Journal | Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale
Journal issue | 57 | 2023
Research Article | Il corpo come spazio e la pratica della scrittura: Die Weiber (1987) di Wolfgang Hilbig
Abstract
The article aims to demonstrate the concept of Zwischenraum behind Wolfgang Hilbig’s short story Die Weiber (1987). The setting is to be identified with the social space of the DDR, structured not only through the panoptic control of the Stasi, but also according to rigid ideological norms that polarize the cultural field and produce a spatial gap, as understood by Henri Lefebvre. The search for an interstitial space, capable of problematizing reality, is expressed metaphorically through the women’s disappearance: the correspondence between the polarized social space of the DDR and the gender division allows the centrality of the body and the interval of desire to emerge, in order to rhizomatically reconfigure the existing. In Die Weiber, this search is channeled through writing: according to Michel de Certeau, such practice can generate and appropriate new social space – a space in which, in Hilbig’s view, the culturally repressed can be revealed and the relationship with the deliberately forgotten German history can be re-established.
Submitted: April 18, 2023 | Accepted: June 20, 2023 | Published Oct. 30, 2023 | Language: it
Keywords Identity • Body • Wolfgang Hilbig • Shoah • Desire • Practice • Space
Copyright © 2023 Marta Rosso. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOc/2499-1562/2023/11/009