| dc.description.abstract | Kracht’s first novel is about a trip through Germany. The first-person narrator, a semialcoholic
young man belonging to the upper class, travels from the north to the south of
the country; he spends his time going to parties and nightclubs, getting more and more
confused. In his “performance” he mentions numerous brands of consumer goods –
clothes, cars, liquors, but also butter, yogurt, stick ice creams – and names of pop-rock
bands. Kracht, who is one of the new archivists mentioned by Baßler, initiates with
this novel the new German pop literature. Drawing on some theoretical perspectives
on performativity and literature (Derrida, Culler), the present work brings together
the categories of pop and performativity in order to look at what are here identified as
performative aspects in Faserland, namely: 1. the iteration of various brand names and
pop culture features, which acts as a “citation of norms” – the narrator does things with
words (Austin) and in so doing he constructs a generational and social identity; 2. the
use of specific linguistic expressions and textual strategies to narrate the vicissitudes
of the protagonist, which makes them appear as events happening here and now in
front of the reader-spectator’s eyes and whose effect is a narration with the immediacy
of a dramatic monologue; 3. the implicit invitation to a multimedial and performative
reception of the text, one which includes, as part of the act of reading, the search on
the internet for the pictures and music mentioned in the novel. | en_US |
