Germany From the Outside : Rethinking German Cultural History in an Age of Displacement

The nation-state is a European invention of the 18th and 19th centuries. In the case of the German nation in particular, this invention was tied closely to the idea of a homogeneous German culture with a strong normative function. As a consequence, histories of German culture and literature often are told from the inside-as the unfolding of a canon of works representing certain core values, with which every person who considers him or herself "German" necessarily must identify. But what happens if we describe German culture and its history from the outside? And as something heterogeneous, shaped by multiple and diverse sources, many of which are not obviously connected to things traditionally considered "German"? Emphasizing current issues of migration, displacement, systemic injustice, and belonging, Germany from the Outside explores new opportunities for understanding and shaping community at a time when many are questioning the ability of cultural practices to effect structural change. Located at the nexus of cultural, political, historiographical, and philosophical discourses, the essays in this volume inform discussions about next directions for German Studies and for the Humanities in a fraught era. Cover 1 Halftitle page 2 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 Contents 6 Illustrations 8 Contributors 9 Introduction Laurie Ruth Johnson 14 I Reading German Cultural History Differently 24 One Finding Odysseus’s Scars Again: Hyperlinked Literary Histories in the Age of Refugees 26 World Literary Histories 30 Global Histories, Refugees, and the Question of Archives 35 Afghanistan and Germany: An Attempt at a Globally Connected Literary History 41 Finding Odysseus’s Scars, Again: Hyperlinking Literary Histories 43 Coda 45 Two Between the Court and the Port, but Never Part of a Nation: Friederike Brun’s Domesticated Cosmopolitanism 50 Situating Friederike Brun 50 A Ship in a Port, or Reading a Narrative Episode 52 Networks, Genres, Vanishing Acts 55 German Language, Philology, Marginalia 61 Brun Interrogates Ancient Greece and Ends Up Writing German 65 Cosmopolitanism Abridged and Domesticated: From the Salon to the Book 69 Three On the Inside Looking Out: Fichte, the University, and the Psychopolitics of German Idealism 74 Fichte’s Revolutionary “I” 76 Fichte, Humboldt, and the German University 85 Fichte’s Politics as a Projection of the Psyche 89 Four Rewriting German Literary History from the Outside in: J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello 98 II Stories of Expulsion, Exile, and Displacement 120 Five Looking for Heinrich Heine with Nâzım Hikmet and E. S. Özdamar 122 Transnational Literature/World Literature(s) 123 Heine in and out of Germany 125 The Legacy of Two Poets beyond Borders 129 A Turkish Scheherazade goes West 133 Six Between Times and Places: Mobility and National Identity in Albert Vigoleis Thelen’s Refugee Memoirs from Spainand Portugal (August 31–September 1, 1939) 142 The Looks of the Refugee (Images) 149 Of Words, Letters, and Passes (Texts) 151 “Gewalt” as Power and Violence (Beyond Image and Text) 154 Literature, Counter-Memory, and Life in Common 158 Seven Writing Germany with Brazil: Julia Mann’s Memoir 164 Eight From Vienna to the Midwest: Austrian Refugees and Quaker Rescue Efforts after 1938 182 Nine Keeping Time: Trauma as Intimate Alienation in Hans Keilson’s Writing 204 Da: Here/There, Home and Away 206 Time after Time: The après-coup of Trauma 211 Keeping Time: Intimate Alienation 220 III Rewriting German Culture 226 Ten Tracing the Continual Present: Yoko Tawada and Vilém Flusser 228 Introduction: The Past, Present, and Future of Writing 228 Yoko Tawada and Vilém Flusser on Time and the Medium of Writing 230 Rewriting Zero as Reorientation in Space and Time 239 Conclusion 247 Eleven Mobilizing the Archive: Marica Bodrožic ́ and Deniz Utlu’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Eingewanderten 250 Exile, Immigration, and the Transnational Alchemy of Literary Tradition 255 Making Connections and Animating Absences: The Literary Archive of Migration 259 Imbricating Poetics and Politics 263 Toward Non-Closure: Mobilizing the Archive 269 Twelve Constructing an “Inside”: Transcultural Laughter Communities in Fatma Aydemir’s Ellbogen (2017) and Olga Grjasnowa’s Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt (2012) 274 Thirteen Screening Urban Space and Belonging in Berlin: Contemporary Berliners in Sheri Hagen’s Auf den zweiten Blick/At Second Glance (2013), Ines Johnson-Spain’s Becoming Black (2019), and Amelia Umuhire’s Polyglot (2015) 294 Exploring the Work of Black Artists in Germany 297 Overcoming Obstacles 300 Three Case Studies 301 Close-up: Polyglot 303 Close-up: Becoming Black 306 Close-up: At Second Glance 308 Fourteen Bertolt Brecht’s Me-ti or the Aesthetics of Translation: Universal Love, Mutual Benefits, and Transience 316 Brecht’s “Translation” and the Renaissance of Mohismas a Global Moment 319 The Great Order: Socialism 325 The Great Method: Dialectics 330 Fifteen Clowns in Exile: Hamletmaschine and the (In)human 336 Clowns and the Inhuman 340 Inhuman Objects (of Comedy and Violence) 343 Clowns, Refugees, and the Theater of Confrontation 346 Index 356 Volume in the Series 366 "The nation-state is a European invention of the 18th and 19th centuries. In the case of the German nation in particular, this invention was tied closely to the idea of a homogeneous German culture with a strong normative function. As a consequence, histories of German culture and literature often are told from the inside - as the unfolding of a canon of works representing certain core values, with which every person who considers him or herself "German" necessarily must identify. But what happens if we describe German culture and its history from the outside? And as something heterogeneous, shaped by multiple and diverse sources, many of which are not obviously connected to things traditionally considered "German" Emphasizing current issues of migration, displacement, systemic injustice, and belonging, the essays in this volume explore new opportunities for understanding and shaping community at a time when many are questioning the ability of cultural practices to effect structural change. Located at the nexus of cultural, political, historiographical, and philosophical discourses, this volume will inform discussions about next directions for German Studies and for the Humanities in a fraught era. "-- "Illuminates our understanding of the nation and the role of culture in the nation, in an era of extreme displacement and increased migration, in "German" geopolitical and linguistic-cultural spaces"-- Provided by publisher