Making Of Identity Of The Chinese Living In Germany

The thesis at hand provides an insight into the processes of identity construction by implementing food as a concept of Cultural Thematics(Kulturthemenforschung)of Intercultural German Studies(Interkulturelle Germanstik).As an example,the novel The Girl,the Cook and the Dragon(2013)will be examined.The book was,written by the Chinese author Luo Lingyuan(born 1963),who has been living in Berlin since the beginning of the 1990s.In the first part of the thesis,the theoretical grounds will be provided,introducing and critically examining keywords such as theme/cultural theme,collective and individual identity(cf.Straub),cultural memory(cf.Assmann)and imagined community(cf.Anderson).'Food' will be brought forward as a universal cultural theme and,thus,dealt with in an interdisciplinary manner.Luo Lingyuan's novel channels the various forms of 'Chinese Identities',mainly via the culinary.Subsequently,'Chinese identities' in Germany will be investigated by firstly defining critically approaching the imagined community of the Chinese in Germany.Then,Chinese food as in(a)food of the Chinese in China and(b)food of the Chinese restaurants in Germany with regard to the collective identity of the Chinese will be interrelated.Thus,the problematic state of current research aiming at the study of the minority group of Chinese in Germany will be displayed.Stereotypes,Orientalism(cf.Said),and lacking academic research of the area of interest result in a severe disadvantage of the investigation of Chinese in Germany compared to the one being set in practice in the US.This becomes especially apparent in food culture.The author of the novel The Girl,the Cook and the Dragon.Luo Lingyuan,will be situated within newly formed genre of Chinese-German literature,which is being defined,critically examined and situated within the current state of research.To conclude this third part,a brief summary of already existing studies concerning culinary readings of Chinese-German literature will be put into practice.Even though there is no into-depth study of the topic of food in Chinese-German literature,some examples will proof that a culinary reading is indeed a very promising approach worth applying,since it helps to shed light on identity building processes.The last part consists of the culinary analysis of the novel The Girl,the Cook and the Dragon with regard to identity building processes.In this part,individual as well as collective identities will be shown by using the cultural theme of food as an approach.In the area of collective identity,food will be seen as a source of pseudo-national identities.Moreover,the function of cooking and eating as a means of conquest and a patriarchal instrument of power will be shown.Thirdly,the memorial function of food as an element constructing cultural belonging will be analyzed.Furthermore,the differences between several generations will be made explicit and interpreted.The second part of analysis will examine individual identities with regard to their formation,seeing food as an object of personal taste.Thus,especially culinary metaphors as characterizations of the novel's characters play a major role.Also,the culinary as a means of placing the self in or within cultural spheres will be looked at.The last section deals with the construction of negative identities through the denial of eating.