Konturen

Notes on a Contested Concept

2024-02-23T15:42:22-08:00

Introduction to vol.13: Neue Heimat(en): A Contentious Concept Reconsidered

Improvising Kanak Sprak: Feridun Zaimoğlu’s Freestyle Forms and the Politics of Belonging

2024-03-06T17:12:07-08:00

Public discourse often excludes the erroneous speech of migratory subjects, thus foreclosing social and political rapprochement. This paper argues that the position outside of pregiven, linguistic norms provides migratory speech with an improvisatory quality that can serve as a catalyst for community formation. Simulating freestyle forms in writing, Feridun Zaimoğlu’s Kanak Sprak seeks to find a new language for the critique of xenophobia and to establish belonging based on precarious conditions. In a close reading of Fikret’s monologue “Pity is that true vitamin,” I show how improvisation disrupts established discourses and transforms the meaning of conventional hate speech tropes to forge transethnic alliances. The paper then turns to the subsequent volume Koppstoff and problematizes the commodification of Kanak speech in neoliberal pop culture. Çağıl’s monologue “If you’re smart, you take our side” hints at a different understanding of improvisation that reframes the relation between mainstream society and its others. Drawing on critical improvisation studies, the paper contributes to the understanding of linguistic interventions into social orders that determine who can say what, in which speech form, and according to which norms of belonging.

Heimat: Malady Without Remedy. “Deheimatizing” German Literature (Othmann, Taha, Ayata)

2024-03-06T17:25:37-08:00

It has become commonplace to consider Heimat a loaded concept. The origins of the malady of Heimat have been very convincingly laid out by Bilgin Ayata in her argument for a “deheimatization” of German cultural politics. Ayata deems this necessary as she considers every effort to salvage the concept through reclaiming or pluralization (Heimaten) as futile. While suggestions have been made out of social and cultural studies aiming to remedy its exclusionary and dangerous shortcomings, this article engages with literature’s potential for a “deheimatization” of German cultural spaces. In the study of three German novels by Kurdish authors, first access points are worked out: From rendering a German Heimat impossible through the destruction of the Kurdish homeland in Ronya Othmann’s The Summers (2020), and the disenchantment of a Kurdish Heimat as place of longing in Karosh Taha’s In the Queen’s Belly (2020), to the “deheimatizing” of the German Heimat in getting to know the Kurdish homeland thus far ignored in Imran Ayata’s My Name Is Revolution (2011). The present engagement with Kurdish-German literature provided some first access points towards a “deheimatization” of the German literary landscape and the canon, which could ultimately lead to new imaginaries of collectivity beyond the nation and thus beyond Heimat in its unsalvageable meaning. However, more theorizing is needed in order to render the concept of “deheimatizing” more fruitful for literary analyses.

World as Heimat: Ernst Bloch and the Future of a Contested Term

2024-03-06T17:29:49-08:00

This paper examines the interaction between Heimat as a social construct and the authentic longing for Heimat and security in Ernst Bloch’s magnum opus The Principle of Hope. Echoing the language of globalization and hypermobility, the ideas of place-lessness and detachment from specific locations seem to be the fundamental characteristics of today’s life. But behind this lies the human need to continuously establish new perceptions of Heimat and new practices of Heimat-making. Heimat, then, I argue, is not a romantic, fixed, and limited place to be protected. It is a pluralistic and conflict-ridden sphere of agency that can foster social exclusion, but which can also open up new connections and possibilities for human self-determination.

I Belong Here, Everywhere. Heimat in the Plural

2024-03-06T17:37:24-08:00

Excerpt from Mehr als eine Heimat: Wie ich Deutschsein neu definiere (Duden Press, 2019), translated from the German by Didem Uca

Hadi Tschüss

2024-03-06T17:41:01-08:00

Prose piece (translated from the German by Didem Uca)

Unpacking

2024-03-06T21:13:23-08:00

Prose piece (original publication)

Nora Krug, Belonging

2024-03-06T21:19:15-08:00

Nora Krug, Belonging. Scribner, 2018.

Combined Review: Dana Bönisch, Jil Runia and Hana Zehnschetzler (eds.), Heimat revisited & Svenja Kück, Heimat und Migration. Ein transdisziplinärer Ansatz anhand biographischer Interviews mit geflüchteten Menschen in Deutschland

2024-03-06T21:23:45-08:00

Dana Bönisch, Jil Runia and Hana Zehnschetzler (eds.), Heimat revisited. De Gruyter, 2020.

Svenja Kück, Heimat und Migration. Ein transdisziplinärer Ansatz anhand biographischer Interviews mit geflüchteten Menschen in Deutschland. Transcript Verlag, 2021.