More than a Metaphor: The Passing of the Two Worlds Paradigm in German-Language Diasporic Literature

German Life and Letters 59:4 October 20060016–8777 (print); 1468–0483 (online)

MORE THAN A METAPHOR: THE PASSING OF THE TWO WORLDSPARADIGM IN GERMAN-LANGUAGE DIASPORIC LITERATURE

Jim Jordan

ABSTRACT

German-language diasporic literature published during the period from the late1970s to the early 1990s frequently deploys images, metaphors and motifs depictingthe migrant as suspended, trapped or stranded between two worlds. I briefly outlinethis phenomenon and the criticism it has been subjected to in recently publishedresearch, which emphasises the regressive effect which the persistence of this meta-phor has had. The passing of the ‘two worlds paradigm’ marks a transition in thedevelopment of diasporic writing, making it an apposite time to achieve an under-standing of this paradigm as more than merely an impediment to a more differentia-ted appreciation of the literature of migration. I therefore explore this paradigm inrelation to debates concerning multiculturalism during the 1980s and early 1990s.In conclusion, I examine how a paradigm voluntarily adopted by diasporic writersas representative of their situation at that time has endured to become an outdatedcharacterisation of all migrant writing.

A significant feature of German-language diasporic literature published du-ring the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s is the frequent de-ployment of images, metaphors and motifs which depict the migrant assuspended, trapped or stranded between two worlds, those of origin andmigration, or of ‘host’ and migrant community/culture. In this essay I shallbriefly outline this phenomenon and the criticism it has been subjectedto in recently published research, which rightly emphasises the regressiveeffect that the persistence of this metaphor has had on the reception of themore complex recent explorations of identity formation and the diasporicexperience. The passing of what I shall call the ‘two worlds paradigm’ clearlyconstitutes a transitional moment in the development of diasporic writing,and this makes it an apposite time to achieve a clear understanding of thisparadigm as more than merely an impediment to a more differentiatedappreciation of the literature of migration produced currently. I thereforeconsider this paradigm as the literary correlate of models of multicultural-ism developed during the 1980s and early 1990s. Rooting the two worldsparadigm in a broader social and intellectual context reinforces the need toapproach diasporic culture from a range of perspectives, and reminds us ofthe agency of diasporic writers in shaping their own understandings. In con-clusion I examine how a paradigm voluntarily adopted by diasporic writersas representative of their situation at that time has endured to become anunhelpful (if convenient) characterisation of all migrant writing, and whyit has proved so difficult to dislodge.

C© The author 2006. Journal compilation C© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 20069600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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In his examination of the metaphor of the bridge in Turkish-Germandiasporic writing, Moray McGowan identifies a number of images andmetaphors fulfilling the same function of placing the migrant subject be-tween two coastlines or poles, or in a state of suspension from which s/hemight fall to one side or the other.1 These include tightrope walking, imagesof doorways and gates, and metaphors involving birds and flight betweentwo discrete locations, often shores or continents. ‘Gedicht XIV’ from ZaferSenocak’s cycle Verkauf der Morgenstimmungen am Markt (1985) providesfurther examples:

Ich habe meine Fuße auf zwei Planetenwenn sie sich in Bewegung setzenzerren sie mich mitich falle

ich trage zwei Welten in miraber keine ist ganzsie bluten standig

die Grenze verlauftmitten durch meine Zunge

ich ruttele daran wie ein Haftlingdas Spiel an einer Wunde2

A collection of guest-worker and migrant writing from the same year entitledZwischen zwei Giganten also contains Alev Tekinay’s much-cited poem ‘Da-zwischen’, which describes how the migrant’s feelings of homesicknessincrease in proportion to her increased rootedness in the land of migration.3

And the most prevalent (and, unfortunately, least illuminating) figure ofspeech representing the in-betweenness of migration is the cliche ‘zwischenzwei Stuhlen’, whose myriad occurrences defy documentation.

