Questioning the Canon

The series Culture and Conflict aims to promote a dynamic, pluridisciplinary dialogue meant to discuss the multiple ways in which conflict influences, supports or constrains the production of meaning in modernity. It publishes innovative original scholarship from the fields of literary and cultural studies as well as media, visual and film studies. Culture and conflict inevitably go together. The very idea of culture is marked by the notion of difference and creative, i.e., conflictual interaction. Differential markers, such as self and other, inside and outside, high and low, pure and dirty, old and new, support the key themes of the study of culture, e.g., identity and diversity, memory and trauma, translation of cultures and globalization, mediation and exclusion. The new series Culture and Conflict aims to promote a dynamic, pluridisciplinary dialogue meant to discuss the multiple ways in which conflict influences, supports or constrains the production of meaning in modernity. It publishes innovative original scholarship from the fields of literary and cultural studies as well as media, visual and film studies.

Culture and conflict inevitably go hand in hand. The very idea of culture is marked by the notion of difference and by the creative, fraught interaction between conflicting concepts and values. The same can be said of all key ideas in the study of culture, such as identity and diversity, memory and trauma, the translation of cultures and globalization, dislocation and emplacement, mediation and exclusion. This series publishes theoretically informed original scholarship from the fields of literary and cultural studies as well as media, visual, and film studies. It fosters an interdisciplinary dialogue on the multiple ways in which conflict supports and constrains the production of meaning, on how conflict is represented, how it relates to the past and projects the present, and how it frames scholarship within the humanities. Editors:Isabel Capeloa Gil, Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal; Paulo de Medeiros, University of Warwick, UK, Catherine Nesci, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. Editorial Board:Arjun Appadurai, New York University,Claudia Benthien, Universität Hamburg,Elisabeth Bronfen, Universität Zürich,Bishnupriya Ghosh, University of California, Santa Barbara,Joyce Goggin, Universiteit van Amsterdam,Lawrence Grossberg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University,Ansgar Nünning, Universität Gießen,Naomi Segal, University of London, Birkbeck College,Márcio Seligmann-Silva, Universidade Estadual de Campinas,António Sousa Ribeiro, Universidade de Coimbra,Roberto Vecchi, Universita di Bologna,Samuel Weber, Northwestern University,Liliane Weissberg, University of Pennsylvania,Christoph Wulf, FU Berlin,Longxi Zhang, City University of Hong Kong

Auteur

Christine Meyer, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France.

Résumé

"Theoretically sophisticated and historically situated, Questioning the Canon: Counter-Discourse and the Minority Perspective in Contemporary German Literature is a novel and welcome contribution to the study of 'migration literature' in contemporary German letters. By focusing on selected writers of Middle Eastern heritage, Meyer offers an indispensable in-depth analysis of the intertextual themes and strategies of their work and shows how they negotiate their own cultural inheritance with homage to German literary models." Azade Seyhan, Fairbank Professor in the Humanities, Department of German, Bryn Mawr College

"Meyer's monograph is a rare, sophisticated, and beautifully translated treatise that brings conceptual rigor to the complexity of migration literature in Germany since the 1970s, while situating it in broader Germanophone literary questions from the 19th century onward. Meyer's scholarly formation shines through here, showing us how critical vantage points on 'Germanophonie' from beyond German borders can be just as promising as parallel inquiries into 'Francophonie' have been throughout the postcolonial period. The monograph invites a new commitment to literary-historical clarity, as we enter the next half century of Germanophone literature of migration."
David Gramling, Professor of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies, University of British Columbia

"This book is a revelation. For too long, much literary study has been limited by a methodological monolingualism, refusing to acknowledge the creative potential of an emerging translingual poetics. Christine Meyer boldly questions this status quo. She has assembled a remarkable corpus of exophonic, diasporic writing in German, and her sustained focus on canonicity reveals the progressive hybridization of national literatures. The result is essential reading for all those interested in cultural transmission and literary creativity."
Charles Forsdick, James Barrow Professor of French, University of Liverpool, and UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Theme Leadership Fellow, Translating Cultures