Literarische Öffentlichkeit ohne Lesen. Zur Neubetrachtung von <i>Rifbjergs lytterroman</i> (1972)

Zusammenfassung In 1972, Danmarks Radio invited its audience to write a novel together with Klaus Rifbjerg in the six-part radio program Rifbjergs telefonroman . The radio show proved to be extremely popular, but the documentation in book form that was subsequently published under the title Rifbjergs lytterroman was a commercial failure. The following article first classifies this literary event in terms of literary history and literary theory. In a second step, it analyzes the event in light of the current version of Jürgen Habermas’ public theory, because Rifbjerg and Habermas hold similar views on the social relevance of literature. The analysis leads to the thesis that the literary event Rifbjergs telefon-/lytterroman realizes a literary public in the Habermasian sense without the audience reading. The article provides also an outlook on what perspective the event opens up for literary studies on Habermas’ assumption of a current digital structural transformation of the public sphere.