1 Moray McGowan, ‘Brucken und Brucken-Kopfe: Wandlungen einer Metapher in der turkisch-deutschen Literatur’, in Die andere deutsche Literatur. Istanbuler Vortrage, ed. Manfred Durzak andNilufer Kuruyazıcı, Wurzburg 2004, pp. 31–40 (here p. 31, note 1). See also McGowan, “Bosporusfließt in mir”: Europa-Bilder und Bruckenmetaphern bei Aras Oren und Zehra Cirak’, in Brucken zwi-schen Zivilisationen. Zur Zivilisierung ethnisch-kultureller Differenzen und Machtungleichheiten. Das turkisch-deutsche Beispiel , ed. Hans-Peter Waldhoff, Dursun Tan and Elcin Kursat-Ahlers, Frankfurt a.M. 1997,pp. 21–39, and “The Bridge of the Golden Horn”: Istanbul, Europe and the “fractured gaze from theWest” in Turkish writing in Germany’, Beyond boundaries: textual representations of European identity, Year-book of European Studies, 15 (2000), 53–69. A volume of essays and original fictional work by migrantauthors edited by McGowan and Sabine Fischer was entitled Denn du tanzt auf einem Seil: Positionendeutschsprachiger MigrantInnenliteratur , Tubingen 1997.2 Zafer Senocak, ‘Gedicht XIV’ from the cycle Verkauf der Morgenstimmungen am Markt, in Flammen-tropfen. Gedichte, Frankfurt a.M. 1985, p. 69.3 Alev Tekinay, ‘Dazwischen’, in Zwischen zwei Giganten. Prosa, Lyrik und Grafiken aus dem Gastarbeiterall-tag , ed. Franco Biondi, Jusuf Naoum and Rafik Schami, Bremen 1983, p. 59. The title of the collectionis taken from Mehmet Unal’s short story of the same name, pp. 31–6.

C© The author 2006. Journal compilation C© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006

490 THE PASSING OF THE TWO WORLDS PARADIGM

Some of these metaphors are more sophisticated than others: for exam-ple, the planets in Senocak’s poem have their own trajectories, and do nothave to run parallel or at some prescribed distance from one another. Fur-thermore, as McGowan has noted, the use of such metaphors can be ironicor even self-mocking.4 None the less, underlying the use of these metaphorsis a model of two fixed entities, with the migrant subject either suspendedin motion or trapped between them. The nature of these two entities de-pends on the context being described or explored by the writer: they canbe the land of origin and the land of migration; or, in an essentialist sense,the cultures of these two lands; or they can be the migrant and ‘host’ com-munities within the country of migration, or the cultures emerging fromthese communities. There is always some form of fundamental incompati-bility between these two worlds: the migrant may be called on to bridge thisincompatibility, or to mediate, or to tread warily along the fault-line betweenthese two bodies. As the use of this metaphor predates debates around cul-tural hybridity, the migrant in this image does not inhabit Bhabha’s moreproductive ‘third space of enunciation’, that space of potentiality where newcultural combinations can be experimented with and performed.5

In what follows, I shall refer to this as the ‘two worlds paradigm’. The meta-phors arising from this paradigm do not feature solely in fictional work.Indeed, diasporic authors have used these metaphors in works characte-rising the position and role of their writing.6 Naturally enough, this leadin characterising diasporic writing was taken up, particularly in reviews, asone which carried the endorsement of the producers themselves and wasthus authentic. This paradigm therefore carried over from the productionof diasporic literature to its reception, and this was in no small measuredue to the contribution of migrant authors themselves. It has provided anenduring characterisation of diasporic writing as an activity which takesplace between cultures, and I shall consider later the reasons for itspersistence.

Over the last decade, the two worlds paradigm has come under increasing-ly heavy fire, particularly from scholars of German Studies in the UnitedStates. Arguing for German Studies both in the U.S. and abroad to takestock of the perspectives opened by the debates on multiculturalism in theAmerican university curriculum and by the rise of cultural studies as a disci-pline, Arlene A. Teraoka criticised the multicultural debate in Germany as

