Attraverso la violenza. Due forme di "vita offesa" nella cultura di lingua tedesca

The paper focuses on the phenomenon of the violence in the context of the German-speaking culture, with particular attention to the novel of Ingeborg Bachmann and to her reading of the ‘case Lenz’ in the talk delivered when she was awarded the ‘Büchner-Preis’. Starting from her interpretation of Lenz’ psychological collapse as an ‘accident’, the article investigates some ‘topoi’ of the novel Der Fall Franza, dealing with the rape and with the suicide of the protagonist, intended as a collateral effect of a ‘damaged life’ (the phrase refers to the meaning Adorno gave to it). In the novel of Bachmann the violence assumes different forms: colonialist violence, gender violence, specist violence, psychological violence, individual and collective violence, and cultural violence.