Trauma and Terrorism: The Problem of Violence in the Work of Anne Duden
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Anne Duden’s representation of violence poses problems for the feminist critic analysing the constructions of a female writing subject. On the one hand Duden is explicitly concerned with the trauma of recent German history and of violence against women; on the other hand her poetological works present writing itself as violent, as an act of ‘terrorism’ which is fundamentally in conflict with life, especially life as a woman. This paper explores the representation of violence and images of abjection in relation to language and subjectivity in ‘Übergang’. It relates this discussion to the elaboration of an uncompromising modernist aesthetic in Duden’s more recent work, in which the theme of suffering coincides with the ‘extremism’ of writing in sometimes disturbing ways, as Duden confronts her readers with the violent legacy of German identity.