Blending Worlds

Blending Worlds On Ethnic Identities in Late Modernity Elka Ts chernokoshewa Tschemokoshewa, Elka 1997: Blending Worlds. On Ethnic Identities i n Late Modernity. - Ethnologia Europaea 27: 139-152. Can a perHon simultaneously identi(y him- or herself with two or more individual ethnic He m a ntics? Can, in this sense, a person have several ethnic identities? And how is this dealt with in theory, what kind of concepts do we have about such clouble lives and such hybrid identities? Why is ethnicity often defended as virtually the last bastion of unambiguity? Who is interested in this? The article centers around these questions. The empirical argumentation iH based primarily on the example ofthe Sorbs - a Slavic minority in Germany. The theoretical m·gumentation tries to open up the ethnological cultural studies for some of the considerations of the system theory and the modern constructivis m. The article is a plea for the hybridity of cultures, ideas, politics, and fo r an ethnology which takes part in this construction. Ellw Ts chernokoshewa, Assoc. Prof:, Department fo r Empirical Cultural Studies I Popular Art, Sorbian Institute, Bahnho{st1: 6, D-02625, Bau.tzen, Germany. it is also a part of German or German-language Confessions and Attributions stage literature" (Lorenc 1995: 43). In an essay with the title "Bikulturalitat und So much for his confession. But how do the Selbstverstandnis" (Biculturalism and Self humanities deal with the classification of such image), it is not without irony that the author texts or cultural events? As an initial approach Kito Lorenc writes about the ethnic classifica to this question, I would like to cite an example tion of his work as well as the events in the taken fr om the largely autobiographical novel German-Sorbian Theater in Bautzen: "As you Liebe und Mull (Love and Waste) by Ivan Kli know, the Sorbian actors do not only co-act in ma. The central figure, a writer who fe ll into German plays, and their German colleagues do disgrace fo llowing the events of 1968, earns his not - depending on their faculty of language - living as a street sweeper in Prague, and in his only occasionally appear in plays performed in fr ee time he occupies himself with the biogra the Sorbian language. One respects and toler phy of Kafka. His train of thought: "Franz ates one another also in his or her respective Kafka undoubtedly belongs to the most re ability or partial inability. And all of them will markable writers to have lived in Bohemia. He appear together in the tragic grotesque play Die often cursed Prague and his parental home; wendische Schiffahrt (The Wendish or Sorbian however, he could not bring himself to tear Ship's Voyage), a piece commissioned by this himself away fr om either of them. Only upon theater, which (I may say so as its author) is not superficial examination does the milieu of his merely a play written by a Sorbian playwright fantastic stories have nothing to do with a real that is 'also produced in German', but rather, it place. In reality, his hometown was more to him is an original Sorbian piece, although its Sorb than just a backdrop fo r his tales. He was ian author originally wrote it in German and permeated by its multitude of voices and its there was never a Sorbian version nor will there melancholy, by its shadiness, its susceptibility. ever be one. Of course this piece is a part of [ . ..] Kafkaspoke perfect, at best somewhat rigid Sorbian literature; however, at the same time, Czech; he wrote in German. He, who was not a 139 and research on the Self and the Other. Olo fOnt aorbluchon Jlowev Roglonon cr, my theoretical approach here is concerned 0 with the discourse surrounding-pure and mixed identities, surrounding cultural homogeneity L and ditl'erence in late modernity. L Beyond Unambiguity we evaluate current biographical material on @ If KalawaCalau the members of ethnic minorities, we will find an abundance of material on how individuals declare their affiliationwith two or more sepa rate ethnic semantics. The lyricist R6za Domas cyna recently commented on this in an inter view in which she stated that she had grown up in Lausitz (Lusatia) with two languages, and explained how she composes her literary work in both Sorbian and German. "As a child, lan guage was like a game to me," she says. you Sorblsche "If Spruchgeblele possess two languages, you remain curious."2 In Q nlodorsorblsch her essay "Warum das alles?" (Why all of this?), Q Oborgangsdlolekte she also speaks of the discontinuity and the Q oborsorblsch ambivalence of a life on the boundary: "I recall the reading assignments we had in school. Fried Fig. 1. The Sorbian area in eastern Germany. rich Schiller's Glocke (The Bell) and the Sor bische