Abstract
From Jacob Grimm to GDR-Witches:
Feminist
Witchcraft and Magical Realism in East German Women’s Writing
Qinna
Shen
2008
The
dissertation examines the witch as a feminist identification figure in
East
German Women’s Writing against a background of nineteenth-century
attempts to
reposition the witch as a subversive persona and the
feminist reappropriation of the witch taking place concurrently in
American,
French and West German feminism. My focus is both on well-known
texts
such as Sarah Kirsch’s Zaubersprüche
(1973), Irmtraud Morgner’s Leben
und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz nach Zeugnissen ihrer
Spielfrau
Laura (1977) and Amanda. Ein
Hexenroman, (1980,
pub. 1983), Christa Wolf’s Kassandra (1984) and Medea (1996),
the sex change stories in Geschlechtertausch
by Kirsch, Morgner and Wolf, and on lesser-known texts like Renate
Apitz’ Hexenzeit (1984) and Elke
Willkomm’s Hexensommer (1984).
The witch in these texts is
both the fictive character created by individual writers, and
self-designation
for them; in the latter case, writing, especially writing in the
experimental
fashion, is a form of witchcraft. The dissertation analyzes these texts
using
the theoretical concept of magical realism. Although magical realism is
mostly associated with post-colonial studies, it proves to be an
apposite mode
for feminist studies as well.
We have comparable binary constellations of the colonizer versus the
colonized
and man versus woman, with the latter seeking autonomy. Magical realist
literature in both contexts is a literature of decolonization,
emancipation and
reconstitution. GDR women authors use magical realism to contravene
both the
GDR discourse on women’s equality under socialism and the socialist
realist
aesthetic itself. The present study seeks to use the witch thematic as
a wedge
to open up new ways of thinking about East
German
literature and East German feminism.