4 Cf. his comments on Zehra Cirak’s ‘Lied vom Onkelchen in Avrupa’ from Fremde Flugel auf eigenerSchulter (1994): McGowan, ‘Brucken und Brucken-Kopfe’, p. 37.5 Homi Bhabha, The location of culture, London 1994.6 A few examples will suffice: Franco Biondi and Rafik Schami, ‘Mit Worten Brucken bauen.Bemerkungen zur Literatur von Auslandern’, in Turken raus? Oder verteidigt den sozialen Frieden. Bei-trage gegen die Auslanderfeindlichkeit, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1984, pp. 66–77; Gino [Carmine] Chiellino,‘Betroffenheit zwischen Kafig und Falle. Zur Literatur der Auslander in der BRD’, in Untersuchungendes Ludwig-Uhland-Instituts der Universitat Tubingen, LXVII, ed. Hermann von Bausinger, Tubingen1986, pp. 129–140; Gino Chiellino, Am Ufer der Fremde. Literatur und Arbeitsmigration, Stuttgart 1995.



being insufficiently interrogative of the fixed conceptions of social identityfundamental to the two worlds paradigm:

Missing from the German discussion is a sense of the fluidity, contingency,and multiplicity – the constructed, contradictory, and changing nature – ofsocial identity. Instead, German debates surrounding multiculturalism seemto focus on a search for the optimal manner of regulating the interaction ofcultures understood as fixed objects.7

In a series of publications Leslie A. Adelson has strongly advocated a moveaway from conceptualisations of diasporic writing and the migrant authoras being ‘in between’.8 In her view the conception of the migrant as be-tween worlds has a disempowering effect on the migrant subject and deniesher/him entry into German cultural space. She argues that this paradigmimpedes an understanding of the increased complexity of diasporic narra-tives and the subtle ways in which they both interact with and become partof discourses in German cultural and intellectual life, such as the discus-sions on the consequences of reunification and the continuing process ofcoming to terms with the Holocaust. Moreover, it denies the dynamic natureof cultural development: ‘“Between two worlds” becomes conceptually pro-blematic when the conceit is made to function as an analytical paradigm thatis effectively incapable of accounting for cultures of migration as historicalformations.’9

It is undoubtedly true that the two worlds paradigm is insufficient todo justice to the challenges which contemporary diasporic writers pose.Authors no longer conceive of themselves as between cultures: instead, theyare positioned within matrices of gender, generation, class, ethnicity andnationality which themselves are in flux, and subject to changes of historicalperspectives, international political realignments and differential rates ofmodernisation. Often, migrant artists are transnational in their affinities andactivities (for example, the film directors Fatih Akın and Kutlug Ataman)or comfortable and productive in their role as cultural mediators (RafikSchami, Yuksel Pazarkaya). In the face of this, the two worlds paradigm hasbecome, in Adelson’s words, a ‘cultural fable’.10

But it is precisely at the point of its passing that we must gain the mostaccurate ‘fix’ on the paradigm we can achieve, lest we lose sight of some

7 Arlene Akiko Teraoka, ‘Multiculturalism and the study of German literature’, in A user’s guide toGerman Cultural Studies, ed. Scott Denham, Irene Kacandes and Jonathan Petropoulos, Ann Arbor1997, pp. 63–78 (here pp. 70–1).8 Leslie A. Adelson, ‘Opposing oppositions: Turkish-German questions in contemporary Germanstudies’, German Studies Review, 17/2 (1994), 305–30; ‘Against Between: A Manifesto’, in Zafer Senocak,ed. Tom Cheesman and Karin Yesilada, Cardiff 2003, pp. 130–43; The Turkish Turn in ContemporaryGerman Literature, New York 2005.9 Adelson, The Turkish turn, p. 3, italics in the original.10 Ibid., p. 5.



important features of its origin and functioning. We should remind ourselvesthat the two worlds paradigm was a conceptualisation through whichmigrant writers made sense of themselves and their world. This concep-tualisation came into being in response to debates regarding such issuesas the integration of migrants, relations between the ‘host’ and migrantcommunities, and the role of the writer and intellectual in an apparentlypolarised social context. One of the most influential debates taking placein the 1980s and early 1990s was the debate concerning multiculturalism,which, from a discussion on the place of (white, largely male) ‘great writers’in the North American university curriculum, had spread to a much moregeneral consideration of how best to regulate community relations inincreasingly multi-ethnic societies in the U.S., Canada and Europe. I shallargue that the terms of this debate, as they were in due course transposed tothe situation of pre- and then post-unification Germany, were the concep-tual framework on which the two worlds paradigm was based, and that theparadigm lost its validity once the multicultural debate had given way fromthe mid-1990s onwards to discussion of the consequences and politics of cul-tural hybridity. Although diasporic writers continued to track the progressof the new debates in changes in their writing, the paradigm (for reasonswhich will be discussed in due course) remained stuck as the predominantconceptualisation in public and critical discourse.

