On Display: Conditions of Critique in Austria
Abstract
Postwar Austrian literature features an unusual number of writers whose literary attacks are directed at their own nation. How do we explain this high concentration of tirades in Austria? Thomas Bernhard's "Alte Meister" provides a possible answer. For Bernhard, the work of art is the primary object of critical judgments. The crucial site for this critical judgment is the museum, since it puts artworks on display in a nonreligious context, as artifacts divested of sacred meaning. Bernhard's novel indicates that Austria as a whole has become the object of sustained critique because it has elevated the museum to the status of the paradigmatic state institution. The critical judgments of authors are directed toward Austria because this nation puts itself on display for citizens and tourists alike, and has turned itself into an object of critical assesment. As a country that appears as a museum, Austrian is not necessarily the worst of nations, but perhaps the most criticizable.
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Scholars@Duke
Jakob Norberg
Jakob Norberg’s research explores conceptions of community in German thought and literature. His first book, Sociability and Its Enemies (Northwestern 2014), examines the search for non-authoritarian forms of collective life after the end of the Second World War and focuses on thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, and Jürgen Habermas. The second book, The Brothers Grimm and the Making of German Nationalism (Cambridge UP 2022), shows how Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm viewed philologists as arbiters of national identity, even adjudicators of national territory, and therefore as experts indispensable to the modern nation state. The third book entitled Schopenhauer’s Politics (Cambridge UP, 2024) reconstructs Arthur Schopenhauer’s anti-nationalist, anti-collectivist political philosophy. His articles have appeared in venues such as PMLA, Arcadia, Cultural Critique, New German Critique, Textual Practice, Telos, and the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought. More information about Norberg can be found on academia.edu.
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