Language:
English
Pages:
1 Online-Ressource
Edition:
Version 1.0, published 19 August 2022
Series Statement:
Compendium heroicum. das Online-Lexikon des Sonderforschungsbereichs 948 „Helden – Heroisierungen – Heroismen“
DDC:
302.23
Abstract:
Abstract: Heroic figures perform their deeds on their own. It is they who decide, who act, and who risk their lives. Hegel wrote that heroes in the ‘heroic age’ were still fully responsible for their deeds. Therefore, for Hegel, there could no longer be heroes in a modern, civil society which is characterised by the division of labour: Numerous members are involved in the course of each event, responsibility is spread, and it is “no longer a matter of individual heroism and the virtue of a single person”. Historically, Hegel’s prognosis has not come true. Even in the so-called ‘post-heroic age’, heroic figures are all around us. However, it remains true for the portrayal of heroes that they are usually shown as lone fighters with sole responsibility. Heroic stories concentrate on one protagonist and they place a strong and active individual figure at their centre. Drive and determination are both essential hallmarks of the hero. It is therefore not surprising that, along with ‘heroic death’ and ‘heroic bravery’, ‘heroic deed’ is one of the few established idioms which comprise ‘hero-’.〈br〉As with the other central features of heroic figures (extraordinariness, transgressiveness, affective and moral charge, and agonality), this analysis aims to show how the traits of heroic agency emerge. Heroic agency is analysed as the result of a ⟶constitutive process.6 Within this process agency is attributed to and concentrated on the respective figure. In order to trace it, we start with a concrete heroic figure (Louis Pasteur) and reconstruct how this trait came about. For this purpose, actor-network theory is applicable and will be introduced as an analytical tool below.〈br〉Actor-network theory – expanded to include approaches from literature and media studies – is used to examine attribution, communication and representation processes through which a person is first made into a hero. Accordingly, the heroic figure represents a ‘real fiction’ which is generated via communication and media, irrespective of whether a real historical person is the starting point or not. If a historical person forms the starting point, the concentration of agency takes place as a historical process, as a history of transmission. However, in the case of fictional representations it can also be examined how the strong agency emerges as a communication and representation effect
DOI:
10.6094/heroicum/he1.0.20220819
URN:
urn:nbn:de:bsz:25-freidok-2290275
URL:
https://doi.org/10.6094/heroicum/he1.0.20220819
URL:
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:25-freidok-2290275
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