Vergangenheitsbewältigung und Migrationswahrnehmung in Zafer Şenocaks Roman Gefährliche Verwandtschaft Zur Entstehung einer Autorschaft

Abstract

The present article analyses the novel Gefährliche Verwandtschaft by German-Turkish writer Zafer Şenocak. It aims to reconstruct the author’s perspective on debates on migration and integration and to show in which way this affects the genesis of authorship represented in the novel. According to the thesis presented in this article, Gefährliche Verwandtschaft is first of all a novel about identity politics in newly reunited Germany. As a result, it also deals with historical perceptions and interpretations of the past. This goes to show that the value of the novel lies in its provocative questioning of memory culture and politics in Germany in the 1990s and of the consequences of an increasingly institutionalized and ritualized remembrance of National Socialism for the perception of migration.