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The Silences of Syrian Literature in Germany
Abstract by Dr. Razan Ghazzawi On Session X-14  (After Syrian Literature)

On Saturday, December 3 at 5:30 pm

2022 Annual Meeting

Abstract
In recent years, a considerable amount of Syrian memoirs, novels, and fiction have been published and translated into the European and North American literary and translation scenes, specifically in Germany, where Berlin is now described as the capital of the Syrian art. In an article in the ArabLit and ArabLit Quarterly Magazine in 2020, Mari Odoy described this recent and markable interest in Syrian writers, as a “boom” of Syrian literature translated into German,” and notes that this sudden interest “is felt across Berlin.” This development of “Syrin literature” in exile is reminisent of Prof Mohja Kahf’s critical work, as many literatry scholars noted in recent work exploring the emergence of Syrian literature in parellel to the on-going war back home. In her prophetic article published in 2001, “The Silences of the Syrian Literature,” Prof Mohja Kahf encounraged her readers to rethink the term “literature literature” alongside the Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iraqi literature, all of which grew and were shaped by exile as a consquences of settler colonialism, empire, and authoeriatian violence together. Two decades later, critics are exploring the emergence of not only the Syrian literature, notably in the Berlinian exile, but also the politics of suffering around such emergence. Based on ethnographic research and elite interviews with Palestinian and Syrian writers, artists, and scholars based in Berlin, including Palestinian and Syrian queer and feminist writers, this paper explores the racial politics behind publishing Syrian and Palestinian literature in Germany, specifically since the so-called “refugee crisis.” More specifically, I explore the racial figuration of ‘refugee’ and its attachment to the emotion of white innocence. politics that are attached to it. I do that in comparison and/or in parallel with understanding and interviewing Palestinian authors about their experiences as literary authors based in Berlin. More specifically, I explore the racial politics attached to the figuration of ‘refugee,’ Syrian refugee, and a Palestinian refugee. I examine how the different figurations of refugees expose the interconnectedness between race, politics, and sexuality, in the realm of literary productions.
Discipline
International Relations/Affairs
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
Anti-Racism