"Deutschland? Aber wo liegt es? Ich weiss
das Land nicht zu finden" (Schiller).
Towards a narration of belonging:
Navid Kermani and the language of
nation(hood)
Name: Anna Feldman
Candidate number: 11104449
Thesis supervisor: Dr. Ansgar Mohnkern Second Marker: Prof. Nicole Colin Programme: Literary Studies rMA Universiteit van Amsterdam
Table of Contents
1.1 INTRODUCTION 3 2.1 LEITKULTUR AND THE NATION: IDENTITY, CULTURE AND THE NATION 5 2.2. CHALLENGING A NATIONAL NARRATIVE 14 3.1 NARRATING THE NATION: THE ROLE OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 20 4.1 BELONGING OUTSIDE OF NATIONAL DISCOURSE: THE TEXT AND THE READER 24 5.1. ENLIGHTENMENT, LITERATURE, AND NATION: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 29 5.2 ‘LESSING UND DER TERROR’: RECLAIMING THE ENLIGHTENMENT FROM NATIONAL STRUCTURES 31 5.3 NAVID KERMANI AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT WRITERS: BETWEEN A GERMAN TRADITION AND A WELTLITERATUR 36 5.4 CLAIMING LANGUAGE: WRITING OUTSIDE OF NATIONAL-GEOGRAPHICAL BORDERS 39 6.1 CONCLUSION 45 BIBLIOGRAPHY 481.1 Introduction
The Nation’s existence is embedded in daily life, turning individuals into nationals, leaving ‘individual cultures chasing after nationhood’1, through the encroachment of a national concept into the lived cultural domain. Its formation relies on its, ‘“coming into being” as a system of cultural signification as the representation of social life rather than the discipline of the social
polity’.2 An intertwining of national politics with a cultural sphere turns nationality into a question of cultural identity which is used in turn to continue to invent and re-invent the nation. The link between language as a tool through which nations are established has been long established by critics across the fields of literary studies and social sciences. Homi Bhabha places a special emphasis on the role of language, as he believes it is from ‘political thought and literary language that the nation emerges as a powerful historical idea in the West.’3
Geoffrey Bennington in the 1980s made the connection between the language of narration and its application in the creation of national identity: ‘The idea of nation is inseparable from its narration: that narration attempts interminably, to constitute identity against difference, inside against outside, and in the assumed superiority of inside over outside, prepares for invasion and ‘enlightened colonialism.’4 The constitution of nation in terms of identity, based on cultural belonging, artificially places people as ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ the nation. Sociologist Armin Nassehi points out that the term culture recurrently appears in the context of a debate on national belonging, ‘es [ist] genau dieser Begriff, der als geradezu verdrängter Inhalt immer wieder an die Oberfläche will’5, proving that as long as the nation is constructed in cultural terms, it will be impossible to move away from a much-critiqued debate surrounding cultural ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. If the power to construct a national concept lies in language as a system of cultural signification, literary language also offers the possibility to subvert the language of the nation. Simon During claims, ‘it is, quite specifically, the battery of discursive and representational practices which define, legitimate, or valorize a specific nation-state.’ 6 When the discursive or representational practices are themselves viewed from a different perspective and analysed in a language which defies the socio-political boundaries of a nation
1 Simon During, Literature – Nationalism’s Other? The Case for Revision, in H. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and
Narration, p138
2 H. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and Narration, p1 3 Ibid. p1
4 Geoffrey Bennington, ‘Postal politics and the institution of the nation’, in H. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and
Narration, p132
5 Armin Nassehi, ‘Im Wiederholungszwang’, in Die Zeit, 03.05.2017, accessed 04.05.2017
6 Simon During, Literature – Nationalism’s Other? The Case for Revision, in H. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and
created by national representational practices, then language itself could hold the key to creating a discourse which is, if not detached from the nation, then at least an attempt to open national borders. Language’s implicit connection to the nation is de-linked by literature. The literary text claims language and thereby discourse and representational practices for itself, challenging the linking of a literary culture to the nation, breaking open the myth of cultural ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ through its connection to a centuries-old, non-national literary tradition.
Based on Bennington’s explanation of nation and narration, Navid Kermani is an author who writes both from the centre and the periphery of the nation. Having won many literary prizes, including the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, participated in literary events aligning him with a German Bildungstradition, such as the Lessing Tage in Hamburg, and even working in collaboration with politicians as part of the ‘German Islam Conference’, Kermani could be viewed as an author who represents and is represented by national institutions which have a vested interest in maintaining the current nation-state. On the other hand, Kermani’s essay collections, Wer ist Wir? Deutschland und seine Muslime (2009) and Zwischen Koran
und Kafka: West-östliche Erkundungen (2014), represent and explore the position of those
existing on the edges of the scope of the German nation, be that in a mode of political extremism or enforced ‘otherness’ born of their cultural and/or religious affiliation. Kermani’s conscious focus on the plurality of voices, social behaviours and political standpoints, which position themselves in relation to the nation, reflect to a certain extent Homi Bhabha’s concept of a ‘counter narrative of the nation’. Such a narrative, according to Bhabha, holds the potential to redefine the ‘totalising boundaries’7 of the nation state, both real and imagined, which
ensnare ‘imagined communities’.8 Whether a writer who is so intricately linked to the
institutionalisation of the nation on several levels can nevertheless ‘disturb those ideological manoeuvres through which “imagined communities” are given essentialist identities’9 through the act of writing, or whether Kermani rather offers us a form of narrating the nation which attempts to deconstruct national narrative borders yet is not necessarily counter to the nation is a line of inquiry relevant not only in relationship to Kermani’s texts but can be expanded to an
7 H. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and Narration, p1
8 The phrase ‘imagined communities’ was first coined by Benedict Anderson in which he depicts a nation as a
socially constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. (1991). Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Revised and extended. ed.). London: Verso. pp. 6–7
9 Bhabha, Homi, ‘DissemiNation: time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation’ in Narration and
examination of many authors writing inevitably within a national framework. It is however particularly interesting in the case of Navid Kermani due to the plurality of the social positions which he includes in his work and to an extent personally represents. The inseparability of discursive and representative practices linking nation and language to the concept of culture in chapter one will attempt to open up the fixation on culture in the national narrative. In examining the way in which a mode of behaviour has developed where, ‘cultures are more worth fighting more than nations, hierarchies of cultures seem to fix identities, whereas hierarchies of nations merely seeming to belong to history and politics.’10 Literature as it is institutionalised in the German canon is re-examined in its pre-nineteenth century context by Kermani. Chapter two moves away from a context of traditional German culture, examining how texts, in Kermani’s example the Quran, can form a basis for a more personal sense of belonging within a group, through an individual interaction with a particular culture, linguistic, or religious textual heritage. This allows a reader to return to the status of individual, rather than being caught in the condition of being national, in which an individual is constituted through his or her relationship to the nation-state.
Chapter three will focus on how Kermani pushes the boundaries of language to promote a replacement of language and nation with the concept of literature and language spanning across cultures and political borders. The text, replacing a hierarchy of national culture which fixes identity, opens up a space which reclaims language from the nation, opening it up through the medium of the literary text as a form of international interaction to all those who have access to the German language. Given that one can constitute oneself in the German language regardless of nation, cultural or religious affiliation language itself proves to be the key to shifting social belonging away from the closed terms of the nation towards a concept of
Weltbürgertum in which the focus is the exchange of ideas and communication through literary
communication.
