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“The Double Bind” of 1989: Reinterpreting Space, Place, and Identity in Postcommunist Women’S Literature

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“The Double Bind” of 1989: Reinterpreting Space, Place, and Identity in Postcommunist Women’S Literature “THE DOUBLE BIND” OF 1989: REINTERPRETING SPACE, PLACE, AND IDENTITY IN POSTCOMMUNIST WOMEN’S LITERATURE BY JESSICA LYNN WIENHOLD-BROKISH DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010 Urbana, Illinois Doctorial Committee: Associate Professor Lilya Kaganovsky, Chair; Director of Research Professor Nancy Blake Professor Harriet Murav Associate Professor Anke Pinkert Abstract This dissertation is a comparative, cross-cultural exploration of identity construction after 1989 as it pertains to narrative setting and the creation of literary place in postcommunist women’s literature. Through spatial analysis the negotiation between the unresolvable bind of a stable national and personal identity and of a flexible transnational identity are discussed. Russian, German, and Croatian writers, specifically Olga Mukhina, Nina Sadur, Monika Maron, Barbara Honigmann, Angela Krauß, Vedrana Rudan, Dubravka Ugrešić, and Slavenka Drakulić, provide the material for an examination of the proliferation of female writers and the potential for recuperative literary techniques after 1989. The project is organized thematically with chapters dedicated to apartments, cities, and foreign lands, focusing on strategies of identity reconstruction after the fall of socialism. ii To My Family, especially Mom, Dad, Jeffrey, and Finnegan iii Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction: “We are, from this perspective, all postcommunists now”…………. 1 Chapter Two: Authorial Narratives: The Place of the Apartment in Postcommunist Women’s Literature…………………………………………………………………………………………44 Chapter Three: Reconciliatory Plots: The Place of the City in Postcommunist Literature.……..88 Chapter Four: Transformative Perspectives: The Place of the Foreign in Postcommunist Literature………………………………………………………………………………………..157 Chapter Five: Conclusion: “A New Race of Nomads”…………………………...…………….211 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………220 iv Chapter One Introduction: “We are, from this perspective, all postcommunists now” 1 Wolfgang Becker’s 2003 film Good Bye Lenin! elucidates the reorganization of and relationship to space after the fall of the Wall in Berlin. While in a coma, the protagonist’s mother, who enthusiastically supports the socialist state, misses the fall of the Berlin Wall and her beloved East Germany. Alex attempts to protect his mother from the disturbing news by transforming the family apartment back into its pre-Wende state. 2 He replaces the Western furniture with the now out-dated furniture of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that had been disposed of on street corners throughout the city and imagines a new version of the story of the fall of the wall, in which the Westerners desire to leave the West and take up residence in the East. Alex’s attempts to control personal space in the reorganization of cultural and national borders reflects the post-wall primacy of space relations after 1989, as well as the conflicting fears and joys accompanying the transition. 3 Films like Germany’s Good Bye Lenin! , as well as Hungarian Ibolya Fekete’s 1996 Bolshe Vita and Serbian Srdjan Karanović’s 2003 Sjaj u ocima [Loving Glances ], attest to the psychological and physical border shifts that accompanied the end of socialism and the exigency to produce “texts” to attest to or deal with the cultural and 1 Sakwa, Richard. Postcommunism . Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999. (3) 2 “Wende” is a German word meaning “the change or turning point” in reference to the fall of the Berlin Wall. 3 I use the date 1989 and the terms post-wall and post-Wende to refer not only to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of socialism in East Germany, but also as a symbol of the changes that took place all over Eastern, Central, and Southeast Europe, as well as in Russia, following this symbolic spatial catalyst. The terms Post-wall and Post- Wende emanate from German Studies. Post-wall has been used in German Studies as early as 2000 in Eric Rentschler “From New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus” ( Cinema and Nation . Eds. Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie. New York: Routledge, 2000). The German Studies Journal New German Critique highlighted the term in a “Special Issue on Postwall Cinema” (No. 87, Autumn 2002), and the term has been widely employed in post-1989 studies, including Anke Pinkert’s Film and Memory in East Germany (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). 1 identificatory transition. 