German and Scandinavian Literary Perspectives, 1990-2005 a DISSERTATION SUBMIT
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Toward a Multiculturalism for the 21st Century: German and Scandinavian Literary Perspectives, 1990-2005 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Elisabeth Helena Karlsson IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Poul Houe Arlene A. Teraoka September 2008 © Elisabeth Helena Karlsson 2008 Acknowledgements I want to thank the following individuals and institutions for support and assistance: • My advisors, Arlene Teraoka and Poul Houe, whom I admire more than they know, and who always challenged me to think for myself and trust my own voice. • Monika Zagar and Ingeborg Kongslien for showing interest as well as encouragement. • Ruth-Ellen Joeres, for support and words of encouragement. • Kaaren Grimstad, for laughter in the mailroom, tea and friendship. • Charlotte Melin, for guidance in teaching and generous support. • Arsena Ianeva-Lockney, for friendship. • The department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch for several fellowships and TA-ships that helped me progress. • Gerhard Weiss for the fellowship in his name. • All my students of Swedish and German at the University of Minnesota for inspiring me to be a good teacher. • The wonderful students and staff at the American-Swedish Institute, Minneapolis, for loving the Swedish language and culture and for reminding me that learning is a life long project. • My dissertation group, Alison Guenther-Pal, Monika Moyrer, Nicole Grewling and Brechtje Beuker, for coming together in the spirit of cooperation and generosity. Danke Schön! • Roland Thorstensson at Gustavus Adolphus College for wisdom, kindness and humor. • Philip Bryant at Gustavus Adolphus for insight into poetry and how to translate poetry. • Bernard Reuter for correcting my German. • My mother and father in Sweden, Lisa and Allan Karlsson, for planting the seeds of independence and curiosity, for keeping me grounded and for always loving me unconditionally and being interested in what I do. • The rest of my family in Sweden, Torbjörn and Torgny and their families; Alva and Åke; for always been supportive. Jag saknar er! • Benjamin Fink, for intelligent feedback and a sharp editor’s eye. • Last, but not least, I want to thank my sambo Jairo Espinosa for generosity, optimism and love. Te quiero mucho. i Till Far och Mor Allan and Lisa ii Abstract This dissertation is a reading of literary texts from 1990-2005 by four authors of immigrant extraction in Germany and Scandinavia. I ask how these authors engage in both a reality of multiculturalism and a discourse of multiculturalism. The project is organized around the tension in these texts between negative experiences of ethnic and global disadvantage and positive representations of minority identity and cultural mixture. I argue that the four writers - Feridun Zaimoglu (Germany), Bertrand Besigye (Norway), Jonas Hassen Khemiri (Sweden) and Emine Sevgi Özdamar (Germany) – combine in their texts a serious critique of the dominant culture with a playful, critical, often provocative outlook on identity. In light of recent theoretical critiques of the terms “multiculturalism” and “minority”, I defend the value of minority perspectives and sensibilities to contemporary German and Scandinavian society, identity and culture. I start my discussion with an analysis of the Kanak identities in two of the Turkish- German Feridun Zaimoglu’s texts. I discuss how Zaimoglu’s appropriation of the derogatory word for foreigner in Germany serves a critique of a dominant German culture reluctant to embrace its new ethnic minorities. Then I analyze the Ugandan- Norwegian Bertrand Besigye’s prose poetry. I show how cultural and racial difference can be used playfully to insert difference into a national identity too narrowly and homogenously defined. In Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s texts, I discuss how Khemiri criticizes the ethnic definitions assigned to immigrants by the Swedish majority culture and how he pushes for a more open, cosmopolitan national identity. Engaging with the Turkish- German Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s texts, lastly, I examine how the author’s conciliatory and humorous attitude toward the reality of multiculturalism potentially fosters cross- cultural identification and more open and generous identities. In the end, I show that a multiculturalism worth defending is one that acknowledges persisting ethnic and racial inequalities and prejudices while it at the same time expands the horizons of our cultural, national and individual identities. iii Toward A Multiculturalism for the 21st Century: German and Scandinavian Literary Perspectives, 1990-2005 Elisabeth Helena Karlsson INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER 1 Feridun Zaimoglu, Germany: The Rebellious Kanaken…………...