Projektifieringen

Litteraturvetenskapen som vara

Abstract

Projectification. Literary Studies as Commodity

The article contains a critique of the project form which the humanities at large have embraced during the past few decades. The ”project” is not only a word we attach to our research efforts; it is a concept that has far-reaching consequences regarding how we read, think, write and act as scholars. The projectification of the humanities is not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a larger development. This article addresses a number of the consequences of this tendency in the context of literary scholarship, suggesting that: 1) the draft becomes more important than the realization; 2) the research tends to be standardized; 3) the academic activity is segmented; 3) economical means are regarded as ends in themselves; 4) a new type of research subject arises through the interpellation of the research foundations; 5) stress and sickliness becomes frequent among researchers and PhD-students, since projectification gives rise to a ”bragging culture”. Finally the article argues that projectification is one component of a more extensive development, in which activity has become an end in itself. Following Louis Althusser, Georg Lukács and Luc Boltanski & Eve Chiapello this article argues that these developments originate in the logic of capitalism or in the dialectic of enlightenment. It is thus difficult to find a simple solution to the problem. However, the article ends with an argument for more modesty in terms of research, and simultaneously discerns a utopian element in the research plans that are never carried out.