Nature and femininity in Raphaela Edelbauer’s Das flüssige Land — Fluid concepts in a liquid land

Abstract

An allegedly unspoilt natural landscape is a crucial backbone of Austria’s national brand and yet, a look behind the façade of this ‘Goldener Landschaftsmythos’, reveals that nature plays a complex and paradoxical role in Austrian self-stylisation and culture: the very system that relies on its pristineness exploits and degrades it. Edelbauer’s 2019 novel Das flüssige Land draws on this tension and brings it into conversation with essentialist views of femininity, rejecting expectations of women as inherently connected with nature and protective of it. The female protagonist’s relationship with the Alpine landscape is fluid, ambivalent, and paradoxical and — as it oscillates between care and exploitation, connection and disdain — it invites an approach from the angle of social ecofeminism that calls for an overcoming of essentialist claims about women and nature.

KEYWORDS:

• Alps
• Austria
• Austrian studies
• Branding
• Ecofeminism
• Environmentalism
• National Identity
• Nature
• Tourism

Groß-Einland appears to be an inconspicuous Austrian town that could feature in any Austrian tourism advert: a handful of small buildings neatly centred around a medieval square, nestled into the Alpine landscape and surrounded by a forest, fields, and lush meadows.¹ This fictional town in the Wechsel, a mountain range between Lower Austria and Styria, is the setting of Raphaela Edelbauer’s debut novel Das flüssige Land, and a site of trouble. The idyllic façade distracts from the fact that the mountain upon which it is built has been hollowed out, resulting in a huge subterranean hole that threatens to swallow the entire village. The product of excessive excavations by miners looking to extract silver and lime, and later the site of a Nazi armament factory run on slave labour, the hole is an embodiment of both Austria’s suppressed past and of a — masculinely connotated — exploitation of nature. The residents are acutely aware of the issue, as the town’s buildings are affected — cracks are appearing in facades, pavements are sinking in, and statues are breaking apart — and yet they do not attempt to tackle the root cause of this damage. Shying away from confronting their past, they tinker with facades, fill cracks, and hide larger damage from view by placing bulky furniture in front of them. The exclusive focus on attempts to maintain a flawless appearance thus allows the corrosion to progress, while the superficial repairs cannot halt the erosion of the town’s beauty.

Ultimately, only a filler material developed by Edelbauer’s narrator and protagonist Ruth, a physicist, is able to save Groß-Einland from its imminent collapse. However, its use would come at a great cost: application of the filler material would irrevocably kill off the flora in the vicinity of the hole, slowly ‘suffocating’ it as the author puts it,² and thus destroying the natural landscape that features so strongly in the self-stylisation of both the town and Austria as a whole. Ruth thus finds herself at a crossroads, having to choose between conflicting and yet equally crucial facets of Austria’s national brand: she can refuse to apply the compound she developed and preserve nature, a choice which would allow the imagery of an ‘unspoilt’ nature to persist, but which would make the town uninhabitable. Or she can allow it to be applied, stabilising the town but destroying its natural beauty, while simultaneously making an investigation of the hole and a subsequent reappraisal of its history impossible. The latter choice would, quite literally, cement the status quo of the town’s failure to cope with its tainted past and the elements of exploitation of both non-human nature and the humans within it. Thus, the decision Ruth eventually makes is not only substantial for the fate of Groß-Einland, an epitome of Austrianness. It also speaks to Edelbauer’s polemical portrayal of Austrian culture, in which both nature and gender play a crucial role.

The imagery of its allegedly unspoilt alpine landscape is central to Austria’s self-stylisation, in which portrayals of lush greenery, rugged mountains, and clear creeks are almost omnipresent. The very first words of the Austrian national anthem introduce it as the Land der Berge, the permanent exhibition in the Viennese hdgö (Haus der Geschichte Österreich) prominently features a chairlift placed in front of a photo wallpaper of a mountain scene,³ and alpine landscapes are the backdrop for all kinds of advertising — from placards for political campaigns⁴ through tourism adverts⁵ to commercials and branding material for Austrian food and beverage brands like Almdudler,⁶ Handl,⁷ Inzersdorfer,⁸ and Rauch.⁹ These examples show just how closely Austrian self-stylisation is intertwined with a romanticised portrayal of the Austrian landscape, a ‘Goldener Landschaftsmythos,’ to borrow a term coined by Ernst Hanisch.¹⁰ Historians like Oliver Rathkolb and public intellectuals like Robert Menasse argue for the import of this myth for the construction of Austria’s national identity¹¹ and in my own research I have shown its importance for the country’s national brand — an image of Austria that is shaped by processes of consumer culture, from deliberate branding efforts to public and literary discourse. Against this backdrop, the fact that Ruth has to make this crucial decision becomes all the more significant and calls for a closer examination of her motives, her personality, and her relationship with nature. The reader is repeatedly incentivised to anticipate the resolution of her inner conflict — even more so since her decision is only revealed at the very end of the novel.

