{"title":"The Sociability of Narrative: Freedom, Vulnerability, and Mediation in the Intercultural Novel","authors":"Özkan Ezli","doi":"10.1215/0094033x-10708279","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"From the 1980s to the early 2010s, intercultural novels were often characterized by a liberal impulse to question prejudices and free characters from victim positions as well as cultural and identity-political constraints. This process has been analyzed and sometimes celebrated by scholars in countless literary studies claiming that hybrid actors and multivoiced narratives have replaced passive tales of suffering. More recent novels replace the heterogeneity and freedom of narrative agents with their experiential vulnerability and perceptions of discrimination. The central thesis of this essay is that this shift from freedom to vulnerability closely correlates with the disappearance of figural effects of mediation. The disappearance of a mediating function, which according to Georg Simmel is what makes face-to-face interaction social in the first place, fundamentally changes the intercultural narrative situation, the structure of encounter, and ultimately the forms of sociability in postmigration society. For the future of diversity-oriented and interdisciplinary research in German studies, it will be crucial to grasp this change precisely to develop new theories of inter- and transculturality from these insights.","PeriodicalId":46595,"journal":{"name":"NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE","volume":"47 11","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033x-10708279","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
From the 1980s to the early 2010s, intercultural novels were often characterized by a liberal impulse to question prejudices and free characters from victim positions as well as cultural and identity-political constraints. This process has been analyzed and sometimes celebrated by scholars in countless literary studies claiming that hybrid actors and multivoiced narratives have replaced passive tales of suffering. More recent novels replace the heterogeneity and freedom of narrative agents with their experiential vulnerability and perceptions of discrimination. The central thesis of this essay is that this shift from freedom to vulnerability closely correlates with the disappearance of figural effects of mediation. The disappearance of a mediating function, which according to Georg Simmel is what makes face-to-face interaction social in the first place, fundamentally changes the intercultural narrative situation, the structure of encounter, and ultimately the forms of sociability in postmigration society. For the future of diversity-oriented and interdisciplinary research in German studies, it will be crucial to grasp this change precisely to develop new theories of inter- and transculturality from these insights.
期刊介绍：
Widely considered the top journal in its field, New German Critique is an interdisciplinary journal that focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century German studies and publishes on a wide array of subjects, including literature, film, and media; literary theory and cultural studies; Holocaust studies; art and architecture; political and social theory; and philosophy. Established in the early 1970s, the journal has played a significant role in introducing U.S. readers to Frankfurt School thinkers and remains an important forum for debate in the humanities.
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