Cultural Multeity and Fluid Identities: Transitional Spaces in Contemporary German-Language Post-Migration Literature

Since the recent surge of refugees and migrants to Germany in 2015, the publications on German-language literature written by migrants has significantly increased. While it is without question, that an investigation of how literature represents the life of migrants and refugees in contemporary Germany is necessary for an understanding of transnational literature (e.g., Taberner Transnationalism), my talk instead focuses on how cultural spaces, public as well as private spaces, are reiterated and performed within a post-migration framework. If culture today is to be defined independent of places, literature also has to be seen as a globally connected fluid system of economic, political, social and intellectual exchanges beyond national boundaries, thus having an effect on concepts of identity and belonging.

It is not only the notion of the nation as confined public space, that is at question here, but also subsequently the notion of the migrant’s body as an alternate cultural space. My aim is to show how a post-migration society has to be imagined as an open space, which includes the notion of culture as a dynamic process, including an ongoing migration, rather than pleading for an integrative concept that still carries on with a two-worlds-paradigm, whether it is seen as transcultural or intercultural. In this sense, two examples of the most recent works of German-language literatures (Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck, and A Slap in the Face by Abbas Khider) will be cross-read as instances of an experimental literature, which demonstrates the fluidity of borders, languages and cultures.