Gender performance in the Wir reisen short story and Im Stein novel by Clemens Meyer

This paper examines gender issues in the Wir reisen short story and in the Im Stein novel by Clemens Meyer. Although these texts cannot be analysed solely within the framework of gender and/or queer discourse and their focus on gender was not the author̕ s goal, I believe that illuminating these issues contributes significantly to understanding Meyer's humanistic narrative foundation of his entire oeuvre. His storytelling recognizes contradictions in human nature and the ambivalence of our identities-a nightmare that he develops into dramatic performances in his texts, while simultaneously deconstructing them. The analysis of gender discourse in the texts attempts to answer the question of whether an individual can create and maintain their own identity by returning to the collective (gender and sex) performance imposed by the so-called reality packaged in normative social roles. Meyer̕ s characters are an integral part of the society, but they do not fit into social norms, while also not knowing how to resist them. This is where their tragedy lies. In the story Wir reisen, the characters who are from the social margins-small-time criminals and former prisoners-find closeness, love and happiness precisely in the deconstruction of the dominant gender performance. In the heroes of the novel Im Stein, contradictory ambitions are also reflected, as they seek to assign meaning to their lives. Those needs that do not serve acquisition of money are shifted from the level of social affirmation to the level of individual fulfilment, both in male and female characters.