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What is the status of women's writing in German today, in an era when feminism has thoroughly problematized binary conceptions of sex and gender? Drawing on gender and queer theory, including the work of Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault, the essays in this volume rethink conventional ways of conceptualizing female authorship and re-examine the formal, aesthetic, and thematic terms in which "women's literature" has been conceived. With an eye to the literary and feminist legacy of authors such as Christa Wolf and Ingeborg Bachmann, contributors treat the works of many of contemporary Germany's most significant literary voices, including Hatice Akyün, Sibylle Berg, Thea Dorn, Tanja Dückers, Karen Duve, Jenny Erpenbeck, Julia Franck, Katharina Hacker, Charlotte Roche, Julia Schoch, and Antje Rávic Strubel -- authors who, through their writing or their role in the media, engage with questions of what it means to be a woman writer in twenty-first-century Germany. Contributors: Hester Baer, Necia Chronister, Helga Druxes, Valerie Heffernan, Alexandra Merley Hill, Lindsey Lawton, Sheridan Marshall, Beret Norman, Mihaela Petrescu, Jill Suzanne Smith, Carrie Smith-Prei, Maria Stehle, Katherine Stone. Hester Baer is Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Maryland. Alexandra Merley Hill is Assistant Professor of German at the University of Portland.
Edited by
Hester Baer, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Maryland,Alexandra Merley Hill, Assistant Professorof German at the University of Portland
Edited by
Hester Baer, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Maryland,Alexandra Merley Hill, Assistant Professorof German at the University of Portland
UNLIKE ANY OTHER MEDIUM, literature has the ability to employ the reader's imagination in the construction of bodies. When a narrator communicates information about a text's characters, the reader completes the act of constructing bodies by imagining their contours, postures, and gestures. A character's gender is thus dependent upon both the narrator's speech—his/her use of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives—and the reader's expectations regarding gender. If the narrator omits information about the character's gender, the reader finds clues in the text—social cues, behaviors, and actions—to fill in that information and assign one. Such moments activate literature's potential for “undoing” gender and bring to light the ways in which reading literature is an act of collaboration. Through this collaborative process between the reader and the narrator, the reader can become an active participant in the denaturalization of such basic categories as gender.
Two contemporary German authors exemplify literature's ability to employ the reader's imagination in this way. In Antje Rávic Strubel's Kältere Schichten der Luft (Colder Layers of Air, 2007), female protagonist and narrator Anja slowly transforms into a young man named Schmoll after a mysterious young woman (mis)recognizes her as him. Although Anja at first objects, the woman's insistence that Anja is Schmoll leads to Anja's physical and emotional transformation. Anja accepts Schmoll as a second identity within herself, experiencing a plurality of gender whenever Schmoll manifests himself in her body. Judith Hermann's short story “Sonja” (1998) similarly relies on a third party interlocutor to reveal information about the gender of the narrator. The reader may assume a female narrator until, halfway through the story, the protagonist's lover utters the pronoun “er” (he) and thereby forces the reader to reimagine the narrator as a man and her lesbian relationships as his heterosexual ones. Just as in Kältere Schichten der Luft, the gender transition in “Sonja” requires a third party interlocutor within the diegetic world to be initiated in the mind of the reader. In both texts, it is the moment in which heteronormativity is introduced into the lesbian relationship when queering happens—that is, the binary gender system breaks down.
Edited by
Hester Baer, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Maryland,Alexandra Merley Hill, Assistant Professorof German at the University of Portland
Edited by
Hester Baer, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Maryland,Alexandra Merley Hill, Assistant Professorof German at the University of Portland
Edited by
Hester Baer, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Maryland,Alexandra Merley Hill, Assistant Professorof German at the University of Portland
Edited by
Hester Baer, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Maryland,Alexandra Merley Hill, Assistant Professorof German at the University of Portland
Edited by
Hester Baer, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Maryland,Alexandra Merley Hill, Assistant Professorof German at the University of Portland
Edited by
Hester Baer, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Maryland,Alexandra Merley Hill, Assistant Professorof German at the University of Portland
