Der innere Gral der Männlichkeit: Zur männlichkeitskonstituierenden Funktion des Militärs

Narrating the Revolutionary Self in German Post‐terrorist Life‐writing: Gender, Identity and Historical Agency

“…58 This fits well with Ruth Seifert's claim that gendered difference is perceived as the most natural and inevitable in institutions of collective violence, with the following result: 'Der Krieger ist als Kriegerin kaum vorstellbar.' 59 And yet, as I want to argue, in their narrative (re)constructions of their revolutionary self, both Schiller and Viett do gesture towards a distinctly female revolutionary identity -a 'Kämpferin' identity of sorts -even if that construction is contradictory and, at times, reproduces the mainstream discourses that denied women political agency in the first place. I have already pointed to moments in both texts which function in that way: Viett's subversion of the 'coming of age' narrative for the woman revolutionary; Schiller's rewriting of the iconic photograph of her; Schiller's construction of a different, more convincing form of agency in her account of being 'terroristed'.…”