"Not a one-way Cassandra, but one that moves in two directions". The race against time in "wir schlafen nicht and in die alarmbereiten" by Kathrin Röggla

Abstract

The object of this analysis are two works by Kathrin Röggla, a writer born in 1971 in Salzburg, author of narrative texts that can also be adapted for the stage. These are wir schlafen nicht (We never sleep, 2004) and die alarmbereiten (Always vigilant, 2010), which show how Röggla deals with the alienation that derives from a perpetually transitory and emergency situation of living in the present. What seems of great importance is that the structure of Röggla’s texts does not marry with a precise plot, but rather frames the reaction of individuals to states of stress; therefore, it lends itself to being an object of interest both for the literary critic, for the sociolinguist, for the psychologist as well as for the mass media specialist. His literary work shows a clear condemnation of the new working methods and current existential conditions which – with the advent of globalization processes – have replaced the past models and rhythms of life of civil society in a traumatic way. A crucial problem is that of reducing human life to the function it performs, which finds its model in Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities. In his works, the alienation of the individual also conditions his language, modulated according to accelerated or decelerating rhythms. The texts present mottos or advertising slogans already exploited by the pop culture of the Seventies, but they also reveal the emergence of pathologies of media subjugation, which require individual control of the annihilating effects implied in it.