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Diaspora and Nation.

MigrationInto OtherPasts1
AndreasHuyssen
This essay has two parts- a reflectionon diasporicand nationalmemory and a case study of a remarkable,but little-knownnovel by Zafer
writer in whose work this constellationof
$enocak, a Turkish-German
and
centralafterand becauseof Germanunination
has
become
diaspora
fication.2Both topics are new terrainfor me. My past work on memory
has dealt with nationalmemoryin Germanyand with the travelsof Holocaust memory across borders.I tried to understandthe transformations
over time of Germanmemorycultureafterthe Holocaustby readingits
artistic, literary, philosophical, and architecturalmanifestationsboth
before and after 1989.3 I came to be increasinglypuzzled by what
appearedto be somethinglike a globalizationof traumaticmemory discourses in which the tropes and rhetoricof the Holocaust played an
increasinglyprominentrole in differentnationalandpoliticalcontexts.
Indeed, roughly since the epochal change of 1989/90 we have
observedthe emergenceof a transnationalor global memory cultureof
I. I would like to acknowledgeherethe criticalcommentsI receivedon the draftof
this essay from Leslie Adelson, MeltemAhiska,and Miige Sokmen.
2. The claim that unificationmarks a break can be traced easily in $enocak's
literaturein general.Thus Leslie Adelson,
essays, but it may not applyto Turkish-German
a leading scholarof Turkish-German
literature,writes:"Unificationdid not inauguratea
literarycomminglingof Turkishand Germanremembrances,but it did coincide with its
intensification"See Leslie Adelson, "TheTurkishTurnin ContemporaryGermanLiteratureand MemoryWork."GermanicReview77:4 (Fall 2002): 327.
3. See AndreasHuyssen,TwilightMemories:MarkingTimein a Cultureof Amnesia (New Yorkand London:Routledge,1995);andPresentPasts: UrbanPalimpsestsand
the Politics of Memory(Stanford:StanfordUP,2003).

147

148

Diaspora and Nation

astonishingproportions,and we have come to ask ourselves what this

intense focus on the past and on traumaticmemorymight mean for the
history of the present.I am not suggestingthat there is something like
"one global memory,"or a cosmopolitanmemory, as Natan Sznaider
and Daniel Levy have recently postulated.4Internationalhuman rights
discourses and their legal practices based on universal claims can be
characterizedas cosmopolitan,but memory discourses remain tied to
the specific memories of social groups in time and place. A global
memorydiscourserefersto the emergenceworld-wideof concernswith
the past and its codificationin contemporarypolitical, social, legal, and
culturaldiscourses. Such developmentsare symptomaticof the changing parametersof time and space underthe impactof globalization.We
are facing a structuralchange in the ways we live and perceive temporality, ways that contrastwith the twentiethcentury'sdominantimaginaryof utopianfutures,liberation,andemancipation.5
Of course one can always cite immediate political reasons for the
emergenceof a powerfulmemorydiscoursein specific countries.It usually comes about after histories of mass exterminations,massacres,
apartheid,military dictatorshipsand with the struggles to secure the
legitimacy and future of an emergentpolity by finding ways to commemorate and adjudicatepast wrongs. I have therefore argued that
althoughmemorydiscoursesappearto be global in one register(e.g., the
travels of Holocaustdiscourse,its tropes, images, and rhetoricinto different contexts in South Africa or Argentina),they remain tied to the
historiesof specific nationsand need to be rigorouslyread within those
contexts.While thereis no such thing as a postnationalor a global memory, all such local and nationalmemorydiscourseswere energizedby a
political climate in which internationalhumanrightshad become a powerful force. But transnationalhuman rights activism and the always
nationalor local memorydiscoursesstand in an uneasy relationto each
other.They may reinforceeach otherin some instances,but they are not
identical.Especiallyduringthe 1990s, there seemed to be a happycollusion between culturaland juridical, nationaland transnationalmemory
debates, with the compensationsfor Nazi slave laborersor the cases
broughtagainst Pinochet and other figures from the days of the Latin
4. Daniel levy and Natan Sznaider,Erinnerungim globalen Zeitalter:Der Holocaust (Frankfurt/Main:
Suhrkamp,2001).
5. Huyssen,TwilightMemories13-36, 85-104.

