<title>RÄUME SCHREIBEN : zwischen Verortung, Heimsuchung und Im(Mobilität) : raumkonstruktivistische analysen zu literarischen texten von Tanja Dückers, Jenny Erpenbeck und Judith Hermann</title>
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/120486"/>
<id>https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/120486</id>
<updated>2024-04-16T04:53:04Z</updated>
<published>2017-01-01T00:00:00Z</published>
<summary type="text">Title: RÄUME SCHREIBEN : zwischen Verortung, Heimsuchung und Im(Mobilität) : raumkonstruktivistische analysen zu literarischen texten von Tanja Dückers, Jenny Erpenbeck und Judith Hermann
Abstract: During the last decades, in the context of the so-called spatial turn in literary
and cultural studies an increasing engagement with the spatial paradigm has
developed, which is at the same time counteracted by a tendency towards spatial dissolution in times of globalisation (Bachmann-Medick 2009). Space is
now considered as a product of and an influence on social processes and as the
material expression of social power structures. The paradoxical process of turning away from traditional concepts of space with a simultaneous return to
space, as well as the concept of space as a co-agent in everyday life, can be
shown as central to the literary works of German women writers labelled as
part of the so called ‘literary Fräuleinwunder’ (Volker Hage) in 1998. Taking a
space constructivist approach drawing on space theories by Marc Augé, Gaston
Bachelard, Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guattari
and Michel Foucault, this thesis explores how authors Tanja Dückers, Jenny
Erpenbeck and Judith Hermann enact spatial settings employing a relational
concept of space closely linked to the negotiation of gender roles, concepts of
centre and periphery and memory. Their works are thus analysed, beyond the
problematic ‘Fräuleinwunder’ label, as complex literary reflections of the topical – in both senses of the word – focus on the interconnection between space
and social relations.
In her volumes of short stories Sommerhaus, später (1998) and Nichts
als Gespenster (2003), Judith Hermann evokes the repeated transgression of
boundaries between binary spatial settings and their dichotomous symbolic implications.
The non-place Berlin is counteracted by imaginary heterotopian
spaces in which gender roles and gender specific forms of mobility are negotiated,
ultimately representing non-realisable alternative life styles. In her novel
Spielzone (1999), Tanja Dückers sketches two Berlin districts characterized by
an atmosphere of departure around the turn of the millennium. The urban
changes in the decade after the fall of the wall are reflected in the protagonists’
life styles; in analogy to the city space, the body becomes a construction site
for the negotiation of gender and identity. Moreover, Dückers depicts the figure of a postmodern female flaneur who individualises the urban space by play fully experimenting
with the city’s constructions in cultural memory, but at the
same time – by turning non-places into individualised spaces – in a conflicting
process, she (subtly) reverts to traditional concepts. In contrast to Hermann and
Dückers, in her novel Heimsuchung (2008) Jenny Erpenbeck turns away from
the city space by localising the strong desire for spatial rootedness in a seemingly remote parcel of land in the countryside. The author questions traditional
concepts of centre and periphery and enacts the recurring transgression of
boundaries in order to register the seemingly remote plot as a new site of crime
in collective memory. By evoking small spaces, she challenges the metaphor of
the house as a spatial conservation of positive memories.
The analyses of the chosen texts thus show the oscillation between a
dedication to and a turning away from (traditional) spatial concepts by representing
attempts at self-localisation in times of globalisation. For this purpose,
the authors evoke the constant transgression of boundaries in order to counterpose experimental zones and non-places to conventional settings closely linked
to traditional gender roles and life styles, or in return show the process of unwriting the feeling of belonging connected to a confined space in order to
transform individual as well as collective memory.
Description: PH.D.</summary>
<dc:date>2017-01-01T00:00:00Z</dc:date>