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Takes the recent wave of German autobiographical writing on illness
and disability seriously as literature, demonstrating the value of
a literary disability studies approach. In the German-speaking
world there has been a new wave - intensifying since 2007 - of
autobiographically inspired writing on illness and disability,
death and dying. Nina Schmidt's book takes this writing seriously
as literature,examining how the authors of such personal narratives
come to write of their experiences between the poles of cliche and
exceptionality. Identifying shortcomings in the approaches taken
thus far to such texts, she makes suggestions as to how to better
read their narratives from the stance of literary scholarship, then
demonstrates the value of a literary disability studies approach to
such writing with close readings of Charlotte Roche's
Schossgebete(2011), Kathrin Schmidt's Du stirbst nicht (2009),
Verena Stefan's Fremdschlafer (2007), and - in the final,
comparative chapter - Christoph Schlingensief's So schoen wie hier
kanns im Himmel gar nicht sein! Tagebuch einer Krebserkrankung
(2009) and Wolfgang Herrndorf's blog-cum-book Arbeit und Struktur
(2010-13). Schmidt shows that authors dealing with illness and
disability do so with an awareness of their precarious subject
position in the public eye, a position they negotiate creatively.
Writing the liminal experience of serious illness along the borders
of genre, moving between fictional and autobiographical modes, they
carve out spaces from which they speak up and share their personal
stories in the realm of literature, to political ends. Nina Schmidt
is a postdoctoral researcher in the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate
School of Literary Studies at the Freie Universitat Berlin.
Memory loss is not always viewed purely as a contingent
neurobiological process present in an ageing population; rather, it
is frequently related to larger societal issues and political
debates. This edited volume examines how different media and genres
- novels, auto/biographical writings, documentary as well as
fictional films and graphic memoirs - represent dementia for the
sake of critical explorations of memory, trauma and contested
truths. In ten analytical chapters and one piece of graphic art,
the contributors examine the ways in which what might seem to be
the individual, ahistorical diseases of dementia are used in
contemporary cultural texts to represent and respond to violent
historical and political events - ranging from the Holocaust to
postcolonial conditions - all of which can prove difficult to
remember. Combining approaches from literary studies with insights
from memory studies, trauma studies, anthropology, the critical
medical humanities and media, film and comics studies, this volume
explores the politics of dementia and incites new debates on
cultures of remembrance, while remaining attentive to the lived
reality of dementia.
Takes the recent wave of German autobiographical writing on illness
and disability seriously as literature, demonstrating the value of
a literary disability studies approach. In the German-speaking
world there has been a new wave - intensifying since 2007 - of
autobiographically inspired writing on illness and disability,
death and dying. Nina Schmidt's book takes this writing seriously
as literature,examining how the authors of such personal narratives
come to write of their experiences between the poles of cliche and
exceptionality. Identifying shortcomings in the approaches taken
thus far to such texts, she makes suggestions as to how to better
read their narratives from the stance of literary scholarship, then
demonstrates the value of a literary disability studies approach to
such writing with close readings of Charlotte Roche's
Schossgebete(2011), Kathrin Schmidt's Du stirbst nicht (2009),
Verena Stefan's Fremdschlafer (2007), and - in the final,
comparative chapter - Christoph Schlingensief's So schoen wie hier
kanns im Himmel gar nicht sein! Tagebuch einer Krebserkrankung
(2009) and Wolfgang Herrndorf's blog-cum-book Arbeit und Struktur
(2010-13). Schmidt shows that authors dealing with illness and
disability do so with an awareness of their precarious subject
position in the public eye, a position they negotiate creatively.
Writing the liminal experience of serious illness along the borders
of genre, moving between fictional and autobiographical modes, they
carve out spaces from which they speak up and share their personal
stories in the realm of literature, to political ends. Nina Schmidt
is a postdoctoral researcher in the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate
School of Literary Studies at the Freie Universitat Berlin.
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