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Band 49 · Heft 2 Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik / Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik / Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 \ 72070 Tübingen \ Germany Tel. +49 (0) 7071 97 97 0 info@narr.de \ www.narr.de \ narr.digital Author Guidelines All submissions undergo double-blind peer review. To prepare your submissions please refer to the AAA style sheet available at h�ps: / / elibrary.narr.digital/ journal/ aaa Please submit your contribu�ons to: AAA-editors@narr.de To enquire about publishing a special issue please contact: AAA-editors@narr.de. For subscrip�on informa�on please contact: abo@narr.de. Editors / Herausgeber: innen Alexander Onysko, Ulla Ratheiser, Werner Delanoy Editorial Assistant / Redak�on Eva Triebl Editorial board (alphabe�cal) / Mitherausgeber: innen (alphabe�sch): Sibylle Baumbach Marcus Callies Marta Degani Alwin Fill Walter Grünzweig Sarah Herbe Walter Hölbling Julia Hü�ner Allan James Cornelia Klecker Ursula Kluwick Benjamin Kremmel Andreas Mahler Chris�an Mair Georg Marko Frauke Matz Simone Pfenninger Peter Siemund Ute Smit Laurenz Volkmann Max von Blanckenburg Werner Wolf Libe García Zarranz Founding editor / Erstherausgeber Bernhard Ke�emann Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Band 49 · Heft 2 Table of Contents Articles “The utter nightmare of us students.” Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts Rachel Pole ..........................................................................................................149 The body as a medium in the medium. Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship Sarah Back ..........................................................................................................167 Balkanism in Aleksandar Hemon’s The Question of Bruno (2000) and Nowhere Man (2002). Western representations of the Balkans and its people Nina Bostič Bishop................................................................................................191 Faking authenticity. Authenticity as intermedial performance in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000) and the Teleplays (2019) Elisabeth Frank.....................................................................................................211 How large is the impact of English on Present-day German? An empirical investigation of the Neologismenwörterbuch online Ulrich Busse .........................................................................................................237 Reviews Hans Sauer † & Alessia Bauer (Eds.), To Instruct and to Entertain - Medieval Didactic Dialogues. The Old English Prose Solomon and Saturn, the Middle English Master of Oxford’s Catechism, and their reconstructed Latin source; the Old English Adrian and Ritheus, and the Old Icelandic Dialogue between a Pupil and his Master (Middle English Texts 67). Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 2023. Christopher Blake Shedd .......................................................................................257 Sandten, Cecile, Indrani Karmakar, and Oliver von Knebel Doeberitz (Eds.), Contemporary Indian English Literature: Contexts - Authors - Genres - Model Analyses. (Narr Studienbücher Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, 2023. Christoph Singer ...................................................................................................261 Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Ein alphabetisches Autor: innenverzeichnis der Jahrgänge 1 (1976) bis 45 (2020) finden Sie unter https: / / elibrary.narr.digital/ journal/ aaa. An alphabetical list of authors who published in volumes 1 (1976) to 45 (2020) can be found at https: / / elibrary.narr.digital/ journal/ aaa. 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KG Dischingerweg 5, 72070 Tübingen eMail: info@narr.de Internet: www.narr.de Die in der Zeitschrift veröffentlichten Beiträge sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Alle Rechte, insbesondere das der Übersetzung in fremde Sprachen, sind vorbehalten: Kein Teil dieser Zeitschrift darf ohne schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlages in irgendeiner Form - durch Fotokopie, Mikrofilm oder andere Verfahren - reproduziert oder in eine von Maschinen, insbesondere von Datenverarbeitungsanlagen, verwendbare Sprache übertragen werden. Printed in Germany ISSN 0171-5410 ISBN 978-3-381-12741-2 “The utter nightmare of us students” Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts Rachel Pole I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? - Theodore Roethke, “The Waking” Reading challenging literary texts often results in feelings of confusion, frustration, and alienation in students. The dynamics between students, instructors, and difficult literary texts are both challenging to understand and of great importance because of how such engagements can enhance cognitive and emotional growth. By analyzing a student-created podcast which aims to demystify complex works such as those by Shakespeare, this paper examines the strategies employed by the students-creators to overcome challenges presented by text. It uses a combination of video recordings, transcripts, and interviews to investigate what the students found meaningful as they reinterpreted their reading experiences for the creation of the podcast episode. By focusing on not just the product of the student podcast, but also the process in the form of the experiences, strategies, and appeals they relied on and deployed, this paper attempts to contribute to an understanding of these complex dynamics. 1. Introduction In the study of language, engaging with literary texts is one of the most challenging tasks a student might confront. A text can be challenging on many different levels, sometimes simultaneously. The language of the literature might be archaic, abstract, or full of jargon. The plot might be nonlinear or slow. Characters might take actions that are seemingly inexplicable or distasteful. This small sampling of readerly troubles is only the beginning. The instructor’s role in this engagement is likewise difficult to AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Band 49 · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2024-0008 Rachel Pole 148 navigate; too much guidance can become dictatorial or coddling, while too little is an act of instructional abandonment. The opportunities for alienation, student from text, teacher from student, are many. If we take these recognitions as a starting point, two questions quickly arise. The first is why bother with challenging literary texts in the first place, when other, more accessible options may present many of the same possibilities for enrichment. Multiple answers are possible; the response most pertinent to this paper addresses the nature of difficulty and confusion and the emotional responses they produce. Instructors have long seen that engaging with a difficult concept, be it expressed in words, mathematical symbols, or sounds, can lead to better student outcomes long after the initial encounter. Research has supported these impressions, with multiple studies finding that students who persist in the face of difficulty perform better overall in academic settings (Meyer & Turner 2006: 381). In terms of literacy, engagement with a text’s difficulties can enhance reading skills at large, leading to a more profound understanding of not just the text itself but also the skills and strategies used to understand the text (Salvatori & Donahue 2005: 3). Further, the emotional impact of successfully confronting difficulty can be a profoundly positive experience for the learner. All reading, to some extent, can be seen as “a mode of negotiating uncertainty; ” when the text is particularly challenging, the uncertainty is increased (Allen 2012: 108). Engaging with that uncertainty leads to a “flexibility of mind” that not only benefits the student’s performance, but also positively affects their selfconception (Salvatori & Donahue 2005: 3; Allen 2012: 108). Another way of thinking about the broader benefits of reading challenging texts is implicit in Poletti et al’s concepts of readerly hospitality and reader resilience. Building on Attridge’s definition of the former, Poletti et al. argue that successfully reading a challenging text requires a student to not just tolerate the text’s otherness, but to welcome it. Doing so requires courage and openness to experience; not being able to understand during an initial reading and persisting nonetheless requires resilience (Poletti et al. 2016: 241- 242). These qualities of courage, openness, and resilience are clearly desirable inside and outside of the classroom. Thus, we can see that engagement with difficult texts has the potential to positively influence a learner’s performance, skill level, self-image, and habit of mind. The second question arises from the first. If we recognize that including difficult texts in a curriculum presents both significant benefits and challenges, then instructors must consider how best to support students in their reading. Done poorly, the experience can leave a student feeling alienated not only from the assigned text, but from all literature and resistant to future reading. In order to avoid this outcome, the instructor must consider not only their own lesson plans, but also the student’s experience, both emotional and cognitive, of engaging with a text. The student who is negotiating uncertainty has been and should continue to be studied, not only Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 149 in terms of performance or outcomes, but in terms of experience. The problem here is, of course, that this is difficult to do. The instructor can mediate the text in the classroom, can facilitate discussion, can assess and guide and course-correct but none of these can be successful without understanding what it is students feel and think in those moments when they must rely on their own resources to confront the challenge. As Poletti et al. observe, the role of affect in the encounter between student and literature receives less attention than cognitive processes (2016: 239). This understanding of affect is naturally difficult to universalize, but research points to several factors that play an outsized role in many students’ experiences of reading difficult texts. One is the notion of control. Pekrun et al. found that the perception of control, or lack thereof, in learning is profoundly activating for student emotions (2010: 38). The other factor, according to Pekrun et al, that occupies a place of great importance for student response is subjective importance, or value (2006: 586). The student’s perception of positive value for both the learning activities and outcomes is essential in the production of positive achievement emotions like hope and pride; a perceived lack of value can lead to hopelessness, shame, or boredom. In other words, students must have a sense of both agency and importance in their learning in order to produce positive emotions about learning. How to create an environment in which students are not only given control and valuable work, but also are able to perceive them as such, is essential in creating a positive learning environment. Making control and value visible to the learner is, naturally, the task of the instructor. It is important to note that none of the frameworks mentioned above advocate for avoiding negative emotions while reading; in many cases, it is recognized as inevitable (Poletti et al. 2016: 234). Identifying which negative emotions arise, what causes them, and which tools can be used by both the instructor and the learner is rather the project at hand. This article is based on the following observations: engaging with challenging texts is immensely valuable for students but difficult for the instructor to execute well. An important starting point for the instructor seeking to do this is to understand the student’s emotional, as well as cognitive, experience of navigating the challenging text. Students themselves are the source of potential answers, particularly advanced students who already have many of the resources necessary for reflectively and analytically engaging with texts. As Chick et al. found in their study of teaching students to understand and appreciate complexity in literary texts, many students are “poised to move their readings to a more advanced level with…guidance and support” (2009: 407). Turning to students for answers as to where to begin with this project, as the following article does, centers their experience in order to learn how the instructor can address issues related to control, value, and emotional response to help students successfully engage with difficult texts. Rachel Pole 150 2. Context Course description This study focuses on student output created during an advanced listening and speaking course (Listening and Speaking 3, referred to as LS3 going forward) at the English Department (Institut für Anglistik) of the Universität Innsbruck in the winter semester of 2022-2023. Most participants in LS3 are enrolled in either the teacher training program or the English studies program and are in their fourth or fifth semester of study. In order to take the course, they must have successfully completed two previous listening and speaking courses and several other language proficiency courses. By the end of LS3, successful students must be able to perform at a C1/ C2 level in both listening and speaking, according to the Common European Framework (Council of Europe 2020: 48, 62). I designed and taught the continuous assessment assignment described below, which, along with both a listening and speaking exam, must be completed to pass the course. The four students whose work is examined below were informed, after they decided on a topic, that I was interested in studying their process and results and were asked to video-record their meetings. I collected their notes and performed interviews after their semester grades were released, in order to keep my research as separate as possible from the course-bound assessment. The student group Students in LS3 self-selected their groups of approximately three to four students. The group whose work is studied below was comprised of four undergraduate students, all of whom were native German speakers. Three members of the group were teacher trainees, and one member was studying English language, literature, and culture. All four students were taking LS3 for the first time and passed the course at the end of the semester. One student was male and the other three female, which roughly corresponds to the demographics of most courses at the English department. The assignment As part of the continuous assessment of LS3, students were required to create an approximately 20-minute-long podcast episode, the first of an imagined series. Students spent the first few weeks of the semester listening to professionally produced podcasts across a range of genres and topics to familiarize themselves with both existing concepts and the language used within. Students self-sorted into groups, which were then tasked with pitching potential topics, writing a script, and finally producing a sound file at the end of the semester. The purpose of the project was to expose Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 151 students to a range of styles, registers, accents, and genres through listening to podcasts and then have them demonstrate C1/ C2 level competence in speaking by creating their own. The project also fostered the development of skills related to use of technology, group work, and research. The episode Within the first few weeks of the semester, the group developed a series concept wherein the hosts would examine difficult literary texts and their authors as a means of increasing motivation, decreasing anxiety, and facilitating understanding in their target audience, students less advanced than themselves. The podcast series was named My Dear, We Don’t Give a Damn, in reference to the final line of Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind (1936), and was intended to convey both the hosts’ irreverent tone and the imagined lack of interest on the part of the audience. As designed, each episode would convince the listener to “give a damn” about a chosen author’s body of work through providing context, drawing connections to the present, and acknowledging, in a playful manner, the indifference and/ or anxiety that the reader might face when assigned a daunting literary text. The group quickly decided to treat the work of Shakespeare in their pilot episode, which they entitled “Hamlet.” All four students had read one or more plays by Shakespeare and had vivid memories of their experiences which informed what they included in the episode. The podcast episode, at 20-minutes-long, was divided into a brief introduction, historical and biographical information, and a summary of Hamlet. Modernday connections, “fun facts,” and humorous comments dotted the transitions between each section. Each student took on a different role throughout the episode, leading to a recording with a moderator, “literature guru,” historian, and “fun fact guy” (“Hamlet,” 2023). In creating an entertaining guide to be listened to before reading, the student-creators’ goal was not only to remove anxiety and boredom from the reading process, but also to open the door for the opposite. In creating moments of humor, identification, and connection, the student-creators, as we shall see, plumbed their own reading experiences. By examining both their product and their process, I hope to shed some light onto a relatively dim, difficult-to-observe corner of the reading experience. When these student-creators reflect on their own challenging reading experiences to guide less experienced students, we can observe not just cognitive strategies for solving a practical problem, but also affective responses and imaginative positions from which to take up a difficult literary text. Rachel Pole 152 3. Methodology In order to examine how the student-creators used their own experience to develop the podcast episode, materials from the student project were gathered and analyzed. These included the episode transcript, the video recording of four online meetings held by the student-creators throughout the semester, written reflections completed by each group-member at the end of the semester, and the sound file. Additionally, I conducted interviews with each of the group members individually after their grades were given. The diversity of materials required several different analytical approaches, which will be detailed below. Transcription and audio file classification The episode transcript and the audio file were rather naturally paired together. Seven types of appeals to the audience were identified through a close reading of the transcript, namely contemporary connections (1), use of slang (2), comparisons/ connections to the present (3), humanizing Shakespeare (4), use of the second person (5), sarcasm and/ or irony (6), and reference to students’ imagined feelings about this topic (7). Instances of each were identified and tallied, in hopes of understanding which methods the student-creators relied on to achieve their purpose. Naturally, there is some overlap between several of the above categories. For example, use of the second person may occur in the same utterance as reference to students’ imagined feelings. In that case, the utterance was classified with both 5 and 7. The video recording of the meetings and written reflections were used to both clarify the research questions of this article and to draft interview questions. A close reading of the meetings and the reflections helped me to understand just how much the student-creators were relying on their own experience of reading Shakespeare to inform their creative decisions. Conducting the interview In writing and conducting the interviews, I employed hierarchical focusing, a technique in which the interview begins with more general questions in an attempt to elicit relevant information with minimal direction. Should this fail to produce sufficient information, the interviewer asks another, more targeted question. This focusing can be repeated until the scope of the question asked is quite narrow (Tomlinson 1989: 165). The interviewer attempts to use the language of the interviewee, and avoid using new terms, to allow the interviewee to lead the introduction of new concepts to the conversation (Tomlinson 1989: 169). This technique was ideal for several reasons, including the relatively narrow scope of the research and the familiarity of the participants with the interviewer. The most significant Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 153 reason for the suitability of hierarchical focusing is that it allows the student-creators space to explore experiences and factors that I could not have anticipated in my questions. Because I was primarily interested in identifying which experiences they deemed useful and how they translated those into a guide for future readers, rather than in specific strategies, emotions, and skills, this technique lent an openness to our discussion that would have otherwise been difficult to achieve while maintaining topic coverage. Definition of terms I relied on several definitions and one taxonomy in my discussion of both the episode and the interviews below. The understanding of confusion used in this paper is derived from Lodge et al’s work on difficulty and confusion in learning. They use the term “cognitive disequilibrium,” drawing on Piaget’s concept of cognitive development, which arises from an imbalance caused by new information conflicting with the learner’s previously held mental schema (Lodge et al. 2018: 6). However, Lodge et al. acknowledge that confusion is not merely a result of cognitive processes, but also emotional ones, as well. Using Pekrun and Stephen’s categorization of confusion as an “epistemic emotion,” Lodge et al. conclude that “confusion can be defined as an affective response that occurs in relation to how people come to know or understand something” (2018: 4). This dual nature of confusion is reflected in how the student-creators discussed both their memories and the podcast episodes, slipping back and forth between describing emotions and cognition, which I will discuss in the findings section. Further, Lodge et al. point out that this disequilibrium can be difficult to identify; it is even more difficult to prevent disequilibrium from turning into boredom or frustration, which are emotions that impede learning (2018: 2). The student-creators, in the interviews, were able to reflect on their own moments of disequilibrium, and, in creating their episode, were attempting to prevent boredom or frustration in their audience. It is significant to note that neither Lodge et al. nor the student-creators discuss preventing confusion itself, which is seen as an inevitable and even productive emotion (Graesser & D’Mello 2012: 241). As also conceived by Pekrun et al, confusion in learning is profoundly activating, alerting the student not only that new information is present, but also that any number of processes may soon be underway (2010: 46). Confusion is the starting point for reexamining previously held schemata, challenging student self-definition, and prompting a search for new learning strategies. The term “activating” is taken from Pekrun’s taxonomy of the so-called achievement emotions. In devising a questionnaire (the Achievement Emotion Questionnaire, or AEQ) to detect student’s emotions while learning, Pekrun et al. created four categories, each containing one to three feelings. They are “positive activating (enjoyment, hope, pride); positive deactivating (relief); negative activating Rachel Pole 154 (anger, anxiety, shame); and negative deactivating (hopelessness, boredom)” (2010: 38, italics in original). These categories, designed along the axes of activation and valence, are useful for examining the way the student-creators talked about their purpose, audiences, and effects the episode elements were meant to inspire. Further, this taxonomy provides a useful rubric through which to understand the student- creators’ comments on their own experiences reading Shakespeare. Limitations The most obvious limitations to the observations contained below is the sample size of four students and the specificity of one project. This paper is designed to look deeply at a small sample size’s work in order to draw conclusions about what students themselves do to find support in encountering challenging texts and what and what they then recommend to other, less advanced students. The small and specific dataset is therefore not a significant hinderance to the larger goal of this article which is to observe and, if possible, take away a deeper understanding of affective response to difficult texts in students. Their purpose in creating the episode is discussed extensively; I determined what that was through the close analysis of the episode and the interviews. Whether or not the podcast was successful in achieving this purpose for the prospective listener is outside of the scope of the research. Another issue is that the student-creators were largely working in their second, and in some cases, third, language. While all were advanced students of English, it was perhaps a constraint at times to the ease and precision of expression in both the podcast episode and the interviews. In the interviews, the fact that I was communicating in my native language and that they were answering in their second or third contributed to the power imbalance already present between an instructor and student. As discussed above, I attempted to address that by using hierarchical focusing and by conducting the interviews after the grade for both the project and the class had been given. I emphasized to the student-creators that their participation in this project was distinct from their performance in the course. 4. Findings Topic, audience, purpose All four student-creators reported quickly arriving on both the broader topic of introducing difficult literature to their fellow students and the first episode’s focus on Shakespeare. In terms of the former decision, this seems to have been inspired by Student 4’s viewing of a YouTube video explaining the Nibelungen Saga in what she described as a “studentor teenagefriendly way” (interview with Student 4, 2023). Shakespeare was chosen Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 155 as the focus for Episode 1 due to a range of reasons. Students 1, 2, and 3 alluded to Shakespeare’s centrality to the English literary canon in that his work “comes to mind when you think about literature” (interview with Student 1, 2023) and that there is “no way in literature to not talk about Shakespeare at least once” (interview with Student 2, 2023). Student 3 discussed this centrality in practical terms, referring to the number of Shakespeare’s works on the English Department’s Reading List exam, wherein all students are tasked with reading a large number of literary works across era, genre, and location in preparation for an oral exam (interview with Student 3, 2023). Here we can see external factors, like Shakespeare’s centrality to the curriculum, contributing value to the project of reading his plays. In Pekrun et al’s conception, this establishes conditions in which hope (“I will be able to read this.”) and pride (“I was able to read this.”) can flourish (2006: 586). In addition to importance, Student 1 also raised the other governing factor in the student-creators’ decision-making, that of difficulty. He identified Shakespeare as one of the “hardest to understand” writers and further imagined that difficulty as an impediment to learning. He imagined a teacher simply assigning Hamlet to be read at home, with the result that “…nobody will understand…and if they do, they won’t remember anything. So yeah, I think trying to find an interesting way of instructing or just getting the idea across [was our goal]” (interview with Student 1, 2023). In his conception, exposing the students to Shakespeare’s work without adequate support will negatively affect both motivation and information-retention. This observation is supported by research that providing timely feedback or support before, during and after a challenging task is essential (Lodge et al. 2018: 4). The student-creators wanted to produce some of that extra-classroom support, one whose relevance and utility would be bolstered by their decision to deal with what they perceived as one of the most challenging and important writers in English literature. The imagined audience for the episode was very close to the student- creators’ own identities, namely high school or university students in the English classroom. Interestingly, when the student-creators discussed this broader audience, they almost completely ignored issues specific to fellow EFL learners. In fact, in development meetings and in the realization of the podcast, the student-creators elided many issues that one would imagine relevant to EFL learners. It is my opinion that they did so because they imagined the instructor in the classroom helping students with the language while reading the plays; in contrast, their podcast episode was to be consumed as a kind of pre-reading exercise that focuses more on general information. Student 1 described the imagined identification between the hosts and the listeners, and the general nature of the information as “really relatable… it’s just probably easier to hear from other peers that struggled with the exact same problems other than adults that are kind of, you know, Rachel Pole 156 probably historians or people that studied Shakespeare in depth” (interview, 2023). As seen here, the student-creators imagined their audience was composed of only students. While three of the four were teacher-trainees, they did not conceptualize their episode as material to be used by the instructor in the classroom, but rather as a resource for the motivated but intimidated student looking online for support from their fellow students. In the interviews, Students 2, 3, and 4 focused on the compulsory nature of their listeners’ reading, the emotions the assignment inspired in them, and how the tone and content of the podcast episode could address the more negative aspects of those feelings. This is, in some ways, the other side of Shakespeare’s importance, or value, in the study of English literature. His work is inevitable, leaving the student with little control, which could lead to anxiety, hopelessness or shame (Pekrun et al. 2006: 585). Before writing a script, the students discussed in several meetings their desire to establish a humorous, light tone that would keep their audience engaged and demystify the Bard. Student 3, who throughout the interview often spoke about reading and learning in terms of emotion, imagined the following transformation upon listening to the episode. “I would feel a bit of confusion, maybe anxiety…Maybe a certain sense of anticipation...Then, a view [that] we’ve tried to [present] the topic with the fun facts. Also a sense of calmness in the sense that, oh, so he [Shakespeare] isn’t actually that big broad scary topic, but he’s actually quite fun to interact with” (interview with Student 3, 2023). When asked to elaborate on the distinction between anxiety and anticipation, she responded that “anxiety is…being scared and dreading the interaction…and anticipation is connected to excitement and wanting to know more about the topic” (interview with Student 3, 2023). The richness and variation of emotion in this imagined encounter with Shakespeare and podcast episode is notable. The student- creators were closely identified with their audience, having been there themselves mere years earlier, and were able to articulate conflicting emotions. This acknowledgment that intense, contradictory emotions coexist while reading is borne out by research, particularly in Pekrun et al’ work in developing the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (2010) and in several studies measuring student emotions (Meyer & Turner 2006; Graesser & D’Mello 2012; McBride & Sweeney 2019). Podcast elements and their origins In imagining an audience similar to themselves, the student-creators drew extensively on their own experiences reading Shakespeare. Within the interviews, their comments fell into three categories, namely reading in high school, independently, and at university. In all three categories, the interviewees commented on instruction, text difficulty, and learning strategies. As referenced in the introduction, this created a fertile environment for reflection. The elements included in the podcast, which were informed by Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 157 their experiences, can be categorized into content, in the form of discrete sections, and strategies, which run throughout the episode. The content sections include historical context, “fun facts,” which will be examined together, and the summary of Hamlet. The strategies are slang and direct address to the audience, which often took the form of the acknowledgement of possible audience emotions around reading Shakespeare, and will be addressed in a separate section below. a. Historical context After a brief introduction, the historical context was designed to situate the reader in Shakespeare’s era in a brief and amusing manner. This section overlaps significantly with what the student-creators called “fun facts,” which usually took the form of contemporary connections. Students 1 and 2 both mentioned their lack of interest in history, while also acknowledging the necessity of understanding something of the historical situation in which a text was written. In the podcast, they attempted to help their listener understand historical context through contemporary connections, such as mentioning that Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, shares a name with a contemporary actress. In the interview, Student 1 explained this decision: “I am not really interested in history because I kind of don’t get the point because it’s the past. It doesn’t really change anything to our daily lives now. So to have a modern or…a contemporary reference to your daily life nowadays, I think that helps you appreciate that the writer had this kind of influence or still has this kind of influence. It gives me a purpose, I guess” (interview with Student 1, 2023). This statement tracks with McBride and Sweeney’s notion that it is important for students to be able to understand the purpose of reading when the text is required and not independently chosen by the reader. Here, Student 1 indicates that motivation on the part of the reader can be increased by connecting the historical context, and therefore the author and his text, to the contemporary reader. Student 2 noted the absence of those very connections in their high school reading, stating “…there wasn’t anything outside of literature connected to the poems or the short stories or anything we treated in the classroom. So I felt like as we did literature in school, it was just disconnected from anything else we did” (interview with Student 2, 2023). In reflecting on this experience, Student 2 is able to correct this mistake in the inclusion of many real-world and contemporary connections in the podcast episode. It should be acknowledged that the connection cited above, of the two Anne Hathaways, is a rather superficial one, mostly likely designed to make the listener laugh or express surprise, rather than ponder Shakespeare’s continuing relevance. However, the student-creators thought deeply about this problem of the potential alienation on the part of the reader due to the historical remove and included other more meaningful connections elsewhere in the episode. This sensitivity is, in part, due to direct experience. Rachel Pole 158 Student 4 reported that, in reading literature in high school, “the teacher knew that reading was good for your English and you had to do the reading. But she did not put a lot of effort into these questions or the choosing of the book. And the students felt just the same way that they just had to get it over with” (interview with Student 4, 2023). This observation tracks with Pekrun’s theory of control-value, wherein the achievement emotion activated here was boredom, a negative deactivating feeling that can be detrimental to the reading process (2010: 38). Student 4 also cited the lack of discussion of literature in high school classes as creating the sense that the texts were beneficial in an isolated, difficult-to-understand way that did little to engage either the students or the instructor (interview with Student 4, 2023). In contrast, all four student-creators credited at least one university class with helping them to understand how a text can be read within its historical context. Despite citing initial challenges reading The Tempest in a literature seminar, Student 4 stated “…we talked about it and I really got into the minds of the authors who lived hundreds of years ago…. And this caused me to just get to know people who lived that long ago…and that sometimes even these people…thought the same way or were even more modern than we are” (interview with Student 4, 2023). In the podcast episode, Student 4 used the terms “dead and dusty” in both the introduction and the conclusion of the podcast to set up the episode’s content in opposition to “standard” history. In the interview, she explained the inclusion of these terms was “because we pictured the students who have this image of Shakespeare who’s just dead for a very long time and not really they’re not able to relate to them. So we wanted them [the authors] to become alive again” (interview with Student 4, 2023). This desire to resurrect Shakespeare in the minds of his young, contemporary readers explains some of the humorous comments (“a ladies’ man,” as said in podcast episode by Student 4); by peppering the listener with these funny, flippant comments, the student-creators want to create a living image of the Bard. Further, the student-creators were priming the listeners for more thought-provoking connections to come. While both of the following two examples fall outside of the section dealing with historical context, one can see how they are clearly part of the student-creator’s attempt to deal with relevance. The episode is light on historical facts, dates, and figures, and instead dedicates more space to “giving purpose,” as Student 1 put it, to the reading of texts produced in the distant past. The first example is a brief discussion of the 1994 animated Disney movie The Lion King, which is a retelling of the plot of Hamlet, accompanied by exclamations of surprise and agreement by the hosts. Again, in the interviews, Student 3 explained this in terms of helping students to understand Shakespeare’s tragedy: “If you have that sense of, oh, wow, even The Lion King is inspired by Shakespeare’s story or even other 2000s movies are inspired by Shakespeare’s stories. So Shakespeare isn’t just some author back in the 16th century, but Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 159 he’s still in a lot of movies” (interview