At the Limit of the Obscene: German Realism and the Disgrace of Matter by Erica Weitzman (review)

Abstract

The emphasis on German Realism in Erica Weitzman’s erudite study, At the Limit of the Obscene: German Realism and the Disgrace of Matter, belies the theoretical and temporal potential of its insight. Throughout her book, Weitzman excavates the absence of the material world in realist modes of representation and thereby challenges the anthropocentrism they promulgate, not only in nineteenth-century German realism but also its reverberations in naturalism, modernism, and in the present day. Though the readings in the first half traverse canonical realists (Stifter, Freytag, Fontane), the second half of the book widens its scope beyond typical periodizing confines and traditions to show how naturalist and modernist writers (Holz, Benn, Kafka) have inherited and grappled with the same concerns that plagued their predecessors. In keeping one analytical foot in the traditional modes of German realism while extending the other into new territory, Weitzman innovates the scholarly paradigm for how we address and interrogate a wide variety of contemporary entanglements with the multivalent notion of materiality. Furthermore, At the Limit of the Obscene approaches from two methodological perspectives: one from within the canon of German realism, and one looking back retrospectively, observing, and searching for what’s been excluded and rendered obscene by the conventions of literary history. Weitzman shows that