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Daniel Romuald Bitouh, Aesthetics of Marginality in the Work of Joseph Roth. A postcolonial look at the intertwining of internal and extra-colonialism. Tübingen: Narr/Francke/Attempo Verlag 2016.
Abstract
This book explores the African and Third World context of Roth’s texts – an aspect that has so far received little attention in classic Roth research. The core question of the study is: How is the imperial encounter between Europe and Africa discussed and represented in Roth’s work? A question that – according to the logic of this study – can be translated into the following questions: What is marginality in Joseph Roth? How does the marginality of Roth’s characters come to light? To what extent can this marginality be transferred to a global context? The aim is to question and question Roth’s texts regarding their relationship to Africa and to use this to reconstruct Roth’s attitude to the European imperial movement. The focus is on questions of ‘marginality’, ‘third spaces’, ‘identity’, ‘difference’ and ‘interdependence’. Selected texts by Joseph Roth namely The Rebellion, Job, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, The Escape Without End, The Rehabilitation of the Blacks, The Blonde Negro Guillaume;“>>It may sound strange to want to connect the work of the Eastern Jewish, Austrian writer Joseph Roth with Africa or the so-called Third World. The Austria- and Europe-centered Roth research significantly shapes the discussion about his texts and contributes to fixing a certain image of Joseph Roth. Such naturalized practices of determination consciously or unconsciously create a silence about other possible and productive aspects of Joseph Roth’s work. Joseph Roth found the courage to write against totalitarian systems at a time – the National Socialist era – when the act of writing (counter-)writing meant “giving yourself a death certificate.” This writing against the totalitarian logocentric writing of imperial colonialism can be seen as intellectual decolonization and connects Joseph Roth with authors such as Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Franz Kafka, Franz Werfel, Robert Musil, Mongo Beti, Ngungi wa Thiong’o, Cheikh Hamidou Kane or Wole Soyinka. In our current world, in which subjects in the south and north of the globe are increasingly confronted with borderline situations – wars, armed conflicts, environmental disasters, famines, private and public humiliation and humiliation, a differentiated anatomy of coexistence in the 21st century is emerging a necessity. This work, which deals with Joseph Roth’s texts under the unwieldy concept of ‘aesthetics of marginality’, is embedded in an intercultural dialogue and represents a moment of this dialogue. From a postcolonial perspective, Joseph Roth’s texts dialogue with suggestions from texts by a variety of authors – including Sigmund Freud, Frantz Fanon, Joseph Conrad, Hannah Arendt, Michael Bakhtin, Aimé Césaire, Mongo Beti, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Homi Bhabha, Albert Memmi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Giorgio Agamben etc. – read. Like Franz Kafka, Franz Werfel and Robert Musil, Joseph Roth is one of the most important German-speaking authors from the periphery of the old Danube Monarchy, who brought fame and splendor to both German-Austrian and European literature. Nevertheless, Joseph Roth’s biography is not the subject of this book. The focus is primarily on questions of marginality, domination, power, cultural differences and interdependencies. These questions, which are raised and explored using selected texts by Joseph Roth, enable the use of texts from African literature in the dialogue staged in this work. What is our world if not a dialogic space? This work is the result of a long-standing dialogic commitment.
Abstract
This book opens up the African and third world relationship of Roth’s texts – a hitherto neglected aspect of the classical Roth’s research. The core research question is: How is the imperial en-counter between Europe and Africa discussed and presented in Roth’s work? A question that – according to the logic of this investigation – can be translated into the following matters namely: What is marginality by Joseph Roth? How does the marginality of Roth’s characters come to light? To what extent can this marginality be transferred to a global context? Questions of ‘marginality’, ‘third spaces’, ‘identity’, ‘difference’ and ‘interdependence’ are in the limelight. Selected Texts namely The Rebellion, Job, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, The Escape Without End, The Rehabilitation of the Blacks, The Blonde Negro Guillaume and others are questioned on these points, with categories of postcolonial literary and cultural theory. The investigation is understood as a dialogical movement between texts and contexts. Roth’s texts build a bridge between Europe and Africa and thus enable an extension of view.