Description
Book SynopsisExamines novels that depict human rights violations in order to explore causes of intergroup violence within diverse societies, using Germany as a test case. In these texts, the book shows that an exaggeration of difference between minority and majority groups leads to violence.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Beginnings
- Political Contexts: Right-Wing Extremism in Contemporary Germany
- From Diversity to Interculturality in German Studies
- Organization of the Book
Chapter 1: Difference-The Link Between Interculturality and Human Rights
- Definitions
- Thinking Human Rights from a Right to Difference
- A New Model of Intercultural Competence
- Human Rights Literature
- Empathy for Intercultural Competence: Insights from Cognitive Criticism
- Moving Forward: Reading Human Rights Texts with an Intercultural Lens
Chapter 2: Other Neighbors: Genocide as a Crime of Cultural Exclusion in Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Nicol Ljubic's The Stillness of the Sea
Genocide as a Crime of Cultural Exclusion and Its Remediation through Trials and Literature
- Schlink's and Ljubic's Literary Case Studies
Schlink's The Reader: Cultural Ignorance and Universalist Empathy for a Perpetrator Generation
- Ljubic's The Stillness of the Sea: Intercultural Answers to Cultural Exclusion
Concluding Thoughts and Pedagogical Approaches: Universalism and Interculturality for Spaces of Reconciliation
Chapter 3: Imprisoning Others: Captivity and Alienation in Herta MÜller's The Hunger Angel and Abbas Khider's Die Orangen des PrÄsidenten
- The Imprisonment of Rightless Others
- MÜller's and Khider's Transnational Narratives of Captivity
MÜller's The Hunger Angel: Losing Oneself, Language, and Certitudes
Khider's Die Orangen des PrÄsidenten: The Political Prison as a Universal Rightless Space
Concluding Thoughts and Pedagogical Approaches: Deconstructing Exclusion through Alienation and Difference
Chapter 4: Exclusive Communities: Expulsion in Sabrina Janesch's Katzenberge and GÜnter Grass's The Call of the Toad
Heimat Ideologies and Cultural Exclusion in Intercultural Eastern Europe
- Janesch's and Grass's Literatures of Expulsion
- Janesch's Katzenberge: The Re-Interculturalization of Silesia
- Grass's The Call of the Toad: Intercultural Layers of Expulsion
Concluding Thoughts and Pedagogical Approaches: Deconstructing Heimat and Nostalgia in Reflective Intercultural Texts
Chapter 5: Becoming other: Refugees in Germany in Jenny Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone and Shida Bazyar's Nachts ist es leise in Teheran
- Refugee Rights and the Performance of Threat
- Erpenbeck's and Bazyar's Refugee Narratives
- Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone: Universalist Empathy for o/Others
Bazyar's Nachts ist es leise in Teheran: Intercultural Perspectives of Migration and Exile
Concluding Thoughts and Pedagogical Approaches: Telling Stories of Difference for an Intercultural German Society
Conclusion: Literatures of Uncertainty for an Uncertain World
Notes
Bibliography
