new Germans, new dutch Literary Interventions liesbeth minnaard amsterdam university press 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.