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Beyond origins: Heimat and national identity in selected works by Herta Muller and Libuse Monikova

Goodchild, Sarah; (2002) Beyond origins: Heimat and national identity in selected works by Herta Muller and Libuse Monikova. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London). Green open access

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Abstract

This thesis engages with a body of contemporary German literature which explores notions of collective belonging in the context of migration. I contend that the texts dealt with here fundamentally challenge two current imagined constructions of community: Heimat (pre-modem origin) and nation (modem phenomenon) are non-contingent structures which banish anxiety. Yet new theories addressing the exclusions they create necessitate a revision of both discourses. I examine in Herta Muller's stories their negative analyses of Heimat and its images with particular attention to the implications for women which they divulge. Already discernible in Niederungen, women's complicity receives further elaboration in Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt, where it unsettles the critique of men's desire. This announces the entry of hopelessness into Muller's texts which pushes her work into a political impasse. My analysis of Herztier demonstrates how a rigorous examination of what constitutes resistance prevents the heroine from disrupting the structures of Heimat and totalitarianism which restrict her. Drawing on theories linking adolescence with moral striving, I show how dissidence in the novel is equated with youthful naivety and as such defined in retrospect as unsustainable. Libuse Monikova's interrogations of national affiliation inform her exploration of Czech/Bohemian history. Within the context of recent theories of historiography which insist on the proximity of history's 'true account' to fictional narrative and Benedict Anderson's concept of the nation as a fictional construct, I argue that Monikova's re-configurations of her national and cultural heritage negotiate a new story/basis for a new (re-imagined) nation. The damaging city of Eine Schadigung, the crippled nation of Pavane fur eine verstorbene Infantin, the two irreconcilable Pragues of Treibeis are symptomatic of the nation's inadequacy. In Die Fassade and Verklarte Nacht, I show how Monikova turns her estrangement into a vantage point from which she challenges narratives of origin by thinking past the nation as a monolithic entity.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification: Ph.D
Title: Beyond origins: Heimat and national identity in selected works by Herta Muller and Libuse Monikova
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Thesis digitised by ProQuest.
Keywords: Language, literature and linguistics; Monikova, Libuse; Muller, Herta
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10100946
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