…………………………………………....33 CHAPTER 2 Bertrand Besigye, Norway: A Play with Cultural and Racial Difference…………………...………………76 CHAPTER 3 Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Sweden: Toward New Ethnic Mixtures…………………………………….………......122 CHAPTER 4 Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Germany: The Art of Loving Playfulness…………………………………….….…….....172 EPILOGUE A Multiculturalism for the 21st Century……………….……………………..221 WORKS CITED…………………………….…………………………......…..230 iv INTRODUCTION The linguistic manifestation of our mobility is called Kanaksprak, that is the Babylonian gibberish that this country has really been waiting for from an extremely loud and showy, extremely offended generation. 1 - Feridun Zaimoglu Outside Norway, to the south in Europe, the exaggerated, the theatrical, the expressive, is not something inferior. […] Maybe […] we fill that need for poets who have something to say, who dare to use feelings and colors. We are not afraid of the banal or the high- strung.2 - Bertrand Besigye We have Tunisian fathers and Swedish-Danish mothers and we are neither entirely Swedish nor entirely Arabic but something different […] a new collective without boundaries, without history, a creolized community where everything is mixed and hybridized. We are the reminder that their days are numbered. 3 - Jonas Hassen Khemiri I find it very beautiful,…when I notice…because I notice, that when you speak to people from your heart, regardless of what nationality you are, how much they open up. An old, lonely woman on the street in Germany, for instance, when I speak with her and notice how she opens up. That is, to bring out the childlike in people, to have a voice, without thinking about what you are. […] Yes, to see people without judging them. 4 - Emine Sevgi Özdamar 1 “Die sprachliche Manifestation unserer Mobilmachung heißt Kanak Spray, das ist das babylonische Kauderwelsch einer unbedingt auffälligen, unbedingt angestoßenen Generation, auf die dieses Land wirklich gewartet hat” (Zaimoglu, Kopf und Kragen 15). [All translations are done by myself if not otherwise indicated. I have not attempted a translation of slang or ethno-lects but attempted to translate into standard English]. 2 “Utenfor Norge, sørover i Europa, er ikke det overdrevne, det teatrale, det ekspressive noe mindreverdig. [...] Kanskje […] fyller vi et savn etter poeter som har noe å si, som våger å bruke følelser og farver. Vi er ikke redd det banale og det høyspente” (qtd. in Levin, ”Å dikte det er å leve“ 18). 3 “Vi har tunisiska pappor och svenskdanska mammor och vi är varken helt suedie eller helt arabis [my italics] utan något helt annat […] ett nytt kollektiv som saknar gränser, som saknar historia, en kreoliserad krets där allt är blandat och mixat och hybridiserat. Vi är påminnelsen om att deras tid är räknad” (Khemiri, Montecore 292). 4 “Ich finde es sehr schön,… wenn ich merke…, weil ich merke, wenn man mit Menschen so richtig aus dem Herz redet, egal welcher Nationalität, wie sehr sie sich auch aufmachen. Eine alte, einsame Frau auf der Straße in Deutschland z.B., wenn ich mit ihr rede und feststelle, wie sie sich aufmacht. Das heißt, die Kindlichkeit aus den Menschen herausholen, die Stimme haben, ohne darüber nachzudenken, was man ist. [..] Ja, die Menschen zu sehen, ohne sie zu beurteilen” (qtd. in Wierschke 263). 1 Multicultural Transformations During the past 60 years, the ethnic composition of Germany and the Scandinavian countries has undergone a massive shift. What were not long ago largely homogenous populations with small minority and immigrant subcultures have, quite quickly, become truly multi-ethnic and multicultural populations. Even Edward Said mentions Stockholm and Berlin in the context of a contemporary mass migration, the result of poverty, colonialism, decolonization, political revolution, famine, and ethnic cleansing: In a place like New York, but surely also in other Western metropoles like London, Paris, Stockholm, and Berlin, all these things are reflected immediately in the changes that transform neighborhoods, professions, cultural production… […] Exiles, émigrés, refugees and expatriates uprooted from their lands must make do in new surroundings, and the creativity as well as the sadness that can be seen in what they do is one of the experiences that has still to find its chroniclers. (Reflections on Exile xiv) Although neither immigration nor multiculturalism should be understood as new phenomena to our age or to the northern European nations, it is not an exaggeration to say that Germany and Scandinavia are currently undergoing significant identity transformations. By the turn of the third millennium, European nations have established that multiculturalism and ethnic diversity are definite social facts that will impact the future nation in significant