Who then is Ruth, the person who holds the power to singlehandedly seal the fate of the Alpine landscape around Groß-Einland? How do her personality and her place in the microcosm of Groß-Einland inform her decision-making? What expectations are evoked in the reader? And what role does gender play in this context? Addressing these questions will show how Edelbauer’s novel resists the dualisms that are at the heart of ecofeminist thought, where they are understood as the root cause of the suppression and exploitation of both women and non-human nature. At the same time, the text pushes back against essentialist concepts, according to which women share an inherent and immutable connection to non-human nature, which have also been present in some early ecofeminist writing,¹² and invites a more nuanced, social ecofeminist reading.¹³

Ruth is a complex, at times even paradoxical character, as becomes more and more clear as the novel’s plot progresses; her motivations, priorities, and thoughts are often inscrutable. Her personality oscillates between lucidity and delusion (at times enhanced by her use of psychotropic medication),¹⁴ between rationality and emotionality, between ambition and lethargy, and thus repeatedly crosses divides and makes her an unreliable narrator.¹⁵ The very fact that she is a woman scientist appears self-contradictory if conservative western readings are applied: she is a woman and as such can be associated with emotionality, while she is also a scientist, which entails associations with rationality, especially since she works in the complex field of theoretical physics.¹⁶ Both these facets, however, can also evoke hopes that she will save the Alpine landscape: her research in the natural sciences gives her a skillset crucial for making an intervention, while — as some cultural ecofeminists have argued¹⁷ — her gender implies an innate, close connection with non-human nature, making her protective of it. While Ruth’s role within science and the way she applies her research skills are worth a nuanced discussion on their own, the focus here will lie on how she resists an essentialist reading of her gender that would reduce her to the role of a caregiver and protector of nature, firmly placing her on one side of the dualistic nature-culture divide that has been so foundational to feminist discourse.¹⁸ As Plumwood argues, dualisms are an essential element of hierarchies which lead to the reduction of women to ‘inferior, impoverished or imperfect human beings’,¹⁹ who lack ‘courage, control, rationality and freedom.’²⁰ Consequently, Plumwood develops an ecofeminist theory that understands processes of suppression on the basis of gender, race, class and other factors as the result of dualisms.²¹ An ecofeminist reading that brings femininity as well environmental troubles to the table and sees a connection between the oppression of women and the exploitation of non-human nature to Edelbauer’s text promises to be fruitful, not least because Ruth as a woman shares an experience of exploitation with the Alpine landscape within which she finds herself. Such a reading also invites an analysis of Ruth’s decisions and actions from an ethical standpoint, in particular of those with a direct impact on the fate of the landscape of Groß-Einland. As Victoria Davion argues, ‘a feminist perspective contributes to a fuller understanding of the domination of nature by human beings, and is necessary for the generation of a deeper environmental ethic.’²² One concept that emerged from ecofeminist theory is that of an ethics of care, which is, as Warren suggests, centred around ‘values of care, love, friendship, trust, and appropriate reciprocity’²³ and calls for a respectful treatment of and care for an ‘other’,²⁴ in Ruth’s case of the Alpine landscape, of her environment. This concept is subject to debate and thinkers such as Christine Cuomo have since intervened, arguing that ‘caring is not always a healthy and ethical choice for a moral agent.’²⁵ And while debates about an appropriate form ecofeminist ethics are still ongoing, it is clear that a figure like Ruth does not and cannot fully comply with an ethics of care. Her tumultuous relationship with the Alpine landscape as a specific embodiment of non-human nature, of an ‘other’, makes abundantly clear that she is neither innately bound to it nor protective of it. And yet, her actions are not immoral, nor is her behaviour, I argue, distinctly unethical. Instead, her bond with non-human nature, which causes emotions from disgust to utter veneration, is as ambivalent as her femininity. It is this fluidity that brings into focus just how well Das flüssige Land lends itself to an ecofeminist reading that calls into question the dualisms at the heart of the suppression of both women and nature: nature/culture and male/female.

As a city-dweller, Ruth has grown distant from the Alps which she has to cross on her way to Groß-Einland. The way she describes it differs from the positive tone common in Austrian self-stylisation efforts which are centred around nature. It reveals that Ruth feels alienated:

Vor einem Reisenden, der von Wien kommend den Bergpass zur Steiermark überqueren will, fächert sich das Wechselgebiet auf — eine von Untergipfeln zerfurchte Mondlandschaft. Schief hängende Gesteinsflächen ragen auf und fallen in Klammen zurück, in denen Alpenbäche sich im Laufe der Jahrmillionen tief in die Landschaft gefräst haben. […] Das Wechselgebiet würde wie die Oberfläche eines abgeschieden liegenden Planeten scheinen, wäre nicht gleichzeitig auf jedem Vorsprung dieser Voralpenmassive ein Hotelkomplex gesetzt worden, […]. Neureiche und altreiche Polohemdenträger liegen auf den planierten Flächen, die ein auswärtiger Unternehmer erst in den Stein gestemmt, dann betoniert, dann mit “Naturhotel” überschrieben hat.²⁶

