Subproject 2 ‘Office Novels’

Narrative Micro-Praxeology: Sociological and Literary Office Novels 1970/2000

Modern German Literature, University of Cologne

The sub-project focuses on the simultaneous interest of organizational sociology and literary fiction in bureaucratic procedures and the everyday practice of office work since the 1960s. Instead of following common stereotypes of cultural criticism against bureaucracy and dull routines, these quasi-ethnographic observations of a seemingly marginal aspect of culture reveal the micropraxeologies of hierarchical interaction, media communication, collective narratives, everyday mythologies etc.  Accordingly, the ‘office novel’ (as in Walter E. Richartz’s 1976 ‘Büroroman’)  is not only understood as a genre of literature, but also as an analysis of the office as a social milieu as conducted within sociological systems theory (e.g. Niklas Luhmann’s ‘Der neue Chef’) as well as actor network theory. Through following this hypothesis of the entanglement of fictional and sociological observations of office routines into the 21st century the project aims to provide new insights into the implications of the deployment of New Economy, the implementation of  digital technologies for office practices and the debate about a ‘paperless office’.

Contact

Prof. Dr. Nicolas Pethes

Dr. Livia Kleinwächter

Publications

• Livia Kleinwächter/Nicolas Pethes: ‘Exotik des Alltags’. Siegfried Kracauers feuilletonistische Soziologie des verwalteten Angestelltenlebens. In: Jonas Canteralla/Dina Edmundts/Michael Gamper (Hg.): Zeiten der Alltäglichkeit. Eine schwer fassbare Erfahrung in den Künsten und der Philosophie. Berlin: Schwabe 2024, S. 123-142.
• Livia Kleinwächter/Nicolas Pethes: Männer ohne Eigenschaften. Zur Erzählform des Alltäglichen im Büroroman des langen 20. Jahrhunderts. In: Vanessa Briese/Christopher Busch/Alexander Kling/Tímea Mészáros (Hg.): Alltag! Zur Literaturgeschichte eines Theoriereservoirs. Hannover: Wehrhahn 2023, S. 125-148.
• Nicolas Pethes: ‘viel Momente nichtigen Kleinkrams’. Zur Ästhetik des Alltäglichen in der Prosaliteratur der Moderne, in: Bernhard Groß/Valerie Dirk (Hg): Alltag. Ästhetik, Geschichte und Medialität eines Topos der Moderne, Berlin: Vorwerk 8 (2022), S. 178-190.
• Nicolas Pethes: ‘the form of forms’. Zur Poetik bürokratischen Schreibens in David Foster Wallace’ ‘The Pale King’. In: Peter Plener/Niels Werber/Burkhardt Wolf (Hg.): Das Formular. Berlin: Metzler 2021, S. 215-228.