AndreasHuyssen

149

Americandictatorshipsbeing the most visible examples. Unfortunately,

this phase seems to be coming to an end now as the InternationalCriminal Court has experienceda shaky startand a new kind of geopolitical
crisis is threateningto engulfboththe presentandthe future.
There is the dangerthat the currentinternationalconflict between the
West and the Muslimworld and a new unilateralU.S. foreignpolicy will
make universal ideals such as human rights, civil society, and gender
equality appearto be mere ideologicalprops supportingthe superiority
claims of one civilizationover all others.When SamuelHuntingtonfirst
spoke of a clash of civilizations,it appearedas no more thana retrograde
revival of a Spengleriankind of culturalanthropology.After 9/11, the
clash of civilizationsbegins to look ever more like an adequatedescription of a new geopolitics.Whencivilizationsclash,the space for diasporic
thinking,transnationalexchange,and culturalhybridityshrinks.Orientalist and occidentalisttropeshave a field day,banalanti-Americanand antiEuropeanstereotypesaboundon both sides of the Atlantic,and the metaphysicsof civilizations,cultures,andnationstakesoveryet again.
This tendencyto hold the past hostageto a nationaland culturalpower
politics makes a conference on diasporaand memory even more salutary. As opposed to nationalmemory,diasporicmemory remains seriously understudied,perhapsbecause it often falls prey to nostalgiaand
nostalgia by and large remains a negative category, something to be
shunned. Whether diasporarefers to the classical case of the Jewish
diasporaor to a whole spectrumof expats, exiles, and expellees, immigrants or political refugees, diaspora always seems the opposite of
nation.6 More often than not it refers to a minority culture within a
largermajoritycultureorganizedaroundnation and state. Its claims to
public memory will addressanotheraudience, anothercommunity,the
community of the diasporic, its tenuous and often threatenedstatus
within the majorityculture whose stereotypingof otherness combined
with its exclusionarymechanismsmay make a given diasporaappear
more homogeneousthan it is in reality.Precisely because of such pressures, the diasporiccannotoffer redemptionfromthe national,as it is so
6.
Others such as Arjun Appaduraihave noted the emergence of postnational
diasporasin the context of mass migrationsand electroniccommunications.See Arjun
Appadurai,Modernityat Large(Minneapolis,U of MinnesotaP, 1996). Clearly,diasporic
realitiesare in flux. My studyof memorycultures,however,has persuadedme that it may
be prematureto arguethatnationalconfigurationsare no longerpertinentfor the study of
diasporicmemories.See Huyssen,PresentPasts.

150

Diaspora and Nation

often suggested in currentdiscussions. Imaginariesof belonging with

their constructeddeep histories,deliberateforgettings,and false memories do not only characterizenations. The attemptto create a unified or
even mythic memory of the lost homeland,of the history of displacement, and the desire to returnmay be as much a temptationfor the
diasporaas the creationof a unitarynationalmemory is for the nation.
Often enough it is precisely the nationalmechanismof exclusion by a
majority culture that generates and strengthensthis diasporic counternationalism.Bertolt Brecht'sJewish Wifeis a Lehrstuckon this relation
betweenmajorityand minorityidentity.My point here is not to erase the
differencebetween nationaland diasporicmemorywith a reductiveideology critique.In both cases, that of nationand of diaspora,such imaginaries of belonging may be as unavoidableand necessary as they are
deeply problematic.Nevertheless, in terms of their memory formation,
diasporaand nation, ratherthan being in oppositionto each other, may
have moretroublingaffinitiesthanvisible at firstsight.
Some scholars have suggested that this dependenceof the notion of
diasporaon the privilegingof nationmakes diasporaa questionableanalytic category in explaining the fast changing conditions of migration
and belonging. YaseminNuhoglu Soysal has arguedthat diasporais "an
extension of the nation-statemodel" in that it "constitutesforeignness
within other nationsand ethnicities"and "impliesa congruencebetween
territory,culture, and identity."7Against such a notion of boundedness
and closure, she emphasizesnew practicesof belongingand enactingcitizenshipby migrants,an argumentthat also finds supportin the work by
James Holston and TeresaCaldeiraon new forms of citizenshipin Latin
America outside or on the marginof nationalframeworks.8While this
in the presentis justified, Soysal goes overemphasison transformations
boardwhen she dismisses diasporaas a criticalcategory"destinedto be
a trope for nostalgia."9For just as a reified notion of diaspora may
block out the real present,exclusive focus on issues of citizenship and
everydaylife in the presentmay prematurelyblock out issues of memory,
7. Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, "Citizenshipand Identity:Living in Diasporas in
PostwarEurope,"in Ulf Hedetoftand Mette Hjort,eds. ThePostnationalSelf: Belonging
U of MinnesotaP,2002): 138.
and Identity(Minneapolis/London:
8. See TeresaCaldeira,City of Walls:Crime,Segregationand Citizenshipin Sao
Paolo (Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP, 2000); and JamesHolston,"Spacesof InsurgentCitizenship,"in: Holston,ed. Cities and Citizenship.Durham:Duke UP, 1999).
9. Soysal 149.

AndreasHuyssen

151

history,and, yes, nostalgiawhich should be seen both in its affirmative

delusionaland its criticaldimensionratherthan simply being dismissed.
At a time when memorydiscoursesare so prevalentin our culture,they
pose new questionsregardingdiasporicmemory,questionsthat are too
easily dismissed if we were to follow Soysal's approach.It is particularly the relationshipbetweendiasporicmemoryand the memoryformations of the national culture within which a given diaspora may be
embeddedthat remains seriously understudied.And here the notion of
diasporaitself may assume new meanings in line with the changes of
nationhoodthatSoysal andothershave so cogentlyanalyzed.
A furtherpoint needs to be made pertainingto the changingnatureof
nationhoodand of diasporaunderglobal conditions.One may even suggest that whole nations are becoming diasporicin relationto their past
under the pressuresof global media and the maelstromof the postnational. After all, one of the most frequentlyheard laments in many
nations today is about deterritorializationand the loss of cultural
grounding, both central tropes in any discussion of diaspora. Home,
Heimat,is no longer what it once used to be, either for the nationor for
the diaspora.Clearly, national memory today, in an age of ever more
transnationalinstitutions, migrations, and networks, is being colored
ever more by nostalgiaand imaginedmemory.But so is diasporicmemory at a time when pasts and presentsof migrantpopulationslose the
traditionalcoherence of diasporic community as a result of multiple
travels and relocationsback and forth. Traditionaldiasporaseparateda
diasporic present existentially from a past which thus could become
ever more imaginaryand mythic. Today's hyphenatedand migratory
culturesdevelop differentstructuresof experiencewhich may make the
traditionalunderstandingof diasporaas linked to roots, soil, and kinship indeed highly questionable.If diasporameans loss of a homeland
combined with the unfulfilled desire to return,then the shuttling of
whole migrant populations between host nation and homeland today
may requiresome new conceptuallanguage. In the absence of such a
language, however, I would rather opt for a changed and changing
understandingof diasporaitself - one that denaturalizesits notions of
memory and culture and takes account of its changing relationshipto
the equallychangingworldof the national.
Diasporasmay relateto a distantnationas a lost homeland;they may
claim and create new nationhood;they may even speak of a diasporic

