An Exploration of Materiality in Josef Winkler‘s Narrative Structures A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY William Christopher Burwick IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Leslie Morris [October 2015] © William Christopher Burwick 2015 Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to thank my advisor, Prof. Leslie Morris, for her continued support of my project and my studies, for providing valuable insights into Austrian literature with her attentive reading and remarks, and for encouraging me to pursue my ideas. Prof. Ruth-Ellen Joeres, Prof. Arlene Teraoka, Prof. Rembert Hueser, Prof. Anatoly Liberman, and Prof. Mary Joe Maynes have also been significantly influential on this project. Their advice, their courses, and their support before and during this project shaped the content of the following pages. Indeed, the entire Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch at the University of Minnesota deserve thanks for their faith in me, for the education they have provided, and for their support of my research. Prof. Brigitte Prutti of the University of Washington, Seattle, introduced me to the novels of Josef Winkler and Materiality Theory and helped me develop my writing with my Master‘s Thesis that served as background to this dissertation. Peter and Helga Karlhuber, Vienna, provided housing, invited me to opening of exhibits, and acquainted me with a number of writers and literary journalists. They also initiated me into the art of literary exhibits, especially the Handke Exhibit ―Die Arbeit des Zuschauers. Peter Handke und das Theater.‖ Through their hospitality and friendship, I gained valuable insight into Austrian culture. Additonally, I am indebted to Dr. Clemens Renoldner, Director of the Stefan Zweig Centre of the Salzburg University, for providing me with contacts and conversations. Prof. Dieter Feineis also deserves significant credit for guidance on questions pertaining to Theology, German Catholicism, and the role of relics. Josef Winkler, whom I met in Klagenfurt at the presentation of the Humbert-Fink- i Literaturpreis (March 5, 2014), has agreed to an interview for which I express my advance thanks. Special appreciation is due to my parents, Prof. Roswitha Burwick and Prof. Frederick Burwick. Without their constant emotional and intellectual support this project, and my graduate studies preceding it, would not have been possible. They have helped me hone my ideas, find clarity in writing, and realize connections and concepts I would have otherwise missed. Both deserve my devoted gratitude for instilling a love for the written word. Last but not least, I would like to thank my partner, Jason Damron, for his continuing support. Kate Osman, Tami Damron, and Dr. William Atwood also deserve credit for housing me during various periods of writing. ii Abstract Josef Winkler‘s work is defined by iterations of events from his childhood, most of them in the context of Austrian provincialism, Catholicism, and their patriarchal structures of dominance. In each of his narratives, memories are rehearsed and retold with increasing semantic precision, every time more complicated through intermedial references to sound, smell, and cinematic imagery. In his pursuit of the aesthetics of form and genre, Winkler consciously inserts material objects that become crucial elements in his recollections of the past. This dissertation argues that common household items, sacred relics, or brand items constitute familiar categories of objects that are presented, framed, and placed within the text, where they function as an essential part of narrative structure. While they re-affirm apparently ossified systems of belief, they also break them down. Everytime the object or thing re-occurs, it has changed and thereby changes everything around it. While he fetishizes and manipulates things, in particular those associated with the act of writing, he exposes both their power and their powerlessness with irony and satire. As objects in a system of exchange, they stand in as autobiographical as well as cultural signifiers and articulate a distinct discourse about a particularly ambiguous and ambivalent ―semiotic order of things.‖ iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………….……..…………....i Introduction: Josef Winkler and Materiality ..………………….. .1 1 ―Den Kalbstrick verlängern.‖ Materiality and the Writing Process…………………………………………… 26 2 Writing the Body: Materiality and Aesthetics of the Body ….….…………………………………………. 73 3 Brands and Trans/Nationalism: Materiality and Mediality beyond the Borders of Austria and the Page…………….. ..123 Conclusion……………………………………….…………………170 Bibliography………………………………………………………..180 iv Introduction: Josef Winkler and Materiality Theory Perhaps everyone has taken a critical look around one‘s home, or the homes of friends, or performed an introspection into the memory of one‘s childhood dwelling and questioned what impetus compels one to accumulate such a plethora of things, to amass collections, and to keep precisely the objects displayed in even the most austere of spaces. During such introspection it becomes clear that any household order cannot be the product of random spontaneity or thoughtless whimsy. The photographs, the books, the knick- knacks and ornaments quickly comprise a narrative, revealing one‘s history, culture, preferences and even highly personal externalizations of one‘s memory. Superstitions, fetishes, ideologies are revealed in much the same way in one‘s own domestic gallery. The question that arises, even if jokingly posed, is whether these embodiments of one‘s identity are indeed consciously selected, or perhaps have compelled us through some supernatural power to pick them up and feature them in our most important spaces. Identity, defined through complex subject-object relations, is the foundation of Materiality Theory, an interdisciplinary approach to things and the behavior humans demonstrate in their presence or absence. The Austrian author Josef Winkler has risen to prominence during the early years of the 21st century for many reasons, not least his visual, intermedial, and intertextual writing. His seventeen books released since 1979 follow a number of themes common to the Austrian corpus of 20th century literature, namely, death, social criticism, and postwar issues. Winkler specializes in an autobiographical style. All his texts depend on a core 1 repertoire of memories of his childhood and family in rural Carinthia. During my first exposure to Winkler several years ago, something came to my attention. Certain peculiarities such as a calf-birthing rope (Kalbstrick), the body of his maternal grandmother, and the Julius Meinl logo among others were repeated a number of times within the text. Reading from one text to another I saw this trend present in other works as well. While repetition as narrative principle is nothing new, and quite common in fact to the works of Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek, these repetitions did not appear as a mere device for thematic emphasis, but were also present in relation specific to memories and narrative structures that were repeated with the objects themselves. The following analysis seeks to explore whether these objects possess a function in the text beyond their physical descriptive presence or symbolic value. The same impetus that has given rise to the study of fetishes and fetishism, subject-object relationship between humans and the things they surround themselves with, and notions that objects possess the capacity to compel us to control them as posited by Materiality Theory shall be of importance here. This analysis rejects the notion that the presence of objects is accidental. No one curates their home as a random assortment of junk; even for the most ambitious hoarder, compelled by the materiality of things to a more pathological level, objects are assumed to possess at least a function and at most unique agency. Winker‘s ―Ich,‖ the narrating I, will be the subject of this analysis in relation to commonly repeated objects. In an analysis of the genealogy of Winkler‘s oeuvre, the question arises whether these objects mediate memory, narratives, or subjective conditions through their iterations and peculiar contextualization. 2 Although Materiality Theory is pervasive in most disciplines, it is seldom defined in terms of its origin and evolvement from an entry in a dictionary to a discourse. Neither the etymology, nor the definition, nor the history of the term in prevalent encyclopedias provide a comprehensive understanding of the word ―materiality.‖ Does the modern Latin word materialis and materialitas dating back to the 1520s refer to a ―substance‖ or ―matter‖? Is it simply a ―quality of being material‖ (1560), or a ―quality of being important of matters at hand‖ (1640s)?1 The Oxford English Dictionary differentiates between something material as that which ―pertains to a matter as opposed to form,‖ and that which ―pertains to matter or body, formed or consisting of matter; corporeal.‖2 Defining the term in its linguistic or etymological provenance, the entries in standard lexica present it in its most isolated and reducted form. However, once it enters various disciplines or discourses, it becomes evident that language itself can be causative, that is, it can produce a system of meanings and values. Language can become a formative force (Patterson 67). Associated with ―corporeal,‖ material may be linked with ―worldly‖ affairs and juxtaposed with spiritual