Rewriting the Nation: German-Turkish Transformations of the Bildungsroman

Abstract

Literatures arising in the context of migration and cultural contact are known to provoke the nationally confined canonisation of literature. While the view that so-called ‘migrant literature’ does belong to German literature and culture is widely established within recent scholarship, the literary means of claiming space in the national canon are still an under-researched topic. The purpose of the study is to analyse the literary means of claiming space in the national canon and thereby investigate the permeability of its boundaries. By rewriting a canonical genre of German literature, which is historically linked to the emergence of a sense of a national identity, the analysed German-Turkish texts are using the Bildungsroman as a frame of reference to articulate pluralistic national identities. They further inscribe historical representations that have been omitted from dominant historical discourse into the national cultural memory. While rewriting the genre, the texts participate in the actualisation of the Bildungsroman and thereby reposition its traditional boundaries. Finally, the novels express the need to renegotiate the concept of the nation as well as its demand for homogeneity.