Gegenwartsliteratur r/fülitor in Chief f 1 lllll·lcr [email protected]) UIMl'lwr (zuständig f'tlr Rezensionen)/ Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch tnr for Book Reviews A German Studies Yearbook •• W. Knil'sche ([email protected]) latontinnen/Editorial Assistants 17/2018 .n1h11.1 Mattncr ([email protected]) ~lw11.1 t )'Laughlin ([email protected]) H•lrnt/ Advisory Board l'nkultätsmitglieder der deutschen Abteilung/ Schwerpunkt/Focus: l'nc.·ulty Members of the German Department, Wnshington University in St. Louis Emine Sevgi Özdamar M.itthcw Erlin,Jennifer Kapczynski, Kurt Beals, ( '.aroline Kita, Erin McGlothlin,James F. Poag, t :hristian Schneider, Lynne Tatlock, Gerhild S. Williams Herausgegeben von/Edited by Internationaler Beirat/International Advisory Board ( ;i.inter Blamberger, Universität zu Köln (DE) Paul Michael Lützeler, Rcbecca Braun, University of Lancaster (UK) lbrahima Diagne, Universite de Dakar (SN) Thomas W . .Kniesehe Bernhard Fetz, Oesterreichisches Literaturarchiv (AT) Natasha Gordinsky, University of Haifa (IL) Ortrud Gutjahr, Universität Hamburg (DE) lsabel Hernandez, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (ES) Alexander Honold, Universität Basel (CH) Suzuko M. Knott, Connecticut College (US) Alison Lewis, University of Melbourne (AU) Hiroko Masumuto, Kobe University OP) Judith Ryan, Harvard University (US) Paulo Soethe, Universidade Federal do Parana (BR) Herbert Uerlings, UniversitätTrier (DE) Doren Wohlleben, Universität Heidelberg (DE) Tornislav Zelic, Universität Zadar (HR) STAUffENBURC Leilian Zhao, Renrnin University (CN) VERLAC Gegenwartsliteratur is a member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ); www.celj.org Bibliogrqfische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
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ISSN 1617-8491 ISBN 978-3-95809-644-8 Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents
1. Schwerpunkt: Emine Sevgi Özdamar
ORTRUD GUTJAHR Theatrale Epik: Szenische Stadtkartierung und vernetzte Erzählspiele in Emine Sevgi Özdamars "Der Hof im Spiegel" 17 Der Beitrag geht von der Beobachtung aus, dass Emine Sevgi Özdamar in den Texten ihrer Erzählsammlung Der Hofim Spiegel häufig Stadtkartierungen mit inszenierten Spielszenen verbindet. Dass die Autorin erst durch diese Szenen die anonyme Stadt in einen individuell semantisierten Erinnerungsort transformiert, verdeutlicht die Analyse der titelgebenden Erzählung "Der Hofim Spiegel". Darin fungiert der Spiegel als Medium, das den Stadtraum mit der Innenwelt der Protagonistin verbindet, und zugleich als Bühne für imaginäre Inszenierungen. In einem theatralen 'Hier und Jetzt' schieben sich die unterschiedlichen Zeitebenen eines Trauerprozesses ineinander und die signifikante Differenz zwischen Noch-Leben und Schon-gestorben-Sein scheint aufgehoben. Mit dieser szenischen Stadtkartographie und den ver fremdenden Spiegelinszenierungen knüpft Özdamar an Brechts Erneuerung theatraler Darstellungsformen an und entwickelt eine ganz eigene Form theatraler Epik. ([email protected])
LESLIE A. ADELSON Future Narrative as Contested Ground:Emine Sevgi Özdamar's "Bahnfahrt" and Michael Götting's Contrapunctus 41 Opening with Adorno's 20'h-century reflections "from damaged life" on exilic writing as a break in time, this essay analyzes innovative forms of ra- dical futurity in little known 21"-century fiction by Emine Sevgi Özdamar, who holds emblematic status on Germany's path from Turkish migration to transcultural Europe, and Michael Götting, who has authored the first sustained novel about Black German experience in contemporary Berlin. Minoritarian future-making in Özdamar's "Bahnfahrt" (2008) and Götting's Contrapunctus (2015) is illuminated in formal and social terms with the narratological concept of"future narrative" and Hannah Arendt's philoso- phical insistence on a structural breach in the "heart of time."The literary comparison demonstrates in turn Özdamar's and Götting's cutting-edge German-language contributions to future studies and narrative theory today. (laa [email protected]) 8 Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents 9
B.VENKAT MANI of intimacy as represented in the text, and consider the interpretive work Passport Stories: Aesthetic Affordances, Political Forms, and of reading intimacy politically. Emine Sevgi Özdamar's Short Fiction 69 (beverly. we [email protected]) This essay draws attention to the material and the symbolic import of a passport: as a legal document that defines a human being's political subjec CLAIRE AMANDA ROSS tivity, especially in the context of migration and naturalization of citizenship, The Avian Muttermund in Emine Sevgi Özdamar's Das Leben and as a narrative of overlapping intersectional identities determined by the ist eine Karawanserei 135 status of the nation in larger world politics. In both these forms (material and The mother-son narratives told by paternal grandmother Ay~e in Emine symbolic) this essay argues that a passport shapes and informs the contours of Sevgi Özdamar's Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei, which draw on two ver a human being's home, belonging, and cultural citizenship. Passport narratives sions of the mythic mouth-vulva analogy, perpetuate more often than in literature serve as an apt site for investigations of aesthetic and political undermine dominant phallocentric discourse on motherhood. Her regular forms. To this end, the essay provides a discussion of short prose written by stories celebrate mothers who brutally combat the threat that non-mothers' the Turkish-German author Emine Sevgi Özdamar. vaginae dentatae (devouring sexuality) pose to their sons and fathers. Yet, ([email protected]) in her outlier, a divine mother bird acquires a loving tongue, enabling a womb-like relationship with a boy. The intersubjective relationship between LIZZIE STEWART boy and bird, based on an organ (tongue) that is present as a possibility, Precarious Prose in Emine Sevgi Özdamar's "Bitteres Wasser" 93 even when absent, undercuts the phallocentrism of Ay~e's other tales and Emine Sevgi Özdamar's 2009 text"Bitteres Wasser" is a complex prose la.ment the (protagonist's) world, and invites a feminist reconceptualization of addressing the murder ofArmenian activist Hrant Dink, the historical fate of even the penis itself. the Pontos Greeks, and the death of a homeless man in Berlin. This article ([email protected]) investigates the formal and ethical role of these connective narratives of death and vulnerability, bringing understandings of Özdamar's work developed JOSEPH TWIST by literary scholars such as Liesbeth Minnaard, Leslie A.Adelson, and Kader Sacred and Secular Spaces: Emine Sevgi Özdamar's Das Leben Konuk into conversation with recent theorisations of "precarity" in the ist eine Karawanserei and "Großvater Zunge" 165 work ofJudith Butler and Marianne Hirsch. Moving from performativity to In Emine Sevgi Özdamar's novel Karawanserei and short story "Großvater precarity, from the ethnic to the ethical, this article explores how theoretical Zunge" sacred and secular spaces are invariably ambiguous. A theoretical concerns with "precarity" and the related "ethical turn" in German literature focus on spatial practices, informed by post-structuralist thinkers and Is extend understandings of Özdamar's aesthetic project. lamic studies scholars, illuminates the ambivalent relationships Özdamar's ([email protected]. uk) protagonists