152

Diaspora and Nation

nation. But however stronga case one may want to make for the structural and empirical affinities between nation and diaspora, we must
remember certain basic differences that have not simply vanished.
Diaspora,as opposed to nation in the traditionalsense, is based on geographic displacement,on migration,and on an absence which may be
lamented or celebrated. National memory presents itself as natural,
authentic, coherent and homogeneous. Diasporic memory in its traditional sense is by definition cut off, hybrid, displaced, split. This fact
grounds the affinity of diasporic memory to the structureof memory
itself which is always based on temporaldisplacementbetween the act
of remembranceand the contentof that which is remembered,an act of
recherche rather than recuperation.Of course, this will not prevent
diasporic memories from mimicking the identity fictions that energize
nationhood. But structurally,diasporic consciousness comes closer to
the structuresof memorythan nationalmemorydoes. National memory
usually veils its Nachtraglichkeit.Diasporic memory in the vital as
opposed to its reified sense remainscriticallyawareof it.This could and
should be an advantage. One might formulate it as a question: can
nationalmemory formations,which after all still exist and remainpowerful, learnfromdiasporicmemory?
This question is not asked all too often since the dominantmodel of
scholarlymemorydiscoursein historiographyremainstied to notions of
national memory. Pierre Nora's multivolume Lieux de memoire in
France is as representativeof this limitation as the work of Hagen
Schultze and Etienne Fran9oisin Germany.10Despite the fundamental
differencesbetween Frenchand Germannationalhistory,the realms of
memory in both mnemohistoryprojects are strictly national and don't
make room for diasporicphenomena.Millions of migrantsnow live in
dozens of diasporas within European nation states, but they remain
structurallyexcluded from such national historiographyof memory.
National memory discourse is well and alive in Europe,though clearly
in uneasy relationshipwith an emergentEuropeanmemorydiscourse.If
it is true, as has recently been claimed by Dan Diner at a Leipzig conference about CentralEurope'sexperienceof catastrophe,that "Europe
is being built from the jointly claimedpasts of its history,not least from
10. See PierreNora, Realmsof Memory:Rethinkingthe FrenchPast, 3 vols. (New
York:ColumbiaUP, 1996-98);and HagenSchultzeand EtienneFrancois,DeutscheErinnerungsorte(Munich:Beck, 2001).

AndreasHuyssen

153

the set of events comprisingWorldWarII" and if WorldWarII and the

Holocaust indeed "appearto have something like the significance of a
founding event for Europeas it unites,"then the question arises where
this assumedEuropeanidentityleaves the millions of migrantsand their
childrennow participatingin this buildingof the new Europe.1
Sure,the EU's commitmentto fundamentalhumanrightsand the highminded rejection of any and all genocidal racisms may (despite the
Europeanfailure in Bosnia) be somewhat comforting to legal immigrants, but what about the foundationalclaims for this memory of the
Holocaustas an identityshapingZivilisationsbruch?
How can non-European or periphericdiasporicpeople, includingformercolonial subjects
living in Europe, relate to such a claim and how can or should they
negotiate the invariablydeep nationalmemories of their host nations?
And what is the effect of such an overridingfoundationalclaim on the
memories of Europeancolonialism? My reading of Zafer Senocak's
novel GefdhrlicheVerwandtschaft
will try to give some answersto such
in
relation
to
the
German
context ofS:enocak'swork.
questions
II
Looking at diasporasin Germanytoday, it seems to me that the relationship of diasporicmemoryto the traditionalmemorialcultureof the
"hostnation"is an importantbut understudiedquestion.It arises particularly in relation to the big Turkish-German
minoritywhich is already
four times the size of the Jewish-Germanpopulationbefore Hitler, and
growing. Much work on diasporassuch as the Turksin Germanylegitimately deals with labor issues, citizenshipissues, sociological questions
of schooling, language,gender,religion, and the like. The emphasis is
almost exclusively on the present.When it comes to the culturaldimensions of diaspora,however,the past takes over. We focus too much on
loss ratherthan on renewal: loss of the real home, loss of a culture.
Home is thought of not just as territory,but as a homogenousculture
from which the diasporiccommunityhas been displaced, but which it
must maintainat all cost to safeguardits identity.This reproducesa traditional but problematicunderstandingof culturerooted in anthropology.
Thus diasporicculture is by definitiontied to that which has been lost
11. Claus Leggewie. "HyphenatedGermans,Euro-Muslimsand Union Citizens:
Ethnic Differences and Political Communityin Europe."Lecturedelivered in Berkeley
2002 (internet).

