In terms of exchange

Marlen Mairhofers study In Terms of Exchange examines two texts by Austrian authors, Ingeborg Bachmanns novel fragment Das Buch Franza (1965/66) and Marlen Haushofers last novel Die Mansarde (1969), with regard to exchange and power relations. Alongside Bachmann and Haushofer, the French author Hélène Cixous (born 1937) forms the equal third in the group, whose assumption that male and female writing follow different libidinal economies is critically tested in order to work out the multifaceted exchange relationships that are effective in the texts. This perspective reveals unsuspected parallels and correspondences whose inner dynamics are mutually illuminating and thus cannot be limited to binary typologies. What the three authors have in common are not so much biographical patterns, but linguistic and discursive elements that structured the authors writing and lives in the 1960s. It is the power relations [...], as they present themselves on the basis of the material and bearing in mind the circumstances of its creation, whose economies are reconstructed with relish and opened up on the basis of thematic correspondences. For example, the question of how communication can be maintained when the exchange of signifiers seems impossible, how (linguistic and material) legacies can be dealt with and how the failure of sensory channels can be overcome is examined. In addition, the study subjects the existing reception of all three authors to a critical revision and devotes itself to the specific production conditions of the texts examined by focusing on the economies of material [and] text creation.