have with both Islam and the politics of secularism. Contrary to binary thinking, these texts demonstrate that both concepts, understood BEVERLY M. WEBER broadly, contain the potential to coerce and yet also to offer ways of resisting Precarious Intimacies: Politics and Solidarities in Emine Sevgi such coercion. The autonomy and modernizing potential inherent within Özdamar's Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn 115 the Islamic understanding of space is particularly foregrounded, as female In this article I propose the notion of precarious intimacies as entry point characters convey fluid religious identities precisely because they can re into the representation of the political in Emine Sevgi Özdamar's work. appropriate their confinement in the private sphere by creating their own Through an analysis of Die Brücke vom Go/denen Horn, I explore intimacies sacred space away from institutionalized places of worship. as sites of transformation and political potentiality in the novel, as spaces [email protected]) that nurture political solidarities and spaces in which their loss is most keenly felt. Reading for precarious intimacies reveals aesthetic strategies that highlight the politically generative capacity of intimacy in the face of precarity, but also enacts a politics of interpretation that might challenge the conditions of precarity. I thus both examine the politics and aesthetics 10 Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents 11
JOHN PIZER hinsichtlich der Gestaltung von 'Europa' und 'Asien'. Beide Autorinnen Europe in East Berlin: betonen anhand unterschiedlicher geographischer Schwerpunkte häufig Emine Sevgi Özdamar's Ostalgic Constructions 187 übersehene, enge Beziehungen beider Räume, zeigen aber auch Gründe Emine Özdamar evokes positive images of East Berlin in two of her Mut- für tiefgreifende politische Konflikte in und zwischen 'Europa' und 'Asien' terzunge stories and in the later novel Seltsame Sterne. Her tableaux oflife in auf. Literatur und Theater erscheinen demgegenüber als Bereiche supra these works are informed by a nostalgic attitude toward the cosmopolitanism nationaler Verständigung und Begegnung. Deutschland als geographischer and tolerance she found in the vanished East Berlin capital, in contrast to Ort, deutsche Geschichte und deutschsprachige Literatur sind für beide auf the police state atmosphere she perceived in West Berlin when she lived in Deutsch verfassten Theaterstücke inhaltlich gleichermaßen zentral. both cities from 1976177. Her "Ostalgie" can best be elucidated through ([email protected]) Svetlana Boym's "refiective nostalgia" paradigm, allowing the narrator to "inhabit many places at once," memorially shuttling benveen her childhood Turkish home and East Berlin, a possibility not afforded by life in the police II. Einzelinterpretationen state atmosphere of West Berlin at the height ofRedArmy Faction violence. ([email protected]) MONIKA SCHMITZ-EMANS Sammeln als ästhetische Praxis: ANGELA WEBER Gerhard Roths fotografisch-literarisches CEuvre 263 Das Lautwerden der Sprache: Gerhard Roths CEuvre und seine Poetik stehen im Zeichen des Sammelns, Özdamars 'Periktz1' zwischen Fluch und Versöhnung 209 wie sich insbesondere anhand der Sammlungen seiner Photo-Arbeiten zeigt, Der vorliegende Beitrag liest die in Emine Sevgi Özdamars Theaterstück die mit den literarischen Arbeiten eng verzahnt sind. Anhand von Roths Perikiz1. Ein Traumspiel umgesetzte grotesk-kornische Adaption der Odyssee Photomotiven und deren Konstellationen in den Photobänden lassen sich Homers im Sinne einer kritischen Aufnahme unserer gegenwärtigen condi- paradigmatisch zwei gegenläufige und komplementäre Ausformungen einer tio humana. Die in der Chiffre des halbverbrannten Waldes vorgenommene Poetik des Sammelns unterscheiden - eine Oszillation zwischen stabilisieren- raumzeitliche Verdichtung des europäischen Kriegsgeschehens der letzten der und destabilisierender Sammlungspraxis. Photos und Photosammlungen hundertJahre erscheint dabei als Parabel für die problematische Seite unserer sind bei Roth einerseits Medien der "Feststellung", des Dokumentierens, patriarchal geprägten westlichen Zivilisation. Besonderes Interesse gilt der Konservierens, Erinnerns, des Zugriffi auf gegenwärtige und vergangene, durch den Transfer europäischer Literaturen im Stück realisierten kaleido natürliche, soziale und historische Wirklichkeit. Zum anderen repräsentieren skopischen Blickführung sowie der gedanklichen Leitfigur vom Traum und sie den Typus der"prekären" Sammlung, die auf Vergänglichkeit und Insta- Alptraum Europa. Die in Özdamars geschichtspoetischer Revue realisierte bilität verweist und damit auch ihre eigene Zeitlichkeit betont. Inszenierung eines Grenzortes wird als Geste des Widerstands gedeutet und ([email protected]) eröffnet damit zugleich eine utopische Dimension. So offeriert die gegen Ende in Aussicht gestellte Poetik des widerständigen Dichterworts das Ver SEBASTIAN WOGENSTEIN sprechen einer transnationalen Zukunft. The Problem of Evil in a World in Crisis: ([email protected]) Monika Maron's Krähengekrächz and Zwischenspiel 287 Reflections on the notions of evil and guilt are central topics in Monika ANNE-ROSE MEYER Maron's novel Zwischenspiel and her essay Krähengekrächz.This article exami- 'Europa' und'Asien' in Theaterstücken Emine Sevgi Özdamars nes how these reflections consider various characters' actions in their impact und Yoko Tawadas 235 on others and on society writ large. lt also shows how Maron's engagement Emine Sevgi Özdamar undYoko Tawada sind richtungweisende Autorinnen with political and historical circumstances in both texts invites questions deutschsprachiger Gegenwartsliteratur, deren Bühnentexte selten untersucht of societal evils, collective guilt, and the responsibility to act in the face of wurden. Eine exemplarisch vergleichende Betrachtung ausgewählter Stücke individual and social suffering. In the innocent world of animals, such as - Perik1z1 (2010) von Özdamar und Pulverschrift Berlin (2004) von Tawada the crov
recarious Intimacies: Politics and Solidarities in Emine Sevgi Özdamar's Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn
1 111 Hmine Sevgi Özdamar's most explicitly autobiographical work, th1· rnixed diary/memoir Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde, the narrator &li•,cribes an embodied traumatic reaction to the political violence th.1t resulted from the repression of the student and left movements 111 t he late 1960s and early 1970s:
Wenn wir uns liebten, dachte ich immer an die Menschen, die in den Gefängnissen saßen. Sie können niemanden küssen, sie haben nie manden, mit dem sie wie zwei Löffel im Bett liegen können. Jedes Fleisch, das wir brieten, jeder Apfel, in den ich biss, kam mir wie ein Verrat vor an denen, die im Gefängnis saßen. (Seltsame Sterne, 25)
