Eine Herausforderung fuer die Germanistik: 'Kulturelle Hybriditaet' und literarische Texte von Einwanderinnen in den achtziger Jahren

This dissertation focuses on texts by four immigrant writers in Germany: Rafik Schami, TORKAN, Sinasi Dikmen, and Libuse Monikova. Through their prose texts and theoretical essays these writers demand a different, inclusive--not by appropriation, however--re-conceptualization and re-evaluation of their literature, as well as a discussion and re-formulation of differences and positionalities as a constitutive part of German literature and therefore of German society. In this sense, the writings of these four authors challenge some of the core assumptions of established German literature and the paradigms of German Studies, which have disregarded the works of immigrant writers to a large extent.; The dissertation's introductory chapter outlines the socio-historical contexts of immigration and immigrant life in Germany especially since 1970. The legal restrictions and social as well as cultural problems that immigrants have faced are analyzed and the causes of their marginalization are explained. In the second chapter the different terminologies that have been used to describe and define "the immigrant" since 1970 are critically examined. Furthermore, the social categories are demonstrated to have a bearing on the later reception of "migrant literature" in the 1980s. In the third chapter I define my methodological approach. It is based on an interdisciplinary discussion of feminist, post-colonial, and minority discourses, which are most helpful as a tool in re-reading the context of the production of this literature as well as in analyzing the primary texts themselves. The next four chapters present literary analyses of the authors' works within the societal and discursive contexts of the 1980s.; I am reading these literary texts as an emerging multicultural, integral part of German literature. My analyses evoke the reconstructions of multiple and shifting identities as well as heterogeneous societies and reveal literary hybrid or syncretic processes of culture. This minority literature criticizes dominant German discourses in the literary and social arenas by covering issues ranging from the literary canon to multiculturalism, identity, racism, feminism, minority rights, and immigration in Germany.; My conclusion underlines the need for an alternative approach to understanding and discussing minority writing in the context of German literature.