| A critical reflection on current historiographical approaches to what we call the "avant-garde," the dissertation investigates the relationship between the poet-performer Emmy Hennings (1885-1948) and the avant-garde, locating her as its silenced and suspended point of origin. The reconstruction of the ways she peformed and presented herself will contribute profoundly--and disturbingly--to the historiography of Expressionism and Dada as its unwritten and neglected gender aspect and reveals the degree to which any art movement, even and particularly in its self-declaration as anti-art and anti-representation, is dependent on those very figures that it has sought to repress or undermine.;The first part traces various illegitimate ways in which Emmy Hennings entered avant-garde circles and investigates the question of space and place a woman writer inhabits. Hennings' unique position both in the center and at the fringe of the avant-garde will be approached with Derrida's reading of Plato's chora: a space without space that is giving space, with an analysis of the figure of Ophelia in her relation to Hamlet, and an reflection of the aporia of the illegitimate gift of the Expressionist figure of the "whore" that can never escape the economy of exchange and objectivation.;The second part of the dissertation investigates Hennings' disappearance from vanguard historiography, arguing that such a disappearance was necessary in order to produce the notion of "avant-garde" art. The so called "historical avant-gardes" rely on a genealogical narrative that unfolds around the idea of "birth" and "origin" and run contrary to the figures of eruption, shock, and revolution they claim to enact. Constituting itself as a subversion of established forms of community, "avant-garde" inherently aims to exclude the notion of woman as unpredictable "Other" of community.;The third part of the dissertation consists of a chronology of Emmy Hennings' participation in the avant-garde movement: Giving an overview about all available biographical data covering the years between 1908 and 1922, the chronology is intended to trace her appearance, her effacement, and also her withdrawal from avant-garde historiography. |
