Planetary Alienation: Negation of the Whole Earth in 1970s Austrian Prose

This article examines the reception of the "Whole Earth" paradigm in the late 1970s novels of Peter Handke (Langsame Heimkehr), Gerhard Roth (Winterreise) and Peter Rosei (Von hier nach dort). In histories of German and Austrian literature, the themes of planet earth and planetary crisis around 1980 have been understood as indications of a "catastrophe literature" that hyperbolically (and uncritically) reproduced contemporary fears of ecological and nuclear crisis. This article argues that the planetary images in Handke s, Roths, and Rosei s novels do not simply function as the endorsement (or refutation) of an ecological-alarmist attitude but rather serve as a reflections on the processes of identification and understanding triggered by the mass dissemination of the "Whole Earth" photographs around 1970. Handke's, Roths, and Rosei's novels perform a social critique function by narrating the ways in which the alienated consciousness of a male loner is affected by a confrontation with the earth-image.