The search for the Austrianness in Sama Maani

Abstract

The following article considers the question of politics in the literary works of Sama Maani, focusing especially on the narrative of Der Heiligenscheinorgasmus. It explains how the political aspects of being define literary subjects in the narrative. The article focuses on the question of whether the pre(political) Erscheinungsraum (Hannah Arendt), which opens between the literary subjects of the narrative, enables the essence of conversing with one another (Heidegger) whereby the subjects are established as rational (zoon logon echon) and political beings (zoon politikon). We show that the political aspect of being (Sein) in the world of the narrative is dysfunctional and does not permit the establishment of complete subjectivity, as formulated in the theory running from Aristotle to Arendt, Heidegger, Schmitt, and Mouffe. Instead we are left, especially in the case of the first-person narrator – an Austrian of Iranian origin – with the question of national identity, which is proven to be an unsolvable puzzle and the source of an obsessive quest for a solution. That leads the narrator down the path of neurotic narcissism and a search for comfort in the world of base instincts and sexual deviance.