Tliis short passage exemplifies the ways in which Emine Sevgi Öz• ll.1111ar's oeuvre emphatically locates intimacy as political by suggest lllK how political violence circumscribes the possibilities of intimacy. t1111 this article, 1 examine the novel Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn, wl11ch offers up a complex engagement with political developments 111 West Germany and Turkey from 1966-1975,1 written in decep tlwly simple language and equally deceptively naive tone. As the un n11111ed narrator comes of age in the fraught politics of various left 1n·m·s in both countries (amidst their contradictory approaches to .. r111a11cipatory sexuality and gender justice), she collects words, head lltH·s and books just as she collects sexual experiences, theater expe . rlrnces, and political experiences. 1 propose to consider precarious intimacies in this text as an eJ?..try poi11t into the experience and representation of the political in Oz dn111ar's work. A central dilemma that faces interpretations of this text rrvolves around the treatment of intimacy and subjectivity. J>:.: number of rnnvincing studies have examined the relationship of Ozdamar's trxts to the political upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s in Turkey and · ( irrrnany, for example, as context for the traumatic language of her trxts (Yildiz), or as witness to the transnational revolutions of 1968 117 / 'n"Carious Intimacies
. . . h. s su ests that intimacy itself - our and their violent repression (Schonfield). Elsewhere I have read pl'rsiste~ce of mt:J.mate relattl~n:r;J co!~unities, our solidarities, our political participation of her characters as weil as their sexual co nmnecnons to other_ peop hallen e the very forms of power that of age against the dominant racialized gender norms at work in po \harings _ may fun~t:J.on to ~ g lar discourse in Germany (Weber 2010;Weber 2013). Here, howeve n·nd~r such intimac:es pre~~n~ili-"erent here than the work Margaret wish to explore intimacies more broadly as sites of transformation 1 mtend someth1~g. a lt . 1. n which she draws on Deleuz- political potentiality in the novel. Intimacies provide moments of eo 1.ittler does in her msightful _pdiec~, - ·n Özdamar's Der Hef im . . d to cons1 er mtimacy 1 . h nection that enable a politics against violence, yet they are also mar · 1.111 theones m or er . d f assionate engagement (w1t - by tremendous violence, whether at the hands of the state, as a eo Spiegel as a "a :neta~~or _for) a.::~ ier1:nan life and cult':1~e" (Littler, sequence of gender norms, or because of the pain of separation out necessary identl i~ation . where known identmes expand " of mdeterrmnacy a:. loss. Intimacies are paradoxically both sites that nurture political .U2), or as a zone „ (L. tl 342) Littler's readings for auect idarities and the space in which their loss is keenly felt. In this sc 1heir capac~ty to becor;:~ n ~ t~r~ropes. at the time that defined the I am working with two related understandings of intimacy (nei provide an important c " _e g an b considering Turkey only as of which would relegate intimacy to anything like a private sph . understanding _o~"Tur~~ m_ Ge;~el th~n considering how Turkish In one, "disciplinary power, governmentality, or biopolitics - chi .1 source of o~1~mary_ 1 ent1l~ transformation and change. H~r~, l in the form of discourse - use intimacy to regulate bodies and po · ( ;ermans part1c1pate 1~ ;ng~ g . timacies serve as sites for cons1d~ lations in ways that distribute life chances unevenly" (Wilson, 251); ~hift the ~ocus to cons1. er th~wo:~er in the face of precarity. ~n pie a related sense, I approach intimacy for the ways in which it en i-ring eth1cal contact w1th (hereafter Brücke), intimate potenti:111t1es ethical connections and social interaction necessary for political acti Brücke vom Gol4enen Horn . they reveal· in turn, the v10lent In both senses intimacy is always deeply politicized. .ire limited prec1s~ly by the precar~tydded destroy the solidarities-i~ Reading for precarious intimacies reveals aesthetic strategies ronditions m wh1ch t~ey are em e from which political res1s- . . that serve as important sources highlight the politically generative capacity for touch, care, and c ummacy t d nection, in ways that uncover the structures of violence in which tance can be articulated and enach e . ome to be attached to a di- are embedded and that render them precarious. Furthermore, rea :· Precarity and r:recarious:iess ave t~e conditions of labor created for precarious intimacies enacts a politics of interpretation that ' verse set of meamngs, rangmg ;rodin;i t onomy and "flexible" work r · to a post-1or s ec challenge the conditions of precarity in the hope of working to , by a trans1ormatio:i . . fi roduced in part as response justice. In other words, I examine the politics and aesthetics of in · (Precarias), to neol~beral i~ent(' orm~ p forms of vulnerability that cy as represented in the text, but also consider the interpretive to growing labor mse~uniu~~~eY~utfer 2016). The pr?tagonist of of reading intimacy politically. As an aesthetic strategy, precarious ... ,ire fundament~ to ~emg an to work in factories, m1ght be seen timacies represent connection and solidarity and challenge the fo. · Brücke, who arnves m Ger:n y f the former as her experience cer that produce precarity. As reading strategy, precarious intimacies; tn challenge some as~umpt~ons 0 k . typic.tl "Fordist" economy is low us to recognize and articulate how intimacies are embedded · tainly suggests. that hfe an :wornt fab~rers who filled Germany's la forms of violence, even as alliances and affinities may also present ;1lready precar_10us for the nngr\ 960s Here, though, I wish to con ments of defiance and resistance against forms of exclusion. Precari hor shortage m the 1950s ad? f ~ulnerability as fundamental to intimacies are thus critical, poetic and generative. They engage . sider the broader un~erstan mg_ ol.ty we are always already vulner- . e _ m our socia 1 , (B 1 precarity in the sense of regimes of sexual difference, border con human expenenc d b d.l exposure to others ut er immigration policies, religious belief, and labor (including sexu · , able in our dependence Oll ar ~-~~ is differentially distributed labor) that render certain groups differentially vulnerable to the 2012, 140-141),fbut _t~tyt ;;a~~7te~ humanize certain groups only of death and violence (Judith Butler in Puar, 169-170). They gene through forms 0 socia Wi h r 43) strong affective responses, networks, even new forms of political partially or.. not at ~ (Puar, J~~vet i: dr~~n r~ad as the second book gagement and collectivities. Precarious intimacies may emerge amQ Brücke,
"'411 : 111 1:'rdc (indeed, these three texts were republishe4 hungrig blieb, dachte ich an mei?-e Mutter, oder wenn ich die H.aut CttfY 111 2fHI<>). Brücke describes the coming-of-age of an un.:.; ntrd 11.1rr.1tor from Istanbul who quits high school because she; an meinem Finger etwas herausriss und es weh tat. Da?-n ?achte ich, low~ ll1c.1tl'r. She decides to move to West Germany for a year as dieser Schmerz ist meine Mutter" (Brücke, 21).As she lies m her bed, she hears her friend Rezzan tossing and turning - and Rezz~n and ,, JJ,tll'St worker to earn money for theater school. While there she her mother immediately enter into her thoughts as well .. This em w1 >rks in a _Berlin factory that produces parts for radios; 2 she gains · bodied relationship to her mother is linked to her opemng up to a11d loses fnends as they move on to other lives. She returns brief- . ly to Turkey before studying German at a Goethe Institute in Swit- ' Rezzan. Their intimacy relies on an opening of the body to others. ze~la~d (Brücke, 108), and then working at another factory in Berlin,· As Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey suggest, "In this sense, 'my ~ody' this t~me as a translator. Shortly after Benno Ohnesorg is killed in ', does not 'belong to me:' embodiment is what opens out ~he ~ntima 196 7, she moves back to Istanbul to continue her study of theater, cy of 'myself' with others. The relatio~ship betwe.e?