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eng: Methodologically this dissertation is based on a poststructuralistic theory, particularly deconstructive literary theory, rhetoric, philosophy (of language) and gender-studies. The focus lies in Paul de Man's and Jacques Derrida's theories. Bettine Menke, Anselm Haverkamp and Werner Hamacher represent the germanophone reception of 'deconstruction'. Gender- studies and the deconstruction of gender-binaries through rhetorical approaches are derived from Judith Butler. The epistemological interest lies in the attempt to grasp the loci of the construction of 'gender- identities,' and to investigate, respectively, the modes of both figuration and disfiguration the subject through the representational mechanisms of language. The question of the de-construction of the subject, which is unfold through the concepts of gender/genre, implies as its decisive components the body and gender-identities. How then is the gendered body being marked, contoured and performed through rhetorical and linguistic modes? Does the 'law of gender' function and take effect in the same way as the 'law of genre'? As decisive tropes and figures that make the rhetorical construction of (gender)-identities visible can be considered those of autobiography, i.e., the tropes of prosopopeia, apostrophe, catachresis and parabasis. These reformulated concepts of rhetoric can be linked to Judith Butler's discussion of the terms sex/gender as figures of regulation - construing identities. Butler's 'gender performativity' can then be reframed within a concept of 'autobiographical performativity'. Finally, H.v.Kleist's 'Ueber das Marionettentheater' and its autobiographical paradoxes are examined within the horizon of the outlined theoretical approach as well as the terms of 'memory/Erinnerung/Gedaechtnis', most important for autobiographical studies per se.
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