Relational Subjectivity: Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s Novel Außer Sich

Annette Buehler-Dietrich

doi:10.3828/mlo.v0i0.287

Abstract

Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s debut novel, published in 2017, covers the experience of antisemitism, migration, queerness and political struggle during a 100-year time span. Its structure is anything but straightforward and features homo- as well as heterodiegetic narrators. Structurally, the novel can be related to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, with its analysis of the logic of Kafka’s writings. Rosi Braidotti’s work on nomadic ethics and on the posthuman supplements the framework given by Deleuze and Guattari. Drawing on these writings, my analysis foregrounds the concept of the relational subject as developed in the novel as well as the link between its narrative structure and the exploration of time and anxiety. Taking into consideration its opening James Baldwin citation, I relate these issues to the novel’s of multidirectional memory of oppression. Tweetable abstract: This article explores how Sasha Marianna Salzmann connects queer subjectivity, multidirectional memory, time and narrative structure.

Highlights

In 2017, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, a renowned German playwright, published her first novel Außer Sich [Beside Oneself]
In a recent essay entitled “Sichtbar” [Visible], she says: “Ich gehöre gleich mehreren Minderheiten an; das kaschieren zu wollen, birgt für mich größere Gefahren, als meine Positionen zu benennen” [I belong to several minorities; to hide this involves greater risks than to name my positions] [13]. Her subject positions – German-Russian, Jewish, queer, non-binary – construct a web of relations to other subjects, defying the exclusionary binaries society tries to impose on her. She tells of how a newspaper wanted her to write about possible anxieties she might feel towards Muslim men as a queer Jewish woman
Reading Außer Sich with Deleuze and Guattari, I argue that the doubling of Ali and Anton in the novel serves this function of expressing an anxiety which keeps one character motionless and the other in movement

Summary

Introduction

In 2017, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, a renowned German playwright, published her first novel Außer Sich [Beside Oneself]. Deleuze and Guattari’s brilliant reading of Kafka allows me to highlight specific features of Salzmann’s novel and bring them into relation with each other, notably its narrative construction, the use of affect and the question of narrative order and time.

Results

Conclusion