Spuren des Traumas, Latenzen und Zäsuren im Spätwerk von Ilse Aichinger

This paper focuses on the late works of Ilse Aichinger, especially on Film und Verhängnis (2001). The paper intends to explore some manifestations of latency and caesura in the context of autobiography. Aichinger's writing, which has often experienced productive moments of latency, is also considered in the broader context of reworking of trauma and recovery of memories. Fragmentariness is a characteristic trait of Aichinger’s late prose, which wanders among shreds of memories and instant impressions, exposing the narrator’s self to the unreliability of memory. Latencies and caesuras are also frequent phenomena in trauma narratives and in autobiographical writing. Periods of latency are functional to the posthumous re-elaboration and re-signification of trauma (see the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit in relationship with existential traumas) and caesuras can be intended as productive interruptions or watersheds which allow the emergence of a subsequent phase and activate new narrative zones. Instead of following a (chrono)logical order, Aichinger chooses to bend to the discontinuous and spontaneous stream of her own memory. The special arrangement of the texts in Film und Verhängnis, as well as their internal structure, fit very well in the context of fragmentariness and discontinuity of both memory and writing.