Tarnschriften als Widerstandsgattung der diskursiven Disruption

Abstract

Clashes of heterogeneous discourses are conceptualized differently within the various strands of discourse research. To simplify, one can speak of synthesizing positions of merging discourses on the one hand and difference-based positions of heterogeneous discourses on the other. The latter position, which goes far beyond intra- and extradiscursive conflicts that can ultimately be resolved, can be related to Jean-Francois Lyotard's reflections on the incommensurability of discourses: Starting from an understanding that every discourse has certain inner-discursive rules and that when heterogeneous discourses meet, these rules come into conflict, questions arise about the possibilities and limits of how different discourses deal with each other and their potential incommensurability. The challenges of the encounters between heterogeneous discourses can be comprehensively and productively examined during the 'Third Reich' and in relation to the genre of resistance 'Tarnschrift'. In these camouflage writings, heterogeneous discourses collide in a confined textual space, as the camouflage text corresponded to the rules of the prevailing Nazi discourse and the camouflaged text embedded in it corresponds to the rules of resistance discourses. This textual juxtaposition of communicative expressions of different discourses allows us to analyse procedures of discursive disruption, irritation and incommensurability. Starting from a perspective based on Lyotard's considerations, camouflage writings are therefore to be analysed and reflected upon as a genre of discursive disruption.