„ICH BIN NICHT SICHER, OB ICH SCHINKEN WIRKLICH AM GERUCH ERKENNE ODER BLOß AM KONTEXT“. KÖRPERBILDER IN LEIF RANDTS SCHIMMERNDER DUNST ÜBER COBYCOUNTY IM LICHT DER SIMULATIONSTHEORIE JEAN BAUDRILLARDS
“ICH BIN NICHT SICHER, OB ICH SCHINKEN WIRKLICH AM GERUCH ERKENNE ODER BLOß AM KONTEXT”. BODY IMAGES IN LEIF RANDT’S SCHIMMERNDER DUNST ÜBER COBYCOUNTY IN THE LIGHT OF JEAN BAUDRILLARD‘S SIMULATION THEORY

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the novel Schimmernder Dunst über CobyCounty by contemporary German author Leif Randt for the body images negotiated in this text. Schimmernder Dunst über CobyCounty tells the story of CobyCounty and its protagonist Wim, a 26-year-old literary agent who has spent his entire life in CobyCounty and – plagued by fears of aging and somatic complaints – struggles with the beginning of a new phase of life. The essay attempts to show this novel draws on Baudrillard’s simulation and simulacrum theory. The paper claims that reading this novel with Baudrillard helps interpreting this difficult text, and that a Baudrillard reading and corresponding literary processing by Randt can be claimed for this novel and the shaping of the epistemic rules of the narrated world when reading closely. In the design of the fictional world of CobyCounty, six elements (emotional nostalgia, requests for authenticity, doom fantasies, resurrection of the figurative, economy of the real, imitations and copies) that Randt borrows from this diagnosis of Baudrillard can be identified. Randt supplements them with a contrasting corporeality.

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