Any review of the multicultural debate needs to be approached withcaution. The satirist Sinasi Dikmen’s laconic observation on discussions ofmulticulturalism in Germany could surely apply to debates everywhere: ‘Soist das multikulturelle Leben in Deutschland. Alle reden davon, aber keinerversteht es.’11 An inherent duality obscures discussions about multicultura-lism from the outset: is the term being used in its descriptive sense, as a defacto recognition of the multi-ethnic composition of contemporary societies,or in its prescriptive mode, as a programmatic approach to the regulationof ethnic group and individual rights and relations within the frameworkof liberal democracy? Until these basic terms are clarified, statements suchas ‘Germany is developing into a multicultural society’ can have no clearmeaning. The sheer range of proposed multicultural solutions often con-fuses the debate even further. Are we talking about the ‘melting pot’ model,in which the goal is absolute equality and the achievement of difference-blindness, or the so-called ‘salad bowl’, in which cultures retain a measureof distinctiveness and the question becomes one of how to regulate theinterrelations between these clearly defined cultural groups? And if thelatter, at what stage does the need for distinctiveness come into conflict withindividual liberal rights and/or majority expectations?

Adding a final layer of confusion to any clear-eyed discussion of multi-culturalism are the vested political interests of groups who in effect join

11 Sinasi Dikmen, ‘Das multikuturelle Leben’, in Hurra, ich lebe in Deutschland. Satiren, mit einemVorwort von Dieter Hildebrandt, Munich 1995, pp. 161–4 (here p. 164).



common cause across traditional political and cultural boundaries, and whowish to see the ‘multicultural project’ fail. This is as much in the interests ofright-wing nationalists eager to preserve a mythic national racial purity, as ofsections of the far left which see the preoccupation with cultural and ethnicpolitics as a distraction from the key struggles of class and anti-capitalism;and of ethnic and cultural essentialists within minority groups fearful of adiminution of their group-representative power and status. Small wonderthat we are so frequently told that multiculturalism is dead;12 however, thefollowing post-mortem will show that the cause of death lies in the break-down of the concepts which underpinned the debate.

Fundamental to multiculturalism is the notion of discrete, clearlydefinable ethnic cultures, which are coextensive with a specific group. Thesegroups have been defined normally either in national-ethnic terms (Greek,Kurdish) or on a regional-ethnic basis (Asian, Afro-Caribbean). For the pur-poses of multiculturalism, the distinguishing marker of any individual withinthese groups was ethnicity, into which all other aspects of that individual’ssituation – gender, class, sexual orientation, generation etc. – were sub-sumed. These groups required clear contours of membership, so that theycould be arranged in relation to one another, like social building blocks.The project of multiculturalism was to find the optimum arrangement ofthese blocks which satisfied as many as possible of various desirable aspectsof society: social cohesion, the maintenance of individual and group sensesof identity (and thus self-esteem), the maintenance of commonly agreedliberal rights and the aspiration of the individual for self-fulfilment.

