Transdifference in German-Language Literature by Austro-Hungarian Migrant Women Writers

The primary goal of the proposed habilitation project is the analysis of the subversion potential in the German- language literature of women migrants in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918) through the instances of transdifference created in their literary work. These instances demonstrate the abandonment of thinking in dichotomies and the spontaneous and temporarily shifted dominance of interdependent social categories - such as gender, ethnicity, social class, sexuality, age, nation, confession, regional background, profession, ability/disability, family/household or distribution of wealth - as well as resulting transgressive acts. It will investigate to what extent female authors such as B. v. Suttner, M.E. Delle Grazie, A. Christen, G. Meisel-Heß, M. Janitschek, M. Roda Roda, I. v. Troll-Borostyàny, E. Asenjieff, A. Astl-Leonhand, R. Barach and M. Preindlsberger-Mrazovics use their experience as internal migrants and their knowledge of social minorites and marginalized persons in peripheric multiethnic areas of the monarchy for subversion of literary stereotypes through transdifferent moments. This research question will incorporate deconstructivist approaches and methods from trans-/intercultural, cultural studies and sociology-oriented literary studies. In order to document the subversion potential, intertextual connections and comparisons with hypertexts and hypotexts will be analyzed. The project will also investigate whether these indices can be viewed as a counter-discourse. Secondly, the literature of these female authors will be located anew in the field of literature. The texts will be juxtaposed with comparable contemporary German-language texts by non-migrants and male migrants in order to investigate not only content but also the poetological innovation potential of this literature. The body of texts will cover a broad spectrum of genres, including the tale, saga, drama, essay, periodical publication, and autobiographical writing, and will generate a comprehensive image of these uvres. The traditional literary canon will be set in relation to the reception of the texts at that time and on this basis scrutinized and expanded. The development of applicable methods is the third goal of this project. Transcultural literary approaches that in German studies have focused largely on contemporary migration literature will be sharpened on historical textual material and developed further concerning their potential to uncover critique of the dominant majority society in both historical and contemporary texts. An aim of this project is to make the interdisciplinary, but strongly sociological conecpt of transdifference more easily applicable to literary studies. The textual material for this four-year habilitation project will be collected in Austrian, Swiss, Slovaenian, Croatian, Hungarian and Czech libraries. The project will be based at the Department of German Studies, Faculty for Philology and Cultural Studies, at the University of Vienna. Scientic cooperations are planned with; the Departments of History, Gender Studies, and Comparative Literature at the University of Vienna, the University of Trier (German Studies), the University of Erlangen, ELTE-University Budapest (German Studies) and Central European University Budapest (Gender Studies).

The basic assumption of the research project Transdifference in German-Language Literature by Austro-Hungarian Migrant Women Writers could be confirmed: due to their experience of otherness as strangers and women, a respectable number of migrant women writers broach the problem of strangeness and socially suppressed marginal groups in a sociocritical way.When selecting the text material, it was taken into account whether stereotypical fictional characters like the young gipsy girl or the old Jew or the Bohemian servant girl correspond to literary conventions or undermine them. The main focus was on literary constructed moments of transdifference, i.e. scenes in which the protagonist defies the boundaries of social belongings (relating to generation, confession, profession, gender, language, class etc.) and behaves against all social expectations. This might be the case with love across all boundaries of class or culture, an act of solidarity, or the moral condemnation of ones own ranks. The respective political attitude aims, on the one hand, at promoting the basic values of democracy, i.e. individual freedom, right to self-determination and to equal treatment. On the other hand, the texts express positions within discourses that were socially significant at that time, such as feminism, labour movement, or pacifism. Texts of transdifferent quality often question the hegemonic position of the German-Austrian, the Roman-Catholic, of aristocracy and bourgeoisie in Austro-Hungary as well as patriarchal order. They thus constitute counter-discourses.A systematic database that has been installed as interactive platform comprises over 200 migrant women writers (http://www.univie.ac.at/transdifferenz/). It shows the wide range of women writers and their works and depicts the large number of female writers whose names were then well-known to a large audience, but have fallen into oblivion since. The literary canon should thus be revised.New leading questions deriving from such research fields as cultural studies, postcolonialism, sociology, gender studies and xenology were successfully applied to historical fiction. This leads to a new method in text analysis of transdifference that has already proved its worth relating to contemporary texts by which counter-discourses and socio-criticism can easily be made visible, even if they are not perceptible at first sight. This is a general asset for each reading.The results were presented in several international and transdisciplinary conferences. In 2014, the project conference took place at Vienna University, resulting in a publication in 2017 (transcript Verlag). The venia thesis based on the project is in progress.