{"title":"Intimate Associations: Reading Community in Sasha Marianna Salzmann's Außer sich (2017) and Else Lasker-Schüler's Der Malik (1919)","authors":"J. Rafael Balling","doi":"10.1353/fgs.2023.a899994","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article places Sasha Marianna Salzmann's novel Außer sich (2017; Beside Myself , 2019) in dialogue with Else Lasker-Schüler's experimental prose work Der Malik: Eine Kaisergeschichte (1919; The Malik: An emperor's story) to highlight the shared investments of these two Jewish and gender-variant writers. While situated a century apart, both respond in their work and lives to societal discrimination in similar ways: they make themselves visible as an Other and use the knowledge of their vulnerability as a starting point to build communities that defy antisemitism and gendered oppression. In this context, Lasker-Schüler's rejection of ethnic, religious, gendered, and sexual boundaries and her envisioning of new forms of kinship appear as a precursor of Salzmann's call for inclusive queer-feminist alliances. Reading these works alongside each other invites us to understand the vision of political-personal associations based on the experiences of antisemitism and gendered oppression as an abiding concern of German-Jewish literature.","PeriodicalId":53717,"journal":{"name":"Feminist German Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Feminist German Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/fgs.2023.a899994","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract: This article places Sasha Marianna Salzmann's novel Außer sich (2017; Beside Myself , 2019) in dialogue with Else Lasker-Schüler's experimental prose work Der Malik: Eine Kaisergeschichte (1919; The Malik: An emperor's story) to highlight the shared investments of these two Jewish and gender-variant writers. While situated a century apart, both respond in their work and lives to societal discrimination in similar ways: they make themselves visible as an Other and use the knowledge of their vulnerability as a starting point to build communities that defy antisemitism and gendered oppression. In this context, Lasker-Schüler's rejection of ethnic, religious, gendered, and sexual boundaries and her envisioning of new forms of kinship appear as a precursor of Salzmann's call for inclusive queer-feminist alliances. Reading these works alongside each other invites us to understand the vision of political-personal associations based on the experiences of antisemitism and gendered oppression as an abiding concern of German-Jewish literature.