154

Diaspora and Nation

ratherthan to its negotiationwith the majorityculturewithin which it

operates.This may explainwhy the questionof how a diasporiccommunity will share in the past of the nationalmajorityculture in which it
lives can easily remain blocked by the insistence on diasporiccultural
identitywhich perceivesitself as threatenedand victimized.Not to speak
of the new culturalistracism,as analyzedby EtienneBalibar,that reifies
culturalratherthan racial biological difference for purposes of exclusion.12Ironically,however,this specific conditionof diasporicloss today
also resonateswithin nationalculturesat a time, our time, when culture
itself seems to function,as Zafer$enocak put it, like a "magic formula
for that which has vanished,is hidden,or has been buried"in a rationalized and secularizedworld that is desperatelylooking for meaning.13
Such a reductivenotion of culturefunctionslike blindersfor any analysis of the relation between national and diasporic culture. The more
diasporaand nationsharethe perceptionof loss, the more they both will
insist on safeguardingidentity and fortifyingtheir borders,thus ossifying the past andclosing themselvedoff to alternativefutures.
This then leads to the question of how the diasporicimmigrantcan
relateto the memoryof the host nation.I will focus on the specific case
of Turkishmemory in Germany,one of the most recalcitrantand difficult cases for this kind of question,not the least because Germansand
Turksare not historicallybound by a colonial relationshipwhich would
give them something like a shared history. Speaking about the years
before German unification,Zafer Senocak once put it this way: "We
sharedGermany'spresentwith the Germans,but not theirhistory."14The
questionraised here for the memorydebate is simply this: is it possible
or even desirablefor a diasporiccommunityto migrateinto the historyof
the host nation?How does such a temporalmigration,as it were, affect
diasporicmemoryitself? And how can diasporicmemoryhave an impact
on the nationalmemoryinto which it migrates?Clearlyterms like assimilation,integration,and especiallysymbiosisprovideprematureclosureto
12. EtienneBalibar,"Racismand Nationalism,"in EtienneBalibarand Immanuel
Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London, New York: Verso,
1991): 37, 48.
13. ZaferSenocak,Zungenentfernung:
Berichtaus der Quarantanestation(Munich:
Babel, 2001) 37.
14. See ZaferSenocak,Atlas des tropischenDeutschland(Munich:Babel, 1992) 20;
andAtlas of a TropicalGermany:Essayson Politics and Culture,1990-1998 (Lincolnand
London:U of NebraskaP, 2000), trans.anded. Leslie A. Adelson.This Englishcollection
containsseverallateressays publishedin otherbooksby the author.

AndreasHuyssen

155

such questions. Concepts like these focus on potentially desired or

dreadedresults,not on negotiation,compromises,andconflicts.
Germanywith its traditionof citizenshipbased on ius sanguinis, its
ratherhomogeneousculture,and its continuingclaim not to be a country of immigration,an Einwanderungsland,
clearly has become just that
for its two million immigrantsfrom Turkey,a countrystill likely to trigger an orientalistFeindbild with deep historicalroots most everywhere
in Europe.But as an Einwanderungsland,
Germanyis of course differfrom
its
the
U.S.
since
ent, say,
identity as a nation is not based on
immigration.And it is differentfrom the formerEuropeancolonial powers since it lacks mechanismssuch as the commonwealthor a unifying
notion such as civilisationfranqaise that bind colonizers and colonized.
There was never a colonial relation between Germany and Turkey,
which rules out a straightpostcolonialapproachto Turkish-German
literature.Turkeywas an ally in WorldWarI, neutralin WorldWarII, and
host during the Third Reich of significantGermanand Austrianexile
colonies in Istanbuland Ankara,welcomed and nurturedby the Turkish
Republic, a fact mostly forgotten in contemporaryGermany. In the
meantime,an ever growingpercentageof Turksin Germanyare - with
or without citizenship - hyphenatedGermans. They go to German
schools, speak Germanas their native language,however much Turkish
is still spoken in the family, vote in local elections, and they travel to
or Germangreen-card
Turkeyas tourists,not unlike German-Americans
holders from the U.S. when they visit the old country.So the question
relateto German
inevitablyemerges how should such Turkish-Germans
since
unification
when
German
history,especially
memorydiscoursehas
several
transformations
and conflicts which
undergone
noteworthy
clearly inform present-daypolitical culture. One key question here is:
How will second and thirdgenerationGermansof Turkishdescent deal
with the burdenof Auschwitzand the ThirdReich? Will they or should
they even assume responsibilityfor this past or will it lead them to
explorethe past of theircountryof descentand its darkersides? The history of Turkeyas their "own history,"as some Germanswould call it,
except that of course it is not "theirown" history in a strict sense. At
best it is the historyof theirparentsand grandparents.
Howeverone may
think aboutthis issue of responsibilityfor the past, it is clear that we are
dealing with an interesting constellation of histories and memories
within the Turkishdiasporain Germany,a constellationthat would take