- bodies is .c~~r and forges conn.ections with left student groups. Throughout these '1 acterized by a 'with' that precedes, or is the condit10~ o~ possibihty ~ncounters, she is often the only woman at the table, silently listen for the apartness of'my body"' (Ahmed / Stacey, 5). Sirmlarly to Ju m~ t.o the discussi<:>i:is or ~inging various songs at the request of the ' dith Butler, Ahmed and Stacey here posit the border of the body as activists. As the pohtical chmate deteriorates with the growing power produced by a relationship with an other, a contact that renders the of fascist groups such as the Gray Wolves, the streets of Istanbul be body both vulnerable, and capable of politics. At .tim~s, Butl~r has come increasingly violent. After writing a journalistic piece on the theorized this vulnerability as a marker of our ethical imperative .to conditions for peasants in the far east of Turkey, the narrator is tar the other: in an ethical relationship, "The I is undone" as a speof geted ~)'. the police and eventually imprisoned - ostensibly not for ic form of dispossession (Butler 2012, 142). In h~man:s inherent so her wntmg, but for love letters her boyfriend Kerim has written her ciality, we are all vulnerable, and we are all precanous m the sense ?f in which he discusses life in the army. At the same time as their re being subject to the threat of dea~h at the h.ands of ~noth~r. Yet, m lease, several student leaders are hanged. She then moves back to any given specific context, precano/ resu~ts m the differential expo Berlin, leaving on the day of Franco 's death in 197 5. sure to death and violence. The relat10nship of one body to another, The novel is structured around a series of intimate relationships the "being-with" of bodies, is marked by t~e soci~l ~elationships that that accompany unfolding possibilities for political action, as well as rely on this intimacy, on the processes o~ differentia~10n produced ?Y the interruption or even demise of such possibilities. The beginning gender, race, and nation, requiring contmual a~ten.ti<:>n to the ethics and end of the novel are focused on the deteriorating and then re of bodily contact (Ahmed / Stacey, 5-7): Precanty is mflected by our built relationship between the daughter and her parents; the first half social relationships, including our raciahzed and gendered econo?1- also chronicles shifting friendships while the second half details a se ... ic relationships; it is marked by "the p~esei:ice .or ~bse~ce of sustam ries of sexual encounters as well as a more serious relationship with ing infrastructures and social and pohtical mstitut~<:>ns (Bude~ 2012, a youn~ filmmaker, Kerim. At th~ near-center of the novel, at a piv 148). Vulnerability might, neverthel~ss, be ~o.bihz~d as resistance otal poi.nt, stands an encounter with a Spanish student in Paris,Jordi. (Butler 2016). Yet Brücke's representations of mtimaoes also offer up Jordi will come to be described as the "narrator's first love," (Brücke, significant limits to this line ?f .thin~ing. As the t:xt ~rogresses, the 228; 323) and memories of and letters from Jordi inflect much of the destruction of networks and mtimaoes (a destruct10n m part enact second half of the novel as weil. ed through intimacy itself) is so thorough that it prompts a diss'?lu The author rather explicitly positions each intimacy as an embod tion of the narrator's body, as further addressed below. ~?at .rmg?t ied politics. This is even true of the relationship to her mother at a this entail for the possibility of ethical contact and partiopati~::m m distance from Berlin to Istanbul. She reflects on the fact that she has the political? In particular, as Bu~ler art~culates these thoughts i~ re forgotten many things from her life in Istanbul, but not her moth lationship to a politics of embodied resistance that ~xpr:ss:s as . tak er'. Nev:rtheless, unsure of how to retain a memory as a physical re ing to the streets" - how migh~ we cons~~er precanous mtimaoes as lationship to her mother, she asks, "Wie aber denkt man an eine an aesthetic strategy to engage m the pohtical? Mutter?" She notes that "Ich merkte auch, wenn ich nichts aß und 121 1 ~~', Beverly M. Weber J>recarious Intimacies
II Sätzen: '~Gott schützt mich hier mit der Hilfe meines Vaters - ich 1 hl'gin with the unnamed mother because this relationship frames ·• schwöre, ich werde hier keine schlechten Sachen machen." (Brücke, 33) the text, but also because it allows us to recognize precarious inti- · macies outside of the more obvious sexual encounters that occupy • The suffocating regulation of the three friends' sexuality creates a much more space in the text. The text opens on the train from Is- · foar of fathers and brothers that the narrator never expresses vis-a tanbul to Berlin, with the narrator's recollection of the intense fights vis her own father (she does not have a brother). The narrator and with her mother over the narrator's school performance; as the nar her friends begin to speak quietly around the phone booth (Brücke, rator increasingly gets involved with theater productions, her school J4), so their parents cannot hear them until reading the boo.k performance suffers, and eventually she decides to quit and move to ,· '/1ie Picture of Dorian Gray inexplicably ends their fear, and the1r Berlin. Already in the first pages, however, the longing for her moth- ' imaginative relationship to their parents through the unused phone er is profound: a memory of shared trips to the opera and theater, . booth can be reestablished. even of a shared love for meatballs (unfortunately the meatballs at As these attempts to police the three girls' sexuality continue, a the imbiss she frequents in Berlin prove to be made of horsemeat). · brief moment of respite occurs upon the first snowfall. A form of This longing is eventually expressed in a relationship to the tele mimicry that occurs when everybody stays in the dormitory opens phone booths at Anhalter Bahnhef, which is located near the narra up their bodies to one another: tor's dormitory. This is the shell of a bombed-out train station in the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg, at the time within view of the Alle Frauen machten die Gesichtsausdrücke, die Handbewegungen und Berlin Wall, which stands atop a still-functioning underground tran die Dialekte der anderen nach [... ] . Ihre Gesichter und Körper und sit stop. The station is notorious as one of three stations in Berlin Münder nahmen die Gesichter, Körper und Dialekte der anderen in sich from which deportations of Berlin Jews took place, near a bunker auf [„.] und sie fanden sich wieder zusammen. Im Bus saßen sie wie in which thousands of non-Jewish Berlin residents tried to survive der gemischt zusanunen, in der Wonaymk:üche gaben sie sich Töpfe und the bombings in the latter days ofWorld War II. The ruins were torn · Pfannen von Hand zu Hand, ohne sich zu fragen, ob diese Hände den down in 1960 with the exception of a portion of one wall. Because Zuckers oder Eseln oder Kindern oder Huren gehörten. 