Knowing that Ruth departed from Vienna, it is clear that the outlook on the landscape that she attributes to a traveller is hers, highlighting that she is merely a passer-by who does not belong in this place. The choice of words used to describe the landscape further underpins this reading and suggests that the mountains and meadows in front of her are not a sight she feels drawn to: the mountain range is perceived as lopsided (schief hängend), as rugged and intrusive (the landscape is von Untergipfeln zerfurcht), and the Alpine streams are described as having eroded away the ground (tief in die Landschaft gefräst). Ruth likens the vista to the moon and to the surface of a remote planet, linking it to imagery of desert-like places, hostile to life. Crucially then, the non-human, natural elements of the landscape are perceived as unwelcoming rather than as pristine and appealing. This almost puts the mountains, creeks, and meadows on the same level as those fragments of the larger picture which, from an environmentalist viewpoint, are those which should be viewed as invasive and damaging, namely the concrete platforms and ironically named ‘Naturhotels’ erected for the purpose of tourism. While Ruth describes the microcosm of tourism in a rather depreciative way too, sarcastically mentioning the flocks of wealthy German tourists who wear pricey mountaineering clothes to do nothing but walk from one café to the next, her view does not suggest a strong connection to nature, let alone an inherent urge to protect it. This passage, however, is preceded by a more intense experience which sees the protagonist entirely overwhelmed by her surroundings.

As Ruth’s journey towards Groß-Einland takes her away from the moderately hilly environs of Vienna and deeper into the mountain ranges of Lower Austria, the change in her surroundings soon overwhelms her. The mountains appear to close in on her, the solid ground seems to dissolve, and the land around her begins to move, to ebb and flow in waves, leaving her helpless and distressed. The language used to illustrate her experience alludes to the sea (Wogen, Wellenrücken, Wellenzüge)²⁷ and once more departs entirely from the vocabulary that would traditionally be found in descriptions of the alps. The romanticised touristic imagery is gone entirely and a threatening, dystopian landscape — the liquid land the novel’s title alludes to — appears in its stead. On the one hand, this dismantling of the glorified portrayal of Austria and its natural assets follows traditions of Austrian Anti-Heimatliteratur;²⁸ on the other, it shows quite clearly that Ruth’s outlook on non-human nature is far from positive. As this hallucinatory, panic-ridden episode goes on, her car appears to be a vessel lost in a raging sea, desperately looking for a safe haven. The place where she eventually finds just that is symbolic: a dirty lay-by on the side of the motorway. As Ruth puts it: ‘Sowie ich auf einen betonierten Platz fuhr, fanden die Eindrücklichkeiten ein Ende. Diese öffentliche Bedürfnisanstalt für Autofahrer — der banalste aller Orte — führte mich in die Realität zurück.’²⁹ This man-made concrete patch, a marker of direct human interference in and dominance over non-human nature, evokes a peculiar sense of safety in Ruth: despite its nastiness and banality, to her it is an island of civilisation and stability. The fact that she forms an emotional connection with this unappealing place and not with the mountains and forests once more affirms that there is not much of an innate bond with nature to be found when it comes to Ruth. This brings the aforementioned dichotomy of nature and culture into view — in this case in a very Austrian iteration that is strongly focused on tourism and travel. Since nature has generally been associated with femininity, while culture is linked to masculinity, it is worth noting that Ruth falls on the masculine side of this divide. After all, the sense of security she feels when she manages to pull in at the lay-by appears to be rooted in the fact that she views this small patch of concrete as a symbol of civilisation: these few square feet of sealed ground amidst the meadows, forests, and mountains of the Alpine foothills are a place where culture has won out over nature. It thus is the very suppression of nature that stabilises Ruth. But does her relationship with nature remain so negative? Or does Edelbauer’s protagonist transgress the dualisms of nature and culture, and male and female?

True to her ambivalent personality, her outlook on nature is inconsistent and subject to external influences as well as her psychological state. While her journey through the forests and hills of the Lower Austrian Alps was marked by negative experiences with nature itself and a slab of concrete in the middle of the otherwise untouched region became a saving grace, her continued stay in Groß-Einland appears to change her view. Her fear of nature fades and is gradually replaced with positive feelings. Ultimately, Ruth finds herself in a situation that would have been unimaginable before: at one point she even feels relaxation and relief, similar to the sensation she experienced when she reached the lay-by during her journey. This time, however, it is not a sign of human presence, of culture that causes it. On the contrary, it is nature itself:

Gegen 18 Uhr beendete ich stets die Arbeit und brach, ausgewrungen aber glücklich, zu einem Spaziergang in den Wäldern auf, in die ich mich Tag für Tag mehr verliebte. Ich saß auf ausgebrochenen Baumstämmen und schaute mit leerem Kopf in die nebligen Täler, grub das Moos mit den Händen aus und suchte in den schwarzen Erdkrusten nach Gerüchen und versteckten Lebewesen. Mit was für einer Macht die Landschaftsbildung in diesen Gebirgen fortgeschritten war, riss mich mit.³⁰

