Anja Schwarz, Russell West-Pavlov, eds. Polyculturalism and Discourse. German Monitor. New York: Rodopi, 2007. xix + 279 pp. $90.00 (paper), ISBN 978-90-420-2307-9.
Reviewed by Katrina L. Nousek (German Studies Department, Cornell University)
Published on H-German (July, 2008)
National Identity in a Global Age
What defines a nation today, as transnational interactions in an increasingly globalizing world complicate fixed boundaries and require dynamic definitions of identity to mark moving populations? As the contributions to this collection demonstrate, what is at stake in this question is not any single answer to this question, but rather how a definition of "nation" and the act of defining itself are part of a larger discursive system that actively constructs the events it purports to describe. Taking their cue from the discourse theory of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, these essays focus on the constructive nature of discourse in the context of German and Australian politics. Whether they address post-World War II Turkish Gastarbeiter in Germany or the "indigenous" populations of Australia, questions of national identity concern both countries, particularly in relation to issues of migration and citizenship. In response, discourses about "multiculturalism" arise in political and cultural attempts to describe variation across a population. How these discourses interact to frame the experiences of individuals in the societies they describe is the inquiry at the heart of this volume. In their introduction, Russell West-Pavlov and Anja Schwarz, choosing the term "polyculturalism" to distinguish their approach from the multicultural discourse it analyzes, reformulate the question that begins this review as follows: "how does discourse on polyculturalism in contemporary society influence the manner in which people from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds think and talk about their everyday lives?" (p. x).
The essays approach this question from a variety of methodological and disciplinary standpoints. In "Coming to Terms with Genocidal Pasts in Comparative Perspective: Germany and Australia," A. Dirk Moses argues that a comparison with historical processing of the Holocaust trauma in Germany sheds light on the way in which Australia is also "coming to terms" with its historical treatment of indigenous populations. Australia's "history wars" are marked in part by a debate over whether or not "genocide" is an appropriate term to describe the removal of aboriginal children as evidenced in the Bringing Them Home report (1997). After detailing the development of opposing views between liberal and conservative intellectuals in Germany in the years after World War II, Moses concludes that these debates produce a self-critical community because neither political faction could be considered authoritative. The result in Germany is "an open-ended, critically hermeneutical relationship to national traditions" from which Australia can learn (p. 9).
Katharine Gelber's "Privileged Discourses of Hate in Australia and Germany: The Holocaust and the Stolen Generation" handles the same issues as Moses's work, but focuses on speeches made by Senator John Herron, Australia's Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, in 2000, and Martin Hohmann, a CDU representative in the Bundestag, in 2003, in order to analyze the rhetorical framing of political responses to the Holocaust in Germany and the removal of aboriginal children in Australia. Citing the mathematical discourse and the tone of certainty imposed through the repeated use of superlatives that characterize the truth claims of both speakers, Gelber reveals discursive strategies that further exploit the authority naturally attributed to the figures' privileged speaking positions as public officials. The result is a power imbalance in which Herron's and Hohmann's reconstructions of past events gain authority over opposing discourses and reinforce their authority with scientific, seemingly objective rhetoric.
Nicholas K. White's contribution, "Negotiating Nationhood in Multi-Ethnic Germany: An Australian Perspective," stands out as a "real life" study performed in a secondary school in Osnabrück, Germany. White, a self-identified Australian, records his discussions and interviews with teachers and students, all of whom identified themselves as German, on the subject of nationality. The conversations serve as examples for how the discursive parameters discussed on a more theoretical level in other essays are understood by a concrete group of Germans as interpreted by an Australian. According to White, the underlying assumptions of many of his conversation partners involved an understanding of ethnic difference as defined by traditions associated with primordial groups of people whose national identity is predicated on an imagined historical continuity. Though their intellectual discussions evinced a clear understanding of the constructed nature of national identity and the complexity of labeling groups of individuals in such a way, formulations of nationality as designated by cultural traditions in "original" ethnic groups remain embedded in social interactions.
The volume's contributions may also be considered according to the way in which a discourse intervenes in its larger discursive field. In the cases addressed by Gelber and Moses, discursive strategies are employed to manage populations that threaten traditional conceptions of national identities. Other discourses, however, work to open a space for "new voices" that do not fit the mold of existing constructions of subjectivity. In Steffi Hobuß's essay, "'Ein complexes und wechselhaftes Spiel': Sprachliche Resignifikation in Kanak Sprach und Aboriginal English," the discourses produced in novels by Feridun Zaimoglu, Mudrooroo, and Phillip Gwynne demonstrate the ability of fiction to intervene in discursive fields that integrate political and social discourses. Through a process of resignification, subjects in the works appropriate the very pejorative terms used to refer to them. Resignification, by questioning the possibility of an "authentic identity," casts notions of national identity further into doubt.