By the 1980s the proposition that a society could achieve a genuine‘melting pot’ of cultures in which no single constituent cultural formationwas dominant had revealed itself to be unworkable, because inevitably it re-quired subaltern cultures to assimilate to a dominant cultural group. Thusdebate began to centre around the means by which distinct cultural strandscould occupy the same social space harmoniously. In her review of multi-cultural debates in Germany in the 1980s and early 1990s Sabine vonDirke acknowledges that many of the terms of debate were set in earlierdiscussions in North America.13 She also outlines the specific parameters ofthe debates in Germany in the late 1980s, giving particular considerationto politically conservative responses to multiculturalism which sought tocombine ethnopluralism with the reassertion of a German national identityas the foremost of all constituent cultural identities – in effect, althoughthe term was only coined later, a ‘Leitkultur’. Indeed, many conservativesargued that the presence of other cultural groups in German society would

12 For example, the title page of Der Spiegel on 14 April 1997 ran ‘Auslander und Deutsche: Gefahrlichfremd. Das Scheitern der multikulturellen Gesellschaft’.13 Sabine von Dirke, ‘Multikulti: the German debate on multiculturalism’, German Studies Review, 17/3(1994), 513–36. See also the useful section ‘Multikultur’ on pp. 182–93 of Sigrid Weigel, ‘Literaturder Fremde – Literatur in der Fremde’, in Gegenwartsliteratur seit 1968, ed. Klaus Briegleb and SigridWeigel, Munich/ Vienna 1992.



place German national identity under threat, and thus necessarily leadto its strengthening as anxious citizens hurried back into the nationalfold.

A perhaps surprising advocate of a more genuine multiculturalism whichde-emphasised the primacy of one (‘host’) culture over all others was theCDU politician Heiner Geissler, who advocated a society in which othercultures could live peacefully alongside German culture without necessari-ly becoming assimilated to it.14 Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Thomas Schmidproposed a more detailed model of a multicultural Germany in HeimatBabylon: das Wagnis der multikulturellen Demokratie.15 Acknowledging poten-tial problems when perceived identity needs (such as the wearing of theburkha) might conflict with important principles of civil and liberal society,they suggested that ultimately identity needs should be subordinated toan overriding ‘Verfassungspatriotismus’: ‘Die kulturelle Identitat hat in dermultikulturellen Gesellschaft eine Grenze. [. . .] Religions- und Kulturim-perialismus stoßen in einer freiheitlichen Gesellschaft an die immanentenSchranken der modernen Verfassung.’16 As von Dirke notes, this apparentsquaring of the vicious circle of identity needs versus rights could only beachieved on the basis of a subscription to principles which many find alreadyunacceptably Eurocentric.

The two worlds paradigm, as the conceptual basis of multiculturalism,also influenced the development of the emerging discipline of ‘Interkultu-relle Germanistik’, as Werner Nell notes in his review of Alois Wierlacher’sHandbuch interkulturelle Germanistik.17 Intercultural ‘Germanistik’, at least asoriginally conceived, was dependent on stable notions of national cultures,in this case with the intercultural Germanist forming the link or bridge bet-ween cultures. While Nell notes the indebtedness of the discipline to debatespreviously conducted in relation to multiculturalism, he wrongly attributesto multiculturalism a tendency to see intercultural progress as arising solelyfrom consensual contact between cultures. This overlooks the contributionmade by the ‘polemogene Funktion der Kultur’, a phrase from Klaus Ederindicating the progressive potential of cultural friction.18

A discourse based on relations between discrete cultures was sustainedinto the mid-1990s. Charles Taylor’s highly influential Multi-culturalism andthe politics of recognition appeared to offer a way out of the cul-de-sac of con-flict between liberal rights and identity needs.19 Instead of starting frompresumptions of equal value between cultures or from presumptions of

14 Geissler’s major publication on the issue was Zugluft – Die multikulturelle Gesellschaft, Munich 1990.15 Hamburg 1992.16 Cohn-Bendit and Schmid, Heimat Babylon, quoted in von Dirke, ‘Multikulti’, p. 530.17 Werner Nell, “Und dann kam Wierlacher. . .”, http://iasl.uni-muenchen.de/rezensio/liste/Nell3476019551 753.html (accessed 9 March 2006). Wierlacher’s Handbuch was published inStuttgart in 2003.18 Nell, ibid., p. 5.19 Charles Taylor, Multi-culturalism and the politics of recognition, Princeton, NJ 1992.



