liesbeth minna a r d a m s t e r da m u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s new Germans, new dutch Literary Interventions New Germans, New Dutch New Germans, New Dutch Literary Interventions Liesbeth Minnaard Amsterdam University Press Foundation Palimpsest Foundation Palimpsest supports the publication of excellent scientific research in the academic discipline of cultural analysis, among other things by subsidizing the book series Palimpsest: Disorientation The book series Palimpsest: Disorientation addresses the culture of war, civil war, violence and conflict. It aims to rethink the discourse of war and enmity, and in doing so it hopes to contribute to the undermining of the stereotyping frames, without which no war can be waged. The book series first term, Palimpsest, (the scraped-off parchment roll) suggests the layeredness, opacity and density of cultural objects and processes, and there- fore also their rich possibilities towards rereading and revision. The second term, Disorientation, refers to the need to explore and subvert the expediently enforced boundary between East and West, a violent borderline that was incessantly ad- dressed in the work of Inge E. Boer, in whose honour this book series is estab- lished. Disorientation, in its more common sense, is also a productive force. For disorienting forms of rereading disable the stereotypical ways of reading, which are so seamlessly evoked by dominant worldviews. Cover design: Studio Jan de Boer, Amsterdam Lay out: JAPES, Amsterdam isbn 978 90 8964 028 4 e -isbn 978 90 4850 235 6 nur 617 © E. Minnaard / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2008 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. In loving memory of my open-minded grandmother Cornelia Spruit-Smallegange (1913-2008) Contents Acknowledgements 9 Introduction 13 Chapter I: National Identity The Discursive Production of Germanness and Dutchness 15 Chapter II: Literature of Migration Aesthetic Interventions in Times of Transformation 51 Chapter III: Emine Sevgi Özdamar 'I Didn't Know that Your Passport Is also Your Diary' 69 Chapter IV: Hafid Bouazza 'Long Live Uprooting! Long Live the Imagination!' 107 Chapter V: Feridun Zaimoglu 'Here Only the Kanake Has the Say' 143 Chapter VI: Abdelkader Benali 'When the World Goes Mad and Everybody Has Lost Their Words' 179 Conclusion Literary Negotiations of Germanness and Dutchness 221 Notes 233 Works Cited 291 Index 319 7 Acknowledgements New Germans, New Dutch began as an adventure stirred by wonder. Wonder about the familiar that all of a sudden seemed unfamiliar, uncanny. Coming home to the Netherlands after the NOISE Summer School in Madrid in September 2001, the world seemed to have changed. The boundaries of Dutchness were hastily being redefined – and in a manner that made me feel extremely uncomfortable. It was the rhetoric of division, which was suddenly dominating public discourse, that triggered the basic questions of this book. The adventure then began with my departure for Berlin, that enthralling city of challenges and contradictions. A generous gift from the Dr Catharine van Tussen- broek Fund enabled me to transform my astonishment at the self-justified turn towards intolerance within Dutch society into a comparative investigation of the complexities of national belonging. I am grateful to my colleagues at TransAct and to all the friends who encouraged me to embark on this adventure. Djoke Dam, Christel Kohlmann, Deirdre Mol, Janienke Sturm and Janine Willemsen re- assured me in my doubts about giving up my tenure job position and supported my decision to set out on the slippery paths of academic research. I have never regretted this step: it has brought me new homes, new worlds, new perspectives. I thank Gloria Wekker and Rosemarie Buikema at Utrecht University for their guidance at a very early stage of the project – they gave me their trust even before I had actually begun. Inge Boer I thank posthumously, for her careful readings and valuable comments on preliminary research proposals. Although we have never met in person, I will always remember the warm enthusiasm and intellectual gen- erosity that she conveyed to me by telephone or per e-mail. My special gratitude goes to Birgit Lesch, a warm-hearted and good-humoured spirit like no other: she taught me the many ins and outs of the German language and made Berlin feel like home in next to no time. The Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (DAAD) and Anselm Haverkamp enabled me to extend my stay in the German capital and to continue my research at the Heinrich-von-Kleist-Institut für Literatur und Politik at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder. I thank them for offering me this opportunity. After one year in Berlin I joined the DFG-Graduiertenkolleg “ Identity and Differ- ence. Gender Constructions and Interculturality (18th-21st century) ” at the Uni- versity of Trier, where a wonderful group of people engaged in true interdiscipli- narity. Bernd Elzer, Denise Daum, Thomas Ernst, Anne Friedrich, Hillaria Gössmann, Christine Hanke, Alexandra Karentzos, Ruth Kersting, Stefani Kug- ler, Nina Möllers, Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff and Melanie Ulz are only some of the interlocutors within this research community with whom I was privileged to 9 discuss my material. I thank all the participants for the lively exchange and pro- ductive sharing of ideas on a broad variety of topics. I am grateful to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Forschungsreferat of the University of Trier for their financial support of my research. Special thanks are owed to Kea