media, or technology, it is fascinating to realize that our truth standards are anything but given – and the current struggles revolving around COVID-19 aptly demonstrate that. It is worth investigating the conditions under which certain statements or utterances in certain media contexts are more believed than others (and by whom). Why do some people believe the information provided in a scientist’s publication in a reputable journal, others in a journalist’s blog, and why do yet others believe what they see in an influencer’s YouTube video? While I think that such issues have come to the fore in our high-speed digital age, I deem it also worth observing the large historical continuum of truth-making. In the late 16th century, for instance, poets had a substantial amount of political power because of their way of claiming a ‘poetic truth’ in the form of allegory. By the same token, early newspapers focussed a lot more on ‘bare facts’ rather than expressing any opinion on the events reported.
More information on the article
Zähringer, Raphael. “Markus Söders Kreuzerlass – eine postfaktische Erzählung aus der Politik.” Postfaktisches Erzählen? Post-Truth – Fake News – Narration. Ed. Katharina Rennhak, Matei Chihaia, Matías Martínez, Michael Scheffel, Roy Sommer and Antonius Weixler. [forthcoming 2020]. https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/575518?rskey=9Ir5Uk&result=3
Contact details
Dr. Raphael Zähringer
University of Tübingen
English Department
Wilhelmstr. 50
72074 Tübingen
Germany
raphael.zaehringer@uni-tuebingen.de
Homepage
List of publications
The Short and the Weird: Perspectives on the New Weird Short Story. Thematic Issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 69-2 (2021) [forthcoming 2021].
“Markus Söders Kreuzerlass – eine postfaktische Erzählung aus der Politik.” Postfaktisches Erzählen? Post-Truth – Fake News – Narration. Ed. Katharina Rennhak, Matei Chihaia, Matías Martínez, Michael Scheffel, Roy Sommer and Antonius Weixler. [forthcoming 2020]. [https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/575518?rskey=9Ir5Uk&result=3]
“The Heterogeneous Epistemic Field of Comic Adaptation and Medievalism: Different Versions of ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci.’” Vom Spruchband zur Sprechblase. Comics des Mittelalters – Mittelaltercomics. Ed. Marion Darilek and Matthias Däumer. Bielefeld: transcript [accepted, forthcoming 2020].
“Alternative Fakten und postfaktische Politik als Narrativ.” Literaturwissenschaften in der Krise: zur Rolle und Relevanz literarischer Praktiken in globalen Krisenzeiten. Ed. Anya Heise-von der Lippe and Russell West-Pavlov. Tübingen: Narr, 2018: 93-105. [https://www.narr.de/literaturwissenschaften-in-der-krise-18148/]
“Tweets, postfaktische Politik und Literatur.” Faktor14 12 (2018): 24-29.
Hidden Topographies. Traces of Urban Reality in Dystopian Fiction. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2017. [https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/485044]
“China Miéville, Embassytown (2011).” Handbook of the English Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Ed. Christoph Reinfandt. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2017: 518-535. [https://www.degruyter.com/view/book/9783110369489/10.1515/9783110369489-027.xml?rskey=mRfE64&result=1]
“X Marks the Spot – Not: Pirate Treasure Maps in Treasure Island and Käpt’n Sharky und das Geheimnis der Schatzinsel.” Children’s Literature in Education 48.1 (2017): 6-20. [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10583-016-9308-0]
“’Strange Tricks of Cartography’: The Map(s) of Perdido Street Station.” China Miéville: Critical Essays. Ed. Caroline Edwards and Tony Venezia. Canterbury: Gylphi, 2015: 61-87. [http://www.gylphi.co.uk/books/Mieville/Paperback]
“Sprachproduktivität im Chat und Linguistik in der Schule.” Linguistische Inhalte im Deutschunterricht. Studentische Stimmen zu einem umstrittenen Thema. Ed. Björn Rothstein. Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2010: 53-63.