In his reading of Brian Casto's Looking for Estrellita and Vilem Flusser's Bodenlos, Russell West-Pavlov demonstrates the ability of autobiographical accounts of cross-cultural subjects to problematize discourses of culturally homogenous nations. He argues that formulations of subjectivity that posit the subject as a unified entity are the synecdoche of such a nation. The unconventional discourses employed in these two autobiographies deconstruct notions of stable national identities by revealing heterogeneous, transnational subjectivities.
The essays are well-distributed over discourses in a range of fields. In addition to literature and politics, film is also given a nod in Tim Mehigan's "Towards another Modernity? Multicultural Discourse in German and Australian Film from the 1970s to the 1990s." Mehigan reveals the increasingly optimistic representations of minority rights as the decades pass through a discussion of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Angst essen Seele auf (1974) and Werner Herzog's Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) set against Steve Thomas's documentary, The Hillmen (1996), and Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom (1992). Mehigan's argument is framed by a debate between cultural tradition and rational liberalism that finds its roots in the opposition of Enlightenment and Romantic traditions. As "strategic interventions in a critical discourse," the films comment on cultural tensions in their contemporary societies with an aim to open hegemonic discourses to the complexity of modern, polycultural societies (p. 163).
Justine Loyd and Anja Schwarz's co-authored "The Pacific Solution meets Fortress Europe" brings the tools of discourse analysis and cultural geography together to describe the transnational similarities of border zones in Germany and Australia, where refugees contest conventional understandings of national identity and belonging. The figure of the refugee, once marginal but becoming increasingly central to debates about immigration, complicates dichotomies between "inside" and "outside" the nation. In response, Loyd and Schwarz conclude, legislative discourses employ notions of "buffer zones" that may be inside a nation but whose inhabitants are not eligible for its protection, or outside the nation, yet still under its sovereignty.
Perhaps the most unique contribution in the volume, Ulrike Lölke's essay discusses the relationship between scientific discourse and polyculturalism given the historical power dynamics of European scientific developments in a colonial context. The travel logs of Alexander von Humboldt and Ernst Forester serve as examples of early science discoveries that reflect on their mode of knowledge production. The conflict between different knowledge systems as evidenced in the rejection of local knowledge in the face of expanding European scientific knowledge is a telling model against which one may evaluate epistemological power dynamics of discourses in other contexts. Lölke concludes with the suggestion that Australian school syllabi, as "epistemological contact zones," offer the prospect of indigenous knowledge and European scientific discourses meeting without being subject to the historical privileging of the latter.
A few consistent themes return in several essays, lending a sense of cohesion to the rather diverse methodologies in the volume. Fiona Allon and Anja Schwarz's works, for example, compare conceptions of state formation in Germany and Australia to help explain differences in migration policies and the popularity of the phrase "Wir sind kein Einwanderungsland" in Germany. Allon gives two readings of political campaigns employed in Germany ("Familie Deutschland") and Australia ("Welcome to Sydney"): one acknowledges the apparently progressive nature of the multicultural tolerance the campaigns advertise, while the other reveals the reinforcement of conservative ideals of national identity. Given changing market conditions in a globalizing world, what is marketed as multiculturalism and cultural variety may simply be the reinstitution of a fixed identity bounded by the nation-state. Instead, articulations of citizenship or belonging amidst transnational interactions must seek dynamic, open definitions.
Schwarz's contribution focuses on several terms that arise repeatedly in political discourse to describe issues related to cultural diversity. After an analysis of the uses of "assimilation," "integration," and "multiculturalism" as they develop in Australian political discourse, Schwarz turns to the use of multiculturalism with respect to immigration issues in contemporary Germany. Rather than reflecting a distinct meaning, use of the term varies with the rhetorical strategy of the speaker and the desired effect behind its employment. The comparative methodology allows Schwartz to recognize the terminological instability of "multiculturalism" in the German context, concluding that it is functionally replaced by "integration" in political debates over the Immigration Act.
As a collection of works from various scholars, the volume is laudable for its cohesion and sustained focus on its conceptual project. Despite the various methodologies and disciplinary approaches brought to bear on multiculturalism in a range of discursive fields, the return of a few consistent themes lends the volume a sense of development and productivity. The inclusion of a helpful index further cements the work as a whole, and bibliographies following each contribution provide a useful starting point for scholars unfamiliar with existing literature on discourse analysis in Germany and/or Australia. The only downside to the focused nature of the volume is a certain amount of repetition. Though the introduction provides a cursory explanation of discourse theory, for example, two essays begin with a thorough description of Foucault's work which, though each description caters to the specific trajectory of its respective essay, might have been avoided. However, this minor problem should not take away from praise well deserved for an engaging study of nations not frequently compared in their treatment of such issues.
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at: https://networks.h-net.org/h-german.
Citation:
Katrina L. Nousek. Review of Schwarz, Anja; West-Pavlov, Russell, eds., Polyculturalism and Discourse.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
July, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14770
Copyright © 2008 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.