In the module “Imagined Disruptions”, a corpus consisting of literary texts, fiction films and TV series is analysed with a view to determining which imagined forms and stagings (Inszenierungen) of disruption are being dealt with, and how they address the social semantics of society. The module is guided by the consideration that the narrative arts are better at “translating” complex constellations of disruption (the various logics of the current financial and economic crisis come to mind) and relaying them into social debates than the expertise of many experts because they situate disruption in a narrative context, thus generating emotional constellations and patterns of identification and thereby creating an effect of self-evidence. The studies are devoted to individual genres – such as science fiction or the political thriller – that display a preference for tackling exemplary scenarios of disruption; alternatively, they examine specific, symbolically dense figures of disruption which – like the rampage killer, the migrant or the stockbroker – process social norms and certitudes in a complex interplay of de- and re-normalisation.
