Narratives of female exhaustion around 1900 and 2000

• Applicant: Dr. Marcella Isabelle Fassio
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 466331557

Mental illnesses of exhaustion such as depression and burnout are currently in the focus of science, media, and literature. Yet, the literary processing of exhaustion is not a new phenomenon. As early as during the transition to literary modernism around 1900, pathologies such as melancholy, depression, and neurasthenia, which can be understood as phenomena of exhaustion, are covered in the literature. Exhaustion can be understood in the context of medical (neurasthenia, depression, burnout) as well as historical and aesthetic concepts (melancholy, spleen, ennui). Furthermore, exhaustion is to be placed in relation to gender, (re)production and work and, thus, in relation to social conditions and discourses. The research project aims to work out narratives of female exhaustion around 1900 and 2000 as well as their synchronic and diachronic connections. Narratives of female exhaustion are understood here as written narratives of prolonged states of exhaustion that manifest in the description of psychological (and physical) symptoms. These symptoms can also be negotiated in a hidden way through synonyms such as emptiness or listlessness but must be central components of the narrative texts. The illness may be diagnosed explicitly in the literary texts; however, this is not mandatory. By linking a discourse-analytical and gender-theoretical perspective to a praxeological approach, the project aims to elaborate and systematise narratives of female exhaustion around 1900 and 2000. The respective discourses on exhaustion, femininity, and work, as well as their concrete expression in motifs and narrative structures, are to be made visible and analysed. To that end, the synchronic and diachronic connections, i.e., the similarities between female exhaustion narratives around 1900 and 2000 and the taking up of narrative patterns in contemporary narrative texts of female exhaustion, must be examined. The central question is, how female exhaustion is narrated in narrative texts around 1900 and 2000, both in dialogue with medical, psychiatric and psychoanalytical perspectives and in dissociation from them. The dispositives of power which are part of these discourses must also be considered; on the one hand, with regard to pathologisation, and on the other hand, concerning to the gender attributions associated with them. Following on from this, the question will be which specific narrative procedures can be shown in the depiction of female exhaustion and which specific narratives of female exhaustion can be identified. The central thesis is that female exhaustion narratives around 1900 and 2000 can be understood as ambivalent narratives of failure, refusal, and protest. The intended research project is located at the interface between literary studies and the history of medicine and aims to make the results accessible to medical humanities.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position