4 (Brücke, 43) in Turkish the root for "broken" and "offended" is the same, the train station becomes the "offended train station," important enough to l n the complex and ever-shifting relationships between the wom become the title of part one of the book. This backdrop signals a : en in the dormitory, the narrator's own intimacy to her mother is prior failed intimacy, the lack of ethical contact between Jewish imagined and transformed, but also embedded in moments of possi Germans and most non-Jewish Germans during fascism. ble collectivity with her friends and dormitory mates. Later, through Whenever the three young women pass the telephone booth lo acting as a mother in theater performances, the narrator feels that cated near the ruins, even though they do not place calls, they imag she has been able to again discover her mother (Brücke, 223). Af ine their parents in Turkey as able to hear them through the phone, •· ter her imprisonment, she discovers that her parents have come. to and speak loudly so that their parents can hear them better (Brücke, l'spouse the socialist politics to which the narrator hers~lf. aspires 25; 29). This relationship to the phone booth is interrupted, however, (Brücke, 327), even as Kerim responds to the trauma of the1r 1mpns when some women residents of their dorm seek to police the sex onment with a shift away from their shared political views. uality of the residents by creating fear of fathers and brothers. These .. The mother-daughter intimacy in this text is thus a .complex a:id other women warn the three friends that living in a room with tWQ l'Volving intimacy in which their love and connect1on occup1es lesbians has tainted them in the eyes of their male relatives: ~hifting roles as part of a disciplining i~to. a~c~ptable gender.and sex uality, a series of challenges to those disc1plinmgs, and certam empa [.. .I]hre Sätze über die Brüder und Väter weben ein Spinnennetz, das thetic understandings of their political views and their care for one das ganze Zimmer und unsere Körper bedeckt. Ich fing an, vor ihren another. Their touch through the telephone, their occupation of the Brüdern und vor meinem Vater Angst zu kriegen [... ] Jedes Mal, wenn sbared space of the home, and, at the end, even the narrator's bed ich Angst bekam, schrieb ich an meine Mutter einen Brief mit solchen room as she cries in advance of her final journey to Berlin, produce ------·---·-·-····-··
122 Beverly M. Weber Precarious Intimacies 123
intimacies that are deeply marked by political violence and yet also '. humor of this particular moment is lost, however, in the later encoun are the source for unexpected political solidarity. This is particular- . ters that will eventually even lead to imprisonment. N evertheless, at ly evident in the final pages of the novel, as the narrator walks the 1 this moment state surveillance and violence impinge primarily on the bridge of the golden horn a final time and listens to the thoughts narrator's co~trol over her own sexuality and body, in particular, her of the mothers whose children are being targeted, imprisoned, and desire to interrupt the insertion of her sexuality into a gendere~ sex killed by the Turkish state, a point to which 1 return below. ual economy that attaches value to virginity (as signaled by an mtact Like the first part of the text, "Der beleidigte Bahnhof," the ti hymen). Although for the narrator this particular encounter was_ tak tle of the second, "Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn," refers to an en as a sign that she had better seek her se~ elsewhere, t~e expenence important site of ethical encounter as intimacy in creating possibil- , is also reminiscent of the disappointment m the revoluuonary po~er ities for the political. As a space where the narrator seeks to unpack of sex emerging already by the early 1970s: "The ~opes that making her complex relationship to "Europe" and "Asia" (McGowan) and as love would also make revolution were rather qmckly dashed. Per a space of potentiality, becoming, and transition (Arslan), the bridge haps pleasure, sex, and politics did not really belong together; evide~t also occupies an important role in her experience of intimacy. ly encouragements to ever new sexual experimentation. could coexist In the latter chapter of Part 1 and in Part 2, the narrator's sexu with support for militarism in Vietnam and a profit-onented market al encounters increasingly dominate the plot. During these sections, economy" (Herzog 2011, 134) - or, in_ this case, wit~ the intense sur she is particularly concerned to "get rid of her diamond," as she ex veillance of those critical of the Turkish state. In th1s way, the book presses it, in order to become a better actress and thinker; later, sex is gestures to the ways in which the potential solidarity of intimacies ~s seen as a key aspect of a revolutionary lifestyle; "guter Sex hängt von also subject to other limits of violence produced by gendere? expen revolutionärem Bewusstsein ab" (Brücke, 252), the narrator's eventu ences of state violence. The narrator is viewed as sexually available due al boyfriend, Kerim, argues. These developments locate the narrator in to her left-oriented politics - and in some ways, this serves her weil in the wide-ranging discussions about sex and sexual pleasure that were her quest to gain sexual experience. The student continues to atte1:1pt part of the new left movements, some of which associated sex with to interrogate her even in bed; when she declares th~t she h~r~elf 1s a an anti-fascist stance (Herzog 2011, 147; Herzog 1998), and many of . Communist, he is aroused. Yet he comically turns his surve1lling eye which imagined a world where sexual emancipation would lead to • on himself, interrupting the narrator's potential for pleasure. much broader societal revolution (Herzog 2011, 134-135; Herzog In the wake of this unsuccessful experience, the narrator resolves 1998). The eventual obsession with orgasm as measure of pleasure also only to trust socialists and seeks_ out those whon: she thii:iks she can makes its way into the novel, in which a number of friendly discus sleep with easily, hoping to av01d a need to nav~gate th~ir conc_~rns sions take place around whether or how orgasm is achieved. Indeed, that "Turkish girls" might wish to ensnare them_ m m~rnage (Brucke, at this slippage between revolutionary act and individual pleasure, one 164), or their expectations of a more stable relat1onsh1p. ~any of the sees a manifestation of the evolution of the sexuality discussions of the narrator's briefer conquests are never given names: th~ Liml?mg So mid to late 1970s in Europe, as they increasingly depoliticized sex. cialist, Wooden Leg, and the Owl are encountered m vanous left In many intimate encounters, the Turkish secret police disrupt inti gathering places in Berlin and Istanbul. _In all '?f these_ ~ncou_nters, mate contact. This occurs in brief encounters as well as in longer re she tends to remain a silent participant m ensumg poht1cal discus lationships. On a trip to Paris, for example, the narrator is taken in by sions, responding with rote phrases such as "we can dis~~ss that". o_n a group of Turkish students. They bring her to a room where a man the rare occasion when her opinion is asked. The poht1cal part1c1- turns on a lamp in an already brightly lit room, a staging of interroga pation that grows out of these encou?-ters does not happen i?