„Tango als Erzählstrategie. Zur literarischen Konstruktion dichotomischer Erfahrungen in Herta Müllers Drückender Tango“ (original) (raw)
Der Raum des Fremden als »fahrender Zug« in Herta Müllers Reisende auf einem Bein
Zeitschrift für interkulturelle Germanistik
Irene, the protagonist in Herta Müller’s Reisende auf einem Bein, experiences the transit between two political systems as a continuous journey which does not end with her arrival, but extends into everyday life in the destination country, a life marked by Otherness, foreignness and placelessness. The political oppression suffered in her country of origin, an unnamed Eastern bloc state representing Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Romania, influences Irene’s perception of her Western destination country. While Irene suffers from the Otherness and placelessness experienced on her journey, this experience also constitutes her identity as a »vagabond« (Brittnacher / Klaue), making it impossible for her to stop. Irene makes this experience as a train passenger, as well as in train and metro stations where the movement of passing trains makes her feel disconnected, but also allows her to see the fractures in other relationships around her. The article shows how the train journey becomes a central met...
Politischer Tango. Intellektuelle Kämpfe um Tanzkultur im Zeichen des Peronismus
Since its origin in the mid of the 19th century the history of tango has been intimately interwoven with the history of the argentine nation. Tango was the preeminent cultural ingredient of the overall argentine nation building process. However, this process was not self-sufficient but dependent on a postcolonial context. Parallel to the consolidation of the nation state and to its uneven material integration into a world economy tango has become the cultural representation of this emerging postcolonial Argentina. An imperialist circulation of feelings gave rise to tango as an “emotional capital”. By this, tango has been continuously reified as an “exotic”, “wild”, “primitive” and, particularly, “passionate” commodity that has located Argentina culturally in the world order of the 20th century. Behind the seemingly harmless claim of cultural “authenticity” a fervor struggle over national identity arose. This postcolonial history of nationalism and tango is the point of departure of this book. It questions the overall nationalization strategies of tango. Though there is a substantial literature on this topic, there are no systematic analyses of the historiography of the tango. Tango is not only dance, music and poetry but it is also a knowledge of its history; a narrative of its origins, its heroes, its dramas and its places. This historiography of tango reaffirms tango as a national culture. It tells the story of the immigration, of the brothels, of the misery of the south of Buenos Aires and of their ambivalent heroes. A very important part of this knowledge has been produced by argentine intellectuals between 1955 and 1973. During this time an immense amount of tango related books have been published in Argentina. Though Tango has always been a controversial topic in the argentine intellectual field, it was not before 1955 that it has become an outstanding subject. Very important intellectuals such as Ernesto Sabato and Jorge Luis Borges have written about the history of tango to that time. And some classical tango works such as “La ciudad del tango” of Blas Matamoro or “Tango: su historia y evolución” of Horacio Ferrer has been published. The tango history became a prime concern within the argentine intellectual field. How can we make sense of this intellectual production between 1955 and 1973? This book tries to answer this question and to understand the specificity of the emergence of the historiography of tango. By this, this book takes a discourse analysis approach inspired by the “Archeology of Knowledge” of Michel Foucault. The historiography of tango is treated conceptually as a “discourse” that has emerged within a broader historical context. In terms of Foucault the concept of discourse is not equivalent to its underlying texts. A discourse has a rationale of its own, which transcends the narrative coherence of the texts. This rationale is the constructivist logic of sense-making and has to be isolated from the text. Therefore, the intellectual tango discourse is not the starting point but rather the aim of the analysis. The textual corpus of this discourse analysis consists of 63 Tango books published during 1955 and 1973 in Argentina. The main argument of this book is that the historiography of tango is a product and a medium of the political polarization between peronism and anti-peronism of that time. The intellectual production and consumption of a historiography of tango can be read as an anti-hemonic strategy to reify in the public realm a leftist oriented peronist subject. This cultural production was an attempt of political resistance against the anti-peronist regimes. By drawing on a history of tango, a discourse about the “authentic” argentine nation could be re-habilitated. Since peronism was excluded from the political participation after the forced exile of Juán Domingo Perón in 1955, the cultural realm seemed to be a preeminent place for a peronist engagement. But peronism was not an already pre-established ideology. On the contrary, the very definition of peronism itself was at stake. As Federico Neiburg has once argued, after the exile of the Líder the significance of peronism was continuously re-invented and negotiated. Peronism became an “empty signifier” for the national subject. Argentine intellectuals were the prime actors of these reinventions. While the mayor part of the intellectual field was formerly anti-peronist, this overall political orientation changed after the exile. Simultaneously to the praxis of re-invention, the intellectual field became more affined to peronism. This is not to say that intellectuals were peronists, but their discourses became more integrated into the “empty signifier” of peronism. As this book tries to demonstrate the historiography of tango was part of this intellectual praxis of invention. The history of tango is told as a de-colonizing counter culture narrative of a liberal and an anti-peronist Argentina. Different discursive strategies can be reconstructed: In first instance, the narrator of the history of tango presents himself as an “anti-intellectual”. He criticizes the argentine intellectuals for being “Europeanized”, i.e. for gazing on Argentina, as if they were located in the countries of the north. The argentine intellectuals are discursively constructed as members of the argentine oligarchy. Second, the origins of tango are dated back to 1880. This is right the year, when the argentine state was consolidated by the conservative party “Partido Autonomista Nacional” (PAN). In contrast to the perspective of a liberal historiography, the consolidation of the state and the integration of Argentina as agro-exporting country into the world economy is not seen by the tango historiography as a glorious marker of independence, but as a sign of a postcolonial connoted uneven development. By this, tango is seen not as a simple fairy tale of a pre-modern Argentina, but as the social heterotopia of the modernizing nation. For example, the “compadrito”, the main hero of the tango world, is not interpreted as a lazy and morally dubious character, but as a worker that was forced to immorality due to his precarious social conditions. Third, the historiography of tango served as a contemporary critique to the oligarchic mainstream culture that could be observable between 1955 and 1973. After the “Golden Age” of tango in the 1930ies, ‘40ies and in the early ‘50ies, tango almost disappeared as a cultural expression in Argentina. It was repressed by foreign, western music, which served more the consumption needs of the argentine middle class. This absence of tango was seen by the narrators of the historiography of tango as a sign of domination of the western, imperial culture. Finally, the overarching rationale of the intellectual discourse of the tango history was polarization. By polarizing the narrations about tango this discourse participated in the re-invention of peronism. Tango was socially constructed as the cultural basis of the political ideology of peronism. This main argument of the discourse analysis is developed in six chapters. The first chapter is theoretical. It presents the relationship between nationalism, nation and intellectuals on a conceptual ground. The second chapter, works out the methodological approach of a Foucault inspired discourse analysis. The third chapter presents a genealogy of the cultural production of tango within a historically changing intellectual field. The fourth chapter reconstructs the political and social conditions of the emergence of the historiography of tango. The fifth chapter analysis the institutional context of the publishing houses of this emerging literature. Finally, the historiography of tango is textually de- and reconstructed and integrated into the institutional and historical postcolonial context of that time.
