Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Teresa Ludden
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
This article explores Verena Stefan’s images of non-oppositional relationality, relations between the self and other beings in the world, and Leib the living body in her 2007 novel Fremdschläfer which is presented as an assemblage of sections with little temporal and spatial continuity. I examine relationality with reference to a nexus of ontological questions pertaining to non-oppositional models of relational selfhood, constitutive alterity immanence and the relation between empirical experience and the conditions of experience. My analysis of the multilayered imagery in Fremdschläfer focuses on how these poetic images engender self-world relationality, being together with others, heteronomy, intersubjectivity, while also foregrounding the experience of immigration multilingualism and living with a poor medical prognosis. I argue that Stefan figures the Leib (living body) as a sensible transcendental. It is the touch and embodied listening of other material embodied selves that give shape to the self’s changing boundaries.
Author(s): Ludden T
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Oxford German Studies
Year: 2024
Volume: 53
Issue: 3
Pages: 346-364
Online publication date: 14/11/2024
Acceptance date: 28/08/2024
Date deposited: 29/08/2024
ISSN (print): 0078-7191
ISSN (electronic): 1745-9214
Publisher: Routledge
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2024.2395200
DOI: 10.1080/00787191.2024.2395200
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/efdt-f782
Notes: Special Issue: Relationality in Contemporary German Literature and Culture, part 2. Guest Editors Anne Fuchs and Mary Cosgrove.
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
