Exotic Spaces in German Modernism

by Gosetti-Ferencei, Jennifer Anna

• ISBN13: 9780199604128
• ISBN10: 0199604126
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei demonstrates that the exotic, as reflected in major works of German literature and in the philosophy and art that inspires it, provokes central questions about the modern self and the spaces it inhabits. Exotic spaces in the writings of such authors as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, Robert Musil, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gottfried Benn, and Bertold Brecht, along with the thought of Nietzsche, Freud, Levi-Strauss, and Simmel and the art ofGerman Expressionism, are shown to present alternatives to the landscape and experience of modernity. In an examination of the concept of the exotic and of spatial experience in their cultural, subjective, and philosophical contingencies, Gosetti-Ferencei shows that exotic spaces may contest andreconfigure the relationship between the familiar and the foreign, the self and the other. Exotic spaces may serve not only to affirm the subject in a symbolic conquering of territory, as emphasized in post-colonial interpretations, or project the fantasy of escapism to a lost paradise, as utopian readings suggest, but condition moral, aesthetic, or imaginative transformation. Such transformation, while risking disaster or dissolution of the self as well as endangerment of the other, maypromote new possibilities of perceiving or being, and reconfigure the boundaries of a familiar world. As exotic spaces are conceived as mystical, liberating, erotic, infectious, frightening or mysterious, several possibilities for transformation emerge in their exposure: re-enchantment through epiphany;the collapse of the rational self; liberation of the imagination from the confines of the familiar world; and aesthetic transformation, revealing the paradoxically 'primitive' nature of modern experience. In strikingly original readings of canonical authors and compelling rediscoveries of forgotten ones, this study establishes that exotic experience can evidence the fragility of the European or Germanic self as depicted in modernist literature, revealing the usually unconsidered boundaries ofthe subject's own familiar world.

Author Biography

Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. Her books include Heidegger, Hlderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language and the Ecstatic Quotidian: Phenomenological Sightings in Modern Art and Literature.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	p. ix
Introduction: The 'Exotic' and the Geographical Imagination in Modern German Literature	p. 1
The Relational and Mobile Concept of the Exotic	p. 2
Orientalism, German Literature, and the Geographical Imagination	p. 8
Fernweh, Travel, and the Re-enchantment of the World in Hofmannsthal, Dauthendey, and Hesse	p. 16
Atmosphere and Exotic Spaces in Hofmannsthal's Travel Writings	p. 19
Fernweh, Heimweh, and the Critique of Modernity: Die Briefe des Zurückgekehrten	p. 24
Distance, the Exotic, and Bildung: The Unfinished Novel Andreas	p. 28
Vastness, the Labyrinthine, the Unreachable: Travel Writings in Northern Africa	p. 37
The Re-enchantment of the World in Dauthendey's Asia	p. 46
Enchantment as Critical Distance from Modern Europe	p. 53
Enchantment and Disillusionment in Dauthendey and in Hesse's Aus Indien	p. 58
Conclusion	p. 67
Infectious-Erotic Topographies: Mann's Der Tod in Venedig and Der Zauberberg and Zweig's Der Amokläufer	p. 71
Fragile Boundaries: Three Infectious-Erotic Topographies	p. 72
The Infectious-Erotic in Der Tod in Venedig	p. 77
Sexuality, Illness, and Colonial Aggression in Der Amokläufer	p. 90
Constructions of Exotic Space in Der Zauberberg	p. 103
Conclusion	p. 119
An Intimate Elsewhere: Imagination of Distance and Vastness in Kafka	p. 121
Post-Colonialist Interpretations of Travel and Exotic Spaces in Kafka	p. 123
Intimacy in the Spaces of 'Elsewhere': Russia and America	p. 130
The Parody of Fernweh and Immanent Vastness in Der Verschollene	p. 135
Distance and Vastness: The Undetermined Spaces of Kafka's China and Russia	p. 146
Conclusion	p. 160
Inner Depths: Exotic Topographies of Primal Consciousness in Benn, Musil, and Kubin	p. 163
The Inner Topography of the Self and its Exoticization	p. 164
The Influence of Nietzsche on the Exotic Rendering of Primal Consciousness	p. 169
'Das andere Leben': Aesthetics of the Southern/Eastern Exotic and Primal Consciousness	p. 180
'Der andere Zustand': Mysticism and Primal States of Consciousness	p. 199
'Die andere Seite': Dream-Topography and Primal States of Consciousness	p. 214
Conclusion	p. 225
Primitive Modernity and the Urban Jungle in Brecht	p. 228
The City and its Exoticization in Modernism	p. 230
Urban Aggression, Primitivism, and Racism in Brecht's Im Dickicht der Stadte	p. 238
Conclusion	p. 248
Conclusion	p. 250
Bibliography	p. 258
Index	p. 275
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