Affective spaces: trajectories of migration in Scandinavian and German transnational narratives (2011-2017)
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Date
09/01/2020Author
Tröger, Anja Claudia
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis comparatively examines literary representations of lived migrant and
postmigrant experiences in different contemporaneous contexts and from a
multiplicity of perspectives. Published between 2011 and 2017 and selected from the
literatures of Denmark, Germany, Norway and Sweden, the twelve literary texts
analysed in this thesis centre not only on characters who themselves migrate, but also
on their descendants, and on characters who encounter those they perceive or
marginalise as ‘other’. Following the different steps of the migratory journey from
departure and travel to an uncertain arrival and the problematic notions of belonging
and integration, this thesis employs the theoretical angle of affect studies to investigate
the ways in which policies and practices of exclusion, processes of othering, and the
disparate distribution of precarity affect the characters’ lives, bodies and self-understanding.
The detailed analysis of those affects which are produced in precarious
life situations, in embodied encounters and through exclusionary politics grants
insights into contextual configurations, as it throws into sharp relief the social and
political power relations underpinning the protagonists’ conflicts and struggles. The
comparative examination of these political structures is further supported by the
multiplicity of texts and perspectives. With a symmetrical division of three texts each
from the literatures of Denmark, Germany, Norway and Sweden, this thesis is firmly
rooted in Scandinavian literary studies; however, the inclusion of texts from German
literature allows for an exploration and problematisation of particularly Scandinavian
themes, such as Scandinavian Guilt and Scandinavian exceptionalism, from a
transnational perspective. Reading Scandinavian and German texts in close contact
with each other brings the texts’ politics into sharp focus: by contrasting these different
politics, this thesis contends that literary texts may constitute a counter-discourse to
those discourses that often sustain marginalisation and othering, insofar as these texts
reimagine the lives and voices of those who are usually invisible and inaudible:
refugees and asylum seekers.