with Student 3, 2023). The omnipresence of Shakespeare’s work in contemporary culture, in the student- creators’ conception, was a powerful engine of not just motivation, but understanding. It seems as if, without explicitly saying so, the student-creators think that if students can identify certain universal themes or plots in Shakespeare’s work, such as power and familial tension as in Hamlet, they can find their way into the text. The second example of a more thoughtprovoking connection also speaks to the timelessness of Shakespeare’s work, focusing on his language. The Selena Gomez song “Kill Em With Kindness” is referenced as an example of the ubiquity of Shakespeare’s language even in the works of a contemporary pop singer (Gomez, 2015). The student-creators discuss not only the sheer number of Shakespearean expressions used today, but also marvel at the brevity and wit of the paradoxical expression in the podcast episode. Here, they are making another implicit appeal to their audience; not only are the themes of Shakespeare’s work still relevant today, but the language is timeless as well. b. Plot summary Another essential element of the podcast was the summary of Hamlet, a play all of them had read, delivered as a humorous monologue by Speaker 3 in the final third of the episode. Several of the student-creators discussed their previous experience with using summary as a tool for comprehending a difficult text, Shakespeare in particular. Student 1 reported positively on a high school media project in which he and groupmates were assigned to present the plot of Hamlet in a creative way. “[I]t was really nice for me because I’ll probably never forget Hamlet’s plot because it kind of got drilled into us.... But I like the way the teacher did it because I like to do assignments like these where you have to do a lot more work, but it’s just fun” (interview with Student 1, 2023) He also reported that they read an adapted version of Hamlet, “in an easier language [sic],” which furthered his understanding. His sense of accomplishment and enjoyment (“more work, but it’s just fun”) lead to a feeling of mastery (“I’ll probably never forget”) (interview with Student 1, 2023). In their work on enhancing learning, Bjork and Bjork found that when students are asked to generate information, rather than simply looking it up, they are much more likely to retain that information, particularly when the generation is repeated several times (2011: 61). Essentially, Student 1 is correct in that he probably will never forget the plot of Hamlet; in retrieving that information for this high school project, and then again for the podcast episode, he has cemented its place in his memory. Student 3, when discussing her positive experience reading The Taming of the Shrew in high school, explicitly stated that knowing the plot beforehand increased her appreciation of a theater performance thereof. She described this in contrast to some of her class- Rachel Pole 160 mates who “found it [the performance] boring…But I think for many, reading the play beforehand was also giving it away…they wanted to be surprised or just go there and not know the ending…but I didn’t mind” (interview with Student 3, 2023). Here, she is tacitly acknowledging reading for purposes or pleasures other than plot; seen from a different light, the knowledge of the plot facilitates understanding and enjoying the text during the performance. Summary continued to be an important tool for the student-creators after high school. Student 1, who characterizes himself as a highly motivated “English nerd,” decided to read Macbeth independently in preparation for a university course (interview with Student 1, 2023). After quickly encountering confusion, he searched online for a brief summary, one that did not include many details, which he felt he would easily forget. Returning to Macbeth, he felt he not only understood the play, but enjoyed it as well. He employed the same strategy in subsequent reading of Shakespeare during a university course. As described by Clifford in his work on risktaking while learning, Student 1 seems to be showing the characteristics of an academic risk-taker in that he tolerates failure, is capable of using various strategies in the face of difficulty, and prefers challenging tasks (1991: 264). Similarly, when Student 3, who characterizes herself as a passionate reader, encountered difficulties in reading Shakespeare, she looked for plot summaries online. She describes this experience as a journey through different emotions: “My initial reaction was, okay, great [sarcastic]. I’m reading one of the most famous authors and I can’t get it and I had a lot of issues with the words...And then the story, I couldn’t follow along because of those uncertainties…and I then went on to Google and tried to find a good summary of the book…and it made much more sense” (interview with Student 3, 2023). The experience of not understanding, in combination with her appreciation for Shakespeare’s importance, seems to have momentarily challenged her conception of herself. However, her motivation and resourcefulness led her to consult summaries online which then allowed her to return to the text successfully. For both Student 1 and 3, experiencing a challenging moment in a subject they considered themselves proficient in left a lasting impact. It forced them to reconsider their “readerly identities,” to use McBride and Sweeney’s term, and thus helped define the strategies they implicitly recommend to other students by including them in the podcast episode (2019: 56). These experiences in and out of various classrooms clearly informed the student-creators’ decision to include a summary of Hamlet in the episode. In all interviews, summary was discussed as a tool to further understanding, tacitly acknowledging that challenging texts such as Hamlet require not only resourcefulness on the part of the reader but also an awareness that such texts demand various skills and an awareness of reading for different purposes. It seems that the students agree that developing an understanding of the plot does not have to only come from reading the text; plot Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 161 comprehension can be outsourced by watching videos or reading summaries online. Then the text can be returned to for a close examination of language, an understanding of character, or a more detailed familiarity with the plot. In providing a summary, the student-creators set out to build a foundation upon which the listeners could build deeper understanding. c. Slang and direct address Throughout both the summary and the historical context sections of the podcast, the student-creators relied on two strategies to create an engaging tone that would appeal to their audience, namely slang and direct address to their audience. The student-creators deployed both of the strategies for two purposes simultaneously. First, given that their purpose was to inspire “excitement,” or if not possible “engagement,” because, in the words of Student 2, entertainment was nearly as important as education throughout (interview with Student 2, 2023). A swift pace, created by the focus on general information mentioned in the section on summary above, and humor, created using slang, were two of the factors meant to entertain their audience. The second purpose of these strategies was to encourage identification between student-creators and the audience. This identification has been discussed in previous sections, but here in the use of slang and direct address, we can see the student-creators most clearly trying to establish credibility with their listeners. The student-creators, as discussed above, are clearly positioning themselves as an intermediary between the imagined instructor, who inhabits the expert role, and the learner. Douglas et al, in their study of reading resilience in tertiary literary studies, use the term ‘coaching’ to reimagine the role of the university instructor who, instead of being the expert, is the guide in developing student reading skills (2015: 3). Perhaps, we can imagine the student-creators inhabiting the role of coach, or even assistant coach, who can motivate listeners to ‘play along.’ As such, the student-creators need to implicitly convince the learner-aslistener to identify with the podcast voices as student proxies. The struggles with the text are shared, the slang is shared, the cultural references are shared; if this is achieved, then solutions may be shared as well. The use of slang is particularly evident in the summary, where it was intended to create both humor and credibility. In the episode, Student 3 referred to “our girl Ophelia” or the audience as “kids,” borrowing the casual, fast-paced patter of material on social media, such as Tik-Tok videos, that often include slang adopted from Black American culture. She also used humorous flourishes also recognizable from contemporary online discourse, such as understatement (“the Prince is obviously not thrilled”) or therapy-speak (“Dude has some issues. I would recommend a therapist”) (“Hamlet,” 2023). The juxtaposition of the complex, culturally revered plot of Hamlet and Student 3’s slang-laden, facetious tone is meant to not just Rachel Pole 162 inspire laughter, but also create a bit of a transgressive thrill. Recalling Student 1’s comments that the hosts are fellow students, not “adult experts,” (interview with Student 1, 2023) the description of Fortinbras as a “hunky dude” should prove to the audience that our hosts do not take any of this too seriously and therefore are to be trusted (“Hamlet,” 2023). The heavy sprinkling of slang, irreverence, and sarcasm signal to the listener that this challenging, august text can be understood and played with at the same time. I also interpret this humorous retelling as an echo of the student-creators’ positive memories of reading or discussing Shakespeare in the classroom. Student 3 was sensitive to unique properties of plays and particularly cited reading the play aloud in class as a successful strategy. Similarly to Student 1, she appreciated doing something other than “the usual teaching…we were just interacting… It almost came to life much easier when we were at it together” (interview with Student 3, 2023). In both Student 1’s and Student 3’s positive experiences, interaction with their peers lent a vibrancy to the reading that facilitated understanding, retention, and enjoyment. While they did not state this explicitly, these memories clearly informed their intentions. When actual exchange between the listener and podcast-hosts was not feasible, the student-creators’ tone was designed to replicate the experience of talking to a peer (albeit a well-read one) about the Bard. This direct address to the audience, implicit in the use of slang that peers can easily understand, becomes explicit elsewhere in the podcast episode. In setting up the summary of Hamlet in the podcast episode, Student 4 explains the purpose of what follows: “Let’s have a quick look at one of his most famous plays which you, my dear listeners, are very likely to encounter during your academic career and will, thanks to our podcast, not have such a hard time with. You are welcome” (“Hamlet,” 2023)! Here, she nearly states the thesis of the project in a light-hearted manner, referencing the title of the series with “dear listener” while also parodying a more formal tone. This style of peer-to-peer communication is also informed by the student-creators’ sense that interaction with fellow students about Shakespeare’s work was both meaningful and entertaining. This speaks to Douglas et al’s observation that in-class conversations, student- student and teacher-student, about literary texts lead to better results in term papers and contribute to overall student satisfaction (2015: 11). As previously mentioned, all four student-creators reported positively on the discussion of in university courses, and particularly highlighted that illuminating information often came from their peers, rather than solely the instructor. Student 3 stated “it [reading passages in class together] made it more fun to interact with the book instead of just everyone reading it alone and then just discussing the book. In the interaction directly with the story, everyone was able to also put in their own emotions and how they would feel” (interview with Student 3, 2023). The interaction, with the instructor, Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 163 peers, and text, seems to be part of Student 3’s enjoyment, which in Pekrun’s theory stands in opposition to boredom in that it is a positive activating emotion (2006: 586). The student-creators tried to recreate this sense of engagement, and therefore, enjoyment, in speaking to their audience as peers, using the first-person plural, and directly addressing what the audience might be feeling. This acknowledgement of feeling also occurs in respect to negative emotions as well. Early in the episode, Student 3 refers to Shakespeare as “the utter nightmare of us students” (“Hamlet”, 2023). Here, as in the previous example from the episode, we see the student-creators recognize the challenges their audience faces in reading. The overstatement above is said with a wink but also a comforting hand on the arm; the hosts know what it is like to be intimidated and overwhelmed and they are here to help. The facetiousness is belied by a sincere appeal to the struggling student because all of the student-creators have been confronted with the “nightmare” quite recently. Student 2, who identified as a non-reader, had particularly vivid memories of reading Shakespeare in high school. Her negative experience was at least partly shaped by a teacher’s choice to read the original play in class and translate it into German line-by-line. Student 2 characterized the reading as “hard and really intense because when I usually read a piece of literature or a poem, it doesn’t take me 2 hours…I was kind of afraid that every single piece of literature we’re treating was going to be the same thing” (interview with Student 2, 2023). Boredom, caused by the perceived lack of relevance, and frustration, induced by the reader’s perception of the exercise as tedious and arcane, were products of this encounter (Graesser & D’Mello 2012: 241). This painstaking approach of translating led to lasting anxiety on Student 2’s part and created the sense among her peers that “when this is going to be part of our test sooner or later, right, we’re going to be messed up” (interview with Student 2, 2023). Taken together, the interviewee perceived this reading experience as not only challenging, but impenetrable and lacking in relevance outside of the imagined, fear-inducing assessment (Graesser & D’Mello 2012: 238). Thus, in creating the podcast episode, the student-creators were speaking to their former selves, particularly in light of Student 2’s experiences. Although they characterize Shakespeare as a nightmare, a close look at their interview comments reveal that the real trouble lies in some of the apparatus of formal learning, like dry activities and assessments with little connection to the world outside the classroom. By alluding to the negative emotions the audience might be bringing to the episode, the student-creators draw the audience further into identification with “us students” and offer up a bit of comfort. This process described above reflects Poletti et al’s observations on readerly hospitality as posited by Attridge. Poletti et al. argue that this framework allows students and instructors to recognize the fundamentally challenging nature of reading difficult literary texts by “making reading visible as a process, as a challenging and as a worthwhile Rachel Pole 164 pursuit” (2016: 242). By explicitly naming some of the challenges in the podcast episode, the student-creators model some of their own affective experience, going beyond a solutions-based, best practice approach. Put another way, their podcast episode could potentially help with addressing the issue that “the difficulty of difficulty is not that it is difficult but that we do not face the difficulty soon enough” (Adams as qtd. in Chicks et al. 2009: 401). If “we” in this context refers to instructors, confronting not just the difficulty but also the attendant emotions could alleviate some of the negative outcomes like boredom or frustration on the students’ part. The student-creators crafted a document that does just this. They acknowledge and model the anticipation, anxiety, hope, and pride that reading a challenging literary text can evoke. Inspiring in their listener the courage required to invite such an experience is very much part of the purpose of this close identification (Poletti et al. 2016: 241). An implicit appeal in the podcast is ‘if we can do it, so can you.’ Given the obvious pleasure the student-creators take in their episode’s banter, insights, anecdote, and jokes, a second, convincing message is also and you should. 5. Conclusion After observing the student-creators at work, a few conclusions can be made for the instructor looking for answers as to how to encourage the tolerance for, and perhaps optimistically, the enjoyment of, difficult literary texts. The student-creators clearly focused on a few practical strategies, such as using summaries and making contemporary connections, that can be adopted as support structures for the student reading difficult literary texts like Shakespeare. They created a resource themselves in the form of a podcast, which should remind instructors of the broad selection of podcasts, video and other media that can be used as preparatory or support material. Perhaps even more interestingly, the student-creators also adopted and modeled an attitude essential in an encounter with a challenging text. As instructors, we should appreciate that the student-creators aimed to prepare, entertain, and excite the reader rather than replace the work of reading and understanding. We should also note that, while the summary did include an overview of the plot, the purpose of the podcast was not to make Shakespeare ‘easier,’ which implies simplifying complexity to facilitate swift understanding, but rather to make Shakespeare ‘less frightening’ in the words of Student 3. The student-creators demonstrate here an understanding that much of what is at stake when we task students with difficult reading is emotional. By acknowledging and playing with this affective dimension of reading, the student-creators signal solidarity with their listener, offering the prospect of a peaceful night in the place of nightmares. Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 165 Nightmares, used by Student 3 tongue-in-cheek to describe students’ feeling towards reading Shakespeare, occur to each individual alone, in the disorientating dark. If we share the symbols, affects, confusion held therein, as our student-creators have, then not only do we fear them less but we can begin to understand more about the stories that surround us. References Allen, Ira J. (2012). Reprivileging reading. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 12 (1): 97-120. Bjork, Elizabeth L. & Robert Bjork (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In: Morton Ann Gernsbacher (Ed.). Psychology and the Real World: Essays Illustrating Fundamental Contributions to Society. FAABS Foundation. 55-63. https: / / www.researchgate. net/ publication/ 284097727_Making_things_hard_on_youself_but_in_a_good _way_Creating_desirable_difficulties_to_enhance_learning [August 2023]. Chick, Nancy L. et al. (2009). ‘Pressing an ear against the hive’. Reading literature for complexity. Pedagogy 9 (3): 399-422. Clifford, M. M. (1991). Risk taking: Theoretical, empirical, and educational considerations. Psychologist 26: 263-298. https: / / psycnet.apa.org/ record/ 1992-215 35-001 [August 2023]. Council of Europe (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment - Companion Volume. Council of Europe Publishing. https: / / www.coe.int/ en/ web/ common-european-framework-reference-lan guages. [August 2023]. Douglas, Kate et al. (2015). Building reading resilience: re-thinking reading for the literary studies classroom. Higher Education Research & Development. https: / / doi.org/ 10.1080/ 07294360.2015.1087475 [July 2023]. Gomez, Selena et al. (2015). Kill em with kindness [Song]. On Revival. Interscope. Graesser, Arthur C. & Sidney D’Mello (2012). Moment-to-moment emotions while reading. The Reading Teacher 66 (3): 238-42. JSTOR. http: / / www.jstor.org/ stable/ 23321285 [August 2023]. “Hamlet” (2023). My Dear, We Don’t Give a Damn. Transcript and MP3 file (podcast episode). Hobson, Andrew & Andrew Townsend (2010). Interviewing as education research method(s). In: Dimitra Hartas (Ed.). Educational Research and Inquiry. Continuum. 223-238. https: / / doi.org/ 10.5040/ 9781474243834.ch-014 [August 2023]. Lodge, Jason M. et al. (2018). Resulting confusion in learning: An integrative review. Frontiers in Education 49 (3): 1-10. https: / / www.frontiersin.org/ articles/ 10.3389/ feduc.2018.00049/ full [August 2023]. Magnusson, Eva, & Jeanne Marecek (2015). Doing Interview-Based Qualitative Research: A Learner’s Guide. Cambridge UP. Mayr, Celina (Student 4). 10 March 2023. Personal interview. McBride, Maureen & Meghan A. Sweeney (2019). Frustration and hope: Examining students’ emotional responses to reading. Journal of Basic Writing 38 (2): 38-63. JSTOR. https: / / www.jstor.org/ stable/ 27027814 [August 2023]. Rachel Pole 166 Meyer, Debra K. & Julianne C. Turner (2006). Re-conceptualizing emotion and motivation to learn in classroom contexts. Educational Psychology Review 18 (4): 377-90. JSTOR. http: / / www.jstor.org/ stable/ 23364156 [August 2023]. Pekrun, Reinhard et al. (2006). Achievement goals and discrete achievement emotions: A theoretical model and prospective test. Journal of Educational Psychology 98 (3): 583-597. Pekrun, Reinhard et al. (2010). Measuring emotions in students’ learning and performance: The achievement emotions questionnaire (AEQ). Contemporary Educational Psychology 36 (1): 36-48. https: / / doi.org/ 10.1016/ j.cedpsych.2010.1 0.002 [August 2023]. Pekrun, Reinhard & E. J. Stephens (2012). Academic emotions. In: Harris, Karen R., Steve E. Graham, Tim E. Urdan, Sandra E. Graham, James M. Royer & Moshe E. Zeidner (Eds.). APA Educational Psychology Handbook Vol. 2. Individual Differences and Cultural and Contextual Factors. American Psychological Association. 3-31. https: / / doi.org/ 10.1037/ 13274-001 [September 2023]. Poletti, Anna et al. (2016). The affects of not reading: Hating characters, being bored, feeling stupid. Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 15 (2): 231-247. https: / / doi.org/ 10.1177/ 1474022214556898. [July 2024]. Salvatori, Mariolina Rizzi & Patricia Donahue (2005). Introducing difficulty. The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty. 1-14. Pearson. Saurwein, Anna (Student 3). 2 March 2023. Personal interview. Steiger, Laura (Student 2). 2 March 2023. Personal interview. Tomlinson, Peter (1989). Having it both ways: Hierarchical focusing as research interview method. British Educational Research Journal 15 (2): 155-76. JSTOR. https: / / www.jstor.org/ stable/ 1500577 [August 2023]. Verdorfer, Alex (Student 1). 1 March 2023. Personal interview. Rachel Pole University of Innsbruck The body as a medium in the medium Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship Sarah Back This paper explores how socio-political discourses are constructed and developed transmedially in Bernardine Evaristo’s authorship, using the discourse of Black hair politics (Craig 2006; Davis 1994; Hooks 1989, 1995, 2015; Robinson 2011) as an example. Special attention will be paid on the ways in which the body can function as a medium in the development of these discourses. Firstly, it will be explored how the discourse is constructed through the body in the novel Girl, Woman, Other (2019) and, secondly, how the same discourse is continued and developed transmedially in other forms of media - in this case, in the Sunday Times UK special issue “BEAM” (2020) edited by Evaristo. To that end, both, Girl, Woman, Other and “BEAM”, will be examined through the lens of Evaristo’s method of ‘showing and informing’- a combination of illustration/ portrayal and historical, socio-political contextualization - to build a discourse throughout the explored media units. In the course of exploring the processes in the construction of Evaristo’s transmedial discourses, the different functions that the body assumes in constructing and transmedially developing Evaristo’s Black hair discourse, will be identified through the lens of phenomenology/ feminist embodiment (Ahmed 2007; Fanon 1952; Lehtinen 2014) as well as Situated Knowledges (Haraway 1988) and Black feminist standpoint theory (Hill Collins 2000, 2002, 2010). Three identified versions of ‘the body’ will eventually be explored in the context of transmediality and Evaristo’s authorship: the physical body, the body of the community, and the authorial body. Through these three versions of body in their interplay across various forms of media as well as in the course of Evaristo’s ‘showing and informing’, the embodied, situated, frequently contradictory, perspectives on Black hair politics are revealed, thus presenting the discourse in its complexity and Evaristo’s authorial figure as central aspect in the development of these discourses. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Band 49 · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2024-0024 Sarah Back 168 1. Introduction: Evaristo’s authorship, transmedial discourses, and the body In his discussions on transmedia storytelling, Henry Jenkins argues that “moving characters from books to films to video games can make them stronger and more compelling” (2003: online). This paper’s aim is to illustrate how moving sociopolitical discourses 1 from books to online media can make them stronger, and in their entanglement with the body, authors and their authorship more compelling - using the example of Bernardine Evaristo’s transmedial ‘Black hair’ discourse. The forty years of Bernardine Evaristo’s artistic output encompasses theatre, poetry and novels. Throughout this period, her work has consistently engaged with discourses centred on race, gender, and the African diaspora. Similarly, her commitment to feminist and activist causes, which has, for instance, manifested in numerous mentoring programs for writers of colour in Britain, spans several decades as well (Evaristo 2022: online). While Evaristo’s works have been well received by literary critics, their sales were limited (Kleiber 2022: online). This meant that for a long time, her artistic work and activist projects were not given a prominent platform. However, when she (together with Margaret Atwood) won the Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel Girl, Woman, Other - the first ever Black woman in history - Evaristo’s career took a significant turn. Since then, Evaristo has given numerous interviews, delivered public talks, participated in panel discussions, won a considerable number of followers on social media, contributed short stories and essays to online magazines, and guest edited several publications. It soon became evident that Evaristo was not going to allow the newfound attention to go to waste: she has utilized various channels, both offline and online, to engage in discourses surrounding the topics with which she has been involved for decades. And the manner in which she approaches and discusses these discourses, thereby staging her authorship project, is fascinating to observe. The novel Girl, Woman, Other, for which she received the Booker Prize and which centres on the lives of twelve women of colour living in or immigrating to England, brings together the discourses with which she has engaged in her previous works, and, at the same time, serves as the base 1 In this context, and in line with “British cultural studies collectively” Sawyer (2002: 450), discourse is understood as a form of communication or debate about a particular socio-political issue or topic that is primarily directed and guided by Evaristo (in the form of transmedial storytelling) and to some extent shaped by other actors (such as audiences). In the process of constructing a discourse, Evaristo defines relevant concepts and terms, assigns meaning to them, and forms semantic relationships between stories, concepts and terms that ultimately create the discourse. Consequently, exploring a discourse in the context of transmedial storytelling and authorship involves considering “the concepts, enunciative modalities, objects or strategies that are part of discourse formation” Sawyer (2002: 447), which will be attempted in this article. Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship 169 for many of her subsequent transmedial stagings. Consequently, Evaristo has constructed her authorial project around the discourses present in the novel, such as gendered racialisations in the arts and beauty industry, or forms of discrimination and exclusion of people of colour from Western cultural establishments. In other words, these discourses are discussed in the novel, as well as in other offand online-media, such as essays on Harper’s Bazaar, interviews in The Guardian, or Instagram posts, as a form of telling stories across media. This approach enables her to create an author persona that reflects both a version of feminist/ activist authorship due to the types of discourses involved and a version of (post)digital authorship due to the methods and tools she employs. Consequently, her engagement with digital media reflects a novel form of literary activism that challenges the boundaries between literary production and activist engagement. Furthermore, the manner in which Evaristo constructs her authorship project and unfolds and intertwines discourses transmedially is characterised by a pronounced material, physical and corporeal quality. This encompasses discourses that conceptualise the body as a central element in the formation and evolution of global social structures, as well as the significant function of the body in the medialisation of discourses across diverse (digital) platforms. Consequently, at both the level of content and implementation, these discourses are embodied - in different manners and in varying intensities. A study of ‘the body’ in Evaristo’s transmedial discourses thus offers insights not only into a new centrality of materiality (of, for example, ‘flesh and bone’, the physical body) in the (post)digital realm, but also into the inescapable role of the body in a feminist of colour authorship project. This indicates that the body (in its various conceptualisations) is a crucial player in the transmedial ‘project Evaristo’, as it plays a fundamental role in the construction, discussion and evolution of its transmedial discourses across diverse versions and functions, including figurative, physical and visual. Consequently, as different versions of the ‘body Evaristo’ play a significant role in her authorship project, the role of Evaristo’s public persona, as shaped, manifested and disseminated through these versions of the body, is also considered in this exploration. It is thus essential to undertake a comprehensive examination of the various manifestations of the body in order to gain a thorough understanding of the workings, functions and structures of a transmedial authorship discourse such as Black hair politics. To illustrate Evaristo’s transmedial construction and development of these discourses, the example of ‘Black hair politics’ and its development across two media units will be explored. Firstly, the way in which the discourse is constructed in Girl, Woman, Other will be discussed. Subsequently, the analysis will focus on the way the discourse is revisited and developed transmedially in the online version of the Sunday Times UK Special Issue “BEAM”, which was guest edited by Evaristo in June 2020. Given the significance of the body in Evaristo’s discourses and her authorship in general, Sarah Back 170 particular attention will be paid to the ways in which bodies, or the various forms of body, represent, construct and develop Evaristo’s transmedial Black hair discourse. 2. Transmediality Simply speaking, transmedia means “across media” (Jenkins 2011: online; Rajewsky 2013: 22). In this paper - in the context of socio-political discourses moving across media and thus forming authorship - transmediality is understood following Irina Rajewsky’s distinction between transand intermediality, where transmediality is defined as “non-media-specific phenomena that can be enacted in different media with the means specific to each medium” (Rajewsky 2002: 12-3; [own translation].) In particular, the concept of “transmedia storytelling” as introduced 2 by Henry Jenkins in 2003, is applied. According to Jenkins, in transmedia storytelling, “integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels to create a unified experience. Ideally, each medium makes its unique contribution to the unfolding of the story” (Jenkins 2007: online). This means that, in the context of digital media, narratives are constructed across a range of different media platforms, which enables audiences to consume and experience entire fictional worlds in their entirety. In “Transmedia 202: Further Reflections”, Jenkins extends his concept of transmedia storytelling adding further “logics”, as he calls them, such as “transmedia branding”, “transmedia performance”, “transmedia activism”, “transmedia spectacle”, etc. into the mix (Jenkins 2011: online), arguing that the same principle - the systematic scattering of elements of an entirety, a narrative, etc. across multiple channels - can be applied to various phenomena. Following the paradigm of “convergence culture”, “where old and new media collide” (2006) 3 , Jenkins attempted to understand the various ways in which more established forms of media and recently emerged ones ‘meet’, connect, form each other, or influence each other, as well as what kinds of new dynamics, hierarchies and phenomena have emerged and are in the process of emerging from these forms of convergence (Jenkins 2006: 13- 37). While Jenkins, when it comes to his approach to transmedia storytelling, is mostly concerned with the construction of fictional worlds and phenomena across media, Evaristo’s transmedial discourses - which can also be defined as a form of transmedia storytelling - reflect the emergence and development of a sociopolitical discourse across at least two media units. Evaristo’s transmediality both transgresses forms of media and moves across fictional and non-fictional spheres, and through this, her audience 2 The term was first used in some form by Masha Kinder in 1991 in her work Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games. 3 The title of a monograph by Henry Jenkins (2006). Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship 171 can grasp her discourses in their complexity and variety - by reading about and/ or viewing different aspects of discourses across Evaristo’s media appearances and products, projects, and written works. Evaristo can spread these even more effectively, systematically speaking (Jenkins 2003: online), by strategically including fictional elements that develop the discourse in the direction of her favour. Furthermore, while it is often emphasised that the original medium (in the case of Evaristo’s Black hair politics, the novel Girl, Woman, Other) plays no or only a minor role (Rajewsky 2002, 2013), in the case of transmediality and authorship it does make sense to reflect upon a possible original medium, because such reflections provide insights into hierarchies or relationships between the work, the author, and readers. Reflecting on a potential original medium in transmedia storytelling is of particular interest in the case of Evaristo’s discourses (such as Black hair politics): For Evaristo, winning the Booker prize for the novel - in which the discourses are at the centre - only provided the foundation for the subsequent media attention that she required to pursue these forms of transmedial continuations and developments of her discourses over the following months and years. 3. Showing and informing In her authorship project, Evaristo frequently uses the technique of ‘showing’. This may take various forms, including the use of visual materials, such as images, or detailed verbal descriptions. The shown subject is frequently a non-male body of colour. However, the shown body is never portrayed in isolation; it is always presented in a contextualised and well-informed manner: It is frequently described from multiple, well-informed, perspectives or portrayed through a variety of body practices. Thus, for instance, nude, queer, old bodies are shown as well as bodies having (consensual) sex and bodies being raped. Consequently, presenting the body and applying certain gazes at this body in relation to the discourse under discussion are defined, in this context, as ‘showing and informing’. This involves the combination of ‘visual’ showing (portraying, describing) and contextualising, explaining and informing about a discourse that either occurs simultaneously in one medium or connects two or more, with the body playing a central role. In Evaristo’s case, the body assuming the role of the medium in her transmedial discourses is frequently a non-male body of colour, which, in the context of feminist of colour authorship, significant. The representation of the non-male body of colour in mainstream media is characterised by stereotypes and “controlling images” (Hill Collins 2000: 72-84), ranging from forms of “mammification” to “hypersexualisation” (ibid.). Consequently, artists and scientists of colour have faced challenges in depicting and exploring the female body of colour in its diversity. In particular, the Sarah Back 172 representation of sexuality has been avoided out of fear from reproducing stereotypes and controlling images (Hammonds 1997: 98-99; Willis & Williams 2002: 88). Conversely, the attempts of pop stars such as Beyoncé to utilize their, naked or sparsely dressed, bodies in a conscious manner are - while applauded for their Black feminist motives - defined as insufficient (Hobson 2018; Hooks 2016). For instance, Janell Hobson argues that, despite their efforts, popular ‘Black feminist’ performances, are, in their following the logics of western, white, male spectatorship, “limited visions, divorced from political consciousness of race and gender issues”, and “would only perpetuate familiar stereotypes” (2018: 99). In addition, according to bell hooks, in order “to look anew, to radically revision how we see the black female body […] simply showcasing beautiful black bodies does not create a just culture of optimal well being where black females can become fully self-actualized and be truly respected” (2016: online). Consequently, in terms of the representation of the non-male body of colour, two vicious circles have existed: Avoiding presentations of naked nonmale bodies of colour has led to ever more restrictive representations, while ‘simply showcasing’ non-male bodies of colour has reinforced existing harmful images and stereotypes. How, then, can theory, art and activism contribute to the emancipation of the non-white, non-male body from restrictive, discriminatory, and exclusionary images and representations? And, how can the body then play such a significant role in Evaristo’s intersectional feminist authorship? Bell hooks has indicated that, in order to achieve some form of liberation of the non-male body of colour of harmful images, a mainstream representation of the body must be accompanied by and embedded in informed cultural and political discussion (2016: online), stories need to be told about these bodies. Thus, it is vital to both show and inform, and this strategy or method can, in Evaristo’s case, be observed throughout her transmedial authorship project. Evaristo’s ‘showing and informing’ can consequently be defined as both a means to weave, construct, develop her socio-political discourses transmedially and to integrate the body in her authorial practices. Thus, this tool enables Evaristo to firstly, integrate the body as a central element in her authorship project and, secondly, to construct and portray her sociopolitical discourses in their complexity. Evaristo’s ‘showing and informing’ thus allows readers to consider and reflect upon the multiple representations and attitudes towards the body - which can subsequently be contrasted and questioned - as a form of informing about a discourse. Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship 173 4. The politics of Black hair Before embarking on the analysis, it is necessary to provide a brief overview of the discourse through which Evaristo’s transmedial construction of discourses will be exemplified, the politics of Black hair. Black hair politics are inextricably linked to the concept of Blackness. Rooted in slavery and colonialism, natural Black hair, along with other physical characteristics of people defined as ‘Black’, has been established as a major cause for discrimination targeting people with hair of a certain structure, mostly found among people with African ancestry (Craig 2006; Dabiri 2020; Davis 1994; Hooks 1989; 1995; Montle 2020). This has proven especially severe and consequential at the intersection of race and gender (Robinson 2011), where hair has been used as an argument to dominate, sexualize or dehumanize women of colour for centuries (Ngandu‐Kalenga Greensword 2022). The structural inequalities based on the construction of race have been taken up in theory and activism in many ways: For instance, in the past decades, there has been much discussion about how, in terms of global body aesthetics (Byrd & Solomon 2005; Deliovsky 2008; Hooks 1995; Irvin 2016), physical aspects considered ‘white’ (among it, long, straight hair) have been defined as global ideals of beauty, while natural Black hair has been found to be perceived as unprofessional, inaesthetic, etc. (Dabiri 2020; Donahoo & Smith 2022; Rowe 2021). In addition, Black women have suffered professional and financial disadvantages (Tate & Fink 2019) as a result of wearing Black hairstyles such as braids, or, even more so, natural hair (Opie & Phillips 2015). Toks Oyedemi defines this “consent to the hegemonic notion of beautiful hair” as a “very violent process […] [which is] enmeshed with all forms of violence: physical, direct, structural, cultural and symbolic” (2016: 537-538). And this form of global violence and eurocentric notion of aesthetics has given rise to a global billion-dollar hair straightening industry (which also perpetrates this violence) that can be defined as a symptom of the fact that ‘white beauty’ is a global commodity (Deliovsky 2008; Hunter 2005; Hunter 2007; Hunter 2011; Mire 2019). As Adele Morrison adequately summarises, “straightening is whitening. Whitening is bettering. Therefore, straightening is bettering. It is bettering in that it makes Black women more acceptable in environments dominated by whites” (2010: 89). In the past decades, however, the wearing of natural Black hair is and has been promoted in many settings (Canella 2020; Dash 2006; Neil & Mbilishaka 2019; Walker 2007). One such setting is the ‘African’ hair salon, which, in the course of its increasing prevalence, has “contributed to the current, new form of Afrocentrism, allowing hair to be a connective force between Black women in the Diaspora” (Ngandu‐ Kalenga Greensword 2022: 13). Yet, Black hair is still subject to discrimination and stigma (Joseph-Salisbury & Connelly 2018) throughout institutions in the west-be it education (Phelps-Ward & Howard 2022), marriage Sarah Back 174 and job markets (Donahoo 2023; Hunter 2011; Jones 2020), or law enforcement (Donahoo & Smith 2022). It is precisely these aspects and themes of this vast, global discourse that Evaristo has repeatedly highlighted and discussed in a multitude of contexts. For instance, Evaristo stated in a public conversation “Fashion and Fiction” at V&A London in 2020 which was focussed on beauty matters in her novel Girl, Woman, Other, “when we wear our hair natural […] it’s considered socially unacceptable in many spaces” (Sounds Right 2020: online). This statement provides a glimpse into the workings of Evaristo’s transmediality, which will subsequently be explored in more detail: Evaristo refers to Girl, Woman, Other in her discussion about forms of discrimination in relation to Black hair in this talk while additionally providing ‘real-life’ examples of Black-hair oppression. In his way, through transmedial storytelling, the discourse is contextualized, extended, and developed by Evaristo. 5. Black hair politics in Girl, Woman, Other (2019) If indeed there were a basis or origin for Evaristo’s transmedial discourse on Black hair, a proposition that can be argued to be (at least in the temporal sense) valid, then it would be Evaristo’s novel Girl, Woman, Other, as Evaristo refers to the novel across media when addressing the discourse. The following examples, text passages and methods, will illustrate the manner in which the politics of Black hair are constructed as a discourse in the novel. In the novel, Evaristo’s ‘showing and informing’ plays a central role in the construction of Black hair politics. In the course of various instances (presented in a sequence of events, covering different women through a third-person omniscient narrator), Black hair is introduced in relation to the portrayed women’s respective situations, practices, and circumstances. Certain, contrasting and contradictory, characteristics and actions are consequently attributed to Black hair, embedding it in a multifaceted picture. The following examples illustrate the descriptions of hair and the actions performed on it, primarily conveyed through ‘showing,’ and perspectives on hair, primarily conveyed through ‘informing,’ in relation to the narrator (in short, what is said about hair and by whom). Through exploring present gazes at Black hair as well as practices connected to it, both its role and its functions in the respective situations will be revealed. Furthermore, it will be investigated what specific gazes at Black hair and/ or hair practices reveal about the character, and, consequently, about their social, cultural or institutional situatedness. Altogether, it will be discussed what these instances of Evaristo’s ‘showing and informing’ in their interplay contribute to the Black hair discourse as established in the novel. Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship 175 In general, gazes at hair can be divided in two categories: By one group of characters, Black hair is disciplined (disregarded, shamed, etc.), by the other, hair is celebrated (admired, adored, etc.), which is why these perspectives will be henceforth named ‘colonial’ (disciplining) and ‘oppositional’ (celebrating) gazes. Both gazes at Black hair play an important role throughout the novel, adding various perspectives and layers to the discourse of Black hair politics. Disciplining perspectives or colonial gazes are realized in various manners in the novel. They can, for instance, manifest themselves through opinions, worries, anger, or shame in relation to Black hair. In addition, disciplining perspectives can present themselves through practices related to hair - things done to Black hair. In all instances, hair is presented, in the course of which showing takes place, and, is subsequently disciplined in one form or another. The act of disciplining is then formed in such a way that it is embedded in a bigger socio-political construct and/ or presented as a contributing or determining factor for decisions or developments in the novel’s plot; and in this way, a version of ‘informing’ takes place. For instance, Black hair is “straightened and scraped back into a martial topknot” (2019: 114), “gelled down and side-parted to look very smart and professional” (2019: 190), “real hair” hasn’t been “seen or felt” for decades (2019: 427), or hair is subject to “touching” and “staring” by white girls (2019: 376). To illustrate how aspects of Black hair politics are constructed through disciplining hair, two passages will be explored in more detail in the following. Successful city of London banker and second-generation Nigerian immigrant Carole’s appearance is described as follows: “look at her / / in her perfectly tailored city clothes, the balletic slope of her / / shoulders, straightened hair scraped back into a martial topknot” (2019: 114). As further thoughts and recollections from Carole are shared in this section, it can be concluded that Carole’s perspective on Black hair is revealed. Consequently, a version of hair is presented within a larger context, namely in relation to Carole’s coming-of-age story. In the chapter that narrates Carole’s story, her journey from the only child of a Nigerian widow living in a housing estate who was raped at thirteen, to gaining admission to Oxford University, is recounted. Carole has reached this goal through the application of discipline, hard work and the assistance of a schoolteacher (Mrs. King/ Shirley). She then proceeds to excel at Oxford, adopting the habits, language and appearance of the white upper class, marrying a white, posh man, and subsequently advancing her career as a banker despite the everyday institutional racism she encounters. Since the passage revolving around Carole’s appearance opens with “look at her,” it indicates a certain pride on Carole’s part to have achieved what she has achieved, and to look the way she looks in this very moment. In short, her appearance seems to represent her achievements. And Carole’s Sarah Back 176 hair, in addition to her posture and attire, plays a central role. It is straightened since only in this version, it is suitable and appropriate, which Carole explains in a conversation with her then-boyfriend Marcus: He “said he preferred / / her hair natural, she told him she’d never get a job if she did that” (2019: 137). Thus, in this example, ‘showing’ is realized in the presentation of a version of Black hair within a specific context, while, Carole’s proud gaze at her straightened hair can already be defined as a version of ‘informing,’ presenting straightened hair in the context of personal achievements. Furthermore, in terms of ‘informing’, the practice described related to Carole’s hair is important as well. Carole’s hair is “scraped back into a topknot.” In more detail, Carole’s hair is scraped back into a topknot to suit her perfectly tailored attire and fit into her flawlessly assembled appearance as someone who’s made it. Carole’s perspective consequently reveals that straightened and scraped back hair signifies, for Carole, embodied professionality. This means that, in regard to the Black hair discourse, the act of straightening and scraping back in the course of Carole’s voyage from rags to riches presents straightened Black hair as a bodily reflection of professionalism and success (Dixon & Telles 2017; Hunter 2011). This passage consequently illustrates a particular aspect of the discourse surrounding Black hair in the novel, demonstrating how discrimination operates at the intersection of race, class and gender in the context of the job market. In Carole’s case, straightened Black hair is contextualized as a bodily sign of professionality, and in Carole’s case, the practice of straightening, making it sleek thus elegant - taming it - mirrors the gateway to socioeconomic upward mobility. Straightening and crapping Black hair back into a topknot signifies the utmost degree of disciplining - pulling it back and making it small. Thus, Carole’s gaze reveals that, for a Black woman in London, maximum professionality is achieved through maximum disciplining of Black hair. The second passage centres on a similar story, however, in a rather different socio-economic context. LaTisha, a single mother of three with a difficult history of neglect who has recently been promoted supervisor in a supermarket, is described as follows: “LaTisha / / is wearing her uniform of navy-blue trousers with a / / crease down the front, navy blue cardigan, fresh white shirt, hair gelled down and / / side-parted / / very smart and professional” (2019: 190). Again, LaTisha’s perspective at her own appearance is covered in this passage. This time, it is not straightened or stretched Black hair that is shown, but rather Black hair in its natural state, which can be inferred from the described hair practice of ‘gelling down.’ From LaTisha’s manner of describing herself, one can again sense pride in her personal achievements. And this proud gaze is directed at both her ‘professionally’, as she frames it, and her appearance, where hair again plays a central role. While this time, Black hair is shown in its natural state, it is still disciplined: The depicted practice involves pulling hair down tightly- Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship 177 sleeking it down to get rid of curls and kinks-and then fixing it tightly in the back. Furthermore, in the passage, Black hair is “gelled down and sideparted” to make it “look very smart and professional.” Consequently, LaTisha’s appearance - her hair being a vital element in it-mirrors the end of her journey of hardship and obstacles, “after she crawled her way out of the horror movie of her teenage / / years” (ibid.). Disciplined hair thus represents a version of LaTisha who has worked hard and is prepared to go further. Consequently, LaTisha’s disciplining perspective serves as a further example of the internalized perception that Black hair must be tamed, controlled, made smaller - in short, whiter (Craig 2006) - to become professional and to succeed. This is thus a further example of a colonial gaze at Black hair, of the contextualisation of the relationship between ‘disciplined’ Black hair and economic success. In conclusion, the combination of the depicted disciplinary perspectives at Black hair, realized through ‘showing and informing’, adds a further layer to Evaristo’s Black hair discourse: The relationship between socioeconomic upward mobility and disciplining Black hair extends across all socio-economic classes and levels of education, and, Black hair oppression, as an internalised form of racism and sexism, is dominant in institutions across the social spectrum-from supermarkets, to universities and international corporate banks. In the group celebrating Black hair in the novel, oppositional gazes concerning Black hair are portrayed. The act of celebrating Black hair is similarly diverse as that of disciplining hair in the previous group, encompassing a variety of approaches, ranging from descriptions of hair, over emotions in relation to hair, to hair practices. In these celebratory passages, feelings of admiration, attraction, and pride directed at Black hair (natural hair as well as Black hair styles) dominate. Black hair is, again, portrayed - through which showing takes place - and subsequently celebrated in one form or another. The act of celebrating hair is, through ‘informing’, contextualized in a way that the relevance or role of Black hair in both a specific and wider context is illustrated. For instance, Yazz describes her afro hair as “amazingly wild, energetic, strong and voluminous” (2019: 12) while her afro is blocking the view to the stage, Black feminist Nzinga is described as “spectacular” with her “ornamented dreadlocks” (2019: 81) when she appears in front of her future girlfriend Dominique for the first time, Meghan/ Morgans “shaved off” hair is “loved” (2019: 312) in an act of self-discovery, or Helen’s “looser hair” is “liked” (2019: 9) by African men. Again, to illustrate how aspects of Black hair politics are constructed through celebrating hair, two passage, covering Meghan/ Morgan und Helen, will be explored in more detail in the following. Sarah Back 178 The first passage describes Meghan’s hair act as a teenager before identifying as non-binary, adopting the pronouns they/ them, using the name Morgan, and becoming a social media gender-activist: “at sixteen she shaved off her hair to see what it felt like, loved / / running her hands over her new, low-maintenance bristle” (2019: 312). In the passage, which covers Meghan’s perspective, a shaved head is shown. Furthermore, two hair practices are celebrated: Meghan celebrates the act of touching her “lowmaintenance bristle” as well as the act of shaving off her hair. How can shaving off hair be an act of celebrating hair and why is this an example of an oppositional gaze at Black hair in regard to Black hair discourse? In a different section of the novel, Meghan is described as “publicly admired” and distinctly beautiful, partly due to her “blond corkscrew curls” (2019: 312). Consequently, when it comes to the act of shaving off hair in Meghan’s case, the structure of the hair is central: Meghan’s portrayed hair act is oppositional in her getting rid of “blond corkscrew curls.” Meghan/ Morgan, after identifying as non-binary, reflects on their upbringing, recalls being forced into a stereotypically female appearance by their (usually liberal) mother as a way of becoming socially acceptable as a biracial child, while feeling utterly uncomfortable in this gender performance. And, once puberty arrived, they experienced severe gender dysphoria. Consequently, Meghan’s depicted celebration of shaving off her hair can be read as an oppositional gaze at the heteronormative pressure to achieve ‘beautiful, female, hair’ as part of “normative femininity” (Bartky 1990: 80), which is, in Black women’s cases, also racialized (Dabiri 2021). Meghan’s celebration is therefore directed against her ‘beautiful, female’ hair that has, among other gendered aspects of her body, caused her so much pain. Long, ‘white’, hair is consequently presented as a heteronormative, eurocentric beauty ideal, which represents, in Meghan/ Morgan’s perspective, an immensely heavy burden. Meghan thus views the act of shaving off her hair-the celebration of ridding herself from her blond curls-as a liberating act, and the act stroking her shaved head as a form of falling in love with and rediscovering her true self-divorced from the present societal pressure concerning gendered hair, especially as a non-male person of colour. Meghan/ Morgan’s displayed gender dysphoria further intensifies that which is contributed to the Black hair discourse through this passage: Meghan/ Morgan’s struggles shed light on how the norms revolving around the socially constructed goal of being perceived as beautiful are not only racialized and gendered but also dominated by heteronormative structures (Deliovsky 2008; Rajan-Rankin 2021). Thus, through showing and informing, existing forms of societal-racist, sexist and heteronormative-pressure as well as anxieties connected to this aspect of the Black hair discourse are revealed. The second passage illustrating a celebratory perspective on Black hair and further version of an oppositional gaze, covers Helen, who, being one Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship 179 of the few biracial young women in Scotland in the first half of the twentieth century, experienced difficulties of finding a husband. Amma, her daughter, recounts that Helen left Scotland young and moved to London, during a period when many young African men immigrated there. Helen went to African dance evenings and social clubs, where she, for the first time in her life, attracted male attention, as the African men present “liked her lighter / / skin and looser hair” (2019: 9). Furthermore, Helen is described as “half-caste” (ibid.), which was the common term used to describe a biracial person during that time. Concerning her own gaze at her appearance, according to Amma, Helen expressed that “she felt ugly until African men told her she wasn’t” (2019: 10). Consequently, Helen’s depicted perspective on her body serves as an initial step in this example of informing: The present colonial - eurocentric and patriarchal - gazes directed at mixed-race women in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century, which Helen had internalized by feeling ugly 4 , are revealed. Then, after having felt ugly, partly due to her hair, Helen’s suddenly “looser” hair is liked by some men. Consequently, hair is presented in a contextualized manner, as two contrasting gazes are applied at the same version of hair. This depicted act of celebratory gazing, which is oppositional to the gaze under which Helen grew up, is performed by African men. Being a mixed-race woman, Helen’s hair is looser than African women’s hair and is so situated in the context of global beauty hierarchies. Thus, mixed-race hair, which is, through these forms of gazing, portrayed as somewhat curly but not Afro hair, is presented as a bodily mirror of the global phenomenon of colourism (Tate & Fink 2019). As such, it reflects the fact that throughout Black communities and communities of colour, proximity to whiteness is valued as an ideal of beauty (Phoenix 2014). Furthermore, through the African men’s gaze, the celebration of Helen’s hair, the depicted eurocentric perspective at mixed-raced hair as ‘Black’ and thus ugly hair is juxtaposed with a perspective at beautiful, ‘looser hair,’ which can thus be defined as a reflection on the racial hierarchies grounded in constructions of race and their social and political consequences. As a result, this celebratory perspective on Helen’s biracial hair develops the Black hair discourse through an illustration of global hierarchies concerning the structure of Black hair to Evaristo’s hair discourse. The juxtaposition of two perspectives on the same hair type - devaluation by white men and celebration by African men - adds to the complexity, the present tensions and contractions of the discourse surrounding Black hair. In sum, these celebratory perspectives at biracial hair demonstrate the multiple factors that influence taste in hair or hair aesthetics. They reveal that, while 4 This gaze is, at a later point, juxtaposed by Amma’s description of her mother when she was young, namely a mix between Lena Horne und Dorothy Dandridge, who were famous actresses in Hollywood. Sarah Back 180 hair aesthetics are context-dependent, they are, at the same time, subject to universal, normative structures, and a significant amount of effort is involved in taking on oppositional perspectives. This renders the discourse on Black hair as presented by Evaristo in the novel an ambivalent, highly complex one. Altogether, it is apparent that in both disciplining and celebratory perspectives on hair, other voices and gazes than the portrayed individuals’ ones are involved in the construction of the characters’ attitudes, perspectives and practices concerning their hair: present hierarchies and institutionalized structures around Black hair in a global context are, throughout all instances, normative points of orientation. Furthermore, in the constructions of the Black hair discourse achieved through ‘showing and informing’ in the novel, the body plays a central role. The following discussion will attempt to pin down which versions of ‘body’ are involved in the construction of the Black hair discourse in the novel, and how the body can be read in these versions of showing and informing of/ about Black hair. Firstly, the physical body is involved in the construction of the discourse of Black hair in the novel. Rather than looking at the body as an assemblage of flesh and bone to which hair is attached and whose presence in the construction of the discourse is thus inevitable, ‘physical body’ is read in the sense of the lived body: one’s bodily, subjective experience (Ahmed 2007; Fanon 1952; Lehtinen 2014; Mooney 2022). The characters’ portrayed relationships to their/ or someone’s Black hair are, throughout the novel, ‘embodied’ ones, created through bodily experience. Often, bodily characteristics, bodily practices as well as the emotions and sensations (frequently subsequently expressed in attitudes/ opinions) tied to them - which are, in the novel, summarized as, e.g., determined, ugly, amazing, stupid, smart - are displayed in relation to Black hair. Assuming that “whiteness is lived as a background to experience” (Ahmed 2007: 150), and that, “in advance of our activities, we lean on core beliefs that none of us can avoid espousing” (Mooney 2022: 52), whiteness is a ubiquitous determiner of our western belief system. These very core beliefs, which frequently present themselves as pre-conscious (Shouse 2005) bodily manifestations, such as forms of affect, or in relation to external impulses (e.g., looking at someone’s hair), can be defined as symptoms of forms of “normative embodiment” (Foucault 1975/ 1988). In these, normative practices “inscribe power constellations and discourses into subjective experiences and bodies” (Wehrle abstract). And these very bodily manifestations contextualize the character’s physical and social situatedness (Aho 2009; Sheets-Johnstone 2020), as they stem from enlivened, internalized - embodied - experiences of, e.g., forms of racism, that are situated in the world (e.g., Black female embodiment [cf. Davis 1981]). In short, the variety of physical sensations that hair evoke tell their own stories, revealing causalities and narratives around Black hair inscribed, frequently by painful normative actions and practices, in our social surroundings. Consequently, Black hair is portrayed to be in Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship 181 a symptomatic relationship to the socio-economic situatedness of both the body as object - the politized, racialized, gendered, body - and the body as subject, the lived body (Harraway 1988). Black hair, or what is done with it, can therefore be understood as the mirror of the localization of the physical body revealed through the lived body’s subjective experiences (affect, emotions, etc.). The body thus functions as the screen or canvas for the discourse in the novel. Secondly, in relation to the localisation of a - physical or lived - body and its situated knowledges (Harraway 1988), the body can also be read as the body of the women of colour community in London. This version of body is central, as it is a polyphone, located body, and, according to Donna Harraway, “location resists the politics of closure, finality, ‘simplification in the last instance’” (Harraway 1988: 590). Thus, “feminist embodiment resists fixation and is insatiably curious about the webs of differential positioning […] the goal is better accounts of the world” (ibid.). Also, because of the location and position of the characters - which is partly revealed through their emotions and perspectives on hair - and of the sum of these localized perspectives and situated knowledges, a body is formed, one that ‘speaks’, ‘narrates’. This holds especially true in the case of women of colour - from their personal experiences with both racism and sexism - and, out of these discussions, a Black feminist epistemology (as introduced by Patricia Hill Collins in 1990) was established, focussing on the body of knowledge and consciousness to achieve empowerment. Through this body - the lens of Hill Collins’ Black Women’s Standpoint Theory (2000) - the characters’ multiple and varying statements, attitudes and hair practices, according to Hill Collins, “provide us with a unique angle of vision concerning Black womanhood” (2000: 35) and thus on “self, community, and society,” (2000: 3) which, in this case, applies to the discourse of Black hair. In the course of this version of ‘informing’, the multiple perspectives (e.g., colonial, Eurocentric, communal, feminist) that have shaped Black hair discourse are revealed, in a manner that both enables to grasp the discourse through individual experiences and to map the discourse on a meta-level. In the interplay between those perspective then constructs this communal vision: “The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another” (Haraway 1988: 586). Thus, “the construct of community operates within contemporary power relations of class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, ability, nation, and race” (Hill Collins 2010: 7). In this way, the complex, multifaceted politics of Black hair is introduced through the individual women’s localized knowledge - in total, through the body of their community. In essence, the novel illustrates, discusses, and questions dominant, eurocentric logics about Black hair through the deliberate and well-chosen Sarah Back 182 gazes and the provision of context and information in relation to the characters, combined with and nested in the act of showing various varieties of, perspectives on, and practices connected to Black hair. Thus, by revealing many different realities in relation to Black hair, the complexity of the discourse and the complexity of the relationship between individuals and Black hair is revealed, as well as the fields of tension between something that is ‘part of someone’ (as hair is) and its politicization (both concerning systems of stigmatization and manners of using and wearing it in a way that could function as an act of liberation/ feminism/ or resistance). In short, the complexity and polyphony as well as the existing fields of tension of this discourse are shown through the body in the novel. 6. Transmedial adoptions & continuations: Evaristo’s “BEAM” (Sunday Times UK) In the following, the transmedial adoption and development of a discourse in Evaristo’s authorship will be exemplified by an examination of Black hair politics in Evaristo’s “BEAM”. which is an issue of the Sunday Times UK, guest edited by Evaristo and published - both in print and digitally - in July 2020. As Evaristo states in her editor’s letter, “BEAM” is an acronym for “Black Women Eternally Mainstream,” as this special issue exclusively features non-male people of colour with the aim of promoting them. Central in this issue are interviews with women of colour - the “talented creatives defining a more inclusive future and paving the way for revolutionary thinking” (Evaristo 2020: online) - and their visual presentation through portrait photographs. Again, Evaristo employs the method of ‘showing and informing’ to construct the discourse of Black hair in this medium. In this case, ‘showing’ aspects of the hair discourse and ‘informing’ about them is employed in different sections of “BEAM”. This way of employing the method helps to adopt Black hair politics transmedially and subsequently construct and develop the discourse intermedially (Rajewsky 2000) in the issue, namely in the course of “interactions and interplays” (Rajewsky 2013: 22) between Evaristo’s editor’s letter and further sections (portraits, interviews, etc.) of the issue. In “BEAM”, the discourse of Black hair politics is first mentioned in Evaristo’s editor’s letter, in which she introduces the project and explains the intentions behind dedicating this special issue exclusively to non-male people of colour. Evaristo opens the letter by referring to both Girl, Woman, Other and Black womanhood, providing a base for subsequent transmedial links to the discourse: “it was of utmost importance to me […] to make sure this issue put Black women in the spotlight and also to make it queerinclusive, much as I did with my novel Girl, Woman, Other” (Evaristo 2020: online). Having provided a contextual foundation by referring to Girl, Woman, Other, Evaristo subsequently establishes direct transmedial Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship 183 connections to the discourse of Black hair politics: “The issue of Black women and our hair is big business, literally. Yomi Adegoke […] writes with pizzazz about the trend for the buzzcut among our women, and some of the brouhaha it attracts when women decide to shave or crop it down to the bone, and go from high to low maintenance” (ibid.). Hence, Evaristo explains that she has included an article about hair by Yomi Adegoke, author of Slay in Your Lane (2019), in her Times UK special issue, while at the same time, referring to the Black hair discourse in her novel Girl, Woman, Other. Evaristo develops her Black hair discourse in “BEAM” by referring to the novel, by creating a transmedial connection to the character Meghan/ Morgan. By stating in the letter how liberating it is to “go from high to low maintenance”, which is portrayed in a similar manner in the novel, as Meghan/ Morgan “loved / / running her hands over her new, low-maintenance bristle” (2019: 312) - as a way of freeing herself from the eurocentric, patriarchal and heteronormative pressure exerted by concepts of ‘female beauty’ from which she has suffered. Furthermore, in the letter, the liberating experience of wearing a shaved head as portrayed in the novel is, in the context of the global black hair industry, revisited by Evaristo, and directly addressed by stating that “our hair is big business, literally” (Evaristo 2020: online). Furthermore, Evaristo’s reference to another writer, Yomi Adegoke, whose work also addresses the topic of Black hair, not only extends Evaristo’s exploration of Black hair politics beyond the discourse established in her novel Girl, Woman, Other, but also reinforces the role of the body of the community in creating and shaping the discourse in this transmedial adoption. The article about Adegoke’s book in “BEAM”, referenced by Evaristo in her letter, addresses the politics of Black hair. Consequently, Evaristo’s discourse is not only expanded and developed through the diverse perspectives of characters from Evaristo’s imagination (a body of the community representing Evaristo’s interpretation of the discourse), but is also further developed from Adegoke’s standpoint, rendering it truly constructed by a collective body of the community - the multifaceted perspectives of women of colour from London. This renders Evaristo’s practice of ‘informing’ about the Black hair discourse a communal practice in this adoption. In addition, in the letter, Evaristo positions herself, her authorial figure and public persona, as directly affected by the Black hair discourse and addresses others affected (women and non-binary people of colour) in her appeals and arguments concerning Black hair. Evaristo consequently introduces the discourse through ‘informing’, personifies it by her direct appeal (we, our) and expands it by providing a link to a detailed article on Black hair by author Yomi Adegoke in the letter. Eventually, Evaristo refers to the portraits of the women and non-binary people of colour in this special issue, which play an important role in the transmedial adoption and the development of the Black Hair discourse in Sarah Back 184 “BEAM”. In the letter, Evaristo consequently creates a link to the portraits of the women covered in the issue, who, as stated in the magazine’s subtitle, are part of “Bernardine Evaristo’s future list” and exclusively “nominated by our guest editor” (ibid.). By establishing an intermedial connection to the section where the hair discourse is reflected visually, Evaristo (albeit indirectly) performs a version of ‘showing’. Evaristo contextualizes the discourse first in the editor’s letter and picks it up visually through the portraits of her chosen individuals. Thus, after having established a transmedial connection by referring to the discourse in her novel, Evaristo develops the Black hair discourse intermedially in “BEAM” by employing ‘showing and informing’ across sections of this issue, across the letter, Adegoke’s article, and the portraits of the featured individuals. The large and colourful portraits of the featured individuals are presented in combination with their cover stories, which, in many, cases, include short interview sections. Consequently, in this section of “BEAM”, similar to Girl, Woman, Other, multiple realities concerning Black hair, transmitted through the body of the community, a Black Woman’s Standpoint (Hill Collins 2000), are portrayed. In this case, however, the multiple perspectives on Black hair are visually revealed. As with the preceding section, in which Yomi Adegoke’s perspective on Black hair politics has been included in the act of ‘informing’, in this section Evaristo expands and develops the discourse by having the various personalities covered in “BEAM” present their Black hair styles. While in Girl, Woman, Other, the ‘shown’ versions of Black hair are firmly rooted in Evaristo’s imagination (crafted through her intellectual and creative endeavours), in this transmedial adoption, the act of ‘showing’ Black hair becomes a communal practice as well. For instance, a portrait of Yomi Adegoke with a shaved head, to whom Evaristo refers in the letter - to her book and the power of shaving one’s hair - is included here. Furthermore, natural Black hair - Afro hair - is portrayed, by covering poet Theresa Lola. Or, Black hair styles-in the form of long braided hair-are included through, for instance, the portrait of non-binary performer Travis Alabanza. This indicates that, in this particular case, the method of ‘showing’ - as was done in terms of ‘informing’ by including Adegoke’s perspective - is taken one step further. In contrast to the act of ‘showing’ Black hair in Girl, Woman, Other (where specific actions are performed on Black hair and where controlling and taming it is linked to success), in this section of “BEAM”, natural Black hair or Black hair styles are visually portrayed as crucial features of the presented successful individuals’ identities, encompassing their personalities or (public) roles. Therefore, in this transmedial adoption, the method of ‘showing’ Black hair styles in success stories of women of colour represents a new direction in Evaristo’s Black hair discourse, whereby Black hair styles can be seen as physical manifestations of the success models presented in this special issue (the transmedial adoption). Eventually, having previously po- Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship 185 sitioned herself as part of the discourse (through ‘informing’), Evaristo visually includes herself in this section of “BEAM” as well. Therefore, Evaristo not only personifies the discourse in her editor’s letter through ‘informing’, but through ‘showing’ as well, namely by visually exemplifying Black hair through including an image of herself in the letter. In this way, Evaristo’s Black hair politics evolves and grows, in certain instances, in a manner in which the body of the community - as opposed to Evaristo - navigates the course of the discourse. Thus, Black hair politics is constructed by different versions of ‘showing and informing’ and transmitted through the body, both the physical body (the portrayed individuals as well as Evaristo’s), and, more than ever, through the body of the community, by having multiple voices visually ‘speak’ (show and inform) about Black hair. Although Evaristo is the decision-maker of what is displayed and covered in her capacity as editor and therefore establishes a foundation for the continuation and development of the discourse, she allows the discourse to be shaped by a communal voice. The discussed sections of “BEAM” thus serve as a conduit for both ‘showing’ and ‘informing’ about Black hair politics, in which the body of the community plays a key role. Altogether, Evaristo’s development of Black hair discourse in “BEAM” is similar to its construction in Girl, Woman, Other: In both cases, the discourse is contextualized (historically or transmedially), observed from a global perspective, and approached from different angles. Nevertheless, in “BEAM”, the transmedial adoption of Evaristo’s Black hair politics, the discourse is not only approached by Evaristo herself but is also evolving through multiple voices and points of view, thus rendering the discourse one that is shaped by collective experiences and perspectives of the community - thus, the body of the community. Moreover, both in the novel and in “BEAM”, a variety of Black hair is presented: in “BEAM”, this is realized through visual presentations of individuals wearing Black hairstyles, and in the novel, through descriptions of hair. While in “BEAM”, the celebrating perspectives of Black hair are at the centre, Evaristo still contextualises Black hair politics as a socio-political issue, as both cause and effect of global racialized and gendered forms of inequality and oppression. This narrative is thus, to quote Rajewsky, “realized differently […] specific to each medium” (2002: 12-3; [own translation]) with different media complementing each other and expanding Evaristo’s transmedial hair discourse. Evaristo’s Black hair politics is thus an example of how a “mediaunspecific discourse” is built and developed transmedially - “across media” (Jenkins 2011; Rajewsky 2013: 22), and in the case at hand, in close relationship with the body. Sarah Back 186 7. Conclusion Looking at the discourse of Black hair politics as presented in this paper, which versions of the body are involved? Firstly, it is the body of the Black female community. In Girl, Woman, Other, “unique angle[s]” (Hill Collins 2000: 35) and Situated Knowledges (Haraway 1988) build the discourse, and this polyphony is revisited in the visual portrayal of multiple voices in “BEAM”. Secondly, it is the physical body of characters in the novel, of the women shown in the images in “BEAM” as well as of Evaristo herself, through which Black hair discourse is developed intermedially and also transmitted transmedially. Thirdly, it is Evaristo’s authorial body - the vital role of her authorial figure in the construction of the discourse, in which the boundaries between the socio-political and the fictional, as well as between the literary work of the author and her activist engagement, are shown to be blurred. Transmedial discourses such as the politics of Black hair can therefore be seen as a building block with which Evaristo constructs her authorship project. In her intermedial ‘project Evaristo’, which is created transmedially and through such discourses, her authorial figure, her physical body and her works are almost inseparable. In the course of her intermedial authorship, and, with the help of many such transmedial discourses, Evaristo subjectifies herself as an author, activist, Black woman and intersectional feminist in the (post)digital realm. In sum, Evaristo’s embodied writing (writing [with/ on] the body) as demonstrated both in her novel Girl, Woman, Other and in her project “BEAM” can be described as an intersectional feminist subjectivation process. The eurocentric and androcentric tradition of separating mind and body, which justified European colonialism by othering the colonized as ‘body’ and therefore as uncivilized, which has particularly affected women of colour (Ahmed 2007; Hill Collins 2000), is thus countered. Consequently, by displaying the discourses enacted through and on the body, Evaristo exemplifies an intersectional feminist approach to digital authorship. The body-the authorial body, the physical/ lived body and the body of the community-is not merely a conduit for the dissemination and discussion of the discourses; it is also the site of their formation. Evaristo’s intersectional feminist authorship is embodied, and the digital realm provides a context in which authorship can be embodied, with the boundaries between authorship/ oeuvre and representation/ production becoming increasingly blurred (Yekani, Klawitter & König 2012: 32-33; [own translation]). Black hair politics as transmedia discourse in B. Evaristo’s authorship 187 8. References Ahmed, Sara (2007). A phenomenology of whiteness. Feminist Theory 8 (2): 168. https: / / doi.org/ 10.1177/ 1464700107078139. Aho, Kevin (2009). Heidegger’s Neglect of the Body (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy). SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bartky, Sandra L. (1990). 