unequal value (as in the idea of a dominant ‘Leitkultur’), Taylor suggestedstarting merely from a presumption of value in all cultures, arguing that thiswould eventually lead to a ‘fusion of horizons’ between cultures in which asocially dominant culture might be changed by the act of contact with subal-tern cultures. Jurgen Habermas subsequently proposed, partly in responseto Taylor, that liberal values themselves should be considered as dynamicand themselves subject to change in response to social developments.20 Inthis way cultural conflicts might in time be defused by changes in the funda-mental principles of liberal societies. Another approach was made by WillKymlicka, who argued strongly that, according to need, group-specific rightsin conflict with a strict interpretation of liberal rights might be permittedon a time-limited basis in order to maintain the integrity of a social groupor identity.21

All these approaches, which found resonance and were debated acrossNorth America and Western Europe, were based on a conception of culturaland ethnic groups as, in Teraoka’s words above, ‘fixed objects’. Paradigmsreliant on such static conceptions of cultural groups began to collapseduring the second half of the 1990s. A review of Kymlicka’s work by MarcoMartiniello pointed to the unsustainability of his ideas in situations whereindividuals maintained more than one group allegiance,22 and academicdebates began to focus on issues of cultural hybridity.23 Monika Fludernikargues that the rapid rise of hybridity studies reflects a sense of reliefamong the academic community at being freed from the constraints ofthe fixed boundaries imposed by multiculturalism.24 As Amartya Sen hasrecently pointed out, the problem is a model of multiculturalism based on‘plural monoculturalisms’, in which the individual is identified with onecharacteristic or facet of his/her identity.25 Thus, in the wake of the attacksin New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 and on European citiesthereafter, the label ‘Muslim’ has been applied irrespective of the geogra-phical origins of the individual or his/her family, gender or social class.

The breakdown of the two worlds paradigm is reflected in develop-ments in German-language diasporic literature from the mid-1990s onwards.The most explicit demonstration of this is in the work of Senocak: while‘Gedicht XIV’, quoted above, relates in archetypal fashion to the two

20 Jurgen Habermas, ‘Struggles for recognition in the democratic constitutional state’, in Multicultu-ralism: examining the politics of recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann, Princeton, NJ 1994, pp. 107–48.21 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural citizenship, Oxford 1995.22 Marco Martiniello, ‘Citizenship, ethnicity and multiculturalism: postnational membership betweenUtopia and reality’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 20/3 (1997), 635–41.23 Cf. for example Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood (eds), Debating cultural hybridity. Multi-culturalidentities and the politics of anti-racism, London 1997.24 Monika Fludernik. ‘The Diasporic Imaginary. Postcolonial reconfigurations in the context of mul-ticulturalism’, in Diaspora and multiculturalism. Common traditions and new developments, ed. MonikaFludernik, Amsterdam/ New York 2003, pp. xi–xxxviii (here p. xxiii).25 James Harkin, ‘Identity crisis. Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen warns James Harkin of atyranny posing as tolerance’, The Guardian, 18 February 2006, 27.



worlds paradigm, his prose fiction – starting with Der Mann im Unterhemd in1995 – depicts partial and fragmented identities and provides disjointednarratives which sometimes defy reconstruction by the reader.26 A partic-ular feature of his novels is the inclusion of individuals with multiplecultural allegiances, such as Sascha Muchteschem in Gefahrliche Verwandt-schaft (1998), who sets about recovering his Turkish antecedents, partic-ularly where they involve the massacre of the Armenians in 1915–16, inparallel with reflections on the German Holocaust.27 Just as he applies post-modern perspectives in almost textbook fashion to prose fiction, Senocakis explicit about his postmodern turn in his essays,28 where he describes itas a necessary response to a time in which former certainties (including,presumably, his own adherence to Taylor’s conception of multiculturalism)are disintegrating.29

Feridun Zaimoglu’s Kanak Sprak exploded onto the literary scene in 1995,awakening fears of a disaffected second generation which, while rooted inGermany as their land of birth or childhood, rejected any subscription tothe industrious and law-abiding ethics which their ‘Gastarbeiter’ parentsand their German peers held in common. The collection of ‘24 Mißtonevom Rande der Gesellschaft’ is less a work of ethnographic authenticity thana plea for the recognition of the more complex web of cultural allegiancesinhabited by post-migrant generations. A specific obstacle to this recogni-tion is the ‘Marchen von der Multikulturalitat’ which, in Zaimoglu’s view,romanticises Germany’s cultural plurality without acknowledging any of therelated problems:

