The rise and fall of an intellectual woman - Christa Wolf and her critics

ISBN-13: 9783836427302 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 256 str.

Ying Tang

Opis

Christa Wolf, a GDR intellectual, was discredited as a writer after German Unification.How is it possible that one writers literature is praised universally as"critical" one moment, and denigrated as banal and simply moralistic thenext? As a response to the controversy around Christa Wolf, this workattempts to understand Wolf less as an isolated "writer" than as an "effect" ofpolitical and cultural discourse about the GDR in the Federal Republic ofGermany prior to unification and in united Germany after 1989. However, inthis book Wolfs own opinions about her role as intellectual active in theGDR, as well as her explicit pacifist and feminist positions, which sheenunciated in both essays and her literature, are also taken intoconsideration. Thus, the author plays the writers own self-reflective textsover and against the texts that made Wolf first into the banner of analternative socialism and second, after the Wende, into the target ofconservative accusations. The book presents an interdisciplinary approach toa well discussed writer that will not only engage scholars of Christa Wolf, butwill also appeal to those with broader interests in cultural politics, feministtheories, especially those concerned with the role of (women) publicintellectuals.