Transdifference and Transculturality in Austro-Hungary

According to H. Breinig and K. Lösch, the concept of transdifference sheds a critical light on conventional differentiations of social belongings like gender, language, culture, religion, class, or nation. A critical analysis makes visible how these belongings are socially constructed and can therefore be altered. The transgression of social boundaries can be regarded as moments of transdifference. The various belongings of an individual do affect each other. Individuals and social groups are imbued with different cultural influences and handle them individually. This manifold cultural interfusion is what W. Welsch calls transculturality. While transculturality helps comprehending the multiculturality of Habsburg Monarchy, the counter-concept transdifference serves to bring out of the possibilities of individual self-determination despite social expectations. Both terms are crucial to the anthology dealing with various cultures and literatures within Habsburg Monarchy. On this basis, the concept of culture is reconsidered in relation to the transcultural space of Austro-Hungary, literary stereotypes and social prejudice can be exposed. Analysing transdifferent moments depict the socio-critical impact of texts, thus shedding light on the actual work of authors around 1900. Furthermore, the way of living of multilingual artists and authors between different linguistic cultures can be reconsidered. Travel and migration experiences had an distinguishable impact on their works of art: the foreign is depicted as both attractive and threatening, it is the other of the own (alterity), alienated by close-ups, by taking up the position of the other, by encounters that are characterised by the eagerness to understand the other. Notable experts from almost all regions of the former Habsburg Monarchy have contributed to this anthology. They represent different scientific fields such as literary studies, cultural studies, theatre studies or science of history. The material comprises novels, poems, plays, childrens books, literature for young people, librettos, travel literature, reports by women writers, theatre criticism, magazines, diaries, letters, military files as well as early film documents, and Wikipedia entries. Works of literature that are dealt with are texts by J. Déry, M. v. Ebner-Eschenbach, I. Franko, M. Frischauf-Pappenheim, M. E. delle Grazie, I. Hartinger, M. Jkai, B. Katscher, M. Lobe, G. Meisel- Heß, B. Pappenheim, G. Saiko, F. Salten, A. Šenoa, B. v. Suttner, and F. Tomizza. The articles examine the theory of transdifference, they criticise historical canonisation, gender roles and cultural stereotypes. They depict the conflict between ethnic and national belonging in multilingual regions and show how journalism deals with transculturality. This combination of transdifference and transculturality is an unusual concept; applied to a material that is not much known to a wider audience, the anthology makes accessible new aspects of Austro-Hungarian cultural space.