Der Kanake taugt in diesem Falle als schillerndes Mitglied im großen Zoo derEthnien, darf teilnehmend beobachtet und bestaunt werden. ‘Turkenspre-cher’ gestalten bunte Begleitprospekte fur den Gang durch den Multikulti-Zoo, wo das Kebab-Gehege neben dem Anden-Musikpavillon plaziert wird.30

These apparently clear ethnic categories belie generational conflict withincommunities, hybrid identities, affinities with disaffected minority andmigrant youth in other countries and so on.

26 For a more detailed analysis of these developments in Senocak’s prose fiction and their relation tochanging concepts of multiculturalism, see my essay ‘Zafer Senocak’s essays and early prose fiction:from collective multiculturalism to fragmented cultural identities’, in Zafer Senocak, ed. Cheesmanand Yesilada, pp. 91–105.27 These elements are re-traced by Margaret Littler in ‘Guilt, victimhood, and identity in ZaferSenocak’s Gefahrliche Verwandtschaft’, The German Quarterly, 2005, 357–73.28 For example, ‘Der Schriftsteller ist ein Archaologe: Ein Essay uber Schreiben in Deutschland unduberhaupt’, Die Welt, 5 June 1999, 11, reprinted as ‘Welcher Mythos schreibt mich?’, in Zungenentfer-nung. Bericht aus der Quarantanestation. Essays, Munich 2001, pp. 97–103; and ‘Vom Stammeskrieg derethnischen Fixierungen zu einer pluralen Identitat’, die tageszeitung , 1 February 1999, 10.29 Senocak’s enthusiasm for Taylor’s ‘fusion of horizons’ is clear from War Hitler Araber? IrreFuhrungenan den Rand Europas. Essays, Berlin 1994, p. 64.30 Feridun Zaimoglu, Kanak Sprak. 24 Mißtone vom Rande der Gesellschaft, Berlin 1995, p. 11.



Using Senocak and Zaimoglu as examples, Sandra Hestermann arguesthat diasporic literature in Germany since the mid-1990s has responded tothe failure of the concepts of multiculturalism (in its sense of a social pro-gramme) to take root.31 In her view Germany was open only to multiculturali-ty, the acknowledgement and celebration of ethnic pluralism. This is difficultto sustain in relation to literary works, given that the preponderance of mi-grant narratives of the time belong to the ‘Literatur der Betroffenheit’, pre-dicated on the depiction of behaviours which either clearly militate againstmulticulturalism (for example, incidents of racism and discrimination) oroffer positive role models of enlightened and tolerant attitudes. German-language migrant literature in the era of two worlds multiculturalism wasthus socially programmatic, if not outright didactic. Nor is it clear that morerecent diasporic literature is multicultural in the socially prescriptive sense,particularly given that the examples cited by Hestermann from the workof Senocak tend rather to evince the multiculturality which she claims hereacts against.32

Despite some of Zaimoglu’s rhetoric, the shift away from the two worldsparadigm should not be seen as a matter of transition between generations,as indeed the case of Senocak makes clear. Emine Sevgi Ozdamar was herselfpart of the initial wave of ‘Gastarbeiter’, but her literary works describe theelusiveness of identities predicated on nationality and ethnicity. The workof Guney Dal has always reflected broader changes in intellectual and socialperceptions, from the political commitment of early works such as Wenn Alidie Glocken lauten hort (1979) through the postmodernism of Der enthaarteAffe (1988)/Janitscharenmusik (1999)33 to the complex cultural relations ofTeestunden am Ring (1999), which tells of the life of Sabri Mahir, an Ottomanboxer and artist who lived in the Berlin of the Weimar Republic. Such worksdemonstrate how writers are attuned to social and intellectual debates anddevelopments, to the extent that they sometimes even anticipate them, ascould be argued of Ozdamar’s Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei published in1992, in other words while the breakdown of the two worlds paradigm hadby no means yet become apparent.

