„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.

Dichter in unruhiger Zeit. Versuch über einen "charakteristischen Zug" in Pessoas Werk

Pessoa Denken, 2020

Wenn es einen ›charakteristischen Zug‹ gibt, der es erlaubt von Pessoas Werk als von einer Einheit zu sprechen, dann liegt er fraglos in der ›Unruhe‹, in einem ›Überdruss‹ (tédio) am Denken, der die ›Sehnsucht‹ (saudade) nach einer unmetaphysischen Dichtung produziert -eine Sehnsucht, die durch Pessoas Werk nie gestillt werden kann. Dem ständigen, beunruhigenden poetischen Ausbruch aus dem Denken oder aus der Metaphysik, dieser zentrifugalen Kraft der Zerstreuung und Vervielfältigung, die für Pessoas Werk so charakteristisch ist, steht allerdings noch eine andere, zentripetale Kraft entgegen: ein Zug der Systematisierung, der denkerischen Wiederaneignung, ein Zug der aneignenden Selbstinterpretation. Doch weder die zentrifugale, ›dichterische‹ noch die zentripetale, ›denkerische‹ Bewegung kann in Pessoas Werk für sich bestehen.

Tango Argentino als ästhetische Kultur – postkoloniale und gendertheoretische Fragen

blog interdisziplinäre geschlechterforschung, 2020

Ein Buch über leidenschaftliche Begegnungen im Tango Argentino mag auf den ersten Blick nicht gerade gendertheoretische Innovationen vermuten lassen. Es gibt jedoch in der internationalen Forschungslandschaft Bücher, deren Übersetzung in eine andere Sprache schon immer überfällig war: Das Buch von Kathy Davis ist sowohl gendertheoretisch als vor allem auch intersektional eine erhellende Lektüre. Skizzenhaft möchte ich hier zeigen, worin der Mehrwert in der Lektüre dieses Buches liegt und was es besonders im Forschungskontext um Tango Argentino und Gender Studies zu einem "must read" macht.

Die belebte Unwirklichkeit. Emanzipatorische Mechanismen in Herta Müllers Werken.

Kronstädter Beiträge zur germanistischen Forschung

Das lückenlos Unwirkliche bezeichnet in Müllers poetologischem System den Spielraum ihres literarischen Schaffens, in dem sich ihre Biographie, ihr Verhältnis zur Macht, die Traumata, die Angst, die Wunden, die niemals heilen aber auch die rei-ne Lebensgier und der Freiheitsdrang, sich in deterritorialisierte, flüssige, nomadische Intensitäten verwandeln. Es ist ein Prozess der Unwirklich-Werdung, dessen Phäno-menologie vergleichbar ist mit dem der Tier-Werdung, die Deleuze und Guattari in Kafkas Werken bemerkt haben. In meinem Beitrag erläutere ich die Wesenheiten die-ses Prozesses anhand von Herta Müllers poetologischen Texten sowie ihrer frühen, noch im kommunistischen Rumänien veröffentlichten Prosa und Lyrik. Schlagworte: Emanzipation, Deterritorialisierung, der fremde Blick, das lückenlos Unwirkliche