Of Awful Connections, East German Primitives and the New Black Berlin Wall: Germany and German History in African American Literature, 1892-2016

Project Information

GAAL

Grant agreement ID: 786281

DOI

10.3030/786281

Project closed

EC signature date 2 May 2018

Start date 1 July 2019

End date 1 July 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 171 460,80

EU contribution

€ 171 460,80

Coordinated by

GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTLICHE ZENTREN BERLIN EV
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GAAL (Of Awful Connections, East German Primitives and the New Black Berlin Wall: Germany and German History in African American Literature, 1892-2016)

Reporting period: 2019-07-01 to 2021-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

“‘It used to be ‘Aimez-vous Paree?’ that the black GI ran to,’ my dad said, rolling slowly in his chair, up to and back from his desk. ‘But you and your cousin can’t get enough of that ‘Sprechen Sie Jive?’’” This quote from African American writer Darryl Pinckney’s novel “Black Deutschland” (2016) is a representative example of a fictional discourse of both transnational and transtemporal character. Set in the late 1980s, Pinckney’s novel introduces a protagonist – a young bibliophile African American man from Chicago – whose decision of moving to West Berlin needs to be viewed in the light of images as diverse as the “European dream” of “race-divided lovers of the New World”, W. E. B. Du Bois’s romantic perception of Wilhelminian Germany as a country of poets and philosophers, the reputation of 1980s West Berlin as an “involuntary island” and “petri dish of romantic radicalism”, and Christopher Isherwood’s famous description of liberal Weimar culture, which – together with Berlin’s darker role in history during the time of the Third Reich – leads the protagonist to expect that (West) “Berlin meant white boys who wanted to atone for Germany’s crimes by loving a black boy like me.”
The MSCA action “Of Awful Connections, East German Primitives and the New Black Berlin Wall: Germany and German History in African American Literature, 1892-2016” (GAAL) has studied African American literary works such as Pinckney’s, which are partly set in Germany and include references to events of German history such as the Holocaust and German Reunification. The central aim has been to provide an accurate analysis of the images and functions of Germany and German history in African American literature from a transnational, comparative perspective. The project has worked on the assumption that a perspective which is especially aware of the cross-cultural and intertextual contexts in which African American literature is produced is highly innovative because it allows to connect new developments within “traditional” comparative imagology with insights from academic fields such as “comparison literature”/world literature studies and transnational African American/Black diasporic literature studies. Thus, the project not only contributes to the advancement of several research areas within the humanities, but also shows an exemplary way of how the study of literature can have an impact on society: At a time in which the image of Europe and the notion of a European identity are rapidly changing and much discussed questions, the project provides a theoretically rich and broad perspective connecting the timely question of how Europe and Germany are perceived by (internal and external) “others” with a focus on literary developments most neglected in (European centered) investigations in the context of comparative and world literature.
The project has been based at the interdisciplinary Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- and Kulturforschung (ZfL) in Berlin. In addition, a secondment at the Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the FU Berlin took place.
The scientific results of the project will be presented in a monograph on the topic, and many of them are already described in a series of articles. Moreover, the project included several networking, dissemination and communication activities, which have connected the project with numerous other Berlin-based institutions.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Drawing on a theoretical framework that connects comparative imagology, Black diaspora studies, and the recent academic focus on world literature's “multidirectional memory” and its “cosmopolitan style”, the project has analyzed four historically diverse, cross-cultural discourses that have shaped the role of Germany and German history in African American literature: 1) the formation of a “canonic” African American image of postromantic Wilhelminian Germany that can be traced back to W.E.B. Du Bois’s time as a student in Berlin (WP1); 2) the interwar period and its intertwining sub-discourses of the Old World as “racial haven” for African Americans, and of Berlin as “European capital of sexual libertinage” (WP2); 3) National Socialism and its relations and parallels to racism in the U.S. (WP3); 4) African American perceptions of Germany as a divided and/or reunified country (WP4). In addition, the project has extensively reflected and sharpened its own research methodology within a theory-related work package (WP5).
Each of these five work packages had research, textual analysis, and writing as their main tasks. They all result in a chapter of the monograph and in several scholarly and non-scholarly articles. In addition, the project included work packages on finalizing the monograph, training, dissemination, communication, and management and monitoring. Among the results of these work packages are an international workshop on “Sketches of Black Europe”, the fellow’s participation in the Leibniz Mentoring program for female researchers, the teaching of a course to students, several presentations and public lectures, as well as articles in blogs and national media.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The research action had an impact on several fields within the humanities: On the one hand, it responded to the continuing demand for internationally oriented, comparative research in African American studies by investigating understudied aspects of the field. It goes beyond the state of the art in showing how writers such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, James Baldwin, Vincent O. Carter, John A. Williams or Paul Beatty creatively made use of Germany and German history to articulate their own visions about America and Europe, to draw innovative comparisons, and to position themselves as competent observers of European and international (post-)modernity. At the same time, the project enriched comparative literature by advancing the theory and practice of comparative imagology, as well as by connecting the timely discourse on multidirectional memory and global comparison in world literature with the question of national images. In addition, the project touched upon growing scholarly fields such as of African European studies, critical whiteness studies, and interdisciplinary studies on the concept of appropriation, and enriched them by providing a literature-specific perspective.
The wider societal impact of the project results from its capacity of confronting the citizens of Berlin, Germany, and the European continent with the perception of themselves and their places of origin through the “eyes” of African American literature. Thus, the project has brought people in touch with past processes of cultural exchange in Europe, and challenged them to reflect how collective images of ourselves and others arise and shape our views of the world. This is of timely relevance in a period in which European societies struggle to find adequate responses to refugees coming to Europe from different directions, bringing along different images and expectations regarding the countries they immigrate into. By maintaining that the perspective of African Americans on Germany is one that is very specific and highly different from the perspective of people of color of Afro-German, Afropean, or African descent, the project has showcased the need of getting aware of the specificity and high variability of collective images, which often differ depending on country of origin, social status, gender, religion, or other factors.

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