Abstract
This article examines the work of contemporary German-Jewish writer Sasha Marianna Salzmann through the framework of Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of minority. Focusing on Salzmann’s debut novel Auser Sich, I investigate how the text complicates ideas of familial, national, linguistic and gendered belonging, which results in a fundamental deconstruction of the very concept and possibility of belonging. I argue that the framework provided by Deleuze and Guattari needs to be extended in Salzmann’s case, by bringing it together with Judith Butler’s thoughts on the “ec-static” character of the self and interpersonal relationships. Based on Butler’s notion of ec-stasy, I demonstrate how Salzmann’s text develops an innovative politics and poetics of non-belonging, which connects their writing with a broader “postmigrant” trajectory. Apart from helping us question facile conceptions of belonging, Salzmann’s work thus also enables us to shift our current understanding of the cultural location of German-Jewish writing. Tweetable Abstract: This paper examines minority and ec-stasy in Salzmann’s debut novel Auser Sich, staking out these concepts’ innovative politics and poetics of non-belonging.
Highlights
Embracing Ec-stasy The title of this special issue on “Rethinking ‘Minor Literatures’ – Contemporary Jewish Women’s Writing in Germany and Austria” references Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s seminal thoughts on “minor literature” and being “minor” more generally (Kafka; A Thousand Plateaus). The aim of this collection is to probe the productivity of these concepts when reading contemporary Jewish literature by women writers in Germany and Austria. This piece contributes to the project by elucidating how the notions of “minor literature” and being “minor” do provide a productive lens for reading the work of the Russian-born, German Jewish novelist, playwright and activist Sasha Marianna Salzmann, whose plays have received some attention (Landry, “Jewish Joke Telling”, “On the Politics of Love”), but whose novelistic and essayistic production has gone virtually unnoticed
While reading Salzmann’s work through the framework of “minor literature”, I intend to show that their writing suggests an innovative reorientation of Deleuze and Guattari’s thoughts on minority, which adds to ongoing redefinitions of German Jewish writing (Garloff and Mueller; Morris)
Ali/Anton only arrives at a point where they can say and think themselves as an “I” after they have returned from Istanbul (AS 142), and this transformation is the result of the narrative that is Außer Sich – the self emerges as a quintessentially performative category
Summary
This paper examines minority and ec-stasy in Salzmann’s debut novel Außer Sich, staking out these concepts’ innovative politics and poetics of non-belonging. I don’t know how many souls I have. A man who sees is just what he sees.
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