2.1 Leitkultur and the Nation: Identity, Culture and the Nation
Kermani’s essay collections, despite their open criticism of national discourse, reflect a political discourse which places identity at the centre of national belonging. Seventeen years after the CDU Member of Parlement Friedrich Merz introduced the word Leitkultur to the
10 Simon During, Literature – Nationalism’s Other? The Case for Revision, in H. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and
German political scene in 200011, Thomas de Maizière’s attempt to reignite the debate in 2017 reveals the fact that the building blocks of society are still to a large extent perceived to be ‘Homogenität und Bekenntnis, […] Identität und Gemeinsinn.’12 The extent to which
Homogenität, homogeneity, is a necessary condition of social Bekenntnis, acknowledgement,
and what role identity really plays in community spirit, or Gemeinsinn, often become blurred in the culture-lead Leitkultur debate. Kermani’s writing reflects the tendency to interpret the political and social debate as being one in which individual and group identity are presented as the key to social acknowledgement and belonging: ‘der Nationalstaat europäischer Prägung [zwingt] in einer Identität, sei es zur Assimilation oder zum Paria’ (ZKK, p.311). Kermani view portrays this here as a form of forced assimilation and thus directly criticises the Leitkultur model of social belonging. Kermani’s choice of the verb ‘zwingt’ suggests a certain violence towards the individual, be that linguistic or physical, on the part of the national state. It suggests that in order to achieve a sense of Gemeinsinn, a complete homogeneity of identity is necessary. Yet as sociologist Armin Nassehi points out, even those opposing a Leitkultur are in danger of promulgating their own version of a Leitkultur, ‘weil viele Kritiker eines Leitkulturkonzeptes gerne einen eigenen Leitkulturkatalog hätten: eben europäischere, offenere, tolerantere, symmetrischere Formulierungen.’13 Kermani is simultaneously a Leitkultur critic and a staunch supporter of values, ‘der europäischen Idee[…] einer säkularen, transnationalen, multireligiösen und multiethnischen Willensgemeinschaft’. Even if these values are deemed by Kermani as utopian, not yet forming a social reality, by Nassehi’s standards they form, ‘einen eigenen Leitkulturkatalog’. Kermani’s position as a Leitkultur critic may compromise his ability to move away from his own Leitkulturkatalog, yet his critique of the current political and social reality in Germany and Europe could be seen as an acceptance of the utopian aspect of this alternative Leitkulturkatalog. However, even if Kermani manages to avoid falling into the same pattern of argument as his conservative opponents, it remains ambiguous as to whether his discussion of the building blocks of Gemeinsinn manages to move the discussion away from identity as the central focus of the Leitkultur debate.
The title of Navid Kermani’s book Wer ist Wir? Deutschland und seine Muslime conveys the perception that there is a homogenous ‘wir’, a homogenous group of ‘Muslime’, a perception which he brings to light in order to directly challenge: ‘Wer ist Wir? Dieses Wir ist
11 Originating in the field of political science in the work of Bassam Tibi. See: Europa ohne Identität? Die Krise
der multikulturellen Gesellschaft. 1998, München: Bertelsmann
12 Armin Nassehi, ‘Minarette in Oberbayern’, in Die Zeit, 30.11.2000, website accessed 04.05.2017 13 Armin Nassehi, ‘Im Wiederholungszwang’, in Die Zeit, 03.04.2017, website accessed 04.05.2017
durchlässiger geworden’ (ZKK, p302/303). Kermani’s statement within the opening pages of
Wer ist Wir, ‘daß zum Beispiel Arm oder Reich, Stadt oder Land, Gebildet oder Ungebildet
Kategorien sind, durch die Menschen, wenn sie nicht eben in einem rassistischen Staat leben mehr voneinander getrennt, benachteiligt, bevorzugt werden als durch die Nationalität oder den Glauben’ (WiW, p25) sets the tone for a discussion which shifts the debate away from religion and nationality, towards other categories of social affiliation. The categories Kermani chooses such as education and poverty in a similar manner to nationality and religion, carry a certain aspect of the socially predetermined. There therefore arises a conflict between Kermani’s portrayal of pre-determined social categories as a factor in social belonging and his consideration of a socially constructed identity as the determining factor in belonging – ‘Identitätsfindung funktioniert grundsätzlich über die Abgrenzung von anderen Identitäten’ (WiW, p26) – as implied through the use of Identitätsfindung which suggests a certain agency in identity construction and therefore in social belonging. The agency is however lacking in Kermani’s break down of social factors which contribute to identity formation in the first place, revealing a certain tension between the idea of agency in identity formation and the pre-assigned categories of social belonging.
The dualistic level of the individual and the collective come together in Kermani’s argument in which his personal anecdotes support his use of the plural ‘wir’. He claims ‘Natürlich neigen wir zu Bestimmungen, Einordnungen, also Identifikationen’ (WiW, p26), following up with his own personal anecdote. This suggests he is talking on the level of the individual, a level which allows for the claim ‘so widersprüchlich sind wir alle’ (WiW, p26). Yet the categories ‘Arm oder Reich, Stadt oder Land, Gebildet oder Ungebildet’, which exist in many countries and are not German specific, focus on a non-national social level, raising the question as to what function these categories play in society and whether the individual can really choose the social groups to which they are perceived to belong. Kermani’s view that ‘die Abgrenzung von anderen Identitäten’ (WiW, p26) is a tool for building one’s own ‘Identitätsfindung’ is similar to that of political scientist Claus Leggewie, who claims that conflict stems from and solidifies cultural differences and social worlds, it ‘wird zum Medium der Binnenintegration: dadurch, dass man den Nachbarn ausschliesst’14. The main difference between the two is that Kermani views exclusion as a method of identity formation, whereas Leggewie views exclusion as a tool for creating a sense of group social belonging. The differentiation between group belonging, group identity, and individual identity remains
somewhat ambiguous in Kermani’s work, particularly in his opening essay to Wer ist Wir ‘Grenzverkehr’.
There are however benefits to an ambiguous representation of identity formation and its relationship to social belonging. The ambiguity acts as a tool to counteract the tendency to view identity as an inflexible set of characteristics combined in a person which in turn are used to determine the right to belong. If identity can be used as a tool with which ‘boundaries between self and not-self, margin and centre, are rigidly drawn and assumed stable’15, which can lead to a fixed sense of identity by ‘freezing it into mere group membership’16, separating group identity and group belonging from individual identity can help open up boundaries to promote a sense of belonging not based solely on identity. Young-Kyung Kim in his exploration of Muslim identity in the diaspora suggests it is necessary to ask the question which remains on the sidelines of Kermani’s work: ‘was für einen Träger die Identität hat: Ein Individuum oder ein Kollektiv’? Peter Taubman similarly highlights a multifaceted, multi-layered identity in his conception of ‘the complex interplay of differences within oneself and between oneself and others’17, whilst Leggewie stresses the importance of individual identity formation, claiming ‘Biografie als Einheit’18. If Kermani’s text does not create a clear
distinction between the public and private spheres, between individual identity and group belonging, Kermani’s writing does create a textual unity in a way which theory is unable to do: Writing as an individual, Kermani is able to draw on differences within himself, between himself and others, combining it with communal identity in the German context. His texts thereby remove the sense of rigidity and stability between different layers of identity often present in theoretical writing, opening the boundaries between the national Self and national Other19, exposing the contradictions between an individual and a collective identity.
