SOURCE: “Each One as She May: Melanctha, Tonka, Nadja,” in Modernity and the Text: Revisions of German Modernism, edited by Andreas Huyssen and David Bathrick, Columbia University Press, 1989, pp. 95–107.

In the following essay, Ryan considers “Melanctha” as avant-garde text.

Despite the proliferation of discussion immediately following the appearance of Peter Bürger's theories of the avant-garde in 1974, our understanding of this phenomenon does not appear to have moved forward substantially in the last several years, precisely the time frame during which one might have expected a second phase in critical avant-garde theory. One problem arises no doubt as a result of the rapid transition from ideological criticism to deconstructionist and reader-oriented criticism. The newer methods, whose ideological implications are less overtly manifest, have been unable to engage effectively with the controversies unearthed by the techniques they supplant.

It is my hope to present a more differentiated picture of...