Automaten, Puppen, Hüllen. Subjektivität zwischen Projektion, Performanz und diskursiver Zuschreibung bei E. T. A. Hoffmann, Wladimir Odojewski, Gustav Meyrink und Aleksandr Grin
Automata, Puppets, Shells. Subjectivity between Projection, Performance, and Discoursive Attribution in the Works of E. T. A. Hoffmann, Wladimir Odojewski, Gustav Meyrink, and Aleksandr Grin

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the motif of the automaton in E. T. A. Hoffmann (Die Automate, 1814; Der Sandmann, 1816), Vladimir Odoevsky (Derevyannyy gost’, 1833), Gustav Meyrink (Der Golem, 1915), and Aleksandr Grin (Zolotaya tsep’, 1925) as a literary model for reflecting on the transformation of subjectivity from Romanticism to early Modernism. In Hoffmann’s works, the uncanny arises not from technology itself but from the projection of interiority onto external signs. Odoevsky shifts the focus to the reproducibility of cultural markers of personhood, while Meyrink radicalizes the problem by presenting identity as a fragile occupation of form rather than a stable inner core. In Grin’s novel, the speaking automaton exposes the mechanisms through which subjectivity is attributed in dialogic interaction. The article argues that literary automata function not as technical precursors of artificial intelligence, but as analytical models of attribution processes that continue to shape contemporary debates on AI.

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