Christian Kracht's novel Imperium and the question of self-enactment

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the novel Imperium by Christian Kracht (2012) within the long tradition of self-enactments of writers and artists in general as a constitutive element of the aesthetic field. Concerning Kracht, this is done first in the narrative text itself as a literary enactment with all its facets and second in Kracht's bewildering media appearances where his literary writings, in itself dubious, are once more rearranged, put in doubt or enriched. This procedure thus generates uncertainties, ambiguities and disfigurements that are the hallmark of Kracht in the contemporary literary universe.