Surveillance Narratives: Kafka, Orwell, and Ulrich Peltzer’s Post-9/11 Novel Teil der Lösung

Abstract

In the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks and the ensuing increase in state controlled surveillance measures questions revolving around authority, privacy and individual freedom call for re-examination. Reading Ulrich Peltzer’s contemporary Berlin novel Teil der Lösung against the backdrop of Kafka’s Der Process and Orwell’s 1984, the following paper will examine continuities and ruptures in the representation of surveillance with regards to privacy and – first and foremost – authority. Kafka’s and Orwell’s “Ur-Surveillance Novels” (Nellis 2009) are revealed as precursors to the contemporary critique of surveillance at work in Peltzer’s fiction and in Trojanow’s and Zeh’s polemic pamphlet “Angriff auf die Freiheit”. While exploring how in the wake of 9/11 political resistance towards surveilling authorities is mirrored in contemporary German literature, I also elucidate the question of narrative authority within structures of surveillance in Kafka’s Der Process, Orwell’s 1984 and Peltzer’s Teil der Lösung. I argue that Peltzer’s postmodern text criticizes surveillance practices by undoing the centralized-authoritarian position of the narrator for the sake of a more diffuse, decentralized style of narration, thereby working against anti-democratic tendencies.