Even though Ruth still perceives nature as a force much bigger than herself, she is no longer intimidated and scared. Sitting down amidst the lush greenery of an alpine forest, digging her fingers into the soil, she begins to build a connection with non-human nature that we have not seen in her before. She is, quite literally, getting closer to it, no longer locked inside her car, separated from the forest by metal and glass. The landscape thus becomes a place for her to reduce her anxiety, to recover and relax, which echoes the slogan of advertising campaigns run by the Austrian tourism board: ‘Austria — arrive and revive’,³¹ the campaign that was run until 2021, and ‘Austria — feel the spark’,³² in German ‘Österreich — spüre das Leben’,³³ the current tourism campaign. In fact, the image of Ruth, who was introduced as an overworked urban woman, calmly walking through a forest, running her hands over the soft moss while taking in the earthy smells and finding calm while doing so, is a near perfect reiteration of video adverts produced for the ‘Austria — arrive and revive’ campaign. One of these videos follows a couple from the German financial capital Frankfurt am Main (as the number plate on their car gives away) on their trip to Austria where they unwind, relax, and slowly regain happiness. This is visualised among other things by a close-up of the woman touching lichen hanging from a tree and taking a deep, slow breath — a mirror image of what Ruth does here. Despite the intensity of Ruth’s experience in this moment, her closeness to elements of non-human nature, the sensation is only short-lived, just as a tourist’s experience of nature is circumscribed by time. Ruth is acutely aware of the limitations of her experience, as she states when she thinks back to this time: ‘Damals dachte ich noch, es würde sich um eine Art Urlaub handeln und mein Aufenthalt in dieser Freiheit sei temporär.’³⁴ This self-reflection further underpins the conclusion that her tie with nature is not an innate, predetermined one and even at this point she does not develop a love and affection that is more than spontaneous and self-centred. Instead, the moments in which she is able to connect with non-human nature and to feel in tune with the Alpine landscape are shaped by social frameworks in which she enacts a specific role. In the short passage outlined here, she is granted the role of a tourist, of a figure who gets to enjoy the natural beauty of the Alps for a limited time, whose connection to it is limited in scope and duration. Crucially, her positive experience is only possible because of the brevity and superficiality of the encounter. The ability to stay for an extended period of time allows her to engage with her surroundings more closely than any tourist could. This entails an increasing number of moments in which she can spot the imperfections and thus grasp the desolate state the landscape around Groß-Einland actually finds itself in. The erosion of the impeccable surface of the tourist imaginary becomes inevitable, and the truth that lies behind the shiny façade comes to light. As Ruth, initially an admirer of the picture-perfect town centre, begins to spot the cracks in the buildings’ facades, she starts to reassess her relationship with nature once again.

Her official transition from tourist to resident, marked by the town chronicle (a book which can only be accessed by residents and which Ruth had so far only illegally been reading after having pressured the librarian into handing her the volume) being shoved into her letter box,³⁵ is a crucial turning point in her relationship not only with the town but also with the nature it is surrounded by. The truth that she was so desperately trying to find up until this point not only becomes accessible to her, it suddenly becomes inescapable. Ruth is reminded of the town’s troubled past, its imperfections, and its exploitative practices at every turn. Subsequently, the image of the tranquil tourist idyll that had brought her joy and calm for a while begins to fade. With it her newfound relationship with non-human nature degrades and a feeling of disgust resurfaces:

Mit einem Mal offenbarten sich beim Blick ins Tal die Ausmaße der Einsenkungen, die sich vexierbildartig neigten. Die Flächen waren in Stücke zerhackt — kleine, unnütze, in die Form gezwungene Felder. Ein Riss ging rings um die Innenstadt, entstellend wie eine tiefe Narbe. Dieses Panorama widerte mich an — und gleichzeitig, je mehr ich von ihm Abstand nahm, desto mehr rückte es nach, wie ein indiskreter Mensch, der nicht von einem ablassen will.

Zum ersten Mal bedrückte mich die Landschaft, mehr noch: ein Ekel überkam mich, sodass ich beschloss, den Rückweg anzutreten.³⁶

