'Eine Befreiung aus einer Einengung': Helga Königsdorf’s Queer Protagonists, Shame and Self-Censorship in 'Ungelegener Befund' and 'Gleich neben Afrika'

This article investigates self-censorship in two works by Helga Königsdorf written either side of German reunification: 'Ungelegener Befund' (1990) and 'Gleich neben Afrika' (1992). The form of Königsdorf's texts engages with self-censorship in and after the GDR, and the queer identities of her protagonists serve to emphasise this narrative project. Self-censorship represents the transmission of the prohibitions and machinations of power involved in literary production into a writer's work and even identity. I argue that Königsdorf demonstrates writers’ internalisation of GDR institutions through analogy to the queer subject who has internalised society's repression in the form of shame. The manifestations of self-censorship in Königsdorf's texts on the level of narrative form have much in common with the features of a shame experience, appearing for example as silences and evasions in the text, most clearly in 'Ungelegener Befund'. The protagonists’ same-sex desire is directly related to the process of writing, furthermore, so that the narrative of 'Gleich neben Afrika' can itself be considered queer. Königsdorf's characters never fully overcome their self-censors, but these two narratives suggest an open-ended process of self-reassessment which GDR writers were engaged in during and after reunification.