In ‘Grenzverkehr’, the opening essay to Wer ist Wir? Deutschland und seine Muslime, Kermani challenges the perception that ‘the national state has been superseded as the pinnacle of social life by a more globally organized configuration of powers’20 by highlighting how current media and political debate, as the major producers of discourse and representational practices of the nation in Germany, function upon the premise of a dichotomy between a national German ‘Wir’ and a Muslim other: ‘<<Wir>> Deutsche müssen Dialog führen mit
15 Taubman, Peter, in McCarthy, Cameron, Race, Identity, and Representation in Education, p221 16 Ibid., p221
17 Ibid. p221
18 Leggewie, Claus, Was heisst Interkulturalitaet? p14
19 Term coined by Lisbeth Mannard in New Germans, New Dutch, p16
den Muslimen, sagen die Gutwilligen. Das ist löblich nur bedeutet es für etwas 3 Millionen Menschen in diesem Land, dass sie den Dialog mit sich selbst führen müssen’ (WiW, p 27). Behind the slightly comic image of 3 million people talking to themselves lies the message that those 3 million also belong to the category German, yet are excluded from the German social collective by a public dialogue which excludes them, by implying they are not part of the ‘Wir Deutsche.’ The disconnect between the perception in the discourse and the reality of who belongs to the German Nation-State collective identity suggests that the narrative of the nation is out of joint with reality. Kermani highlights where the calls for a dialogue come from – namely the ‘Gutwilligen’ – thereby insinuating that their voices belong to those of the dominant culture, who display an underlying assumption that there is only one way to ‘be German’, a way which, it is implied, is not synonymous with being Muslim. By adding their voices to his writing – ‘sagen die Gutwilligen’ – Kermani is able to set his writing up as a counterweight or responding voice to such calls for dialogue, which not only create a dichotomy between a German and Muslim identity but also play into the narrative of the nation-state. Despite the presence of 3 million Muslims, the call for a dialogue between them and the ‘Deutsche’ (what exactly this encompasses except for not Muslim remains unclear in the opening essay ‘Grenzverkehr’ betrays a continuation of thinking similar to Robert Wokkler’s analysis of the origin of the nation-state. Wokkler claims the origins of this framework lie in the origins of the Nation-State as born out of the French revolution in 1789, ‘they [the revolutionaries] linked the rights of man to the sovereignty of the nation, the legislators of the National Assembly defined those rights in such a way that only the State could enforce them and only members of the nation could enjoy them, thereby ensuring that only persons comprising nations which formed states could have rights.’ Whilst the modern European Nation-State is often morally and legally bound to acknowledge the rights of those not belonging to the dominant ‘nation’ in Wokkler’s sense of the term, the founding ideas of the Nation-State are arguably now played out in the sphere of culture. Groups of people deemed, due to their cultural heritage, to be the national Other are forced to relate to the Nation-State in one of two ways. The forcing of an individual to assimilate or be excluded not only removes the importance of nuances of identity on an individual level but it also creates a false sense of stability and rigidity of identity on a collective level, strengthening a sense of ‘Wir Deutsche’, whilst denying those for whom such clear cultural boundaries do not exist the right to belong.
Stuart Hall conceives of a national culture as ‘a discourse – a way of constructing meanings which influences and organises both our actions and our conception of ourselves […] National cultures construct identities by producing meanings about ‘the nation’ with which we
can identify.’21 A national culture becomes harmful, however, when the meanings about ‘the nation’ only allow some members of the group belonging to that nation (in the sense of born and/or living long-term in that Nation-State) to identify with this national culture. Kermani’s view that the media22 has a tendency ‘es auf Polarisierung, auf eingängige Behauptungen und eindeutige Meinungen an[zu]legen’ (WiW, p.94) feeds into a lexicon of a Leitkultur which simultaneously creates a discourse by producing meaning about the nation, whilst producing a moral discourse of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ citizens, determined by how much an individual adheres to the norms of the German national culture. In ‘Die Terroristen sind unter uns’ Kermani focuses on headlines run by Der Spiegel which convey a message of assimilation. He claims the articles feature women, ‘gute Türkinnen’, as those who had broken away from their Turkish cultural heritage – ‘die mit ihrem Elternhaus gebrochen haben und nun von tapfern Deutschen geschützt werden’ (WiW, p.92). As the German side is portrayed as ‘tapfer’, those who assimilate as ‘gut’, the implication is that those who belong to other, traditionally non-German cultures, are bad, until they adopt German values. The example is intended to illustrate his argument that ‘der Preis zu den anderen zu gehören, wäre die Loslösung von der eigenen Kultur’ (WiW, p.92), as the ‘Dialog’ is based on the premise of conflict in which one culture must emerge dominant, victorious. In reflecting this discourse, however, Kermani reproduces within his own writing the polarisation which he criticises and thus furthers rather than subverts the debate. His choice of language – ‘gute Türkinnen’ (my italics), ‘die Gutwilligen’ – encourages the valorisation and moralisation of culture belonging. Rather than situating his writing outside of the debate, Kermani whilst talking about the language used, in fact reproduces the self-same language of moralisation which leads to different forms of identity and belonging being deemed as right or wrong. Thus in the same way that Kermani teetered on the edge of reproducing the Leitkulturkatalog in his opposition of a Leitkultur, his discourse surrounding national culture, rather than disrupting the language used to frame the debate in order to create a new ‘way of constructing meanings which influences and organises both our actions and our conception of ourselves’23, Kermani ends up echoing this language without reflection on the danger of the moralisation of such a debate.
Kermani’s criticism of the assimilation discourse produced by the nation-state and by
Der Spiegel run over into his criticism of integration, which he views as equally disrespectful
21 Stuart Hall in Lies Minnard, New Germans, New Dutch, p292
22 Kermani’s use of the term ‘media’ explicitly covers TV talk shows and newspapers but hints at the inclusion
of other media outlets, although none are specifically mentioned in Wer ist Wir? Originally published in 2009, it may be of interest to revisit his ideas in light of the developments in social media of the past decade.