156

Diaspora and Nation

quite differentforms in the Turkishdiasporain Londonwhere issues of

British colonialism would resonatemore stronglyin relationto the history of the OttomanEmpireandthe TurkishRepublic.
If one asks the questionof how GermanTurksrelateto Germanmemory, one must first guard against the misconceptionof seeing German
memory culture as homogeneous.Ever since unification,the memory
issue in Germany has become enormouslycomplicated. While Holocaust memorial culture has become ever more prevalentin the 1990s
(best symbolizedby the Berlin Mahnmaldebate,but also by the numerous 50th anniversariessuch as those of the Wannseeconference,the liberation of Auschwitz, the end of the war), it has become overlaid by
othersets of memoriestriggeredby unification(memoriesof the Stasi as
well as the increasinglynostalgic memories of the GDR - what has
come to be called Ostalgie). The gap between East and West German
memorydiscoursesregardingfascism andthe ThirdReich has absorbeda
lot of attention,and there still are distincememorycultures.In the early
1990s there was the debate about the right and desirabilityof access to
Stasi files and what came to be called a second Vergangenheitsbewiltigung. Even more consequentialwere the drawn out negotiationsabout
propertyrestitution,the legal questionsaboutresponsibilityfor the shootings at the wall, and the increasinglypopularview in the East that unification meant colonization. Only recently did Eastern and Western
memoryapproacheach other in the new public debatesaboutthe expulsion from the EasternterritoriesafterWorldWarII and aboutthe air war
against Germancities. The focus of Germanmemory cultureis in flux,
but it remainsrigorouslyfocused on things German.Neither scholarsnor
critics in Germanyever botherto ask what these debatesactuallymight
mean for the Turkish-German
community.15In 1989/90 Turksin Berlin
in
were doubleoutsiders,both the presentand in relationto the past. And
thingshave not changedsignificantlysince then.
III

But let me backtrackat this point to 1998, to a moment when there

was a chance to open up the discourseof Germanand Jewish memory,
15. While such questionsdo not seem to be asked in Germanyat all, U.S. scholar
Leslie Adelson has discussedrecentTurkish-German
literatureas an importantcomponent
of Wende-Literatur
in Germany.See Adelson,"TheTurkishTurn."Her forthcomingbook
will be entitled The TurkishTurnin ContemporaryGermanLiterature:Towardsa New
CriticalGrammarof Migration(anticipatedfor 2004 or 2005).

AndreasHuyssen

157

the discourseof perpetratorsand victims, to a new dimension,a dimenvoice to triangulatethe

sion that might have allowed a Turkish-German
debate about Germanand Jewish memory in new ways, thus reflecting
the realitiesof migrationinto contemporaryGermany.In the same week
that novelist Martin Walser, in his speech given in Frankfurt'sPaulskirche when he was given the Friedenspreisdes deutschenBuchhandels, polemicized against the overbearing presence of Holocaust
memory in the media, capturingall media attentionand causing a controversythat still reverberatestoday,a slim novel by ZaferSenocak was
published by a small publisher in Munich. The novel was entitled
Gefdhrliche Verwandtschaft(Dangerous Kinship or Dangerous Affinities), conjuringup literarymemoriesof titles such as Choderlosde Lac16 It is
los's Les liaisons dangereusesor Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften.
a novel about Turkish,Jewish, and Germankin over three generations,
told by the German-borndescendantof this family from a post-1990
Berlin perspective. But it is also a novel, at the metaphorichistorical
level, about a web of affinities over time between Turksand Germans,
between Jews and Turks,Germansand Jews, affinitiesand kinshipsthat
are called dangerous- but dangerousto whom andwhy?
;enocak was alreadyknown in Germanyas a writer of several short
prose works, poetry, and essay collections that focused on issues of
the Turkish diaspora in Germany,on issues of cultural nationalism,
bilinguality, and the political relations between ChristianEurope and
Islam. But the chance to break throughthe repetitioncompulsions of
the German-Jewishdialogue in Germany and to open them up to a
significant new dimension groundedin the existence in Germanyof a
new minority population, its culture, and its memories, was entirely
missed. There was not much of a public receptionof Senocak's novel.
It never sold very well, is out of printby now and not even present in
the university library of the FU-Berlin. The oblivious attitude of the
West-Germanfeuilleton and of academic scholarship toward Jewish
and/or exiled writers in the 1950s and 1960s seems to repeat itself
now vis-a-vis emergentTurkish-German
writers such as Zafer Senocak
-a
basic unwillingness to engage, combined with forms of studied
16. I first encountered references to $enocak's Gefdhrliche Verwandtschaftin
anotherbrilliantand wide-rangingarticle by Leslie Adelson, "TouchingTales of Turks,
Germans,and Jews: CulturalAlterity,HistoricalNarrative,and LiteraryRiddles for the
1990s,"New GermanCritique80 (2000). This article containsthe first majorscholarly
treatmentof the novel anywhere.

