Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.17234/ZGB.31.7

Foreign, Alien, and Extraterritorial. And Yet Similar? Questions for a Contemporary Discourse with Reference to Kafka, Camus, and Chamisso

Wolfgang Müller-Funk ; Vienna, Austria

Abstract

The connection between border, alterity, and language in Waldenfels’ latest study on phenomenology and psychoanalysis is the starting point of this paper. The paper outlines the narrative logic of three literary texts in which various moments of the Alien and Alteritarian overlap, and a basic impulse of the Alien emerges vividly. In all three texts, the protagonists – Albert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl, Franz Kafka’s Karl Roßmann, and Albert Camus’ Meursault – are characterized by the disruption, discontinuation, or neutralization of their social roles. Each of the forms of the Alien is linked to a shadowed, but at times also explicitly named, political context.

Keywords

the Alien; Albert von Chamisso; Franz Kafka; Karl Roßmann; Albert Camus; phenomenology

Hrčak ID:

289498

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/289498

Publication date:

29.12.2022.

Article data in other languages: german

Visits: 354 *