Politicising Desire in Juli Zeh's Spieltrieb

Publisher： Rodopi

ISSN： 0927-1910

Source： German Monitor, Vol.76, Iss.1, 2013-05, pp. : 187-207

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Abstract

Novelist, playwright, essayist, and jurist Juli Zeh is, unlike many of her contemporaries, highly publically engaged and demands that literature be politically committed. Consequently, the political relevance of her own nonfictional writing also translates into her literary work, as contemporaneous public discourses are inscribed in the representation of interpersonal relationships. This chapter will begin by locating Zeh's writing within the larger debates in contemporary German literature. A close reading of her 2004 novel Spieltrieb will then illustrate how the political implications of the relationships at the core of the novel demonstrate how global-political discourses reverberate in local-intimate notions of power and desire.