Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-4hvwz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-04T10:09:54.893Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Austrian Inner Colonialism and the Visibility of Difference in Stifter's Die Narrenburg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Joseph Metz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay reads the novella Die Narrenburg (1844; “The Castle of Fools”), by the Austrian germanophone writer Adalbert Stifter (1805–68), in terms of colonial and postcolonial theory. I argue that Die Narrenburg captures the moment when race becomes visible in a multinational Austrian Empire figured as inner colonial space. The novella also offers a challenge to the reality of race emerging into visibility and presents a strikingly modern picture of divided colonial consciousness, its desires suspended melancholically between the symptomatic maintenance of imperialist identifications and a sensitivity to the colonized that anticipates Frantz Fanon. The text thus exposes Hapsburg Austria as an unexpected symbolic locus for thinking about European racial and colonial discourse. It serves as a perceptive theorist of race and colonialism in a broad sense and suggests how we might read other seemingly peripheral works of central European literature for insights into intra- and extra-European colonial contexts. (JM)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 5 , October 2006 , pp. 1475 - 1492
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991.Google Scholar
Arens, Katherine. “For Want of a Word …: The Case for Germanophone.” Die Unterrichtspraxis / Teaching German 32.2 (1999): 130–42.Google Scholar
Balibar, Étienne, and Wallerstein, Immanuel. Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. Trans. Chris Turner. London: Verso, 1991.Google Scholar
Begemann, Christian. “Das Verhängnis der Schrift.” Afterword. Die Narrenburg. By Adalbert Stifter. Ed. Begemann. Salzburg: Residenz, 1996. 121–41.Google Scholar
Begemann, Christian. Die Welt der Zeichen: Stifter-Lektüren. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, Russell A. Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1998.Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Robert, and Tommy, L. Lott. Introduction. The Idea of Race. Ed. Bernasconi, and Lott, . Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000. vii–xviii.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. “The Other Question: Stereotype, Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism.” The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. 66–84.Google Scholar
Block, Richard. “Stone Deaf: The Gentleness of Law in Stifter's Brigitta.” Monatshefte 90 (1998): 17–33.Google Scholar
Cheng, Anne. The Melancholy of Race. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Csaky, Moritz. “‘Was man Nation und Rasse heißt, sind Ergebnisse und keine Ursachen’: Zur Konstruktion kollektiver Identitäten in Zentraleuropa.” Müller-Funk, Plener, and Ruthner 33–49.Google Scholar
Doppler, Alfred, and Frühwald, Wolfgang. Studien: Kommentar. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1997. Vol. 1, pt. 9 of Werke und Briefe: Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe. By Adalbert Stifter.Google Scholar
Downing, Eric. Double Exposures: Repetition and Realism in Nineteenth-Century German Fiction. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Enzinger, Moriz. Adalbert Stifters Studienjahre, 1818–1830. Innsbruck: Österreichische, 1950.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove, 1967.Google Scholar
Feichtinger, Johannes, Pratsch, Ursula, and Csáky, Moritz, eds. Habsburg Postcolonial: Machtstrukturen und kollektives Gedachtnis. Innsbruck: Studien, 2003.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” The Freud Reader. Trans. James Strachey. Ed. Peter Gay. New York: Norton, 1989. 584–89.Google Scholar
Fruhwald, Wolfgang. “‘Tu felix Austria …‘: Zur Deutung von Adalbert Stifters Erzählung Der Kuß von Sentze.” Vierteljahresschrift des Adalbert-Stifter-Instituts des Landes Oberösterreich 36.3–4 (1987): 31–41.Google Scholar
Glajar, Valentina. “From Halb-Asien to Europe: Contrasting Representations of Austrian Bukovina.” Modern Austrian Literature 34.1–2 (2001): 15–35.Google Scholar
Glajar, Valentina. The German Legacy in East Central Europe, As Recorded in Recent German-Language Literature. Rochester: Camden, 2004.Google Scholar
Hannaford, Ivan. Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Hechter, Michael. Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966. London: Routledge, 1975.Google Scholar
Herder, Johann Gottfried. Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit. Ed. Bollacher, Martin. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker, 1989. Vol. 6 of Werke in zehn Bcinden.Google Scholar
Holub, Robert C. “Adalbert Stifter's Brigitta; or, The Lesson of Realism.” A Companion to German Realism: 1848–1900. Ed. Kontje, Todd. Rochester: Camden, 2002. 29–51.Google Scholar
Judson, Pieter M. “Inventing Germans: Class, Nationality, and Colonial Fantasy at the Margins of the Hapsburg Monarchy.” Nations, Colonies, and Metropoles. Ed. Daniel A. Segal and Richard Handler. Spec. issue of Social Analysis 33 (1993): 47–67.Google Scholar
Juliet Flower, MacCannell. The Hysteric's Guide to the Future Female Subject. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2000.Google Scholar
