The next seminar in our series is by Britta Jung
'Framing Fortress Europe: A Literary Intervention'
Thursday, 11 April, 1pm, D418, Newman Building
While mobility has always been
part of human activity and can be traced back to the dispersing of archaic and
modern humans across the continents some two million years ago, the advent of
the modern nation-state in the 18th and 19th century and
the rise of nationalism in the late 19th and early 20th
century have transformed the migration process and subjected migratory flows to
substantial regulation. As a result, the (migrant) Other has increasingly been
framed as a threat to national security and social harmony, either in moral,
social or political; or indeed in ethnic, racial or religious terms. Despite a
general embrace of liberal values and the adoption of a legally binding
UN-convention regarding the elimination of racial discrimination in 1969, the
idea of institutionally targeting specific immigrant groups to avoid a
so-called ‘race suicide’ maintains its populist appeal and resurfaces in times
of crisis to this day.
In the aftermath of 9/11 – and more recently terrorist attacks in
European capitals such as Paris, London, Berlin and Madrid – on the one hand,
and the
financial crisis and the global refugee crisis on the other hand, hitherto celebrated visions of multi-, inter- and
transculturalism have become less optimistic and more guarded in recent years. Mainstream parties are divided on how to respond to
the marked shift in public discourse, which is echoed in the rise nationalist
movements and right-wing populist parties. After decades of publicly and diplomatically pursuing
policies of both integration and inclusion vis-à-vis
migrant communities, local and national government policies in Europe seem to
increasingly enable nationalist discourses by banning and stigmatising migrants
from the Middle East and Africa as a deviant Other. Ostensibly established
(trans)national spaces, borders and boundaries are being once again put up for
reconsideration, with border controls within the Schengen-Area being
temporarily reintroduced and an increasing fortification of the EU’s external
borders. This talk seeks to explore the way literary works engage with the
Fortress Europe in its newest, post-war iteration. After all, literary works are not only representations of specific
social worlds, but – more often than not – conjure up possible, idealised
and/or alternative worlds which may affect the extra-literary world. They are –
or can be – an important intervention.
Britta C. Jung is an IRC
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the UCD Humanities Institute. Her project ‘Contested
Identities. A Comparative Study of the Migrant Experience in Contemporary
German, Dutch and Irish Literature’ addresses – among other things – the urgent
need to critically (re)examine the terms of the migration debate, including
collective and national identity, belonging, displacement and transnationalism.
Additionally, Dr Jung is currently conducting a comprehensive study on behalf
of the Higher Education Authority and Léargas regarding the attitudes toward and learning experience of foreign languages in the context of
Erasmus+ in Ireland.
Dr
Jung’s PhD was jointly awarded by the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and
the University of Limerick in November 2015. She has published extensively in
the areas of German Holocaust Studies and Youth Literature. Her German-language
monograph on the transnational turn of the German memory discourse was
published by Vandenhoek & Ruprecht in October 2018 and a coedited volume on
the literary representation of the Central and Eastern European borderlands is
due for publication in summer 2019.