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Sarah Back University of Innsbruck Balkanism in Aleksandar Hemon’s The Question of Bruno and Nowhere Man Western representations of the Balkans and its people Nina Bostič Bishop Balkanism as a paradigm was first introduced by Maria Todorova and refers to historical representations of this region and its people by the West in a negative and stereotypical manner, typically as a place marked by backwardness, violence, savagery and ethnic conflicts. The term is associated with Edward Said’s idea of Orientalism that relies on stereotypes, generalizations, and simplifications of Oriental cultures and peoples, depicting them as exotic, irrational, mysterious, or inferior. In her work Imagining the Balkans, Todorova draws some parallels, but she also points out the differences between the two paradigms. However, she agrees that both paradigms have been linked to reinforcing stereotypes and biases about the regions and their people, depicting them as an inferior Other that is binary to the superior West. In several of his literary works, the Bosnian-American author Aleksandar Hemon addresses this negative construction of a narrative and image of the Balkans that misrepresents the region and its people. He does this by introducing characters who are Westerners practising Balkanism in their relationships with characters, who are often involuntary migrants as a result of the Balkan war in the 1990s. By so doing, the author attempts to demythologize the Balkans and its people. The paper analyses the manner in which the author attempts to deconstruct this negative narrative that does not accurately reflect the complexity and diversity of the region in two of his works, The Question of Bruno (2000) and Nowhere Man (2002). In addition, the paper also attempts to identify how these stereotypical, negative views of the Balkans affect the identity of the Balkan exiles that populate these two works. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Band 49 · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2024-0025 Nina Bostič Bishop 192 1. Introduction The paradigm of Balkanism was first proposed by Maria Todorova in her work Imagining the Balkans ([1997] 2009) and refers to the reductionist, stereotypical, biased and prejudiced representations of the Balkans by the West since the 19 th century. Todorova analyses representations of the region throughout media channels as being typically backward, tribal, primitive, savage, uncivilized, and barbaric, therefore, disseminating and introducing balkanist discourse to the general public and thus, gradually constructing a common Western view of the Balkan region and its people as not being able to “conform to the standards of behaviour devised as normative by and for the civilized world” (Todorova 2009: 3) or, in other words, as the Other. The manner in which such biased representations have affected the identities and subjectivities of the Balkan migrants that populate Aleksandar Hemon’s two literary works The Question of Bruno and Nowhere Man is at the centre of this analysis. 2. Balkanism In Imagining the Balkans, Todorova studies the phenomenon that she refers to as Balkanism and the manner in which the Balkan region has been imagined historiographically. Todorova’s concept of Balkanism partly draws on Edward’s Said concept of Orientalism 1 that he developed in his eponymous study, Orientalism, which was first published in 1978 and in which he analyses the Western world’s textual practices of portraying the Orient as an exotic, mysterious and backward Other that is also static, unchanging and passive. In this way, Said observes the construction of a dichotomy of the East and the West that can, therefore, be typically imagined as dynamic, rational and progressive, gaining an authority over the East. However, despite the general tendency to view Balkanism as only one variant of Orientalism, Balkanism is also geographically and historically concrete. Todorova firmly maintains that although both may be used as powerful metaphors, Balkanism is less slippery and intangible in its nature as it is unclear what the real Orient is. Said denied its existence and since the time of the Greeks “the East has always existed as an elastic and ambiguous concept” (Todorova 2009: 11). By contrast, Balkan was at first the name of a mountain, and then the peninsula and the entire region and only became a pejorative symbol with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire by the beginning of the twentieth century. Therefore, Balkanism cannot be perceived as “merely a subspecies of orientalism” (8) as the two phenomena seem to be identical, but are in fact only similar (11). She also states that, 1 Todorova states: “In introducing the category of balkanism, I was directly inspired by - and at the same time invited critical comparison to - Said’s “orientalism”, as well as the subsequent literature on postcolonialism.” (Todorova 2009: 192) Western representations of the Balkans and its people 193 in addition to the geopolitical reason, Balkanism evolved independently from Orientalism also because of the absence of real colonialism. According to Todorova, in the Balkans “there is always present the consciousness of a certain degree of autonomy” (17) as the region was marked by Byzantium rule for several centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire that was more concerned about maintaining and integrating it into a larger imperial structure rather than establishing a colony characterized by resource exploitation. Among other things, Balkanism can be explained as a “a reaction to the disappointment of the Western Europeans’ ‘classical’ expectations in the Balkans” (Todorova 2009: 20). Another reason is that the region was predominantly Christian, so it possessed for a long time “the crusading potential of Christianity against Islam” (20). Finally, Todorova mentions the construction of the Balkan self-identity that was formed against the oriental Other as one of the reasons why Balkanism cannot merely be a variant of Orientalism. Furthermore, Balkanism was shaped by around 1000 years under Byzantium that had political, economic and cultural effects on the entire region, which was followed by approximately 500 years under the Ottomans that, in addition to long-lasting demographic and cultural changes, also gave this southeast European peninsula its name, as according to Božidar Jezernik, the name the Balkans derives from the Turkish noun balkan, meaning a rugged and wooded mountain chain that in the 19th century became generally used to refer to the area “to meet the need for a short-hand label for the new states that emerged in the territory previously known as European Turkey or Turkey-in-Europe” (Jezernik 2004: 24). Jezernik also states that in the 1911 issue of Encyclopaedia Britannica the Balkans are defined as “encompassing Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia-Slavonia, Dobrudja, Greece, Illyria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Novibazar, Serbia and Turkey” (24), whereas the 1995 edition included Romania, Vojvodina, Moldova and Slovenia, but excluded Greece (24). Jezernik also gives a description of the Balkans by an unnamed German author that illustrates the stereotypical views of the region held by the West as the author writes that the Balkans is like a “garden shed standing beside the noble West European villa housing many people who were unable to get on with each other, and quarrelled incessantly among themselves” (25), thereby enforcing the stereotype. Therefore, it can be concluded that Balkanism is a development with its own characteristics since the imagined Orient that Said theorises was non- European, non-white and closely linked to the religion of Islam as the religion of the Other and was sometimes romanticized, while the Balkans was a geographic region in Europe that had no true colonial past and was as Todorova states the “unrivalled centre of the civilized European world” (11), with a mostly white and Christian population. It was not until the fall of Constantinople in the 15 th century that the term ‘the Balkans’ became pejorative as the power of the Orthodox church diminished and several Nina Bostič Bishop 194 small and economically weak nation-states were created. It is for this reason that Andrew Hammond states that Said “demystified Western representations of the Islamic Middle East and Northern Africa, viewing their binary constructs not as empirically grounded but as an institutionalized, cumulative tradition of textual statements that have channelled and controlled Western knowledge of the Orient from the eighteenth century onwards.” He thereby ascribes the main reason for advancing the imperial supremacy of the West to representation (Hammond 2007: 201) and acknowledges that the influence of Said’s work on Orientalism has had a considerable impact on analyses of Western representations of the Orient and other parts of the world. He also states that there are differences between Orientalism and Western representations of the Balkans: [a]s opposed to the Islamic Middle East, with its status as external to Europe, the Balkans are the internal Other, a liminal zone which threatens the continent’s orderly, progressive civilization from within the perimeters of Europe itself. (Hammond 2005: 136) However, both Hammond and Todorova state that in addition to differences, there are also similarities between Western representations of the Orient and the Balkans, namely “mystery, degeneracy, savagery, immortality, chaos” as they may be identified “persistently in post-Enlightenment writings on the two regions” (Hammond 2007: 202) and that the two discourses “have been structured according to exactly the same binarist logic, with South-East Europe proving as effective an antitype for the enlightened, progressive, imperial West as the Islamic East” (ibid.). After Constantinople fell in 1453 and the power of the Orthodox church declined and Western Europe began experiencing a considerable economic growth, the Orthodox world started viewing the East as less privileged. The division of Europe into the uncivilized East and the civilized West occurred later, during the Enlightenment. At first this split was only spatial but it then developed into a binary between a society that is backward, savage and irrational on one hand, and a society that is rational and civilized, on the other. Todorova claims that this division occurred on the account of the Enlightenment movement and that it occurred when Eastern Europe began to lag behind the West as it was continuously being labelled as undeveloped and industrially backward without the necessary progressive social relations and institutions that the more developed capitalist West featured, along with irrational and superstitious cultures untouched by the Western progressive movement of Enlightenment (Todorova 2009: 11-12). She goes on to state that the term ‘Balkan’ was assigned a negative connotation sometime by the beginning of the 20 th century when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and nation-states were formed, which resulted in nationalistic tendencies, so the Balkans became “a symbol for the aggressive, intolerant, barbarian, semi-developed, semi-civilized and semi oriental.” Western representations of the Balkans and its people 195 (194) On that note, Hammond writes that travelogues of the 19th century feature almost no positive accounts and describe the region as a destination with a rugged landscape and an “ample scope for masculinist adventure” (Hammond 2005: 136). Most 19 th century texts, he observes, report on the region as “abject” and “primitive, chaotic, barbarous and with a “ferocity…inherited from their savage ancestors” (ibid.), which brought about the representational paradigm evolving solely around “obfuscation, savagery, discord and backwardness” (ibid). In Wild Europe: The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers (2004), Jezernik finds the representation of the Balkans to be more or less identical. This pejorative use of the word “Balkan” then continued at the time of WW1. Todorova also states that the great crime of the Balkans, which she refers to as the Balkans’ ‘original sin’, was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip, the event that caused WW1. Todorova goes on to say that this event “left an indelible mark on all assessments of the region” and “wiped off all the ambivalence” of whether the region was civilized or uncivilized (Todorova 2009: 118). This negative ‘imagination’ of the Balkans and with it the negative representation of the entire region reoccurred in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall and continued throughout the war in the Balkans in the 1990s. Similarly to Todorova, Hammond also states that negative representations of the Balkans persisted throughout the Balkan crises of the 1990s when, as he states, “South-East Europe became, via a plethora of travel accounts, films, memoirs, and media articles, one of the West’s most significant others” (Hammond 2007: 201-2) and “[o]ne only has to look at the West’s response to the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, or the wave of racism that has greeted Eastern European asylum seekers over the last few years, to discern the persistence of a prejudice that has debilitated the region for centuries” (Hammond 2007: 215). In fact, his research into the representation of the Yugoslav wars found that the Western media almost exclusively represented the region as disorderly, poor and with few values as he writes in his article titled “The Danger Zone of Europe: Balkanism between the Cold War and 9/ 11” published in 2005: “  t  he nightly broadcasts of Balkan chaos and savagery, of homes destroyed, of householders displaced, of the civitas besieged, of shells landing in marketplaces, indicated not only a highly undesirable condition in itself, but also a highly symbolic attack on the core values and practices in western society” (Hammond 2005: 150). Finally , Milica Bakić-Hayden in her work “Nesting Orientalism: The Case of Former Yugoslavia” (1995) refers to the dichotomy that may arise within a certain region and states that “[b]alkanism can indeed be viewed as a variation on the orientalist theme that distinguishes the Balkans as a part of Europe that used to be under Ottoman, hence oriental, rule and as such, different from Europe ‘proper’” (921). She states that in addition to roughness, savagery and overall backwardness, typical representations of the Balkans and its people were also female submissiveness and dreamlike Nina Bostič Bishop 196 and infantile thought or lack of reason (ibid.). In this article Bakić-Hayden proposes the term ‘nesting orientalisms’ to denote a gradation of ‘Orients’, which is a “pattern of reproduction of the original dichotomy upon which Orientalism is premised” (918), so according to this pattern, Asia is more “East” and more of an “Other” than Eastern Europe, and the Balkans is more “East” and more “Other” than other parts of Eastern Europe. Moreover, Bakić-Hayden proposes that “within the Balkans there are similarly constructed hierarchies” (918). Accordingly, the Balkan regions that were once under the Habsburg Monarchy, see themselves as more European than the people who live in regions that were once ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Similarly, Eastern Orthodox Christians have perceptions of themselves as more proper Europeans than European Muslims, who in turn, feel more Western, and less Other than the ultimate Orientals from the Orient. Balkanism is a concept that Hemon addresses in his work in order to demythologize the region and do away with Western European thought of the West being politically and intellectually superior. He also refers to this in several interviews as he, in line with Todorova states that Europe needs the Balkans in order to establish the better and more positive Self, acting as the ‘counterexample for the Union, establishing the dichotomy between the Balkans as ‘cancer’ and Europe as ‘healthy tissue’” (Jones 2020: online). 3. Balkanism in The Question of Bruno The Question of Bruno was first published in 2000 and is a collection of seven short stories and a novella titled “Blind Jozef Pronek and Dead Souls”. The stories and the novella are inter-linked by characters and two settings that are Chicago and Sarajevo, with the main aim being to narrate the life of a Bosnian involuntary migrant, his fluid identity as a result of being an exile and the relationships he enters with other characters, some of whom are local and some of whom are migrants. At first glance, the narratives in the collection are fragmented, but a closer reading reveals that the sub-stories in the short stories and the novella make the collection function as a whole. The first story “Islands” presents the reader with life before exile, rupture and ‘nowhereness’, as the Hemons take a family vacation on the Adriatic Island of Mljet, so the story is set in a warm, slow, peaceful and languid place, typically visited by ex-Yugoslav holidaymakers. Hemon speaks about his family patiently waiting for the ferry on a long pier that burnt the soles of his feet when he took off his sandals and the air that was filled with sea-ozone and the smell of coconut sun lotion (Hemon 2000: 5), there are cicadas humming, his family and friends drink red wine while talking and laughing (7), eating watermelons and waking up in the morning into carefree days of the summer with “breakfast on the table in the net-like shadow of the vines” (12). These days on a holiday were mostly spent Western representations of the Balkans and its people 197 swimming, eating and spending time with friends and family on the beach, followed by languidly spent summer afternoons and evenings: We walked up the path as the sun was setting. Everything attained a brazen shade and, now and then, there would be a thin gilded beam, which managed to break through the shrub and olive trees, like a spear sticking out of the ground. Cicadas were revving, and the warmth of the ground enhanced the fragrance of dry pine needles on the path. I entered the stretch of the path that had been in the shadow of the tall pines for a while, and the sudden coolness made me conscious of how hot my shoulders felt. I pressed my thumb firmly against my shoulder and, when I lifted it, a pallid blot appeared, then it slowly shrank back into the ruddiness. (14) These sentences above present the bliss of summer holidays, which the Balkan people enjoy in a similar manner to Western holidaymakers. Thus, Hemon depicts Balkan people as civilized holiday-makers, similar to any other Western holiday-maker in an attempt to demythologize the Balkan region as uncivilized, savage and backwards by challenging stereotypical representations. In this way, the author promotes a more nuanced and nonbinary understanding of the region. The story “The Accordion” in which Hemon tells the story of his greatgrandfather, who had migrated to Bosnia from Ukraine, is centred around the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that started WW1 in 1914 and which, according to Todorova caused the West to permanently view the region as inferior and uncivilized thereon (Todorova 2009: 118). During the visit of Sarajevo, the Archduke and his wife make several pejorative statements about the region. For example, as they are riding in their coach through the city, minutes before they are assassinated, Hemon writes how the Archduke was thinking about what a monkey language Bosnian was, which is a clear example of Balkanism: “The coach is passing between two tentacles of an ostensibly exultant throng: they wave little flags and cheer in some monkey language (Would it be called Bosnian? wonders the Archduke)” (Hemon 2000: 89). Moreover, the Archduke also sees “[c]hildren with filthy faces and putrid, cracked teeth” (ibid.) and looks at his wife to see her “face in a cramp of disgust” (ibid.), while observing the Sarajevans. Similarly, in “Exchange of Pleasant Words”, a short story in which Hemon tells the history of his family and surname originating from Ukraine, Hemon writes that Uncle Teodor “talked about Hemons defending European civilization from a deluge of barbarian Slavic marauders” (108), thereby suggesting that Slavic people that live in the Balkans are not European and that Europe needs protection from these barbaric Slavs, while Ukrainians, who are technically also Slavs are not Balkan and are, there- Nina Bostič Bishop 198 fore, more civilized. Thus, Balkanist attitudes practiced here divide the European continent into a civilized part and the uncivilized part that is the Others, who are in this case, barbaric Balkan Slavs. The novella “Blind Jozef Pronek and Dead Souls” is autobiographical and is titled after the Sarajevan blues band one of whose members is also the main character. It introduces the character Jozef Pronek who is, similarly to Hemon, an exiled writer from Sarajevo who travels to the United States after the start of the war in Bosnia. Similarly to Hemon, Pronek also decides to stay in the USA and in an attempt to make Chicago his new home, he finds that his identity has been transformed, which is in accordance with Stuart Hall’s understanding of the anti-essentialist post-modern subject that has no essential core because it is “formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us” (qtd. in Voicu: 17). Pronek has become an exile who, while travelling around America, is experiencing culture shock, encountering new feelings of displacement and non-belonging that grow stronger every time he is a target of Balkanism, which is more or less whenever he comes into contact with local Westerners, who have biased views of the Balkans, suggesting that it is, as Todorova and Hammond maintain, an all-encompassing stereotype present in Western societies. For example, at the dinner party at his girlfriend’s parents’ house Pronek is continually othered as Balkanism is practiced consistently. Consequently, throughout dinner he is only able to utter a few short responses that consist of one or two words. He was othered even before he sat down at the table when he took off his shoes, as is customary in the Balkans, and was looked at strangely by Andrea’s mother, who was not aware that the gesture is an expression of politeness. As the dinner party progresses, other members of the family continue to other Pronek by being ignorant of Bosnia’s location, openly confusing the country with Czechoslovakia and practicing Balkanism as Westerners, degrading the Other who is from the Balkans, a region that has had a long history of violence and is, in their opinion a profoundly dangerous place: ‘Nana,’ Andrea’s mother said, ‘this is Andrea’s friend from Bosnia.’ ‘I never was in Boston,’ Nana said. ‘Bosnia, nana, Bosnia. In Yugoslavia, near Czechoslovakia,’ Andrea’s mother said, shook her head, and waved her hand as if pushing away a basketball, asking Pronek to forgive Nana. In a moment of confusion, Pronek took off his shoes. Andrea’s mother glanced at his feet, then locked her hand, pointing to the left, in front of her bosom and said, ‘Let’s move to the salon.’ (Hemon 2000: 175) Western representations of the Balkans and its people 199 Also, at this dinner party it is clear that they understand the Balkans as the cultural Other, which is as Todorova states “one of the most powerful pejorative designations in history” (Todorova 2009: 7), and a stereotypical powder keg, and exaggerate the differences between the West, in this case the USA and the East, the Other, the Balkans or in this case Yugoslavia: ‘So what’s going on in Czechoslovakia? ’ Andrea’s mother asked. ‘Yugoslavia, Mom, Yugoslavia,’ Andrea said. ‘I read about it, I tried to understand it, but I simply can’t,’ Andrea’s father said. ‘Thousands of years of hatred, I guess.’ ‘It’s a sad saga,’ Andrea’s mother said. ‘It’s hard for us to understand, because we’re so safe here.’ ‘It’s mind-boggling,’ Andrea’s father said. ‘I hope it is over before we have to get involved.’ (177) From the above extracts, the dichotomy between the ‘safe’ and civilized West and the unsafe and uncivilized Balkans is clear. The novella features negative representations of the region as theorised by Todorova, Hammond, Jezernik and Bakić-Hayden as Pronek is from South-East Europe and, therefore, represents places that are synonymous with a primitive, backward, war-torn and barbaric world and, which are in opposition to all that is the West. The focus is on the differences between the Self and the Other and they are often exaggerated, while similarities are minimized in order to legitimize negative attitudes. Westerners in this novella see themselves as better, more civilized and more sophisticated people than those from the East, which, as Todorova claims, may be the result of an ongoing negative and stereotyped portrayal of the region. This is further exemplified in the following example that depicts Pronek in a bar where he wants to order his first beer in America and the waitress thinks that he is just another foreigner, assuming that the selection of beer in countries that are ‘the Other’, is limited. Again, the binary built on the differences between the East and West is obvious: ‘Beer,’ Pronek said. ‘What kind of beer? This is not Russia, hun, we got all kindsa beer. We got Michelob, Milleh, Milleh Light, Milleh Genuine Draft, Bud, Bud Light, Bud Ice. Wh’ever you want.’ (Hemon 2000: 141) Similarly, when Pronek is having dinner with some “intellectually distinguished friends” (Hemon 2000: 151) they very clearly show that they think that Bosnia is a backward place where most people do not own a television set or know what asparagus is, which is in line with Todorova’s observations that Balkanism is omnipresent in the West as people tend to generally think that the Balkan regions lag behind the West as a result of continuous Nina Bostič Bishop 200 negative representations throughout the public media from the 19 th century onwards. This can be identified in the following questions that the local Westerners ask Pronek: What’s the difference between Bosnia and Yugoslavia? Huge. Do they have television? Yes. Do they have asparagus there? Yes, but no one in their right mind eats it. (Chortle on the right, chuckle on the left.) What language do people speak there? It’s complicated. Is the powder keg going to explode? Yes. (ibid.) Also, the question “Is the powder keg going to explode? ” is asked by a Westerner who has been influenced by the generalization, reductionism and stereotyping of the Balkans in the media that Hammond and Todorova write about as a region with a long history of violence and war. Moreover, when Pronek is in Los Angeles, he is also othered as people that he talks to utter stereotypes of the Balkans and make it clear that they think only the West can help the region that has been affected by ‘thousands of years of hatred’ (153), which is the second time in the novella that this exact statement is uttered: ‘Do you people in Sarajevo like Sam Peckinpah? ’ Milius asked. ‘We do,’ Pronek said. ‘No one made blood so beautiful as the old Sam did,’ Milius said. ‘I know,’ Pronek said. ‘I didn’t know you could watch American movies there,’ Reg Butler said. ‘We could.’ ‘So what’s gonna happen there? ’ Milius asked. ‘I don’t know,’ Pronek said. ‘Thousands of years of hatred,’ Reg Buttler said and shook his head compassionately. ‘I can’t understand a damn thing.’ Pronek didn’t know what to say. ‘Hell, I’ll call General Schwarzkopf to see what we can do there. Maybe we can go there and kick some ass,’ Milius said. (Hemon 2000: 153) Also, Andrea tells him “[y]ou Eastern Europeans are pretty weird” (Hemon 2000: 170), generalizing the East, expressing a pejorative attitude and again and similarly in perpetual violence that has permeated the region is expressed here: “‘What’s with you people? ’ Chad asked. ‘Can’t you chill out? ’ ‘They just hate each other over there,’ Carwin said.” (Hemon 2000: Western representations of the Balkans and its people 201 173). It is, therefore, clear that Westerners see the Balkans in a thoroughly negative way as there is nothing positive about the region and its people that they ever express when talking to Pronek. 