Aus der Mitte beginnen – literarisches Erzählen als verkörperte Aktivität in Ulrich Peltzers Roman „Alle oder keiner“
Starting from the Middle – Literary Narration as Embodied Activity in Ulrich Peltzers Novel “Alle oder keiner”

Summary/Abstract: Based on the programme of naturalization of the mind in neuroscience this article tends to demonstrate how the naturalistic turn affects both the production und reception of literature. Focusing on the novel “Alle oder keiner” from U. Peltzer as an example for this approach, the paradigms of embodied activity and the capacity to bring forth a world (Varela et a. 2013) function hereby as key concepts. Therefore the question is raised in which way the concept of embodiment manifests itself in specific textual structures. For this purpose, central passages of the novel, in which the narrating subject’s perception of reality is thematized, will be examined. It turns out that instead of the narrators consciousness-ego which remains enclosed in its mental inner world (old model of representation), a participatory perspective, that of the readers, is required, so that the perspective of the author writing, which otherwise remains inaccessible and thus indifferent, can be situated in an intersubjectively shared sphere of the lifeworld. Only in this extended sense the literary text can function as a syntopic space (Fuchs 2021), in which the perspectives of the author/narrator and the reader can touch or coincide. This paper is intended as part of a broader research project to complex narration (Steiner 2021), in which categories from complexity studies, cognitive literary studies and neuro, subject and media philosophy are applied to the interpretation of contemporary complex narrative texts.

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