Poetik der Übereinstimmung

Abstract

This article treats the problem of ideology in Peter Weiss’s trilogy Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (1975–1981), examining the semantics of ›Übereinstimmung‹ as well as the theory of class consciousness in the novel. The semantics of ›Übereinstimmung‹ bridges the gap between two poetological stances of the author: the claim for documentation, on the one hand, and for radically subjective empathy or mimesis, on the other. The question of class consciousness as developed by Georg Lukács in Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein (1921) marks the crucial theoretical context regarding the formal construction of the novel and its narrator. Thus, the poetics of ›Übereinstimmung‹ must be understood as the poetic solution to the problem of class consciousness that the novel confronts.