Film and Literary Studies

In the globalised world of today, traditional definitions of national Self and national Other no longer hold. The unmistakable transformation of German and Dutch societies demands a thorough rethinking of national boundaries on several levels. This book examines how literature of migration intervenes in public discourses on multiculturality in Germany and the Netherlands, epitomised in the strikingly parallel debates on the ‘German Leitkultur’ and the Dutch ‘multicultural drama’ in the year 2000. By juxtaposing detailed analyses of literary work by the Turkish-German writers Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Feridun Zaimoglu and the Moroccan-Dutch writers Abdelkader Benali and Hafid Bouazza, New Germans, New Dutch offers crucial insights into the specific ways in which this literature negotiates its national context of writing. This book demonstrates how German literature of migration seeks alternative forms of community outside the national parameters, whereas the Dutch literature negotiates difference and re-imagines Dutchness within the national framework.

There is a striking difference between the first appearance of literature of (labor) migration in German and in Dutch culture. In Germany, first-generation labor migrant writing appeared in the early 1980s, whereas writers of migration background (mostly of the second generation) entered Dutch culture only in the mid-1990s. The emergence of migrant writing in the two countries is examined in their specific socio-political contexts and their effect on contemporary German and Dutch literature of migration.

The ways in which the poems of Ramsey Nasr explore the urban space of the Flemish city of Antwerp and stage encounters with various inhabitants of the Flemish metropolis are examined. In 2005, Nasr, a poet of Palestinian-Dutch background, was appointed City Poet of Antwerp. The nine poems that he wrote during this one-year-appointment were published in his third poetry collection onze-lieve-vrouwe-zeppelin. Antwerpse gedichten (2006). Through close analysis of three selected poems it is shown how this work by an urban poet-with-offi cial-status, a representative poet so to speak, represents the Antwerp cityscape. By reading the poems as examples of a third phase of literary fl anerie (whereby fl anerie refers to a particularly productive combination of simultaneous moving and seeing, reading and interpreting), what could be called postcolonial fl anerie is conceptualized. Postcolonial fl anerie refers to a particular way of processing the, at times, overwhelming experiences of the increasingly globalized metropolis. Nasr's 'Antwerpse stadsgedichten' [Antwerp city poems] feature as a poetic test case of postcolonial fl anerie.

At the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, after a decade in which harsh indictments of the supposedly failed multiculturalism of the Netherlands have become mainstream, and, in their wake, xenophobia and racism, the times when the Netherlands defined itself as a tolerant, multicultural nation seem almost forgotten. This past, however, is still very recent. A closer look at the days before the shift helps to understand the complex history of the Dutch negotiations of race and ethnicity. In the time span between 1996-the year in which several writers of migrant background published their first writings-and 2001-the year of the National Book Week on "Writing between Two Cultures"-the Dutch literary field went through a phase of extraordinary openness: it celebrated a "happy multiculturality." In these years the interest among publishers, reviewers and readers alike in what was called multicultural or ethnic literature was not only of considerable intensity, but also remarkably positive-tuned. Dutch literature seemed to embrace its multicultural richness in a similar way as Dutch society of that time boasted its (self-acclaimed) multiculturality and tolerance. This chapter takes one of the celebrated specimens of this multicultural literature, the novel Bruiloft aan zee (1996) by the Moroccan-Dutch writer Abdelkader Benali, as its central object of research. It offers a critical reading of this novel in the light of the broader "happy multiculturality" discourse and demonstrates how this novel critically confronts the idea of an all too happy, all too tolerant Dutch self-image. In the time before the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, when tolerance was still considered a Dutch virtue, this novel's representation of cultural transgression explores and challenges the racist nature of the Dutch boundaries of

Preface xiii We also owe thanks to our meticulous and patient proofreader Tim Yaczo and the series-editor Dr. Cedric Barfoot. They not only brushed up our English so as to meet the academic Anglophone norm and standard, but also advised us on terminology matters (such as how to translate-or not-the controversial but often-used Dutch term "allochtoon" that has no real equivalent in the English language). "MULTICULTURAL LITERATURES" IN A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE WOLFGANG BEHSCHNITT AND MAGNUS NILSSON "Multicultural literatures" as international literatures "Multicultural literatures"-that is, literatures written, read, and discussed in the context of migration, multiculturalism and multilingualism-must, today without doubt, be considered an international phenomenon. Consequently, research on these literatures and matters must adopt an international perspective. Ulrich Beck states convincingly in his The Cosmopolitan Vision that the transnational reality of migration today requires a transgression of national borders on the part of critical research as well. 1 Why, then, do we in this volume restrict our view to the situation of multicultural literatures in certain nation states? And, moreover, why do we choose to focus on countries like Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Flanders (the last, though not being a state, a region with a strong consciousness of national independence)? They all seem of peripheral significance in the global context of migration and literature, considering their moderate size and population, their minor political and economic influence, the limited scope of their languages and literatures, and, above all, the comparatively small number of literary texts which pertain to the field of multicultural and multilingual literature. Does not such an approach risk relapsing to bygone times when Comparative Literature meant enhancing national particularities rather than questioning them? Not to mention the additional risk that, in principle, transnational literatures, literatures of

The recent rise in global migration movements and the simultaneous attempts to prevent migrations to the Global North in general and Europe in particular have produced numerous images and narratives that try to record and convey these events and their actors. Many of these representations depict migrants as suspects and border crossings as uncontrollable. The (bilingual) 66th issue of FKW examines a range of artistic interventions in European ‘refugee crisis’ rhetoric from the fields of literature, visual art, film, and theatre and reflects on the ways in which these art-works do – or do not – succeed in providing new grammars and alternative imaginations of the present.