Wienand and Silke Förschler, inspired and gifted woman-warrior-collaborators. Discus- sions with these two friends were always happily fruitful. With them I share a deep interest in the intersection of politics and aesthetics, and the belief in an academia that can and needs to be transformed as well as transformative. I would like to thank Anna-Lena Sälzer for her spontaneous and accurate help in the final stage of writing. My dear friends Matthias Brunn and Britta Wegner made an indispensable contribution to the project by distracting me with evenings of laughter and leisure. I am thankful for their gift of friendship. Mieke Bal ’ s Theory Seminar at ASCA, the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analy- sis, became my second intellectual laboratory. I thank the participants in this thought-stirring seminar, especially Roel van den Oever and Sonja van Wichelen, for the lively exchange of ideas, the feedback on presented material, and the Dutch gezelligheid during drinks afterwards. Mieke Bal is the seminar ’ s indefatig- able and multi-talented guide from whose ideational originality and bright enthu- siasm my work and I profited enormously. Her work continues to inspire me. The same counts for the work of Leslie Adelson, who enabled me to spend some time at Cornell University at a crucial stage in my writing. Her superb feedback on my analyses and her encouragement to probe deeper and to not settle with easy an- swers were of determinative impact on my work. I thank her for her generosity in sharing critical insights that have kept me thinking ever since. I thank Gizem Arslan for the vivid and valuable late-night library conversations, her marvellous sense of humour and her lasting friendship. This book would not have attained the intellectual depth and rigour that it has without the guidance and support of my two supervisors, Herbert Uerlings and Ernst van Alphen. Although they have never met in person, in their comments on my work they complemented each other amazingly well. I could always count on both of them for meticulous readings of preliminary chapters, insightful criticism on lines of argumentation, and probing questions that prompted me to delve dee- per and to ask further. Conversations with Herbert Uerlings helped me to balance my personal and political wish to make a difference and the more subtle (aes- thetic) difference provided by the literary texts. Ernst van Alphen taught me how to make theory productive for literary analysis without it becoming dominant. Additionally, he stimulated me to take up more space to unfold my arguments – advice that has transformed my writing style with powerful effects. I am indebted to both for their intellectual generosity and I thank them for the trust that they placed in me and my work. Shortly after finishing writing this book in 2007, I joined the staff of the Lit- erary Studies Department at Leiden University. I could not have been more fortu- 10 new germans, new dutch nate. Not only can I carry on with my analytical work on the multiple cultural effects of interculturality and globalisation, I can do this in a wonderfully inspir- ing and supportive atmosphere. For this I thank my dedicated and knowledgeable colleagues as well as our highly motivated students: I have worked in many places, but the creative dynamic that I have encountered in the Leiden department is extraordinary. And what counts for the department in general counts for my ‘ partners in PoCo ’ in Leiden in particular. Never was planning postcolonial sabo- tage more thought provoking and delightful than with Maria Boletsi, Isabel Hov- ing and Sarah de Mul. Throughout all the stages of writing this book I could rely on the unconditional support (and the necessary distractions) of my down-to-earth family in Zeeland. I cannot express in words how much their warm interest in my well-being means to me. I thank them deeply for being there: whenever, wherever, however. My most heartfelt gratitude goes to Cornelia Fischer, critical companion in wonder and adventure from beginning to end. Without her, this project would not have come into being and this book would not exist. I thank her for posing the most challenging life questions and for exploring possible answers together with me. acknowledgements 11 Introduction ‘ But imagination changes mentalities, however slowly it may go about this ’ (Glissant 1997: 183). I started a first draft of this manuscript with the statement that ‘ migrants ’ have more and more become part of German and Dutch societies. In the course of writing this book this statement has become increasingly disputed. In both Ger- man and Dutch societies, several dramatic incidents – the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, and ‘ smaller ’ instances of specifically gendered violence in Germany – have caused a rapidly growing polarisation be- tween several parts of the German and Dutch populations, in particular between the indigenous majority and the (homogenised) ‘ Muslim ’ minorities. 1 The global increase of culturally and/or religiously motivated acts of terror has further con- tributed to a new emphasis on matters of cultural conflict instead of on processes of cultural encounter. This worrisome development has also affected the public discourses that serve both as the context of this book and as its frame for inter- pretation. 