to those who are required to integrate. Integration can only exist when one culture emerges dominant. It is only then that there is ‘ein bestehendes Ganzes’ (ZKK, p303) into which another group can integrate. Integration itself as a concept is therefore a product of, amongst other sources, ‘Gutwilligen’ voices in the media, who exclude by wanting to include. The inclusion, however, is unquestionably into a national dominant German culture, without questioning to what extent this imagined homogenous culture really exists, what form it takes and what values it represents. Kermani considers integration to be a furthering of the concept of an existing dominant national culture:
‘allein das Wort der Integration, das Norm geworden ist, zeigt an, dass die Grundlage weiterhin die Vorstellung eines irgendwie einheitlichen Staatvolkes ist, fuer das ein Fremder sich zu qualifizieren, in das er sich einzubringen hat. Integration ist schon dem Wort nach ein einseitiger Vorgang: Ein Einzelner oder eine Gruppe integriert sich in ein bestehendes Ganzes.’ (ZKK, p303)
Kermani’s use of the word ‘Vorstellung’ hints at the questionable existence of a unified Leitkultur, suggesting the imagined reality does not correspond to lived reality and only holds power for so long as the idea is expounded in public dialogue. In the context of integration, it is to a certain extent the Leitkultur which is essentialised through the perpetuation of the idea that a ‘bestehendes Ganzes’ exists as a fixed entity. The national ‘Other’, in Mannard’s terms, or those deemed as not belonging to the Leitkultur, are trapped in a situation where they are at once essentialised, reduced to specific stereotypes, (as in the case of the ‘good’ Turkish women who defied a stereotype of what it meant to be Turkish), whilst also being expected to constantly interact and alter their relationship with the dominant culture. In contrast to this, Kermani’s frames the outsider as active, ‘für das ein Fremder sich zu qualifizieren, in das er sich einzubringen hat’. It is the expected role of the ‘Other’ to wish to and actively make an effort to live within the parameters of the Leitkultur. The combination of a frozen Leitkultur and expectations placed on the figure of the ‘Fremder’ leads to ‘ein einseitiger Vorgang’, which determines the way in which the outsider is to become active. Peter Taubman claims that identity, ‘emerges in the relations among and between individual, group, and society’24 in what he calls a process of ‘identity in motion’. In a situation in which only one group of people are participating in the relationship, no reconfiguration of the relationship and thus of the identity
can occur. A language of integration freezes the potential for a communal ‘identity in motion’, as the relationship becomes one-sided, dominated by the national culture. Identity is ‘essentialised’, to return to Taubman’s terminology, reduced to ‘mere group membership’, through the perpetuation of the idea of integration.
The concept of integration can only function if a ‘national Other’ exists in the first place. Kermani examines how a discourse of polarity, of cultural opposites at times artificially creates an ‘Other’, thus creating a form of ‘Kampf der Kulturen’ where one did not previously exist. In the context of young German Muslims Kermani claims, ‘womöglich hielten sie es für selbstverständlich oder haben nicht darüber nachgedacht, dass der Westen ihre Heimat ist […] sie sind in die Entscheidung gezwungen; Gehörst du zu uns, kannst du nicht zu denen gehören’ (WiW, p.93). The polarised narratives of belonging issuing from public debate centred around cultural exclusivity, can lead to a sense of exclusion, especially for those who feel an affiliation to more than one cultural tradition which are now viewed as no longer compatible. If German Muslims previously felt included, part of the ‘wir’, the desire to define and reaffirm what the ‘Westen’ is through discourse, forces in Kermani’s opinion, young German Muslims into the position of outsider, or the West’s ‘Other', a position which they did not previously see themselves as occupying. This in turn transforms this group into strangers called upon to play an ‘active’ role in society, whilst the dominant German voices promoting integration dictate the terms of acceptance back into the Leitkultur to which they once belonged - and in daily reality most likely still do form - a part. The message of integration sent through such polarisation – ‘es geht doch, wenn ihr nur wollt!’ (WiW, p.93) –, reiterated in nationally orientated discourse, such as in the writing of Thilo Sarrazin, ‘Mann kann etwas erreichen, wenn man will. Aber man muss es selber wollen’25 – is interpreted by Kermani as a divisive
discourse. It does not attempt to incorporate other cultures into a national discourse, nor does it accept the compatibility of cultures and the flexibility of identity on an individual, group, and social level. Kermani’s critique suggests that such a discourse builds the idea of an imagined rigid and stable idea of group identity as the essential identity to which one can only belong when one has given up the ‘other’ cultural and religious Muslim tradition. It functions as a key part of the national cultural discourse, which instead of challenging whether one (or 3 million Muslims) should want to give up their Muslim identity in order to ‘integrate’ into or belong to the German Leitkultur, in fact acts to exclude (or in some cases further exclude) those who already are a ‘Mitglied einer Gemeinschaft’, the German Gemeinschaft. The rhetoric of
integration within the context of a German Leitkultur is thus in fact a rhetoric of exclusion, which enables a strengthened concept of the Leitkultur by creating its own national other.
Kermani’s writing is to a large extent exemplary of Taubman’s concept of ‘identity in motion’, as he attempts to engage with and redefine a sense of ‘German’ identity in his essays. Through his writing Kermani claims the right to belong whilst challenging the inflexibility of identity boundaries by questioning the terms in which they take place. Kermani’s focus on the problem of holding a one-sided dialogue of exclusion, shifts his focus towards the language of discourse. The words in which the dialogue surrounding national identity take place not only act as a tool for exclusion but are often used without consideration for the many levels on which identity is formed, as Young-Kyung Kim suggests: ‘Wenn zum Beispiel der Ausdruck “nationale Identität” allein steht, weißt man nicht, ob es sich hier um “Identität einer Nation” oder um “Identität einer Person in bezug auf ihre Nation” handelt.’26 ‘Identität einer Nation’ suggests a preconceived collective, whereas ‘Identität einer Person in bezug auf ihre Nation’, suggests a focus on the individual and seems to remove the assumption that an individual’s identity is synonymous with the identity of the nation. In Zwischen Koran und Kafka Kermani equally maintains the sense of agency in identity by maintaining the focus on the individual with the power to act, who nevertheless belongs to a larger social group, ‘Jede Mensch, jeder gewöhnliche Mensch, handelt, denkt, urteilt, liebt als Mitglied einer Gemeinschaft, geleitet von seinem sensus communis’, suggesting that a vision of collective belonging steers the behaviour of the individuals who exist within this collective, yet that each individual maintains the power to act, think, and make decisions. Kermani’s presentation of the individual’s role within the collective, however, also keeps the figure of the individual as an active participant, in what could be conceived of as ‘identity in motion’, identity played out and constantly re-evaluated in relation to the individual, group, and societal level. A multi-layered identity focus draws Kermani away from participating in a polarising ‘Dialog der Kulturen’, which has unintended consequences in that it ‘bestätigt in seinem Gutmeinen ungewollt sein Gegenmodell, den <<Kampf der Kulturen>>’ (WiW, p.127). Rather than discussing ‘nationale Identität’ from the perspective of a unifying collective, which automatically creates a form of polarisation, Kermani speaks instead in personal terms – ‘Ich bin Muslim. Der Satz ist wahr und zugleich blende ich damit tausend andere Dinge aus, die ich auch bin und die meiner Religionszugehörigkeit widersprechen können’ (WiW, p.17). Whilst Kermani does not completely redefine the terms of the debate, moving them away from identity altogether, by
bringing in personal ties Kermani shifts the focus of his debate towards the concept of ‘Identität einer Person in bezug auf ihre Nation’, thereby making room for contradictions in the otherwise simplified version of national identity. Kermani therefore reinforces the necessity of nuance in debates, which he suggests can only take place if identity is unfrozen, de-essentialised, and conceived of as a concept born out of many levels of identification and belonging. The necessity for a nuanced debate is particularly apparent when comparing Kermani’s method of exploring his own identity with that of the media. Clearer still is the need for language use to break away from the patterns of fixed representational practices employed in producing national meaning through discourse.