Anhand des Beispiels der Oberammergauer Passionsspiele lässt sich zeigen, dass sich die Beantwortung der Frage nach literarischen Kontexten in Form des einen originalen Textes, des eindimensional gedachten Einflusses und der einen unverän-derlichen Textidentität als unzulänglich erweist. Vielmehr bedarf es für die Erört-erung spezifisch literarischer Kontexte des Einbezugs rezeptiver, bezugsgruppen-bezogener und soziokultureller Elemente als grundsätzliche Bedingungen einer seriellen Textidentität, die stets durch zahlreiche Varianten geprägt ist. Über eine phänomenologische Fragestellung, eine diachrone Betrachtung des Phänomens Passionsspiel und seiner konkreten Ausformungen an kontextuellen Bezügen in den Oberammergauer Spielen, genauer: über die Behandlung seiner literarischen, filmi-schen und dramatischen Adaptationen, soll ein Analyseansatz vorgestellt werden, der sich von einem engen Textbegriff löst und stattdessen in erster Linie auf perfor-mativ bestimmte Kategorien zurückgreift. Kontexte von Literatur werden normalerweise und wie selbstverständlich auf der Basis des einen, ursprünglichen und originalen Textes ausgemacht. Der Film Romeo und Julia mit Leonardo di Caprio beispielsweise ist zweifelsohne im Kontext von Shakespeares Drama zu sehen, da der Film die Textgrundlage des Dramas verwen-det; Umberto Ecos Der Name der Rose kontextualisiert unter anderem die Schriften Wilhelms von Ockham und Roger Bacons, die Ausführungen Williams von Basker-ville greifen teilweise wortwörtlich auf diese zurück. Wie aber kann die Frage nach den Kontexten eines Textes bearbeitet werden, der entweder nicht überliefert ist, dessen Ursprung unbekannt ist oder der in vielen Fassungen existiert, die nicht etwa auf ein " Original " reduzierbar sind? Und wie kann hier noch von der Identität des einen Textes gesprochen werden? Was für neuzeitliche Texte die Ausnahme zu sein scheint, ist für vormoderne Texte viel eher die Regel. 1 1 Vgl. dazu grundsätzlich: Jauß 1977. Trotz der dort geschilderten plakativen Unterschiede zwischen mittelalterlichen und modernen Texten ist die " originale Identität " neuzeitlicher Texte nur scheinbar selbstverständlich und ist bei näherem Besehen auf einen engen Kanon von Literatur beschränkt, deren Autoren die Originalität als grundsätzliches poetologisches
In der Einleitung zu seiner Ausgabe der Schriften von J.M.R. Lenz aus dem Jahre 1828, die 1848 unter dem Titel „Goethe und seine Zeit“ neu herausgegeben wurde, unternimmt Ludwig Tieck den Versuch, die Bedeutung Goethes und seines Werks für die deutsche Literatur und Kultur zu bestimmen. Formal ist diese umfänglichste essayistische Arbeit Tiecks dabei als Gespräch einer Gruppe von Freunden angelegt und greift auf unterschiedliche literarische Formen zurück. Der vorliegende Beitrag legt dar, dass in „Goethe und seine Zeit“ die frühromantische Forderung nach einer anti-normativen und liberal-pluralistischen Dichtungskritik sowohl explizit thematisiert als auch in der formalen Anlage des Essays selbst umgesetzt wird. Der Text wird somit als Exempel einer selbst dichtenden Dichtungskritik verstanden und darüber hinaus in den Kontext von Tiecks allgemeineren Überlegungen zu Literatur und Literaturkritik gerückt. In the introductory essay to his edition of the works of J.M.R. Lenz from 1828 – a text published again in 1848 under the title ‘Goethe und seine Zeit’ – Ludwig Tieck explores the significance of Goethe and his work for German literature and culture. This essay, the most extensive in Tieck’s œuvre, consists of conversations among a group of friends and employs various literary forms. The present article analyses the extent to which the early-romantic demand for an anti-normative and liberal-pluralistic mode of literary comment is explicitly expressed in the essay and also imminently reflected in its formal structure. Understood in this light, Tieck’s text exemplifies an intentionally poetic form of literary criticism. It is then evaluated within the larger context of Tieck’s general reflections on literature and criticism.