Dissident Stories of Travel and Displacement: Middle Eastern Heritage German Writers' Interventions into the Nationalist Imagination

Open Access
- Author:
- Mohammad, Yasemin
- Graduate Program:
- German
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 10, 2012
- Committee Members:
- Daniel Leonhard Purdy, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Martina Kolb, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Daniel Leonhard Purdy, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Reiko Tachibana, Committee Member
Ursula Bettina Brandt, Committee Member
Jonathan Eugene Brockopp, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Turkish-German Literature
Arab-German Literature
Exile Literature
German Immigration Literature - Abstract:
- This dissertation examines how German writers of Arab and Turkish heritage form aesthetic, cultural, and political reorientations in the process of imagining German national identity and history in the course of the twentieth century. Focusing on Unerwarteter Besuch: Auf der Suche nach der Gegenwärtigen Zeit VI (1997) by Aras Ören, Alman Terbiyesi (2007) by Zafer Şenocak, Der Marschländer (1999) by Hussain Al-Mozany, and Kafka und andere palästinensische Geschichten (1991) and Absturz im Paradies:Geschichten eines Eingewanderten (1998) by Wadi Soudah, I engage in a comparative study of four male protagonists’ experiences of travel, displacement, and exile in the Middle East and in Germany, as dramatized in their major novels and short stories. Debunking an ethno-culturally defined German identity and collective memory, this dissertation contributes to a critical and nuanced understanding of the literature produced by German writers of Arab and Turkish heritage, thus moving beyond the prevalent paradigm that these writers represent the clash of contradictory worlds. Most contemporary research on the topic has focused on immigration and hybridity. My dissertation, by contrast, explores exile as experienced by individuals, who voluntarily or involuntarily left their homelands because of political, social, and cultural upheavals and dilemmas. I read exile as a complex and contradictory term: it involves not only feelings of nostalgia and painstaking loss, but moments of enrichment and empowerment as well. Each of my chapters depicts the protagonists’ negotiation of exilic experience in the twentieth century, as well as the effects this has on their understanding of time, space, language, culture, and the nation. Furthermore, I analyze how these protagonists’ experiences overlap with or differ from the other fictional characters who experience exile. I argue that the exilic vision of Ören, Şenocak, Al-Mozany, and Soudah instill them with a plurality of vision, which makes them question one-dimensional interpretations of ethnic, religious, and national affiliations. By drawing analogies between the national imagination in Germany and their own countries, these authors and their protagonists form transnational historical connections and enable new imaginary spaces of cosmopolitan existence. To the best of my knowledge, mine is the first study to bring into dialogue German writers of Turkish and Arab origin, who share the historical heritage of the Ottoman Empire, and who confront similar stereotypes and prejudices related to Islam and the Middle East.