2.2. Challenging a National Narrative
Published twice, once under the title Vergesst Deutschland! Eine patriotische Rede and once as a chapter in Zwischen Koran und Kafka, ‘Die heroische Schwäche: Lessing und der Terror’, Kermani’s speech at the occasion of the opening of the Hamburg Lessing Days in 2012 shows Kermani’s desire to carve out an alternative narrative to that presented by politicians and the media. If his attempt to argue against a Leitkultur in Wer ist Wir? functions as a critique of how national discourse is framed, drawing on examples and personal experience, ‘Lessing und der Terror’ pushes the autobiographical element of storytelling further. Without detracting from a focus on untold truths, Kermani combines a quantitative, impersonal and statistical approach with a literary tradition of storytelling in a manner which challenges the common, impersonal mode of producing a narrative of the nation. These statistical analyses add a dimension to this text which is rarely found in his other essays, even within the same collection Zwischen Koran
und Kafka, which help to build up Kermani’s offering of an alternative truth. The choice of
presenting this information in an essay form allows Kermani ‘einen Aspekt von mehreren Seiten zu beleuchten’ (WiW, p.95) and thus positions itself as an alternative to the ‘Talkshow’ format which forces complicated arguments to be simplified, they are ‘zu einem Statement zusammen[ge]fass[t].’ Rather than reducing his argument to one dominant viewpoint, Kermani deliberately brings in many different ‘statements’, pitting them against one another in order to break open a certain public perception of German society.
Kermani’s situation of his debate at the poles of German society – from the nationalist, right wing ‘Zwickauer Terrorzelle, to the Islamic extremist ‘Hamburger Terrorzelle’ – allows him to examine factors which lead to extremist behaviour and draw connections. By
establishing that ‘ein Überzeugungstäter […], der zu sterben bereit ist, handelt in seiner Selbsteinschätzung selbst dann notwendig gerecht, wenn er Menschen tötet, die auch nach seinen eigenen Maßstaben völlig unschuldig sind’ (ZKK, p.93), Kermani removes the specificities of belief which lead to an act of violence against innocent people. Instead he appreciates that amongst both Islamic extremists and German right-wing nationalists there is a common belief that one’s own cause is justification for acting against one’s own morals or conception of innocent and guilty. Through the examples of Uwe Mundlos, from the right-wing nationalist Zwickauer terror cell and Mohammen Atta from the Islamic Hamburger terror cell, Kermani brings both figures, diametrically opposed on a political scale, together in the same sentence, thereby dismantling the narrative which situates them as worlds apart: ‘Sowohl der Kopf der Zwickauer Terrorzelle, Uwe Mundlos, als auch der Kopf der Hamburger Terrorzelle, Mohammed Atta, stammen aus gebildeten Familien, in deren Einstellung der nationale beziehungsweise religiöse Extremismus gerade nicht vorgeprägt war’ (ZKK, p.94). Both figures came from similar backgrounds, were well liked by their friends (ZKK, p.95) and caused media outlets, such as Der Spiegel and Stern to ask how both figures came to take such a course in life: ‘Wie konnte aus einem freundlichen Professorensohn ein von Haß geleiteter Rechtsterrorist werden?’ (ZKK, p.96) The purpose of drawing this parallel is to draw attention not only to the shift in motivation and method behind terror attacks but also to point to our failure as a society to interpret and understand the ‘Bürgerlichkeit, die Bildung, die Intelligenz; die Liebenswürdigkeit, den Idealismus’ (ZKK, p.96) as anything but peaceful, accepting and tolerant. Through this implicit critique of a German model of Bildungsbürgertum – of which Kermani himself is to a certain extent a representative – Kermani shows a desire as an author to situation himself on the periphery of this category. Kermani’s text functions as a ‘dritter Raum’27, as defined by Homi Bhabha, in so far as it challenges the parameters which define each individual as ‘belonging to’ or ‘outside of’ the society by criticising the middle of society. By attempting to demonstrate the inability of the media to report and explain such new phenomena, where the lines between being, ‘in der Mitte der Gesellschaft’ and on the extreme edges of it are blurred, Kermani’s text sets itself up as an alternative authoritative source, which can offer an explanation. Kermani does this by bringing the specific backgrounds of the attackers together as individuals, claiming the common factor is the powerless feeling of the individual against ‘a ‘zugleich abstrakten und übermächtigen Gegner, wie dem Westen, dem
27 Bhabha, Homi, ‘In the Cave of Making: Thoughts on Third Space’, in Ikas, Karin, Wagner, Gerhard, (eds.),
Kapital, oder einem Staatsapparat’ (ZKK, p97) which leads to ‘ein neuer Typus des Terrorismus [..], der seinen Schrecken gerade aus der Wortlosigkeit bezieht’. The question then becomes, how do and should public debate respond to a mentality of fear, of ‘Taten statt Worte’ (ZKK, p.97)? By focusing on extremist acts and their representation in the media Kermani identifies a need for a different mode of knowledge production and understanding than that offered by Spiegel or Stern articles. This provokes a reaction on two levels in Kermani’s text: firstly, it leads on to an examination of how Germany’s social ‘reality’ is narrated from the ‘middle’ of society; secondly, it focuses on the personalised story of the individual. The individual story replaces statistics in their role as evidence in Kermani’s argument.
In the context of extremist actions and views, Kermani chooses to focus on the disturbing parallel between extreme positions in society and those aligned with a ‘moderate’ tradition of Bildungsbürgertum. He draws attention to the labelling of the far-right crimes against those with a Migrationshintergrund, or migration background, by those in the
Zwickauer Terrorzelle themselves, as ‘Aktion Dönerspieß’ (ZKK, p.90) and the continuation
of this lexicon in the mainstream press. The language of the far-right was adopted by the media and thus became mainstream terminology: ‘Den Ausdruck <<Döner-Morde>> […] haben seriöse Zeitungen in den öffentlichen Sprachgebrauch eingeführt’ (ZZK, p.104). Having previously touched on the social impact of the power to determine belonging and identity through the expression of the word ‘wir’, Kermani here explicitly points to language as the stage on which the battle of belonging plays out. Whereas before the ‘Gutwilligen’ were the voices able to determine who belonged to the ‘wir’, now indirectly, nationalist-extremists were steering public perception of murders they carried out. By juxtaposing headlines which are separated by months, even years – ‘schwer durchdringbare Parallelwelt der Türken schützt die Killer’, ‘2009 machte dasselbe Magazin dann die Wettmafia verantwortlich’ then in 2011, ‘eine Allianz zwischen rechtsnationalen Türken, dem türkischen Geheimdienst und Gangstern’ (ZKK, p104) – Kermani exposes a pattern, showing how individual headlines formed a narrative which simultaneously created a closed world to which the victims purportedly belonged, then adopted an outsiders perspective, claiming to not understand where the motive for the murders come from, whilst using similar language to that employed by the murderers. The phrase, ‘durchdringbare Parallelwelt’, plays on the same concept of a German society which is separate from the culture and society of migrants living in Germany. Although the victims belonged to these worlds, the criminalising of whole communities by connecting their national identity, ‘Parallelwelt der Türken’, ‘rechtsnationalen Türken, dem türkischen Geheimdienst’, with that of criminal underworlds ‘Wettmafia’, ‘Gangstern’ created an artificial
divide between the German nationalist criminals and the Turkish community, claims Kermani. This is the turning point towards a critique of educated ‘moderate’ citizens in Kermani’s argument. The press’ previous lack of understanding of how the seemingly model citizens Uwe Mundlos and Mohammed Atta turned to extremism and violence is shown in here in a new light - the press is portrayed as wilfully misunderstanding. The dehumanising aspect of labelling the crimes ‘Döner-Morde’, alongside the press’ insistence on a narrative of guilt, despite the evidence, are undermined by Kermani’s humanistic portrayal of the father – ‘der Vater des Gemüsehandlers Süleyman Tasköprü hielt die Leiche seines Sohnes noch in den Armen, als er schon aus dem Ladenlokal weggeführt und mehrere Stunden lang auf der Polizeiwache verhört wurde.’ This picture which offers an individual and human portrayal of the crime, in which numbers are replaced with names, is placed in stark contrast to the reality of the press reports, which in comparison seem closer to the dehumanising ‘Aktion-Dönerspieß’ in that they replicate a sense of lack of individuality and humanity by reducing the victims to one simplified characteristic – either their job (Döner shop owners) or their migration background (Turkish). The linguistic parallels between the right-wing extremists and the media, along with the contrast between the media reportage and Kermani’s story aims to create a sense of mistrust in the reader towards the language, ‘facts’, and headlines presented by the media, headlines with which the reader may be familiar and now sees in a different light. Kermani’s stated goal, ‘einen Aspekt von mehreren Seiten zu beleuchten’, therefore contributes towards creating a form of critical awareness or perception of society in the reader. Even those ‘Gutwilligen’ who would have wished to speak with this ‘Parallelwelt’ are challenged with the question – to what extent do these parallel worlds really exist, or to what extent are they a production of public discourse, furthering the creation of a national ‘Other’, which is out of sync with the reality behind the words?
