Diary Writing as a Technology of the Self: On the Cultural Performativity of Graphic Self-Reflexion in Victor Klemperer’s Third Reich Diaries

ArviSepp

pages: 44-59
First published online: 22 May 2015
Version: 30 May 2015

ABSTRACT
This article will focus on Victor Klemperer’s changing German-Jewish identity in his diaries I Will Bear Witness (1933-1945) and analyze how the autobiographical reliance on the speaking ‘I’ reveals its involvement with subjectivity and self-construction through the performative act of writing. Klemperer’s diaries highlight the divide between a single and changing self.

Key words: Klemperer, diary, writing, performativity, Holocaust, identity.