While it is the Alpine landscape that seems to trigger a reaction of nausea and disgust in Ruth, this episode is not as similar to her first terrifying encounter with nature at it might initially appear. What stands out is that Ruth’s stance on the nature/culture divide appears to have shifted: it is no longer non-human nature itself that causes her discomfort. On the contrary, it is the impact of human interference, which is glaringly obvious to her now, that makes her feel detached and disgusted. A sense of solidarity with the non-human other appears to emerge. The patterns she spots as she gazes across the valley — depressions where the ground has sunk because of the instability caused by the hole, fields which she perceives to be ‘forced into shape’, and a rift that circles the town centre — are all man-made. What we see then is an inversion of the initial experience discussed earlier: now nature appears to be preferable to Ruth, and culture, once her saving grace, has become a bone of contention. The aforementioned change in her social status appears to be a cornerstone for this development. Ruth does not become a resident of Groß-Einland without any caveat, her naturalisation and the restitution of her parents’ house is the direct result of a relationship she establishes with Countess Ulrike Knapp-Korb-Weidenheim, an anachronistic and paradoxical figure who owns the entire town.³⁷ As the sovereign of Groß-Einland (despite the appearance of a democratic system with an elected mayor) she guides the town’s fate singlehandedly and draws Ruth into her network as well. What begins with a generous offer — Ruth is expected to spend half her time working for the Countess and is otherwise free to complete her ambitious academic project³⁸ — eventually grows into an exploitative relationship that drains Ruth’s resources. The pressure on her, especially in her capacity as a scientist, grows continuously; she is expected to take on an increasing number of tasks and is drawn on to help conceal the ongoing damage caused by the hole and to find an ultimate solution to the problem. The Countess, relentlessly trying to profit from the dire situation her town is in, becomes an embodiment of exploitation that polemically shows how a mere inversion of roles, the rise of a woman to absolute power (at least over this microcosm), does not necessarily end repression and exploitation. As ecofeminist scholar Christine Cuomo argues when criticising tendencies to romanticize of the connections between women and non-human nature, ‘[m]any human females have been conceived, and have conceived of themselves, as dominators within the logic of domination – as above nature, and/or as above other members of the human species.’³⁹ The rigid social system she maintains soon makes Ruth reject the culture of Groß-Einland, and while this decision at first appears to go hand in hand with a more general shift away from culture and towards nature, Ruth still does not show a close and stable connection with non-human nature. Immediately after the scene in which she looks out over the valley, she gets lost in the dark on her way back home. After stumbling through the pitch black forest without a torch or a phone, Ruth eventually stops to wait for the break of dawn, when the first light will allow her to continue her journey – frightened, but also annoyed by the movements and noises in the forest, she lies awake, huddled among the trees, and waits.⁴⁰ When she eventually arrives back home, she immediately walks into the bathroom, grabs a hairbrush and begins to remove leaves and other residue from the forest floor from her hair. In conjunction, these two passages showcase the ongoing instability of Ruth’s tie to nature: even in the light of a growing motivation to rebel against the system, to reveal the way Groß-Einland especially, and Austria more widely, are exploiting and ruining the environment, she does not feel love or affection for non-human nature. Edelbauer’s protagonist thus continues to defy essentialist expectations leveraged against her gender and begins to approximate to the goals of social ecofeminism by making attempts to dismantle ‘the economic and social hierarchies that turn all aspects of life into a market society […].’⁴¹ Carolyn Merchant argues that the goal of social ecofeminism is a form of society in which traditional hierarchies are overturned in favour of a system ‘that would transcend the public-private dichotomy necessary to capitalist production and the bureaucratic state’⁴² and that would allow for an end of exploitation of both women and non-human nature.

In the context of Merchant’s concept of social ecofeminism, Ruth’s research into the town’s history as well as her familial history, and her subsequent reaction, become all the more important. As she gets more integrated into the town’s social structure and becomes aware of the restricted town chronicle and other documentation, she immerses herself deeper in the culture and the lifestyle of Groß-Einland’s citizens. Soon she begins to discover the ugly reality that lies at the heart of the town’s history and from which its picturesque façade had initially distracted her. Her research reveals information about the exploitation that the Alps and their landscape has been subject to for centuries, about practices which have produced the hole that is now pushing Groß-Einland towards the brink of collapse. A short passage in the town chronicle succinctly summarises the history of the subterranean abyss: it originated as a mine used to extract first silver and then lime, before being used as a branch of Mauthausen, Austria’s most infamous concentration camp during the Nazi years.⁴³ During that time malnourished prisoners were marched across town towards their hidden workplace where they would be forced to produce ammunition to sustain the Nazi war effort.⁴⁴ These findings spark an interest in Ruth, who aims to uncover the secrets that the town’s population apparently seeks to keep hidden. What Ruth faces here is Austrian memory culture in its purest form: Groß-Einland and its inhabitants are engaged in attempts to maintain a flawless façade by hiding the ugly portions of its past and by refusing to grapple with them. Crucially, however, the hole is not only a symbolic site of Austria’s troubled history, it is also embodies the consequences of the exploitation of both non-human nature and human labour for the sake of wealth and profit. The hole’s origins as outlined in the chronicle are reminiscent of those of a mine in Schwaz, a town in Tyrol. Schwaz is home to a former silver mine which is now a museum and whose history can be traced back to the Middle Ages. In the 1940s it became a site of forced labour just like the fictional mine in Groß-Einland.⁴⁵ Writing about the mine in Schwaz, journalist Kuno Knöbl argues that Austria’s deliberate refusal to evaluate the impact that mining has had on the Austrian landscape has had consequences — the urge to uphold a romanticised image of Austria as a land of farmers, who live in perfect harmony with non-human nature, has led to destabilisation.⁴⁶ Groß-Einland’s story then, even though exaggerated and polemical, finds an equivalent in Austria’s real history.

