Contemporary Jewish Writing Austria After Waldheim

This book examines Jewish writers and intellectuals in Austria, analyzing filmic and electronic media alongside more traditional publication formats over the last 25 years. Beginning with the Waldheim affair and the rhetorical response by the three most prominent members of the survivor generation (Leon Zelman, Simon Wiesenthal and Bruno Kreisky) author Andrea Reiter sets a complicated standard for 'who is Jewish' and what constitutes a 'Jewish response.' She reformulates the concepts of religious and secular Jewish cultural expression, cutting across gender and Holocaust studies. The work proceeds to questions of enacting or performing identity, especially Jewish identity in the Austrian setting, looking at how these Jewish writers and filmmakers in Austria 'perform' their Jewishness not only in their public appearances and engagements but also in their works. By engaging with novels, poems, and films, this volume challenges the dominant claim that Jewish culture in Central Europe is almost exclusively borne by non-Jews and consumed by non-Jewish audiences, establishing a new counter-discourse against resurging anti-Semitism in the media.

About the author

Andrea Reiter is a Reader in German in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Southampton, UK.

Product details

• Authors: Reiter Andrea, Andrea Reiter
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Content: Book
• Product form: Hardback
• Publication date: 20.11.2013
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Society
• EAN: 9780415659451
• ISBN: 978-0-415-65945-1
• Pages: 256
• Series: Routledge Studies in Religion
• Subjects: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, Media Studies, Thomas Bernhard, RELIGION / General, European History, Poetry, RELIGION / Judaism / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry, Robert Menasse, RELIGION / Religion, Politics & State, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / German, RELIGION / Judaism / History, LITERARY CRITICISM / Jewish, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / European / General, Religion: general, Wiener Gruppe, Fairy tales, Jewish Studies, Performativity, Tante Jolesch, Second World War, The Holocaust, Judaism, Doron Rabinovici, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, History and Archaeology, Social groups: religious groups and communities, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / Eastern, bar mitzvah, Jewish writers, Young Man, Jewish Museum, postwar austria, bat mitzvah, post-war Austria, Jewish Cultural Festival, Jewish space, Waldheim Affair, Bar Mitzvah Boy, Austria’s Nazi Past, Mazal Tov, Jewish Identification, Vienna Jewish Community, Simulation Space, Contemporary Jewish Writing, non-Jewish Majority