5. Academic Culture and the Politics of Knowledge

The projects in the research field “Academic Culture and the Politics of Knoweldge” investigate the institutional conditions and practices of the production of knowledge. What factors organise the field of the production of ideas? What patterns of behaviour govern the politics of knowledge, and how are ideas and texts shaped by the practices, techniques and communication systems governing the development, processing, and distribution of knowledge? The individual projects take up these questions by looking at the political governance and self-image of the University of Halle during its early Enlightenment phase, by studying the varied practices of excerpting and their effects and evolutions from the early modern period up to the present day, as well as by investigating the mechanisms of dissemination of literature and knowledge in the eighteenth century and after. These projects are all connected by the overarching question of the role that the Enlightenment movement played as a political and scientific practice in the context of the transition of the republic of letters from traditional to modern.