2 The starting point of New Germans, New Dutch is the idea that people of migrant background, in their capacity as ‘ new Germans ’ and ‘ new Dutch ’ , engender new meanings for the contested concepts of Germanness and Dutchness, and of Ger- man and Dutch national identity. In the changing German and Dutch ethnos- capes traditional and monolithic definitions of national Self and Other no longer hold. 3 National identities were never static, nor homogenous, but under the influ- ence of transnational migration and other forms of globalisation this (false but influential) assumption has become absolutely untenable. The extensive public interest in issues of national identity in relation to the increased multiculturality of German and Dutch societies underlines the symbolic importance of the ques- tion of national boundaries. The two parallel and national public debates on the German Leitkultur and the Dutch ‘ multicultural drama ’ in the year 2000 can be considered symptomatic for the heightened, and often conflicting, discursivity of this question. It is clear that the unmistakable transformation of German and Dutch society enforces a thorough rethinking and renegotiation of these national boundaries on several levels of public life. One of these levels is that of literature: in the process of rethinking and renegotiating national identity literature proves of particular significance. New Germans, New Dutch investigates the significance of the literary 13 imagination in the age of globalisation. It considers literature as an alternative source of (aesthetic) knowledge and as a privileged sphere of reflection and con- templation on the contested issue of national identity. What counts for literature in general, counts for ‘ migrants ’ literature ’ or ‘ literature of migration ’ in an ex- ceptional way. 4 In her path-breaking study The Turkish Turn in Contemporary Litera- ture: Toward a New Critical Grammar of Migration Leslie Adelson (2005), describes this particular significance of literature of migration as follows: ‘ [T]hese literary narratives provoke us to ponder the historical intelligibility of our time, to become more historically literate by reading against the grain of existing categories, con- cepts and statistics of migration in order to ask what worlds we inhabit as the millennium turns ’ (Adelson 2005: 13/14). New Germans, New Dutch investigates the imagination of transforming German and Dutch worlds in the literature by four writers in particular: the Turkish-German Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Feridun Zai- moglu, and the Moroccan-Dutch Abdelkader Benali and Hafid Bouazza. 5 It exam- ines how their literary works rework the cultural matter of which German and Dutch national identities are made, and scrutinises in what ways this literature of migration intervenes in public discourses that still very much maintain exclusion- ary definitions of Germanness and Dutchness. New Germans, New Dutch discusses how this literature of migration negotiates the boundaries of these national cate- gories and shows the space it opens up for new imaginaries of belonging. 14 new germans, new dutch I. National Identity The Discursive Production of Germanness and Dutchness ‘ [T]he nation state is a machine that produces Others ’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 114). ‘ Increasingly, “ national ” cultures are being produced from the perspective of disenfranchised minorities ’ (Bhabha 1994: 6). National Identity under Globalisation: Controversies The central concept in New Germans, New Dutch is that of national identity. For over two centuries scholars and intellectuals in ‘ the West ’ have been trying to define this concept under a number of headings such as, for instance, Volksgeist or volks- aard , national character, national spirit, national consciousness or national Self (-understanding). 1 Its conceptualisation varied according to the circumstances, or, more precisely, according to its function in a matrix of power and interests. The concept was defined and redefined, appropriated and reappropriated, as were its symbols, its myths, and its (invented) traditions. In ‘ The Question of Cultural Identity ’ (1993) Stuart Hall describes national identity as a particular kind of cul- tural identity. 2 He argues that in the modern world the nation state constitutes a prime source of identification, not only as a political entity, but also as a signify- ing system of cultural representation: National cultures are composed not only of cultural institutions, but of sym- bols and representations. A national culture is a discourse – a way of construct- ing meanings which influences and organizes both our actions and our con- ception of ourselves ( ... ). National cultures construct identities by producing meanings about ‘ the nation ’ with which we can identify ; these are contained in the stories which are told about it, memories which connect its present with its past, and images which are constructed of it. (Hall 1993: 292/293) 15 National identity thus combines the membership to a particular nation state and identification with and feelings of belonging to a national culture. It is especially this second dimension of symbols and representations that Benedict Anderson addresses in his influential study Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1986). 3 His famous conceptualisation of nations as ‘ imag- ined communities ’ has encouraged numerous scholars to study the different (nar- rative) forms of these imaginations, the (collective as well as individual) processes of national identification, and the affective orientations in respect to national be- longing. Central to the (symbolic) production of national identity is the construction of inner- and outer-boundaries, the definition of the national Self by means of exclu- sion of a national Other that functions as its ‘ constitutive outside ’ . Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman (1993) refer to these various discursive patterns that to- gether produce both the nation and its subjects with the term ‘ National Sym- bolic ’ 4 Historically, the conceptualisation of the National Symbolic in a specific nation state was closely linked to the coming into existence, maintenance, threat or expansion of the various other (neighbouring) nation states. The technology of Self and Other, the construction of national (and often cultural) sameness as naturally opposed to a fundamentally different and often demonised Other con- tinues to contribute to an (exclusionary) dynamics of symbolic identity construc- tion. In contemporary Europe the national Other is predominantly an Other that resides within the borders of the nation state: ethnic or religious minorities, mi- grants, illegal aliens and so on. Whereas in times of stability and continuity people generally aren ’ t too con- cerned about national identity as a determinant of who they are and where they belong, in times of economic pressure, insecurity or change, national identity returns on the public agenda as a topic of vehement discussion and strong em- phasis. 5 The increased crossing of national borders – be it as migratory move- ments and diasporic dislocations, for reasons of work on the global market, or simply for leisure – immerse people in situations that require a reconsideration of conventional constructions of national identity. The rapid global transformation pressurises national boundaries and prompts a reassessment of many people ’ s national orientation. 6 Migrants appear as icons of this rapidly transforming world. As such they often feature as intruders that pose a threat to cohesion, social order, and stability in worlds that still define themselves as national. It is in these worlds and their ideological and affective frames of reference that na- tional identity comes to function as a discursive means of exclusion, an exclusion- ary discursive boundary. In its strong intersection with issues of citizenship, national identity sustains a regulating metadiscourse with far-reaching conse- quences on a social, economic and personal scale for the people defined (or ex- cluded) by it. 7 16 new germans, new dutch Taking all of this into account, it is no surprise that national identity also ap- pears in academic work as a highly politicised and contested concept. On one side of this polarised discourse, more conservative defenders of ‘ the national ’ urge for a return to and a (new) appreciation of a national definition of the Self. This (often rather romantic) longing is partly pushed forward by current feelings of uncertainty, insecurity and even threat in a world determined by change and seemingly limitless global expansion. Discourses and practices around interna- tional terrorism further contribute to a reification of the national, in particular of its borders. In the German and the Dutch contexts, developments of increasing European cooperation and integration as well as the – until recently – growing numbers of resident aliens and asylum requests constitute two other factors that motivate a protective reorientation on national identity. To a certain extent scho- lars on the more liberal side of the polarised spectrum of opinions acknowledge these motivations. In the preface to the wide-ranging volume Unpacking Europe. Towards a Critical Reading , Gilane Tawadros, for instance, affirms that: national identities are in a state of constant turbulence, unsettled from below by the complex, transnational identities of Europe ’ s shifting citizenship and, at the same time, overshadowed from above by the forces of globalisation that stride across the world ’ s continents with little regard for the discrete borders of the nation states. (Tawadros in Hassan and Dadi 2001: 8) However, instead of persistently holding on to national identities as they were, Tawadros and others propose to take up the challenge posed by the process of global transformation. 8 In their eyes this process opens up a field of possibilities to renegotiate established and suppressive structures of Western hegemony. They put national identity aside as an exclusionary concept that reinforces thinking in dichotomies of ‘ us and them ’ , of people who belong and those who do not. These scholars imagine a future of transnational communities that transcend national borders and move beyond the hierarchies established by these. In this postna- tional world, national identity loses its value. Its problematically polarising and divisive fiction becomes obsolete. Although I agree with much of this critique, including the latter assertion of national identity ’ s divisive and exclusionary qualities, I see no possibility to dis- miss the concept altogether: its ongoing influence as a discursive category and as a factor of legal determinacy in issues of citizenship is unabated. As Nora Räthzel insists in her study Gegenbilder. Nationale Identität durch Konstruktion des Anderen [ Counter-images. National Identity by Construction of the Other ]: ‘ The uniform nation exists to the degree to which a majority of individuals contributes to the image of the uniform nation and defines itself and others that way, i.e. including itself, excluding others ’ (1997: 41). 9 National identity remains a central factor in any reflection on the (future of the) contemporary globalising world, both as a discur- i. national identity 17 sive concept and as a field of contesting discourses. In that sense we need an approach to national identity that includes a critical interrogation of the exclu- sionary and divisive dimensions of the concept, as well as an open-minded con- sideration of its particular positive qualities. 