Abject Eve: A Revolutionary Reading of Lasker-Schüler’s “Erkenntnis”

Abstract

This article explores the revolutionary politics in Else Lasker-Schüler’s early poetry, particularly focusing on her 1905 poem “Erkenntnis” (“Knowledge”). The article argues that Lasker-Schüler’s poetic revision of the biblical garden myth presents a conception of abjected subjectivity that seeks to harness a form of antiauthoritarian energy, albeit in a manner invested with ambivalence. In this poem Lasker-Schüler reimagines the story of Eve outside constructions of guilt, emphasizing transgression as a positive, almost salvific action. Still, this attempt on the poet’s part is complicated by the mythopoetic past—by Eve’s own voice, which is filled with shame. The form of the poem performs the process of making space for the abject, complicating the poetic trajectory of liberation by including the echoes of mythic trauma. The article concludes by drawing political consequences from the form of Lasker-Schüler’s poetry and her conception of abject subjectivity, arguing that her early poetry presents us with a politics of vulnerability and solidarity with the outcasts of society.