Relational Subjectivity: Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s Novel Außer Sich

Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s debut novel, published in 2017, covers the experience of antisemitism, migration, queerness and political struggle during a 100-year time span. Its structure is anything but straightforward and features homo- as well as heterodiegetic narrators. Structurally, the novel can be related to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, with its analysis of the logic of Kafka’s writings. Rosi Braidotti’s work on nomadic ethics and on the posthuman supplements the framework given by Deleuze and Guattari. Drawing on these writings, my analysis foregrounds the concept of the relational subject as developed in the novel as well as the link between its narrative structure and the exploration of time and anxiety. Taking into consideration its opening James Baldwin citation, I relate these issues to the novel’s of multidirectional memory of oppression.

Tweetable abstract: This article explores how Sasha Marianna Salzmann connects queer subjectivity, multidirectional memory, time and narrative structure.