The Banat Terrain as a Liminal and Post-Anthropocentric Space in Esther Kinsky’s Banatsko

Abstract

The paper analyzes the depiction of the northern Banat region’s landscape – a border area divided among Hungary, Romania, and Serbia – in Esther Kinsky’s novel Banatsko. The author of the novel rejects the term “landscape” in her poetics and introduces the concept of a “disturbed terrain”, marked by traces, negotiation and stratification. The study investigates how literary representations of borderlands can destabilize anthropocentric narratives and binary oppositions such as nature/culture. The aim is to explore Kinsky’s portrayal of liminal and post-anthropocentric space through the narrator’s observations of border dynamics, hybrid terrains, slow-paced everyday life, nonhuman elements, and abandoned spaces. Grounded in border studies and ecocriticism, the paper applies close reading as its primary method. The analysis reveals that the novel reconfigures conventional notions of borders as static and fixed, instead presenting them as fluid and performative, and offers insights into the Banat terrain as a space of natural-cultural entanglement.