10 Any proposal to simply do away with national identity underestimates the connective potential that national iden- tity also possesses. Conceptualised in a non-monolithic way, national identity can, in my opinion, function as a factor of (multi-)cultural integration and social cohesion for the multiethnic communities of this time. 11 This last opinion feeds in with the influential questioning of transnational and cosmopolitan alternatives to national identity by Timothy Brennan (1997), as laid out in his critical work on cosmopolitanism. In his article ‘ Cosmo-Theory ’ Bren- nan (rather cynically) defines cosmopolitanism as a ‘ friendly ’ cultural discourse of ‘ the West ’ that is on the one hand blinded by the ‘ euphoria of a good will ’ (2001: 673), and on the other (inevitably) entangled in the dynamics of the global mar- ket. In his opinion the blind spot in the intellectual propagation of the cosmopo- litan idea – including the understanding of the nation state as obsolete – is its own (profitable) implication in a particular nation state system: cosmopolitanism ‘ makes sense only in the context of a specific national-cultural mood ’ (ibid. 661): 12 Among the issues forgotten here are those key advantages nations provide the global subalterns they [ ‘ cosmopolitanists ’ , LM] wish to free from the tyranny of the national state – advantages that are particularly condemned by the hu- manists who are hostile to the myths of national belonging. And yet, any pro- gressive vision today depends on such myths. For, outside cosmopolis, they represent the only basis for organizing opposition to the corporate carnival- esque ( ... ). (Brennan 2001: 672) Brennan emphasises that the decision to give up on national identity can only be made from the privileged position of having a national identity that is recognised and undisputed. Those who make the claim that national identity has lost its relevance in the present world mostly have no need to worry about questions of national acceptance and national belonging. In a world in which many individuals are still struggling to become national, this claim appears rather precipitate and premature. 13 As Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny put it: Being national is the condition of our times, even as the nation is buffeted by the subnational rise of local, regional and ethnic claims, and the transnational threats of globalization, hegemonic American culture, migration, diasporiza- tion, and new forms of political community. In one way nationalism, like ra- cism, becomes the protective cover to resist the uncontrollable transforma- tions of our time. In another, nationalism and belonging to a nation may be 18 new germans, new dutch the kind of ‘ cultural recovery ’ that could potentially lead – not to a politics of the blood – but to acceptance, even celebration of difference. (Eley and Suny 1996: 32) National identity thus comprehends both a problematic and a challenging dimen- sion. It appears as the subject of an ongoing and multidimensional process of negotiation and redefinition. In this process the growing multiculturality of na- tional communities features as an important factor of influence and acceleration. The changing German and Dutch ethnoscapes effect a heightened public discur- sivity of the National Symbolic and its future. In Germany and the Netherlands two strikingly vehement public debates that evolved parallel to each other in the year 2000 testify to this heightened discursivity. In Germany the debate revolved around the idea of a deutsche Leitkultur [ ‘ German guiding culture ’ ]; In the Nether- lands it went down in history as the ‘ multicultural drama ’ debate. In both debates the question of national identity explicitly intersected with the issue of multicul- turality. The following sections offer a discussion and contextualisation of these paral- lel debates. Starting with a historical overview of the phenomenon of organised labour migration in both countries and continuing with the socio-political dis- courses that developed in the wake of this phenomenon, they position the two debates within the larger discursive complex on the multiculturalisation of Ger- man and Dutch national identity. A Shared Moment of National Transformation: German and Dutch Histories of Labour Migration The historical phenomenon of organised labour migration evolved almost simul- taneously in Germany and the Netherlands. 14 It was officially propagated in the years between 1955, when the first agreement of this kind was signed (between Germany and Italy), and 1973, when the international oil crisis resulted in a com- plete ban on foreign recruitment in both countries. 15 The Federal Republic of Germany was the first western European country that drew up an official bilateral agreement for the temporary importation of foreign labour after the Second World War. With this agreement the West German government responded to the economic boom that is commonly known as the German Wirtschaftswunder , the ‘ economic miracle ’ . As a result of this economic miracle, the Federal Republic urgently needed more manpower for production work in the heavy industry that profited in great measure from the expansion of the international trade. In the early 1950s most shortages on the expanding West German labour market could still be annulled by workers from the German Democratic Republic (especially in Berlin) as well as by the many postwar refugees from the former German terri- tories in the East. To fill the still-remaining shortages the West German govern- i. national identity 19