GE 430 Reading Contemporary German Diasporic Writing
From two worlds to many: multiculturalism and its breakdown
Literature in its social context
not as a historical document of social change
but as a part of a matrix of negotiations which constitute that change.
There is therefore a direct linkage between social issues and debate and the literature
which articulates those ideas, imagines contexts and solutions for them.
The first 10-15 years of diasporic literature are marked by the terms of the social
debates which underpin it.
There is little or no art pour l’art, few attempts to emerge thematically from the
complex of issues surrounding migration, integration and acceptance/tolerance
The literature reflected the identity concerns of first-generation migrants or of those
moving to Germany as children.
As such, the found themselves ‘zwischen zwei Stühlen’:
 the cultural and linguistic identity not only of their country of origin but often too
of their local communities in Germany (cf. ‘ghettoisation’)
 the linguistic and assimilatory expectations of German society.
Articulated in literary terms, this is evidenced by the proliferation of images such as:
the bridge, the tightrope, birds and flight, gateways, opposite shores etc.
The migrant was thus:
 suspended
 under an implied threat
 called on to perform a bridging role
E.g. Şenocak, ‘Doppelmann’; Tekinay, ‘Dazwischen’.
The two worlds could be:
 two languages;
 the physical spaces of migration;
 two cultures; two communities etc.
Crucially, this self-characterisation by migrant writers carried over into literary
reception, welcomed by German critics.
The two worlds paradigm thus has its origin in diasporic writers’ selfconceptualisations.
American critics such as Teraoka and Adelson challenged this paradigm because it
imposed a fixity on concepts which were dynamic.
Diasporic writers should be thought of instead as in a matrix of gender, generation,
class, ethnicity and nationality, itself in constant change.
The origin of the two worlds paradigm lies in the debates on multiculturalism in
Germany, following several years after original debates on North American
campuses.
The term can be descriptive or prescriptive
and is highly politicised (even by those who would seek to deny it).
The concept is based on
 discrete cultures
 defined in national-ethnic or regional-ethnic terms.
Social groups would be aligned to achieve
 social cohesion
 the maintenance of individual an group identity
 the maintenance of commonly agreed liberal rights
 the aspiration of the individual for self-fulfilment.
My working definition in this lecture will be:
Multiculturalism postulates a political space existing between the ideal
demands of all of the constituent ethnic groups within a society and the
inalienable rights of the individual.
The ‘melting pot’ model failed in its aspiration to achieve cultural equality and to
avoid a dominant culture.
Debate moved on to how the ‘salad bowl’ model might work.
Against the background of political moves in Germany to limit immigration, the
debate there centred on the maintenance of ethnopluralism set against a strong sense
of German national identity as the primus inter pares.
Charles Taylor sought to address the problem of a dominant (almost invariably host)
culture by arguing for a presumption of value in all cultures, rather than cultural
equality.
Jürgen Habermas argued that liberal rights, often incompatible with specific identity
needs, should themselves be considered dynamic and eligible for change.
Models of multiculturalism based on static and bounded conceptions began to
collapse towards the mid-1990s:
 the borders of ethnic communities were by no means clear, particularly after a
succession of generations
 individuals often had more than two cultural allegiances.
The demise of the modernist, progressive certainties of multiculturalism are also
linked to the rise of postmodernism.
Compare Zafer Şenocak’s poem ‘Doppelmann’ with:
Unsere Welt hat sich in eine Baustelle verwandelt. Doch läßt es sich dort nicht
nach einem bestimmten Plan bauen. Keine schlechte Zeit für Autoren. Sie
werden herausgefordert, Pläne zu entwerfen, die weniger nach Gültigkeit als
nach ihrer Phantasieleistung zu beurteilen sind. (‘Der Schriftsteller ist ein
Archäologe: Ein Essay über Schreiben in Deutschland und überhaupt’, Die
Welt, No. 128, 5.6.1999, p. 11)
This approach is mirrored in his prose works such as Gefährliche Verwandtschaft
(1998): the central character has German-Jewish and Turkish antecedents, and his
search for answers on the Armenian massacre of 1915-16 runs parallel to reflections
on the Holocaust, establishing a German-Jewish-Turkish triangle.
