Interrupted Stories
Multilingualism in Post-Yugoslav Literature in Germany and Austria
Summary
Looking at questions of language, gender, memory and identity, this book sheds new light on texts by three post-Yugoslav authors writing in German: Saša Stanišić, Marica Bodrožić and the lesser-known Austrian author Alma Hadžibeganović.
Drawing on sources from history, sociology, feminist theory, trauma studies and linguistics, the author argues that post-Yugoslav texts use multilingual strategies to explore the complex interplay of linguistic, ethnic, gender and sexual difference in the former Yugoslavia and to interrogate the monolingual paradigm dominant in Western Europe. She shows that post-Yugoslav literature – written in German and born out of spatial and linguistic dislocation – can open up new imaginary possibilities and point to transnational bonds that counter the acute sense of loss and speechlessness induced by trauma.
The proposal for this book was the Winner of the 2018 Women in German Studies Book Prize.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 German Responses to the Yugoslav Wars
- Chapter 2 Linguistic Impurity and De-constructed Ethnicities in Saša Stanišić’s Novel Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert
- Chapter 3 Transnational Feminist Solidarities and Multilingual Futures in kirschholz und alte gefühle by Marica Bodrožić
- Chapter 4 Linguistic Transgressions and Displacement in the Work of Alma Hadžibeganović
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
Acknowledgements
This book started off as PhD thesis submitted in 2018 at King’s College London and the Humboldt University in Berlin. During my PhD, I was supported by two wonderful women. My first supervisor Dr Áine McMurtry had believed in this project from the very beginning and was there every step of the way, helping me define my research questions and goals, guiding me through the thicket of theory and encouraging me to keep going when I wanted to stop. Thank you for your patience, always being available, your incredible work ethic and the intellectual and emotional support I received from you throughout the years.
I would like to thank my second supervisor Prof. Miranda Jakiša for agreeing to act as my mentor and giving me a second academic home at the Humboldt. Thank you for your infectious enthusiasm and energy, involving me in teaching, trips, publications and conferences; waging bureaucratic battles on my behalf; and making me feel more confident about my project.
I am grateful to King’s College London for awarding me a very generous doctoral stipend and to the Caroline von Humboldt Grant Programme for the completion grant which allowed me to finalize this research project.
Danke dem deutschen Sozialstaat für die finanzielle Sicherung und für die Möglichkeit, mich von dem PhD-bedingten Burnout zu erholen.
Revising the thesis for publication was a long and complicated process. I am grateful to my PhD examiners – Prof. Erica Carter, Prof. Margaret Littler and Prof. Alfrun Kliems – for their thoughtful and kind feedback, which helped me delete what needed to be deleted and rewrite/revise what needed revision. I would like to thank the series editor at Peter Lang, Prof. David Midgley, for his remarks and comments. Laurel Plapp, thank you for your patience and kindness. Rebecca DeWald, thank you for providing your translations, and for being such an insightful and thorough proofreader.
I want to thank my generous readers throughout the years: Polly Dickson, Céline Marraffa, Franziska Nössig, Amanda Hsieh, Frank Voigt, Manuel Ghilarducci and Bartek Redlicki, as well as Prof. Robert Weninger, Prof. Helmut Peitsch and Prof. Boris Previšić.
Ross McQueen, thank you for your most excellent editing work.
Passa Porta, thank you for letting me use your lovely and affordable co-writing space to put the finishing touches to the project.
A project of this size and magnitude cannot be completed without heaps of love and support. I would like to thank my chosen family in Berlin, Brussels and elsewhere (Olo, to ty), who stood by me on the hardest days and had fun with me on brighter days.
Ania Stryjewska, thank you for being my best friend for life, for always holding my hand, your incredible mind and your big and generous heart. Thank you for saving me, again and again, in so many different ways. I am a lucky girl to have you.
Zaid Eslim, ohne dich hätte ich es nie geschafft. Danke, dass du dich um mich gekümmert hast und mir stets Raum gegeben hast, so zu sein, wie ich bin.
Amr Eslim, thank you for making me laugh, for giving me hope and fixing my keyboard when it decided to give up the ghost.
Lisa Jura, danke für die Spaziergänge, Gespräche, deine Kreativität und deine unglaubliche Kraft, die mich in den darksten Zeiten getragen hat.
My Brussels-based brother Alex Arvanitakis, thank you for being there for me, giving me a new home and helping me believe in myself a little more. I hope that one day, I will be able to see myself with your eyes.
Dziękuję Oli Dobroszek za bycie na zjebkach, zdalne wspieranie na duchu i rozmowy o życiu i biznesach.
