Stereotype and Destiny in Arthur Schnitzler's Prose: Five Psycho-Sociological Readings by Marie Kolkenbrock

Abstract

Reviewed by: Stereotype and Destiny in Arthur Schnitzler's Prose: Five Psycho-Sociological Readings by Marie Kolkenbrock Helga Schreckenberger Stereotype and Destiny in Arthur Schnitzler's Prose: Five Psycho-Sociological Readings. By Marie Kolkenbrock. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018. Pp. 268. Cloth $120.00. ISBN 978-1501330964. In her rich, nuanced reading of Arthur Schnitzler's prose works Der Weg ins Freie (1908), Flucht in die Finsternis, (completed 1913, published 1931), Traumnovelle (1925–1926), and the novellas of Dämmerseelen (1907), Marie Kolkenbrock focuses on the interrelation between stereotypes and destiny as a reflection of the difficult relationship between individual and society in the modernist era. Her clearly articulated framework for her analysis is presented in the introduction. Drawing on theories on identity, subjectivity, and power by Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu, and Eric Santner, she argues that destiny and stereotype provide a coping mechanism for Schnitzler's protagonists against a threatening loss of legitimacy in a social order that has begun to disintegrate. While stereotypes function as an ordering tool that stabilizes the position of the self within the norm by marking the different "other," destiny provides the reassurance of individualized existence. Kolkenbrock differentiates between "social destiny" enforced by stereotypes, which "enclose the typecast person within the limits of the social position defined and legitimized by them" (16) and individual metaphysical destiny as a force of individualization. She points out that for Schnitzler's protagonists, metaphysical destiny gains importance when their social destiny and, thus, the legitimacy of the social order is threatened. These moments, which expose the constructedness of the cultural narratives that form social reality provoke a recurring sensation of "Grauen" in the protagonists. For Kolkenbrock, this links Schnitzler's works to the Schauerroman of German Romanticism and its aim to unsettle "naturalized" boundaries. However, as Kolkenbrock is quick to point out, Schnitzler's works do not promote any kind of mysticism. The protagonists' invocation of individual destiny fails to provide a lasting alternative to the normative order and often proves fatal. [End Page 379] In the following chapters of her book, Kolkenbrock analyzes the various interplays of stereotypes and destiny in Schnitzler's texts. Chapter 1, "Stereotypes and Physiognomy in Der Weg ins Freie," explores the link between stereotype and physiognomy with regard to both racial and gender stereotyping. However, as Kolkenbrock shows, the text presents a number of examples where the stereotype does not fit the individual revealing both its constructedness and its relativity. Moreover, the text also reveals that even those individuals within the norm are not exempt from being determined by cultural narratives. Identification with the "other" represented by the Jews seems to offer an alternative destiny from the one within the social norm. This voluntary identification, however, contains the idea of individuality and singularity of an individual destiny that is absent from the social destiny of the Jews for whom Jewishness is no longer a choice but unchangeable fate. In the second chapter, "Madness and Investiture in Flucht in die Finsternis," Kolkenbrock reads the mental crisis of the protagonist as a reaction to the perceived loss of his social status. As mental illness marks the diagnosed subject as "other" excluded from the social norm, it can be seen as a way to escape from the bourgeois order. While the protagonist's half-conscious enactment of stereotypes of madness suggests a yearning for a meaningful destiny, his flirt with the social position of the "other" ultimately proves overwhelming. The protagonist's madness is not a cure for but a symptom of the instable post-Enlightenment bourgeois order, which, for Kolkenbrock, links it to Romantic madness. The next chapter, "Race and Destiny in Die Weissagung and Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief," analyzes the connection between both novella protagonists' social destiny and their use of racial stereotypes about Jewishness in the case of the former and blackness in the latter. The protagonists employ racial stereotypes to defend their legitimate position within the norm; the failure to do so leads to their death reiterating the inescapability of social destiny. As in her first chapter, Kolkenbrock shows how Schnitzler's texts undermine the stereotypes of otherness by revealing their constructedness. Kolkenbrock's fourth chapter focuses on the cliché of love...