THE RESEARCH GROUP OF CULTURAL AND LITERARY THEORY
  Research Group

  Contact
 kultuuriteooria
      [ät]gmail.com
PROJECTS


Special Issue of the Journal of Baltic Studies: Soviet Colonialism in the Baltic States
Editor Epp Annus

The collected volume "Twentieth Century Movements of Thought"
Editor-in-chief Epp Annus

The volume gives an in-depth review of the most important thinkers and currents of thought in the twentieth century, with an aim to determine the role of philosophy in the shaping of cultural space. "Twentieth Century Movements of Thought" was published in summer 2009.


Participatory Culture in Cyberspace: Literature and its Borders
2008–2011 (ETF7679)
Principal investigator Piret Viires

The point of departure for this project is the tight connection between postmodernist cultural situation and the technological development. The goal of the project is to analyze the new forms of literature and culture that emerge thanks to the development of information technology. The objects of the research are various cultural texts created in the digital environment, and especially literary texts, so-called ‘cyberliterature’. The central theoretical approach for the research would be “participatory culture” The main goal of the project is to analyze cultural texts in cyberspace which expand the traditional borders of culture and literature. Estonian materials as well as international sources will be researched; participatory culture and its accompanying phenomena will be also described theoretically. The problem of authorship is central to the research, as well as various interpretations of the ‘virtual’. On a broader level, the postmodernist cultural situation will be characterized as well as its relations to the technological development, simulations, the virtual, and the society of the spectacle. As such, the project centres on Estonia, but the research will be related with practices abroad. On the one hand, this guarantees a common comparative ground to the project; on the other hand, it will be a chance to supplement the international scientific discussion with something of our own. The research subject of the project is positioned in the interstice between humanitarian sciences and technological development. Developments in New Media and information technology have radically transformed and undermined the traditional ways and building blocks of society. “Participatory culture” is not only a cultural term, it can as well be applied to the analysis of wider social tendencies and phenomena which have appeared or transformed because of changes in information technology. The theoretical analysis of the cultural change that accompanies developments in information technology should evidently be among the main principles of an innovative society that looks to the future. The present project offers a possibility to concentrate on a specific chapter in the complex of recent cultural changes and therefore sees its output in meaningfully describing the new shapes our culture has taken due to the developments in information technology.



Finished projects and Estonian Science Foundation grants