GERMAN QUARTERLY最新文献

This article introduces a new approach to spatial anomalies in Franz Kafka's work by examining them through Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the literary chronotope, situating it within the broader framework of Bakhtin's earlier ideas on answerability, responsibility, and the ethics of the act. Conceived as a triangular existential structure of possibility comprising time, space, and action, the expanded notion of the Bakhtinian chronotope serves as a key for remapping Kafka's oeuvre based on the distinct types of chronotopic disruptions it displays. These systematic disruptions erode the agency of Kafka's protagonists, leaving them unable to act properly, i.e., with genuine answerability at decisive moments. This, in turn, discloses a fundamental principle of Kafka's work: the irrevocable rupture between the spatiotemporal structures of possibility and the domain of human action.

Nach dem kürzlich vergangenen Kafka-Jahr 2024 gewinnt das Thema der Metamorphose an neuer Aktualität. Der Begriff der Metamorphose wird nach Ovids Metamorphosen (8 v. Chr.) spontan mit Kafkas Werk Die Verwandlung (1912) verbunden. Während diese beiden Werke die Verwandlung auf Äußerliches beschränken, liegt das Interesse von Zweigs Rausch der Verwandlung (1982) in der Verbindung von äußerer Verwandlung und innerer identitätsstiftender Mutation. Aus der armen, unsicheren Postgehilfin Christine Hoflehner wird in einem Schweizer Luxushotel für kurze Zeit die wohlhabende, selbstbewusste Christiane von Boolen. Die gesellschaftliche Anerkennung bestätigt das neue Selbstbild der jungen Frau. Doch die abrupte Rückkehr in ihr ehemaliges Leben erweist sich als äußerst problematisch, insofern die kurze Erfahrung der Verwandlung Christines Blick auf ihre eigene Realität verändert und sie sowohl der erlebten Luxuswelt als auch ihrem vorherigen Leben entfremdet hat. Was bleibt, ist die Erkenntnis der sozialen Ungerechtigkeit und der Starrheit der gesellschaftlichen Struktur: Die Metamorphose als Experiment gesellschaftlicher Veränderung ist gescheitert.

During his career as poet and pamphleteer of the Befreiungskriege, Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769–1860) made use of a then-new aesthetic trend that insisted that modern art must by nature be interested art. Such interest-driven art is, this paper argues, the key to his success as a poet and nationalist demagogue. The importance of such art for Arndt's oeuvre is evident in his prose and poetry. Looking at various representatives of German idealism, this essay first recounts the definitional shifts interest underwent in the aesthetic theories of German idealism before presenting Arndt as a pivotal link in the transition from Kantian disinterested enjoyment of beauty to the engaged, interested ideological writing of which Arndt was himself a propagator. Here, ideological interests are compounded in writing with violent emotion and religious pathos, heralding a key moment in the advent of modern ideological literature.

This essay explores the disturbing presence of anti-Black language and tropes in Emine Sevgi Özdamar's recent, celebrated novel Ein von Schatten begrenzter Raum. Drawing on Toni Morrison's classic analysis in Playing in the Dark, I argue Özdamar's anti-Blackness is characterized by a double-valence: on one hand, Özdamar's anti-Blackness partakes of the racializing clichés anatomized by Morrison and stakes a claim to whiteness and canonicity on their basis; on the other, this anti-Blackness is continuous with a tendency towards racialized self-mockery in the whole of Özdamar's oeuvre, as if Özdamar imagined these scenes to be produced from within Blackness and/or as a gesture of minoritarian solidarity. The text is structured by a problematic (mis-)identification with Black abjection and a desire for whiteness. Özdamar thus participates in both an avant-gardist tradition of transgression and a liberal logic of post-raciality in which racializing tropes are free for unlimited literary appropriation.

This essay defines “ableist fragility” in the context of non-autistic parenting of autistic children through an analysis of Tessa Korber's memoir Ich liebe dich nicht, aber ich möchte es mal können (2012). Ableist fragility draws directly from the term fragility in Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility (2018). Informed by anti-racist and disability justice critiques of systemic ableism, the essay explores the roles explicit and implicit bias and notions of neurotypicality play in shaping parental identity and non-autistic parent-autistic child relationships. It draws connections between systemic ableism and fragility as one cause of chronic stress experienced by many non-autistic parents of autistic children. Caregiver supports focus on the child and engage less with caregiver emotional literacy, well-being, and embodied mental health. Ableist fragility functions as a starting point for non-autistic parents/caregivers and others to identify and process distress created by their own explicit or implicit ableism in an inherently ableist society.

This article shows how Thomas Heise's essay film Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit (2019) emphasizes the significance of personal artifacts in portraying German history. Instead of utilizing archival footage, Heise explores Germany's past through his family's personal writings created primarily during the Nazi era and in the former GDR. Drawing on Jaimie Baron's concept of the “archive effect,” which frames archival documents as experiences of reception, this analysis illustrates how Heise's approach to presenting history emphasizes the audience's response to personal artifacts. The archive effect occurs when viewers realize the temporal and intentional disparities between the family materials and the film's modern images of landscapes, ruins, and trains. As these disparities are potentially challenging for viewers, Heise bridges possible gaps using a train-related leitmotif, specific camera movements, and sound. Rather than merely conveying historical significance, these methods enable viewers to experience history through the presence of personal artifacts.

Theodor Adorno wrote Der Schatz des Indianer-Joe, a singspiel adaptation of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, in 1932–33. Adorno developed his critical stance towards popular entertainment's totalitarian tendencies through an engagement with childhood nostalgia. Adorno and Walter Benjamin both responded to the National Socialist rise to power by describing childhood experiences in which they apparently overcame the authority of their parents and teachers through fantasy stories. These experiences were comforting but illusory, as their allusions to popular Indianergeschichten suggest. Reading Schatz in the context of the Indianergeschichte genre reveals a cautionary tale against the blinding dangers of comforting fantasy narratives. In Adorno's retelling, Tom Sawyer's self-aggrandizing adventure games provide him a specious feeling of power while blinding him to society's oppression of the marginalized. The article concludes by arguing that Adorno's “Tom” project was a key moment in his development as a critical theoretician.