Ein Portrait des Germanisten als junger Mann. Zu W. G. Sebalds dissidenter Haltung gegenüber der Literaturwissenschaft in seinen akademischen Rezensionen.

Abstract

Bereits die Magisterarbeit und Dissertation von W. G. Sebald waren als Angriffe auf die Germa nistik angelegt. Diese konfrontative Stoßrichtung ist auch in den knapp dreißig Rezensionen aka demischer Fachbücher zu finden, die er von 1971 bis 1990 zumeist für das ›Journal of european Studies‹ und für ›Modern Language Review‹ verfasste. Diese durchweg polemischen Verrisse, die das Rezensierte als exemplarische Anhaltspunkte zur generellen Kritik an der Disziplin nutzen, werden hier erstmals und in ihrer Gesamtheit untersucht. W. G. Sebald's MA dissertation as well as his PhD thesis already amount to attacks against the German practice of Germanistik. The confrontational intent also characterises the nearly thirty reviews of academic publications which Sebald wrote for the ›Journal of european Studies‹ and the ›Modern Language Review‹ from 1971 to 1990. The essay undertakes the first comprehensive investigation of these polemical reviews which use individual works as examples for a general critique of the discipline as such.

An uncanny journey: W. G. Sebald and the literature of protest

“…To support this contention, Sheppard singles out several common concerns: an anti-capitalist stance, an apocalyptic sense of history, an acceptance of the central thesis of Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, and a critique of contemporary Germanistik, with its emphasis on a dehistoricizing 'werkimmanente Kritik' ('work-immanent criticism') which, in the name of close reading, isolated text from context. As a result, by the mid 1970s, Sebald was engaging in significant ways with left-wing radicalism and the kind of literary works to which it had given rise during the Weimar Republic (Sheppard, 2009a: 88-9; see also Schütte, 2008;; 9 importantly, interest in literature as a forum for revolt and pre-Nazi radical traditions characterized the protest movements.…”

W. G. Sebald as a critic of Austrian literature

“…Disappointed in his teachers -and, as his book reviews show, in the tendency of Germanistik generally, in Britain as well as Germany, to avoid urgent questions (Schütte, 2008) -Sebald found an alternative source of ideas in the writings of Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School. Recalling his studies at Freiburg, he writes: I have often wondered how dismal and dishonest our understanding of literature would have remained, if the writings of Benjamin and the Frankfurt School, which after all was a Jewish school researching bourgeois social and intellectual history, had not provided us with new perspectives. (LieL: 12) In addition, Sebald relies heavily on psychoanalysis and (in the broadest sense) on anthropology.…”

“…By defying the conventions of Germanistik, Sebald's essays belong to a critical genre that is perhaps more familiar in anglophone than in German writing. Disappointed in his teachers -and, as his book reviews show, in the tendency of Germanistik generally, in Britain as well as Germany, to avoid urgent questions (Schütte, 2008) -Sebald found an alternative source of ideas in the writings of Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School.…”