The two worlds paradigm, complete with stools and bridges, does indeedpersist, less in informed critical and academic work than in essays and edi-torials on community relations and in reviews of diasporic works in, forexample, the ‘Feuilletons’ of local and regional newspapers. A number offactors may contribute to its ‘enduring rhetorical appeal’ (Adelson).34 Sucha convenient depiction of the situation of the diasporic individual must haveseemed a gift to the early reviewers of diasporic works (most of whom would

31 Sandra Hestermann, ‘The German-Turkish diaspora and multicultural German identity. Hyphe-nated and alternative discourses of identity in the works of Zafer Senocak and Feridun Zaimoglu’, inDiaspora and multiculturalism, ed. Fludernik, pp. 329–73.32 See, for example, her treatment of Senocak’s novel Gefahrliche Verwandtschaft on pp. 356–7.33 Der enthaarte Affe was later re-ordered, revised and published as Janitscharenmusik.34 Adelson, The Turkish Turn, p. 4.



have had little or no contact with the kinds of individuals or communityrepresented in such images), the more so as it carried the endorsement ofthe writers themselves at that time. The two worlds paradigm and the meta-phors it has given rise to have surely also been given a new lease of lifeby the polarisations liberated in reaction to the events of 9/11 and after:Christian/Muslim, East/West, democrat/terrorist, Orient/Occident etc. Insuch fraught times, convenience easily overrides accuracy.

The fact that the two worlds paradigm was actively promoted by diaspo-ric writers and then adopted by the critical establishment serves as a usefulreminder of the extent to which migrant writers and intellectuals themselveshave helped shape the parameters within which the migrant experienceand diasporic culture is articulated and discussed. While in many works themigrant individual is indeed the victim of circumstances and social proces-ses beyond his/her control, this does not necessarily hold for authors. Forexample, while Saliha Scheinhardt may portray female Turkish protagonistsat the mercy of their violent husbands, the act of writing itself is one of pro-test, awareness-raising and resistance.

This exploration of the link between the two worlds paradigm, essentiallya creation of social studies, and diasporic literature also demonstrates thatnon-literary perspectives can usefully inform our understandings of literaryworks and developments. There is some weight in Gerd Bayer’s argumentthat a preoccupation with social approaches to migrant writing has castthe quest for a robust aesthetic of diasporic literature in the role of thepoor relation.35 Ultimately, though, an area of study as dynamic and multi-facetted as diasporic writing can only be explored fully by deploying a widerange of perspectives. Diasporic literature is part of the social processes andchanges it represents, and thus constitutes one link in a chain of negotiationswhich constitutes Germany’s adaptation to a wider ethnic population base.It must, therefore, be valid to open it up to sociological as well as aestheticand other perspectives, as long as we avoid simply mining this literature forcomplementary forms of social evidence.

Unfortunately (or perhaps not) formulations and metaphors such asthose arising from the two worlds paradigm can outlive their usefulnessand become regressive cliches and stereotypes. Scheinardt’s characterisa-tions of Turkish marriages in migration have often been taken for thenorm,36 just as in the wake of Necla Kelek’s Die fremde Braut all young Turkishgirls seem to have become either potential victims of honour killings or fod-der for forced marriages.37 Similarly, the politically provocative adoption ofthe term ‘Gastarbeiterliteratur’ by writers in the PoLiKunst movement of

35 Gerd Bayer, ‘Theory as hierarchy: positioning German Migrantenliteratur ’, Monatshefte, 96 (2004),1–19.36 See Karin Yesilada’s feisty ‘Literatur statt Tranen! Warum das Goethe-Institut Saliha Scheinhardtnicht mehr einladen sollte. Eine Polemik’, Diyalog 99, 151–4.37 Necla Kelek, Die fremde Braut, Cologne 2005.



the 1980s led to its perpetuation long after the phenomenon of the guestworker penning poems and short stories in labour hostels had ceased toexist. In this context, it is unsurprising that the two worlds paradigm shouldhave displayed such remarkable reserves of endurance.


Documents

More than a Metaphor: The Passing of the Two Worlds Paradigm in German-Language Diasporic Literature