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Gendered Heimat discourse and the poetics of the ‘Gedehnter Blick’ in Wilhelm Ganazino's Mittelmäβiges Heimweh
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Fuchs, Anne (2011) Gendered Heimat discourse and the poetics of the ‘Gedehnter Blick’ in Wilhelm Ganazino's Mittelmäβiges Heimweh. German Life and Letters, Vol.64 (No.1). pp. 145-155. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0483.2010.01526.x ISSN 0016-8777.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0483.2010.01526.x
Abstract
This article discusses Wilhelm Genazino's poetics of the ‘prolonged gaze’ as a response to the rapid production of social and cultural obsolescence in our technology-driven age. It shows how Genazino's protagonists attune their idiosyncratic perception to objects and events that normally lie below the threshold of perception. In this way they cultivate a state of perplexity that allows them to break with habitualised patterns of perceiving and inhabiting the city. The second part of the article then turns to the parodic re-enactment of gendered Heimat discourse in Mittelmäßiges Heimweh. In this post-Heimat novel, Genazino employs the prolonged gaze to overturn the traditional link between womanhood and Heimat. In contrast with the city where this mode of perception ensured the protagonist's magical, albeit fragile connection with the environment, in the countryside the same mode of perception results in his radical exclusion from the rural world. However, while nature's indifference to man's concerns underscores the fact that Heimat is a discursive construct which is always implicated in power relations, the narrative validates the protagonist's longing to belong as an anthropological need that has not been made obsolete by the conditions of our supermodern age.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > German Studies | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | German Life and Letters | ||||
Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd. | ||||
ISSN: | 0016-8777 | ||||
Official Date: | January 2011 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | Vol.64 | ||||
Number: | No.1 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 145-155 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1111/j.1468-0483.2010.01526.x | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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