This essay discusses the phenomenon of “aggressive localism” in literary works by Andrzej Stasiuk and Jurij
Andruchovyč. The former is characterized by anti-urbanism, underground aesthetic, and regional determinism.
The Wende – as the revolutionary events of 1989/91 in East and Central Europe are commonly, if
controversially, referred to in German – is used as metaphorical pivot. Across this rupture the city serves as the
dominant frame of reference for (self-) interpretations of underground art, defined as a specifically all-embracing
form of expression that seeks to subvert “official” claims about the city, i. e. spatial hierarchies. The city thus
connects the marginally (sub-) urban with political dissent in the form of social nonconformity. Stasiuk and
Andruchovyč intensely employ literary means derived from aesthetic patterns of underground art. Their
characters envisage urban solitude and death, post-multicultural fissures in the (great) city. Yet, both narrators
depict “their” respective city as a metropolitan village, as a place of a more local, even rural, of indeed pagan
profile. At the same time, they use these patterns to praise the East Central European countryside as a “slow
space”. In such manner, they appropriate a pre-Wende aesthetic strategy in order to produce structural aggressive
fantasies of a re-ruralized “East”.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:91236 |
| Date | 03 May 2024 |
| Creators | Kliems, Alfrun |
| Publisher | Akademie-Verlag |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | German |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 0044-3506, 2196-7016, 10.1524/slaw.2011.0016 |
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