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Briana Niblick
Lafayette College

Subject Listing - Foreign Languages
Advisor: Dr. Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger

Friday, Oral Session 6, Presentation 2, Carmichael Hall 133

ZAFER SENOCAK: QUESTIONS OF IDENTITY IN GERMAN-TURKISH LITERATURE

The purpose of this project is to examine the question of socio-cultural and personal identity by studying literature written by German-Turkish author Zafer Senocak. I theorize that Senocak intends to convey that the German-Turkish people can only thrive as a community when their multicultural identities are recognized and accepted as an integral part of today's Germany and the European Union.

I chose three texts written by Zafer Senocak: the essay collection "Zungenentfernung" (2001), the novel "Gef„hrliche Verwandtschaft" (1998), and the poetry collection "šbergang" (2005). Senocak's literature deals with various identity issues such as individuality versus commonality, acceptance versus rejection, and integration and assimilation versus denunciation and exclusion. Consequently, his texts offer poignant insights into the shaping of identity through language, history, and culture. I position my analysis within the context of post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha's study "The Location of Culture". Bhabha refutes the cultural dichotomies, such as West and East, Self and Other, Master and Slave. Instead, he advocates a culture where differences are embraced as elements of multi-faceted identities. In addition to Bhabha's text, I utilize Zafer Senocak's own collection of political essays, "Atlas eines tropischen Deutschlands" (1992) and an (unpublished) interview from June 2005 where he discusses the cultural perspectives from which he approaches his writing.

Advisor: Dr. Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger, Associate Professor of German, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Lafayette College, Easton, PA