Gender and Language 20(2008)

Iconicity as a Doorway to a New Space: Lesser Known East German Women Writers in the Seventies and Eighties

1 About a century ago, two theories of the sign were conceived on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The European semiology of Saussure emerging on one side was "verbocentric," as Saussure saw the arbitrary nature of la langue as the paradigm form of representation. On the other side, Peirce, a systematic philosopher, suggested a much broader epistemological conception of representation: for him, the sign-relation is able to explain comprehensive theorems of knowledge and perception. Iconicity is nested within a complex structure of philosophical, as opposed to linguistic, concepts. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we must acknowledge that Peirce has won the match: our language is not exclusively arbitrary as Saussure postulated, and iconicity is ubiquitous in language and literature, cognition and scientific activities.
2 Broadly speaking, iconicity refers to a specific relation between the form of a linguistic sign and the concept to which that sign refers in a person's understanding of his or her real world. Pierce considers the relations between three basic elements — the representation (sign), the object of the representation (referent or object) and the way the object is represented (interpretant). In his correspondence with Lady Welby dating from 1908, Peirce explains which "path" can be followed between object and interpretant.

The logical order of determination is indicated by the direction of the arrows in Fig. 1:

3      The correspondence between sign and object can be quite direct, when both share common, intrinsic features. This basic version of iconicity, whose existence Saussure did not reject, is commonly referred to as imagic. A prominent example of this type is the notion of onomatopoeia, which is not limited to words such as the German bang or plumps, but also includes puns like Mauser (in place of Mauer, German for wall). Katja Lange-Müller, an East German writer, chose this name for the main character of the book she published in 1988, four years after leaving the GDR and one year before the East-West German wall came down. In other cases, however, the correspondence between sign and referent is far less direct: in Peirce's taxonomy of signs, this type of iconicity is termed diagrammatic. In this case, there is no overt similarity between the signifier and the signified. Caesar's veni, vidi, vici is a very often used illustration for the iconic diagram. The sequence of individually symbolic words mirrors the sequence of actions it enumerates. There is a third and a last category of iconicity, rarely addressed by Peirce's critics: metaphoric iconicity. Jappy gives an obvious example to illustrate how metaphors operate: "This surgeon is a butcher" (Jappy, Chapter 3). The metaphor, which will be analysed more precisely later on, conveys the idea that this surgeon treats patients as if they were lumps of meat and bone in the butcher's hand. Even if this example might be a metaphoric sign (or hypo-icon), Peirce insists on the point that metaphor is form, and not a piece of figurative discourse such as a sentence.
4      The corpus of works on which this study draws consists of texts written by eight lesser known GDR female authors between 1978 and 1989. Astonishingly enough, the Peircean concepts of iconicity have never been applied to the writing of East German women. This is indeed quite surprising, since the former GDR appears to be a good "substrate" for iconicity, as far as the working and living conditions of female authors were concerned. I would even like to suggest that the three types of iconicity described above (imagic, diagrammatic and metaphoric) are inherent in the writing of women in the GDR, due to the specific features of that country. Geographically, politically, economically and sociologically, East Germany differed a lot from Western Europe: It was virtually impossible to cross the border to the Federal Republic of Germany. The state's doctrine was marked by militarism and nationalism; the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) dominated political life. The SED was based on centralism and on the principle of social unity, which reinforced the standardisation of society, whereas divergent elements were excluded or instrumentalised. The socialist regime ruled over the mechanisms of literary creation and reception: writers, reviewers, publishing houses as well as the channels of distribution were under government control. This state domination had paradoxical consequences on the literary climate, which also benefited from this public support: reading and writing played a bigger role than in other countries. Another specific feature of GDR society is the so-called "proclaimed equality of rights" between men and women. Indeed legislation in the GDR was very progressive (e.g. female access to so-called masculine jobs, equality of wages, divorce, birth control and abortion). Nevertheless the ways of thinking had not evolved as quickly as the politics, and most of the time women were still in charge of the household and the children's education, in addition to their paid jobs.
5      The standardisation of society was an expression of political will. However, this does not necessary mean that all GDR female authors to be dealt with in this paper had the same experiences in their lives as women and as writers. Of course they shared a common denominator, a lack of recognition, but their personal situations might have varied a lot. The following diagram shows how close or distant some lesser known female writers were from the central power. The state machinery treated some in a more or less friendly way than others (Fig. 2).

