Emily Jeremiah & Frauke Matthes 
Edinburgh German Yearbook 7 [PDF ebook] 
Ethical Approaches in Contemporary German-Language Literature and Culture

Building on a long tradition in German-language literature and culture, this volume focuses on contemporary engagements with ethical concerns in literary texts, essays, and films.


There has been an 'ethical turn’ in the literature, culture, and theory of recent years. Questions of morality are urgent at a time of increasing global insecurities. Yet it is becoming ever more difficult to make ethical judgments in multicultural, relativist societies. The European economic meltdown has raised further ethical difficulties, widening the gap between rich and poor. Such divisions and difficulties heighten the widespread fear of 'the other’in its various manifestations. And in the German context especially, the past and its representation offer ongoing moral challenges.


These ethical concerns have found their way into recent German-language literature andculture in texts that deal with history and memory (Timm, Petzold, Schoch, Strubel); materiality (Krauß, Overath); gender (Berg, Schneider); age and generation (Moster, Pehnt, Schalansky); religion, especially Islam (Senocak, Kermani, Ruete); and nomadism (Tawada). The relationship between self and other; the connection between particular and general; the personal and political consequences of individuals’ actions; and the potential, and danger, of representation itself are issues that are vital to the shaping of our future ethical landscapes, as this volume demonstrates.


Contributors: Monika Albrecht, Angelika Baier, David N. Coury, Anna Ertel & Tilmann Köppe, Emily Jeremiah, Alasdair King, Frauke Matthes, Aine Mc Murtry, Gillian Pye, Kate Roy.


Emily Jeremiah is Senior Lecturer in German at Royal Holloway, University of London. Frauke Matthes is Lecturer in German at the University of Edinburgh.

Spis treści

Introduction: Ethical Approaches in Contemporary German-Language Literature and Culture

’The Absoluteness of the Knowledge Once Possessed’: 1968 Ethics and Consensual Ethics in Uwe Timm’s Novel
Rot

What the World Needs Now: Rancière, Ethology, and Christian Petzold’s
Toter Mann (2001) and
Wolfsburg (2003)

Materiality and Ethics in Recent German Prose Narratives by Angelika Overath and Angela Krauß

Shameful Stories: The Ethics of East German Memory Contests in Fiction by Julia Schoch, Stefan Moster, Antje Rávic Strubel, and Judith Schalansky

Affective Encounters and Ethical Responses in Robert Schneider’s
Die Luftgängerin and Sybille Berg’s
Vielen Dank für das Leben

Narrative Ethics and the Problems of Age and Aging in Annette Pehnt’s
Haus der Schildkröten

’So ähnlich könnte es gewesen sein, aber [. . .]’: Unethical Narrations of Emily Ruete’s 'Große Wandlungen’

Enlightenment Fundamentalism: Zafer Senocak, Navid Kermani, and Multiculturalism in Germany Today

Voicing Rupture: Ethical Concerns in Short Prose and Lyric Texts by Yoko Tawada

O autorze

FRAUKE MATTHES is a Lecturer in German at the University of Edinburgh.