Have a look at the complete issue or the separate contributions on: www.fkw-journal.de

'Long live woman and her freedom. It is indecent to gurgle.' Muslims, masculinity and irony in Hafid Bouazza's work This article sets out to scrutinize the world of difference that lies between Hafid Bouazza's story-collection De voeten van Abdullah from 1996, and his collection of essays De akker en de mantel from 2015. It does so by means of a critical re-reading of Bouazza's celebrated 1996 debut, a work that at that time was primarily read as a tongue-in-cheek depiction of rural Muslim life. This re-reading positions De voeten van Abdullah in a 'pre-post-erous' relation to Bouazza's later, Islam-critical, if not Islamophobic writing. This article's comparative analysis of both works focuses in particular on the representation of Muslim masculinity and of the supposed threat that this particular masculinity poses to the position of women in society. As I will argue it is the transideological and elusive force of irony in Bouazza's stories that makes them escape any final determination. The 'pre-post-erous' juxtaposition of the two works, however, not only reveals their ideological and historical situ-atedness, but also that of their readers/readings.

Toen Hafid Bouazza in 1996 debuteerde met de verhalenbundel De voeten van Abdullah was de literaire pers unaniem enthousiast. Deze jonge "Marokkaanse schrijver" wist de lezer moeiteloos mee te nemen naar een fascinerende Oriënt van 1001 erotische nachten. De Nederlandse dimensie van de verschillende, al dan niet in Marokko gesitueerde verhalen bleef veelal buiten beeld ten behoeve van een interpretatie van het werk als de schrijvers gefictionaliseerde herinneringen aan Marokko. Bouazza's protest, dat hij een Nederlandse schrijver is en dat zijn werk deel uitmaakt van de Nederlandse literatuur , werd door zijn interviewers vriendelijk en geïnteresseerd genoteerd. Desalniettemin bleef de aandacht gericht op het exotisch-Marokkaanse karakter van de bundel. Nu, tien jaar later is het Nederlandse tij in vele opzichten gekeerd. Zo ook voor Bouazza. Inmiddels lijkt Bouazza als Nederlandse schrijver in de Republiek der Letteren aangekomen. Na een periode van negatieve kritiek volgend op zijn geprezen debuut wordt zijn literaire werk nu doorgaans veel gelezen en positief beoordeeld (vgl. Benzakour, 2004;. Hijbehoort tot de meest gewaardeerde schrijvers van dit moment. Ook de publieke interesse in Bouazza's mening over maatschappelijke vraagstukken is groot, vooral nadat hij begin 2002 in twee artikelen in NRC Handelsblad fel uitviel over de zijns inziens slappe en naïeve houding van Nederland ten opzichte van het islamitisch fundamentalisme. Sindsdien geldt Bouazza als een kritisch commentator van de Nederlandse multiculturele samenleving en wordt ook zijn literatuur -in de periode daarvoor regelmatig als te gekunsteld afgedaan Goedkoop, 1998;) -met hernieuwde interesse gelezen. De roman Paravion is een voorbeeld van Bouazza's nieuwe populariteit: het werk, een combinatie van een migratiedrama met een herdersidylle stond wekenlang op de bestsellerslijsten.

The name Lampedusa resonates meaning in multiple ways. Located at the outskirts of the European Union and place of refuge for a large number of refugees, the Mediterranean island Lampedusa has not only become a contemporary symbol for the so-called European refugee crisis, but also for the dramatic failure of the European Union’s current border and migration policy. This chapter questions and opposes the current interpretation of Lampedusa as a problematic and worrisome site at the European margins, and argues that Lampedusa should rather be seen as a heterotopian space at the heart of Europe and read as symptomatic for the European Union’s in many respects faltering neoliberal politics. It elaborates on this idea by analyzing the theatre text Lampedusa (2015) by the acclaimed young British playwright Anders Lustgarten. The chapter demonstrates how this Lampedusa brings two individuals’ struggles to endure the specific situations of ‘crisis’ they find themselves in together and prompts its readers to think about their narratives as “touching tales” – touching in the sense of equally emotionally charged (tales of insecurity, pain, loss, and fear) but also, importantly, touching in the sense of bordering on each other and interconnected in pivotal ways.

The so-called refugee crisis has triggered manifold responses in the field of European art and literature. This paper discusses two works by the Dutch writer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer as examples of Dutch “refugee crisis literature”: his highly acclaimed novel La Superba (2013) and the short-story “Fatou yo” that was published in the text-collection Gelukszoekers (2015),  but that is actually also a fragment from the aforementioned novel. I start my comparative discussion of these two texts by exploring the challenges and pitfalls in representing refugees in literature more in general, focusing on the seemingly inescapable trope of refugee victimhood and the humanitarian and empathic mind-set that “refugee crisis literature” mostly requires from its reader. Then I embark on an analysis of the two texts and of the way in which, as I will demonstrate, the texts position and, ultimately, manipulate their empathic reader. I will argue that the discomfort that results from this manipulation is considerably more effective within the frame-work of La Superba than within the Gelukszoekers- collection, despite the latter’s explicitly activist agenda.

This article focuses on Lodewijk van Deyssel’s fascinating novel Blank en geel (White and Yellow) (1894) that tells the story of the encounter between the young Dutch bourgeois woman May and a Chinese merchant Tsengki-Harr in Amsterdam at the end of the nineteenth century. It analyses the representation of exotic otherness in this story about an intercultural love affair that was considered highly improper at that time. In a careful analysis of the novel’s mode of narration the article demonstrates how Blank en geel testifies to both a fascination with, and a fear of, the exotic other, thus reflecting, as well as catering for the ambivalent mind-set of the fin-de-siecle reader. It argues that the novel, while securing the stability of bourgeois ‘normality’, simultaneously offers this fin-de-siecle reader the pleasure of scandalous reading.