SENIOR SOPHISTER OPTIONS 2018-19

Mary Cosgrove, Perspectives on New Economy Capitalism in Contemporary German-language literature and film

Emerging from the major financial challenges of unification and against global trends, the German economy has been thriving since the turn of the millennium. Yet recent and contemporary German-language literature and film has tended to feature the “new economy”, or neoliberal capitalism as it is also known, as highly problematic, a global force that has been eroding the fabric of local and individual everyday life since the fall of the Wall. In their works, German-language writers and filmmakers scratch the surface of wealthy Germany (and by implication the wealthy West), exposing the extreme pressures and affective realities that new economy capitalism bring to bear on the worker-consumer. The primary texts and films on the course offer a differentiated overview of this critical field of cultural production. They cover topics such as: the financial aftermath of unification and the spectre of the GDR in contemporary capitalist Germany (Petzold, Hein, Bauder); the commercialisation of Holocaust memory in the Berlin Republic (Hanika); the precariousness of existence as a white-collar employee of a multinational company (Röggla, Mora, Losmann); global high finance and the global city (Hochhäusler); new neoliberal identities, such as the “entrepreneurial self” (Nawrat). Secondary literature and theoretical texts will include reflection on: the defining features of neoliberal capitalism; the corrosion of character in the new economy; time and 24/7 culture in the digital era; the abstraction of finance capitalism and the question of how to represent it in film / literature; place, non-place and the body.

& (indicative) Iris Hanika, Das Eigentliche (Vienna: Droschl, 2010) Terezia Mora, Der einzige Mann auf dem Kontinent (Munich: Luchterhand, 2009) Matthias Nawrat, Unternehmer (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2014) Kathrin Röggla, Wir schlafen nicht (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2006)

! (indicative) Marc Bauder, Das System (2015) Christoph Hochhäusler, Unter Dir die Stadt (2010) Christian Petzold, Yella (2007)

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Clemens Ruthner, German, Austrian and Swiss Post/Colonial Studies

It is widely forgotten that between the 1880s and the First World War, the German Kaiserreich was among the colonial powers of Europe, occupying e.g. the territories that are known as Namibia, Cameroon, Togo, and Tanzania in Africa nowadays, along with New Guinea in the Pacific and the Chinese city of Qingdao. In the case of Austria-Hungary, however, the mantra of Habsburg historiography remains that this empire was not an colonizer (overseas) - but maybe it was within the continent or, at least, in its own imagination. Strange is the case of Switzerland, too, which as trade superpower was an important facilitator of European colonialism, but abstained from colonial conquest itself.

All of this has left traces in literature, be they affirmative or critical, which will be investigated in our Option seminar: examples of colonial as well as of postcolonial writing between 1900 and our present, with some prominent authors and some lesser known. In a first step, Postcolonialism as one of the major contemporary approaches to literary and cultural studies are introduced, before the literary texts of our corpus will be discussed (extracts and whole books). Students are required to give a presentation in Postcolonial theory as well as on one of the literary texts, ending in a research paper of their own choice.

& Altenberg, P.: Ashantee (1897) – African 'People Exhibition' In Vienna Frenssen, G.: Peter Moors Fahrt Nach Südwest (1906) – Namibia Novel Kubin, A.: Die Andere Seite (1909) – Dystopian Novel Set In Central Asia Timm, U.: Morenga (1978) – On The Genocide In Nambia In 1904 Winkler, J.: Domra. Am Ufer Des Ganges (1996) – Queering India Bärfuss, L.: 100 Tage (2008) – On The Genocide In Rwanda In 1994 Kracht, C.: Imperium (2012) – German Colonialism In The South Pacific

A detailed reading list (including recommended editions) will be handed out in the opening session of the module.