- the tion and surveillance against the putative welcome. He proceeds to ask space of the intimate encounters, nor m_ the overtly poht1cal disc~s her questions that invite her to inform on Turkish students, particu sions in the bars and cafes, but rather m the way the narrator m larly Communists (Brücke, 127-128). At night, when one of the Turk creasingly politicizes her understanding of theater, language, and her ish students comes to her bed, he is so busy asking about Communists own movement through various city spaces. . . and watching his own body as he fl.exes his muscles that "vom viel The pivotal sexual encounter in the n~vel occurs ~ith a_ Spamsh en Beobachten blieb mein Diamant weiter bei mir" (Brücke, 128). The leftist student she encounters in Paris,Jordi. Not only 1s Jord1 named, 124 Beverly M. Weber Precarious Intimacies 125 but even the narrator is named, after a fashion, as weil. Her encounter narrator can speak to each other, even though they are communicatinf? with him is central to the text, literally and structurally. In an almost . in their extremely lirnited English. Shortly before they separate, Jordi out-of-body experience, the narration slips into third person narra-: also writes a poem to the narrator. This is the only moment when the tion to describe their three days together, referring to herself and Jor narrator comes close to receiving a name herself shortly before they di as the girl and the boy. In this intimate contact, time slows down part, he asks her name (Brücke, 144). Earlier he had also asked how to and stretches for the narrator; at one point, she even demands it: say "my love" in Turkish (Brücke, 140). Althou~h the narrat~; doe~ .no~, record her response, Jordi begins the poem with the word Sevgilim, Sie sagte "wait," der Junge wartete, sie wartete. [... ] Ich schaute mir die (Brücke, 144) referencing "Sevgi" as both a common name in Turkish Brüste des Mädchens an, und das Mädchen schaute in die Augen des .. (and the second name of the author) as weil as the word for "love" or Jungen. Die Augen des Mädchens vergrößerten die Augen des Jungen , "dear," thus meaning both "my Sevgi" and "my love" or "my dear" in so lange, bis er nur ein Auge wurde. Die Sonne gab ihren letzten Atem Turkish. Their point of contact is perhaps of all the intimacies one most und zog sich langsam zurück von ihren Körpern. (Brücke, 133) dearly rooted in an equitable encounter. Their mutual, deliberate ac knowledgement of each other's name, in stark contrast to the rest of Whereas so much of the book is punctuated by passages of rapid the text, lends this encounter a particular weight. As they learn each fire headlines that suggest a quick passage of time, in these few pag~ . other's name, they also teach each other songs and poetry; in many of es with Jordi, the headlines disappear. After a deeply sensuous several · the narrator's other encounters, she is only trying to learn in order to days described in detailed descriptions of touch, sun, rain, fire, song catch up with her partners' knowledge. Jordi and the narrator commu and poetry, their last evening together ends with them both fever nicate in their equally lirnited English, while in many of the other sex ish and sick. The narrator doesn't see any blood on the mattress and ual encounters the narrator is muted by a sense that she does not have concludes that she has not "given up" her diamond. In the foilowing ' an adequate (political) language to communicate with her partners. pages, she will continually mourn the fact that she did not leave her ' Throughout the remainder of the novel, Jordi will often be re diamond with Jordi (Briicke, 142; 152; 162). She eventually choos forred to as "my first love;" frequently the narrator thinks of him, es the "Limping Socialist;' a Turkish socialist sent to Berlin to found. ways in conjunction with the fact that Franco remains in power: a socialist group. She successfully plots how to get him to sleep with her. After painful sex, and then repeated sex throughout the night, Ich staunte, dass ein Linker wie Jordi in Spanien legal zur Post gehen, she gets up to discover that again, there is no blood. She decides . eine Briefinarke kaufen und in ein fremdes Land eine Karte schicken that she left her diamond with Jordi after all: "[Ich] verstand, dass · konnte. Ich las die Karte deswegen auch heimlich, damit er in Spanien ich meinen Diamanten schon in Paris bei Jordi gelassen hatte, ich keine Schwierigkeiten mit der Polizei bekäme. Auf die Karte schrieb ich war schon seit Paris, ohne es zu wissen, eine Frau gewesen" (Brücke, zwei Sätze von Lorca - "Grün wie ich dich liebe, grün. Grüner Wind, 165).5 The lack of knowledge about her own body here, as odd as : und grüne Zweige." - und warf sie ins Meer mit Jordis Adresse. Das it seems, is less important in the text than two other consequenc.., Meer würde sie ihm bringen. Jordis Karte machte mich so glücklich, dass es: she controls the narrative of her own sexuality, and forges a pow ich elektrische Schläge bekam, wenn ich einen Gegenstand anfasste. Ich erful connection with Jordi in a context that feels "out of time," a lief über die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn, in diesem Moment regne connection that the narrator even imagines their mothers approving. te es, und ich dachte: ''Jordi, aus dem Himmel, dem wir manchmal unse The narrator decides for herself which moment she wishes to value re Liebe zum Tragen gaben, regnet es Liebe auf die Hemden der armen and privilege, and to designate with her "diamond:' Männer auf der Goldenen Brücke:' (Brücke, 228-229) The connection between Jordi and the narrator is strengthened through their shared love for the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca, The contact with Jordi, despite his physical absence, infuses the nar whose poetry makes an impression on the narrator because the poet , rator's relationship to the political in multiple ways. In their care is killed by Spanish nationalists, but also anticipates the narrator's brief ful interaction, they often imitate each other's words and movements involvement with surrealist groups once she returns to Turkey (Brücke, as a way of deepening communication. Jordi and the narrator mirror 194-198). The poetry lends them a language in which Jordi and the l'ach other, verbally and physically, in notable contrast to the student Beverly M. Weber Precarious Intimacies 127 working with the Turkish secret police, who had gazed at himself as ; 229). The narrator does not yet ask their name, nor enter into a rela if in a mirror. If the physical encounter is ·based in an ethical open tionship of listening and learning with the mothers. ing up to the other in which they enacted a radical not-knowing " The leftist filmmaker, Kerim, becomes the other named sexual part in order to create the possibility to learn from the other, this ongo- , ner in the novel. During their initial encounters, the narrator speaks ing connection between Turkey and Spain via postcards and letters ) little, fearful that her language doesn't express enough politi~al aware deepens their intimacy through their shared experience of violence, : ness, or consciousness (Brücke, 252). She finds herself_ seeki~g to be surveillance, and imprisonment at the hands of the state. This intima "conscious" enough to have "conscious sex," as Kenm cla1ms that cy with Jordi, thus, functions as precarious intimacy: lt is brief and · "Die chinesischen Mädchen, die mit der Mao-Revolution bewusster fleeting (at least in terms of physical proximity), marked by their ex geworden sind" (Brücke, 252) are capable of: for "G:itei: Sex h~gt :ron posure to state surveillance, but also serves as a contact that enables revolutionärem Bewusstsein ab" (Brücke, 252). The Jarnng Onentalism political solidarities. lt