4. Balkanism in Nowhere Man: The Pronek Fantasies The novel Nowhere Man: The Pronek Fantasies was first published in 2002 and follows the life of Jozef Pronek, a character that Hemon first introduced in The Question of Bruno. In Nowhere Man, Pronek is a dislocated migrant residing in-between two cultures as in Homi Bhabha’s conceptualisation of the Third Space where hybrid identities, generally produced between two, but also more cultural elements that come into contact with each other and result in something new and different than either of these elements individually (Bhabha 1994). This Third Space is the intercultural space of enunciation, which is the liminal space where identities become fluid. In Hemon’s novel an unnamed Bosnian migrant comes to Chicago in April 1994 and confesses “Had I been dreaming, I would have dreamt of being someone else” (Hemon 2002: 3), signalling that one of the main topics in the novel is identity and its hybridization, that is its transformation as a result of involuntary migration and the resulting trauma. In August 2000, Pronek finds himself in Shanghai. Pronek is now a transmigrant in line with the definition provided by Glick Schiller et al. who observed that the processes of accelerated globalization that were enabled by the development of transportation and telecommunications resulted in migrants turning into transmigrants, defining transnationalism as the “processes by which immigrants build social fields that link together their country of origin and their country of settlement” (Glick Schiller et al. 1992: 1), thereby challenging the traditional view on emigration as a linear path of movement from the home country to the receiving country. Transmigrants are according to Glick Schiller et al. “immigrants whose daily lives depend on multiple and constant interconnections across international borders and whose public identities are configured in relationship to more than one nation-state” (48). In line with the latter definition, Pronek lives simultaneously in his home country Bosnia, and his host country that is the USA through memories and his actual presence. In the process of connecting his previous identity with the new one in the hybrid liminal space, his identity is transformed in accordance with Edward Said’s view that in exile “habits of life, expression, or activity in the new environment inevitably occur against the memory of these things in another environment” (Said 2000: 55). The novel is narrated through seven distinct sections or chapters each linked to specific dates and cities with the main protagonist Jozef Pronek Nina Bostič Bishop 202 being the main character throughout these seven chapters, thereby connecting seemingly disparate stories. Through the narrators who come into contact with Pronek either as family members, friends, colleagues or only as acquaintances across several different cities around the world including Chicago, Sarajevo, Kyiv, Lviv and Shanghai, the readers learn about Pronek’s life across different periods of time and multiple locations. Therefore, the narrative follows a fragmentary, non-linear thread with geographical transfers mostly between Eastern Europe and America. The individual segments delve into the complexities of Pronek’s life, spanning from his carefree childhood and adolescence in Sarajevo to a crucial moment in Kyiv in 1991 where he attends a Ukrainian language course. Subsequently, he finds himself in exile in Chicago in 1991. Multiple narrators provide perspectives on these pivotal moments, offering insights into the turning points of his past, which extend over various decades including the entire 20 th century and places, encompassing Pronek’s youth in former Yugoslavia with a focus on Sarajevo, his experiences in Ukraine and ultimately, his time in Shanghai. Characters’ perpetual mobility between the East and the West, in this case from Bosnia to America, as well as from the West to the East or from America to Ukraine, allow for the negotiation of difference, transforming Pronek’s identity along the way. Hemon’s borders between the East and the West are porous and transnational identities as defined by Glick Schiller et al. above are constructed as a result of cross-cultural exchange, through which individuals from different cultural backgrounds interact, share, and influence each other’s cultural practices. whereby the West permeates the East. Since Hemon attempts to illustrate that generally Americans know very little about the Balkans and that their knowledge about this part of the world and its people is restricted by typical representations of the Balkans in the media, American characters in the novel frequently stereotype and denigrate Bosnia along with former Yugoslavia and the Balkans in general, which are all typical elements of Balkanism. There are several examples of Balkanism in this work as a result of how the ‘civilized West’ has been interpreting the ‘barbaric East’, whereby the Balkans and its peoples are typically portrayed as backward, degenerate, savage and immoral. With this in mind, it could be said that Hemon reveals Western, and particularly American representations of the region as he frequently exposes the denigratory essentialization of the Balkans as a result of the established dichotomies between the West and the foreign Other. For example, the narrative titled “Passover: Chicago, April 18, 1994”, which is set in Chicago, begins on 18 April 1994 and is told by an unnamed Bosnian immigrant who used to know Pronek in Sarajevo and is fantasizing “about melting under the shower and disappearing into the drain” (Hemon 2002: 3) as he is living a bleak existence of a Bosnian exile, barely surviving on a minimal wage in Western representations of the Balkans and its people 203 an apartment infested with cockroaches, features several examples of Balkanism. One of the interviewers for an ESL teacher job position says to the other interviewer who thinks that the unnamed Bosnian migrant is from Czechoslovakia: “He is from Yugoslavia. It’s a war-torn country”, to which the migrant replies: “I am from Bosnia,” (Hemon 2002: 16). The interviewer Marcus then represents Bosnian men as brave and passionate and women as beautiful: “You know,” Marcus said, “I was on a mission in Bosnia once. I met some brave men and beautiful women there”. “When was that? ” Robin asked, and rubbed her temple. The skin on it wrinkled and unwrinkled under her finger, the pain still untouched. It must have been taking a lot of strength to maintain the expression of permanent bafflement. “Long time ago,” Marcus said. “I fell in love with a majestic, passionate woman, but circumstances too-fatuous-to-detail took me elsewhere.” (Hemon 2002: 18) This example of Balkanism above is in disagreement to Hammond stating that “male writers went out of their way to emphasize that no impropriety with Balkan women had occurred, denouncing their lack of beauty and even suggesting, on occasion, that their appearance violated physical norms” (Hammond 2007: 210), therefore, claiming that the balkanist discourse typically defeminized the female. However, in Hemon’s work, Marcus found Balkan women “beautiful”, “majestic” and “passionate”. It can, therefore, be concluded that Hemon has his character perceive Balkan women similarly to how Oriental women are typically represented by exoticizing and mystifying them. However, Marcus speaks stereotypically about the Balkans as a perpetually war-torn region, using a patronizing tone so typical of how a Westerner views the Balkans. Thus, Hemon here attempts to demythologize the Balkans by addressing the same stereotype: ““You know a lot about hardship, don’t you? ” he said. “I do not know,” I said uncomfortably”” (Hemon 2002: 17). The other interviewer comes to the conclusion that she does not understand people from the Balkans: “I do not understand these people,” Robin said, still shaking her head. “I simply do not” (ibid.), which is in line with Hammond who writes that “[i]n the Western imagination, the region is less a secure marker of alterity than an unstable and unsettling presence loosed from clear identity, an obscure boundary along the European peripheries where categories, oppositions, and essentialized groupings are cast into confusion” (Hammond 2007: 204) because the Balkans are positioned between the East and the West with several nationalities, languages, religions and ethnicities occupying one region, or as Hammond puts it, “various ethnicities have infiltrated European space while simultaneously refusing many of the West’s models of social development and cultural organization” (ibid). Therefore, due to being different from the West, the Balkans have become an “internal Other”. Nina Bostič Bishop 204 Furthermore, in the narrative “Yesterday,” the title highlighting Pronek’s fascination with The Beatles, Hemon paints a vivid picture of Pronek’s joyful and careless childhood and teenage years spent in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The text is not chronological, depicting Pronek’s upbringing in ex-Yugoslavia during the 1980s as a happy period, challenging stereotypes that portray the Balkans and its communist countries as bleak and oppressive. In that, Hemons attempts to ‘write back’ and show that in the Balkans life before forced migration was normal and content and similar to the life in the West. Pronek’s teenage years parallel those of any Western teenager, filled with experiences like meeting girls, experiencing first sexual encounters, rebelling against parents, and immersing himself in music. Therefore, Hemon portrays life in the Balkan region akin to life in the Western world, by describing how his Bosnian characters enjoy Western music and watch Western TV series like Sherlock Holmes. By doing this, he demystifies the region and challenges the perception of life under communist rule as primitive and uncivilized. To counteract the notion of Balkanism and Western stereotypes of Bosnia and former Yugoslavia as backward, savage, war-ravaged, and primitive, Hemon provides detailed descriptions of Sarajevo in the 1980s, presenting it as “a beautiful place to be young.” (Hemon 2002: 49). Another example of how the Balkans are typically stereotyped as dark and savage is given in the story titled “Fatherland: Kiev, August 1991” that is set in Kyiv and Lviv in Ukraine where Pronek travels, because his father wished him to learn more about the Ukrainian culture. The story is narrated by an American of Ukrainian descent Victor Plavchuk, who is Pronek’s roommate. He gives a detailed description of the Ukrainian people and the landscape, but also American stereotypical perceptions of Eastern and Southern Europe that may be referred to as Balkanism. This part of Europe is depicted as being on the periphery, which is clear from the first page with men drinking several shots of vodka on the train, followed by Victor’s description of Pronek’s clothing to be “Eastern European bleak” (Hemon Nowhere Man 79), continuing by stating that Eastern Europe was overall “unremarkable”, with trays in cafeterias being sticky and “reeking of socialist grease”, tea was “tasteless”, and men had “fiery eyes and mountainous muscles”, while women had “arms that were bones coated with skin” (81), and “Slavs have large Slavic heads and an itch in their crotch” (100). Nevertheless, Victor is attracted to Pronek, which can be traced to a particular form of stereotyping that Blažan theorises. In her work “The Immigrant Is Dead, Long Live the Immigrant: The East European Transmigrant in Contemporary American Literature” Slađa Blažan attributes this attraction to underlying Balkanism, claiming that the reason why Victor, otherwise a closeted homosexual, finds Jozef attractive is that the Balkans have been stereotyped as rough and savage. She maintains that the exoticization of the region and its unfamiliarity and mysteriousness that Victor would have been exposed to as an American “allows Victor to project his Western representations of the Balkans and its people 205 wildest phantasies” (Blažan 2004: 40), similarly to how the ‘civilized’ West imagines coming to rescue to the ‘barbaric’, ‘savage’ and ‘wild’ Balkans before they bring destruction upon themselves. Since Victor sees Pronek as a primitive individual, his Balkanism becomes tangible. Another evidence of this is also in Victor’s complete disregard of Pronek as a former student of literature. Victor does not even tell Pronek about his PhD thesis on King Lear because he thinks that Pronek could never understand it since he, as Balkan people tend to be in his view, is intellectually inferior. Instead, Victor concentrates on Pronek’s physical features more than his intellect: “I loved Jozef Pronek because I thought that he was the simple me, the person I would have been had I known how to live a life, how to be accommodated in this world” (Hemon 2002: 124). Here, “simple” indicates an overall Western superiority over Balkan inferiority. A further example of Balkanism is when President Bush selects Pronek to be his interpreter because he wanted someone who “looked Slavic and exotic, yet intelligible - the whole evil empire contracted in one photogenic brow of woe” (105). Again, Hemon here attempts to deconstruct the myth about the Slavs, Eastern Europe and the Balkans or “the whole evil empire” (ibid.). However, Hemon does not stop deconstructing the myth there as he makes Bush patronizing and ignorant of where Bosnia is (Hemon 2002: 103): “But, I am from Bosnia…”. “It’s all one big family, your country is. If there is misunderstanding, you oughtta work it out.” (Hemon 2002: 106) 2 . Here, it is clear that Jozef represents the ‘conflict zone’, the ‘powder keg’, ‘the Balkans’ and ‘the East’ and that the American President views the entire region as the Other. A further example of Balkanism can be identified in the narrative entitled “The Deep Sleep: Chicago, September / October 15, 1995”, which is written in the third person. In this story, Pronek encounters a private detective called Owen at a job interview. This is where Pronek begins to slide into the state of an angry immigrant as a result of his realization that his new American surroundings do not take any interest in him or his past and that they stereotypically see him as just another Balkan migrant. The environment in which Pronek finds himself is more often than not utterly essentialist, which is a direct opposition to Pronek’s forming of a transnational migrant identity as defined above. During the interview, Owen first addresses Jozef Pronek with ‘Joe’, adapting and Americanizing his name, admitting that he has never heard of Bosnia, but remembering Yugoslavia when Pronek tells him that “[i]t was in Yugoslavia” (141), adding only that “It’s a good place not to be there right now” (ibid.). Owen contacts Pronek 2 Hemon here produces a fictionalised variant of the speech given by President Bush in Kyiv, Ukraine on 1 August 1991, also known as the »Chicken Kiev« speech in which Bush warned Ukraine about potential future nationalism and independence. This speech was given when Ukraine and most Ukrainians desired to gain independence from the Soviet Union, so the speech was not favourably accepted. Nina Bostič Bishop 206 and offers him a job of serving a court summons to a man named Brdjanin, who is actually a Bosnian Serb. When Owen describes the man to Pronek, Balkanism may be detected again since after describing him as a “runaway daddy” (146) who left his wife and daughter and does not want to pay child support, Owen also says: “Are you all like that over there, sonovabutches? ” (ibid.), where “over there” refers to the Balkans. This question startles Pronek and he is humiliated on account of Owen displaying Balkanism to the point that he “imagined himself snorting up all those ashes and butts” (ibid.) sitting in an ashtray. Another example of Owen practicing Balkanism may be identified when he refers to Pronek’s home country as irrelevant and too inferior for anyone to remember, which may be the result of the region having been represented as subordinate, dominated, marginalized and being on the periphery: “  M  y parents are still there. But they are still alive.” “Now, who’s trying to kill them? I can never get this right. (Hemon 2002: 149). Furthermore, Owen refers to Pronek’s language as “your monkey language” (Hemon 2002: 150), thereby once again balkanizing him and making his native language inferior to English. Balkanism practiced by the people that Pronek comes into contact with, contributes to Pronek’s increased feelings of loss and displacement. A further example of the locals practicing Balkanism when they come into contact with Pronek is presented in the narrative titled “The Soldiers Coming: Chicago, April 1997-1998.” In this story, Hemon split the narrator in two in order to emphasize Pronek’s split identity as a result of displacement and difficulties with relating to the locals who frequently denigrate him on account of his Balkan origins. The story is set in the period after the war and Pronek now has a job as a canvasser for Greenpeace. The central theme is Pronek’s growing displacement as a result of the impossibility to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers that deepen his sense of nonbelonging, dislocation, unrootedness and isolation. Pronek starts feeling like a “displaced, cheap and always angry” foreigner (Hemon 2002: 164) also on account of coming into contact with the local American people who frequently practice Balkanism. However, Pronek’s girlfriend Rachel, who is at first his canvassing trainer, is initially one of the few Americans who shows sympathy and knowledge about the war in Bosnia. For example, in the following conversation, unlike other Americans, Rachel asks whether his family are safe and refrains from making comments denigrating the Balkans and its people: “You watch it on TV and feel nothing but numb helplessness. It just makes me angry.” “I know.” “It must have been hard for you.” (Hemon Nowhere Man 173) But soon even Rachel brings up the Balkans in a negative way, attempting to dominate Pronek, showing him that he is inferior to her, which gradually Western representations of the Balkans and its people 207 causes Pronek to feel more anxious and displaced. When he asks her “What do you do in your life? ”, she replies “In my life? What is this? Do you Balkan boys always ask questions like that? ” (170). Here, Rachel responds to a question that is not impolite in Bosnian and is in fact often asked at the start of a conversation; but Rachel is unaware of this and takes Pronek’s question as overly intruding and personal. Her response in which she practices Balkanism, putting the “boys” from a region as vast as the Balkans in one basket is rude and infantilising and again shows that she feels like the dominant one and takes Pronek as the Other. Furthermore, by using the word ‘boys’ to talk about men she infantilises the entire region of the Balkans. Pronek’s rage deepens as a result of his realization that he is a displaced migrant and continuously belittled due to his Balkan background, which eventually impacts his identity. This can also be detected when he starts working as a canvasser and notices that Rachel, who is canvassing across the street, receives a more favourable response from clients as they tend to react nicely and listen to her while she is talking. But Pronek, who, even at first glance, seems to match the stereotypical image of a Balkan migrant, and becomes aware that people “stared at him with dim contempt” and with “no interest whatever” is treated like the Other. As “[d]oor after door was slammed in his face” (ibid.) his anger grows until he “kicked a neongreen plastic bucket and […] banged [it] against the picket fence” (ibid.). His anger spirals down from that point. Hemon turns Pronek into a split character-narrator to emphasize his displacement as an involuntary migrant from the Balkans and his inability to enter stable relationships on account of his foreignness and otherness. The relationship with Rachel depicts the absolute impossibility for an exile to surpass linguistic and cultural barriers and overcome trauma since the relationship is irreversibly broken. The main reason for this is that, despite the fact that Rachel is the only American character in the book who is kind to Pronek and does, at least at first, not look down on him, she continuously reminds him that he is just another man from the Balkan. Finally, features of Bakić-Hayden’s concept of ‘nesting orientalism’ can also be identified in Nowhere Man as the character of Brdjanin, who is an Orthodox Christian from the Balkans views Muslims from the Balkans as inferior to him and as liars. He expresses bigotry towards Muslims when he and Pronek discuss the massacre that happened during the war in Bosnia at the Sarajevan market. When Pronek tells him that he knows people from Sarajevo who have told him that the massacre really happened, Brdjanin asks Pronek about his friend’s ethnicity and after learning that he is Bosnian, calls him and all other Bosnians lying Muslims and concludes that if “He is from Sarajevo, he is Muslim. They want Islamic Republic, many mudjahedini.” (Hemon 2002: 153) By exposing Balkanism in his writing, Hemon challenges the narrative that perpetuates stereotypes depicting the Western world as civilized and Nina Bostič Bishop 208 the East as savage, filled with ancient hatred and regressive peoples. By strategically reinforcing the very same essentialisms that the region has been subjected to since the 19 th century, thereby practicing “spirited resistance to popular Western discourses about the Balkans” as Matthes and Williams state in “Displacement, Self-(Re)Construction, and Writing the Bosnian War: Aleksandar Hemon and Saša Stanišić” (Matthes and Williams 2013: 35), Hemon criticizes these oversimplified beliefs. 5. Conclusion In both texts, the main character is the Bosnian forced migrant Pronek. He suffers from being displaced and othered as a migrant originating from the Balkans, experiencing the full force of what Todorova defines as Balkanism. This concept, which is a Western creation, implies viewing the region and its people as primitive, irrational, backward, violent, barbaric, subservient and in need of saving. By writing about the life in a Balkan region before the war as pleasant, peaceful and civilized where people listened to the same music as Westerners, watched the same films, read the same books and took nice summer holidays, and by making Pronek reminisce about the time in his youth that could have been spent the same way by any other child, teenager or young adult in the West, Hemon attempts to challenge the omnipresent stereotypical Western representations of the Balkans and its locals. Moreover, Hemon addresses balkanist discourse whose primary aim of representing the entire Balkan region and an otherwise highly diverse range of moral attitudes, languages, customs, religions, cultures and political structures as one in order to make the Balkans a binary of the West, that is an abstract antithesis or a contrasting image against which the West may then define itself as culturally and morally superior. In this way, Hemon attempts to demythologize the Balkans as a place of perpetual conflict and a powder keg zone that is primitive, savage and wild, as so often represented in Western media. 6. References Bakić-Hayden, Milica (1995). Nesting orientalisms: The case of Former Yugoslavia. Slavic Review 54 (4): 917-931. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Bhabha, Homi K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London/ New York: Routledge. Blažan, Slađa (2004). The immigrant is dead, long live the immigrant: The East European transmigrant in contemporary American literature. Dve domovini / Two Homelands: Migration Studies 19: 34-46. Debeljak, Aleš (2014). Bosna u Čikagu: Aleksandar Hemon. (Translation: Bosnia in Chicago: Aleksandar Hemon). Sarajevske sveske 45/ 46: 203-214. Glick Schiller, Nina et al. (1992). Transnationalism: A new analytic framework for understanding migration. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 645 (1): 1-24. Western representations of the Balkans and its people 209 Hammond, Andrew (2005). The danger zone of Europe: Balkanism between the Cold War and 9/ 11. European Journal of Cultural Studies 8 (2): 145-155. Hammond, Andrew (2007). Typologies of the East: On distinguishing Balkanism and Orientalism. Nineteenth Century Contexts 9 (3): 201-218. Hemon, Aleksandar (2000). The Question of Bruno. London: Picador. Hemon, Aleksandar (2002). Nowhere Man. London: Picador. Jezernik, Božidar (2004). Wild Europe: The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers. London: Saqi Books. Jones, Bronwyn (2020). Aleksandar Hemon: The Balkans is just close enough to being Europe to perpetually fail at being Europe. Kosovo 2.0, 16 Feb 2020. https: / / kosovotwopointzero.com/ en/ aleksandar-hemon-the-balkans-is-justclose-enough-to-being-europe-to-perpetually-fail-at-being-europe/ [July 2020]. Matthes, Franke & David Williams (2013). Displacement, self-(re)construction and writing the Bosnian War: Aleksandar Hemon and Saša Stanišić. Comparative Critical Studies 10 (1): 27-45. Said, W. Edward (2000). Reflections on Exile. Granta. Said, W. Edward (2003). Orientalism. London: Penguin Books. Todorova, Maria (2009). Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford UP. Voicu, Cristina-Georgiana (2014). Identity in the postcolonial paradigm: Key concepts. Exploring Cultural Identities in Jean Rhys’ Fiction. Warsaw: De Gruyter Open Poland. 15-42. https: / / doi.org/ 10.2478/ 9788376560687.1. Nina Bostič Bishop University of Ljubljana Faking authenticity Authenticity as intermedial performance in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000) and the Teleplays (2019) Elisabeth Frank 1. Introduction This is an act of forgetting that the dead are dead and that is that. Forgetting the candle held behind the figure speaking Behind the screen. Or does the mouth, calligraphic friend, cast its own shadows? “At Hiroshima,” you write, “the shadows of the victors were as if photographed into concrete building blocks.” Or are they just turned on for a long time? Or do we two share a forgotten tongue? Or do they funnel us both to the ideograph barely legible on the paper screen— The space around it Where the shadow and the mouth are one? *[In ink calligraphy in katakana syllabary on handmade paper looseleaf. […] Yasusada has brushed “victors” for “victims”.] (Yasusada 1997: 81) This poem, translated from Japanese to English from handwritten notes found after the author’s death, was published in Doubled Flowering - From the Notebooks of Araki Yasusada in 1997. The author, Araki Yasusada, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, constitutes writing as an act of remembering - an act of retrieval that is made possible by attempting to forget the accepted fact that the written word, the image of the photograph or the movement on the screen is an act of mediation and therefore always a reduction - an echo, a residue or an imprint - of the AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Band 49 · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2024-0026 Elisabeth Frank 212 real. He brings into question whether an authentic account of an experiential reality is even possible through the funnel of media, which usually results in an insufficient representation of the real. The “Yasusada Poems” would have been a valuable addition to Hiroshima literature if they had been written by a real contemporary eyewitness of the atomic bombing and not by a man from Illinois. Everything stated about the alleged author and Hiroshima survivor ‘Yasusada’ up to this point is untrue and part of the myth that the original author perpetuates to this day. There are no poems originally written in Japanese, no handwritten notebooks and no author by the name of Yasusada. Instead, the poems, written in English, are part of a literary hoax by a man named Kent Johnson, who still denies the authorship of the poems (Mead 2012: 344). After the Yasusada poems were exposed as literary forgery, this revelation caused a debate about the nature of ‘authentic’ literature and ‘original’ authorship. It was called a “criminal act” (Mead 2012: 344) by Arthur Vogelsang, editor of American Poetry Review, one of the first journals to publish the poems. What does the staging of an elaborate literary hoax have to do with Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves (2000) and the additional teleplays for a House of Leaves series (2019) that complement the novel? Both, the novel and the teleplays of House of Leaves, are about an event in the past that is attempted to be recovered through different kinds of media. Every mediation, remediation and adaptation leaves its own media-specific imprint on the original event described in the book. It is either a reduction or distancing from the event, or, in the case of the teleplays, an addition, an accumulation of data that presents the events of the book in a different light and provides readers with a new perspective. In this article, it is my contention that in House of Leaves (the novel and the teleplays) Mark Z. Danielewski creates a mode of authenticity that is of an intermedial nature. The author uses intermedial themes, techniques and structures to elicit effects of authenticity in his readers. Since House of Leaves is a book that constitutes itself in relation and in delimitation to other media, Danielewski employs authenticity-building techniques that leverage media known for their realism, such as photojournalism and documentaries, alongside digital formats like podcasts and docuseries. These diverse forms of media play with the boundaries between fact and fiction, further enhancing the sense of authenticity in his narrative. This way, it does not matter whether the incidents in the book are real or fake, factual or fictional; as long as they are immersive and ‘feel’ authentic, the referential impossibility of a house that is bigger on the inside than the outside is irrelevant: “Authenticity effects are what is necessary.” (Mead 2012: 344, emphasis original). I use a literary-centric approach of intermediality as described by Irina O. Rajewsky (2002, 2005), to investigate the relations between media and our notion of authenticity - a concept that requires an Authenticity as intermedial performance 213 intermedial approach. The theoretical basis will be underpinned by examples from the novel and the teleplays to showcase the functionality of the proposed concepts. But what exactly is authenticity and how can we create authenticity effects with the means of literature accessing the qualities of other media? What intermedial strategies can be employed to create said authenticity effects? Since the teleplays for a House of Leaves streaming series are fairly new and can now only be purchased on Mark Z. Danielewski’s official website, I want to give a brief summary of the novel and the teleplays, the latter of which add another perspective to the already proliferating diegetic layers of the novel. The story follows the Navidson-Green family - Will Navidson, Karen Green, and their two children - who move into a seemingly ordinary home. They soon discover strange dimensional anomalies, realizing that the interior space of the house is larger than the exterior. After a short visit to Seattle, the family comes back to find out that a door has appeared in the master bedroom, which leads to infinite, ever-changing hallways. Will Navidson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, attempts to document the inexplicable darkness within his home through his documentary “The Navidson Record”. Zampanò, an old blind man, writes an unfinished academic analysis of the documentary, layering it with various interpretations that corroborate the authenticity of the events. After Zampanò’s death, his scattered notes are found by Johnny Truant, who adds his own reflections and autobiographical footnotes to the manuscript. Fictional editors of the real publishing house add another diegetic layer by correcting Johnny’s translations or pointing out events, persons or references in the footnotes that they were unable to verify. By referring to real events, people, artistic or academic works, this heteroreferentiality 1 evokes an immersive effect in the recipient. Drawing on the veracity-assuring characteristics of analog media like photography (i.e. photojournalism, family photographs) and film (i.e. documentaries, surveillance footage, home videos), this effect is produced and heightened. In the teleplays, new narrative layers emerge, shaped by digital media. Rather than using formats like notes or VHS tapes, “The Navidson Record” is found on a USB drive, uploaded online, and later adapted for a podcast and new documentary. This discovery causes major repercussions for the book within the diegetic world of the scripts, with the book being labeled as a hoax and called “fake fiction” (Danielewski 2019, Script 2: 3). Detailed 1 Werner Wolf coined the term “heteroreferentiality” to explain how aesthetic illusion, a mental state triggered by experiencing representational texts, artifacts, or performances, creates immersion in a fictional or factual world. This illusion generates a sense of imaginative and emotional involvement akin to real life but tempered by the recognition that it is only a representation. See Wolf’s articles “Aesthetic Illusion as an Effect of Fiction” in Style 38, 2004 and “Is Aesthetic Illusion ‘illusion référentielle’? ” in Journal of Literary Theory 2.1, 2008. Elisabeth Frank 214 passages from the book are adapted for digital screens. Additionally, previously grainy and decayed footage is restored with enhanced clarity, and other data expands on the documentary, revealing more about its production and editing. While the book’s setting revolves around analog media of the 80s and 90s, the scripts embrace digital trends like podcasts, viral videos, AR games and fake news. Social media and cloud services are key to distributing the recovered footage. Mélisande Avignon, a film studies lecturer and expert on grief in films, is introduced as a protagonist. While being interviewed by a documentary team, a student delivers a flash drive containing loose footage of “The Navidson Record” and a documentary she co-produced with Johnny Truant, titled “The Mélisande Tapes”. Mélisande uploads the footage online, which quickly goes viral and inspires new media productions. Around the same time, a popular video titled “The Keflavik Clip” shows an engineer vanishing in an endless hallway, sparking a phenomenon called ‘Server Dark’, which triggers a larger global phenomenon called ‘Shadowgate’. The first victim of Shadowgate is a boy named Tom, who disappears after stepping through a strange door in the AR game Harrow 5.5. These events are the focus of the podcast-turned-docuseries “Shadow Power”, which opens each episode of the House of Leaves teleplays, adding another narrative layer by connecting Mélisande’s upload of the footage to the Keflavik incident (see Figure 1). Figure 1. An overview of the diegetic layers of House of Leaves (2000/ 2019). Authenticity as intermedial performance 215 2. The construction of authenticity in House of Leaves and the Teleplays The term ‘authenticity’ and the attribute ‘authentic’ have undergone a change of meaning over time, which is also partially attributed to changes and developments in media and technology. In the late 16 th century the term ‘authentic’ referred to the interpretation of a (legal) text as certified, genuine or valid. Its genuineness is certified by an objective or recognized authority (IDS, online). In historical and literary contexts, the term is also used in the context of eyewitness accounts with regard to historical events or journalistic work, thus characterizing them as reliable and credible sources (IDS, online). These meanings derive from the Latin authenticus, which can mean “written by one’s own hand, original, vouched for, reliable” (IDS, online) having its etymological roots in a Greek family of words […] which includes the adjective α ὐ θ εντικός (‘of first-hand authority, original’) as well as the nouns α ὐ θ εντί α (‘original authority’) and α ὐ θ έντης (‘one who does a thing himself, a principal, a master, an autocrat’). The latter combines the prefix α ὐ τ ( ο ), meaning ‘self’, with an agent noun ἑ ντης , which derives from the verb ‘α νύειν ’ meaning ‘to accomplish, to bring about’ (Funk 2015: 28). Wolfgang Funk highlights two important aspects of the word’s etymology that clarify the link between self-expression and artistic creation. First, it signifies an act of creative effort or achievement. He suggests that the inherent ambiguity in the idea of authenticity stems from the combination of personal essence (‘self’) and the act of creating or bringing something into existence (Funk 2015: 28). What should be noted here, is this distinction’s applicability to persons and objects as well as its paradox state of constructing authenticity, while still giving the impression of naturalness and unmediatedness (Funk 2015: 28), which is especially fruitful for its later application to House of Leaves. Funk argues that authenticity often points to realms beyond the confines of language (2015: 25). It embodies an idea that escapes conventional symbolic representation, maintaining a quality that cannot be fully absorbed into established systems of meaning. Its elusive nature suggests a deeper significance, one that transcends traditional interpretative frameworks. Funk describes this as a “surplus of signification” (2015: 27), where authenticity implies more than what can be articulated within the limits of language and cultural structures. This leads Irmtraud Huber to the comparison of the inherent qualities of authenticity with that of trauma. Both, authenticity and trauma, are indescribable and impossible to represent directly: “Every verbalization, every assimilation of the event into a narrative would therefore imply a loss of authenticity.” (Huber 2012: 122). What Funk and other scholars identify as the paradox of authenticity (2015: 25) is the aspiration of the authentic subject or object to be experienced as authentic. However, Culler (1988) suggests that Elisabeth Frank 216 the moment something is labeled as authentic, it paradoxically becomes a “sign of itself” (164), thereby losing its original status as authentic. Authenticity typically refers to an unmediated and unobserved state. By describing or defining something as authentic, the very act of observation and description alters its nature, reducing it to a mere representation rather than preserving its ‘unfiltered essence’. This paradox forms the core of Danielewski’s narrative technique: first he exposes the construction of authenticity and shatters the illusion, in order to then build up a second, deeper layer of authenticity through new forms of mediation. This process already begins in the introduction to the fake dissertation on the documentary “The Navidson Record”, in which Zampanò provides readers with an initial assessment of the concept of authenticity: While enthusiasts and detractors will continue to empty entire dictionaries attempting to describe or deride it, ‘authenticity’ still remains the word most likely to stir a debate. In fact, this leading obsession - to validate or invalidate the reels and tapes - invariably brings up a collateral and more general concern: whether or not, with the advent of digital technology, image has forsaken its once unimpeachable hold on the truth. (Danielewski 2000: 3) However, he only offers a constricting perspective, which focuses exclusively on the authenticity status of the material properties of objects and then segues into a more complex question: Do digital images have the same umbilical connection to reality or ‘truth’ as analog photography? (Barthes 1981). It is inevitable that every photographic image is composed in varying proportions of a mixture of choice and coincidence, of significant and insignificant elements, signal and noise - a surplus of information. Because noise (e.g. background noise in (audio-)visual recordings, the grainy veil in photographs) and traces (e.g. evidence of presence in photographs or film footage), usually considered unintentional, coincidental information, give the impression of an especially authentic and reliable account of a photographer’s or photojournalist’s subject. However, the second the authentic quality of a trace or noise is addressed, it is aesthetically constituted, loses its status of the “untouched by mediating cultural codes” (Culler 1988: 164) and is subsequently transferred to the category of culture (Ruchatz 2008: 370). Additionally, medial representational gaps are a central point in the investigation of an authenticity represented by intermedial means. It is precisely in the failures of different media that the “singularity of experience”, its “nongeneralizability” and “nonrepeatability” (Hansen 2005: 606) become apparent. It is in these instances that moments of authenticity are performed and verbally enacted. When recording, filming or photographing an event has failed the material must be supplemented by a verbal retelling or by typographic experiments that both fill in and highlight Authenticity as intermedial performance 217 these gaps. This is where I see the authenticity-creating potential of Danielewski’s intermedial narrative strategies. Where words and recordings fail, it requires intermedial techniques that combine these media, so they can ultimately influence each other in order to achieve the impression of a better representation and a more authentic portrayal of the events described in the book. An example of an authenticity-enhancing intermedial technique, highlighting photography’s role in memory, appears early in “The Navidson Record”: Navidson immediately asks whether or not they overlooked the room. This seems ridiculous at first until one considers how the impact of such an implausible piece of reality could force anyone to question their own perceptions. Karen, however, manages to dig up some photos which clearly show a bedroom wall without a door. (Danielewski 2000: 28) The Navidsons return home from a three-day trip to Seattle and find their home changed. During their absence, a door has appeared, which now connects the master bedroom to the children’s room. What should be noted here, is Karen’s first impulse to consult images, photographs to be exact, which confirm their memories and prove unequivocally that the door was not there when the family left. Here, media are used to verify, what Karen and Navidson called into doubt. By relying on photographs, they draw on the medium’s inherent proximity to reality to verify the troubled notions of their memory. As Johnny recalls his first encounter with “The Navidson Record” in Zampanò’s apartment, the description of events is permeated by resorting to the diction and metaphors of the medium of photography: “Of course all of that’s gone now. Long gone. The smell too. I’m left with only a few scattered mental snapshots.” (Danielewski 2000: xvi). Just like the Navidsons rely on photographs and other images (architectural blueprints of the house, surveillance footage during their absence, history records) and Johnny’s representation of his thoughts and memories reverts to the medium of photography, media facilitate new ways of thoughts, thinkpatterns and (re-)organizing memories. The patterns of autobiographical writing also operate under the impression of representing reality under “the auspices of verisimilitude and veracity” (Depkat 2019: 280). Much like photographs, we expect autobiographies and memoirs to have a certain adherence to truth. The reality, however, is somewhat different: Even ‘factual’ narratives tend to combine the real and the fictionalized version of events, the actively remembered and the passively forgotten and retrospectively place emphases and priorities to certain life events. Autobiographical narratives organize an individual’s life by imposing patterns and integrating elements of fictionalization, despite their claims of referential truth (Depkat 2019: 281). Elisabeth Frank 218 The methods used to create authenticity in autobiographical writing - such as selecting, organizing, and emphasizing memories - can also be applied subversively. Birgit Neumann suggests that these narrative molds and cultural scripts can be undermined by the use of techniques of unreliable narration. The dissolution of a singular plot line into multiple perspectives, narrative voices or diegetic layers (as seen in House of Leaves) is another technique employed in order to obfuscate the narration or make it seem more authentic. It offers readers a multiplicity of approaches and interpretations for the text - ultimately imparting the narration with another layer of truthfulness or authenticity, as events are always considered and perceived from multiple perspectives. In House of Leaves, too, the unreliability of memory and its constant reinterpretation is elevated to a structural principle of the narrative. Two examples, one from the book and one from the teleplays, elucidate Danielewski’s technique of an unreliable narrator, who knows about common narrative constructions and ultimately uses them to imbue his story with a second order of authenticity. Johnny, during his nights out with Lude, where they usually try to attract women by telling exciting but fake anecdotes from their lives, makes use of such techniques. Lude provides Johnny with a prompt and Johnny immediately corrects him. By correcting Lude’s already made-up prompt, he obscures the lie and thereby invariably ‘confirms’ his alleged autobiographical anecdote: “Show them your arms, Johnny” Lude will say, in his most offhand over-thetop manner. “Aw come on. Well, alright just this once.” I roll up my left sleeve and then, taking my time, I roll up the right one. “He got that in a cult in Indiana.” “Idaho”, I correct him. And it goes on from there.” (Danielewski 2000: 20) The second example, this time from the teleplays, is a similar example for the whole narrative strategy employed in House of Leaves. Eddie, a hitman who is send out to recover the USB flash drive from Mélisande, is looking for other hidden flash drives in the home he lives in with his family, his wife and two sons. He goes into the closet and, using a drill, he removes the back panels, revealing “a cache of photographs of another woman, lacy garments, letters. Some money. A few hundred dollars at most.” (Danielewski 2019, Script 1: 33). But this first box with compromising items is just a ploy to distract his wife or sons should they come across Eddie’s hiding place. Behind the first wall is a much more incriminating box: EDDIE now takes out some more intricate tools and removes the back wall behind this quaint little idyll to adultery. Authenticity as intermedial performance 219 The cache-behind-the-cache is much different: stacks of hard drives, video tapes, DVDs. There’s also a lot of cash, as in thousands and thousands of dollars. And that’s not all. (Danielewski 2019, Script 1: 33) These examples are constitutive of Danielewski’s rhetoric and narrative strategies to expose or conceal a second layer in the narration or mediation of House of Leaves - drawing on the structural principal of a kind of Doppelbödigkeit. The first example obfuscates the lie by correcting another lie, while the second example admits to a first layer of deception and therefore hides the second layer of construction. On a bigger scale, Danielewski’s techniques and structural principles to create authenticity effects within the texts draw heavily on the utilization of other media, i.e. either highlighting or concealing their respective medial qualities, inherent medial restrictions and storage media. This dynamic will be further explored in the remainder of the article. 