Bekenntnis (Sorbian Confession) by Ja German, but a Jew. Not a single Czech literary kub Bart-Cisinski". But it was not so much historian has ever summoned up the generosi Schiller and Cisinski who left a lasting impres ty, the courage or the tolerance to place him sion on her, says the writer, but rather "a lot of alongside Czech writers. The fe eling of being authentic banality": her own childhood, the excluded and of loneliness which runs through dissonance in the deeply religious family, the his prose was certainly a result of his predispo mother in traditional dress and herself in a sition, but also of his circumstances. He shared miniskirt, the mother who secretly learns the this with many of his peers" (Klima 1991: 89- Sorbian alphabet out of her daughter's school 90). book3, the father's accounts of the war, of the In the fo llowing contribution, we shall not "German war", in particular what he left out, simply be occupied with the question of wheth his states of panic, the Sorbian language, which er a cultural text or event can be credited to was oftenfo rbidden or at best only silently held more than one national culture: to the Czech or in contempt, the LPG4, the borders, idiomatic the Jewish, to the Sorbian or the German. expressions like "pol'sche Wirtschaft" (sham Rather, this contribution centers around the bles), "wend'sche Hanka" (Wendish Hanka), question: Can a person simultaneously identify "deutscher Michel" (the plain honest German), him- or herself with two or more individual "die lwans" (the Russkies), "Heimatlieder" ethnic semantics? Can, in this sense, a person (songs about the homeland) and what they have several ethnic identities? I am going to conceal. And all of this is bundled up with the base my empirical argumentation primarily on constant desire "to be different" (Domascy the example ofthe Sorbs - a Slavic minority in na 1995). Germany. 1 In this respect, my contribution is But itis not only the writers and the intellec linked to some of the findings of research on tuals who tell of a "divided, double life" - to cite minorities and migration, as well as to concepts the title of a poem by Domascyna. Research on 140 the ethnic sense of be longing or the "simple trips, weekend and extended vacations, cultur people" in the region supply an abundance of al festivals, diverse encounters, as well as em material on such an ambivalent life, e.g. the ployment across the border. Characteristic for work by lnes Keller, Surbische und deutsch this is, e.g., the Sorbian High School, which is sorbische Familienr.(Sor bian and German-Sorb just celebrating the 50th anniversary of its ian Families), which is based on extensive field fo unding: afterthe years ofN azi discrimination research. The investigations on cultural identi against the Sorbs in the Third Reich, the high ty carried out at the Sorbian High School in school was first established in Czechia. But Bautzen verify this: in interviews with stu another part ofthe banality ofevery life are the dents, events were portrayed which were de typical inspections at construction sites in or scribed by those questioned as "conflicting", der to catch people from the east doing illicit "split personality", or "[ have somewhat mixed work, or as has recently been the case, the feelings about it" ("das ist'n bil3chen gespalten tightened controls by border guards in order to bei mir").li And in a newspaper article under the catch illegal border crossers from non-EU coun spectacular title "Kamenzer Schulratin fiihrt tries. These individual examples clearly illus ein Doppelleben" (Kamenz school inspector leads trate that the people in this region exist beyond a double life), a situation is described which is unambiguity. not at all unusual for this region: "To a certain In a similar vein, research on migrants, extent, the woman leads a double life. When she refugees and other foreigners supplies informa gets up in the morning, mumbles a sleepy 'Do tion on how they fall back on different areas of bre Ranje!' to her husband, perhaps looks in on cultural semantics and practices and in many her mother, whom all her life she has only seen respects - including an ethnic one - lead double in traditional Sorbian dress, she is Lenka, Len lives. In her book Der getOtete Pafl (The Mur ka Pj echowa. Everyone in Ralbicy, where she dered Passport), Barbara Wolbert tells compact grewup as the oldest often children, knows her stories about people who come to the Federal in this way. The people here only speak German Republic of Germany fromTurkey to work here when strangers ask for directions. Moments for ten or more years before returning to Tur later, however, she climbs the steps leading to key.

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