The literary climate in the GDR (i.e. the conditions in which literature emerged) could be tough for one author and yet encouraging for another one, depending on her political acceptance. There may be a strong link between the political acceptance of an author and the use she made of iconic means in her literary works. Can we say, for instance, that the more literary iconicity she used (i.e. the more daring and provocative her writing was), the more difficult it was for her to stay in the GDR and have her works released there? In order to test this intuitive hypothesis, we need to have a closer look at the texts — and at the East German context.
6 Why might it be that unrecognised works by East German female authors hold so many surprises as far as literary iconicity is concerned? Their innovative potential is due to their very specific place of emergence. Since East Germany remained a patriarchal country in spite of its progressive socialist laws, in this particular context language appears to be dual, existing simultaneously as a factor of oppression and a key to emancipation. Iconicity enables the writers to cope with language duality:

Leech and Short allude to the emotive value of iconicity for the interpretation of literary texts. They refer here to an "enactment," which leads to a reader-based "dramatic performance." This performance is by definition a subjective process, which is an individual result of the act of reading. It means that the representation of the text (the sense) does not exist before the act of reading, which makes it difficult for censorship (as well as self-censorship) to work efficiently. This is why we can assume that literary iconicity is particularly vivid in works written by East German female authors, due to their very specific way of life.
7      More than in Western Europe, the life of lesser known women writers in the former GDR was affected by the double standards described above. First, they experienced this contradictory situation as women — living in a state where the question of women's liberation was considered solved but the mentalities remained patriarchal. Secondly, they felt the rift between principles and reality, between theory and practice in their life as writers. On the one hand, the GDR society was extremely literature-friendly: many people read a great deal of books; the authors were in close contact with their editors and readership. Moreover, even books considered hard to sell were published; editorial decisions were not governed by the commercial rules applied in capitalist countries. On the other hand, literary creation was subject to censorship, which automatically induces self-censorship. Thirdly, lesser known East German women writers experienced marginalization in the literary landscape because their works were considered second-rate or not considered at all. During the GDR era their texts were not duly reviewed or analysed by literary critics. Recognition finally came late and with hesitation (i.e. after the Wende in 1989-1990).¹
8      Beyond these GDR-specific difficulties, East German women writers — like other female authors all over the world — also coped with the problem of what Sigrid Weigel called "double place" (Weigel, Topographien 262; my translation). They experienced this phenomenon both in their life and in their writing: they lived in an inherently patriarchal society, which at the same time pretended that the equality of rights between the sexes had been achieved. They faced a male language that tended to exclude them, but also served as their first means of effective expression. Thus, they had to look through what Weigel calls "the man's glasses," in her much-cited essay on the topic of Feminine aesthetics, entitled "Der schielende Blick" (Weigel, Blick 85).² Indeed, for East German female authors, there were no other ways to see: the patriarchal glasses are the language in which they articulate themselves, the reason they need to draw conclusions. But the paradoxical status of women in a patriarchal society as both subject and object allows them to squint: with one eye they see through the glasses but with the other they dare to peek at another reality (Weigel, Blick 104). Iconicity may serve as a literary technique enabling these female authors to rule the norms instead of being ruled by them.
9      The first type of iconicity used as a literary technique is the imagic one. East German female writers often use imaginisation in search of a suitable literary setting. They make literary use of a resemblance between an item and its referent by some — visual, pictorial, acoustic — characteristic. Katja Lange-Müller's work is one of the most striking examples. She plays with the phonetic shape of words and the evocative value of sounds in order to locate her writing between both German states (Lange-Müller, Kasper). Her story entitled Kasper Mauser — Die Feigheit vorm Freund tells us less about life in East Germany than about the author's break with her former existence and her transition to a new society.

The first character in Lange-Müller's story is the anarchist Anna. She calls herself "Independent Autonomous Republic Anna Nass" (21),³ reminiscent of a confused and corrupt banana republic. The many cracks in her biography find an echo in the blank between her first and last names, "Anna Nass, like the tropical fruit" (23). Rosa Extra is Anna's "bosom foe" (18), both constitute a "neatly separated unity" (71). Rosa Extra's name is derived from the name of a sanitary towel only distributed in the former GDR, whereas pineapples (German Ananas or "Anna Nass") were a privilege of Western Germany. Kasper Mauser, alias Amigo Amica, is Anna's friend. Out of "cowardice" towards such a difficult "friend" — the socialist regime — he decides to leave the GDR and to follow Anna to West Germany. He chooses the allusive name of Kasper Mauser in reminiscence of the historical character of Casper Hauser. In the GDR he was living in a "cave-like room" (27). When he leaves his hiding place, he is deaf and dumb like the hero in Jakob Wassermann's Caspar Hauser oder Die Trägheit des Herzens (Caspar Hauser or The Inertia of the Heart). He is "from the Mongolian people" (62). Katja Lange-Müller knows Mongolia well, since she was sent there for one year after she had completed her studies. Thus the GDR regime kept her at a distance from the political events in her home country. The deplorable living conditions she experienced in Mongolia depressed her so much that she lost her faith in socialism and applied for an exit permit when she came back to the GDR.
10 Like a child, Kasper Mauser is a master in folk-etymology (i.e. he likes to link unknown parts of the wor(l)ds to wor(l)ds he already knows). For Olga Fischer and Max Nänny, this is a type of iconicity through which "children, and also adults, make sense of the world": "[Children] have a very clear need to make arbitrary signs transparent by relating parts of the sign to other previously learned signs so that the arbitrary makes sense to them in a 'natural' way" (5). The anti-hero Kasper Mauser indeed has a childish attitude in a supposedly adult world, refusing to have a steady identity, even refusing to be reduced to one person. Kasper, Anna and Rosa are likely to build a single, contradictory personality. After the Wende, Lange-Müller explained in an interview with Jürgen Krätzer:

