Asian Fusion: New Encounters in the Asian-German Avantgarde

Description

"This book contributes to a historically evolving conversation about immigration as a facet of globalization in the European context. Focusing on literary and artistic works from the post-World War II era, the author uses a structure of "call-and-response" - as in African-American slave songs, Indian kirtans, and Jewish liturgy - to create a series of dialogues between Asian-German authors, including Yoko Tawada, Pham Thi Hoài, and Anna Kim; and an earlier generation of German-speaking authors and artists, including W.G. Sebald, Peter Weiss, and Joseph Beuys, whose works have engaged with "Asia." Considering the recent successes of the New Right, which have brought about a regression to Nazi anti-Semitic discourses grounded in the equation between Jews and "Orientals," the author advocates a need for solidarity between Germans and Asian-Germans. Using "fusion" as a metaphor, she revises the critical paradigms of Orientalism and post-colonial studies to show how, in the aftermath of the twelve-year Nazi dictatorship, Germany has successfully transformed itself into a country of immigration - in part due to the new and pioneering Asian-German voices that have reshaped the German-speaking cultural landscape that are now, for the first time, featured as coming together in this book"--