158

Diaspora and Nation

ignorance.17In addition,the strengthof the nationalmemory discourse

and its focus on Germans,Jews, and the Holocaustwas so overwhelming that Senocak's interventiondid not have a chance to be noticed,
even though his novel focused on the populartopic of memory and the
archivesof experiencein contemporaryBerlinafterthe fall of the wall.
My reason to focus on this little known gem of fiction is this. With
great literarysubtletyand narrativeskill, Senocakraises the question of
how Turkish-Germans
or second-generationTurkscan migrateinto German history,18while at the same time having a ratheruprootedrelationship to the history of their own parentsand grandparentswhich is often
shrouded in mystery. Leslie Adelson has pointedly stated that Zafer
Senocak "write[s] a new subject of Germanremembranceinto being,"
one that is still persistentlyignoredby Germanacademic criticism,but
thatcan only become strongerandmoremanifestin yearsto come.19
This issue surfaced in ~enocak's Atlas des tropischenDeutschland
(1992) in two essays first publishedin the SuddeutscheZeitungin January 1990 and in Berlin's TAZin January1992 respectively.Clearly the
emergenceof a Turkishmemoryproblematicin his work was triggered
by Germanunification.Unification posed new kinds of identity problems for second generationTurks who witnessed a series of violent
right-wing attacks on foreigners and especially on Turks in the early
1990s. Before 1989, the issue of Germannationalhistory and identity,
apart from the intense discussions of so-called Vergangenheitsbewdltigung in the FRG,was rathermarginalallowing both Germansand immigrants, $enocak argues, to avoid confrontingGermannational history.
There was no emphatic nationalism.Theories of constitutionalpatriotism, even postnationalismas in the work of JtirgenHabermasmarked
an intellectualleft-liberalconsensus.At the same time, however,citizenship continuedto be ruled by the nationalistius sanguinis and one must
rememberhow intensely nationalthe Germanunderstandingof culture
remainedall along, particularlyvis-a-vis its Turkishimmigrantsand in
17. The Germannon-receptionof $enocak'sfictional texts contrastssharplywith
The novel has
the extremely positive Frenchreceptionof Gefahrliche Verwandtschaft.
also been translatedinto Italian,and in the U.S., $enocak is one of the more sought after
Turkish-Germanwriters who has held visiting engagementsmultiple times since the
1990s.Of course,not all Turkish-German
writershave been similarlyignoredin Germany.
Exceptionsare EmineSevgi Ozdamarand FeridunZaimoglu,to mentionjust two.
18. See Senocak,Atlas 16;anmScenocak/Adelson,
Atlas 6.
19. Adelson,"TheTurkishTurn"333.

Andreas Huyssen

159

relationto their culturaland citizenshiprights. Integrationinto German

culture was demanded,and in the late 1990s, after citizenship regulations had been somewhatrelaxed, the CDU even advocatedsomething
like a Leitkultur,a dominantnationalcultureas guideline for all immigrants.The concept was roundlycriticizedin the media and in intellectual circles, butby and largeit remainsGermanpractice.
As $enocak's essays pose the questionwhetherGermanycan become
a "HeimatfUirdie Tiirken,"a home for the Turks,he acknowledgesthat
issues of national identity became much more prominentduring and
after unification.This in turn leads him to ask new questionsabout his
own intellectualand political position. In 1989, West Berlin had ceased
to be a space of happy limbo and of time damned up by the frozen
structuresof the Cold War,"gestauteZeit,"as Dan Diner once called it.
As the wall was torn down, Berlin's urban,political, and mental pasts
began to haunt the present in powerful ways. Memory began to take
materialform in the debates and practicesof urbanreconstructionand
nationalself-understanding.20
Inevitably,Senocak'swork was shapedby
this context, and he turnedto his own genealogicalpast, and he did so
with a strongemphasison his patriarchallineage.
Thus in a lateressay on the 50th anniversaryof the end of WorldWar
II entitled "Thoughtson May 8, 1995," Senocak describes how his
fatherexperiencedthe war on the radio in his Turkishvillage, relishing
like other Turks in the German attack on the godless Soviet Union
which was foiled by Hitler in its plans to invade Turkeyin the Caucasus.21This and othermemoriesof Germansand Turksbeing brothersin
arms in WorldWarI then lead cenocak to pose the 1995 memoryproblem in generationalterms:"In S)45 my fatherexperiencedneithera liberation nor a collapse. He was neither victim nor perpetrator.This
vantagepoint allows me to raisea few questions."22
Neither victim, nor perpetrator-this was the formula for the creation of the part autobiographic,part fictional protagonist and narrator of Gefahrliche Verwandtschaft,23Sascha Muteschem. "I am a
20. Huyssen,PresentPast 49-71.
21. I rely here on Leslie Adelson'sanalysisof this essay. See Adelson, "TheTurkish
Turn"330 f.
22. $enocak,Atlas 26; and $enocak/Adelson,Atlas 58f.
23. See $enocak,GefahrlicheVerwandtschaft
(Munich:Babel, 1998): 40. All page
referencesto the novel areto the Germanoriginal,butthe translationsaretakenfromTom
Cheesman's2001 Englishtranslation,availableon the web.

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grandchildof victims and perpetrators,"writes the narratorwho is the

son of a German-Jewishmotherand a Turkishfather,and grandsonof a
Turkishhero of the East who, as the novel slowly lets on, was involved
as an organizer in the Armenian deportationsof 1915, worked as a
secret agent for MustaphaKemal, the founder of the moder Turkish
Republic, and fought the Greeks at the Western front in Anatolia in
1921, a campaignthat led to the forced expulsion of 1.5 million people. The questionof the novel then is not just how the Germanson of a
Turkishfather who experiencedWorld War II from afar can relate to
German memories of the Third Reich. The question becomes one of
entirely differentkinships and the dangerousmemoriesthey trigger for
the Turkish-Jewish-German
grandson.A pre-history(pre-historyfrom
the Holo-caust perspective) of expulsions, deportations,and genocide
appearson the peripheryof Germanmemory culture, and it is no less
Germanfor that. It is this triangulationof Jewish, Turkish,and German
memories thatSenocak writes into being via a fictional family history
andthe vicissitudesof its discoveryby the novel's protagonist.
The point of the narrativeis not simply the propositionthat Germany
and Turkeyshare a history involving genocides that have left a burden
of guilt to successive generations.It is not the elective affinity of genocidal guilt that is at stake. The questionis ratherhow such histories are
rememberedand how they can be imaginedand writtenat a time when
the changingmemorycultureof Germanyposes new froblems of memory for the Turkishimmigrantsandtheirdescendants.2
At first reading, $enocak's novel appears deceptively simple. Only
slowly does it reveal its layers of historical,ethical, and literarycomplexity. The deepergenealogicalpast is triggeredfor Sascha,who works
as a journalistand writer in Berlin, by the sudden death of his parents.
Having spent the years 1989 to 1992 teachingin a midwesterncollege in
the United States, he entirelymissed out on the key period of Berlin's
transformation.Since his returnto Berlin, he lives with Marie, a German documentaryfilm makerwho is in the midst of producinga documentaryaboutTalatPascha,a leaderof the Young Turksresponsiblefor
the Armeniangenocide of 1915 and refugee to Germany,where he was
24. It is interestingto note that such memoryissues, regardingthe Armeniangenocide, the Greek expulsion or the war against the Kurds, are now also surfacing with
increasingintensityin Turkeyitself, somethingthat would have been unthinkableonly a
few years ago. Thus in March2003 therewas a richly texturedand wide-rangingconference on "ThePolitics of Memory"at Istanbul'sBogazigiUniversity,organizedby Meltem
Ahiskaof the Departmentof Sociology.