The problem behind this question, as identified by Kermani, is ascertaining what ‘reality’ is and who creates it. If Kim explored the question ‘was für einen Träger die Identität hat’28 in the context of identity, Kermani asks the question, ‘was für einen Träger die Wirklichkeit hat’, coming to the conclusion that all meaning is produced through language. He dismantles the idea of reality being an easily determined set of facts and through his writing creates a version of societal and personal reality which incorporates wider social patterns and individual perception of reality on a local level. One point of contention Kermani picks up on within reality production, or reality perception, is the employment of statistics in supporting
stand points in debates. Kermani challenges the way in which this quantitative method of knowledge production is viewed as producing incontestable facts, by demonstrating a bias in statistic production. By deliberately bringing in contradictory statistics in his essay ‘Lessing und der Terror’, Kermani dismantles the myth that arguments built upon statistics are indisputable. He thereby opens the door to his own method of fact production: story telling. The clearest contradiction given by Kermani concerns the discrepancy in the recorded number of deaths due to racist violence depending on the source: ‘Seit 1989 zählen antirassistische Initiativen 182 Tote rechter und rassistischer Gewalt. Mindestens 150 Tote sind es in der Auflistungen der deutschen Presse. Die Bundesregierung beharrt dagegen bis heute auf <lediglich> 47 Opfern’ (ZKK, p.103). The statistical comparison here not only raises the question as to how different organisations could produce death tolls which differ by 135 deaths, but also why this occurred. The myth of the infallible statistic is lifted, leaving in its wake room for a direct critique and interpretation of the concepts (e.g. racist violence) and names (Süleyman Tasköprü, Uwe Mundlos), which the numbers claim to represent. Kermani responds by revealing that which numbers alone cannot – by giving specific context. Kermani provides examples to suggest there is enough evidence to prove an ulterior motive behind the statistic production. A reader’s mistrust in the statistics provided is built up before the introduction of the statistics, with the example provided by Siegfried Mundlos of the mistrust between the police and the Verfassungsschutz: ‘einmal standen zwei Männer vor seiner Tür und rieten, eine Telefonzelle aufzusuchen, sollte er mit seinem Sohn telefonieren – dann könne die Polizei nicht mithören’ (ZKK, p102). Having demonstrated with this an several other examples that those employed by the Verfassungsschutz behaved in a manner contrary to public and police interest, ultimately damaging lives and obscuring certain right-wings truths, Kermani follows up the statistics with details of the decision to close the department for right-wing extremism within the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, despite the rise in crime at that time. The specific examples and the follow up evidence of lack of interest in this department leads Kermani to interpret the low numbers of deaths recorded by the government in comparison to those given by the media and anti-racist movements as, ‘strukturelle Verdrängung’, on the part of the
Bundesregierung. The ‘strukturelle Verdrängung’ (ZKK, p103) creates, according to Kermani,
a state narrative of denial of the growth of right-wing groups which displays parallels with the previously examined media narrative of denial. By examining specific circumstances, Kermani forms an answer to ‘how’ and ‘why’ there is such a discrepancy in the death toll statistics, suggesting that statistics alone are an unreliable source of information, the numbers must be
contextualised, providing an example of how this can be done – through the use of specific examples, by telling a story.
Statistics can lead to biased interpretations, as Kermani touches on in the context of Thilo Sarrazin’s Deutschland schafft sich ab. Although the content of their works could be viewed as opposing one another, both authors present statistics, Sarrazin occasionally although far less than Kermani, use examples taken from invididuals, which allows both authors to rhetorically undermine the depersonalisation employed in the meta-narrative of the nation. Given the similarities in style of text of both authors, it is therefore interesting that Kermani chooses to include Sarrazin as a follow-up on his critique of ‘strukturelle Verdrängung’. It is perhaps because Sarrazin combines statistics with arguments in a way which Kermani criticises as: ‘entwürdigende Sprache, die ganze Bevölkerungsgruppen auf ihren – noch dazu äußert fragwürdig berechneten – ökonomischen Nutzwert reduziert’ which provokes Kermani to draw Sarrazin into the debate at this specific point in the essay. Having previously not participated in the debate surrounding Sarrazin, ‘weil ich mit der Fertigstellung des Romans beschäftigt war, Dein Name’ (ZKK, p.112) Kermani’s critique at this point is not just aimed at the content of Sarrazin’s arguments which ‘ganze Bevölkerungsgruppen auf ihren […] ökonomischen Nurtzwert reduziert’ but also heavily critiques how Sarrazin argues, using statistics which are ‘fragwürdig berechnet[..]’ and framed in an ‘entwürdigende Sprache’, which when combined follow a questionable logic, a ‘scheinrationalen Argumentationskette’ (ZKK, p.114). In a context in which statistics prove to be unreliable, Kermani seems to suggest that rational argument (as opposed to a ‘scheinrationale’ argument) is as equally, if not more, reliable way of determining what reality is than relying on quantitative sources produced with hidden motives. Statistics are presented as tools to aid a debate which must always take place within the medium of language. Kermani’s attack on Sarrazin’s use of language has the effect of diminishing the content which is conveyed through language. Kermani’s role as an author in this text is as a critic of production of public and institutional knowledge as well as one of unveiler, even collector, of linguistic evidence. Whilst Kermani does attempt to convince a reader of the ‘strukturelle Verdrängung’ in existence, he does not fall back on statistics to provide clarity in his argument but rather works with the uncertainty of the reporting of events. His aim is to point out the unreliability of statistics, as well as those arguments which base themselves directly and unquestioningly on data without examining other sources of knowledge, sources, which give credence to the individual story. These are sources which gain meaning from the use of personalised language rather than abstract numbers and which according to Kermani’s style of argumentation deserve just as much weighting in a debate as
numerical evidence. In contrast to Sarrazin’s rigid method of employing language to provide a fixed picture of reality, Kermani employs a language which enables various perceptions of reality. He thereby shifts the focus onto language as a flexible tool with the capacity to be shaped by the speaker.
