A Space of Anxiety: Dislocation and Abjection in Modern German-Jewish Literature

A Space of Anxietyengages with a body of German-Jewish literature that, from the beginning of the century onwards, explores notions of identity and kinship in the context of migration, exile and persecution. The study offers an engaging analysis of how Freud, Kafka, Roth, Drach and Hilsenrath employ, to varying degrees, the travel paradigm to question those borders and boundaries that define the space between the self and the other. A Space of Anxietyargues that from Freud to Hilsenrath, German-Jewish literature emerges from an ambivalent space of enunciation which challenges the great narrative of an historical identity authenticated by an originary past. Inspired by postcolonial and psychoanalytic theories, the author shows that modern German-Jewish writers inhabit a Third Space which poses an alternative to an understanding of culture as a homogeneous tradition based on (national) unity.By endeavouring to explore this third space in examples of modern German-Jewish literature, the volume also aims to contribute to recent efforts to rewriting literary history. In retracing the inherent ambivalence in how German-Jewish literature situates itself in cultural discourse, this study focuses on how this literature subverts received notions of identity and racial boundaries. The study is of interest to students of German literature, German-Jewish literature and Cultural Studies.