Title Details
258 Pages
22.8 x 15.2 cm
Series: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture
Series Vol. Number:
169
Imprint: Camden House
Inscription and Rebellion
Illness and the Symptomatic Body in East German Literature
- Description
- Contents
- Reviews
Employs research on the GDR's healthcare system along with feminist and queer theory to get at socialism's legacy, revealing a specifically East German literary convention: employment of "symptomatic female bodies" to either enforce or rebel against political and social norms.
The healthcare system of the German Democratic Republic, based on Soviet models, reflected the importance the socialist state assigned the health both of its citizens and of the metaphorical national body meant to represent and promulgate the nation's political vitality. Yet many East German literary writers depicted characters ailing and under medical care, and even after the country's dissolution in 1990, writers who had lived there continued to portraysickness and the GDR healthcare system prominently in their fiction.
This book offers an innovative reading of such texts - both by the GDR's most prominent writer, Christa Wolf, and by younger writers raised in the GDR but active mainly after 1989 - employing historical research on the healthcare system and feminist and queer theory to get at socialism's legacy. It develops a new approach to East German literature that underscores the impact of fortyyears of Marxist-Leninist thought on post-GDR poetics. Intertwining aesthetics with politics, the book employs the Foucauldian concept of the "symptomatic body," in this case a female character's body on which historical and political events inscribe physical or psychological illness, in so doing revealing a specifically East German literary convention: employment of such "symptomatic bodies" to either enforce or rebel against political and social norms.
SONJA E. KLOCKE is Associate Professor of German Studies and Affiliated Faculty in Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The healthcare system of the German Democratic Republic, based on Soviet models, reflected the importance the socialist state assigned the health both of its citizens and of the metaphorical national body meant to represent and promulgate the nation's political vitality. Yet many East German literary writers depicted characters ailing and under medical care, and even after the country's dissolution in 1990, writers who had lived there continued to portraysickness and the GDR healthcare system prominently in their fiction.
This book offers an innovative reading of such texts - both by the GDR's most prominent writer, Christa Wolf, and by younger writers raised in the GDR but active mainly after 1989 - employing historical research on the healthcare system and feminist and queer theory to get at socialism's legacy. It develops a new approach to East German literature that underscores the impact of fortyyears of Marxist-Leninist thought on post-GDR poetics. Intertwining aesthetics with politics, the book employs the Foucauldian concept of the "symptomatic body," in this case a female character's body on which historical and political events inscribe physical or psychological illness, in so doing revealing a specifically East German literary convention: employment of such "symptomatic bodies" to either enforce or rebel against political and social norms.
SONJA E. KLOCKE is Associate Professor of German Studies and Affiliated Faculty in Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Introduction
Disease, Death, and Desire Pre-1989: Christa Wolf's Symptomatic GDR Bodies
Christa Wolf's Goodbye to Socialism?: Illness, Healing, and Faith since 1990
Retrospective Imagination in Post-GDR Literature: Gender, Violence, and Politics in Medical Discourses
Haunted in Post-Wall Germany: Sickness, Symptomatic Bodies, and the Specters of the GDR
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Disease, Death, and Desire Pre-1989: Christa Wolf's Symptomatic GDR Bodies
Christa Wolf's Goodbye to Socialism?: Illness, Healing, and Faith since 1990
Retrospective Imagination in Post-GDR Literature: Gender, Violence, and Politics in Medical Discourses
Haunted in Post-Wall Germany: Sickness, Symptomatic Bodies, and the Specters of the GDR
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
"[E]xemplary . . . . [A]n outstanding contribution to the field of German studies, particularly the study of GDR history and culture . . . . Klocke's interdisciplinary study perfectly exemplifies the benefits of bringing historical research and literary analysis into fruitful dialogue with each other." GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW
"[A] valuable contribution for anyone who wants to learn more about the health-care system of the GDR, its underlying ideology, and the dominance it exerted over the individual patient through the lens of its socially engaged literature. The study as a whole succeeds in demonstrating the value of literature in complicating and expanding the collective memory archive, and shows the fruitfulness of a medical humanities approach to this corpus of texts." Nina Schmidt, MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW
"Synthesizing historiographic research and literary analysis, [this book] offers a powerful interdisciplinary reading of the relationship between (East) German literature, social discourse, and the politics of health." Caroline Summers, GERMANIC REVIEW
"Sonia E. Klocke's book . . ., carefully researched and written in an easily readable English, makes a worthy contribution to Christa Wolf scholarship, to Body Studies, and not least to the discourse on the GDR in the collective imagination." JAHRBUCH LITERATUR UND MEDIZIN
"Klocke's combination of nuanced literary analysis and historical context demonstrates a particularly East German treatment of illness and the 'symptomatic' body . . . . She presents excellent insights not only into the earlier and later works of [Christa] Wolf, whom she regards as a 'historiographer' of the GDR, but also into the politicization of health under socialism and how literature interacted and interacts with medical discourse." JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES
"[A] lucidly written and convincingly argued study of selected literary works that critically portray aspects of GDR society and/or challenge representations in post-unification Germany that reduce the GDR to a 'Unrechtsstaat' (a state without rule of law). . . . [S]uccessfully claims a space for the continued critical study of East German literature and culture in the field of German studies." Friederike Eigler, WOMEN IN GERMAN NEWSLETTER
Hardcover
9781571139337
November 2015
£97.00 / $115.00
Ebook (EPDF)
9781782046448
November 2015
£24.99 / $29.95
Paperback
9781640140554
March 2019
£29.99 / $37.95
Title Details
258 Pages
2.28 x 1.52 cm
Series: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture
Series Vol. Number:
169
Imprint: Camden House
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