even situates such political solidarities in an " of Kerim's statement is made obvious to the reader by the narrator's imagined literary solidarity, and allows both the narrator and Jordi to ' unthinking repetition of the phrase. If we take her at her word, as a find shared pleasure and expression in poetry. consequence of her desire to "become conscious" for Kerim, she ~e I am reminded here of the ethics of encounter suggested by But gins voraciously reading newspapers. If we trust the longer narrative, ler, a theorization that is indebted to her readings of Hannah Arendt however, the narrator has already been reading newspapers since the and Emmanuel Levinas. She suggests: beginning - headlines mark time and historical anchoring points for the readers from early on in the novel. In any case, soon after the en [.. P]araphrasing Arendt, the question we pose to the Other is simple counter with Kerim, the transnational moment in 1968 of intersecting and unanswerable: "who are you?" The violent response is the one that student protest, state violence, and attention ~o colonialism ~nd racis:r:i does not ask, and does not seek to know. lt wants to shore up what becomes visible through a long list of headlines. The ~eadlmes d~ta1l it knows, to expunge what threatens it with not-knowing, what forc the rise of the fascist Grey Wolves, the murder of Martm Luther King, es it to reconsider the presuppositions of its world, their contingency, student protests and strikes in Paris, the occupation_ of uni".'ers~ties in their malleability. The nonviolent response lives with its unknowingness Paris Istanbul, and Ankara by students (and then police), ant1-V1etnam about the Other in the face of the Other, since sustaining the bond that prot~sts, the clash of black and white Arnerican soldiers in Jap~n. Al the question opens is finally more valuable. (Butler 2004, 35) though Kerim writes her love letters and sends flowers from his ~ar racks in the mountains (where he is serving mandatory army serv1ce), The narrator and Jordi meet in the spirit of radical unknowingness, , the reader never has access to those letters. Instead, the narrator shares connect, separate, and continue to forge their solidarity in intimacy the citations from newspaper articles and protest signs, the narrator's through letters, postcards, and imaginations. Their contact and touch own "writing" of the world around her. She walks through the streets opens the narrator up to a more radical openness to other encoun with the letters, while "überall reparierten Glaser die zerbrochen.en ters as well. This includes a new relationship .to the Bridge of the Fenster" (Brücke, 259), the Bridge of the Golden Horn is filled w1th Golden Horn (which not only titles the book, but also Part 2 of the student protesters, and the student leaders are arrested. book). Previously, the bridge occupied a distinctly European space The narration here is multilayered. The narrator muses that her (as a bridge between two European parts oflstanbul). When the nar growing politicization will impress Kerim and in this s~nse, .. the rator moved through this space, she initially often remained turned potential solidarities emerging seem marked by the narrator s naive inward. Now, she opens to the impoverished that inhabit the bridge. re her constant desire to please her male partners, and her fear of Nevertheless, her encounter with the homeless on the bridge at this in~dequacy as somebody without a school-:leaving certif\ca~e. The moment remains one inflected by a relationship of power, reflect simple sentence structures contribute to this sense of childishness. ed in the uneven grammar of the one who pities and the one who Yet the structure of the text suggests something more sophisticated, is pitied. Indeed, the impoverished are abjected: "Die Armut lief wie a construction of precarious intimacies that locates the narrator eine ansteckende Krankheit durch die Straßen. Ich schaute auf die arnidst the protest of 1968 and links the opening up to th~ other to Armen wie auf Pestkranke und konnte nichts für sie tun" (Brücke, processes of reading and writing. When the narrator dec1des to go 12H Beverly M. Weber Precarious Intirnacies 129 cu tlu· l'.l'll'rll border ofTurkey with Iran and lraq to write a sto becomes itself a form of violence, as Kerim's "new languages" began ry .1h11111 peasant poverty and starvation, it appears, again, unthink- ' to enact a new disciplining of the narrator's body into gender and lllJJ, a11d 11a'ive - after all, the people she is meant to serve end up dass norms. The dissolution of their shared political activism is re ~1w11di11g a good amount of time, resources, and effort to protect the flected in the dissolution of the skin of her mouth. 11arrator and her friend from the police. Yet, this report is important.. Yet as Kerim's language fossilizes, the narrator is developing a new Through it, she again learns to open to listening to the other, to '. language and politics of listening that evolves out of all of the in thc various peasants who express what they wish her to write: "Wir timate encounters of the book, all the precarious intimacies. Mov sind tot, meine Tochter [ ... ] Sagt dem Staat, er soll uns aus den He ing across the Bridge of the Golden Horn, the narrator's speech is likoptern Gift herunterwerfen. Wir werden es essen und dann alle no langer reduced to the earlier, potentially patronizing language of sterben. Schreib das, meine Tochter" (Brücke, 291). In contrast to her ' poverty and plague. Instead, she is able to listen to the thoughts of language on the bridge, in this section she asks the other in a gesture a new group on the bridge: the mothers who have lost their chil of ethical learning to know. The report is also the first thing she writes, dren to the violence of political repression over the prior weeks. The other than the letters to her mother at the beginning of the book, that stream of consciousness description is far more poetic than any other is actually read (her letters to Jordi up until this point are largely of- · language of the book, except perhaps for the description of the en fered up to the water or the birds to make their way to Jordi). counter with Jordi. Unlike the short, clipped sentences of much of The arrest of the narrator and Kerim, ostensibly for the love let- ·· the book, the words emerge fluently, for several pages long: ters he wrote while in the army, brings the interruption of state vio lence into intimacy to a new degree. For weeks they are imprisoned, So leicht wie ihre sündenlosen Taten fallen sie wie Federn herunter. Die while the narrator witnesses ongoing interrogations and the results of Milch, die sie aus unseren Brüsten getrunken haben, kam aus ihren Na torture. She never suggests that she herself is tortured, but she moves sen heraus. Warum kommen unsere Kinder nur in unsere Träume. Hier through the spaces of the police station with blood on her shoes stehen wir auf der Brücke vom Goldenen Horn. Mit diesen Augen gese (Brücke, 319). Upon their release, she writes again to Jordi. This time, hen haben wir in dieser blinden Welt den Jüngsten Tag. (Brücke, 326). her writing is accompanied by the student leaders writing their l~st letters to their fathers before they are hanged. Even as her letter wnt Even as the narrator here has lost her language as her mouth peels, ing produces a possible solidarity with other protestors, the trauma of she also has begun