3.1 Narrating the Nation: The Role of Autobiography
Kermani’s move away from data as reality production conversely reinstates the authority of essays which do not rely on statistics but on other sources of information, such as personal experiences. Kermani maintains a belief in the essay form as a means which can counter those who ‘[sich] mit den Mitteln einer extremistischen Partei oder eines Medienkonzerns, von den Rändern der Gesellschaft oder aus ihrer Mitte, gegen einen Grad der Pluralität und Weltoffenheit [auflehnen]’ (ZKK, p.119), that much is evident from his publishing of his essay collection Zwischen Koran und Kafka in 2014, two years after his
Vergesst Deutschland! (Lessing und der Terror) speech. However, the essay collection which
best counters arguments based on shaky statistical foundations, such as Sarrazin’s, remains Kermani’s Wer ist Wir? published in 2009. As in Lessing und der Terror, Kermani focuses on bringing in contrasting sources of evidence together in an essay format in order to re-determine or redefine the story of certain political and or social events. If ‘Lessing und der Terror’ explores how, as Lisbeth Mannard put it, ‘in contemporary Europe the national Other is predominantly an Other that resides within the borders of the nation state’29, what marks Wer
ist Wir as particularly noteworthy in the debate surrounding integration in Germany is
Kermani’s repeated use of personal experiences, individual tales, which shifts the focus from a fixed collective identity to the way in which an individual forms a sense of belonging. Wer
ist Wir performs a certain ‘zooming in’ to a personal level, which to a certain extent counters
the concept of a national Other, by examining interpersonal relationships, as opposed to those between different collectives. Thus, Kermani’s classmate in school, ‘der mit sechzehn oder siebzehn bei uns als Nazi verschrieen war’ (WiW, p.131), when confronted with Kermani’s question, ‘ob ich denn auch nach Hause gehen solle’ (WiW, p.131) is taken out of the wider context which allows him and his views to be connected to a collective with specific unifying beliefs. He, as an individual, interacting with Kermani, an an individual, replies, ‘Quatsch, dich
meine ich doch gar nicht damit, du bist doch nicht sooo ein Ausländer’ (WiW, p.131). Through Kermani’s personal experiences the contradiction between the reaction between individuals who on a social level are deemed to belong to two different ‘collectives’ or social groups, is exposed as an artificial barrier between people, who in reality can live, learn, and interact with one another with minimal conflict. The acceptance, or belonging, which Kermani receives from his classmate demonstrates how belonging is not necessarily tied to identity formation, as Kermani’s frequent linking of national belonging and identity often suggests. The link between identity and belonging on a national level (as previously explored in the context of the
Leitkultur debate) proves to not carry over onto the individual level. On the individual level
acceptance does not necessarily stem from a cultural Gemeinsinn as Kermani’s example illustrates. He does not, however, explore this avenue of enquiry explicitly, choosing instead to focus on the unity of different cultures within an individual, rather than unity of different cultures in relationships between individuals.
Whilst Kermani’s writing draws on his personal experiences, his essay collections distance themselves from autobiographical writing. Of all the essays in the collection, Kermani’s essays ‘Grenzverkehr’ and ‘Lob der Differenz’ draw on the most autobiographical experiences and subjective perceptions of growing up in Germany with a home culture which is not synonymous with the surrounding German Leitkultur. In his opening of Wer ist Wir, Kermani combines a sense of division, of borders, with a sense of biographical unity reminiscent of Leggewie’s concept of ‘Biografie als Einheit.’ If his home life consisted of ‘Formen, Gerüchen, Geräuschen, Menschen und Farben, die es jenseits der Türschwelle nicht gab’, Kermani once again demonstrates the power of language in overcoming barriers. His knowledge of the German language allowed him to assimilate in primary school: ‘mein Deutsch hatte die Melodie und das rollende R unserer Mittelgebirgslandschaft.’ Such an opening, focused on the ease with which Kermani lived out his daily life in different languages, smells, and people, draws attention to the medium through which these differences are experienced and communicated – namely that of language. The image of the figure of Kermani seamlessly moving between the two ‘worlds’ and linguistic settings is implicitly set again a discourse of parallel worlds, failed multiculturalism, and lack of integration. Without directly situating itself in such a discourse, the structure of Kermani’s writing dismantles the concept of two incompatible cultures and societies through his childhood experiences. Having made the reader complicit in his moving between both German society and at home as though it was self-evident, natural, ‘so gewöhnlich wie meine eigene Haut’ (WiW p.12), Kermani then references the wider social context in which he grew up: ‘Dass Menschen gleichzeitig mit und
in verschiedenen Kulturen, Loyalitäten, Identitäten und Sprachen leben können, scheint in Deutschland immer noch Staunen hervorzurufen’ (WiW, p.12). The lack of understanding for the ability of an individual or group of people to live with a mixture of cultures and identities seems itself a reason for ‘Staunen’, when set against Kermani’s description of how he grew up without inner or exterior conflict living amongst different languages and cultures. Kermani’s text aims to explain this background first, before bringing in the widely-held view quoted above, revealing it for what is it – a lack of understanding. In contrast to Zwischen Koran und
Kafka, in which Kermani aimed to create a sense of critical thinking on the part of the reader,
Kermani here seems to nurture a sense of understanding of the part of the reader, presenting a human side to the statistics and headlines through personal experience. In a sense Kermani is replaying a narrative of the nation on a personal level by narrating his own story.
If the national Other is located within state borders, and yet is found to be somewhat absent outside of the collective, on a personal level, Kermani’s linking of the personal and political allow him to explore the question; where are these new perceived, or real borders to be found? Kermani’s border was on the one hand the threshold to his house, yet on the other hand, his sporting and economic situation are portrayed as stronger forces in dividing him from and uniting him with others. Focusing on the example of his football team, Kermani explains how he felt divided from his fellow football players for economic reasons: ‘der Wohlstand meiner Eltern war im Fußballverein jedenfalls nicht von Vorteil; er war mir eher peinlich, weil ich zum ersten Mal das Gefühl hatte, einer Gruppe nicht wirklich anzugehören, wenigstens am Anfang’ (WiW, p.21). Even when the source of difference stemmed from a difference in economic background, language still proves to be the ultimate medium through which this is communicated and thus it also acts as a barrier to social belonging: ‘Es gab außerdem bestimmte Wörter oder Sätze, die ich zwar kannte, aber selbst nicht gebrauchte. Es war eine bestimmte Diktion, die die anderen beherrschten und ich nicht’ (WiW, p21). However, the situation in which Kermani felt like he did not belong for the first time due to language differences, also offered him the chance to belong: ‘die soziale Anerkennung wurde im wesentlichen durch die Leistung auf dem Platz definiert’ (WiW, p.21) demonstrating how belonging need not be tied to either language or nation when other unifying factors are in play. By following the course of his own experiences with belonging as a child Kermani is able to identify different social fields of belonging, which work upon the basis of different social rules, be that money, talent, or cultural belonging. Kermani does not rule out the existence of other fields of belonging which other individuals experience, what he does do, however, is make it explicit through the example of these experiences that belonging depends on the context and
premise upon which a collective is based. Using the wealth of his parents and his acceptance on the football pitch as evidence, Kermani argues, ‘daß es andere Unterschiede gibt, die in den meisten Fällen gravierender sind als die Hautfarbe oder die Religion’ (WiW, p.25), that wealthy immigrants, ‘kaum Schwierigkeiten haben, sich an die neue Umgebung anzupassen […] sie ist der neuen ziemlich ähnlich’ (WiW, p.23). Whilst Kermani attempts to show how a nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiment and discourse is often at odds with the reality of interpersonal relationships regardless of national affiliation and personal interactions with cultures, including a national Leitkultur, he refuses to isolate the debate surrounding integration and multiculturalism as one solely based on culture. Kermani points to the fact that within the German language itself there exist differences in language use which create similar conditions for exclusion or belonging as those found between German and other languages. Through an examination of language use Kermani shifts the debate from a call for dialogue between ‘Germans’ and the national ‘Other’ to a genuine call for a dialogue between all of those who carve out an identity for themselves within the German language, be that a Muslim or Christian identity, rich or poor, football lover or not. Language is the means by which Kermani demonstrates that belonging is more complex and multi-layered than the simplistic polarisation of national and non-national characteristics displayed in the newspaper samples he analyses.