Dziękuję mojej rodzinie: Mamie, Tacie, Ani, Babci Lili, Babci Bożennie, Wujkowi Darkowi i Dziadkowi za pomoc, wsparcie, słowa otuchy w trudnych chwilach, wiarę we mnie i w to, że to jednak da się zrobić i że jakoś sobie poradzę.
Aniu, dziękuję Ci za zadawanie konkretnych pytań, np. ‘A po co ci ten doktorat?’ Mam nadzieję, że kiedyś znajdę na to pytanie odpowiedź. Kocham cię najbardziej na świecie.
And, finally, thank you Iga, for not giving up on Iga, for choosing yourself, for owning your issues but not letting them define you.
An earlier version of Chapter 3 was published in the volume Slavische Literaturen der Gegenwart als Weltliteratur. Hybride Konstellationen, edited by Diana Hitzke and Miriam Finkelstein. I am grateful to the editors for permission to include parts of the material in reworked form.
Introduction
The Yugoslav Wars (1991–1999) constituted a watershed moment in recent European history. The conflict spanned almost a decade and caused deaths, trauma and injuries on a scale which many had no longer thought possible in Europe after the end of the Second World War. Literary texts written in response to those events explore the effects of migration, flight and expulsions resulting from the conflict, and address the difficulties of post-war reconciliation. They engage with the violent disintegration of the Yugoslav state and mirror social and political developments in Europe during the last decade of the twentieth century – a time when old certainties were undermined and a new political consensus was negotiated out of the remnants of East Germany, the Soviet Union and, eventually, Yugoslavia. In many ways, these texts remain highly pertinent today, given the worldwide rise in xenophobia and nationalism, and the recent return of aggressive warfare to Europe. The works examined in this study critique nationalist and exclusionary ideologies in Western European and Balkan states, while also pointing to as yet uncharted ways in which societies and communities can co-exist in this interconnected yet divided world.
In her study of post-Yugoslav literature and film, Gordana P. Crnković argues that works of art created in response to a brutal conflict ‘have much to tell the world, especially about things that bring wars – the often subtle elements that destroy communities and minds, and participate in the hollowing and worsening of the world’.1 These texts can ‘change and enrich the global realms of sensitivities, concepts, and politics’ and ‘create some new “neural pathways”, so to speak, in our collective brain’.2 This is also true of post-Yugoslav texts written in German.
It is not possible to examine all German-language literary figurations of the post-Yugoslav condition within the bounds of this study. My focus here is on texts which (a) deploy multilingual literary devices and (b) are thematically concerned with the former Yugoslavia and, more specifically, with the Wars of Yugoslav Succession. While the conflict in Kosovo (1998–1999) plays an important role in my discussion of German (military) involvement in the Balkans, the literary works under examination focus on the Croatian War of Independence (1991–1995), the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and, to a lesser extent, the Ten-Day War in Slovenia (1991). Sarajevo and Srebrenica are among the most notorious sites of the Yugoslav conflict and as such constitute part of the European cultural imagination.3 However, the events which took place at these two locations give only a partial picture of the war’s gruesome reality.4 The literary texts analysed in this study not only engage with both Srebrenica and Sarajevo but also recount the fall of Vukovar in Croatia in 1991 and the massacres in Višegrad in eastern Bosnia in 1992.
The authors who receive sustained attention here are the winner of the German Book Prize Saša Stanišić, the acclaimed German writer Marica Bodrožić, as well as the lesser-known Austrian author Alma Hadžibeganović, whom I have chosen due to the originality and exceptional metalinguistic sensitivity of her texts. These authors have diverse biographies. Marica Bodrožić, born in Croatia, came to Germany with her parents in 1983 at the age of 9. Her novel kirschholz und alte gefühle [cherrywood and old feelings] (2012) tells the story of a woman from Sarajevo who lives as a student in Paris during the siege of her home city and who later moves to Berlin to escape an abusive relationship. Saša Stanišić and Alma Hadžibeganović both fled Bosnia as refugees in 1992. Stanišić’s novel Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert [How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone] (2006) has as its focal point the massacre of the Muslim population of Višegrad in eastern Bosnia by Bosnian Serb forces in 1992. The novel is partially written from a child’s point of view and describes the narrator’s flight to Germany as well as his journey to Višegrad as an adult. Hadžibeganović’s ‘zz00m: 24 Std. mix 1. of me oder Penthesilea in Sarajevo’ [zz00m: 24h mix 1. of me or Penthesilea in Sarajevo] (1997) spans just 24 hours and concentrates on two women attempting to obtain a permit to leave the besieged city. Hadžibeganović’s collection ilda zuferka rettet die kunst [ilda zuferka saves art] (2000) addresses the past and present experiences of Bosnians and Yugoslavs living in Vienna and engages with the colonial legacy of the Habsburg Empire.
