Üble Dinge

The writings of Paulus Hochgatterer are characterized by a fine-grained realism, often inscrutable plots, and a wealth of allusion - as well as an immense number of things, in the most concrete sense: material objects. They belong to the characters of these texts and serve as items of equipment, as tools, fashion items, lucky charms, weapons. What`s remarkable is the strong presence of these otherwise so discreet things in the author`s texts, the high detail of description and designation, often including their brand names. These things, presumed secondary matter, not only receive a striking amount of attention (from the text as well as its protagonists); they also, instead of being just available, develop a life of their own: They influence the people around them, they carry various meanings, sometimes these tools turn into obstacles. In the course of the last two hundred years, objects of this kind have been intensively researched: by ethnologists, theorists in the marxist tradition, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, mostly under the notion of the fetish. The fetish constitutes a category of objects to which man has an irrational, or, with Hartmut Böhme: `corrupted` relation, be it in the realm of religion, production and consumption, or sexuality. In manyfold ways, Hochgatterer`s texts allude to these discussions and traditions (with an emphasis on psychoanalytic theories of fetishism). A closer look on these fictionalized objects reveals two things: It is exactly these unobtrusive things on the margins of the plot lines that point towards the texts central secrets. Also, the author`s texts can be read as commentary on how to interpret, maybe to revalue these corrupted object relations today, decades after the discussions about them started to fade: if life without these suspicious, adored, beloved objects is possible - and if this is something to wish for in the first place.