Three Media--One Story? Marie-Therese Kerschbaumer's "Gypsy" Narrative.

There are very few narratives about "Gypsies" that would not qualify as "stories of textual persecution" (Claudia Breger). The Austrian writer Marie-Therese Kerschbaumer, however, has demonstrated discursive resistance to the prejudice against "Gypsies" in an iterative process of representing the experience of this ethnic minority. Through a comparative analysis of Kerschbaumer's three different approaches to the topic--the central chapter "Die Zigeunerin" ("The Gypsy") from Der weibliche Name des Widerstands (Woman's Face of Resistance), the radio play of the same title, and the television film--this essay explores the connections between the author's aesthetic creed, her ideological concerns, her thematic choices, and the medium-specific voice addressing the intended audience. (MRK)

Over the past decades, academe has provided us with many serious discussions of the concept of identity. We have moved from rejoicing the death of the subject to negotiating subject positions and establishing gendered identities. The decentering of the subject has put into question belief in the potential of human agency, and victimhood as a state of being has, in turn now, brought forth assertions of quite essentialist notions of identity.

Debates about "theory" in intellectual forums can afford the playfulness of "ideas-for-ideas' sake," but in the realm of sociopolitical, historical reality, conflicts over identity hardly ever resemble a mind game. No matter how complex and complicated matters may be, the leap, by individuals or groups, to simplistic, reductionist definitions of identity occurs quickly and seems, in fact, to govern the antagonism. Examples include the hostilities between Hutus and Tutsis, the persecution of Kurds in Turkey, or the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo Albanians by Serbian forces. "Identity" has also been at stake in the acrimonious German debates about dual citizenship, as well as in the politically powerful US movement advocating English only.

To understand the contemporary Austrian writer Marie-Therese Kerschbaumer and her representation of "Gypsies," it is necessary to refer to the steadily increasing attention paid to national identity in Austria, which has experienced an influx of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants from formerly Eastern Block countries. Over the past years, the public debate of "us versus them" has influenced elections and federal legislation. Critical observers have become concerned about the emergence of a public discourse that has broken taboos that the experience of fascism/Nazism had imposed on postwar society. Even before the Freedom Party (FPO) joined the coalition government in Vienna, a new word had entered the vocabulary of Austrians: Verhaiderung (Haiderization)--implying that in all kinds of social spheres, defensive arrogance vis-a-vis anything foreign, different, or non-traditional was quickly becoming a trend.(1)

Austrian society, it should be stated here, is conceived in rather homogeneous terms, so that the existence of six so-called Volksgruppen (ethnic minorities)--Slovenians, Croatians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, and Sinti/Roma--is ignored more often than recognized. The political scientist Anton Pelinka summarizes the Austrian tradition of defining national/cultural identity quite succinctly:

 
   Austria under the monarchy was a country with internal ethnic 
   discrimination, internal national conflicts.... Prewar Austria 
   distinguished itself from the rest of the world by emphasizing how German 
   it was. Today's Austria is a country that combines contemporary forms of 
   discrimination with those known under the monarchy and during the prewar 
   decades. German nationalism has weakened, but a new form of Austrian 
   arrogance has replaced it. In Austria today, there live more or less 
   authentic Austrians (109). 

Ethnic minorities, such as the "Gypsies" and so-called "guest workers," are definitely among the "less authentic" Austrians. It is not surprising, then, that minorities have been granted equal rights only reluctantly. "The motto was not `as many rights as possible' but rather `as few rights as are absolutely necessary'" (Baumgartner 17). The political leaders of the Second Republic have been able to count on public support for their fairly consistent policies of marginalization and discrimination. Silence has been a national norm. Until the late 1980s, for instance, there was no public awareness that of the 11,000 "Gypsies" in Austria in 1938, about 6,700 were killed under National Socialism. Only in 1993, after years of struggle and lobbying, were Austrian Sinti and Roma finally recognized as an ethnic group entitled to all the usual political support, funding, and protection. This belated response to the "Gypsy question" and a seemingly improving relationship between the majority and Sinti/Roma were put into question in 1995 when four Roma were assassinated by a bomb. Only recently was the murderer identified and given a life sentence in prison.(2)