What also comes into view if one recognises this historical precedent is the fact that the hole’s development is closely linked to the rise of capitalist systems as outlined by Jason W. Moore. I explore this in a comparative reading of Das flüssige Land together with Robert Seethaler's Ein ganzes Leben in my article “Nature and the ‘National Brand Austria’ – Backbone, or Bone of Contention?”, in Anthropocene Austria, eds. Caitríona Ní Dhúill and Nicola Thomas (forthcoming 2022). The hole's origins in the Silberrausch of the early seventeenth century mean that it has been opened to extract ‘the physical basis for money’,⁴⁷ as Moore terms it, directly linking it to the birth of monetary exchange. The shift to lime extraction too was driven by the pursuit of profit and aimed to stabilise the young Austro-Hungarian empire; according to the town chronicle, the material was needed to fuel the steel industry in remote parts of the empire guaranteeing its economic viability,⁴⁸ linking it to imperialist practices. Austria’s absorption into Nazi Germany in 1938 then meant that the suppressive and exploitative regime would also be implemented on Austrian soil, leading to the last known chapter in the history of the hole.

What stands out then is that each stage of the hole’s development is marked by the exploitation of non-human nature — silver and limestone resources were depleted, horses were deliberately blinded to make them usable as draft animals in the dark mines⁴⁹ — as well as the exploitation of humans — from the first bondsmen of the mine’s founder, ‘die sich für ihn in den Lohen am Milzbrand die Haut von den Knochen schab[t]en,’⁵⁰ through the cheap workers from Hungary and the Burgenland who were tasked with the extraction of lime, to the slave labourers from Mauthausen concentration camp. Ruth’s keen interest in this facet of Groß-Einland’s history and the fact that she prepares pamphlets which she plans to hand out to the press at a touristic mega-event which the Countess is staging to celebrate the anticipated filling of the hole⁵¹ instils the hope that Ruth is indeed going to carry out an act of resistance. Revealing the hidden exploitative practices and enabling a discourse to bring about a reappraisal and prevent a repetition would surely be an act that would qualify as a first — though hesitant and not particularly radical — step towards dismantling established power structures.

This strategy would require Ruth to refuse to disclose the formula for the filler material, making it appear more likely that she will eventually make a decision that would save the flora and fauna, even if that means that the town has to be evacuated at the very least. Making this decision would not only rescue the landscape, it would also prevent the irrevocable burial of the remnants of the past that lie hidden in the depths of the hole, making it possible to unearth and analyse them. And yet, even though Ruth appears to have developed into a critical, proactive figure with a genuine concern about an appropriate handling of the past and who thus wants to make the reasons why the hole exists and grows publicly known, her resolve fades at the last minute. Document folders that Ruth has prepared, diligently compiling information, inconsistencies in the town’s narratives, and hints at the hidden truth, will never make it to their intended readers.⁵² Instead of following through with her plan and distributing them when she takes the stage to give a speech at the Countess’s publicity event, she throws the papers into the hole, where they will be lost forever once the filler material is applied — making it impossible once and for all to bring the truth to light. The opportunity to effect change through an act of resistance — what might be considered an act of ecofeminist resistance, fighting against the exploitation of both humans and non-human nature for the sake of profit and prestige — is not seized. Ruth literally turns her back on the event and on her plans, gets into her old car and bolts; leaving behind the event she was supposed to be a part of, the town that she had made her home, and — most crucially — her responsibility for its future. On her way back to Vienna, she tries to convince herself that sacrificing nature and allowing a stabilised Groß-Einland to persist with all its flaws, rigid social structures, and its willingness to embrace artificiality for the sake of outward appeal is the right thing to do. In doing so, she resorts to a line of reasoning that is so paradoxical that it chimes impeccably with Austria’s stance towards its past:

Schweigen, die Verweigerung des Sprechens, dachte ich wieder und nahm die erste Serpentine, war der höchste und weitreichendste Akt der Rebellion. Ich würde mich einfach Groß-Einland entziehen, meiner sogenannten Heimat den Rücken kehren, und nichts bliebe dann von mir — das heißt, bis auf die Abertonnen von Füllmittel, die gerade in den Boden gepumpt wurden. Wenn man die Handlungen einer Gruppe nicht billigte, dann musste man sich eben eine neue Gruppe suchen, um dieses Problem zur Auslöschung zu bringen — ja: Probleme verlangten nicht nach einer Lösung, sondern nach einer vollkommenen Verflüchtigung, einer Vernichtung.⁵³

