Zwischen Befreiung und Einschränkung: Die Poetik der Verwandlung in Das nackte Auge von Yoko Tawada

Yoko Tawada’s novel Das nackte Auge (2004) has a number of features that fall somewhere between the modern and postmodern aesthetic in her expression of intercultural and neocolonial transition, which gives the work a prominent place in contemporary literature. The text has important metaliterary and metacultural elements and it explores various forms of aesthetic configurations that play with linguistic and cultural restrictions. In particular the semantic field of the eye and visibility are linked to the linguistic dimension to self-referentially explain a poetology of the intervals of uncertainty caused by cultural friction. Using the concepts o limitation and liberation, the analysis of the novel allows us to combine the formulas found into a poetics of mutation.