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Peter Arnds, Wolves and Politics in German Culture This seminar shows the unique relationship German culture has with the wolf as a metaphor in the context of politics from the Middle Ages until today. Embarking from the specifically Germanic medieval concept of the criminal outlaw as wolf (vargr), it traces the ways in which this figure transforms over time, epitomizing different and shifting cultural anxieties, from religious and superstitious fears to psychological and racial ones. The trajectory of this course follows the wolf as a metaphor for greed and foolishness, for despotic rulers, for women as witches, persecuted ethnic minorities, migrants, traumatized individuals, for nationalism and fascism, and those practising resistance against institutions of power. The wolf stands for greed and clerical hypocrisy in medieval animal epics from the late twelfth century such as Heinrich der Glîchezâre’s Reinhart Fuchs. It becomes a religious metaphor for human sin – voraciousness, belligerence, idleness, vagrancy and crime – in the early modern age, for example, in Grimmelshausen’s picaresque novel Simplicius Simplicissimus (1668), and a catalyst for initiation rites in cautionary folktales. Fears of foreign invasion are voiced through the image of wolves in Heinrich von Kleist’s Hermannsschlacht (1808), and the presence of Gypsies, Jews, and purported witches perceived as predatory wolves becomes the cause of communal anxieties, persecution, and abandonment in selected prose by Wilhelm Raabe, while a seventeenth-century farming community called the Wehrwölfe fend off Gypsies in Hermann Löns’s extremely racist novel Der Wehrwolf (1910). As an internalized psychic condition the wolf denotes oedipal neurosis in Sigmund Freud’s famous case study (1918) and becomes prominent in Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf. How was the wolf image perceived in Nazi Germany, and how is it still a metaphor for fascism and nationalism in places like Germany Russia, and Turkey today? In Günter Grass’s Hundejahre (1963) the wolf stands allegorically for race, breeding, and a catalyst for the representation of perpetrators and victims. We will analyze the various manifestations and functions of this metaphor caught between hatred and veneration, look at one film, and at literature in a comparative (Stoker, Carter, Tournier) and environmental context in view of the reappearance of wolves in Germany and the lower 48 states in the US. A particular focus of this seminar will be the wolf metaphor in the context of race, gender, exile, and migration.

& Heinrich der Glîchezâre: Reinhart Fuchs Medieval Saga: Volsunga, Beowulf Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen: Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch Heinrich von Kleist: Die Hermannsschlacht Gebrüder Grimm: Rotkäppchen; Der Wolf und die sieben Geiβlein Angela Carter: The Bloody Chamber Wilhelm Raabe: Die Hämelschen Kinder; Else von der Tanne Bram Stoker: Dracula Hermann Löns: Der Wehrwolf Hermann Hesse: Der Steppenwolf Sigmund Freud: The Wolfman Case Günter Grass: Hundejahre Michel Tournier: The Ogre Hans Lebert: Die Wolfshaut Misha Defonseca: Surviving with Wolves Nicolette Krebitz: Wild (movie)

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Caitríona Leahy, Kunst nach Auschwitz

Adorno behauptete kurz nach dem Ende des Krieges, nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben sei barbarisch. Einige Jahre später nahm er Abstand von der Aussage, doch sie ist der deutschsprachigen Kultur nachhaltig in Erinnerung geblieben. Was sagt die Kunst angesichts Auschwitz? Nachdem bei der Ermordung in den Konzentrationslagern Mozart gespielt wurde, trägt die Kunst da nicht eine gewisse Schuld in sich? Hat sie nun zu schweigen, weil das Recht auf eine ästhetische Erfahrung von der barbarischen Wirklichkeit zerstört wurde?

In den letzten 15 Jahren hat es eine regelrechte Flut an Holocaustliteratur gegeben. Das sind Memoiren, Autobiographien, und vor allem Romane, die 50 Jahre nach dem Ende des Krieges von dem Bedürfnis zeugen, die Vergangenheit wieder neu in Erinnerung zu rufen, wieder neu darzustellen. Warum jetzt sprechen? Die Psychoanalyse und die Theorie des Traumas lehren uns, daß das Trauma erst “nachträglich”, das heißt, aus der zeitlichen Distanz erzählbar ist. Insofern kommt der Holocaust erst jetzt zu sich, sowohl bei den Überlebenden, als auch in der Kunst. Dann stellt sich aber auch eine andere Frage: nachdem die meisten Opfer verstorben sind, wem gehört der Holocaust? Wer soll als historischer Zeuge auftreten? Und wie kann man etwas gerecht repräsentieren, das man selbst nicht erlebt hat, und dem vielleicht auch keine Repräsentation gerecht werden kann?

Im Kurs wird eine Auswahl zeitgenössischer Romane gelesen. Wir werden uns auch mit einigen zentralen theoretischen Schriften befassen und uns mit der Repräsentation des Holocaust im Film, in der Malerie und in der öffentlichen Gedächtniskultur beschäftigen.

& (TO BE CONFIRMED) Ruth Klüger, weiter leben. Eine Jugend. DTV W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz. Fischer Verlag. Elizabeth Reichart, Februarschatten. Otto Müller Verlag or Aufbau Verlag Thomas Bernhard, Vor dem Ruhestand. Eine Komödie von deutscher Seele. Suhrkamp. Also available in T. B., Stücke 3. Suhrkamp. Peter Weiss, Die Ermittlung. Oratorium in 11 Gesängen. Edition Suhrkamp. Edgar Hilsenrath, Der Nazi und der Friseur. DTV

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