The Collapse of Language and the Trace of History in Ingeborg Bachmann's "Simultan"

In Ingeborg Bachmann's story "Simultan" ("Word for Word"), history—-specifically the history of fascism in Austria and Italy-and language have collapsed as structures and subsided into symbolic rubble, ruled by metonymy and slippage, exceeding any stable meanings. Fascist violence is always present through its very absence, in lacunae and silences. Bachmann's protagonist, both privileged and cursed by her awareness of this language of echo and displacement, chooses to become blind and deaf to the trace of fascism; ultimately, she is "cured" of its discomfiting effects by submitting to the "murder" of her unique subjectivity. (SSC)