4 Postsocialist cities and nations underwent major physical changes after 1989. Examples include the reconstruction of areas such as Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, the construction and remounting of monuments such as that in Ban Jelačić Square in Zagreb, the renaming of city streets across postsocialist countries, the establishing of museums dedicated to preserving the socialist past, like Muzeum komunismu in Prague or the DDR Museum in Berlin, and cafes, like Ljubljana’s Nostalgie, with décor catering to the communist past. When we recall the end of socialism in Eastern Europe, 5 we remember the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the opening of borders between Eastern and Western Europe, the partitioning off of nations in Russia, and the contestation of borders in the Balkans. The collapse of socialism sparked extensive shifts in physical borders across Europe and with these changes came intensified transformations of symbolic categories, such as ethnicity, nationality, gender, and religion. My project explores “the language of place” in postcommunist texts from Russia, Germany, and Croatia. Wesley A. Kort notes, “The language of place and space is always part of narrative discourse and can be a principle locus of a narrative’s power and significance. Places in narrative have force and meaning; they are related to human values and beliefs; and they are part of a larger human world, including actions and events” (11). The language of place Kort refers to is one of many “languages” that make up a narrative, including the language of character, action, 4 For the purposes of this project, I use the terms socialist and postsocialist when referring to the political and economic systems of former socialist countries. Karl Marx explains socialism as the dictatorship of the proletariat that restructures society, resulting in the ultimate goal—communism. Communist and postcommunist are employed when addressing the utopian ideology of the socialist state. Thus, my title refers to postcommunist literature pointing to the cultural and social function of literature in the socialist state’s schema as “engineers of human souls” that pushed toward the dream of communism. In this way, the terms communist and postcommunist do not directly apply to the state itself, but to the Marxist ideology. 5 The geographical terminology for postcommunist countries is confused and disordered. In an attempt to discuss Russia, Germany, and Croatia, I use the terms Eastern and Central Europe, Western and Eastern Europe, Eastern and Soviet Block depending on context (both ideological and geographic). I recognize the problematic nature of including the former Yugoslavia in either of these categories, as it is located in Southeastern Europe/the Balkans and ideologically split with the USSR in the 1950s. Likewise, the unsettled position of Russia (both in Europe and Asia) and its position at the center of the Eastern Block (in contrast to the satellite nations that made up the Soviet Block) make it difficult to geographically group these nations under a single name/term. 2 and tone. 6 As Edward Said points out in Culture and Imperialism , narrative provides a spatial sense that can contribute to an individual’s or nation’s understanding of itself and its position in the world. Place in narrative does more than provide a passive setting from which characterization and plot are developed. It is a “language” that helps us understand our relationship to space and to situate ourselves historically. Kort suggests that through narratives we can see how a nation, such as England, has “appropriated its past, adjusted to its present, and anticipated its future” (13). Narrative directly contributes to the “imagining of communities” 7 and the individual’s place within them. The places of the narratives covered in my dissertation (apartments, cities, and countries) generate and contend with understandings of space after 1989. With post-wall geographic changes in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, identity markers, such as nationality, ethnicity, and religion, became intrinsically connected to questions of space. The importance of place in defining identity gained greater emphasis as postsocialist nations stressed the complexity of joining larger international political and economic groups (such as the European Union) that promoted the opening of borders and cross-national interaction. The opening of borders resulted in a perceived threat of the loss of individual identity. Thus, these postsocialist nations attempted to maintain, reestablish, or construct symbolic categories of nationality, ethnicity, and religion. The collapse of socialism and the resulting transitions caused by the end of the Cold War (with its oppositional East versus West identity construction, along with increased access to world markets and international interactions) highlights an identity struggle underscored by spatial relations. The main purpose of 6 In this context, place is
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