Forced into the role of judge and executioner, trapped in a moral dilemma between saving either her parents’ hometown or the Alpine landscape, Ruth decides to sacrifice nature; a decision that allows her to escape the turmoil it would have caused if she had compelled the town — and by extension the nation — to face their tainted, troubled past and their relationship to the Alpine landscape that they so readily exploit. In an ironic twist, Edelbauer thus reveals just how far Austria still is prepared to go in order to avoid a sincere and thorough confrontation with the past. Exploitative practices have left Groß-Einland in dire straits and Edelbauer’s novel shows, in a polemical portrayal of an exemplary Austrian town, how deeply ingrained these practices and the refusal to address them really are. Even Ruth, the only person brave enough to make an attempt to bring about change, is intimidated and discouraged enough to give up on her act of resistance. Unlike the Countess, who has rejected a loving, respectful connection to nature in order to fully establish herself in the realm of culture — a tendency that Plumwood has termed the ‘masculinising wave of feminism’⁵⁴ — Ruth was torn until the very end. While the paradoxical nature of her character and the instability of her relationship with non-human nature enable her to escape dualistic classifications for quite a while — her identity is too fluid to easily fit any binary — this ultimately does not last. As she gives up on her act of resistance, she is joining ranks with those who have exploited the alpine landscape for centuries. If one follows Plumwood, this dystopian ending already takes root in Ruth’s profession, in her role as a scientist: as she argues in Women, Humanity and Nature, women can gain and have gained empowerment by entering science, as Ruth has done, but as long as science itself and its ‘orientation to the domination of nature remain unchanged’⁵⁵ this practice alone cannot achieve the systemic change that ecofeminism in particular calls for. In this context it is all the more striking that it is a product of Ruth’s scientific enquiry that seals the fate of Groß-Einland’s non-human nature.

The dire and yet logical endpoint of Ruth’s story and of decades of a politics of suppression of the past is reached when her filler material is applied: as it hardens, it irreversibly buries Austria’s hidden past and simultaneously cements the very power structures that Ruth set out to overturn. The Countess remains in power, the self-serving touristic spectacle, staged to distract from the town’s unsavoury secrets, is undisturbed. Thus, the only change effected is change for the worse: the fluid land becomes rigid — a chance for progress is lost, the truth is buried, and the exploitation of the landscape culminates in its destruction, there is no more room for flexibility and fluidity. Even Groß-Einland, although saved from collapse, loses a core facet of its identity, the beauty of its landscape, once and for all. The cataclysmic finale of Das flüssige Land demonstrates how ongoing attempts to bury Austria’s past are intrinsically linked to issues of environmentalism as well as feminism. A nuanced, ecofeminist discussion of the role of non-human nature in Austrian history, culture and self-stylisation in particular might help to identify necessary interventions. And while Ruth’s inability to establish a thorough connection with non-human nature refutes essentialist claims of intrinsic connections between women and the environment, and might even run counter to some early ecofeminist thought, her story makes clear that especially a social ecofeminist approach, focussing on issues caused by the public-private dichotomy and its links to capitalist systems, has promise. Assessing and understanding the ways in which the market-oriented, touristic, and image-driven self-understanding of the nation fuels the exploitation of non-human nature and women alike appears to be a crucial step towards affecting necessary systemic change.

Notes on Contributor

Rebecca Wismeg-Kammerlander is a lecturer in German and European Studies at King’s College London where she teaches on German language literature, history, and culture. Her main research interests lie in the fields of Austrian literature and culture, and consumer and material culture. Her monograph on the national brand of Austria will be published in 2022.

Notes

1 Ernst Hanisch, Landschaft und Identität. Versuch einer österreichischen Erfahrungsgeschichte (Vienna: Böhlau, 2019).

2 Raphaela Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2019), p. 278.

3 Haus der Geschichte Österreich, ‘Sessel des Einersessellifts Brüggelekopf, Alberschwende 1967’, https://www.hdgoe.at/sessellift, accessed 15 March 2022.

4 Die Grünen, ‘Alexander Van der Bellen. Österreich dienen — und keiner Partei’, https://gruene.at/gfx?j=a65660db1dc25da30ced376d72915324; FPÖ, ‘Herbert Kickl. Einer, der unsere Heimat schützt’, https://comrecon.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/4_FPOE-Einer-der-unsere-Heimat-schuetzt.jpg, both accessed 15 March 2022.

5 ‘the Nothing-can-spoil-this-view perfection — Austria arrive and revive’, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, https://onb.digital/result/11764CEF; ‘the around-me-only-green abundance — Austria arrive and revive’, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, https://onb.digital/result/11764D1E; ‘the it’s-all-About-perspective Moment — Austria arrive and revive’, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, https://onb.digital/result/1176512F; all accessed 15 March 2022.

6 Almdudler, ‘Dudeliges Verlangen auf dem Skilift’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwLbxZQcr5A, accessed 15 March 2022.

