Forms and Figures of Balance in Media, Art and Literature Science
The Aristotle ethics of the “middle”, diet ethics, pre-stabilized harmony, balance of powers and balancing out, poetic justice, balance of the soul, successful proportions, the balanced relationship between speaking and being silent, the position of the object in the room of the art – with these forms only a few of the prominent teachings are addressed that imply a constitutive idea of the equilibrium. The thought figure of balance, the “balance sense” which is very closely associated with it as well as specific cultural practices connect such different field like politics, history, law, economy, natural philosophy, anthropology, sociology, sport science, media theory, psychology, philosophy, art, ethics and aesthetic.
From the perspective of cultural scientific research, it is astonishing, given the circumstances, that the talk of equilibrium and the concern about its impending loss so far has not yet attracted any interdisciplinary empirical studies and any theoretical reflection based on them. The omnipresence of balancing concepts is countered by the extensive lack of cultural, discourse and media studies on the subject. The Promotion Network on the Theory of Balance is dedicated to this desideratum of interdisciplinary research.
Research Program
Structure of the Promotion Network
The Promotion Network serves to further develop the balance conceived as a flexible model and offers doctoral students the opportunity, in close cooperation with each other and with the project leaders, to write further chapters on empiricism, history and theory of balance in its numerous forms and figures. One representative each from the fields of media and literary studies as well as art history is in charge of the dissertation projects, which apply to the central building blocks of the topic outlined in more detail in the following: Communication, object science, literary-philosophical discourse.
In media science, basic research on the balance of communication is to be carried out. Research on basic determinations of proportion and balance in the visual arts as a concrete mode of often non-verbal communication will be added in close coordination. The comparative literature work area profits from this media and art scientific basic research, builds up on it and is dedicated to the exploration and processing of facets of the historical semantics of balance, as articulated in literary and philosophical discourse.
As a glance at the complex topic of the network shows, the material developed in a relatively limited context can only mark the beginning of further studies which, on a larger scale, would have to contribute interdisciplinary research, for example on economics, ecology, sociology, medicine, ethnology, political science, rhetoric or anthropology. It is therefore planned to work out a larger format for the promotion network on the “Theory of Balance”.
According to the technical competence of the applicant, the research program on the theory of balance is currently divided into three research areas:
- Research area A is dedicated to the balance of communication;
- Research area B researches the nexus between image, object and room as highly variable manifestation of balance models and concepts;
- Research area C is dedicated to the research on balance as a metaphor of existence in the literary and philosophical discourse.