2026-09-19T09:59:24Zhttps://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/oai/requestoai:ecommons.cornell.edu:1813/406662026-05-14T13:56:08Zcom_1813_35col_1813_47
Nousek, Katrina
Adelson,Leslie Allen
McBride,Patrizia C.
Hull,Isabel Virginia
Fleming,Paul A.
2015-08-20T20:56:35Z
2020-05-24T06:00:28Z
2015-05-24
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/40666
9255417
This dissertation analyzes future-oriented narrative features distinguishing German literature about European communism and its legacies. Set against landscapes marked by Soviet occupation and Ceauşescu's communist dictatorship in Romania (Müller) and against the 1956 Hungarian revolution, eastern European border openings, and post-Wende Berlin (Mora, Bánk), works by these transnational authors engage social legacies that other discourses relegate to an inert past after the historic rupture of 1989. Dominant scholarship reads this literature either through trauma theory or according to autobiography, privileging national histories and static cultural identities determined by the past. Shifting attention to complex temporal structures used to narrate literary subjectivities, I show how these works construct European futures that are neither subsumed into a homogeneous present, nor trapped in traumatic repetition, nostalgic longing, or psychic disavowal. My analysis extends and contributes to debates in politics and the arts about the status of utopia after communism and the role of society in political entities no longer divided in Cold War terms of East/West, three worlds, or discrete national cultures. By focusing on Müller, Mora and Bánk, I widen the purview of FRG-GDR discussions about communism to include transnational, temporal and narrative perspectives that scholarship on these authors often overlooks.
en_US
Postcommunism
Contemporary German Literature
Temporality
"Pasts With Futures: Temporality, Subjectivity And Postcommunism In Contemporary German Literature By Herta MüLler, Zsuzsa BàNk And TeréZia Mora"
dissertation or thesis
application/pdf
Germanic Studies
Cornell University
Doctor of Philosophy
Ph. D., Germanic Studies
Publication
Cornell Theses and Dissertations
Nousek, Katrina
5893a6ea-7af3-41d7-abc6-04bcd26ab5df
open.access
open.access
<Publication xmlns="https://www.openaire.eu/cerif-profile/1.1/" id="017012d0-d9ff-4496-909f-66c4463bdb39">
<Type xmlns="https://www.openaire.eu/cerif-profile/vocab/COAR_Publication_Types">http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_1843</Type>
<Language>en_US</Language>
<Title>"Pasts With Futures: Temporality, Subjectivity And Postcommunism In Contemporary German Literature By Herta MüLler, Zsuzsa BàNk And TeréZia Mora"</Title>
<PublishedIn>
<Publication>
</Publication>
</PublishedIn>
<PublicationDate>2015-05-24</PublicationDate>
<Authors>
<Author>
<DisplayName>Nousek, Katrina</DisplayName>
<Affiliation>
<OrgUnit>
</OrgUnit>
</Affiliation>
</Author>
</Authors>
<Editors>
</Editors>
<Publishers>
<Publisher>
<OrgUnit />
</Publisher>
</Publishers>
<Keyword>Postcommunism</Keyword>
<Keyword>Contemporary German Literature</Keyword>
<Keyword>Temporality</Keyword>
<Abstract>This dissertation analyzes future-oriented narrative features distinguishing German literature about European communism and its legacies. Set against landscapes marked by Soviet occupation and Ceauşescu's communist dictatorship in Romania (Müller) and against the 1956 Hungarian revolution, eastern European border openings, and post-Wende Berlin (Mora, Bánk), works by these transnational authors engage social legacies that other discourses relegate to an inert past after the historic rupture of 1989. Dominant scholarship reads this literature either through trauma theory or according to autobiography, privileging national histories and static cultural identities determined by the past. Shifting attention to complex temporal structures used to narrate literary subjectivities, I show how these works construct European futures that are neither subsumed into a homogeneous present, nor trapped in traumatic repetition, nostalgic longing, or psychic disavowal. My analysis extends and contributes to debates in politics and the arts about the status of utopia after communism and the role of society in political entities no longer divided in Cold War terms of East/West, three worlds, or discrete national cultures. By focusing on Müller, Mora and Bánk, I widen the purview of FRG-GDR discussions about communism to include transnational, temporal and narrative perspectives that scholarship on these authors often overlooks.</Abstract>
<Access xmlns="http://purl.org/coar/access_right"
>
</Access>
</Publication>