Bildung, Negative Exceptionalism, and the End of Genealogy in Robert Walser’s Jakob von Gunten

Abstract

Focusing on the servant, this article analyzes figurations of disobedience in Robert Walser’s novel Jakob von Gunten (1909) in dialogue with formal genre conventions. Jakob von Gunten: Ein Tagebuch presents itself as the diary of the eponymous protagonist who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, enters a school for servants in Berlin to break with his aristocratic lineage. In contrast to the narrative arc of the Bildungsroman and Entwicklungsroman that envisages self-realization through progressive education, the novel abandons teleological emplotment in favour of the performance of servility. Rather than embracing the Enlightenment program of self-realization through learning and experience, Jakob overtly champions a downward career in defiance of both his aristocratic origins and developmental progress. However, this article demonstrates that, in the context of modernity, his role play as a quasi-feudal servant stages negative exceptionalism as a new form of perfection: Jakob wants to turn into “eine reizende kugelrunde Null” precisely because this zero position without value generates absolute agency. The analysis of the formal features of Jakob’s diary entries complements the thematic exploration of his escapades, dreams, and fantasies, which often stage an aggrandized and omnipotent alter ego. In so doing, I show that the performance of disobedience in Walser’s novel articulates an exclusive and elusive subjectivity.