Literature as an Exploration of Past Worlds as Spaces of Possibility: Herta Müller’s The Hunger Angel

Abstract

<p>This chapter develops the concept of a space of possibility to theorise how literature functions as a medium of cultural memory and mnemonic migration. I suggest that an important way in which fiction can help us understand past worlds is by dealing with them as spaces of possibility in which certain modes of action,<br>thought and affect were possible, while others were impossible or unlikely. Crucial to why we read historical and memory fiction is perhaps less the desire to know “historical facts” about a specific historical world and more an interest in getting a sense of what it might have been like to live in that world. Through engagement<br>with narrative fiction we can obtain not only a sense of that world as a space of possibilities in which individuals negotiate their life choices but also resources to reflect on the relevance of that space for our current sense of the possible (Meretoja 2018). The notion of a space of possibilities allows us to resist the reification of the past and to see both that individuals have agency in shaping the course of events that may seem to have been necessary and that such agency has limits set by the historical world in which it is embedded. I suggest that cultural memory studies would benefit from paying more sustained attention to the aspect of the possible in looking at how cultural memorial forms travel and shape our understanding of past and present worlds. The chapter develops this theoretical approach in dialogue with how Herta Müller’s novel The Hunger Angel (2009/2012) depicts a Soviet forced labour camp as a space of possibilities in which certain modes of action, thought and affect were possible and others were impossible or extremely difficult.<br></p>