Consolidating, Consuming, and Annulling Identity in Jutta Brückner's Hungerjahre

Situated within German feminist practices of the 1970s, Jutta Brückner's Hungerjahre attempts not only to represent the director's youth during the years of the Economic Miracle, but also to find expressive forms to articulate experiences that evade language. While the voice-over searches for such a language, it is hindered, I argue, by its very embeddedness in the structures that produce such stunted subjectivities as Ursula's, the protagonist of the film. More compelling is the voice that Ursula herself constructs through the repressive mechanisms of socialization that shape her subjectivity. By examining how she speaks through the contradictions that characterize her socialization-the double bind of consumption and denial-I emphasize her ability to speak through such contradictions, to create her own language and unique voice through the very oppressive terms that otherwise deform her identity. Although her "language" is ultimately self-defeating and self-destructive, it still manifests the strands of a unique self emerging within the fabric of social, cultural, and historical conditions woven into her subjectivity. (MM)