Şenocak’s intellectual approach to the complexity of cultural identity apparently
contrasts with Feridun Zaimoğlu’s avowedly ethnographic interviews Kanak Sprak
(1995).
The xenophobic attacks of 1992-3 had shocked ‘middle Germany’; however, the
ensuing ‘Lichterketten’ led to formulaic public awareness campaigns (‘Mein Freund
ist ein Ausländer’) but little political change. Second- and third-generation youth saw
themselves slipping off the political agenda and, despite being born in Germany
being lumped together with other quite different strands of recent immigrants.
Zaimoğlu’s figures voluntarily adopt the label ‘Kanak(e)’, in order to confront
German society with its intolerance and indifference (cf. ‘Gastarbeiterliteratur’). But
they also stand in opposition to many of the attitudes and aspirations of the first
generation of migrants.
They cross clear-cut boundaries between German and non-German, secular and
religious etc. They also often assume exaggerated ethnic autostereotypes.
The publication of the volume helped lead to the establishment of the politicalcultural movement ‘Kanak Attak’, comprising filmmakers, musicians, writers,
journalists, artists etc. The stated aims of the group:
Unser kleinster gemeinsamer Nenner besteht darin, die Kanakisierung
bestimmter Gruppen von Menschen durch rassistische Zuschreibungen mit
allen ihren sozialen, rechtlichen und politischen Folgen anzugreifen. Kanak
Attak ist anti-nationalistisch, anti-rassistisch und lehnt jegliche Form von
Identitätspolitiken ab, wie sie sich etwa aus ethnologischen Zuschreibungen
speisen. (‘Kanak Attak und basta!’)
The strategy was to be one of confrontation with the contradictions of migration and
undermining of unchallenged complacencies: ‘Es ist Zeit, den Kuschel-Ausländern
und anderen das Feld streitig zu machen, die über Deutschland lamentieren, Respekt
oder Toleranz einklagen ohne die gesellschaftlichen und politischen Zustände beim
Namen zu nennen.’ (‘Kanak Attak und basta!’)
(Philharmonie Köln extracts)
But: the demise of the two worlds paradigm is not a generational issue. Many
nominally first-generation writers track such changes in their work as it evolves: Zafer
Şenocak, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Güney Dal etc.
While it was ultimately untenable, the two worlds paradigm shows diasporic writers
as agents, actively framing their self-understanding; just as those who followed have
done.
Further reading
Adelson, Leslie A., 2005. The Turkish turn in contemporary German literature. New
York & London: Macmillan.
Cheesman, Tom, 2002. Akçam – Zaimoğlu – ‘Kanak Attak’: Turkish lives and letters
in German. German Life and Letters, 55 (April 2002) No. 2, pp. 180-195
Habermas, J., 1994. Struggles for recognition in the democratic constitutional state.
In: Gutman, Amy, ed., Multiculturalism: examining the politics of recognition.
Princeton (New Jersey): Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 107-148.
Jordan, Jim, 2006. More than a metaphor: the passing of the two worlds paradigm in
German-language diasporic literature. German Life and Letters 59 (October
2006) No. 4, pp. 488-499.
Kymlicka, Will, 1995. Multicultural citizenship. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Martiniello, M.,1997. Citizenship, ethnicity and multiculturalism: post-national
membership between Utopia and reality. In: Ethnic and Racial Studies, 20
(1997) no. 3, 635-641.
Rex, J., 1985. The concept of a multi-cultural society. Coventry: University of
Warwick Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations. (Occasional papers in
ethnic relations, no. 3)
———, 1997. The problematic of multinational and multicultural societies. In: Ethnic
and Racial Studies, 20 (1997) no. 3, 456-473.
Taylor, Charles, 1992. Multi-culturalism and the politics of recognition. Princeton:
Princeton UP.
Link:
http://www.kanak-attak.de/ka/about.html