Cultural Conservatism, Intellectual Aristocracy, Resentment: Critical Perspectives on Literary Intellectual Discourses since 1918 and their Current Relevance

The interdisciplinary and international conference aims to take a closer look at the topicality and explosive nature of cultural and right-wing conservative intellectual discourses since 1918 in their historical genesis and their interconnectedness. In a diachronic and synchronic perspective, continuities, but also ambivalences and contradictions will be critically examined and analysed. The aim of the conference project is to methodically bring today's positions of cultural conservatism, intellectual aristocracy and resentment in the literary field into a comparative constellation with those of the multi-layered and contradictory intellectual formations in the ideological spectrum from (cultural) conservatism to the 'Conservative Revolution' after the First World War. The presentations at the conference will shed light on two forms and concepts of cultural conservative thought that are around a hundred years apart by critically comparing them with one another, thereby sharpening the critical eye for current manifestations of right-wing conservative and new-right literary politics and cultural theories.