3. The (de)construction of authenticity via intermedial means Now that the concept of second-order authenticity or Doppelbödigkeit has been introduced, we can explore its further application through intermedial strategies in House of Leaves - both in the novel and the teleplays. The focus on concrete intermedial configurations that are found in literary works makes Irina O. Rajewsky’s categorizations of intermediality particularly useful for analyzing intermedial techniques used by Mark Z. Danielewski in his two literary renditions of House of Leaves. Her approach includes explications of intermedial phenomena “such as transposition d’art, filmic writing, ekphrasis, […] film adaptations of literary works, ‘novelizations’, visual poetry, […] comics, multimedia shows, hyperfiction, multimedial computer ‘texts’ or installations […].” (Rajewsky 2005: 50). To determine the intermediality of these disparate examples in her investigation of intermedial configurations in texts, Rajewsky proposes three subcategories that “distinguish groups of phenomena, each of which exhibits a distinct intermedial quality” (2005: 55): medial transposition, media combination and intermedial references. In order to narrow down the excessive amount of media in House of Leaves, the selected examples primarily focus on (audio)visual media like film, photography and their respective storage media. Every category will be exemplified with an intermedial configuration from the texts to prove the inherently intermedial methods employed by Danielewski. 3.1. Medial transposition Medial transposition or medial transformation is a phenomenon, where the intermedial quality is derived from the conception of the resulting media Elisabeth Frank 220 product, i.e. the transformation or ‘translation’ of one media product (text, film etc.) into another medium. Its formation is based upon the medial specifics and characteristics of the original medium. However, only the resulting medium is present in its materiality (Rajewsky 2005: 51). Film adaptations and novelizations are one example for medial transpositions, where a film is based on a novel and vice versa (e.g., H.G. Wells science fiction novel The War of the Worlds (1897) was adapted as a radio play by Orson Welles in 1938). Rajewsky describes this intermedial phenomenon as a “production oriented, ‘genetic’ conception of intermediality” (2005: 51), where one medium serves as the original or source for another. The intermedial strategy of the medial transposition is not really present in the novel or the teleplays. House of Leaves is not really the novelization of the documentary “The Navidson Record”, but it presents itself as one. The text stages the ekphrastic retelling of the fictional documentary “The Navidson Record” and does so by drawing on the media specific properties of the ‘original’ medium - the deteriorating reels and tapes of the fake documentary. It also channels the media and genre specific characteristics of cinéma vérité, reality TV shows, survival and adventure shows, (family) drama as well as crime, thriller and horror movies. However, within the diegetic world of the teleplays, the documentary is revealed to be real and the book is exposed to be a fraud as it claimed to be fictional but now turns out to be factual. In the truly clichéd style of news exposition in movies, Danielewski simulates the fragmented montage of breaking news, which are reported on various channels: ‘A literary hoax! ’ ‘Not the first literary hoax though this time with a very strange twist.’ ‘This beloved novel’ ‘cult book’ […] ‘was today’ ‘yesterday’ ‘tonight’ ‘just this morning! ’ ‘declared a fraud’. […] ‘This is not like James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces’ ‘or Wilkomirski’s Fragments’ ‘or JT LeRoy’s Sarah.’ […] ‘Quite the contrary, this novel always made clear that none of its content is true’ ‘real’ ‘actual’ ‘legitimate’ ‘factual’ ‘non-fiction.’ (Danielewski 2019, Script 2: 1) In the teleplays, the book “House of Leaves” 2 is dealt with as a novelization of the documentary, thereby confirming the alleged primacy of the movie by establishing it as the original source for the book. Here, not only do the proliferating authors and contributors of the book and the confusion of diegetic hierarchies confound readers, but in addition to that, commonly held believes of an ‘original’ and ‘source material’ are questioned. What came first, the novel or the documentary? This scene highlights a core issue of medial transposition: House of Leaves stages itself as a novelization of a non-existent documentary while drawing on the specific medial qualities 2 “House of Leaves” in quotation marks means the book within the diegetic world of the scripts, while House of Leaves in italics is the physical copy and novel by Mark Z. Danielewski. Authenticity as intermedial performance 221 of both the book and the documentary. In the teleplays, however, the lines between fiction and reality blur further when the documentary is revealed to be real, exposing the book’s claim to fictionality as a deliberate construct. This reversal destabilizes the readers’ expectation of what constitutes the original source. In his typesetting of the book, Danielewski made a few noticeable choices when it comes to the paratexts, front matter and title page. Instead of taking ‘his rightful place’ as the author on the recto page of the front matter, he places himself on the verso page - the back of the page - and foregrounds Zampanò’s and Johnny’s ‘involvement’ in the creation of the book. Retracing or reconstructing the origins of the story is therefore denied, as Danielewski presents the books as a collaboration or multi-authorial project. Mélisande’s interactions with her students in the teleplays also raise significant questions about adaptation and originality, particularly in the context of medial transposition. A student points out that the book claims the film did not exist, but now it does. Mélisande responds that by posting it, she is proving its existence, suggesting it now predates the book. The discussion then questions whether the film is an adaptation, with another student proposing that perhaps the novel is the adaptation. (Danielewski 2019, Script 2: 13) Through its use of medial transposition, House of Leaves foregrounds its own production process, constantly referencing its fictionality and thereby undermining its authenticity by challenging conventional beliefs about the original source and its reproduction. Mélisande’s interactions with her students highlight this issue, serving as a microcosm of the larger problem Danielewski explores - what happens when the boundaries between original and adaptation become so fluid that it’s impossible to determine which came first. This deliberate confusion is central to Danielewski’s approach, as he continuously questions and destabilizes the notion of an original source. In doing so, he underscores the inherent instability of narrative and media, where authenticity and originality are revealed to be as much a product of mediation and perception as the content itself. 3.2. Media combination Media combination encompasses phenomena in which the intermedial quality is based on the constellation and combination of different media, which are perceived as conventionally distinct, all of which are present in their own materiality (e.g., the combination of image and text in newspapers or news reporting) (Rajewsky 2005: 51). In media combination, it is essential to acknowledge that the distinct media components “contribute to the constitution and signification of the entire product in their own specific way.” (Rajewsky 2005: 52). Especially documentaries’ plurimedial Elisabeth Frank 222 structure - the combination of images and eyewitness accounts - is a constitutive feature of the medium. The reciprocal influence and conflation of images and words enhances their truth value and consequently their authenticity status. Media combinations use two different media, which can lend the other an aura of authenticity. However, the combination of images and words can also open up fields of tension and contradictions. It is precisely at this point of rupture, between the supposedly manipulated, staged film recordings and the questionable claims about the truth status of the images, that the contradictory states of truth become apparent in the case of the first releases of “The Navidson Record”: The Navidson Record did not first appear as it does today. Nearly seven years ago what surfaced was “The Five and a Half Minute Hallway” - a five and a half minute optical illusion barely exceeding the abilities of any NYU film school graduate. The problem, of course, was the accompanying statement that claimed all of it was true. (Danielewski 2000: 4) In the novel, the questionable images, here in the form of a film, are described as an “optical illusion” and a bad one at that. But what makes them so interesting is the outrageous claim that the footage of a house, which is larger on the inside than the outside, is authentic. This creates a tension, which is developed as the book progresses, but never reaches a resolution to resolve the growing unease. The images described in the book contradict general knowledge and cultural believes; they are cause for uneasiness, doubt of the veracity of images in general and their susceptibility for manipulation. The teleplays, though, raise completely different concerns. Here, ‘absolutely fake,’ digitally generated images within the augmented reality (AR) environment of the game Harrow 5.5 become part of the characters’ reality. Between the publication of the book in the year 2000 and the publication of the teleplays in 2019, a naturalization of digital images has taken place that has had a tremendous impact on how we perceive and integrate images into our everyday life. The dual nature of AR - where binary information and physical reality intersect - creates a fusion of diegetic levels that deepens immersion. The confusion between these layers is illustrated by the disappearance of the character Tom in Shadowgate. On one hand, AR visuals can seem blatantly artificial, “skittle-shiny” (Danielewski, Script 3: 57), and easily distinguishable from real-world objects. On the other hand, the same technology can produce hyper-realistic images that convincingly mimic reality. In Shadowgate, a highly realistic digital door appears in the middle of a forest, indistinguishable from a physical object. Tom opens the door and vanishes into thin air. The other children remove their AR headsets, but the door has disappeared, existing only in the digital realm - though it still has real-world consequences. This passage from the Authenticity as intermedial performance 223 teleplays, where a digital artifact becomes ‘real enough’ to cause physical consequences, exemplifies the interaction between digital and physical realities through the use of media combination in AR, as it blurs the line between mediated experiences and actual events. The normalization of AR and digital media in House of Leaves reflects broader societal shift, where the digital has become an intrinsic part of how we perceive and interact with reality, mimicking it so convincingly that its influence on the physical world is undeniable. 3.3. Intermedial references Intermediality in the sense of intermedial references can contribute to the constitution of a text in different ways - from the simple mentioning or thematization of an altermedial product (individual reference to a specific film, play or song) or system (reference to a whole media system like cinema, theatre or music in general) to transposing processes that attempt to reproduce certain structures and elements of another medium in verbal language. This includes phenomena and features like “filmic writing, ekphrasis [and] the musicalization of literature […].” (Rajewsky 2005: 50). The author of a text can, if they are trying to relate to film or television for example, use cinematic strategies, such as zooms, cuts, montage, fade-in and fade-out, superimpositions and other editing techniques. However, only an illusion of the other medium is created, which illustrates the simulation-forming quality of intermedial references. Rajewsky calls this the ‘as-if’ character of intermedial references (2005: 54). In House of Leaves, whether in novel or teleplay form, the written text serves as the core medium. The narrative employs its own media-specific methods to evoke, imitate, or reflect features of other media forms, while maintaining its foundation in the written word. Due to media differences, an actual realization of the referenced medium is not possible, but according to Rajewsky there can at least be an asymptotic approximation of the referenced system (2005: 55). At the same time, this highlights the medial differences and analogies and reveals medium-specific features. These metamedial thematizations are able to reveal the general insufficiency of all medial representation and the constructed character of all media. In the failings of medial representation, but also in its attempts to cover up or highlight its blind spots and insufficiencies, authenticity is attempted to be performed. By laying bare the incongruity of human experience and its representation and by pointing out the insufficiencies of every kind of representation, the question comes up, whether authenticity effects can be achieved by transcending and subverting constructed medial borders: “All types of intermedial reference can create such defamiliarizations and hence appeal to the readers’ special attention by irritating the boundaries between media, by thematizing their different relations to reality and by problematizing their degree of fictionality.” (Brosch 2015: 346). With the Elisabeth Frank 224 help of the following categorizations of intermedial references (explicit references and references via transposition), an attempt will be made to describe Danielewski’s intermedial strategies in House of Leaves, which generally involve the exposure of medial structures, subversions of established narrative and rhetoric practices and the highlighting of genre conventions of various media. 3.3.1. Explicit references According to Rajewsky, the explicit mentioning of another media system or the thematization of an altermedial product is the simplest form of intermedial reference and not a ‘genuine’ intermedial phenomenon, as it is just the simple naming of another medium and there is no simulation or imitation at any time (2004: 46). However, the explicit reference serves an important function in the text and is relevant for the intermedial character of a product. This “marker function” (Rajewsky 2004: 57) draws readers’ attention to potential implicit cinematic techniques and can even confirm their presence within the narrative (Rajewsky 2003: 66). It draws the readers’ attention to the intermedial character of the text and makes them receptive to more complex or subtle intermedial procedures that could otherwise be overlooked (2003: 79). The explicit reference is also responsible for the metaization of the narrative discourse. This way, medial, aesthetic and fictional qualities of a media system, e.g., of film and photography, can thus be reflected and commented on (Rajewsky 2004: 79). The strategies of authentication and authenticity as well as their subversion in House of Leaves, which are closely linked to the choice of media and genres mentioned in the text, question the ‘reality-guaranteeing power’ of media, like film and photography. Due to the assumed reality-mediating function of images, which results from their material properties, they are ascribed a certain power and effect on the way that our understanding of images affects textual production. Because of the inherent ‘claim to reality’ of images, authors continually attempt to approach them via rhetorical strategies, elaborate descriptions, metaphors and other stylistic devices and textual procedures, as it is a common practice for people to “create much of our world out of the dialogue between verbal and pictorial representation […].” (Mitchell 1994: 161). Here, one must distinguish between analog and digital recording processes. In the book of House of Leaves there are only cameras and camera recorders that work analogously, while the scripts reference digital recording technologies. Analog recording devices are explicitly mentioned in the first chapter of the novel, which medially frames the following plot and activates readers’ experience of film and photography as a referenced medium: The Hi 8 cameras, which are mainly used in the house and in the expeditions inside the house, are video cameras which use an analog video format for recording. The data carrier is a magnetic tape, such as those Authenticity as intermedial performance 225 found in VHS tapes. The Hi 8 is a camera that was used in many households in the 1990s, e.g., for home videos. However, the 16mm Arriflex which Navidson adds is a camera of higher quality that can be used to shoot feature films and was often found in journalistic productions (before digital formats supplanted analog ones) (Bilsky 2012: 142). Analog recording techniques continue to provide recipients with a sense of authenticity and reliability in the images captured. Roland Barthes supports this by emphasizing that the captured object or subject is not an “optionally real thing” to which an image refers but rather the “necessarily real thing” (Barthes 1981: 76, emphasis original) placed before the camera lens. Without this tangible presence, Barthes argues, the photograph would not exist (1981: 76). This connection underscores the inherent trust in analog photography’s capacity to reflect reality. A huge disadvantage of these analog recording techniques is their dependence on light for an adequate recording quality, which also proves to be a problem for the exploration team’s attempts to record the endless hallways of the house for “The Navidson Record”: “Holloway remains the most stoic, keeping any doubts to himself, adding only that the experience is beyond the power of any Hi 8 or 35mm camera: ‘It’s impossible to photograph what we saw.’” (Danielewski 2000: 86). Instead, readers have to rely on the subjectively colored descriptions of Zampanò, who tries to provide an impression of the photographs and recordings, but always refers back to the inherent inability of cameras to photograph the ‘Great Hall’ - and thus ‘reality’ itself: In one photograph of the Great Hall, we find Reston in the foreground holding a flare, the light barely licking an ashen wall rising above him into inky oblivion, while in the background Tom stands surrounded by flares which just as ineffectually confront the impenetrable wall of nothingness looming around the Spiral Staircase. (Danielewski 2000: 155) The expedition team tries to introduce depth cues to the image with the help of light sources and differing distances, which is another failed attempt at representing the true size of the hall, but nevertheless gives an impression of the magnitude of the Great Hall. All attempts are in vain, though, and the house remains unrecordable as far as the media of photography and film are concerned. Only Zampanò’s ekphrastic retelling and his insistence on including the substandard attempts to capture the interior of the house give readers a sense of its unrepresentable enormity. 3.3.2. References via transposition The second major form of intermedial references, known as references via transposition, appears in these ways: evoking, simulating, and (partially) Elisabeth Frank 226 reproducing. This approach involves recreating certain features or structures from one medium and aligning them with the rules of the referenced system. This combination of elements is what provides the technique with its intermedial nature (Rajewsky 2005: 55). The difference between media systems, which can be emphasized by explicit reference, becomes significant because it cannot be completely overcome or resolved. At best, it can only be represented by an ‘as if’ approach, in which one medium imitates or is modelled on another without fully replicating it (Rajewsky 2005: 55). In the so called ‘filmic’ writing in House of Leaves, for example, the author accesses textual strategies reminiscent of certain film techniques, such as tracking shots and other camera movements, title cards, handheld cameras, frame-by-frame playback, zoom-ins, lighting, one-take shots, montage and other editing techniques. Evocation As already explicated before, the trigger for an intermedial reception of the text is an accumulation of explicit references. In combination with a systematical “establishment of iconic analogies between literary structures and filmic conventions, qualities, and structures […]” (Schwaneke 2015: 276) a thematic evocation is achieved. These explicit remarks and thematizations of the other medium can either be done by the narrator or a character (Schwaneke 2015: 276). This form of metanarration refers to selfreflective commentary on the narration process, focusing on how aspects of storytelling are addressed within the narrative itself. As Nünning explains, these are narrative statements about the act of narration, which distinguishes them from fiction about fiction (2009: 204). Rather than examining the fictional elements of the story, this approach highlights how the narrator reflects on the structure and mechanics of the narrative. Metafiction, however, refers to commentary on the fictionality or construction of a narrative, as well as the ability to reveal the fictionality of a narrative and can, e.g., make heteroreferential or self-referential comments on the fictional status of the text (Nünning 2009: 204). Metanarrative and metafictional elements do not inherently break the immersion of a narrative; instead, they can actually strengthen the illusion of authenticity that the story aims to create (Nünning 2009: 205). This authenticity-enhancing strategy can also be used in a subversive way, as employed by Danielewski in House of Leaves. Danielewski utilizes metanarrative commentary throughout the text and does so at every diegetic level, including within footnotes or paratexts. Johnny, for example, admits to ‘compromising’ the diegetic level of “The Navidson Record” at the very beginning of Zampanò’s dissertation and description of Will Navidson’s first scenes. During his editing of Zampanò’s retelling of the Navidsons’ moving into their new home, inhabiting its space and encountering first problems like a broken water heater - Authenticity as intermedial performance 227 Johnny’s narration bursts out of the margins of the footnotes and takes over the page. He writes about his own water heater dilemma, interjecting pages upon pages of anecdotes from his life, until he finally admits his alteration of the text: Now I’m sure you’re wondering something. Is it just coincidence that this cold water predicament of mine also appears in this chapter? Not at all. Zampanò only wrote ‘heater’. The word ‘water’ back there - I added that. Now there’s an admission, eh? Hey, not fair, you cry. Hey, hey, fuck you, I say. (Danielewski 2000: 16) From the outset, Zampanò’s and Navidson’s works are undermined, their truth and authenticity status cast into doubt and their entire story is discredited by Johnny’s intrusion into the text production process. Different diegetic layers are usually used to attribute authenticity to the ‘lower’ diegetic layer by retrospectively corroborating events and asserting a certain truth status. In House of Leaves, this strategy is made impossible by the metaleptic entanglements of the diegetic layers as well as the metanarrative admissions of its multiple authors. While Zampanò tries to make “The Navidson Record” believable by asserting its existence, referencing real studies, books, authors and scholars, Johnny, on the other hand, destroys these attempts by pointing out holes and inaccuracies in Zampanò’s work, while at the same time confirming that Zampanò’s writings are real. While Johnny implicates the existence of the documentary “The Navidson Record”, he in turn affirms the existence of Zampanò’s notes for his academic treatise by editing them. In these notes and documents found by Johnny, Zampanò in turn lends authenticity to Navidson’s diegetic level by adding ample commentary on “The Navidson Record”, in which he insists on the ‘authentic’ nature of the filming and editing process since Navidson did not draw on effects, such as extradiegetic background music, actors or staging. He proves his point by repeatedly mentioning the medial, financial and productional restrictions of the medium ‘film’: “Strangely then, the best argument for fact is the absolute unaffordability of fiction.” (Danielewski 2000: 149). In House of Leaves, the authenticity of events is often questioned through metanarrative commentary. It is stated that the documentary “The Navidson Record” uses elements of cinéma vérité, a method aimed at minimizing barriers between subject and audience by avoiding technical elements such as large crews, elaborate sets, and specialized equipment, and structural features like conventional editing techniques and scripted dramatic tension, instead focusing on an unfiltered portrayal of reality. This approach contrasts with the techniques of traditional documentary and fictional film (Danielewski 2000: 139). Any attempts to refute the authenticity of the footage with Elisabeth Frank 228 cinematic evidence such as digital image manipulation or certain editing techniques are rendered obsolete when Zampanò addresses the economic aspect of digital image manipulation: Perhaps the best argument for the authenticity of The Navidson Record does not come from film critics, university scholars, or festival panel members but rather from the I.R.S. Even a cursory glance at Will Navidson’s tax statements or for that matter Karen’s, Tom’s or Billy Reston’s, proves the impossibility of digital manipulation. They just never had enough money. (Danielewski 2000: 148) Here, the metamedial and metanarrative reference to the unaffordability of digital manipulation and extensive film production, in relation to the financial situation of the producers of the documentary, is meant to reveal that any kind of medial representation is fabricated, while at the same time increasing the authenticity status of the referenced work. Danielewski, however, does not stop at this interplay of affirming and doubting the authenticity status of the narrative by pointing to intracompositional media structures and techniques. He further interweaves his narrative with outer-diegetic, intertextual and intermedial references to other media products. His metafictional entanglements heteroreferentially draw on narratives and constructions that lie outside of the narrative in order to access real life examples. In turn, the ambivalent truth status of the narrative is maintained by referencing not only other fictional media products like media hoaxes and frauds such as Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds (Danielewski 2000: 7), James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood and JT LeRoy’s Sarah (Danielewski 2019, Script 2: 1), and urban legends like slender man or momo (Danielewski 2019, Script 2: 49). There is also mentioning of fake news relating to QAnon, Pizzagate, and Alex Jones (Danielewski 2019, Script 1: 6) as well as conspiracy theories like Flat Earthers, Anti-Vaxxers, and Holocaust Deniers (Danielewski 2019, Script 1: 5). But also, its authenticity status is enhanced by interweaving the events in House of Leaves with a network of real international media events like the Rodney King Video (Danielewski 2000: 145) or the Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster (Danielewski 2019, Script 1: 6). More worldwide images of plummeting markets, ghettoed cities, polluted coastlines, and still more cenotaphs. Then images of celebrants happily dancing when it was still a wedding and not yet the Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster. […] SITE MANAGER (CONT’D) So it had to be a hardware problem. But that was incorrect too. Something had given way. For me, the only way I can describe it, what it felt like, was the Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster. CAMERA OPERATOR (O.C.) How do you mean? Authenticity as intermedial performance 229 SITE MANAGER Like the floor just gave way. CAMERA OPERATOR (O.C.) I don’t understand. SITE MANAGER I don’t either: the hardware is functional, the software runs fine enough, the data is at least initially locatable, but somehow the data becomes increasingly inaccessible, out of reach. […] Images of the Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster when the floor gives way. (Danielewski 2019, Script 1: 7f.) In the teleplays, the fictional event of Server Dark and later “The Keflavik Tape” are compared and intertwined with the real event of the Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster from 2001, when the third floor of a large building in Israel suddenly collapsed during festivities. The images of that disaster were broadcast all around the world because a camcorder captured the event. This intermedial border crossing that the author employs extends to non-fictional events, and in doing so, accomplishes what is necessary for eliciting authenticity effects: a heteroreferential turn to other ‘real’ media and media products. Danielewski constructs his narrative in such a way as to create analogies to real experiences and comparisons to real media that have a higher degree of verisimilitude and authenticity (in this case, randomly or accidentally filmed events and tragedies) that can be seen as part of the reality of the recipients’ lives. This also has an immersion-enhancing effect on the recipients in contrast to the illusion-breaking techniques mentioned earlier; entanglements of the narrative plot of House of Leaves with mimetic experiences of real events or media are simulated by creating analogies to real experiences. Referring back to the strategy of evocation, we can observe how analogies are systematically drawn between literary frameworks and broader epistemological structures. These analogies are established through metanarrative and metafictional commentary from the texts’ characters, which, in turn, work to enhance the readers’ perception of authenticity. This method activates the connection between the narrative and the readers’ interpretative framework. Simulation The discursive simulation of one medium within another text involves mimicking qualities from another medium, such as film, to alter the text’s structure or style (e.g., changing typography or layout). This process aims to approximate the representational methods of the other medium at the discursive level. By adapting the language system, the readers’ familiarity with different media is used to engage the cognitive and perceptual frameworks typically associated with these media. This method simulates readers’ experiences with film and photography and activates their media literacy to increase their interpretive engagement (Rajewsky 2002: 88). Technical details such as a cinematic shot, a frame or a setting find expression in an equivalent textual procedure. It can either come to an iconic Elisabeth Frank 230 representation of a film excerpt as a linguistic sign or, with the help of an onomatopoeic word, the speed and suddenness of a cinematic cut can be represented (Rajewsky 2002: 114). Jed, a minor character in the novel, is given a biographical background that reminds readers of a confessional, a stylistic device used in reality TV shows, in which his hobbies and fiancée are described and he is introduced as ‘the person behind the façade’. Having its origin in documentaries, it was picked up by reality TV shows to provide immediate, often emotional reactions to events and was therefore perceived as especially authentic. Now it is mostly used as a gimmick and has lost its initial claim to authenticity and subjectivity. It is explicitly stated, without any hesitation or doubt, that Jed will survive his ordeal - only to be shot suddenly on the next page. Zampanò uses the frame-by-frame technique to reproduce the following gruesome moment in every detail because otherwise it would have happened too quickly for the human eye to perceive. The frame-byframe technique, which is similar to playing a movie in slow motion, is able to stretch out a short moment in such a way that things are revealed that were not seen before. One must distinguish that it is not the documentary itself that makes use of this device, that is, not Navidson as the creator of the documentary, but the spectator, Zampanò, who uses the technique to make his ekphrastic description as accurately as possible: As diligent as any close analysis of the Zapruder film, similar frame by frame examination carried out countless times by too many critics to name here reveals how a fraction of a second later one bullet pierced his upper lip, blasted through the maxillary bone, dislodging even fragmenting the central teeth, (Reel 10; Frame 192) and then in the following frame (Reel 10; Frame 193) obliterated the back side of his head, chunks of occipital lobe and parietal bone spewn out in an instantly senseless pattern uselessly preserved in celluloid light (Reel 10; Frames 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, & 205.) [...] Here then -- (Danielewski 2000: 193) On the following pages, the words are in a line and are meant to represent a fired cartridge moving through the still images. The moment of the shot continues to be drawn out. Here, various techniques of the cinematic frame of reference are simulated. The delay of the tragedy alone, in which a brief moment of hope is revealed, is reminiscent of every other blockbuster film released in the past few years. The referenced medium of the ‘(Hollywood) movie’ is called up with all its characteristics, clichés and qualities by taking up elements that are non-specific to the medium, such as the use of a ‘red herring’ or a ‘cliffhanger’ (e.g., in chapter VIII of the novel). The characteristics of the documentary and Hollywood film intermingle. On the one hand, Zampanò insists on the reality-depicting quality of the documentary, while on the other hand, he shapes his ekphrasis in such a way as to create Authenticity as intermedial performance 231 an artificially generated suspense through said cinematic techniques drawing on the subsystem of (Hollywood) cinema. By drawing on the structural principles of (Hollywood) cinema, the deception of the readers is achieved with the surprising moment of the shot, played out ‘in slow motion’ on the following pages. The playback of the frames is imitated when the pages are turned. Shortly thereafter, there is an explicit mention of the system and a reflection on the medium and the authenticity of what is presented, which is once again intended to recall the medial qualities of cinéma vérité: Ken Burns has used this particular moment to illustrate why The Navidson Record is so beyond Hollywood: ‘Not only is it gritty and dirty and raw, but look how the zoom claws after the fleeting fact. Watch how the frame does not, cannot anticipate the action. Jed’s in the lower left hand corner of the frame! Nothing’s predetermined or foreseen. It’s all painfully present which is why it’s so painfully real.’ (Danielewski 2000: 206) According to Burns, the authenticity of what is depicted is based on the fact that the camera did not follow the action, i.e. it was not predetermined or planned. Instead of the Hollywood film, reference is made to the documentary. This passage of the book exhibits concrete intermedial configurations throughout and makes use of more than just explicit mentioning of another medium such as simply naming the cameras and editing techniques. The simulation of filmic techniques within the text amplifies the authenticity effect by blending the readers’ familiarity with visual media into the literary form. (Partially) reproducing transposition In the case of (partially) reproducing transpositions, non-media-specific, transmedial components of the reference system are called upon, which can thus be reproduced with the instruments and means of the literary system (Rajewsky 2005: 59). These components and strategies are supplemented by media-specific elements with the aid of the recipient’s media competence and film experience and result in an illusion-creating and potentially authenticity-inducing effect. A good example from the novel is the ‘literary one-take shot’ right in the beginning of Zampanò’s dissertation, which introduces a teaser (“The 5½ Minute Hallway”) and trailer (“Exploration 4#”) for the documentary and further addresses its production, marketing and distribution process. The cinematic technique of a one-take shot is partially reproduced with the means of the textual medium. A one-take shot is a sequence within a film that consists of only a single, unusually long shot showing a completed action without any cuts or editing, also called ‘long take’ or ‘continuous shot’. In blockbuster or avantgarde movies a one-take shot is an elaborately choreographed sequence within the film. Despite its highly constructed Elisabeth Frank 232 qualities, the heightened immediacy achieves a documentary style effect through the perceived congruence of depicted plot and actual time filmed. In the novel this cinematic technique is implemented by the omission of periods, developed here as the textual analog of cuts or edits. The onetake shot is one long sentence, uninterrupted by the use of paragraphs or periods: In one continuous shot, Navidson, whom we never actually see, momentarily focuses on a doorway on the north wall of his living room before climbing outside of the house through a window to the east of that door, where he trips slightly in the flower bed, redirects the camera from the ground to the exterior white clapboard, then moves right, crawling back inside the house through a second window, this time to the west of that door, where we hear him grunt slightly as he knocks his head on the sill, eliciting light laughter from those in the room, presumably Karen, his brother Tom, and his friend Billy Reston — though like Navidson, they too never appear on camera — before finally returning us to the starting point, thus completely circling the doorway and so proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that insulation or siding is the only possible thing this doorway could lead to, which is when all laughter stops, as Navidson’s hand appears in frame and pulls open the door, […] finally retracting and inspecting it, as if by seeing alone there might be something more to feel, Reston wanting to know if in fact his friend does sense something different, and Navidson providing the matter-of-fact answer which also serves as the conclusion, however abrupt, to this bizarre short: “It’s freezing in there.” (Danielewski 2000: 4f.) To create the effect of authenticity that Zampanò seeks, readers are made to share Navidson’s point of view, who is carrying the camera, bumping against a window sill giving the impression of a clearly improvised, unplanned shoot. The stumbling and shaky POV cam are cinematographic techniques created through the use of a handheld camera, giving it the documentary style of a non-staged scene that is even eliciting spontaneous laughter from the people present at the time of filming. The seemingly impromptu nature of the production appears unprepared - depicting ‘real time’ without any cuts - and therefore without any ‘falsification’ or ‘reduction’ of what is filmed. Zampanò calls the depicted events of the described recording an “exercise in disbelief”, which is an implicit invitation to tolerate this ontological impossibility. For added realism, the mimetic effect is enhanced by the rawness of the shot and demonstrative grittiness that is repeatedly emphasized in Zampanò’s dissertation, also in reference and comparison to unplanned recordings by eyewitnesses of disaster (similar to Ken Burns’ view that the footage is authentic because it is raw and gritty and therefore “painfully real”): In his article “True grit”, Anthony Lane at The New Yorker claims “grittiness is the most difficult element to construct and will always elude the finest studio Authenticity as intermedial performance 233 magician. Grit, however, does not elude Navidson. Consider the savage scene captured on grainy 16mm film of a tourist eaten alive by lions in a wildlife preserve in Angola (Traces of Death) and compare it to the ridiculous and costly comedy Eraser in which several villains are dismembered by alligators. (Danielewski 2000: 145) Here, the rawness of the production equals authenticity. The grittiness of the scenes in “The Navidson Record” stems from the surplus of noise in the recording process. ‘Noise’ in recordings is not only the muddling of the signal or the information, but, according to Bruce Clark, noise “too is information - and precisely unexpected information, an uncanny increment that rolls the dice of randomness within every communicative and calculative transmission.” (2010: 166). He goes further in his argumentation and claims “if noise is also information - noise is a ‘signature of the real’[…].” (2010: 166). The inclusion of unexpected, sudden, and unprecedented elements in Zampanò’s ekphrastic descriptions of the footage serves to enhance the illusion of authenticity. These moments, appearing random or unintentional, are framed as natural occurrences, lending a sense of realism to the otherwise artificial narrative. On the one hand, Danielewski’s intermedial strategy of authenticity relies on the reduction or elimination of mediation processes. In this case, authenticity is evoked by refraining from any common and established mediating techniques, like edits, cuts, elaborate tracking shots or any staging. On the other hand, Danielewski implements authenticity into his text by adding a surplus of information in the form of unintentional, sudden and unexpected occurrences such as tripping, stumbling or laughter, which constitutes authenticity of a second order: Danielewski tries to emulate the practice of cinema, which in turn emulates the practice of real life, or as Danielewski adds in his footnotes: “William J. Mitchell offers an alternate description of ‘grit’ when he highlights Barthe’s observation that reality incorporates ‘seemingly functionless detail ‘because it is there’ to signal that ‘this is indeed an unfiltered sample of the real.’” (Danielewski 2000: 146). Danielewski offers yet another way to depict the real and authentic - namely by stripping the medial representation of the ‘entertainment character’ of almost all medial products. Johnny, watching a scene from “The Navidson Record” in the teleplays, where the missing engineer from “The Keflavik Tape” is describing the house, is captivated by the footage, although it seems rather bleak and uninformative: JOHNNY TRUANT You gotta watch this. This guy’s for real. Listen how he analyzes the house. It’s amazing. And kinda scary too. VOICE (O.C.) Only nothing’s really happening. Elisabeth Frank 234 JOHNNY TRUANT Au contraire! That’s how reality happens. (Danielewski 2019, Script 2: 7) Interestingly, what readers perceive as ‘authentic’ up to this point is the referenced media system of cinema, which is evoked by the activation of “content-related concepts, schemata or scripts stored in the recipients’ minds mostly from previous real-life experiences but also from their enculturation […].” (Wolf 2013: 44). As recipients have become accustomed to certain technical standards, these concepts, schemata, and scripts are in turn subverted by Danielewski by disguising the recordings as spontaneous, by adding seemingly ‘unnecessary’ information or ‘noise’ to the footage, or, as exemplified above, by stripping them of their entertainment character - thereby providing the text with a second level of authenticity. In the case of House of Leaves, the text not only draws on the rules and concepts of ‘real life’, but also on the media-specific qualities, techniques and strategies of the reference system ‘film’, cinéma vérité and other recordings. In a second step, it subverts these by exposing their ambiguity and constructed nature. A glimpse of ‘real’ authenticity is provided by hinting at the possibility of authentic representation in the unexpected, the sudden and the coincidental. 4. Conclusion In House of Leaves (the novel and the teleplays), Mark Z. Danielewski uses techniques of constructing and deconstructing authenticity, much like the hoax surrounding the Yasusada poems. Both works initially attempt to present themselves as authentic - but House of Leaves reveals its fictional character and puts it on display. This deliberate unraveling of perceived authenticity allows Danielewski to establish a second-order authenticity, wherein the very act of exposing artifice and mediation becomes a new form of realism. By invoking familiar media conventions - whether through filmic writing, documentary aesthetics, or the raw immediacy of cinéma vérité - and then dismantling them, Danielewski highlights the constructedness of all mediated experiences. This strategy reflects a paradox of authenticity: that which appears real is often a product of manipulation, but the conscious unveiling of that manipulation can create a more immersive sense of authenticity. Ultimately, Danielewski’s approach forces readers to engage with the complex relationship between mediation and reality. By drawing attention to the inherent artifice of narrative and media, House of Leaves questions conventional notions of what it means to convey truth or authenticity. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, like the Yasusada hoax, plays with readers’ expectations of truth, suggesting that authenticity is not an inherent quality, Authenticity as intermedial performance 235 but a performance - one that can be created or faked, deconstructed and reconstructed through the interplay of media, narrative, and interpretation. By embracing this technique of second-order authenticity, Danielewski demonstrates that the search for authenticity is often more about the process of uncovering layers of mediation than about discovering an unmediated truth. References Barthes, Roland (1981). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. 1 st American ed. Hill and Wang. Bilsky, Brianne (2012). (Im)Possible spaces. Technology and narrative in House of Leaves. In: Sascha Pöhlmann (Ed.). Revolutionary Leaves: The Fiction of Mark Z. Danielewski. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. 137-165. Renate Brosch (2015). Images in narrative literature: Cognitive experience and iconic moments. In: Gabriele Rippl (Ed.). Handbook of Intermediality: Literature- Image-Sound-Music. Berlin: De Gruyter. 346. Clark, Bruce (2010). Information. In: Hansen, Mark B. N. & W. T. J. Mitchell (Eds.). Critical Terms for New Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Culler, Jonathan D. (1988). Framing the Sign: Criticism and its Institutions. Oxford: Blackwell. Danielewski, Mark Z. (2000). House of Leaves. New York: Pantheon Books. Danielewski, Mark Z. (2019. House of Leaves. Scripts 1-3. Patreon. Depkat, Volker (2019). Facts and ficiton. In: Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (Ed.). Handbook of Autobiography/ Autofiction. Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter. 280-286. Funk, Wolfgang (2015). The Literature of Reconstruction. Authentic Fiction in the New Millennium. New York: Bloomsbury. Hansen, M. B. N. (2005). The digital topography of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. Contemporary Literature 45 (4): 597-636. Huber, Irmtraud (2012). A quest for authenticity: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated. In: Julia Straub (Ed.). Paradoxes of Authenticity: Studies on a Critical Concept. Bielefeld: transcript. 115-133. IDS (2024). authentisch. OWID, 12 Sep. 2023. www.owid.de/ artikel/ 405539 [September 2024]. Mead, Philip (2012). Hoax poetry and inauthenticity. In: Joe Bray, Alison Gibbons & Brian McHale (Eds.) The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature. London: Routledge. 338-349. Mitchell, W.J.T. (2010). Image. In: M. B. N. Hansen & W. T. J. Mitchell (Eds.). Critical Terms for New Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 35-48. Mitchell, W.J.T. (1994). Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nünning, Ansgar (2009). Metanarration and metafiction. In: Peter Hühn, J. Pier, Wolf Schmid & Jörg Schönert (Eds.). Handbook of Narratology. New York: De Gruyter. 204-211. Rajewsky, Irina O. (2002). Intermedialität. Tübingen: Francke Rajewsky, Irina O. (2003). Intermediales Erzählen in der italienischen Literatur der Postmoderne: Von den ‘giovani scrittori’ der 80er zum ‘pulp’ der 90er Jahre. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Elisabeth Frank 236 Rajewsky, Irina O. (2004). Intermedialität ‘light’? Intermediale Bezüge und die ‘bloße Thematisierung’ des Altermedialen. In: Roger Lüdeke & Erika Greber (Eds.). Intermedium Literatur. Beiträge zu einer Medientheorie der Literaturwissenschaft. Göttingen: Wallstein. 27-77. Rajewsky, Irina O. (2005). Intermediality, intertextuality, and remediation: A literary perspective on intermediality. Intermediality: History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and Technologies 6 (50). Rajewsky, Irina O. (2008). Intermedialität und remediation. Überlegungen zu einigen Problemfeldern der jüngeren Intermedialitätsforschung. In: Joachim Paech & Jens Schröter (Eds.). Intermedialität Analog/ Digital. Munich: Wilhelm Fink. 47-60. Rajewsky, Irina O. (2010). Border talks. The problematic status of media borders in the current debate about intermediality. In: Lars Elleström (Ed.). Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality. 51-68. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ruchatz, Jens (2008). Photography as externalization and trace. In: Astrid Erll & Ansgar Nünning (Eds.). Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter. 367-378. Schwanecke, Christine (2015). Filmic modes in literature. In: Gabriele Rippl (Ed.). Handbook of Intermediality: Literature - Image -Sound - Music. Berlin: De Gruyter. 268-286. Wolf, Werner (2013). Aesthetic illusion. In: Werner Wolf, Walter Bernhart & Andreas Mahler (Eds.). Immersion and Distance. Aesthetic Illusion and Other Media. Amsterdam/ New York: Rodopi. 1-63. Wolf, Werner, Walter Bernhart, Andreas Mahler (Eds.) (2013). Immersion and Distance. Aesthetic Illusion and Other Media. Amsterdam/ New York: Rodopi. Wolf, Werner (2004). Aesthetic illusion as an effect of fiction. Style 38: 325-51. Wolf, Werner (2008). Is aesthetic illusion ‘illusion référentielle’? ‘Immersion’ and its relationship to fictionality and factuality. Journal of Literary Theory 2 (1): 99-173. Yasusada, Araki (1997). Doubled Flowering: From the Notebooks of Araki Yasusada. New York: Roof. Elisabeth Frank University of Innsbruck How large is the impact of English on Present-day German? An empirical investigation of the Neologismenwörterbuch online 1 Ulrich Busse The present study builds on a dictionary of neologisms compiled by the Institut für deutsche Sprache (IDS) in Mannheim that covers the period from 1991 to 2020 per decade. It contains about 2,500 new words, phraseologisms, and new meanings. Three decades seem to be a suitable time span for exploring a shortterm diachronic perspective on lexical innovations. The aim of the present study is to interrogate whether English has provided a significantly larger number of borrowings to present-day German than in earlier times (see Busse 2011a) due to its presently unchallenged position as a global language, and whether word-formation processes (Lehnwortbildungen) on a native or mixed basis are a productive source for the formation of new lexical items. To this end, the results from the Neologismenwörterbuch online will be compared to those obtained in previous pertinent studies on dictionaries of anglicisms such as the Anglizismen-Wörterbuch (1993-1995), A Dictionary of European Anglicisms (2001) and the Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch (1913-1988). 1. Introduction The dominant position of English as a donor language to German and very many other languages has been attributed to its status as a global, international, world language and lingua franca. Tom McArthur (2002: 2) uses these labels in order to characterise “English as the universalizing language of the human race”. 1 Revised and enlarged version of a paper given at the April Conference Fifteen Kraków, 20-22 April 2023, Jagiellonian University Kraków. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Band 49 · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2024-0027 Ulrich Busse 238 Apart from dictionaries of neologisms that register recent changes in the lexicon of German, the presence of ‘new’ words in public discourse has been monitored over the years by the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache [GfdS] by selecting the Wörter des Jahres [words of the year] since the early 1970s. Based on a large corpus of citations and examples sent in by language users, a jury selects ten words per year that have exerted an impact on public discourse in terms of significance and popularity rather than overall frequency of occurrence (see https: / / gfds.de/ aktionen/ wort-desjahres/ ). 2 A snapshot view of the Wörter des Jahres from 2020 shows that out of the ten most prominent words that linguistically influenced the political, economic or social life in Germany, two words/ phrases are of English origin: Lockdown and Black Lives Matter, and the first element of the compound Gendersternchen is also from English. Pflexit (Pflege + exit as in Brexit), Lockdown-Kinder and Booster are among the top ten from 2021. The list from 2022 does not contain any words from English, and in 2023 KI- Boom [artificial intelligence boom] can be found. In order to underline the important role of English as a global lingua franca and most important donor language for all ‘big languages’ and to acknowledge its positive contribution to the development of the German vocabulary, an independent initiative was founded in 2010 that votes for the Anglicism of the year. 3 leaken (2010) Fake News (2016) Shitstorm (2011) Influencer (2017) Crowdfunding (2012) Gendersternchen (2018) the suffix -gate (2013) … for future (2019) Blackfacing (2014) Lockdown (2020 Refugees Welcome (2015) boostern (2021) Table 1. Anglicisms of the year since 2010 4 . These snapshot views testify to the great presence of Anglicisms in presentday German. In order to put these impressionistic findings into a larger and 2 The text also contains all Wörter des Jahres from 1971 to 2023. 3 “Sprachgemeinschaften haben überall und zu jeder Zeit Wörter aus anderen Sprachen entlehnt. Als globale Verkehrssprache spielt dabei derzeit das Englische für alle großen Sprachen eine wichtige Rolle als Gebersprache. Die unabhängige Initiative „Anglizismus des Jahres” würdigt seit 2010 jährlich den positiven Beitrag des Englischen zur Entwicklung des deutschen Wortschatzes.” (https: / / www.anglizismusdesjahres.de) [“Speech communities have always and everwhere in the world borrowed words from other languages. As a global lingua franca, English currently plays an important role as a donor language for all big languages. The independent initiative “Anglicism of the year” has honoured the positive contribution of English to the development of the German vocabulary since 2010.”] 4 https: / / www.anglizismusdesjahres.de An empirical investigation of the Neologismenwörterbuch online 239 more solid perspective, the present study builds on a project carried out at the Institut für deutsche Sprache (IDS) in Mannheim. A research group there has produced three dictionaries of neologisms. These three volumes document more than 2,500 new words, phraseologisms, and new meanings of well-established words that have become part of the general vocabulary of Standard German from 1991 to 2020. Three decades are a suitable time frame for exploring a short-term diachronic perspective on lexical innovations in order to find out whether English is the most prolific donor language in comparison to other languages and to investigate the correlation between native and foreign elements in word-formation. 2. The Neologismenwörterbuch as a database The dictionary Neuer Wortschatz: Neologismen der 90er Jahre im Deutschen (2004) was conceived as an online dictionary and only subsequently turned into a paper dictionary (see Herberg, Kinne & Steffens 2004: IX - XVIII). To date, the neologisms of the 1990s and those of the 2000s (see Steffens and al-Wadi 2013) are available in print. The complete data covering the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s now form part of the Online-Wortschatz-Informationssystem Deutsch - short OWID - of the Leibniz-Institut für deutsche Sprache (IDS) in Mannheim. OWID is a platform for scholarly corpus-based lexicography of German. Apart from dictionaries such as the Neologismenwörterbuch and the Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch, it contains a number of corpora. The database is publicly accessible and free of charge. The great advantage of the online version of the dictionary is that users can run a number of queries on the platform. One can either search the complete lemma list for the three decades - it comprises a total of 2,519 entries - or search each decade individually. This approach reveals that the 1990s were more prolific in producing new lexical items than the other two decades, showing 1,082 entries for the 1990s, 812 for the 2000s, and only 625 for the 2010s. A separate file “Wörter unter Beobachtung” [words under observation] registers about 300 words that have gained some currency during the 2010s, but which are still under inspection as to observe whether they are becoming part of the general language or not. Their use is documented by one or two citations and a preliminary definition. For the future, the IDS plans to document the neologisms of the 2020s and to merge the data with the present database into a new format (see https: / / www.ids-mannheim.de/ lexik/ lsw/ arbeitsbereich-neologismen/ ). Before any kind of empirical analysis can go ahead, one needs to examine how neologisms are defined and categorised. In the introduction to the first paper volume of the dictionary, the compilers define neologisms as follows. In contrast to well established lexical units, neologisms differ in two Ulrich Busse 240 respects: namely that the majority of language users either regards the form and the meaning of a lexical unit as new (new lexemes) or only its meaning(s). The new lexemes are divided into the two subtypes of single words and multi-word units (neo-phraseologisms) see Herberg, Kinne & Steffens (2004: XI)). Table 2 below illustrates the different subtypes of neologism; it shows that the vast majority of neologisms is made up by new single words rather than phraseologisms and new meanings. TYPES NUMBERS New lexemes (total) 2,279 New lexemes (single words) 2,145 New lexemes (phraseologisms) 134 New meanings 201 Table 2. Types of neologism. 2.1. Languages of origin In order to find out which neologisms are formed on a native or a foreign basis, the option “erweiterte Suche” [advanced query] allows for a number of combined searches. The filter “Herkunft (Sprache)” [Origin (language)] has two options: “from English” and “from other foreign language”. Table 3 lists the entries assorted according to language of origin. ENTRIES ORIGIN PERCENT 2,519 Total 100 % 740 English 29.4 % 51 Other foreign languages 2.0 % 791 Foreign words together 31.4 % Table 3. Language of origin. Table 3 shows that borrowings labelled as engl. make up almost 30 % of all entries, leaving a mere 2 % to languages other than English; i.e. all foreign words together amount to slightly less than one third of all entries. Even if it is not mentioned explicitly, this implies that, as a corollary, two thirds of the entries are native words, phrases, or meanings. As far as the 51 words from “other foreign languages” are concerned, they come from a whole range of different languages, including - among others - in loose geographical order: Icelandic Skyr, Swedish Snus ‘Lutschtabak’, Danish Hygge, hyggelig, French Parkour, Scoubidou and Taupe, Spanish Churro, Italian Caffè Latte, Ciabatta, Latte macchiato, and Panino, Arabic Schawarma, Nikab, and Shisha, Russian Nowitschok, Chinese Qigong, Korean Tae-Bo (from Korean tae kwon do + engl. boxing), Japanese Emoji, Karaoke, Manga, Sudoku and Tsunami and Hawaiian Lomi-Lomi ‘Massage’. The An empirical investigation of the Neologismenwörterbuch online 241 examples show that many languages from different corners of the globe provide usually just one or two new lexemes. Italian is prominent in the semantic field of food and drink. In contrast to former times, the classical languages Latin and Greek only play a minor role. Greek Epizentrum is registered with the new meaning ‘centre of an epidemic’, and Latin with prokrastinieren [to procrastinate] and rekuperieren [to recuperate (energy)]. However, next to English there is no other language as a major source of loan words. On closer inspection, Barista can also be considered as an anglicism. In the section “weitere Informationen” [further information] it is mentioned that barista was borrowed first from Italian into English. There, the meaning of ‘barkeeper’ was narrowed down from ital. ‘person that prepares and serves all kinds of drinks’ to engl. ‘person that prepares and serves different coffee-based drinks’. The word Bezness comes from Arabic, but it is based on engl. business. It designates a trick played on tourists in Arabian countries to propose marriage under false pretences. The list also includes two doubtful ‘anglicisms’: ploggen and Plogger. ploggen: ‘während des Joggens Müll aufsammeln’ [to gather garbage while jogging] may have been built as an analogous formation to the anglicism joggen (see also Plogging and Jogging). Can also be interpreted as a loan word (see Swedish plogga, formed from plocka ‘sammeln’ [to gather] and jogga ‘joggen’ [to jog]. Apart from looking for the etymological origin of borrowings, one can also search for different types of borrowing by entering “Herkunft (Typ)” [Origin (type)]. On opening the search window Origin (type), the following categories become available: Loan word*, loan meaning*, loan translation*, partial loan translation, loan rendition, pseudo anglicism and translation of a loan word. 5 The asterisk behind the first three categories indicates three further search options for fine-tuning the results: 1. alle: all members of the respective category are listed 2. “echte” …: only those cases are shown that are considered as certain 3. als … interpretierbar: features those cases which can be considered as German formations, or, which, alternatively, can also be interpreted as putative loans 5 The categories and the terminology follow the model that was established by Werner Betz and which still seems to be prevalent in German linguistics. For a recent description and illustration of the model and its terminology see Munske (2020: 2-16). Ulrich Busse 242 This differentiation has a bearing on the interpretation of the results; i.e. if all items (including the possible cases) are regarded as borrowings, this will increase the number of borrowings. If, on the other hand, the putative cases are regarded as German formations (Lehnwortbildungen), this will reduce the amount of borrowings. In the following sections all of these different categories will be investigated one by one by combining the above search options with a search for “Origin (language)”, in order to separate the English items from those of other foreign languages. 2.2. Loan words For the category loan word this procedure yields the following results: Out of the total of 792 entries thus marked, there are 709 definite cases and 83 possible ones. As far as loan words from English are concerned, they comprise a total of 752 cases, i.e. 669 definite loan words, and 81 loan words that can be considered as borrowings or as cases of loan word formation in German with English-based word material. This pertains in particular to compounds and derivatives. Their treatment and the ambivalent status of certain cases can be illustrated by the entries Chat and Internet and their compounds and derivatives. 1. Chat: loan word from engl. chat 2. Chatbox: loan word from engl. chatbox 3. Chatforum: German compound Chat + Forum, can also be interpreted as a loan word (see engl. chat forum) 4. Chatgroup: loan word from engl. chatgroup 5. Chatline: loan word from engl. chatline 6. Chatraum: translation of German Chatroom 7. Chatroom: loan word from engl. chatroom 8. chatten: loan word from engl. to chat 9. Chatter: German derivative chatten + -er, can also be interpreted as a loan word (see engl. chatter) While the base Chat and its compounds Chatbox, -group, -line, -room and the verb chatten are labelled as loan words, Chatraum is regarded as a translation of German Chatroom. The compound Chatforum, and the derivative Chatter could be either native German formations or wholesale copies of English models. Internet is another instructive example. It is labelled as engl. The compounds -banking, -café, -magazin, -shopping, -surfen and -user are labelled “can also be interpreted as a loan word”, while the compounds -adresse, aktivist, -handel, -literatur, -mobbing, -portal and -seite do not carry a label and are thus regarded as German compositions. An empirical investigation of the Neologismenwörterbuch online 243 The examples of Chat and Internet show that compounds and derivatives are principally subdivided into borrowings (loan word), and doubtful cases that can be regarded as either German formations, or, alternatively, be interpreted as loan words. Chatraum illustrates the relatively rare case of translating the German word Chatroom, borrowed from engl. Chatroom; see also Section 2.6). 2.3. Loan meanings 80 entries are marked as loan meanings. Only one of them does not originate from English. Despite its English form, Loverboy ‘Zuhälter’ [pimp] is from Dutch. This leaves 79 items from English (42 definite cases, and 37 possible ones). According to the conception of the dictionary, this category includes new meanings of already existing lexical units provided that they have produced new sememes with specific semantic features, preferred collocational partners, changes in valency, style or register and not just new usages of well-established words; see Herberg, Kinne & Steffens (2004: XV). The following examples may illustrate this practice. Adresse in the sense of ‘Anschrift’ [postal address] is an old borrowing, but as a short form for E-Mail-Adresse or Internetadresse it is new. The same goes for Tunnel. As a railway term it is an old Anglicism, but ‘widening of the ear lobe’ and ‘the ring in it’ are considered as new senses (with an ‘engl.’ pronunciation). The same procedure is also applied to more recent borrowings such as Update. In the sense of ‘new(er) version of computer software’ it is treated as a loan word, borrowed in the 1990s. The more recent senses of ‘a newer version of something’ and ‘an update of information’ are treated as new meanings that came up during the 2000s. When new senses are registered, attention is paid to their putative origin. Thus, consider the two meanings recorded for Skater: 1. ‘Person using inline skates’ is marked as a loan meaning (definite). 2. Synonym for ‘Inlineskate’ is labelled as a pseudo anglicism. In addition, Tape in the sense of 1. ‘Klebeband’ [adhesive tape] is marked as a loan meaning (definite). Tape in the sense of 2. ‘Verband’ [bandage] is labelled as a pseudo anglicism; see also Section 2.8. 2.4. Loan translations This category contains 94 items, out of which 43 are considered as certain cases, and 51 as cases that can possibly be interpreted as loan translations. The overwhelming majority of them has an engl. model, excepting the following four: Ulrich Busse 244 1. Ehe für alle: (possibly after French marriage pour tous) 2. Flugscham: (possibly after Swedish Flygskam) 3. Liebesschloss: (possibly after Italian lucchetto d’amore) 4. Waldbaden: (after Japanese Shinrin yoku) This leaves 90 cases from English (41 definite cases, and 49 possible ones). In terms of word-formation, the category comprises acronyms, compounds, derivatives and phraseologisms. For example: 1. ADHS: ‘Aufmerksamkeits-Hyperaktivitätssyndrom’; loan translation of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder 2. am Ende des Tages: ‘letzten Endes, im Endergebnis’ [finally, what it comes down to]; loan translation of engl. at the end of the day 3. bei jemandem sein: ‘jemandes Meinung ausdrücklich teilen’ [to share somebody’s opinion explicitly]; can also be interpreted as a loan translation (see engl. to be with somebody) 4. ein Elefant im Zimmer: ‘Problem, das unübersehbar ist, aber permanent ignoriert wird’ [a problem or question that everybody knows about but does not mention because it is easier not to discuss it); loan translation of engl. an elephant in the (living) room 5. entfreunden: ‘eine Freundschaft innerhalb eines sozialen Netzwerkes beenden’ [to remove (a person) from a list of friends or contacts on a social networking website] is either an analogical formation to befreunden or can also be interpreted as a loan translation (see engl. to unfriend). 2.4.1. Loan translations of phraseologisms Section 2.4 mentions a number of translated phraseologisms. The data in Table 2 shows that out of the 2,279 new lexemes there are 134 phraseologisms. Further investigation reveals that 29 of these have an engl. origin. There are ten loan translations, eleven possible loan translations, and eight translations. The following examples illustrate the different categories: 1. alternativer Fakt: loan translation of engl. alternative fact 2. arabischer Frühling: possible loan translation of engl. arab spring, or analogical formation to Prager Frühling, 1968 3. globales Dorf: translation of German Global Village The category translation, as in (3) above, indicates that the German translation and the engl. term were borrowed and that both of them are listed as separate entries in the data base. Since this pertains to only eight cases, An empirical investigation of the Neologismenwörterbuch online 245 in which both terms co-exist, while 21 phraseologisms are definite or possible loan translations, this result differs markedly from the “simple” lexemes. This result ties in with the detailed case study of Sabine Fiedler (2014: 152). In her corpus of 70 neo phraseologisms she found 20.3 % in their original engl. form; a small group of hybrid formations amounting to 9.5 %, while the vast majority are loan translations (70.2 %), and only very few cases feature the engl. original and the German translation as in out of the blue / aus dem Blauen heraus. 2.5. Partial loan translations The search for Teillehnübersetzungen [partial loan translations] yielded twelve hits altogether. Excepting Pezziball, which partially translates Italian palla (Original pezzi ® ), this leaves eleven tokens of English origin. This category does not operate with possibility markers. Within the entry structure, the section weitere Informationen [further information] explains which parts of the compounds are translated (highlighted by italics in Table 4 below). ENTRY ENGL. MODEL abspacen to space out Craftbier craft beer Ig-Nobelpreis Ig[nobel] nobel prize Low-Carb-Diät low carb[ohydrate] diet On-off-Beziehung on-off relationship Pop-up-Buch pop-up book Pop-up-Fenster pop-up window Push-up-BH push-up bra spotted Seite spotted page to-do-Liste to-do-list Walk-in-Dusche walk-in shower Table 4. Partial loan translations. 2.6. Translation of a loan word This category contains 48 items. All of them are translations of anglicisms. What they all have in common is that their engl. models were also borrowed and form separate entries in the database. For example, Pay-TV was borrowed from engl. The loan word coexists with three different translations; i.e. Bezahl-TV, Bezahlfernsehen, and Zahlfernsehen. Selected examples: Ulrich Busse 246 1. Autoteilen: Translation of Carsharing 2. Bezahl-TV, Bezahlfernsehen, Zahlfernsehen: Translations of Pay-TV 3. Soziales Netzwerk: Translation of Social Network 4. Veggietag: Translation of Veggieday 5. Wolke: Translation of Cloud 6. zwitschern: Translation of twittern 2.7. Loan renditions The nine loan renditions retrieved by the query “Herkunft (Typ) + Lehnübertragung” are all treated primarily as German compositions, or, alternatively, as possibly being related to English models [… can possibly be related to engl. …]. Alleinstellungsmerkmal possibly after engl. unique selling proposition CO2-Fußabdruck possibly after engl. carbon footprint digital entgiften possibly after engl. digital detox Ego-Shooter 1. ‘Computerspiel’; possibly after engl. firstperson shooter 2. ‘Computerspieler’; pseudo anglicism Gettofaust possibly after engl. fist bump Ramschniveau possibly after engl. junk bond rating, -status Raubverlag possibly after engl. predatory publisher schönes Leben noch possibly after engl. have a nice life Spenderkind 1.’Kind durch Samenspende’; possiby after engl. donor conceived person 2. ‘Kind, das Organe spendet’ (without engl. influence) Table 5. Loan renditions. 2.8. Pseudo anglicisms The search for pseudo anglicisms yielded 74 hits. The entries explain how these entities are called in English. Examples in selection: 1. Beamer is a pseudo anglicism. The corresponding term in English is (data/ computer/ video) projector. 2. Homeoffice is a pseudo anglicism. Homeoffice has a more specific meaning than engl. home office ‘häusliche Büroeinrichtung’. The proper name Home Office [Innenministerium] designates the An empirical investigation of the Neologismenwörterbuch online 247 department of the British government that is concerned with home affairs. 3. Mobbing is a pseudo anglicism. Mobbing has a more specific meaning than engl. mobbing, the continuous form of to mob ‘über jemanden herfallen’. The English term that corresponds to the German meaning of Mobbing is bullying (at work). 4. Public Viewing is a pseudo anglicism. In English, public viewing means ‘öffentliche Aufbahrung eines Leichnams bei einer Trauerfeier’. English terms corresponding to the German meaning are public screening and public broadcast. Out of the 74 tokens, thirteen entries are provided with two different labels: ENTRY SENSE CATE- GORY SENSE CATE- GORY Bowl ‘Schüssel’ LW ‘Gericht’ PA Call-in ‘Sendeform’ LW ‘Sendung’ PA Egoshooter ‘Computerspiel’, ‘Genre’ LÜ ‘Computerspieler’ PA Factoryoutlet ‘Geschäft’ LW ‘Einkaufszentrum’ PA flashen ‘wie der Blitz kommen’ LW ‘begeistern’ PA (engl. to mesmerize) Inlineskater ‘Inlineskate’ PA ‘Inlineskateläufer’ poss. LW Onliner ‘Person’ LW ‘Dienst’ PA Outlet ‘Geschäft’ LW ‘Einkaufszentrum’ PA Pad 1 ‘Wattepad’, ‘ Polster’ [Pad 1 ] LW ‘Mauspad’ PA Pad 2 ‘Kaffepad’ PA Skater Inlineskate PA ‘Inlineskateläufer’ NM of Skater Slackline ‘Sportgerät’ LW ‘Sportart’ PA Speeddating ‘Veranstaltung zur Partnersuche’ LW ‘Veranstaltung meist zur Berufsorientierung’ PA Tape ‘Klebeband’ LW ‘Verband’ PA Legend: LÜ = Loan translation, LW = loan word, NM = new meaning, PA = pseudo anglicism, poss.