Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Gender as a Category of Knowledge

Myriam Naumann

PhD Project:

Stasi-files: (Auto)Biographical. Subjectification in the Archive of the Ministry for State Security (GDR) After 1989

 naumann

 

Description of the Project

 

 The project aims at analyzing the discourse of self-historization by means of the Stasi-files. A special focus lies on the inspection of the files by individuals in the administration of the Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR (BStU), which has administered the archive of the GDR ministry for state security since 1992. On the one hand, my project investigates the gendered ways of knowledge production with the help of discourse analysis, as well as the circulation and reorganization thereof between 1989 and 1992. On the other hand, it discusses the stabilization of said knowledge through the BStU administration and finally its (auto)biographical appropriation by individual subjects. The scope of the project is highly interdisciplinary. It seeks to gain insights about cultural selfimages, and their ways of governing the historicity of the present. The study contributes to the discipline of archiviology, to a re-assessment of the »Aufarbeitungsdiskurs,« and to the practices of subject analysis.
                                                

Particulars

 

Studied Cultural Studies and aesthetic practice at Universität Hildesheim and Université de Provence Aix-Marseille. 2008 – 2011 scholarship holder of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation.  2013 fellowship at the research training group »Gender as a Category of Knowledge«
   

Selected Publications

 

Das Leben in Stasi-Akten. Archivpraktiken zwischen Pastoralmacht und Heil von 1950 bis 2000. In: Eine Zeitgeschichte des Selbst (1960 – 2000), hg. v. Jens Elberfeld, Pascal Eitler u. Marcel Streng. (2013, im Erscheinen).

Autobiografie und Geheimdienstakte. Zu Vera Wollenbergers Virus der Heuchler. Innenansicht aus Stasi-Akten. In: Performativität statt Tradition. Autobiografische Diskurse von Frauen, hg. v. Marion Schulz u. Brigitte E. Jirku, Frankfurt a. M. u.a. 2012. S. 253 – 275.

»Alles, was man wissen muss«. Der Kanon in der Literatur und seine Lektüremacht. In: Pocket Kultur. Kunst und Gesellschaft von A – Z, hg. v. Wolfgang Schneider u. Doreen Götzky, Bonn 2008. S. 127 – 129.

Klassiker der Kulturgeschichte? Kanonbildungen. In: Kultur.Politik.Diskurs 5 (2003). S. 26 – 28.
   
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