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Provincial Non-Places in Moritz von Uslar’s Pop Reportage Novel Deutschboden
No full textIn this article, Marc Augé’s concept of the non-place is seen against the background of the urban vs. provincial divide by example of Moritz von Uslar’s pop reportage novel "Deutschboden. Eine teilnehmende Beobachtung" (“German Soil. A Participatory Observation”) (2010). In this novel, the narrator's reports from a provincial town in the East-German region of Brandenburg are directed to an imagined cultural center, represented by his Berlin friends, for whom he, so to speak, translates provincial culture. In the analysis, it is shown that a dichotomy between the urban space with its accumulated objective culture and numerous non-places, on the one hand, and provincial spaces with a stronger individual culture with more anthropological places, on the other hand, as suggested by Augé, can’t be sustained. Inhabitants of provincial spaces develop their own specific use of places and non-places. Also, the use of urban and provincial spaces is characterized by a constant mutual transfer of meaning, ascriptions and revaluations shaping the relation between these two types of spaces. As the analysis of Uslar’s text shows, the yearning for the authentic, individual and the historical is developed in the urban context and projected on the provincial space. In the provincial space, for its part, classical transitory non-places are preferred and non-placeness is even simulated, because they represent the alignment with modernity and progress
Provincial Non-Places in Moritz von Uslar’s Pop Reportage Novel Deutschboden
No full textIn this article, Marc Augé’s concept of the non-place is seen against the background of the urban vs. provincial divide by example of Moritz von Uslar’s pop reportage novel "Deutschboden. Eine teilnehmende Beobachtung" (“German Soil. A Participatory Observation”) (2010). In this novel, the narrator's reports from a provincial town in the East-German region of Brandenburg are directed to an imagined cultural center, represented by his Berlin friends, for whom he, so to speak, translates provincial culture. In the analysis, it is shown that a dichotomy between the urban space with its accumulated objective culture and numerous non-places, on the one hand, and provincial spaces with a stronger individual culture with more anthropological places, on the other hand, as suggested by Augé, can’t be sustained. Inhabitants of provincial spaces develop their own specific use of places and non-places. Also, the use of urban and provincial spaces is characterized by a constant mutual transfer of meaning, ascriptions and revaluations shaping the relation between these two types of spaces. As the analysis of Uslar’s text shows, the yearning for the authentic, individual and the historical is developed in the urban context and projected on the provincial space. In the provincial space, for its part, classical transitory non-places are preferred and non-placeness is even simulated, because they represent the alignment with modernity and progress
Postmonolingual Struggles and the Poetry of Uljana Wolf
No full textThis chapter argues that some of the conflicts that take place in the postmigrant condition are fought on a linguistic battlefield. Yasemin Yildiz refers to this situation as the ‘postmonolingual condition’, a situation in which ideas of languages as pure, self-contained and separated units are challenged by ideas of languages as hybrid, fluid and open systems. The increased significance of conflicts about language in the postmigrant condition, it is argued in the chapter, may be better understood when considering language as a cultural institution that plays an important role in the formation of identities and cultural positionings. Using the field of German literature as a case in point, the chapter shows how ideas of languages as hybrid are gaining influence and notions of languages as pure and ideas of monolingual constellations as a state of normality are dissolving. Not only are phenomena of multilingualism simply accepted, they are regarded as generative for artistic creativity. However, new lines of conflict between multilingualism and monolingualism are observed as populist currents have regained influence in society. On this backdrop, the chapter analyses works by contemporary German poet Uljana Wolf as a prominent example of an experimental and translingual poetics that taps into various discourses of society and traces mutually conflictual conceptions of language while examining their political and cultural implications
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