The Nature of the Beetle: Language and Trauma in the Work of Ingeborg Bachmann by SHARON WEINER B.S., Stanford University
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The Nature of the Beetle: Language and Trauma in the Work of Ingeborg Bachmann BY SHARON WEINER B.S., Stanford University, 2004 M.S., M.P.H., Columbia University, 2008 THESIS Submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Germanic Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Chicago, 2017 Chicago, Illinois Committee: Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, Chair and Advisor Patrick Fortmann Elizabeth Loentz Imke Meyer Heidi Schlipphacke Aidan Gray, Philosophy ii To Brad – who stood by me for every jot, and who inspires me to dance the orange. ~ In loving memory: Samantha Lauren Cohn (1980-2014) Diana Hernandez Lebrun (1982-2014) iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I extend my heartfelt thanks to Dr. Dagmar Lorenz and the members of my dissertation committee, for their invaluable feedback and guidance; All the faculty and graduate students of UIC Germanic Studies, who make this a collegial and truly warm department; The UIC Graduate College and Chancellor’s Graduate Research Award, for critical research support during summers 2015 and 2016; Linda Vavra and the UIC Institute for the Humanities, for a productive writing retreat in May 2016 and generous year-round use of their space; Melissa Hibbard, writing counselor extraordinaire, who taught me how to actually write; Benn Williams, for countless “Get your WriteOn” sessions where much good coffee and writing happened; Frau Sonnenberg, my 3rd grade German teacher and lifelong friend; My dance teachers – Mr. Long, Miss Dolores, Miss Birute – who taught me to work with discipline and strive towards beauty; Dr. Bob, who first suggested I take a look at Wittgenstein – quel voyage... et on n’est pas fini; All my friends and family, who make life so very worth living; My parents, brothers and grandparents, for their extraordinary love and support. SBW iv TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1 A. Trauma and Language.......................................................................................................... 1 B. Preview of Findings ............................................................................................................. 2 C. Study Structure..................................................................................................................... 4 II. THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS .......................................................................................... 8 A. Postwar Austrian Literature; Bachmann and her Cohort ....................................................... 8 1. Bachmann’s Roots: Austrian Literature After World War II and the Postwar Generation of Authors ................................................................................................................................ 8 2. Reasons for Focus on Bachmann, Celan and Bernhard ..................................................... 12 3. Bachmann and her Interactions with Contemporaries on Her Path to a Self-Elected Minority Outlook ................................................................................................................... 14 B. My Position Within Trauma Literature Scholarship ............................................................ 16 1. Defining Trauma ................................................................................................................ 16 2. Studies of “Trauma Literature” ........................................................................................ 29 C. My position within studies of Wittgenstein and Literature .................................................. 38 1. Bridges Between Wittgenstein and Literature .................................................................. 38 2. Wittgenstein and Trauma .................................................................................................. 41 D. Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument: Implications for trauma ................................ 43 1. Introduction to the Private Language Argument .............................................................. 44 2. Orthodox interpretations and their discontents ................................................................. 48 3. Kripke and After ............................................................................................................... 55 4. Implications of the PLA for Trauma ................................................................................. 58 III. BACKGROUND AND APPROACH TO INGEBORG BACHMANN ............................... 64 A. Biographical Background .................................................................................................... 64 B. Language and Trauma in Malina: An Introduction ............................................................. 82 C. Why Malina? ....................................................................................................................... 85 D. Dynamics of Discourse in Malina ....................................................................................... 87 1. Diverse Genres ................................................................................................................. 87 2. Genres Interpreted ............................................................................................................ 92 v IV. THE LANGUAGE OF TRAUMA IN BACHMANN’S MALINA ...................................... 94 A. Bachmann’s Pathology of Trauma ...................................................................................... 94 1. Looking Back: Satires and Reworkings of Freud in Malina and the Franza Fragment .. 94 2. Looking Forward: Prefiguring Modern Understandings of Trauma in Malina ............... 99 3. Looking Inward: Malina’s Inner Duel and Dissociative Identity Disorder ................... 101 B. Language Games and Connections to Wittgenstein in Malina and Other Texts ............... 104 1. Language Games: Passages that Playing with Language and Behavior in a Wittgensteinian Way ........................................................................................................... 105 2. Ways of ‘Seeing’: The Duck-Rabbit and Revealing Dreams ........................................ 113 3. Limits of Language and Logic ........................................................................................ 118 4. Themes of Public versus Private .................................................................................... 126 C. Silence, Repression, Secrecy and the Unsayable .............................................................. 130 1. The Violence of Silence ................................................................................................. 132 2. A Right to Kill ................................................................................................................. 134 3. Foucault and the Order of Discourse .............................................................................. 136 4. Madness and Excluded Discourse .................................................................................. 141 5. Discipline of the Disciplines........................................................................................... 143 6. Paradigm of the Author .................................................................................................. 145 7. Bachmann, Foucault, and the Problem of Address ........................................................ 146 V. CELAN’S POETICS OF ADDRESS AND BERNHARD’S LANGUAGE OF MADNESS ..................................................................................................................................................... 149 A. Poetics of Address in Paul Celan’s Meridian ..................................................................... 149 1. Lucile and Lenz: Madness in Meridian ......................................................................... 152 2. “Verstummen” in Meridian: Das Gedicht als “verzweifeltes Gespräch” ........................ 159 3. Meridian’s poetics of address .......................................................................................... 163 B. Moonlighting in the Ludwig Pavilion: Philosophy, Madness and Trauma in Thomas Bernhard’s Wittgensteins Neffe .............................................................................................. 169 1. Background and Approach ................................................................................................. 172 a. Biography........................................................................................................................ 172 b. Bernhard’s Position in Postwar Austrian Literature and his Relevance to a Study on Language and Trauma ......................................................................................................... 175 c. Scholarship on Bernhard and Wittgenstein .................................................................... 177 vi 2. Key themes in Wittgensteins Neffe .................................................................................... 178 a. So verrückt wie sein Neffe Paul: Bernhard’s Philosophical Language Games ............. 180 b. Eine sogenannte Geisteskrankheit: Portrayals and Functions of Mental Illness ........... 184 c. Ohne auch nur ein Wort zu sprechen: Unspoken Trauma and Private Language ......... 188 3. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 192