Von Zetteln, Kühlschränken und der Lacan‘schen Mantis. Zur Problematik der Angst in Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet und anderen Prosatexten Herta Müllers

Abstract

The discourses linked to fear belong to one of the most powerful forces in modern culture. They prove to be particularly productive, not least after the caesura of the 9/11 attacks, especially in the news. Therefore, the exciting question how the fear dispositif operates seems obvious. The examination of the iussue of fear as a link between cognition and affect is staged in a very different way in contemporary German-language literary texts. On the basis of Herta Müller`s texts, which tells of a life targeted by the state police and other forms of surveillance, the question of fear, notably as one of the consequences of observation, will be examplarily examined. Excerpts of her texts are constellated with Lacans Seminar X Anxiety and textologically analyzed, in order to investigate the pivotal question of fear and its relation to the visual thematically and as a structural moment. In Müller, chiefly existential fear, which can be described as an angst, can be found. This opens up questions such as: What do her texts show about the impact of observation on the protagonists, on the writing of Müller herself and on the knowledge of perception? What rhetoric of surveillance is readable in Müller’s writing strategies? Müller showcases the problem of fear and the nexus of the observer and the observed in a new way. (Language: in German)