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“Knives Made of Letters” and Words “On a Shaky Foundation”: Flight, Asylum-Seeking and Language Reflection in Die Auswandernden by Peter Waterhouse and Nanne Meyer
Abstract
The article analyses the concept of language in Die Auswandernden (2016) by Austrian writer Peter Waterhouse (b. 1956) and the German visual artist Nanne Meyer (b. 1953) referring to Waterhouse’s formal strategies. In his text Waterhouse explores the theme of language in the context of forced migration. He highlights the relationships between language, knowledge, and action, subjecting to critical analysis the language of Austrian legal documents concerning foreigners, which, in his opinion, is only seemingly objective. The language of foreign law is contrasted with the language of literature. The literary “mode of attentive word usage”, which Waterhouse considers distinct from everyday language, is analogized with the “mode of attentive word usage” characterizing the speech of Media, an immigrant woman learning German. By intertwining the lives of Media and the anonymous Austrian narrator, Waterhouse showcases how language allows them to approach the existential dimension of their experience and enables its adequate description.
Keywords:
Peter Waterhouse, Nanne Meyer, contemporary Austrian literature, reflection on language, literary representations of forced migrationDetails
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