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161

in 1921. After
murderedby an Armenianin Berlin's Hardenbergstrasse
the death of his parentsin a car accident, Sascha is called to Munich
where he grew up and where his mother's family lived. A notarypublic hands him a silver box as partof his inheritance.It is a box filled to
the brim with notebooks - a diary his Turkishgrandfatherhad kept
from 1916 until his mysterioussuicide at age 40 in 1936. Of course,
Sascha, born in 1954, knows certain essentials of family history that
subtly bind Germanyand Turkey:he knows that this grandfathercommitted suicide just shortly before he was to accompany the Turkish
Olympic team as a sports official to the Berlin Olympics of 1936. He
also knows that duringthe ThirdReich, his mother's family emigrated
to Istanbul,where they found shelter and she met her future Turkish
husband while many of her Jewish relatives became victims of the
Holocaust.The memoryof this Turkishgrandfatherhad been treatedas
a family secret in Sascha's childhood.As he now remembers,he once
found some photos in the attic of a man with a big moustachewhich
were then immediatelythrown in the fire by his parents.But Sascha's
hope to learn more about this mysteriousman is quickly disappointed.
The only remainingwitness, his father,is dead. And the notebooks are
written in arabic and in kyrillic script neither of which Sascha, who
barely knows any Turkish,can decipher.Being denied access to this
archiveof family history,he decides not to reconstruct,but to invent the
In an as yet unpublishedessay on Berlin,
story of his grandfather.25
entitled "Die Hauptstadtdes Fragments,"Senocak writes about this
novel: "History as document and invention becomes the book's real
protagonist,and it becomes ever clearerthat the searchfor truthcan be
documentedonly poorly."26
Given Sascha'sfear of what he may find out, it is only towardthe end
of the novel that he hires a translator,but apartfrom one single entry,in
which the grandfatherclaims that Muslimculturelacks a notion of guilt,
the readernever gets to hear the grandfather'sauthenticvoice, not even
in translation.The secretof the silver box remainsa secretfor the reader,
and, one surmises,a limitedsourcefor the writerwho has to find his own
literaryand memoriallanguagefor what he finds out from the translations. Ratherthan revealinga documentarydimensionby revealing the
grandfather'svoice, the novel maintainsthis absenceand it ends with the
25.
26.

38.
Senocak,GefahrlicheVerwandtschaft
$enocak, "Capitalof the Fragment,"trans.Tom Cheesman.In this issue.

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Diaspora and Nation

grandson'sversion of the rationalefor the grandfather'ssuicide. This last

chapterof the book, wholly italicizedto set it off from the foreground
narrationis introducedwith the following words that provide access to
the past and open out to a futureof the family's secret becomingpart of
memory:"At last I feel in a position to tell the story as it happened.It
might end somethinglike this."27This is the "might,"the "ungefdhr"that
hauntsall memoryenterprisesandtheirtransformation
into literature.

IV
The story of Sascha Muteschemraises all the theoreticalproblems I
have discussed regardingcontemporarydisaporas.The traditionalunderstanding of diaspora as loss of homeland and desire to return itself
becomes largely irrelevantfor the second and third generationswho,
contraryto Senocak himself, are no longer conversantin language and
culture of the countryof their ancestors.Whetheror not they were to
describe themselves as diasporicsubjects(which 5enocak, I sense, will
not do),28 the key problemslie in their relationto the nationalculture
they live in ratherthanto the imaginaryof roots in the cultureof ancestors. It is primarilya problemof life in the presentand the negotiation
with the host culture.If, however,this nationalhost cultureis intensely
orientedtowardmemoryand traumatichistory,difficultiesmay arise for
the immigrantof how to relate to those nationalmemories. The more
nationalthe surroundingculturebecomes, the more will the migrantalso
be pushed towards issues of identity, ethnicity, and belonging. Berlin
clearlyhas become much more nationalsince 1990, and $enocak'spolitical essays testify to that from the perspective of the immigrantwho
experiencesnew difficultieswith his identity.But his prose fiction questions the very notion of identity,and it avoids any hint of culturalnostalgia. As the novel focuses on an individualratherthan on collective
memory,;enocak emphasizesthe lack of full accessibilityto the truthof
a genealogythatreachesmorethana generationback. He shows how the
very search for the Turkishgrandfather(imposedon him, as it were, by
the Germannotarywho handedhim the silver box with the notebooks)
encounteredthat other genocide as part of his own diasporicgenealogy
27. Senocak,GefahrlicheVerwandtschaft
134.
28. ClearlyneitherSenocak nor his work are to be considereddiasporicin the simple traditionalsense. He is a Germanwriter.The questionto whatextenthis work still participatesin a changingdiasporicconditionor is somethingentirelydifferentwill no doubt
be raisedby othersmoreconversantwith the field of Turkish-German
studiesthan I am.

