Being minor and/in/against the mainstream – Constructions of Confrontational Jewishness in the Contemporary German Mediascape

• In Event: Contemporary German Jewish Literature and Culture

Abstract

This paper analyses how a range of contemporary writers and/or artists of Jewish descent, such as Maxim Biller, Oliver Polak, Mirna Funk and Kat Kaufmann, are constructed and construct themselves in the German mainstream media and what role labels such as “German-”, “Jewish-”, “minor”, “mainstream” or “migrant” play in this context. I will pay special attention to tropes of confrontational, provocative or rebellious Jewishness which shape the public perception and (self-)image of all these writers. The Jewish rebel can be regarded as a figure of minority, as s/he is quintessentially an outsider, who, however, holds specific and often critical insights about the majority society that surrounds him or her – s/he is inside and outside of the hegemonic discourse at the same time, often playing with its rules and conventions.
Applying methods from the realm of discourse analysis, I will examine interviews and media portraits with/of Biller, Polak, Funk and Kaufmann that have appeared in major German print outlets, such as Die Zeit, die tageszeitung (taz), Der Spiegel or Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – between 2014 and the present moment, which was a particularly productive period for all the artists in question. Investigating how the personae of these authors are created and performed by the media and by themselves, I will focus on two issues in particular: I will explore the extent to the notion of the ‘jüdische[r] Ruhestörer’, to quote Biller, is a gendered concept, while also probing whether there is such a thing as a strategic ‘being minor’, echoing Gayatri Spivak’s notion of a “strategic essentialism”.

Author

• Maria Roca Lizarazu