Former Fellows

The key part of Dr Erdbeer's research project is a case-study on multiplaying that addresses gaming as a collective technique of the Self.

In literary and scientific theory it has been claimed that fiction would provide, or even ‘be', a form of latent knowledge where imaginary forces gather in free play (Schiller); that it may function as a pre-scientific incubator of scientific reasoning (Alexander von Humboldt), as a myth with its own logic (Blumenberg), as a ‘meaningful' yet short-lived catalyst to generate the truth (Vaihinger) or as a human(ist) capacity to balance the Real and the Imaginary (Iser). Recently, the mode of fiction came to be the fashion mode of virtual reality as well as of Historical Epistemology, a mode of being that provides effective simulations and experiments of thought. The question of this study, though, is simple: how does fiction work? How does it work as an historically mutable, dynamic force, while constituting modern ‘knowledge cultures' between popular, sophisticated and inscrutable professional genres? How do fictional devices, formats and performances depend on their ‘communities of fiction'? In how far is fiction a technology of the non-fictional (or even the fictitious) Self?

This project will investigate the rising ‘New Essentialism' of contemporary culture in a post-postmodern fictional genre: the Role-Playing Game. Its main objectives in relation to this genre, that became a major challenge, if not threat, to postmodern philology, are multiplaying games like URU live and Drakensang, as well as game-related forms of literary, cinematic or performative fiction. For gaming has become a striking issue with the agents of ‘high culture', too. A war game table top appears as central topic in Roberto Bolaños novel El Tercer Reich (2010), the ludic job of ‘farming' is discussed in Cory Doctorows youth novel For the Win (2011), and German dramatist Tim Staffel launched a stage play with the title joke Next Level Parzival (RuhrTriennale 2007).

This study will combine three central aspects of the Gaming Culture with regard to modern literature and literary theory: the new ontology and modelling of ludic Selves (Fictional Competence), the joint proliferation of new objects (New Fictionality), and the cultural encounters of the Virtual and Actual in ‘post-ludic' communities (‘Virtual Essentialism').