By refusing the language of the debate offered by the media, by institutions which often denied racist attacks, Kermani ‘disturb[s] those ideological manoeuvres through which “imagined communities” are given essentialist identities’ (Bhabha, p58). In other words, by drawing attention to alternative modes of individual and collective belonging which diverge from a narrative of national affiliation, Kermani refutes the identity thrust upon those who do not belong solely to a German Leitkultur. Kermani focuses on other factors which challenge the statement that the national Other is located within state borders, by challenging who the Other really is. The national, shown to be an inconsistent product of discourse, is brought down from its pedestal as the most important aspect of individual affiliation to a collective in the German context and a personalised method of storytelling takes its place. Kermani’s use of the personal incorporates both the need for a collective sense of belonging and an individual reconciliation of the various cultures of which one forms a part. By bringing in the personal Kermani neither prioritises it, nor ignores the national and cultural situation of which he is part but uses it as an implement to reach out to a reader to foster an understanding as well as to open new avenues of enquiry in his essays. In a sense, Kermani is employing the personal as political, refusing to remove the element of personal narrative from the often impersonal and thus dehumanised narrative of the nation.
4.1 Belonging Outside of National Discourse: The Text and the Reader
In the individual’s relationship and interaction with a religious text (later on we will explore the boundaries of non-religious texts) there exists the possibility for institutional boundaries – religious and national – to fall away, to be replaced, Kermani’s essay ‘Der Koran und die Gewalt’ suggests, with a culturally, historically relevant interaction between the individual and the text. Kermani’s creation of his own text is not only an alternative to the narrative of nation in the context of a Leitkultur debate in a German national context, but also demonstrates a mode of belonging which neither challenges nor functions within the national framework. It instead offers a private gateway into religion, encouraging each individual to form their own religious narrative – ‘Der Islam lebt wie jede andere Religion gerade in dem Spannungsverhältnis zwischen den Texten und ihrern Lesern.’ (WiW, p115). Already hinted at in Kermani’s encouragement of a critical reading of German national media in the context of ‘Lessing und der Terror’, Kermani’s exploration of the relationship between the individual and the Quran in the context of religious belonging not only shifts his discussion of belonging away from a sense of nationality but also away from the concept of a geographically rooted identity as the key to belonging.30 The interaction between a centuries old text, carrying the weight of historical and cultural tradition, and a reader situated in a temporally distant culture, in a relatively modern setting of the nation, stems from the ability of the reader to interpret the language of the text for themselves. Using the Quran as his example, Kermani demonstrates how the distance between the reader and text leaves room for the creation of a personal30 Navid Kermani’s focus on belonging here as a private interpretation of a religious text, a form of belonging which is independent yet compatible with the German cultural and national setting in which he and his family live as Muslims, delinks identity from geographical belonging. The linking of culture to identity and to geographical border proves increasingly problematic in the context of the rise of ethnopluralism in various European countries – from the Génération Identitarire in France to the Identitäre Bewegung in Germany – which claim that certain geographical regions should maintain the homogeneity of their cultures, a concept termed by Stuart Hall as racism without race. Kermani does not explicitly engage with these movements yet his focus on the text in his presentation of the discrepancy between an exterior perception of a religious text and the religion practised, to some extent moves his presentation of what being a Muslim means for him away from a concept of group identity towards a private sense of belonging. As it is based on a shared religion, in which (for Kermani especially) the text forms a key role, this form of belonging is not geographically linked. Kermani demonstrates a mode of belonging separate from the state based on a textual tradition, which he will echo in his exploration of language and German language literature as we shall see in the following chapter. A Muslim sense of religious belonging is separated from a concept of geographically linked culturally homogenous identity. The linking of culture, identity, and region creates the conditions for exclusion of those with cultural traditions from elsewhere, whereas forms of belonging which are not (solely) linked to regions but rather to language and the text offer – according to Kermani – a more inclusive mode of positioning oneself within the society in which one lives in line with one’s beliefs.
narrative of belonging within a religious context, at once allowing for a connection to the linguistic, textual, and cultural tradition, whilst freeing the reader from the national narrative which through language restricts the possibility of the individual to exist outside of a relationship to the nation. ‘Der Koran und die Gewalt’ shifts a debate on the integration potential of Muslims in Germany away from a German-centric discourse of newspapers and television talk shows. The focus on the Quran as the text upon which Islam as a religion is built allows Kermani as an author to link himself into a non-German, non-national, religious tradition which situates him outside of the German-national literary and political circle to which he on many levels belongs and thus provides him with the authority to attempt to subvert a discourse about Muslims, be that in Germany, Europe, or the Middle East, from a not-so-European, Christian centric angle. Although this subvertion itself proves problematic in its manipulation of national belonging to validate or discredit arguments.
The premise for Kermani’s decision to analyse his family’s and his own relationship to Islam and the Quran in ‘der Koran und die Gewalt’ lies in the rhetorical potential of his (auto)-biography to convey a counter-narrative to national discourse, which negates the idea that, ‘die islamische Welt erst in die Moderne eintreten [kann], wenn sie nach dem Vorbild des Westens einen Prozeß der Aufklärung durchlaufen hat’ (WiW, p120). Despite his inclusion of critics such as Ernest Gellner who promote the ‘Universalismus des Islams’ (WiW, p120) in the debate surrounding the compatibility of Islam and an ‘Enlightened’ Europe, Kermani frames his essay in such a way that a non-European critique of Islam is side-lined in this essay, making way for the for the portrayal of Western critics as the main protagonists in the negative portrayal of Islam. In a debate in which Kermani defines two main contributors initially solely according to their nationality, – ‘zwei deutsche Islam Experte diskutieren mit einem Muslim’31 (WiW,
p103) – thereby turning the restrictive language of nationality back on itself by using language in a manner which encourages a conception of the individual along national lines, calling into question the extent to which Kermani’s text can be conceived of in terms of Bhabha’s ‘counter-narrative’. A reproduction in reverse of the language which one is attempting to write against is arguably a counter narrative in that is provides an opposing opinion, yet in working within the language of the nation, the narration of the nation based upon a concept of borders, of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ is left intact, Kermani’s opposing text simply takes up the position of ‘writing from the margins’. Tilman Nagel and Hans-Peter Raddatz, named only at the end of
31 Tilman Nagel, Hans-Peter Raddatz, and Navid Kermani took place in a debate ‘Der Landtag im Gespräch …
