Literary rationality and the political public sphere: Post-unification Germany and the persistent aesthetics of authenticity

Post-unification German literature and its reception call for a theoretical approach that accounts for the role of literary practice as such in the contemporary public sphere. This is so because both post-unification literature and its reception exhibit a fundamental concern for a notion of authenticity that is the bearer of both the aesthetic quality and the communicative potential of literary artifacts. Accordingly, this study presents both a general theory of the role of literary practice in the contemporary public sphere at large and an interpretive account of representative examples of post-unification literature. This literature and its reception make especially apparent the extent to which contemporary literary practice is a unique contributor to the political public sphere, specifically through its negotiation of a complex claim of intersubjective authenticity.;On the basis of Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action and its reception by aesthetic theorists, a theoretical account of a literary form of rationality is developed and applied in the analysis of relevant literary texts. Particular attention is given to the writers Wolfgang Hilbig and Angela Krauss. Their texts deploy allegorical elements in the representation of shareable complexes of subjective experience, and thereby lay claim to an intersubjective authenticity. The allegorical mode of reading that can be observed in the texts themselves and their reception render them a focus for the public reflection on the intimate connections between personal memory and collective history. Hilbig's texts claim an authenticity for themselves through their portrayal of the inauthenticity of identities in contemporary Germany. Krauss' texts make explicit what is at stake in such paradigmatic representations in contemporary Germany, giving voice to a general disorientation vis-a-vis the acceleration of life in the East after unification, and specifically address the problem of unemployment.;The study argues that the aesthetics of intersubjective authenticity, the literary effort to represent shareable complexes of experience that motivates much of contemporary German literature, renders literary practice itself---both the publication of texts and their evaluation as aesthetic artifacts---and not just the explicitly political remarks of literary writers, a unique and valuable contributor to the political public sphere in post-unification Germany.