Generation 'post-'? (Post-)Migration, Memory and Jewishness in German-language Third-Generation Literature

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Contemporary German-language Jewish literature has been described as undergoing significant changes, especially amongst the latest generation of writers, a majority of whom come from Eastern European backgrounds. These writers negotiate multiple cultural and linguistic affiliations and raise new issues in the context of memory, identity and belonging. Due to the dominant focus on the Holocaust and the intergenerational transmission of trauma, however, the emergence of these new issues has received relatively little attention in German-Jewish studies to this date. My research explores the ways these writers negotiate pluralistic affiliations and to what extent contemporary German-language Jewish literature can be considered as transnational literature. Furthermore, I aim to explore the relationship between transnational tendencies and the newly evolved societal and academic discourse of 'postmigration'. The question of how migrant or migrantized experiences, perspectives, and practices might reconfigure or co-configure newer German-Jewish or Austrian-Jewish conceptualizations and experiences of identity and belonging is only beginning to be explored in the academic sphere. I aim to contribute to this discussion by examining texts by third-generation authors. The term 'postmigration' has become a site of theory-building which implies a new future-orientated perspective that positions migration as central rather than marginal to society and provides a normative political vision. I intend to examine the potential of 'postmigration' as a strategic term not only in the context of the texts' depictions of and reflections on notions of belonging, but also to provide an innovative framework to think about Holocaust memory. To describe the relationship of succeeding generations to the traumatic past of those directly impacted by the Holocaust, Marianne Hirsch coined the term 'postmemory'. Whereas this concept has been one of the prevalent frameworks of Holocaust memory, it seems worthwhile to rethink Holocaust memory in the context of current socio-cultural developments and thereby reassess the third generation's 'postmemory-status'. I aim to explore how a postmigrant perspective might help to challenge certain notions of postmemory - particularly postmemory's 'contagion paradigm'. Postmigration's broader focus which shifts away from binary differences, the subject's concrete experiences and generational connection to society more generally, might provide a useful approach to move Holocaust memory towards futurity and explore ways of remembrance that 'accommodate a diversity of histories that resonate with each other'. I am particularly interested in reflexive tendencies in the texts. Such a shift from a personal to a discursive perspective may indicate a shift in focus away from concrete events of the past to the present. Furthermore, conducting a close reading of the texts' motifs, I aim to examine whether these writers discuss new forms of subjectivity and community in the context of their multiple affiliations. Through my research, I aim to address broader questions surrounding matters of identity and memory in contemporary German-language Jewish writing. Furthermore, I aim to bring German-language Jewish writing together more systematically with manifestations of transnationality and thereby contribute to a reframing of German-language Jewish literature in the context of current political, cultural and social developments. I intend to explore to what extent and by what means this generation of authors contribute to the transformation of the memory-scape in Germany and Austria; examine which understandings of Jewishness are being reflected; and ask whether the notions of belonging and memory depicted in these texts express a shift towards a postmigrant futurity.