https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/120444 2026-06-14T22:31:47Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/120486 Title: RÄUME SCHREIBEN : zwischen Verortung, Heimsuchung und Im(Mobilität) : raumkonstruktivistische analysen zu literarischen texten von Tanja Dückers, Jenny Erpenbeck und Judith Hermann Abstract: During the last decades, in the context of the so-called spatial turn in literary and cultural studies an increasing engagement with the spatial paradigm has developed, which is at the same time counteracted by a tendency towards spatial dissolution in times of globalisation (Bachmann-Medick 2009). Space is now considered as a product of and an influence on social processes and as the material expression of social power structures. The paradoxical process of turning away from traditional concepts of space with a simultaneous return to space, as well as the concept of space as a co-agent in everyday life, can be shown as central to the literary works of German women writers labelled as part of the so called ‘literary Fräuleinwunder’ (Volker Hage) in 1998. Taking a space constructivist approach drawing on space theories by Marc Augé, Gaston Bachelard, Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guattari and Michel Foucault, this thesis explores how authors Tanja Dückers, Jenny Erpenbeck and Judith Hermann enact spatial settings employing a relational concept of space closely linked to the negotiation of gender roles, concepts of centre and periphery and memory. Their works are thus analysed, beyond the problematic ‘Fräuleinwunder’ label, as complex literary reflections of the topical – in both senses of the word – focus on the interconnection between space and social relations. In her volumes of short stories Sommerhaus, später (1998) and Nichts als Gespenster (2003), Judith Hermann evokes the repeated transgression of boundaries between binary spatial settings and their dichotomous symbolic implications. The non-place Berlin is counteracted by imaginary heterotopian spaces in which gender roles and gender specific forms of mobility are negotiated, ultimately representing non-realisable alternative life styles. In her novel Spielzone (1999), Tanja Dückers sketches two Berlin districts characterized by an atmosphere of departure around the turn of the millennium. The urban changes in the decade after the fall of the wall are reflected in the protagonists’ life styles; in analogy to the city space, the body becomes a construction site for the negotiation of gender and identity. Moreover, Dückers depicts the figure of a postmodern female flaneur who individualises the urban space by play fully experimenting with the city’s constructions in cultural memory, but at the same time – by turning non-places into individualised spaces – in a conflicting process, she (subtly) reverts to traditional concepts. In contrast to Hermann and Dückers, in her novel Heimsuchung (2008) Jenny Erpenbeck turns away from the city space by localising the strong desire for spatial rootedness in a seemingly remote parcel of land in the countryside. The author questions traditional concepts of centre and periphery and enacts the recurring transgression of boundaries in order to register the seemingly remote plot as a new site of crime in collective memory. By evoking small spaces, she challenges the metaphor of the house as a spatial conservation of positive memories. The analyses of the chosen texts thus show the oscillation between a dedication to and a turning away from (traditional) spatial concepts by representing attempts at self-localisation in times of globalisation. For this purpose, the authors evoke the constant transgression of boundaries in order to counterpose experimental zones and non-places to conventional settings closely linked to traditional gender roles and life styles, or in return show the process of unwriting the feeling of belonging connected to a confined space in order to transform individual as well as collective memory. Description: PH.D. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z