The right to difference : interculturality and human rights in contemporary German literature / Nicole Coleman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Coleman, Nicole, 1982- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

German literature--21st century--History and criticism.

German literature.

Multiculturalism in literature.

Human rights in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (271 pages)

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2021.

Summary:

The Right to Difference examines novels that depict human rights violations in order to explore causes of intergroup violence within diverse societies, using Germany as a test case. In these texts, the book shows that an exaggeration of difference between minority and majority groups leads to violence. Germany has become increasingly diverse over the past decades due to skilled labor migration and refugee movements. In light of this diversity, this book's approach transcends a divide between migrant and post-migrant German literature on the one hand and a national literature on the other hand. Addressing competing definitions of national identity as well as the contest between cultural homogeneity and diversity, the author redefines the term "intercultural literature." It becomes not a synonym for authors who do not belong to a national literature, such as migrant writers, but a way of reading literature with an intercultural lens. This book builds a theory of intercultural literature that focuses on the multifaceted nature of identity, in which ethnicity represents only one of many characteristics defining individuals. To develop intercultural competence, one needs to adopt a complex image of individuals that allows for commonalities and differences by complicating the notion of sharp contrasts between groups. Revealing the affective allegiances formed around other characteristics (gender, profession, personal motivations, relationships, and more) allows for similarities that grouping into large, homogeneous, and seemingly exclusive entities conceals. Eight novels analyzed in this book remember and reveal human rights violations, such as genocide, internment and torture, violent expulsion, the reasons for fleeing a country, dangerous flight routes and the difficulty of settling in a new country. Some of these novels allow for affective identification with diverse characters and cast the protagonists as individuals with plural perspectives and identities rather than monolithic members of one large national or ethnic group, whereas others emphasize the commonalities of all people. Ultimately, the author makes the case for German Studies to contribute to an antiracist approach to diversity by redefining what it means to be German and establishing difference as a fundamental human right.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Beginnings

Political Contexts: Right-Wing Extremism in Contemporary Germany

From Diversity to Interculturality in German Studies

Organization of the Book

1. Difference: The Link between Interculturality and Human Rights

Definitions

Thinking Human Rights from a Right to Difference

A New Model of Intercultural Competence

Human Rights Literature

Empathy for Intercultural Competence: Insights from Cognitive Criticism

Moving Forward: Reading Human Rights Texts with an Intercultural Lens

2. Other Neighbors: Genocide as a Crime of Cultural Exclusion in Bernhard Schlink's 'The Reader' and Nicol Ljubić's 'The Stillness of the Sea'

Genocide as a Crime of Cultural Exclusion and Its Remediation through Trials and Literature

Schlink's and Ljubić's Literary Case Studies

Schlink's 'The Reader': Cultural Ignorance and Universalist Empathy for a Perpetrator Generation

Ljubić's 'The Stillness of the Sea': Intercultural Answers to Cultural Exclusion

Concluding Thoughts and Pedagogical Approaches: Universalism and Interculturality for Spaces of Reconciliation

3. Imprisoning Others: Captivity and Alienation in Herta Müller's 'The Hunger Angel' and Abbas Khider's 'Die Orangen des Präsidenten'

The Imprisonment of Rightless Others

Müller's and Khider's Transnational Narratives of Captivity

Müller's 'The Hunger Angel': Losing Oneself, Language, and Certitudes

Khider's 'Die Orangen des Präsidenten': The Political Prison as a Universal Rightless Space

Concluding Thoughts and Pedagogical Approaches: Deconstructing Exclusion through Alienation and Difference

4. Exclusive Communities: Expulsion in Sabrina Janesch's 'Katzenberge' and Günter Grass's 'The Call of the Toad'

'Heimat' Ideologies and Cultural Exclusion in Intercultural Eastern Europe.

Janesch's and Grass's Literatures of Expulsion

Janesch's 'Katzenberge': The Re-Interculturalization of Silesia

Grass's The 'Call of the Toad': Intercultural Layers of Expulsion

Concluding Thoughts and Pedagogical Approaches: Deconstructing Heimat and Nostalgia in Reflective Intercultural Texts

5. Becoming Neighbors: Refugees in Germany in Jenny Erpenbeck's 'Go, Went, Gone' and Shida Bazyar's 'Nachts ist es leise in Teheran'

Refugee Rights and the Performance of Threat

Erpenbeck's and Bazyar's Refugee Narratives

Erpenbeck's 'Go, Went, Gone': Universalist Empathy for o/Others

Bazyar's 'Nachts ist es leise in Teheran': Intercultural Perspectives of Migration and Exile

Concluding Thoughts and Pedagogical Approaches: Telling Stories of Difference for an Intercultural German Society

Conclusion: Literatures of Uncertainty for an Uncertain World

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-246) and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472129416

0472129414

OCLC:

1267763068