Research report from Berlin

The project tells the story of how ‘political correctness’ goes from being something of a strategic method within the feminist movement in the early 1970s, to becoming a conspiratorial concept that casts feminists and other champions of oppressed groups as thought police threatening free speech, or even as woke terrorists whose freedom of speech must be curtailed to ensure social stability. At the same time, it charts how literary studies have debated whether literature is best seen as an aesthetic expression of the self or as a rhetorical machinery wherewith to control society, and reminds us of the myriad ways in which these debates have involved the concept PC, not least in relation to feminist theory.

“Conducting this work in Berlin was an enormous privilege,” Ullén reports. “At JFK, in addition to having access to first rate library facilities, I had the great privilege of being able to sit in regularly on seminars and lectures. I also benefited a great deal from informal conversations with members of staff, not least with Ulla Haselstein, who kindly arranged for me to have an office space at the department, and Stefanie Müller, the present head of the Literary Department. And it gave me time enough to get to grips with Jürgen Habermas’s account of the transformation of the public sphere, which proved crucial for my own conception of PC.”

Work on the 140.000-word manuscript that resulted from the visit is still ongoing, but Ullén hopes to have it completed by early Spring 2026. It will likely be another year or so before the study is published, but you can have a sneak preview via the below articles.

The feminist origins of ‘political correctness’: PC terms in JSTOR

Link to article in JSTOR

The Art of Judgment: Postcritique and the Particular Case

Link to article in DiVA

Magnus Ullén is a Professor at our department.

Read more about his research on his profile page