to learn a new language6 that is rooted in an ethi the violence against them also transforms her relationship to Kerim: :. cal encounter with others that relies on a radical listening, which here allows her to listen to the thoughts, feelings, and protests of these si Kerim sagte zu mir: "Es ist die Zeit, die bürgerliche Kultur zu sam..,. lent mothers. The description of the mothers, we learn from head mein und neue Bücher zu lesen und andere Musik zu hören." Wir lines, takes place shortly before the assassination of Salvador Allende in saßen am gleichen Tisch, sahen die Jasminblätter, die vom gleichen September 1973, anticipating the more visible mothers' protests that Baum fielen, aber er hatte angefangen, eine andere Sprache zu spre would take place in both Chile and Turkey in the coming years. chen als ich. Er sagte: "Sprich nicht diese Slogan-Sprache. Zieh den , grünen Militärparka aus. Zieh dich an wie eine Frau." Ich wollte mit · III Kerim nicht mehr schlafen. Viele sitzen im Gefängnis, dachte ich, und The precarious intimacies of Brücke are spaces of encounter that ich bin frei [... ] Mein Mund bekam eine Allergie, er ließ sich wie ·· open the narrator up to the world, sometimes in unexpected ways. eine Apfelsine schälen. (Brücke, 327) 'l'he simple language and na'ive tone of the narrator's reflections throughout much of the text are used to critique the inadequacy of If the relationship with Kerim had once created an intimacy that scHne of the movements with which the narrator engages and the could nurture solidarities and political meaning, it now dissolves language they produce. The shifting styles of writing, on the oth as Kerim and the narrator's bodies and lives become increasing l'r hand, highlight intimacies that teach a different engagement with ly subject to the state repression of leftist and student protest. Once each other and with the world. Contact and touch enacted with a source of pleasure and political inspiration, their contact instead i 11 intimacies enable the sociality that renders people vulnerable, but 1}() l 'nrnrious Intimacies 131 serves as a precondition for political struggles for justice. Those · Elsewhere I have pointed out the important role this novel plays in exca- tirnacies thernselves both rernain precarious and reveal precari 1•.1t i11g the history of women labor migrants in the German economy, in opposition showing the vulnerability of this novel's rnain characters in partic 1u dominant perceptions of German guest workers as male. The long-time inabili- to the violence of the state. As Judith Butler suggests: 1v to engage with women, particularly Turkish women, as part of this history relies nn long-held forms of racialization and Orientalism that imagine Muslim women as [ ... I]f we conceptualize the political meaning of the human body' wnfmed to the space of the home (Weber 2010, 40;Weber 2013 13-16). without understanding those relations in which it lives and thrives1 Throughout the novel, iconic events such as the murder of Benno we fail to make the best possible case for the various political ends' t )imesorg during a student demonstration are used to anchor the sociopolitical we seek to achieve. What 1 am suggesting is that it is not just that this" historical moment, often through the newspaper headlines the narrator reads out. or that body is bound up in a network of relations, but that the bod'!i: These words are used in the novel to demonstrate various relationships to despite its clear boundaries, or perhaps precisely by virtue of thoso 1he gender and sexual norms some women in the dorm seek to enforce. The form very boundaries, is defined by the relations that make its own life and: , 1f mimicry at work here varies from the examples Claudia Breger analyzes as a action possible. (Butler 2016, 16) ' parodic, playful emancipation from ethnic constructs (Breger); here, the mimicry deconstructs various positions vis-a-vis gender and sexual norms while construct If intirnacies as contact between bodies in the text produce the rno ing a community with a shared experience of work in Germany. rnents of connection that enable potential solidarities, not rnerely ac \ Although I do not have the space to explore this here, it bears mention the rnornent of connection, but in subsequent irnaginations of politi i ng that this text also raises significant, difficult conceptual questions about disabil cal action, these intirnacies also produce a social and political rneaning ; ity and intimacy. In addition to the Wooden Leg and the Limping Socialist, the for the narrator's body. The violence in which she is ernbedded renders Schizophrenie Boy also plays an important role in the text when the narrator con both the intirnacies and the body itself particularly precarious, however, siders his marriage proposal, in part because she does not know if she will be able Precarious intirnacies allow us, then, an entry point into the text to fmd a way to abort her pregnancy by an unknown father. In all three cases, the that can consider the text's aesthetic strategies of constructing inti narrator rejects a repeated or extended connection to each, which would locate rnacies as sites of political transforrnation and potentiality rnade pos her in a traditional relationship of marriage and reproduction (if only metaphor sible by contact, and sites rnarked by their situatedness in existing ically). The narrator participates in a relationship to the future that would have relationships of power and violence. They produce a creative un much in common with notions of a queer or crip time (Halberstam; Kafer; Samu folding to the possibilities of listening and ethical relationship to the els); nevertheless she seems to reject figures marked by disability, who are objecti other. As interpretive practice, reading for precarious intirnacies rnay fied through the naming processes the narrator employs. The lovers to whom she pose further questions to and for the reader. In our encounter with gives names, Kerim and Jordi, are never spoken about in similar ways. the text, we rnight be spurred as weil to forrn a practice of listening 6 Much has been made of"new languages" that are located in relationship for intirnacy in the interest of working against precarity, of opening to Turkish and German, and indeed, Özdamar herselfhas remarked on the traumat ourselves up to the text in such a way as to forrn a relationship of ic loss ofTurkish rooted in experience of violence. In Seltsame Sterne she will speak listening, even, perhaps, on the basis of a radical not-knowing. specifically of becoming sick in her mother tongue (23), while in Mutterzunge she imagines the violent loss of her mother tongue. Here, however, the "new" language to which I refer has nothing to do with either Turkish or German. Endnotes
The relationship of these texrs to autobiography is a complex one. Although Works Cited the characters' journeys map onto many of the locations important to Emine Sevgi Özdamar's biography, the narrator of Brücke, for example, has a different birth year;just Ahmed, Sara / Jackie Stacey. "Introduction: Dermographies." Thinking Through the as one cannot see the texts as making claim to autobiography, they also escape simple Skin. Eds. Sara Ahmed / Jackie Stacey. London: Routledge, 2003. 1-17. reduction to representations ofTurkish migrant life in Germany (Kaiser). 132 Beverly M. Weber Precarious Intimacies 133
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