Nature and femininity in Raphaela Edelbauer’s Das flüssige Land — Fluid concepts in a liquid land

Abstract

An allegedly unspoilt natural landscape is a crucial backbone of Austria’s national brand and yet, a look behind the façade of this ‘Goldener Landschaftsmythos’, reveals that nature plays a complex and paradoxical role in Austrian self-stylisation and culture: the very system that relies on its pristineness exploits and degrades it. Edelbauer’s 2019 novel Das flüssige Land draws on this tension and brings it into conversation with essentialist views of femininity, rejecting expectations of women as inherently connected with nature and protective of it. The female protagonist’s relationship with the Alpine landscape is fluid, ambivalent, and paradoxical and — as it oscillates between care and exploitation, connection and disdain — it invites an approach from the angle of social ecofeminism that calls for an overcoming of essentialist claims about women and nature.