Performative pop. Faserland (1995) di Christian Kracht

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.