Ungenach

Autopsies on the body of nature: Dark ecology in Thomas Bernhard's Verstörung

“…In other words, there can be no clear demarcation between natural and cultural objects or phenomena. It is in this sense that Bernhard's ecological thinking can be said to be “without nature.” As Bernhard directly formulates it in the novella Ungenach , published the year following Verstörung : “[T]he concept of nature as we continue to understand it, and as the people we listen to, the newspapers we open, books, philosophies etc., all in the most absurd fashion, continue to understand, apply and practice it, no longer exists at all” (Bernhard, 1975, 17; my translation). When Saurau remarks that nature “completely occupies” him (“[d]ie Natur füllt mich ganz aus”) this precisely entails a collapse of the nature/culture dichotomy.…”

“…A Janus‐faced concept of nature, then, which threads its way into our present era where the contradiction between the reification of nature (in the extractive sense) and the biosphere itself has become clear. In Bernhard's novella Ungenach (1968), we are told that this kind of aesthetically idyllized nature no longer exists: “Nature no longer exists at all” (Bernhard, 1975, 17; my translation)—with “nature” signifying precisely this conception of the natural world as the antithesis of culture.…”