Mary Howard (review)

MLR, 96.I, 2001 MLR, 96.I, 2001 the son of the fascist 'blood-and-soil' poet Will Vesper to revolutionary subject. However, in his awareness of autobiography as a form of fiction in which lived experience and the act of self-presentationare irreconcilable,Vesper concurrently subvertshis own ideal of revolutionary subject, thus rendering his desire to write autobiographyand to change societymutuallyincompatible. Rolf Dieter Brinkmann'sErkundungenfuir diePrdzisierung desGefiilsfiireinen Aufstand are a collection of diaries,collages, and autobiographicalmaterialthat was to form an autobiographicalnovel, but was edited by Brinkmann'swidow afterhis death in 1975. Plowmannagainpoints to the importantinfluence of Marcuseon this author, arguing that the Erkundungen reflect a certain ambivalence between Marcuse's critical response to the mass media as a mechanism that undermines individual autonomy and the influence on Brinkmannof MarshallMcLuhan's celebration of the creativepotential offeredby the new technical media. Indeed, this ambivalence also informs the autobiographicalact; under the influence of Marcuse it offersthe possibilityof resistanceto the 'BewuBtseinsindustrie'and so becomes a precarious utopian gesture, whereas under the influence of McLuhan, individual experience can be transformedand reinventedthroughthe media. In the final chapter of the book, Plowman analyses Karin Struck'sKlassenliebe, Inga Buhmann'sIchhabemireineGeschichtegeschrieben, and Verena Stefan'sHdutungen, all of which he situates within the New Women's Movement born out of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund conference of I968. All three are informed by the feminist critique of the left but also depend upon the emergence of a radical feminist position in the I970s, which emphasized the importance of women's personal experiences. Although this is taken to extremes in Klassenliebe, a text that Plowman sees as dispensingwith politics, 'leaving only subjectivism',he contends that Buhmann is successful in placing history and subjectivity in constructive dialogue. In responseto Hdutungen too he ispositive;while not denyingitsundoubted essentialism,he argues that it combines with a clear 'imperativeof self-invention', thusallowingfor an understandingof the female selfas a 'nexusof possibilities'. The book is lucidly written and sustains a good balance between sympathy towardsand criticismof the texts. There are however points in his argumentwhere I would wishforgreatertheoreticalsophistication:to content oneselfwith Giddens's definitionof feminism as a 'politics of choice' is to assume a subjectiveagency that much feministtheorychallenges, or at the very least explores. It is also unclearwhy Plowman criticizesWimsatt and Beardsleyand Barthesfor neglecting the relationship of the author's social and political context to his or her text, when numerous criticschallenge conventional notions of authorshipby contextualizingit. None the less, this is an intelligent analysis,the final irony of which is Plowman's systematic exclusion of his own voice behind the ubiquitousand depersonalizing'we'. Perhaps he felt this to be a necessary antidote to the subjectivityof his texts, but his voice would have been a welcome addition. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON STEPHANIEBIRD Interkulturelle Konfigurationen: Zurdeutschsprachigen Erzdhlliteratur von Autoren nichtdeutscher Herkunft.Ed. by MARYHOWARD.Miinchen: iudicium. 1997. 200 pp. DM 36. This volume of essaysdedicatedto what hasvariouslybeen called Gastarbeiterliteratur, Migrantenliteratur, or Ausldnderliteratur is based on talks from the I995 Vancouver conference supplemented by a number of specially commissioned pieces. Mary Howard's introduction provides a useful review of the critical literature,which is sparse,and discussesthe question of genre. She toys with definitionsrelatingto the the son of the fascist 'blood-and-soil' poet Will Vesper to revolutionary subject. However, in his awareness of autobiography as a form of fiction in which lived experience and the act of self-presentationare irreconcilable,Vesper concurrently subvertshis own ideal of revolutionary subject, thus rendering his desire to write autobiographyand to change societymutuallyincompatible. Rolf Dieter Brinkmann'sErkundungenfuir diePrdzisierung desGefiilsfiireinen Aufstand are a collection of diaries,collages, and autobiographicalmaterialthat was to form an autobiographicalnovel, but was edited by Brinkmann'swidow afterhis death in 1975. Plowmannagainpoints to the importantinfluence of Marcuseon this author, arguing that the Erkundungen reflect a certain ambivalence between Marcuse's critical response to the mass media as a mechanism that undermines individual autonomy and the influence on Brinkmannof MarshallMcLuhan's celebration of the creativepotential offeredby the new technical media. Indeed, this ambivalence also informs the autobiographicalact; under the influence of Marcuse it offersthe possibilityof resistanceto the 'BewuBtseinsindustrie'and so becomes a precarious utopian gesture, whereas under the influence of McLuhan, individual experience can be transformedand reinventedthroughthe media. In the final chapter of...

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