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theses

This dissertation explores the registers in which German filmmaker and artist Ulrike Ottinger (1942-) and writer Hubert Fichte (1935-86) push the boundaries of the representation of others – both non-European cultural others, as well as the silenced internal others of Europe and Germany – and the kind of aesthetic strategies they use to challenge the normative discourses about these others. I contend that their use of experimental aesthetic strategies foreground aspects of indeterminacy and relationality that are invariably a basic but often concealed part of cross-cultural encounters as well as of normative practices dominant within a culture. I do this by examining two of Ottinger’s films – Freak Orlando (1981) and Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia (1989) – and two of Fichte’s poetic ethnographic works – Die Palette (1968) and Petersilie (1980). The choice of these four works – in each case, one work on non-European cultures and one on Europe’s own marginalized, persecuted and silenced others – serve to identify the framing principle of the other, be it Europe’s external or internal others. Ulrike Ottinger and Hubert Fichte are both known for their ethnographic approach, and the reception of their works tends to divide their oeuvre into early and later phases. It is the later phase, engaging with non-European cultures, that gets categorized with its perceived distance to Europe as ‘ethnographic’. I examine, instead, how both artists challenge traditional ethnographic discourse and how their ethnographic interest is also reflected in their early works and not only in the later ones.

ETD_6135

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Shambhavi Prakash

doi:10.7282/T34Q7WQD

ETD doctoral

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