7 Handl Tyrol, ‘Die Marke’, https://www.handltyrol.at/unternehmen/handl-tyrol-die-marke, accessed 15 March 2022.

8 Inzersdorfer, ‘Über uns’, https://www.inzersdorfer.at/ueber-uns/, accessed 15 March 2022.

9 Rauch, ‘Herzlich wilkommen im Rauch-Tal’, https://www.rauch.cc/de/, accessed 15 March 2022.

10 Hanisch, Landschaft und Identität, p. 46.

11 Oliver Rathkolb, Die paradoxe Republik, Österreich 1945 bis 2015 (Vienna: Zsolnay, 2015), p. 55; Robert Menasse, Das war Österreich. Gesammelte Essays zum Land ohne Eigenschaften (Vienna: Suhrkamp, 2005), p. 98.

12 See Ariel Kay Salleh, ‘Deeper than Deep Ecology: The Eco-Feminist Connection’, Environmental Ethics 6, (1984), 339–45; Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (New York: Harper & Rowe, 1978).

13 See Carolyn Merchant, Radical Ecology. The Search for a Livable World (New York: Routledge, 2005).

14 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, p. 8.

15 Vera Nünning, ‘Conceptualising (Un)reliable Narration and (Un)trostworthiness’, in Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Vera Nünning (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), p. 5.

16 Peter Hay, A Companion to Environmental Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), pp. 75–76.

17 See Judith Plant, ed. Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism, (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1989); Diamond, Irene and Orenstein, Gloria Feman, eds, Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminisim (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990); Susan Buckingham, ‘Ecofeminism in the Twenty-First Century’, The Geographical Journal, vol. 170, no. 2 (2004), 146–54 (p. 147).

18 See Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993); Ynestra King, ‘Feminism and the Revolt of Nature’, Heresies 13 (4), (1981), 12–16.

19 Val Plumwood, ‘Feminism and Ecofeminism’, Society and Nature 1(2), (1993), p. 36.

20 Plumwood, ‘Feminism and Ecofeminism’, p. 36.

21 Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, p. 41.

22 Victoria Davion, ‘Is Ecofeminism Feminist?’, in Ecological Feminism ed. Karen Warren (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 9.

23 Karen Warren, ‘Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections’, Environmental Ethics, 12 (1990), p. 143.

24 Warren, ‘Feminism and Ecology’, p. 143.

25 Christine Cuomo, ‘Unravelling the Problems of Ecofeminism’, Environmental Ethics, 14 (1992), p. 355.

26 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, p. 19.

27 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, pp. 12–13.

28 In Anti-Heimatliteratur authors tend to express a detachment from or rejection of the surroundings which are so prominently romanticised in its counterpart Heimatliteratur. The mainly rural, often alpine landscape that serves as a safe haven in the latter is problematised in the former.

Klaus Zeyringer and Helmut Gollner, Eine Literaturgeschichte: Österreich seit 1650 (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2012), pp. 673–74.

29 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, p. 13.

30 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, p. 79.

31 ‘The brand “Holidays in Austria”’, austriatourism on Youtube, accessed 17 March 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMNKwFCU6AM.

32 ‘Why we are drawn to the mountains’, Austria — the official travel portal, accessed 17 March 2022, https://www.austria.info/en/active-outdoors/lifestyle/why-we-are-drawn-to-the-mountains.

33 ‘Freiheit atmen, Erholung spüren: Österreichs Natur verwandelt die Sinne’, Österreich — das offizielle Tourismusportal, accessed 17 March 2022, https://www.austria.info/de/erholung.

34 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, p. 80.

35 Ibid, p. 117.

36 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, p. 210.

37 Ibid, p. 101.

38 Ibid, p. 103.

39 Cuomo, ‘Unravelling the Problems of Ecofeminism’, p. 356.

40 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, pp. 211–12.

41 Merchant, Radical Ecology, p. 206.

42 Ibid, p. 206.

43 For an overview of the history of the concentration camp Mauthausen and its function in granite mining and the production of ammunition see: Bertrand Perz, ‘KZ Mauthausen’, in 100x Österreich. Neue Essays aus Literatur und Wissenschaft, ed. by Monika Sommer, Heidemarie Uhl, and Klaus Zeyringer (Vienna: Kremayr &Schierau, 2018), pp. 193–97.

44 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, pp. 63–64.

45 Kuno Knöbl, ‘Der Bergbau als Sprengmeister’, Der Standard, 21 July 1999, https://www.derstandard.at/story/43132/der-bergbau-als-sprengmeister.

46 Knöbl, ‘Der Bergbau als Sprengmeister’.

47 Jason W. Moore, ‘The Rise of Cheap Nature in Anthropocene’, in Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, ed. by Jason W. Moore (Oakland: PM Press, 2016), p. 104.

48 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, pp. 62–63.

49 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, p. 62.

50 Ibid, p. 149.

51 Edelbauer, Das flüssige Land, pp. 257–70.

52 Ibid, pp. 345–46.

53 Ibid, p. 348.

54 Val Plumwood, ‘Women, Humanity and Nature’, Radical Philosophy 64 (Supplement), (1988), p. 19.

55 Ibid, p. 19.