"Society Is the Biggest Murder Scene of All": On the Private and Public Spheres in Ingeborg Bachmann's Prose

In her prose Ingeborg Bachmann took up the Frankfurt School's cultural criticism and extended it by adding the dimension of gender. Violence and oppression are thus shown to be structural moments of the public and the private spheres. Against a sketch of the background and cognitive implications of my use of the concepts private and public, I describe Bachmann's critique of the politics of a public sphere that requires the splitting off of feelings. After demonstrating that feelings, sensuality, and trust have no "place" in the private sphere either, and that this sphere can be deadly for "woman," I explore how Bachmann goes beyond the Frankfurt School's critique by portraying the return of "woman" to the public sphere and asking how she can survive there. (HM)