Authors:Maren Lickhardt Abstract: This article examines how David Schalko’s series Braunschlag (2012) presents a community that is threatened by disintegrative forces and dysfunctional communications. The series is read as a political allegory on postmodernist struggles in Austrian culture – as a laboratory for western European societies in general – between globalisation and provincialism. As this is linked to aspects of popular culture in the series, the article includes theoretical thoughts about popular cultural “common grounds” with their inclusive and exclusive function, as analysed by M. Bauer, U. Eco and M. Tomasello. PubDate: Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +000
Authors:Jakub Gortat Abstract: This essay explores one of the films which dealt with the above-mentioned topics and had its cinematic release in the period under discussion – Kassbach, an adaptation of Helmut Zenker’s novel, which was made by Peter Patzak, a prominent Austrian director who passed away in 2021. In this respect, Kassbach would be a work that preceded numerous other Austrian films with a cinematic release in the 1980s and which, even before the Waldheim affair, would touch upon Austria’s difficult past. This article focuses on the film’s message that the lack of de-Nazification at the time, understood not only as a political and bureaucratic, but also as a psychological and social process, facilitates the establishment of right-wing radicalism. PubDate: Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +000
Authors:Ilaria Manenti Abstract: Women play a specific and analogous role in the narrative of Elias Canetti and Thomas Bernhard. Such characters never appear as the only protagonists, but provide a counterpart to male figures, by whom they are often subjugated and marginalized. It is therefore the aim of this article to examine and compare the different ways in which the male characters of Canetti’s Die Blendung and Bernhard’s Das Kalkwerk and Ja dominate and exploit female figures, in an attempt to emphasize similarities and differences in the works of the two authors. PubDate: Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +000
Authors:Raphael Engert Abstract: Focusing on the example of the so-called “Augsburger Messer” in Thomas Bernhard’s Amras, the paper explores the possibility of overcoming the barriers to a hermeneutical reading of Bernhard’s texts through the exploitation of literary things. By comprising both its material and its symbolic dimension the micro analysis of the “Augsburger Messer” suggests coupling the eclectic potential of things in literary texts with Bernhard’s additive and associative style. Eventually, this approach not only opens up a new perspective on Amras as one of Bernhard’s most remarkable texts, but also presents his writing as one that is deeply permeated with the traumatic structures of violence and (Austrian) history. PubDate: Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +000
Authors:Giuliano Lozzi Abstract: Taking studies on deconstruction, performance theories, and pragmatics as my point of departure, I investigate Elfriede Jelinek’s last political play Schwarzwasser (2020), where the so-called Ibiza-gate – which in 2018 involved the former Vice Chancellor of Austria – is represented. In her interpretation, Jelinek refers to René Girard’s Violence and the Sacred and Euripides’ Bacchae in an intertextual dialogue. This contribution aims to show how and why Jelinek recalls and employs The Bacchae in her play and to establish a connection between the political function of Greek theatre and Jelinek’s view of Austrian populism. PubDate: Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +000
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