ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an in-depth analysis of the forms and functions of undecidability in another seminal work of undecidability: The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil. The chapter shows how undecidability permeates the work on the levels of narration, genre, ideas, structure, metaphor and literary and philosophical vision, with a particular emphasis on how the production of the overall philosophical vision is rooted in certain narrative undecidabilities. The use of the Nachlass in Musil criticism is problematised in terms of the distinction between productive undecidability and unproductive indeterminacy; the meaning-productive effects of the endlessness of the work are discussed and framed as part of the work’s project of developing new ‘natural’ narrative standards and a new literary realism and authenticity; the transcendental narrator and the conflation of the spheres of the reader, narrator and characters in the work are characterised; the physical and mental symptom of ‘trembling’ is identified as the central metaphor for the specific undecidability that characterises and structures the work; and the overall philosophical vision is determined as its ethical ideal and concept of subjectivity is described in terms of flexibility, mobility and movement.
