-
The Poetics of Ritual in Diaspora: Anna Mitgutsch’s Familienfest and Vladimir Vertlib’s Letzter Wunsch
- Journal of Austrian Studies
- University of Nebraska Press
- Volume 45, Numbers 1-2, Spring/Summer 2012
- pp. 93-118
- 10.1353/oas.2012.0000
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Anna Mitgutsch and Vladimir Vertlib trace the trajectories of children of immigration and transmigration. In Familienfest and Letzter Wunsch, both published in 2003, Mitgutsch and Vertlib seem eager to meet the challenges of a changing world by reflecting on the category of Jewishness in an emerging transnational world spanning Europe, Israel, and the United States. Both writers privilege and problematize the performative aspects of Jewish ritual and its constitutive role with regard to Jewish identity, especially within the diaspora. In this paper I investigate the new figurations of transnational community in Mitgutsch’s and Vertlib’s novels.