To prevent marginalization and ethnicization of texts examined in the book, I have chosen to use the neutral and comprehensible term ‘multilingual’ to talk about works produced by writers who might fall under Steven G. Kellman’s definition of translingual authors, i.e. ‘those who write in more than one language or in a language other than their primary one’.5 For practical reasons, I sometimes use ‘second-language’ to refer to writers who are fluent in languages other than German, but I do not intend to impose hierarchies between their primary and secondary language.6 Also, I do not regard second-language texts through the lens of identity politics, or as a reflection of the writers’ cultural/ethnic/national origin. Rather, I argue that literary multilingualism is a conscious textual strategy actively employed by the authors. I pay attention to the material (visual and auditory) qualities of language and am particularly interested in instances in which signification is disrupted. This occurs whenever the texts deliberately utilize, or perform, linguistic errors as part of the writers’ artistic strategy. In such cases, the tension between sense and non-sense produces new, unexpected meanings, which emerge as a result of mixing, malapropisms and homonymy.
Multilingual literary practices are not regarded here as mere features of style but as crucial elements of social and political critique present in post-Yugoslav texts. The political implications of multilingual texts are played out in such realms as production, editing and reception, as well as in textual practices which often subvert grammatical, lexical or orthographic conventions: they thus disrupt the monolingual paradigm which is still a dominant force in many Western European societies. This is not to say that it is always each second-language author’s intention to make political statements in their texts but that, in my opinion, it is not possible to discuss these works in separation from the mechanisms of social and political exclusion which still affect non-native speakers and ethnic minorities in Germany today.
The political potential of literary multilingualism
According to official data, every fourth person in Germany has a Migrationshintergrund [migration background, or family history of migration] and as of 2022, 11.6 million people with a foreign passport were registered in the country.7 Still, the question of who does and who does not belong in Germany is a perennial one.8 NGOs and researchers draw attention to the fact that migrants and ethnic minorities in Germany are disadvantaged in terms of social mobility, political participation and representation, mainly due to persistent discriminatory structures in schools, universities, the media, the judiciary and other areas of life.9 Debates about Germany’s status as an Einwanderungsland [immigration country] are often carried out without considering the migrants themselves.10 The racist attack in Hanau on 19 February 2020 showed that right-wing extremism is a real threat to minority communities throughout Germany. The brutal killings sparked a debate about the language used to refer to the victims, many of whom were German citizens, born and raised in Germany.11 Certain media outlets designated the shootings as ‘fremdenfeindlich’ or ‘ausländerfeindlich’ [anti-foreigner], thereby adopting the perpetrator’s perspective.12
Despite increased migration and internationalization in recent years, ideas of German nationhood are still based on normative notions of ethnoracial belonging, accent-free speech and religious conformity.13 The importance ascribed to language is exemplified by the reform in migration law introduced in 2000. The law brought more leniency in terms of the naturalization of foreign residents and introduced dual citizenship for children of foreign parents, but tightened the rules surrounding the command of the German language.14 David Gramling has argued that the reform represented a shift from the ancient ius sanguinis (right by descent) to what he terms ius linguarum (right by languages).15 In a later article, Gramling admits that the plural formulation is in fact ambiguous and suggests that an alternative term, the Latin singular ius linguae, ‘would intimate an oppressive linguistic supremacy to German’ and, arguably, better reflect this new approach to language and belonging, focussed ‘on compelling the voluntaristic acquisition of German’.16 Thus, since proficiency in German became a prerequisite for political and civic participation in the German state, the model of citizenship based on ethnicity gave way to the ideal of a community linked by cosmopolitan monolingualism, which – while acknowledging the existence of multiple languages in the population – seeks to ‘minimize the effect of multilingualism on public life’.17 In Gramling’s view, this means that the pressure now rests on the individual to demonstrate their willingness to ‘integrate’ via language acquisition and linguistic practice.
In practical terms, the 2000 legislation meant that German language proficiency became a significant requirement for foreign nationals wishing to acquire German citizenship.18 In 2005, the German government introduced Integrationskurse [integration courses] for adults, which are primarily devoted to language acquisition and are obligatory for new immigrants. Sometimes, those who are not willing to participate in such courses are penalized.19 Of course, being able to speak German is a useful skill when living in Germany. What concerns me, however, is the implied equivalence between linguistic proficiency (often conceived as speaking correct and accent-free German) and the right to political participation.20 Also, the legal drive towards monolingualism remains at odds with the lived reality of large portions of Germany’s population.