[ibly] Table 6. Pseudo anglicisms. Ulrich Busse 248 These cases illustrate that, once borrowed, loan words develop specific new senses that do not correspond to English models. The semantic relationship between the loan word and its new sense(s) is often driven by semantic processes of metonymy (person - thing) as in (Inline)skate or (concrete - abstract) as in Slackline, or semantic narrowing/ broadening as in (Factory)outlet. A closer view at the two entries for Pad illustrates how semantic and morphological processes interact. Pad 1 : 1. ‘Wattepad’: mid-1990s; loan word; shortening of Wattepad 2. ‘Polster’: mid-1990s; loan word; semantic broadening 3. ‘Mauspad’: mid-1990s; pseudo anglicism [engl. mouse pad, mouse mat] Pad 2 : ‘Kaffeepad’: mid-2000s; pseudo anglicism [engl. coffee pod, coffee bag, coffee satchet] Cross references offer the additional information that the newer sense of ‘Kaffeepad’ stands in metaphorical relation to the older senses of Pad 1 . However, a look at the entries for Mousepad and Mauspad, both attested since the mid 1990s, shows that probably the loan word Mousepad was borrowed first, then partly translated as Mauspad and in turn shortened to Pad 1 . There are further examples of this type in the set of pseudo anglicisms. Apart from the shortening of Mauspad to Pad, the following examples were retrieved manually. They show that in the process of borrowing, English words are shortened or that already existing German loan words are curtailed. 6 For example: 1. Basecap : shortening of engl. baseball cap 2. Daily: shortening of the German bases Daily Soap / Daily Talk 3. FOC: shortening of German Factoryoutletcenter 4. Late Night: shortening of the German base Late-Night-Show (loan word) 5. Low Carb: shortening of the German base Low-Carb-Diät (partial translation of engl. low-carb(ohydrate) diet) 6. Stand-up-Paddling: shortening of engl. standup paddleboarding 2.9. Confixes Apart from the categories of new lexemes (single words and phraseologisms) and new meanings, the database includes a small set of 19 entries of bound morphemes. They precede the list of alphabetical entries and are marked by an asterisk. Among them are the anglicisms Cyber-, cyber-, 6 For a book length treatment of pseudo anglicisms in European languages see Furiassi and Gottlieb (2015). An empirical investigation of the Neologismenwörterbuch online 249 -flüsterer (as in Pferdeflüsterer, after engl. horse whisperer), -holic, -junkie, and -tainment. They form the first or second part of compounds and derivatives and are labelled as confixes. 3. Summary and conclusion Following these detailed analyses, it is now time to pull the different strands together again. Table 7 shows the aggregate values for the different categories of borrowings. 7 CATEGORY all engl. other Loan words (all) 792 752 29.8 % 40 Loan word (definite) 709 669 26.6 % 40 Loan word (possible) 83 81 3.2 % 2 Loan meanings (all) 80 79 3.2 % 1 Loan meanings (definite) 43 42 1.7 % 1 Loan meanings (possible) 37 37 1.5 % - Loan translations (all) 94 90 3.6 % 4 Loan translations (definite) 43 41 1.7 % 2 Loan translations (possible) 51 49 1.9 % 2 Partial loan translation 12 11 0.4 % 1 Translation of a loan word 48 48 1.9 % - Loan renditions 9 9 0.4 % - Pseudo Anglicisms 74 74 2.9 % - Table 7. Types of borrowings. An examination of the figures for loan words from English and those from other languages in Table 7 above clearly reveals that English is indeed the single most important donor language in comparison to other languages. Out of the 792 entries marked as loan words, 752 (94.9 %) are engl. and only 40 (5.1 %) from languages other than English. The overall result changes only marginally if only those tokens are counted that are considered as definite loan words: engl. 669 (94.4 %) vs. 38 others (5.6 %). One aim of the present study is to show whether English has provided a significantly larger number of borrowings in comparison to earlier times. Even though it is problematic to compare data across different dictionaries due to imbalances, different criteria of selection, etc., the Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch (1986) can serve as a reference work for the time of up to the 1980s. 7 All percentages are in relation to the total number of entries, i.e. 2,519 (= 1000 %). Ulrich Busse 250 Based on the data from Alan Kirkness et al., Peter von Polenz (1999: 393-294) has shown that English has become the major donor language in the 20 th century. The hatched columns for English in Graph 1 below indicate a steady and sharply rising number of borrowings from English, reaching a peak of 90 % in 1980, and leaving just 10 % for French and Latin together. On the other hand, the percentage of Lehnwortbildungen [the broken line in the graph], i.e. loan words becoming productive in word-formation, almost provides a mirror image to this development. 8 Graph 1. Percentages of first attestations by the Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch (von Polenz 1999: 393). In comparison to earlier times, Latin and French do not really play any important role in the Neologismenwörterbuch. Definite borrowings from English amount to 95 %, surpassing the 90 % registered for the 1980s in the Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch. 8 Chapter 6.10. Lehndeutsch, Lehnwortbildung, Angloamerikanismen in von Polenz (1999: 391-408) provides a detailed account of these developments. An empirical investigation of the Neologismenwörterbuch online 251 The dominant role of English as a donor language can be attributed to the several roles and functions it performs as a world language. In present times, English is regarded not as one, but as the one and only world language. With regard to language hierarchies, David Graddol (1997: 12-13, Figure 8) visualized the hierarchies of languages as a trapeze with the languages English and French on top. Abram de Swaan’s (2001) system of world languages is represented as a pyramid with English as the sole hypercentral language at the apex. 9 In light of this, Christian Mair (2023: 74) laconically concludes: “Nüchtern und sachlich betrachtet ist die rasante Zunahme von Anglizismen im heutigen Deutsch ein weiterer Beleg für die globale Unausweichlichkeit des Englischen.” [In a sober and matter-of-fact view, the rapid growth of anglicisms in present-day German is yet another proof for the global unavoidability of English]. When the results for the different categories of borrowings are compared to previous studies based on dictionaries of anglicisms (see Busse 2009, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c), it becomes evident that there is only a difference in degree but not in kind in comparison to the Anglizismen-Wörterbuch (1993-1995) and the Dictionary of European Anglicisms (2001) that document anglicisms up to the early and mid 1990s in Germany and Europe. For the Anglizismen-Wörterbuch, vol.1 (A-E) Alan Kirkness and Melanie Woolford (2002: 218) found that approximately 79 % of the entries are definite borrowings, whereas around 19.5 % are German formations with engl. word material. In their opinion, this shows two things at the same time: the high productivity of elements of English origin and, simultaneously, the strength of engl. influence on present-day German. By comparison, Manfred Görlach (2003: 166-167) is rather cautious in interpreting the results for calquing [“inneres Lehngut”] in the Dictionary of European Anglicisms, since they were not collected systematically and probably tell more about data collecting and collaborators’ reactions than about linguistic reality. In any case, out of the four categories, loan translations make up 59.3 %, loan renditions 26.7 %, loan creations 6.5 % and loan meanings 7.5 %. The figures for calques are much lower than those for loan words. Since the compilers of the Neologismenwörterbuch divide the categories of loan words, loan meanings and loan translations into three subclasses (all - definite - possible), it is advisable to pay attention to these distinctions for the interpretation of the results. Hence, when all engl. loan words are counted, they amount to approximately 30 %. If only the definite cases are counted, the percentage of loan words drops to around 27 %. The remaining 3 % - the possible cases - could also be regarded as results of German word-formation. 9 For a short summary and explanation of this model see Mair (2023: 16-27), or, in greater detail, Mair (2019). Ulrich Busse 252 In comparison to importations; i.e. loan words, all the different processes of (partial) substitution (i.e. loan translations (all), partial loan translation, translation of a loan word and loan renditions) only play a marginal role with together 6.3 %. Unsurprisingly, because, methodologically, it is much more difficult to ascertain engl. origin for substitutions than for importations, the discrepancy between the definite and the possible loan meanings and loan translations is much higher than for loan words - amounting to about 50 % in both categories. The second research question concerning the productivity of anglicisms in terms of word-formation can be answered as follows: When the anglicisms are assorted according to parts of speech (see Table 8 below), a familiar pattern from many previous studies on anglicisms becomes apparent, namely that the vast majority is made up by nouns, with verbs, adjectives, etc. following far behind. Nouns 659 89 % Verbs 59 8 % Adjectives 12 1.6% Adverbs 5 0.7% Interjections 2 0.3% Particles ø not a part of speech 3 0.4% 740 100% Table 8. Anglicisms sorted according to parts of speech. The combined search, consisting of: language of origin engl. + Wortbildungsproduktivität [productivity to form new lexemes] provides the following results: Out of the 740 entries marked as engl., 520 enter in word-formation processes as they either form the first or the second part of compositions. 106 serve as bases for derivatives; eight anglicisms form clippings and 24 verbal anglicisms are combined with prefixes. All processes taken together amount to 668 anglicisms. This shows that anglicisms are very productive in forming complex new words. The many facts and figures presented clearly show two things: 1) The long-standing process of borrowing words from English continues and figures are still rising, and will probably do so as long as the role of English as the only remaining world language is not challenged by competitors. 2) Anglicisms are not isolated alien elements in the German lexicon. Quite the contrary, they are productive elements in the formation of complex new lexemes. An empirical investigation of the Neologismenwörterbuch online 253 4. Outlook Nowadays, English functions as the single most important donor language of loan words to other languages, and also as a global lingua franca. More and more languages come into contact with English through these means. This gives rise to the questions in which way and to what extent languages have been influenced by English and how they have reacted to this. For many European languages there exists a large body of studies dealing with the influence of English on a particular language. The research on anglicisms and English influence on other languages is a rapidly growing field of study. The first volume of the AWb (1993: 105*- 193*) contains a comprehensive bibliography for German. Görlach (2002) with his Annotated Bibliography of European Anglicisms extends the scope to sixteen European languages. The bibliography compiled (and regularly updated) by Henrik Gottlieb currently lists more than 5,000 publications on English influence on languages worldwide. (See GLAD publications, bibliography) So far, anglicism research has concentrated mostly on the following topics: 1. corpus-related analysis often based on a certain run of issues of particular newspapers or journals; 2. the compilation of items current in special vocabularies (pop music, the drug scene, sports, advertising, etc.); 3. the stylistic analysis of items taken from studies of types (1) and (2); 4. the compilation of dictionaries of anglicisms; 5. the analysis of anglicisms contained in dictionaries; 6. historical studies documenting the growth of English influence on a particular language (or selected areas of its vocabulary); 7. socio-linguistic investigations exploring the correlations between social variables and the number of loan words known and used, correctness, attitudes, etc. (See Busse & Görlach 2002: 32 f.) As far as anglicism research in Germany is concerned, Onysko (2019) provides a survey of its history and current state. In addition to this, the other papers collected in the volume English in the German-speaking countries (Hickey 2019) address more facets of English impact on German. In 2016, a group of scholars embarked on the project of building a database of anglicisms that are currently used in non-Anglophone speech communities across the world. The ultimate target, expressed in the acronym GLAD [Global Anglicism Database], is to go beyond existing comparative dictionaries and to incorporate as many languages as possible, in order to monitor and register the “linguistic and cultural Anglicization involving the widest possible range of speech communities in Europe and Ulrich Busse 254 beyond” (banner on the GLAD homepage). The major objective of the project is to produce a database of anglicisms. It is still work in progress. The Global Anglicism Database is hosted by the instituut voor de nederlandse taal [Dutch Language Institute of the Netherlands]. It is accessible via the following link ( https: / / glad.ivdnt.org/ lexit2/ ? db=publicglad&lang=en ). At present, it features 17 languages. For the principles of its compilation see Gottlieb et al. (2018). Work on the database has shown that a systematic account of calques on a supra-national scale is still wanting. Many studies pass them by for methodological reasons. The present study also shows that in many cases a shadow of doubt remains whether a particular item is a hidden loan or an independent native formation. Nonetheless, work on the GLAD database has shown that there are many more hidden loans (calques) than previously registered e.g. in the AWb and in OWID, and that, in addition, there are many similarities between European languages. This observation has resulted in a new project under the direction of Alicja Witalisz from Kraków, which currently includes the languages Danish, German, Polish, Spanish and French. So far, the compilation of possible entries in the lemma list has progressed to letter -M-. The detailed data from the Neologismenwörterbuch forms one part of the lexical input to this project. 5. References 1. Corpus Neologismenwörterbuch online. https: / / www.owid.de/ docs/ neo/ start.jsp [July 2024]. 1.1 Dictionaries Carstensen, Broder & Ulrich Busse (1993-1995). Anglizismen-Wörterbuch: Der Einfluß des Englischen auf den Deutschen Wortschatz nach 1945. Berlin: de Gruyter, 3 vols. Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch (1986). Band 7. Lieferung 2/ 3. Alphabetisches Register, Rückläufiges Register, Chronologisches Register, Herkunftsregister. Ed. by Kirkness, Alan with Andreas Huber, Hans Kubitscha & Uwe Sommer. Berlin: de Gruyter. Görlach, Manfred (Ed.) (2001). A Dictionary of European Anglicisms: A Usage Dictionary of Anglicisms in Sixteen European Countries. Oxford: Oxford UP. Herberg, Dieter, Michael Kinne, Doris Steffens, with Elke Tellenbach and Doris al- Wadi (2004). Neuer Wortschatz: Neologismen der 90er Jahre im Deutschen. Schriften des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache. Vol. 11. Berlin: de Gruyter. Steffens, Doris & Doris al-Wadi (2013). Neuer Wortschatz: Neologismen im Deutschen 2001-2010. 2 vols. Mannheim: Institut für Deutsche Sprache. An empirical investigation of the Neologismenwörterbuch online 255 2. Secondary sources Busse, Ulrich (2009). Welche Rolle spielen Anglizismen in europäischen Sprachen? Muttersprache 119 (2): 137-150. Busse, Ulrich (2011a). Anglizismen - Versuch einer Bestandsaufnahme. Aptum. Zeitschrift für Sprachkritik und Sprachkultur 7 (2): 98-120. Busse, Ulrich (2011b). Anglizismen in Europa in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. In: Ines Busch-Lauer & Sabine Fiedler (Eds.). Sprachraum Europa - Alles English oder …? . Berlin: Frank & Timme. 15-33. Busse, Ulrich (2011c). Anglizismen europäisch und historisch: Ein Vergleich der historischen und soziokulturellen Faktoren im anglo-europäischen Sprachkontakt. In: Claudia Schlaak & Lena Busse (Eds.). Sprachkontakte, Sprachvariation und Sprachwandel. Festschrift für Thomas Stehl zum 60. Geburtstag. Tübingen: Narr. 287-309. Busse, Ulrich & Manfred Görlach (2002). German. In: Manfred Görlach (Ed.). English in Europe. Oxford: Oxford UP. 13-36. De Swaan, Abram (2001). Words of the World: The Global Language System. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fiedler, Sabine (2014). Gläserne Decke und Elefant im Raum: Phraseologische Anglizismen im Deutschen. Berlin: Logos. Furiassi, Christiano & Hendrik Gottlieb (Eds.) (2015). Pseudo-English: Studies on False Anglicisms in Europe. Berlin: de Gruyter. Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache [GfdS] (n.d.). Wort des Jahres. [online] https: / / gfds.de/ aktionen/ wort-des-jahres/ [July 2024]. GLAD - List of publications on Anglicisms in the world’s languages (n.d.). https: / / www.nhh.no/ globalassets/ centres/ glad/ glad_bibliography_fall_2023. pdf. [August 2024]. GLAD database (n.d.) https: / / glad.ivdnt.org/ lexit2/ ? db=publicglad&lang=en [August 2024]. Görlach, Manfred (2002). An Annotated Bibliography of European Anglicisms. Oxford: Oxford UP. Görlach, Manfred (2003). English Words Abroad. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Gottlieb, Henrik et al. (2018). Introducing and developing GLAD - The Global Anglicism Database Network. The ESSE Messenger (27) 2: 4-19. Graddol, David (1997). The Future of English? A guide to forecasting the popularity of the English language in the 21 st century. London: British Council. https: / / www.teachingenglish.org.uk/ sites/ teacheng/ files/ pub_learning-elt-future.pdf. Hickey, Raymond (Ed.) (2019). English in the German-Speaking World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Institut für Deutsche Sprache [IDS] (n.d.) Arbeitsbereich Neologismen. [online] https: / / www.ids-mannheim.de/ lexik/ lsw/ arbeitsbereich-neologismen/ [July 2024] Kirkness, Alan & Melanie Woolford (2002). Zur Herkunft der Anglizismen im Deutschen: Beobachtungen und Vorschläge anhand des Anglizismen-Wörterbuchs. In: Rudolf Hoberg (Ed.). Deutsch - Englisch - Europäisch: Impulse für eine neue Sprachpolitik. Thema Deutsch. Band 3. Mannheim: Dudenverlag. 199-219. Mair, Christian (2019). English in the German-speaking world: An inevitable presence. In: Raymond Hickey (Ed.). English in the German-Speaking World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 13-30. Ulrich Busse 256 Mair, Christian (2023). Global English für eine Welt mit vielen Sprachen. Stuttgart: Kröner. McArthur, Tom (2002). Oxford Guide to World English. Oxford: Oxford UP. Munske, Horst Haider (2020). Englisches im Deutschen. In: Barbara Kaltz, Gerhard Meiser & Horst Haider Munske (Eds.). Englisch in Europäischen Sprachen. Erlangen: FAU UP. 1-33. https: / / doi.org/ 10.25593/ 978-3-96147-319-9. Onysko, Alexander (2019). Processes of language contact in English influence on German. In: Raymond Hickey (Ed.). English in the German-Speaking World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 185-207. Polenz, Peter von (1999). Deutsche Sprachgeschichte vom Spätmittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Band III. 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: de Gruyter. Stefanowitsch, Anatol (n.d.). Anglizismus des Jahres. [online] https: / / www.anglizismusdesjahres.de [July 2024]. Ulrich Busse Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg Hans Sauer † and Alessia Bauer (Eds.), To Instruct and to Entertain - Medieval Didactic Dialogues. The Old English Prose Solomon and Saturn, the Middle English Master of Oxford’s Catechism, and their reconstructed Latin source; the Old English Adrian and Ritheus, and the Old Icelandic Dialogue between a Pupil and his Master (Middle English Texts 67). Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 2023. Christopher Blake Shedd This edited volume of medieval texts serves a useful aim, namely making available works of a common theme (medieval didactic dialogues) and situating them in their respective contexts and alongside each other. The book is divided into three main parts: (1) a thorough introduction of the texts in which their provenance, similarities, language, and possible sources are discussed in detail; (2) the texts themselves and their critical apparatus; (3) commentaries on the texts. The texts treated in this volume are the Old English texts Solomon and Saturn (SolSatP) and Adrian and Ritheus (AdRit); the Middle English Master of Oxford’s Catechism (MOC); and the Old Icelandic Spurningar lærisveins og andsvör meistara (SLAM, trans. ‘Dialogue between a Pupil and his Master’). Following these three parts are a glossary of terms from the OE and ME texts along with an index of personal and place names and a bibliography. The introduction offers a condensed description of the genre of medieval didactic dialogues followed by a brief précis of previous editions of the four texts analyzed in this volume. This is accompanied by a succinct treatment of each of the respective manuscripts with its provenance and a detailed listing of the individual texts in each of the manuscripts. These biographical sketches are rounded out with observations from the authors on the significance of these texts in the manuscripts themselves and also in the broader historical and literary contexts. Eight color reproductions of the manuscripts showing excerpts of the volume’s texts as well as images depicting events and themes raised in the dialogues conclude this part of the introduction to the physical manuscripts and lead into an analysis of AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Band 49 · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2024-0028 Reviews 258 their contents. Integral to facilitating a comparison of the texts is Sauer and Bauer’s detailed analyses that are coded to the questions in the texts and are cross-referenced. This means that when one piece of information is mentioned in one text, then the corresponding mentions in the other texts (when present) are provided. Numerous tables attest to the cross-referenced questions and answers shared in the texts and also highlight when information is absent in some of the texts. From this thorough analysis Sauer and Bauer (xxxvii) then provide a tentative reconstruction of the development and interrelatedness of the English texts with reference to the hypothesized Latin original(s). Much of the information found in the volume’s texts draws on a wealth of sources ranging from the Bible (canonical and apocryphal texts), medieval etymologies and observations of nature, and Jewish traditions among others. Evidence for the correlation between the dialogues and these sources (or parallels) is provided with further cross-referencing to other dialogues in which the same information is found. The introduction concludes with a thorough but not exhaustive analysis of the linguistic characteristics of the texts with the Old Icelandic receiving short shrift. In regard to the Old and Middle English texts much of this analysis lends itself to informing a more precise understanding of the periodization of English and offers years of composition based on this analysis. The texts themselves and their critical apparatus comprise thirtyeight pages of this 143-page volume. This speaks not only to the relative shortness of the texts but also to the copious details provided in the introduction and the commentaries. Solomon and Saturn (SolSatP) and Master of Oxford’s Catechism (MOC) are presented together given the high degree of shared material, ostensibly from a common Latin source, one which has been reconstructed in this volume. These texts are presented on facing pages in the following arrangement of four columns (two per page, left to right): (1) a postulated Latin reconstruction of the question-answer sequences, (2) SolSatP, (3) MOC MS Harley, and (4) MOC MS Lansdowne. The benefit of this layout is immediately apparent in terms of ease of comparison; the juxtaposition of the two extant manuscripts of the ME texts also allows for quick assessment to be made of variation between the manuscripts. AdRit and SLAM are presented separately with numbered question-answer exchanges. The critical textual apparatus for each text (save for the reconstructed Latin text) offers a listing of editorial readings with explanations as to the state of the manuscript where relevant. The commentaries reflect a careful, thorough inquiry into each text. Owing much to the previous edition of SolSatP and AdRit by Cross and Hill (1982), the commentary on and translations of SolSatP along with MOC are organized by question-answer sequence with each dialogue being translated into present-day English and followed by a discussion, part of which also offers explanation for choices made with the reconstructed Latin text. The commentaries are far-reaching and address Greek, Latin, and French Rezensionen 259 sources. Elements from AdRit that also appear in SolSatP are covered in this section as well, which means only those elements unique to AdRit are covered in its commentary (where relevant, the reader is directed to the corresponding question-answer unit in the previous commentary section). Likewise, the commentary on SLAM also directs the reader to the commentaries on SolSatP and MOC for shared elements while elements unique to SLAM are elucidated in its own commentary section. In the SLAM commentary a pictorial representation of medieval cosmology supplements the analysis of one of the question-answer sequences, namely SLAM 22. The strength of this volume lies in the juxtaposition of thematically and formally similar texts - the previous (and relatively older) editions of individual texts have not offered the opportunity for comparison that this volume does. This book will be of particular interest to medieval scholars in the fields of linguistics, literature, and religion; those with little or no knowledge of the languages will also find the texts accessible with the translations provided in the commentary sections as well as with the streamlined glossary. The conspicuous lack of a glossary of the Old Icelandic text might speak to an intended audience of Sauer and Bauer’s text very familiar with Old Icelandic; however, this seems unlikely. At any rate, the translations provided in the commentaries essentially render the glossaries of secondary importance in this book. The absence, however, might speak to a less fully realized integration of SLAM into the volume as a whole, the authors’ assertion of having taken SLAM “somewhat more systematically into account” notwithstanding (39). This can also be seen in the cursory treatment of the language of SLAM in the introduction in contrast to the more extensive treatment of Old and Middle English in the other texts. Nevertheless, previous research (e.g., Sauer 1997) has laid the groundwork for this study by addressing some of the issues raised in this volume and thus allows for more exhaustive treatment here. This results in a text by Sauer and Bauer that furthers a nuanced understanding of the texts themselves, their interrelatedness, and the possible shared Latin source(s) of such question-answer type medieval dialogues. Christopher Blake Shedd University of Klagenfurt Sandten, Cecile, Indrani Karmakar, and Oliver von Knebel Doeberitz (Eds.), Contemporary Indian English Literature: Contexts - Authors - Genres - Model Analyses. (Narr Studienbücher Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, 2023. Christoph Singer With Contemporary Indian English Literature, Cecile Sandten, Indrani Karmakar, and the late Oliver von Knebel Doeberitz offer a timely and highly readable introduction to Indian literature in English from the 1980s to the present. Aimed at “students studying Indian and English literature” (19), this anthology encompasses narrative, drama, and poetry, including works by both established and lesser-known authors. Any introduction to Indian literature in English faces the challenge of translating the diversity of texts and contexts into a book that does justice to the complexities at hand while still giving enough of an overview to be a helpful starting point for students. This volume does so effectively: first, the corpus is concise, spanning roughly the last 40 years and subdivided into two parts: the 1980s to the 2000s and the 2000s to the present. Both parts feature six chapters each. Second, the chapters provide close readings and historical contextualization of the selected authors, while also including short introductions to themes and contexts, such as the question of “Writing in English,” “The Short Story in India,” “Indian Poetry in English,” or concepts like “Diaspora, Hybridity, Interand Transculturality.” Third, the chapters include suggestions for further reading and ‘information boxes.’ The latter provide brief explanations of key terms and concepts, such as Indian epics, historical events (e.g., the Indian Mutiny of 1857), vocabulary (e.g., ayah and funtoosh), concepts (e.g., women’s writing), or terminology (e.g., palimpsest). Finally, each chapter concludes with study questions. The anthology’s introduction by Indrani Karmakar and Cecile Sandten provides a comprehensive overview of the central developments in Indian literature in English leading up to the text corpus addressed later in the book. At the same time, the authors outline the complexities of such an undertaking. They make it clear that the term “Indian English Literature” itself “comprises three aspects: a possible or supposed Indianness, a specific form (here the modernist novel), and the use of a non-Indian language” (13). All of these aspects are then addressed throughout the chapters that follow. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Band 49 · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2024-0029 Reviews 262 Part I of this book encompasses, as mentioned, the 1980s to the 2000s, beginning with David Walther’s chapter on “Salman Rushdie - East, West.” Not only does this chapter introduce Rushdie’s oeuvre and its context within Indian and global literatures, but Walther also addresses postcolonial themes that can be exemplified in Rushdie’s writing, ranging from (national) identity to migration and the diaspora. The chapter’s analysis focuses on Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981). In the second chapter, Indrani Karmakar introduces “Writing Women in India” with a focus on “Critical Perspectives on Shashi Deshpande’s Selected Fictions.” Karmakar uses Deshpande’s writing to discuss the ‘new Indian woman,’ with particular focus on The Binding Vine (1993) and Small Remedies (2000). She explores “subjectivity, motherhood, and intergenerational relationships” (62). This chapter concludes with an analysis of how these concepts are communicated through Deshpande’s unique combination of social realism with modernist narrative choices, thereby contrasting tradition and modernity. Monika Fludernik’s chapter examines novels by Amit Chaudhuri, which contrast with the works of authors like Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy by adhering neither to the tenets of postmodernism nor magic realism. After considering Chaudhuri’s literary modernism in A Strange and Sublime Address (1991), A New World (2001), and Friend of My Youth (2017), Fludernik concludes with an intriguing discussion on how postcolonial these texts really are, arguing that “the ‘postcolonial’ element is entirely missing in Chaudhuri” (97). In Chapter 5, Ellen Dengel-Janic explores how Indian women writers use the genre of the short story not only to innovate this time-honoured form but also to challenge hegemonic gender norms by focusing on representations of the female body. After providing an overview of the genre in India, Dengel- Janic illustrates the reciprocal connection between subverted literary traditions and female agency by analysing these themes in Githa Hariharan’s “The Remains of the Feast” (1994) and Binapani Mohanty’s short story “Lata” (1986). The final two chapters of Part One focus on drama and poetry, respectively. Maitryee Misra introduces two “Condition-of-India” plays published in 1993: Mahesh Dattani’s Final Solutions and Poile Sengupta’s Mangalam. After introducing Indian drama in English, this chapter outlines how the playwrights employ dramatic techniques, from a “play-within-a-play” and diary entries to a Greek chorus, to address India’s social problems and issues such as “anger, aggression, abuse, discrimination, identity crisis, gender inequality, and fundamentalism” (140). Cecile Sandten focuses on themes of belonging, home, and migration in the works of two women poets. This chapter introduces theoretical concepts such as diaspora and hybridity, as well as interand transculturality, and then applies these to Sujata Bhatt’s and Imtiaz Dharker’s poetic works. The chapter is particularly fascinating in its exploration of the global/ local dimensions in the writings of these poets, which is further emphasized by intertextual references, including German-speaking writers like Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan. Part II of the book begins with Asis De’s discussion of Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace (2000). She illustrates how this historical novel represents themes Rezensionen 263 such as the “migration of the subaltern, the expansion and decline of empires and families, […] the rise of the plantation economy in Southeast Asia and the role of Indian indentured laborers” (179), among others. This variety of topics is grounded in detailed close readings of select excerpts from the novel. Oliver von Knebel Doeberitz’s chapter, “The Darkness and Beyond: Post- Millennial Trends in Anglophone Indian Fiction,” focusses on India after the turn of the millennium. He reads novels that critically scrutinize an increasingly globalized and neoliberal India, as well as the representation of India on the global stage. Von Knebel Doeberitz identifies a “growing dissatisfaction with social and economic developments in India among writers,” (202) which contrasts with the officially sanctioned nationalist narratives. To highlight these developments, the chapter examines three novels: Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008), Manu Joseph’s Serious Men (2010), and Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani (2006). Anna M. Horatschek’s subsequent chapter similarly focuses on contemporary nation-building. She examines Anuradha Roy’s treatment of gender, sexuality, religion, and politics across all five of Roy’s novels. Horatschek specifically explores four themes in these works: Indian feminisms, nation-building, identitarian histories, and global contexts, offering an intersectional reading of these political concerns and the potential alternatives presented in Roy’s oeuvre.Miriam Nandi’s chapter discusses the representation of the ‘refugee crisis’ in South Asian novels in English. She explores the narrative and aesthetic strategies in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2016), Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019), and Aravind Adiga’s Amnesty (2020), focusing on how these novels address forced migration and border crossings “in a world in which peace and prosperity are limited to a small elite” (249). Nandi highlights not only the novels’ deep engagement with ethical questions but also raises, in the chapter’s conclusion, whether the fact that the authors themselves are not refugees could be considered problematic. Hannah Pardey’s chapter also examines the concept of a “New India.” She analyses Aravind Adiga’s novel Amnesty (2020) and Pankaj Mishra’s Run and Hide (2022), exploring them through the lens of socio-economic change. The chapter is particularly concerned with the aesthetic and formal features these novels employ to represent these concerns. Pardey introduces a concept she calls “liminal realism.” (273) This mode of representation, she argues, does not follow modernist aesthetics that are typical of earlier forms of social realism in Indian English writing. Ariane de Waal’s discussion of “Big Other and Big Brother: State Violence, Surveillance, and Censorship in Contemporary Indian English Drama,” concludes the book. The chapter, as the title indicates, is particularly concerned with the uses and abuses of state power in Abhishek Majumdar’s play The Djinns of Eidgah (2002) and Annie Zaidi’s dystopian Untitled 1 (2018), following an introduction to contemporary Indian drama in English. Like the previous chapters by Nandi and Pardey, de Waal highlights how these dramatic texts “point to the potential of storytelling to build alternative communities” (316). Reviews 264 Contemporary Indian English Literature is a very valuable introduction to a complex and varied topic and manages to be both accessible and insightful. On the one hand, this volume serves as an effective entry point for beginners and students. On the other hand, by including several chapters on lesser-known authors, there is much to discover for readers who are already familiar with the topic. Like most introductions, the editors face the challenge of having too much to cover, but not enough space to do so. Consequently, the chapters sometimes touch on discussions that would have benefited from further exploration. However, the authors provide enough contextualization, suggested readings, and study questions to allow readers to further explore the respective topics. The editors deliver what they set out to do: they offer a well-structured introduction to contemporary Indian literature in English. While intended for students, Contemporary Indian English Literature will also prove to be a valuable resource for teachers at schools and universities who plan to work on one or more of the key texts introduced in the book. Christoph Singer University of Innsbruck BUCHTIPP Dem Fremdsprachenunterricht wohnt ein enormes Bildungspotenzial inne, welches häu g aufgrund äußerer Zwänge kaum berücksichtigt wird. Dieses Studienbuch hat zum Ziel, (angehenden) Lehrkräften für die modernen Fremdsprachen Wege zu zeigen, Fremdsprachenunterricht bildend zu denken. Es führt in zentrale Aspekte einer kritischen Fremdsprachendidaktik ein, welche zum Ziel hat, gesellschaftlich relevante Themen in einen Unterricht zu bringen, der Lernende motiviert und zum aktiven Handeln gegen soziale Ungerechtigkeit ermutigt. Die forschungsgeleiteten Vignetten im Buch sowie zahlreiche theoretische wie methodisch-didaktische Hintergründe dienen dazu, dass die Leser: innen eine kritische Haltung zu ihrer eigenen Praxis entwickeln und ermutigt werden, innovative Konzepte in ihren Fremdsprachenunterricht zu integrieren. David Gerlach, Mareen Lüke (Kritische) Fremdsprachenlehrkraft werden narr STUDIENBÜCHER 1. Au age 2024 2024, 259 Seiten €[D] 29,99 ISBN 978-3-381-11671-3 eISBN 978-3-381-11672-0 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 \ 72070 Tübingen \ Germany \ Tel. +49 (0)7071 97 97 0 \ info@narr.de \ www.narr.de narr.digital ISBN 978-3-381-12741-2 ISSN 0171 - 5410 Contributions by: Rachel Pole Sarah Back Nina Bostič Bishop Elisabeth Frank Ulrich Busse Christopher Blake Shedd Christoph Singer