Narratives of Normalisation: War Discourses in German Politics and Literature After Unification
My thesis focuses on the Federal Republic’s foreign policy ‘normalisation’ after unification, specifically Germany’s gradual re-militarisation and participation in offensive military engagements abroad, and investigates to what extent German authors – through their literary writing and in their role as public intellectuals – have participated in, advanced or even shaped the narratives that supported this ‘normalisation’. Extant scholarship on literature in the context of ‘normalisation’ has largely focused on literary representations of ‘normalisation’ in the context of unification and the legacy of National Socialism. Meanwhile, existing research on literary writing that engages with the events that precipitated Germany’s foreign policy ‘normalisation’ mostly centres around the literary representation of these events. Expanding on this research, this thesis aims to advance readings of contemporary German-language texts through the lens of ‘normalisation’ and to demonstrate the extent to which they can be read as articulations of war discourses and thus become narratives of ‘normalisation’ in their own right. The structure of this thesis is guided by a chronology of events. Based on the work of Marcus Hawel, three ‘normalisation’ milestones have been identified, namely the Yugoslav Wars, the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 in the United States and the War in Afghanistan. In preparation for the discussion of these milestones, a prologue chapter will offer a thorough introduction to the subject of Germany’s ‘normalisation’. Extant definitions and conceptualisations of ‘normalisation’ will be considered and synthesised to advance a novel understanding of ‘normalisation’ for the purpose of this thesis. Following that, each milestone will be discussed in a dedicated chapter, which provides context by giving an overview of events and identifying the core strands of the political ‘normalisation’ discourse before moving on a discussion of how these core strands have entered, are reproduced or advanced in the literary realm. This approach allows not only for a consideration of these milestone events in isolation but also offers a diachronic perspective into how war discourses evolved over time in both the political and the literary realm.
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