Renegotiations of Diversity in Contemporary German Jewish Writing: A Postmigrant Approach

This thesis investigates the diversification of contemporary German Jewish writing against the backdrop of larger demographic and cultural shifts towards greater diversity and the political acknowledgment thereof, which have taken place since the turn of the millennium.
The authors under consideration in this thesis are part of a significantly diversified Jewish presence in Germany that challenges established approaches to German Jewish literature. The arrival of over 200,000 so-called ‘Kontingentflüchtlinge’ in the 1990s ushered in a demographic and attitudinal transformation of the Jewish community that has intersected, and continues to intersect, in complex ways with the broader pluralisation and polarisation of German society as a whole.
Bringing German Jewish literature and the concept of the postmigrant together, this thesis offers an innovative approach that explores the entanglement of (Jewish) diversification, postmigrant thinking, and literary representation. Reading recent works by Mirna Funk, Tomer Gardi, Kat Kaufmann, Sascha Marianna Salzmann, Marina Frenk, Dmitrij Kapitelman and Lena Gorelik through a postmigrant lens, I ask how the texts reflect and shape (re-)negotiations of societal pluralisation. I propose four specific writing modes (metamemorial writing, autobiographical writing, utopian writing, and collaborative writing), arguing that it is through these modes that the texts expose discriminatory structures, subvert established concepts and thought patterns, and imagine new forms of subjectivity, community and knowledge (production). Contemporary German Jewish literature, I argue, is thus not only a site of (Jewish) diversification but also a space for the (re-)negotiation of plurality across the entirety of German society.
This thesis contributes to research on contemporary German Jewish literature by highlighting the agentic, interventionist and generative potential of the texts. In so doing, this thesis not only offers a new perspective on contemporary German Jewish writing but further highlights literature’s ability to develop new frameworks for negotiating difference and diversity and thus, literature’s potential for the postmigrant project.