MacLeod, Catriona. Embodying Ambiguity: Androgyny and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Keller. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Malik, Kenan. The Meaning of Race: Race, History, and Culture in Western Society. New York: New York UP, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metz, Joseph. “‘Eine eigentliche Durchdringung’: Literary and National Identity, Gender, and Body in Rilke's ‘Stifter Letter’ to August Sauer.” German Quarterly 76 (2003): 314–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller-Funk, Wolfgang, Plener, Peter, and Ruthner, Clemens, eds. Kakanien Revisited: Das Eigene und das Fremde (in) der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchic Tübingen: Francke, 2002.Google Scholar
Musil, Robert. Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleβ. Reinbekbei Hamburg: Rowholt, 1978.Google Scholar
Niebuhr, Barthold Georg. Römische Geschichte. 3 vols. Berlin: Riemer, 1828–32.Google Scholar
Okey, Robin. The Habsburg Monarchy: From Enlightenment to Eclipse. New York: St. Martin's, 2001.Google Scholar
Oliver, Kelly. The Colonization of Psychic Space: A Psychoanalytic Social Theory of Oppression. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2004.Google Scholar
Outlaw, Lucius. “Toward a Critical Theory of ‘Race.‘” Anatomy of Racism. Ed. Goldberg, David Theo. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1990. 58–82.Google Scholar
Palacký, František. Geschichte von Böhmen, grösstentheils nach Urkunden und Handschriften. 5 vols. Prague: Kronberger, 1836–67.Google Scholar
Radulescu, Domnica. “Amazons, Wretches, and Vampirettes: Essentialism and Beyond in the Representation of East European Women.” Vampirettes, Wretches, and Amazons: Western Representations of East European Women. Ed. Glajar, Valentina and Radulescu, . Boulder: East European Monographs, 2004. 23–59.Google Scholar
Ragg-Kirkby, Helena. Adalbert Stifter's Late Prose: The Mania for Moderation. Rochester: Camden, 2000.Google Scholar
Reddick, John. “Mystification, Perspectivism, and Symbolism in Der Hochwald.” Adalbert Stifter Heute: Londoner Symposium, 1983. Ed. Lachinger, Johann et al. Linz: Adalbert Stifter-Institut des Landes Oberösterreichs, 1985. 44–74.Google Scholar
Reidy, Ann Elizabeth. “Histories of Realism: Stifter, Storm, and Meyer in the Age of Ranke.” Diss. Harvard U, 1997. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1997.Google Scholar
Ruthner, Clemens. “K.u.k. Kolonialismus als Befund, Befindlichkeit und Metapher: Versuch einer weiteren Klarung.” Feichtinger, Pratsch, and Csáky 111–28.Google Scholar
Scheffel, Michael. “Stifter-Studien im Wandel der Zeit: Eine kleine Forschungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte.” Text + Kritik 160 (2003): 91–108.Google Scholar
Seshadri-Crooks, Kalpana. Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race. London: Routledge, 2000.Google Scholar
Scott, Spector. Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka's Fin de Siècle. Berkeley: U of California P, 2000.Google Scholar
Stifter, Adalbert. Aus dem alten Wien. Ed. Steffen, Konrad. Basel: Birkhäuser, 1969. Vol. 13 of Gesammelte Werke in vierzehn Bänden.Google Scholar
Stifter, Adalbert. “Aus dem alten Wien.” Preface. Stifter, Aus dem alten Wien 7–8.Google Scholar
Stifter, Adalbert. Brigitta. Studien: Buchfassungen, zweiter Band [Studies: Book Versions, Vol. 2]. Ed. Alfred Doppler and Wolfgang Fruhwald. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1982. 409–75. Vol. 1, pt. 5 of Werke und Briefe: Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe.Google Scholar
Stifter, Adalbert. “Erstfassungen der Beiträge Stifters zu Wien und die Wiener in Bildern aus dem Leben, 1844.” Appendix. Stifter, Aus dem alten Wien 245–76.Google Scholar
Stifter, Adalbert. Die Narrenburg. Studien: Buchfassungen, erster Band [Studies: Book Versions, Vol. 1]. Ed. Alfred Doppler and Wolfgang Frühwald. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1980. 319–436. Vol. 1, pt. 4 of Werke und Briefe: Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe.Google Scholar
Stifter, Adalbert. “Über unsere gegenwärtige Lage und unsere sittliche Verbesserung.” Vermischte Schriften. Ed. Steffen, Konrad. Basel: Birkhäuser, 1972. 192–236. Vol. 14 of Gesammelte Werke in vierzehn Bänden.Google Scholar
Tate, Claudia. Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine's Text at the Turn of the Century. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Titzmann, Michael. “Text und Kryptotext: Zur Interpretation von Stifters Erzählung Die Narrenburg.” Adalbert Stifter: Dichter und Maler, Denkmalpfleger und Schulmann: Neue Zugänge zu seinem Werk. Ed. Laufhütte, Hartmut and Möseneder, Karl. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996. 335–73.Google Scholar
van Boheemen-Saaf, Christine. Joyce, Derrida, Lacan, and the Trauma of History: Reading, Narrative, and Postcolonialism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinbaum, Alys Eve. Wayward Reproductions: Genealogies of Race and Nation in Transatlantic Modern Thought. Durham: Duke UP, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim. Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst. Sendschreiben. Erlauterung. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1969.Google Scholar
Wingfield, Nancy M. Introduction. Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe. Ed. Wingfield. New York: Berghahn, 2003. 1–16.Google Scholar
Wolff, Larry. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Young, Robert J. C. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1995.Google Scholar
Zantop, Susanne. Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870. Durham: Duke UP, 1997.Google Scholar