Linguistic research indicates that it does not matter which languages are spoken by bilingual speakers: the mere fact of double proficiency brings with it cognitive advantages.21 However, many people still believe that speaking minority languages can be detrimental to academic success. In Germany, such views are based on statistics indicating that schoolchildren from migrant backgrounds tend to achieve worse results than their peers. This educational disparity is due to the fact that many children ‘are exposed to German less frequently, and the varieties of German are often non-standard; thus they often lack proficiency in the expected varieties of German when they enter school’.22 In some schools in Germany, the proportion of non-German speakers is as much as 90 per cent. Rather than seek innovative solutions such as bilingual alphabetization, preschool and school education remains, for the most part, German only.
While on the face of it, Germany’s ‘right by descent’ was replaced by the potentially more inclusive and lenient ‘right by language’, ethnicity still plays a role in how non-native speakers of German are perceived in the public eye. In 2018, Christian Lindner, leader of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), stated: ‘Man kann beim Bäcker in der Schlange nicht unterscheiden, wenn einer mit gebrochenem Deutsch ein Brötchen bestellt, ob das der hochqualifizierte Entwickler Künstlicher Intelligenz aus Indien ist oder eigentlich ein sich bei uns illegal aufhaltender, höchstens geduldeter Ausländer’ [At the bakery, when someone orders a roll in broken German, you cannot tell whether the speaker is a highly qualified developer of artificial intelligence from India or a foreigner who is staying here illegally or is, at best, legally tolerated].23 This rhetoric, in which distrust of non-white foreigners is disguised by a thin veil of neoliberal, tech-friendly openness, shows that race still matters in current discussions pertaining to foreigners’ linguistic competence. Since speaking German occurs in and through the body, it is impossible to separate the person’s physicality – and how it is perceived in a predominantly white society – from their linguistic enunciation. Personally, as a white woman with a good command of German and nearly accent-free speech, I can ‘pass’ in the professional setting, as exemplified by a casual remark by a colleague who once told me: ‘Bei dir merkt man das überhaupt nicht’ [One does not notice it at all in your case]. What they meant, I think, is that one can easily forget that I have another language up my sleeve, a language far less glamorous than the coveted English or French taught at German schools. I can disguise my ethnic origin – a privileged position which can never be attained by persons whose heritage is clearly visible. Given these factors, I believe it is too early to part with a critical preoccupation with race, ethnicity and heritage, and how they affect a person’s place in the linguistic community.
In her groundbreaking study Beyond the Mother Tongue. The Postmonolingual Condition, Yasemin Yildiz critiques the monolingual paradigm, which, in her view, shaped European modernity, determined the production of monolingual subjects, institutions and systems of knowledge, and played an important role in the emergence of modern nation-states.24 According to this paradigm, she argues, belonging to a political community held together by a nation-state was only available to those with biological and ancestral ties to it. Such exclusionary thinking was instrumental in the discrimination against German-speaking Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Reich, since their language was regarded as being at odds with their ‘ethnic’ identity. Even Jews fluent in German had no claim on the identity supposedly attached to the German language. Yildiz also dissects the common metaphor of the ‘mother tongue’, which she understands as a ‘linguistic family romance’ that produces ‘a fantasy about the natural, bodily origin of one’s first language and its inalienable familiarity that is said to establish kinship and belonging’.25 In turn, speaking multiple languages and being able to switch between them is a sign of deception and inauthenticity.26
Taking literature into account, Yildiz rejects the idea that original literary work can only be produced by ‘native’ speakers of a language. She points out that in the Middle Ages, it was often the genre that determined the language of the work, as opposed to the author’s stable, unchanging ethnic and linguistic identity.27 In the eighteenth century, ‘the notion of monolingualism rapidly displaced previously unquestioned practices of living and writing in multiple languages’.28 It is true that Yildiz does not comment on the fact that the eighteenth century brought about a massive increase in the levels of literacy in Europe. Whereas in the pre-modern period, writing itself was only practised by educated elites who could speak and write multiple languages, the situation in the eighteenth century changed rapidly, and the process of monolingualization went hand in hand with increased access to education and literacy. It is therefore not entirely clear whether the pre-modern period can be so easily compared with modern times, given the higher numbers of people who are able to read and write. One could also ask whether the spread of literacy in eighteenth-century Europe would have taken place without the state-induced monolingual paradigm.
Details
- Pages
- XII, 272
- Publication Year
- 2024
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781803745657
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781803745664
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781803745435
- DOI
- 10.3726/b22019
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2024 (October)
- Keywords
- Memory Trauma Critique of ethno-nationalism, sexism, patriarchy Germanophone literature and culture Former Yugoslavia Multilingualism Identity
- Published
- Oxford, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, 2024. XII, 272 pp.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
