Hybrid cultures - nervous states : Britain and Germany in a (Post) Colonial world / / edited by Ulrike Lindner ... [et al.].

• TeilnehmendeR: Lindner, Ulrike.
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Cross/cultures ; 129; Cross/Cultures 129.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (407 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

While cultural diversity and hybridity have often been celebrated, they also challenge traditional concepts of national and cultural identity – challenges which have caused considerable anxiety. Various disciplines have often investigated the impact of cultural hybridity, multiculture, and (post)colonialism in relative isolation and with a tendency towards over-theorization and loss of specificity. Greater interdisciplinary cooperation can counter this tendency and encourage sustained comparisons between different former empires and across language boundaries. This volume contributes to such developments by combining contributions from history, English and German studies, cultural geography, theatre studies, and film studies; by covering both the colonial and the postcolonial period; and by looking comparatively at two different (post)colonial contexts: the United Kingdom and Germany. The result is productive dialogue across the distinct colonial and migration histories of the UK and Germany, which brings out divergent concepts of cultural difference – but, importantly, without neglecting similarities and transnational developments. The interdisciplinary outlook extends beyond political definitions of identity and difference to include consumer culture, literature, film, and journalism – cultural and social practices that construct, represent, and reflect personal and collective identities. Section I discusses the historical and contemporary role of colonial experience and its remembrance in the construction of national identities. Section II follows on by tracing the reflections of (post)coloniality and twentieth-century migration in the specific fields of economic history and consumer culture. Section III centres on recent debates about multiculture and national/cultural identity in politics, literature, and film.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Encounters Over the Border: The Shaping of Colonial Identities in Neighbouring British and German Colonies in Southern Africa / Ulrike Lindner -- The Colonial Order Upside Down?: British and Germans in East African Prisoner-of-War Camps During World War I / Michael Pesek -- Jack, Peter, and the Beast: Postcolonial Perspectives on Sexual Murder and the Construction of White Masculinity in Britain and Germany at the Turn of the Twentieth Century / Eva Bischoff -- Decolonization of the Public Space?: (Post)Colonial Culture of Remembrance in Germany / Joachim Zeller -- “Setting the Record Straight”?: Imperial History in Postcolonial British Public Culture / Elizabeth Buettner -- (Trans)National Consumer Cultures: Coffee as a Colonial Product in the German Empire / Laura Julia Rischbieter -- Transcultural Tea Times: An Overview of Tea in Colonial History / Christine Vogt–William -- Döner Kebab and West German Consumer (Multi-)Cultures / Maren Möhring -- A Cultural Politics of Curry: The Transnational Spaces of Contemporary Commodity Culture / Peter Jackson -- Knowledges of (Un)Belonging: Epistemic Change as a Defining Mode for Black Women’s Activism in Germany / Maureen Maisha Eggers -- “I ain’t British though / Yes you are. You’re as English as I am”: Staging Belonging and Unbelonging in Black British Drama Today / Deirdre Osborne -- Muslims, the Discourse on (Failed) Integration in Britain, and Kenneth Glenaan’s Film Yasmin / Silke Stroh -- The Current Spectacle of Integration in Germany: Spatiality, Gender, and the Boundaries of the National Gaze / Markus Schmitz -- Works Cited -- Notes on Editors and Contributors -- Index.