(University of Oregon, 2020-02-27) Zabel, Verena; Librett, Jeffrey
Arthur Schnitzler’s novella Fräulein Else has often been juxtaposed with Freud’s Bruchstücke einer Hysterie-Analyse, and both can be read as an endeavour to ‘give voice’ to the hysteric through representation. This representation, however, depends on someone speaking for someone else, and thus, the ‘hysteric’ herself has no voice of her own. Juxtaposing this with Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian helps shed light on a different way of communication and understanding, one that does not rely on someone speaking for someone else but allows for the silence of the silenced to be understood on their own term. I draw on Mieke Bal’s narratology and Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern speak?” in order to analyse and describe how representation of the ‘other’ and the possibility of communication with the ‘other’ is presented differently in these three texts and what we can learn from them.
