Rhein-Main Universitäten (RMU)

Dear Dr Loidolt, Dr Völz, what particular perspective does the Research Training Group take on the topic of democracy, what is its unique selling point?

Sophie Loidolt: We look at democracy from an everyday perspective, in its perceptible and sensorial aspects. That is why ‘aesthetics’ has the broad meaning of aisthesis here, which means “perception” in ancient Greek. According to our approach, democracy does not only consist of legal and political institutions, it is also a way of life – and as such it has a perceivable, staged, and ‘shaped’ side. We want to explore this by using the tools available to us, particularly in the humanities. In doing so, we aim to strengthen and explore a whole new field: democracy research in the humanities. 

According to this understanding, which forms of community below the state level also count as democracy?

Johannes Völz: According to our thesis, democracy is an open and reflexive social form, including practices of coexistence, but also artistic production. Community building is not always harmonious according to the principles of freedom, equality and solidarity, but essentially also conflictual. We are guided by the idea that democratic forms of life consist in the negotiation of their form. In a democracy, as the ancient Greeks were already convinced, conflicts are resolved with words, not with violence. But even back then, ‘words’ meant not only rational, purposeful discussion, but also rhetoric, theatre, philosophising in the agora, and often the resistant disruption of an established order.

Also today, people find ways to do just that. In doing so, they put democracy, i.e. equality, freedom and solidarity, into practice in a tangible way. Our thesis is therefore not limited to actually existing democracies, but also extends to aesthetic-democratic practices, things and experiences in places around the world that cannot be described as liberal democracies. One of our projects, for example, examines how the widespread practice of ‘voting’ in pop-cultural singing competitions in China's anti-democratic regime can acquire a specific, sensorially perceptible potential for democratization – and is also staged aesthetically in this way. Two other projects in the field of film studies deal with the aesthetics of neighbourhood and the voice or voicelessness of female migrant workers in German cinema. Another project in the field of literary studies deals with the retelling and reinterpretation of classical works as a democratic practice.

What approaches and methods do you intend to use to analyse these vivid forms of social life in more detail? Which disciplines are involved?

Sophie Loidolt: The humanities have always specialised in reading, understanding and interpreting ‘texts’ in the broadest sense. By this we do not only mean books, but everything that humans produce and that can be ‘read’. The first texts, one might say, were textiles that humans wove into clothing to protect themselves, to represent themselves, to adorn themselves.

This brings us back to the sensory and aesthetic dimensions. The humanities have developed hermeneutic, formal, and material expertise to analyse images, sounds, practices, and signs: all of these being expressions of the human ‘mind’, individually and collectively, which always also have a sensory side. The Research Training Group involves general and comparative literature, American studies, film and media studies, German studies, art history, modern history, philosophy, Scandinavian studies and Chinese studies.

We see it as a creative and necessary experiment to apply these perspectives and methods developed in the humanities to subjects that usually fall within the realm of the social sciences. Of course, we are not isolating ourselves from the social sciences, which are integrated at several interfaces in our project. And both in Frankfurt and Darmstadt, we have a long history of close cooperation. But we also expect to gain something truly new by combining our humanities expertise for the analysis of democracy. We can still learn a lot from each other, across disciplines, generations, countries, and research cultures, both within the research group itself and together with our international partners.

What role does dialogue with civil society partners and public institutions play in the research group?

Johannes Völz: From the outset, it was important to us not only to research democracy in practice, but also to contribute to strengthening democratic culture ourselves. After all – and the members of the research group agree on this – we see the democratic coexistence that most of us have grown up with as a matter of course as being seriously endangered. Our PhD students will therefore develop public humanities projects that arise directly from their doctoral projects and are intended to have an impact on them. To enable these projects to be realised, we have gathered together almost twenty partner organisations from the fields of culture and politics, mostly from the Rhine-Main region, but also from further afield. The doctoral students will collaborate with museums, literary institutions and even the Foreign Office in order to engage with the public. We are delighted that the Executive Board of Goethe University has recognised the importance of our Public Humanities programme and is supporting these projects with a small grant.

Dr Loidolt, you are involved in the project as a senior researcher and co-spokesperson. What is TU Darmstadt's contribution to the research?

Sophie Loidolt: I am involved in the project as a philosopher. As we received an exceptionally large number of excellent applications from the field of philosophy, three projects are based in Darmstadt. Two of them are related to my focus on Hannah Arendt research, in which I deal primarily with questions of plurality and the public sphere as a space of meaning and experience. One project examines the acoustic dimensions of democracy by considering Arendt's reflections on voice, narrative, and theatre in this new context. Another project questions refusal and withdrawal from politics as an explicitly democratic gesture. Finally, the third project deals with the aesthetics of algorithmics, i.e. how the algorithmic paradigm changes our perception and which kind of impact this has on democratic coexistence. This is a good example of how TU expertise is incorporated into the overall project.

In general, I consider the project to be an excellent, timely, and forward-looking collaboration between our universities. I am very much looking forward to working with the international and interdisciplinary group of PhD students and my colleagues from Frankfurt.

The questions were asked by Michaela Hütig.

The Research Training Group ‘Aesthetics of Democracy’

The Research Training Group ‘Aesthetics of Democracy’ will be funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 1 April 2026 for an initial period of five years with just under six million euros. It analyses the sensory and aesthetic dimensions of democracy – from the level of perception to the level of action. The focus is therefore on the orders, practices, things and experiences that give shape to democratic coexistence. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to this aesthetics of democracy, unlike, for example, the aesthetics of fascism. Using concepts from political theory on the intertwining of forms of government and collective ways of life, researchers from various disciplines, such as literature, art, film and media studies, history and philosophy, are working together.

Johannes Völz, Professor of American Studies at Goethe University, is the spokesperson. The deputy spokesperson is philosopher Professor Sophie Loidolt from TU Darmstadt. Both universities belong to the Rhein-Main Universities (RMU) consortium and offer the cross-location master's programmes ‘International Studies, Peace and Conflict Research’ and ‘Political Theory’.