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163

- a perilous kinship and a dangerousaffinity for the TurkishGerman

that forces him to engage that otherpast. But in the fictionaltext Senocak representsthe Armeniangenocide as a gap, as an absence,thoughan
explosive one, in a double way: there are only scatteredhints of what
happenedin 1915, "the year of the corpses,"and the historicaltruthof
the grandfather'slife remainsburiedfor the readerin the inheritedsilver
box, a metaphorperhapsfor how in the political world of today the
Armeniangenocideitself remainsofficiallyunacknowledgedby Turkey.
But in the "invented"passageaboutthe deathof the grandfatherwhich
is also the end of the novel, the grandfather'srole as perpetratoris mitigated in a most surprisingway by the narrator.The grandfather'spast
catchesup with him in 1936 when, at age 40, he receivesa letterwithout
returnaddressfrom the Armenianwoman he loved as a young man and
helped escape the deportations.She tells him about their daughterhe
never knew and remindshim that he had sworn to kill himself if they
were ever parted- anotherperilouskinshipthat is the cause of his suicide in 1936. But even here,the readeris left to wonder:is it the acknowledgmentof guilt for his involvementin the genocide or is it the broken
promisethat is the ultimatecause of the suicide?The "ungefdhr"of the
inventedendingis not dissolvedintosome delusionof transparency.
Perpetratorsand victims: in individual family histories, the stark
binarymay not always hold. But what does this mean for Germanyand
its diasporiccommunitiestoday? This questionreturnsus to the narrator's presentwhich he characterizesas follows in Chapter25:
In today'sGermany,Jews andGermansno longerface one anotheralone.
Instead,a situationhas emergedwhichcorrespondsto my personalorigin
and situation.In Germanynow, a trialogueis developingamong Germans,Jews, andTurks,amongChristians,Jews andMoslems.The undoing of the German-Jewish
dichotomymightreleasebothpartiesfromthe
burdenof theirtraumaticexperiences.But forthis to succeedthey would
haveto admitthe Turksintotheirdomain.And fortheirpart,the Turksin
Germanywouldhave to discoverthe Jews, notjust as partof the German
past in which they cannotshare,but as partof the presentin which they
live. Withoutthe Jews the Turksstandin a dichotomousrelationto the
Germans.Theytreadin the footprintsof the Jews of the past.29

But then he immediatelycasts doubton such an optimisticscenario:

29.

89 f.
$enocak,GefahrlicheVerwandtschaft

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I only have these fantasieswhen I'm in a good mood. Reality lends no

supportto such concreteoptimisticideas. My realityis a darkhole, the
breadthor narrownessof which I cannotgauge, in which I can hearpeople breathingbut cannotsee them. Languageserves us only as a means
to overlookourselves.I live in a void which offersme nothingto which
to attachthe frayingthreadswhich are meantto connectme to the three
parts of my self. Three bucking, blocking parts. Two of them are at
each other's throatsthe moment they think they can ignore the third.
Menagesa trois are of coursethe most complicatedkind of relation.30

My argumentaboutnationand diasporain Germanyhas been that such

a menage a trois does not standa chance as long as the public memory
discourse in Germanyremains fundamentallyand persistentlynational,
focused on Germanperpetratorsand Jewish victims. Of course, there
have been multiple openings toward Jewish and German-Jewishmemory since the 1980s in literature,oral history,historiography,and in the
reemergencein public of Germany'sJewish communities,but the Turkish immigrantsand theirGermandescendantsremainlargelyabsentfrom
Germany'smemorial culture, except perhapsin the way that Senocak
suggests with a deeply ambiguousmetaphor:"But when the question,
who is a Germanand who is not, is askedtoday,one looks to the Turks.
They providethe test cases for the limits of Germanness.Jews tryingto
come termswith theirGermannessdiscoverthe Turksin the mirror."3In
the novel, this refers of course to a protagonist of Jewish-Turkish
descent. As a metaphorcapturingthe realityof Turksand Jews in Germany today, however, it suggests deep pessimism about any possibility
of crackingopen the Germanunderstandingof nationhoodand national
culture. Despite recent reforms in the laws governing citizenship, the
Germanunderstandingof culturewill remainnationalto the core until
Germans,trying to come to terms with their Germannessor, for that
matter,theirEuropeanness,discoverthe Turkin the mirror.

30. Leslie Adelson discussesthe contrastbetweenthese two quotesas castingdoubt

narrativeof traumaticmemoriesor, in the termsof
on any straightforward
representational
this essay, of the linearinterweavingof diasporicand nationalmemorycultures(Adelson,
"TouchingTales"124). This readingperfectlycapturesSenocak'smajorconcernregarding
documentationand referentialitywhen it comes to issues of memory. See $enocak,
90.
GefahrlicheVerwandtschaft
90.
31. $enocak,GefahrlicheVerwandtschaft