Between myth and becoming a subject – aspects of coming to terms with the Nazi past in Grete Weil’s novel “My Sister, My Antigone”

Abstract

The central topic of the following article is the process of shaping the (literary) subject based on the narrator’s coming to terms with her Nazi past, to which the myth of Antigone serves as an instrument. Regarding the possibilities which a myth provides in the exploration of the theme of fascism in the area of cultural studies, the following text addresses the question of how the myth itself can be used in an individual, autobiographical, literary encounter with the past. Through the example of the Antigone figure, which is central to the novel, it is shown how on the one hand the myth can become a productive instrument for dealing with the traumatic past and support of the speaking subject through the possibilities of identification which it offers. On the other hand, however, the performance of the myth in the narrative emergence of the traumatized subject is questioned. By using Lacan’s concept of the subject, which is based on the submission of language to the signifiers, the article makes it clear that the narrative subject has to get rid of his imaginary identifications, which lie in the mythical, to turn from the imaginary to the symbolic, i.e., to the conscious poetic speaking. As part of this turn, the narrator is asked, according to an important conclusion of this study, to discard the existing ascriptions of meaning to get to the gaps both in her biography (trauma and losses) and in the language itself, and then from the place of their intersection where a so-called pure signifier arises in the sense of Lacan, allowing himself to be redefined as a speaking, desiring subject.