Innovative Autonomy. Transformed Subjectivities In Austrian Short Fiction And Radio Plays

Abstract

This thesis focuses on modern short fiction that demonstrates a linguistic and narrative “governance of subjectivities”, i.e. that problematizes individual autonomy on a diegetic level. By showing the interconnections between historical and subjective crises in the plot, this dissertation will also make the historical transformations in literary forms of autonomy apparent – forms which have been progressing towards an “endgame” of the traditional sense of autonomy in the course of the 20th century, in turn leading to a new narrative mode of governance and a new practice of literary autonomy which is interrelational, intersubjective, intermedial, intertextual, and - in relation to the authors depicted- politically committed. In order to demonstrate this, particular attention is paid to three key motifs: the play, the face, and the mirror as they are manifested in literature from the First to the Second Austrian Republic, spanning the period from the 1920s to the 1970s. The chosen short-fiction works show that autonomy is inevitably at stake, either explicitly or in subtext. Through a close reading of the texts and analysis of the three key motifs, I plea for a more refined historical genealogical understanding of this notion within a relational theoretical framework. It attempts to re-conceptualize the basic underlying individual paradigm of literary autonomy through the lens of modern short fiction, including radio plays.