Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Graml, Gundolf

Titel

The Invention of Reality Required No More Records: Christoph Ransmayr’s Role as Cultural Ecological Archivist

Ist Teil von

• Colloquia Germanica, 2021-01, Vol.53 (2/3), p.141-160

Ort / Verlag

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH Co. KG

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag Zeitschriften und Jahrbücher

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This essay focuses on two crucial aspects that undergird literature’s function as archive in the Anthropocene: first, its capacity to record and transmit human experiences across time and space; second, its ability to make visible the multivocality and multiperspectivity that is part of any archive but often silenced in favor of an alleged scientific neutrality. Through a close reading of Austrian writer Christoph Ransmayr’s novels Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis (1984) and Morbus Kitahara (1995) this essay argues that the novels’ evocative descriptions of deranged time-space configurations are more than the messy, fictional ‘other’ to the scientific archive’s alleged accuracy. Building on Hubert Zapf’s notion of literature as cultural ecology, this article presents literary texts as dynamic and indispensable repositories of a holistic human experience. Ransmayr’s novels exemplify literature’s role in inspiring not only the actions that exacerbate the climate catastrophe but also in offering strategies for adapting to it.