Online-Lecture with Ervin Malakaj as part of the #Vorzeichen series
Literature in, not of, Germany: Thinking about Transnational Solidarities and Diasporic Kinship with Lana Bastašić
How does literature translated into German influence the German literary reception, curriculum, and market? Which global narratives and hi/stories become visible when translated and not only German-language literature is considered as part of the contemporary German literary scene and literary historiography? How can collective literary scholarship and transnational solidarity networks and alliances change the way we read texts?
For the next event of the series #Vorzeichen, our guest will be Professor Ervin Malakaj (University of British Columbia, Canada).
When? 04. June 2024, 18:00-19:00 (CET)
Where? Zoom (please register here: https://www.goethe.de/ins/ie/de/ver.cfm?event_id=25698365)
This event is a collaboration with the Goethe Institutes of North-Western Europe. The event will be co-moderated by Dr Anna von Rath (poco.lit) and Dr Maha El Hissy, the curator of the series. The lecture will be held in English and participation is free of charge.
Lana Bastašić’s literary practice, her presence on the German literary market, and the public termination of a contract with her German publisher Fischer Verlag serve as occasions to think about what and under which conditions literature translated into German is fostered by the German literary establishment. The talk will examine how Bastašić—as a post-Yugoslav writer—was at once intriguing and irritating for the German context. However, disrupting a market’s established logics does not exclusively mean literary failure. Drawing on postcolonial critique, the talk will explore how Bastašić’s politics of opting out served as a framework for new constellations of transnational solidarities that recognise the interconnectedness of various planetary struggles.
Moreover, Malakaj (who was born in former Yugoslavia and whose family lived as refugees in Germany) will trace how his personal engagement with Bastašić’s writing and reading about her experience on the German literary market formed a kind ofdiasporic kinship particularly conducive to exploring the intersection of literature/diaspora/solidarity.
Ervin Malakaj is associate professor of German studies at the University of British Columbia. He is an award-winning scholar, teacher, and community organiser who works at the intersection of German cultural history and queer studies. Currently, he holds an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for advanced researchers at the University of Cologne’s Erich Auerbach Institute for Advanced Studies and a Canada Council for the Arts grant for a book of personal essays on queer life in the Bosnian and Herzegovinian diaspora. In 2016, he co-founded the international scholarly collective Diversity, Decolonization, and the German Curriculum. The research and community practice of the group reshaped scholarly and disciplinary practices internationally.