3. MIGRATION LITERATURE – SOCIAL, LITERARY AND EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS
3.3 Literary aspects of migration literature and its reception
3.3.1 Positioning
Postcolonial theory touches on many aspects that help position literature of immigrants and minorities in so-called host societies. These include issues of language, ethnicity, hybridity, place, history, education, cultural exclusion, feminism, multiculturalism, globalisation. Postcolonial theory replaces exclusively comparative, historical and national approaches, and its “earlier orientation towards philosophy was replaced by an increasing interdisciplinary closeness to anthropology and history as well as a shift towards sociology and an overlap with cultural studies.” (Sarkowsky 2004: 156-157)
Reflecting some of the theoretical approaches presented in chapters one and two, Sarkowsky (2004: 160-171) maps the development of postcolonial theory as follows:
its anti-Enlightenment stand means a rejection of Descartes‟ and Kant‟s simultaneous universalising and exclusive rationalism and humanism. Due to the construction of race and cultural difference in the past and its overt racist assumptions, the construction of the other was regarded as an act of cultural and psychological appropriation. Sarkowsky (2004) also mentions recent criticism of academic institutions teaching postcolonial theory that are returning to deeply conservative politics of cultural difference. She also points out that recently, warnings are growing louder against a celebration of the margin and particularity on the one hand, and an uncritical disposal of human universality on the other: “This difference between cultural particularity within human universality and cultural particularity that denies common human ground has been lost somewhat in institutionalised postcolonial theory.” (Sarkowsky 2004: 171)20 The questioning of basic philosophical assumptions regarding the universal and the particular ties in well with criticism voiced in the previous chapters and renders postcolonial study a useful approach to migration literature. Bhabha (1992) points to the link between postcolonial discourse and minority discourse as an awareness of power imbalances and a challenge of national cultures from the inside. Minority perspectives are questioning and undermining the discourse of a national hegemony. (Bhabha 1992: 437)
20 Here, Sarkowsky mainly refers to Tabish Khair 1999 „Why Postcolonialism Hates Revolution‟.
Amodeo (2002) points out that the evolution of Anglophone literature from Commonwealth literature to postcolonial or emergent literatures mirrors the unsuccessful attempts at liberating migration literature in Germany from the constraints of existing either outside the “true German literature” („außerhalb, jenseits oder neben der ‚wahren deutschen Literatur‟“), or as a marginal, inferior, exotic part of it („als etwas Marginales, Minderes oder Exotisches in die ‚große und bedeutende deutsche Literatur‟ eingeschlossen.”) (Amodeo 2002: 89) She criticizes the attempt at locating the literature at the periphery or outside national literatures as it prevents literary criticism from developing further, and leaves the emergent literature as defined by complete isolation and dislocation:
Es geht [in der Literaturwissenschaft] immer noch um Verortungen, die in Anlehnung an die nationalen Kategorien entstanden sind. Sie verpaßt die Möglichkeit, sich selbst zu transformieren und weiterzuentwickeln.
Weiterentwickeln kann sie sich nicht, indem sie neben den Nationalliteraturen eine transnationale world fiction –Sparte aufmacht, in der alle Exilierten, Ausgewanderten und Deterritorialisierten in Analogie zum Differenzen verwischenden und zu optimistischen global village in der vollständigen Ortlosigkeit verortet werden. (Amodeo 2002: 90)
Amodeo‟s (2002) concerns give rise to the question of what a transnational, intercultural literature is supposed to achieve: is it expected to broaden horizons within the national literatures whence it emerged, or to form its own literary genre?