From Mauser to Mauer (German for wall) there is only a one-letter difference. The East-West German wall indeed fascinates Mauser (27). Described as an "adopstep son" (14), Kasper Mauser indeed says he has "idento-infected" himself with Caspar Hauser,

Coming back to the three basic elements constituting iconicity mentioned in Fig. 1, we could now illustrate them in the following manner:

11 Lange-Müller also uses acoustic iconicity to amplify the meaning of her prose. One senses the animal nature of Kasper Mauser, his insect-like motion, in clauses like "slit-eyed sly dog, speechless, black, gay" (14). The sound conveyed by the alliteration in sibilants echoes the sense: Kasper, sometimes also called "soot beetle" (13, 75), moves "Gregor-Samsa-like" (78), reminding us of the gigantic insect in Kafka's Metamorphosis. All these allusions are actually not cheap puns, but rather part of the imagic iconicity based on sound symbolism. Kasper the insect is a dumb and lonely creature on the fringes of society, even on the fringes of humanity — a typical outsider. Daniel Sich believes that Kasper Mauser deals primarily with the erratic nature of identity, i.e. changing persons in changing states (Sich 68). Thus we can assume that Lange-Müller applies an iconic writing strategy in order to cope with her central theme: unstable signs, constructed language make the world inside and outside the characters even more erratic. So Lange-Müller gets rid for a moment of "the man's glasses" hinted at by Sigrid Weigel: Literary iconicity makes it possible for her to glimpse with one eye and to see things which are blurry through the glasses, but clear without them. It makes her leave the place which she has been assigned in patriarchal society. By using form to add meaning, she captures her own authentic space of writing in a very concrete way.
12 Lange-Müller uses Kasper Hauser as a male mask in her piece. She is not the only female author in the GDR to do so occasionally; other women writers also take advantage of the freedom offered by a non-feminine voice. The imagic iconicity at work is based on a sign (i.e. the form of the literary text) having following characteristic: the authors choose predominantly (Burmeister, Hensel) or at least temporarily (Lange-Müller, Königsdorf) a male narrative perspective, as shown in Table 1.

	Brigitte Burmeister	Kerstin Hensel	Katja Lange-Müller	Helga Königsdorf
Where is the male mask to be found?	In Anders oder vom Aufenthalt in der Fremde (Burmeister): Anders (i.e. "other"), just arrived in a new town.	In Hallimasch (Hensel): the judging society in "Ritter Rosel...," and the first-person narrator in "Herr Johannes."	In Kasper Mauser — Die Feigheit vorm Freund (Lange-Müller): the eponymous hero — with the allusive name.	In Ungelegener Befund (Königsdorf): Dieter Jhanz, a male and homosexual character.
What does this mask hide?	An approach to female writing: for a short time the employee Anders gives up his linear way of writing for the "labyrinthine writing."	An attempt to gain a solid narrative perspective — but this perspective reproduces the balance of power at work in patriarchal societies.	The archetype of the outsider: through the colour of his skin, his sexual orientation, his geographic origin, through his "antisocial" (asocial) character.	Similarities and affinities with female characters in Königsdorf's works, as in Respektloser Umgang.
What does the author think of this deliberate confusion?	Burmeister needs this mask — a character who should be as far as possible from herself, in order to write freely.	Hensel considers her sex as "irrelevant" to her writing: "Nobody asks a man, whether he feels like a man while writing."*	Lange-Müller works on her own uprooted history thanks to the rich interplay between her characters, especially Anna and Amica.	"The inviolability of the individual," i.e. "the principle of human dignity," is more important than one's sexual category.**
The image of the male mask: Which role does it play in the writing strategy?	What motivates Burmeister's choice of a male voice is not the attempt to reach objectivity, but her search for the other in herself ("my mask").	Hensel's writing strategy is typical of Weigel's "squinting gaze," the price a female writer has to pay for her so-called "double existence" (Weigel, Blick 104).	The male mask may be part of Lange-Müller's global "dismantling strategy" (e.g. disruption of the traditional gender roles).	The masculine mask echoes Königsdorf's intention to neutralize the role played by sex and gender in writing.

Table 1: the male mask as a sign
* "Einen Mann fragt niemand, ob er sich beim Schreiben als Mann fühlt" (Hensel in: Dahlke 269). ** "die Unantastbarkeit des Individuums," i.e. "das Prinzip Menschenwürde" (Königsdorf, Prinzip 8).