Margarete Lamb Faffelberger Book order

Visions and Visionaries is an apt title for this volume of essays on contemporary Austrian literature and film, because this collection offers insightful discussions of a gallery of significant authors and cultural figures. It also investigates important issues of style and genre, and portrays questions of Austrian identity and culture in rich contexts of recent literary and multi-media developments, cross-cultural interactions, and historical forces. This book encompasses relevant trends and notions from the past - especially the complexities of lingering effects of the Nazi era - along with issues of the future - in particular the present and anticipated interactions of culture and cyberspace. The essays are enhanced by poems by Evelyn Schlag and Gerhard Kofler.

Contemporary Austria habitually presents itself as the «cultural nation», or Kulturnation , where the promotion of culture is both of national and economic importance. In 1999, the government stated the value of culture in Austria as «Our cultural heritage, contemporary culture, and art constitute major factors for both our own definition of cultural nation as well as the foreign perception of Austria.» Since the 1950s, Austria has nurtured a romantic attitude toward its past glory and embraced a cultural conservatism that hindered many Austrians from developing an open mind toward – and interest in – cultural criticism, artistic experimentation, and innovation. Therefore, most state funding continues to be channeled toward Austria’s established theaters and artists rather than the writers and filmmakers, who make significant contributions to the public discourse on cultural amnesia and historical revisionism by challenging with varying intensity and on differing aesthetic platforms Austria’s misguided self-promotion, such as Kulturnation par excellence.

The essays in this book document how the impressive body of literary works and films created by women writers and filmmakers has greatly enriched the Austrian cultural scene since 1945. Their contributions, however, were only marginally recognized during the 1950s and early 1960s and remain hidden within the shadows of the body of art created by their male counterparts in the process of reestablishing Austria's post-World War II cultural identity. The situation changed during the 1970s, when the literary and film texts of the younger generation began to strongly assert feminist views and issues. The texts of contemporary Austrian women writers and filmmakers were directed towards social and ethnic consciousness-raising and are united by their radically new use of language.