Identifiziert euch (nicht): Deixis, Adressierung und Distanzmanagement in Shida Bazyars Drei Kameradinnen

This article examines deixis and reader address in narrative texts in order to develop a differentiated and appropriate understanding of identification for the analysis of literary texts, especially with regard to questions of identity and representation. Taking a close reading of Shida Bazyar's 2021 novel Drei Kameradinnen as a starting point, I show how deictic procedures and the inclusion or exclusion of readers in addressing them function on the one hand as strategies managing and navigating distance and proximity, and on the other hand as devices constituting a co-presence of narrator and reader. Drei Kameradinnen in particular, directly addressing the reader and involving them in deictic procedures and literary text in general, by employing deictics and implying addressees, demand an identification, conceived as a process not of empathizing with a character, but of adopting a deictic center of orientation (origo).