The "German Illusion"

Germany and Jewish-German Motifs in Hélène Cixous’s Late Work

Professor or Dr. Olivier Morel (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

288 Seiten

2023
Bloomsbury Academic (Verlag)
979-8-7651-0737-9 (ISBN)

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Examines Jewish-German “tropes” in Hélène Cixous’s oeuvre and life and their impact on her work as a feminist, poet, and playwright.

Hélène Cixous is a poet, philosopher, and activist known worldwide for her manifesto on Écriture feminine (feminine writing) and for her influential literary texts, plays, and essays. While the themes were rarely present in her earlier writings, Germany and Jewish-German family figures and topics have significantly informed most of Cixous’s late works. Born in Algeria in June 1937, she grew up with a mother who had escaped Germany after the rise of Nazism and a grandmother who fled the racial laws of the Third Reich in 1938. In her writing, Cixous refines the primitive scene of a “German” upbringing in French-occupied colonial, antisemitic Algeria.

Scholar and filmmaker Olivier Morel delves into the signs and influences that “Germany,” “German,” and “Osnabrück” have exerted over Cixous’s work. Featuring an exclusive interview with Hélène Cixous and stills from their travel together to Osnabrück in Morel’s 2018 documentary, Ever, Rêve, Hélène Cixous, Morel’s The “German Illusion” examines the unique literary meditation on the Holocaust sustained throughout her later texts.

Morel helps us to understand an uncannily original oeuvre that embodies the complexities of modernity’s genocidal history in a new way.

Olivier Morel is Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame, USA. He is also a filmmaker, with cinematic work receiving prizes in international film festivals, and author of three books including Berlin légendes ou la mémoire des décombres (2013) and a graphic novel, Walking Wounded: Uncut stories from Iraq (2015).

Introduction: “An Originary Exile”

I. I call Germany: The Landline (1916-2016)
1. The first telephone
2. The dream call
3. The last phone call
II. “Os, na, brück”: The Capital of Memory (1933-1935)
1. Ruins and remembrance: from “Os, na, brück” to “Rom’”
2. Osnabrück the instrument of Peace: “recorder,” recorder
3. Remembrer-remember: a detour to Montaigne’s Tower… and its ruins
(image)
4. “Je suis, nous sommes le 23 octobre 1935”. The October 23, 1935 picture
5. N’ai-je pas vu (Have I not seen…) la neige pas vue (…the snow not seen)?
III. An Originary Move: The Move of the Origin (1938)
1. Omi was in Osnabrück…
2. “Bericht”
3. “Etwas”
4. Epilog
IV. Zugehör: The Jewish-German psyche
1. “Envoûté,” delirium
2. “We”
3. Epilog: Zugehör

Conclusion: Frauenprotest

Afterword: A filmed-interrupted interview with Hélène Cixous
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	28.11.2023
Reihe/Serie	New Directions in German Studies
Mitarbeit	Herausgeber (Serie): Prof Imke Meyer
Zusatzinfo	33 b&w illustrations
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 216 mm
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Spezielle Soziologien
ISBN-13	979-8-7651-0737-9 / 9798765107379
Zustand	Neuware