This very probably depends to a large extent on the willingness of a national literature to incorporate the authors, the experiences and their literary expression into its society, mentality and serious literary criticism, all of which requires the forging of new categories of thinking. At the same time, it seems highly questionable that the creation of a “transnational world fiction genre” should be seen as an amorphous assortment of dislocated writers, a reflection of our nondescript and chaotic times. In the case of migration literature, the challenge is to describe something that emerged from locations within more than one national category and thus created its own location in the interstice (or the „in-between‟ as it was termed by Bhabha (1994,
1996)21 and others). Already in 1990, Bhabha noted the increasing separation of nation and narration. (Bhabha 1990)
The positioning of literature is not merely an abstract concept, but the result of writers‟ experiences in the in-between. These experiences are summarized well in an excerpt from Pico Iyer‟s The Empire Writes Back:
Die Romane, die aus der Tradition der multiplen Heimat hervorgehen, haben es unweigerlich mit der Identität zu tun, und ihr zentrales Thema ist die prekäre Situation derer, die zwischen Mutterländern und Muttersprachen zerrissen sind, die Lage der not quites, wie die indische Schriftstellerin Bharati Mukherjee sie nennt - der nicht ganz Dazugehörigen, nicht ganz Definierbaren. Sie blicken nicht hierhin oder dorthin, sondern gleichzeitig in beide Richtungen und werden schließlich zu Bewohnern eines Nirgendwo oder Irgendwo in der Welt des Geistes. Ihre Situation ist universell, Grenzen überschreitend. (Iyer 1998: 84)
Or, as Öztürk (2004) writes, “die Autoren [wurden] lange Zeit nach ihren Geburtsorten, Lebensorten, Reiseorten, Besuchsorten, Schreiborten kategorisiert und [werden] jetzt nach ihrem Ortswechsel/Displacement, nach ihrer Ortlosigkeit, nach ihren Sehnsuchtsorten oder Wunschorten kategorisiert.“ (Öztürk 2004: 154) These locations can be real or imagined. Öztürk (2004) calls them locations constructed on a cognitive map that symbolizes a collective of cultural memory. (Öztürk 2004: 155) Displacement is a characteristic of Germany‟s brand of intercultural literature and its authors.
Positioning has, of course, been a central concern of literary criticism. The fact that authors placed themselves and their literature in the in-between has, among other factors, prompted early literary criticism of Germany‟s migration literature to place it outside mainstream literary production. Gastarbeiterliteratur provides a good example of how this literature was received in contrast to the spirit in which it was
21 E.g. Bhabha in his discussion of Nadine Gordimer‟s 1990 novel My Son‟s Story. In: Bhabha, H.K.
1994. The Location of Culture. 20. Also:
Bhabha 1996. „Culture‟s In-Between‟. 53-60.
written: the early writing of „guest workers‟ as collected in anthologies such as Südwind – gastarbeiterdeutsch and Südwind – Literatur was called Betroffenheitsliteratur (literature of victims) and described as “therapeutic writing by victims of social processes.” (Fischer and McGowan 1996: 4) Said (1997) pointed out that victim-hood does not necessarily lead to an increased sense of humanity (Said 1997: 88)22. Fischer and McGowan (1996), referring to Özakin in her critique of Günther Wallraff‟s book Ganz Unten describe pity as a means of stabilizing cultural dominance, even as the most refined form of contempt. (Fischer and McGowan 1996:
14) Still, German literary circles initially labelled Turkish-German literature the literature of victims. And despite the fact that the second and third generation were
“critical in new ways of the prejudice they encounter in Germany, but also of the self- pity, subservience, backwardness or greed of their parents‟ generation.” (Fischer and Mc Gowan 1996: 6), it seemed a utopian task to transform literature of victims of social contempt into one that drives an intercultural literary movement, surpasses borders and helps transform German literature and its criticism. It is significant, however, that although Betroffenheitsliteratur has been described as such by literary criticism, this label does not necessarily reflect how the authors saw themselves and their writing. It cannot have been a “literature written by victims” as much of this literature was an attempt to inform, criticize and subvert. One should rather say that it represents a rejection of victim status. Chapter 4 elaborates further on the significance of Betroffenheitsliteratur for the development of intercultural writing in Germany as well as its educational value.