Selected Publications
- Kompositionen der Erinnerung. Gedächtnis und Poetik in deutschen und spanischen Exilautobiographien. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2013.
- “Dingwelten in Auflösung. Zum Traumcharakter des Exils bei Rudolf Leonhard und María Teresa León”. In: Exilforschung. Ein internationales Jahrbuch 31 (2013), 157-177.
- Blicke auf Auschwitz. Deutsch-spanische Relektüren. Marburg: Tectum 2011. Co-edition and intro (with Rosa Pérez Zancas).
- “La memoria como práctica simbólica: tras las huellas de una historia traumática”, in: María G. Navarro/Betty Estévez/Antolín Sánchez (eds.): Claves actuales de pensamiento. Seminario Internacional de Jóvenes Investigadores. Madrid: Plaza y Valdés 2011, 73-92.
- “Zur Autobiographik von Germanisten im Exil: Selbstbestimmung und Selbstreflexivität bei Bernhard Blume und Egon Schwarz”, German Quarterly 83-4 (fall 2010), 485-502.
FRIAS Project
1. Postcoloniality and Exile. German Literature and Cultural Difference in the Americas;
2. Hannah Arendt’s Correspondance with Gershom Scholem: Politics in exile
My current project analyses representations of cultural difference in texts written by German exile authors in the postcolonial context of Latin America. In order to explore the structural link between these representations and the European experiences of violence and exclusion lived by the writers in the 1930s and 1940s, I will probe into and critically examine postcolonial concepts like “transmodernidad” (E. Dussel), “transculturación” (F. Ortiz) or “epistemic violence” (G. Spivak).
Postcolonial theorists have paid much attention to the figure of the (postmodern) migrant, but much less to the exile, although postcolonial and modern exile literatures share basic characteristics (configuration of intercultural encounters, problematicity of canon, self-reflexive writing strategies). Of course, this is not meant to suggest that exile literature is to be readas a postcolonial literature. Rather, my project explores the productivity of postcolonial theory, as it has been put forward in Latin American contexts since the 1940s (in part avant la lettre), in the analysis of an exile literature which itself is situated in a postcolonial context. Firs case studies will focus on the literary and journalistic work of Paul Zech (1881-1946) on Argentine, and Gustav Regler (1898-1963) on Mexico.
My second project for the months to come is the traduction of the correspondance between Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem for its Spanish edition; and in connection with this, the analysis of politics in exile proposed by Arendt in North America.