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nation. But however stronga case one may want to make for the structural and empirical affinities between nation and diaspora, we must
remember certain basic differences that have not simply vanished.
Diaspora,as opposed to nation in the traditionalsense, is based on geographic displacement,on migration,and on an absence which may be
lamented or celebrated. National memory presents itself as natural,
authentic, coherent and homogeneous. Diasporic memory in its traditional sense is by definition cut off, hybrid, displaced, split. This fact
grounds the affinity of diasporic memory to the structureof memory
itself which is always based on temporaldisplacementbetween the act
of remembranceand the contentof that which is remembered,an act of
recherche rather than recuperation.Of course, this will not prevent
diasporic memories from mimicking the identity fictions that energize
nationhood. But structurally,diasporic consciousness comes closer to
the structuresof memorythan nationalmemorydoes. National memory
usually veils its Nachtraglichkeit.Diasporic memory in the vital as
opposed to its reified sense remainscriticallyawareof it.This could and
should be an advantage. One might formulate it as a question: can
nationalmemory formations,which after all still exist and remainpowerful, learnfromdiasporicmemory?
This question is not asked all too often since the dominantmodel of
scholarlymemorydiscoursein historiographyremainstied to notions of
national memory. Pierre Nora's multivolume Lieux de memoire in
France is as representativeof this limitation as the work of Hagen
Schultze and Etienne Fran9oisin Germany.10Despite the fundamental
differencesbetween Frenchand Germannationalhistory,the realms of
memory in both mnemohistoryprojects are strictly national and don't
make room for diasporicphenomena.Millions of migrantsnow live in
dozens of diasporas within European nation states, but they remain
structurallyexcluded from such national historiographyof memory.
National memory discourse is well and alive in Europe,though clearly
in uneasy relationshipwith an emergentEuropeanmemorydiscourse.If
it is true, as has recently been claimed by Dan Diner at a Leipzig conference about CentralEurope'sexperienceof catastrophe,that "Europe
is being built from the jointly claimedpasts of its history,not least from
10. See PierreNora, Realmsof Memory:Rethinkingthe FrenchPast, 3 vols. (New
York:ColumbiaUP, 1996-98);and HagenSchultzeand EtienneFrancois,DeutscheErinnerungsorte(Munich:Beck, 2001).
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in 1921. After
murderedby an Armenianin Berlin's Hardenbergstrasse
the death of his parentsin a car accident, Sascha is called to Munich
where he grew up and where his mother's family lived. A notarypublic hands him a silver box as partof his inheritance.It is a box filled to
the brim with notebooks - a diary his Turkishgrandfatherhad kept
from 1916 until his mysterioussuicide at age 40 in 1936. Of course,
Sascha, born in 1954, knows certain essentials of family history that
subtly bind Germanyand Turkey:he knows that this grandfathercommitted suicide just shortly before he was to accompany the Turkish
Olympic team as a sports official to the Berlin Olympics of 1936. He
also knows that duringthe ThirdReich, his mother's family emigrated
to Istanbul,where they found shelter and she met her future Turkish
husband while many of her Jewish relatives became victims of the
Holocaust.The memoryof this Turkishgrandfatherhad been treatedas
a family secret in Sascha's childhood.As he now remembers,he once
found some photos in the attic of a man with a big moustachewhich
were then immediatelythrown in the fire by his parents.But Sascha's
hope to learn more about this mysteriousman is quickly disappointed.
The only remainingwitness, his father,is dead. And the notebooks are
written in arabic and in kyrillic script neither of which Sascha, who
barely knows any Turkish,can decipher.Being denied access to this
archiveof family history,he decides not to reconstruct,but to invent the
In an as yet unpublishedessay on Berlin,
story of his grandfather.25
entitled "Die Hauptstadtdes Fragments,"Senocak writes about this
novel: "History as document and invention becomes the book's real
protagonist,and it becomes ever clearerthat the searchfor truthcan be
documentedonly poorly."26
Given Sascha'sfear of what he may find out, it is only towardthe end
of the novel that he hires a translator,but apartfrom one single entry,in
which the grandfatherclaims that Muslimculturelacks a notion of guilt,
the readernever gets to hear the grandfather'sauthenticvoice, not even
in translation.The secretof the silver box remainsa secretfor the reader,
and, one surmises,a limitedsourcefor the writerwho has to find his own
literaryand memoriallanguagefor what he finds out from the translations. Ratherthan revealinga documentarydimensionby revealing the
grandfather'svoice, the novel maintainsthis absenceand it ends with the
25.
26.
38.
Senocak,GefahrlicheVerwandtschaft
$enocak, "Capitalof the Fragment,"trans.Tom Cheesman.In this issue.
162
IV
The story of Sascha Muteschemraises all the theoreticalproblems I
have discussed regardingcontemporarydisaporas.The traditionalunderstanding of diaspora as loss of homeland and desire to return itself
becomes largely irrelevantfor the second and third generationswho,
contraryto Senocak himself, are no longer conversantin language and
culture of the countryof their ancestors.Whetheror not they were to
describe themselves as diasporicsubjects(which 5enocak, I sense, will
not do),28 the key problemslie in their relationto the nationalculture
they live in ratherthanto the imaginaryof roots in the cultureof ancestors. It is primarilya problemof life in the presentand the negotiation
with the host culture.If, however,this nationalhost cultureis intensely
orientedtowardmemoryand traumatichistory,difficultiesmay arise for
the immigrantof how to relate to those nationalmemories. The more
nationalthe surroundingculturebecomes, the more will the migrantalso
be pushed towards issues of identity, ethnicity, and belonging. Berlin
clearlyhas become much more nationalsince 1990, and $enocak'spolitical essays testify to that from the perspective of the immigrantwho
experiencesnew difficultieswith his identity.But his prose fiction questions the very notion of identity,and it avoids any hint of culturalnostalgia. As the novel focuses on an individualratherthan on collective
memory,;enocak emphasizesthe lack of full accessibilityto the truthof
a genealogythatreachesmorethana generationback. He shows how the
very search for the Turkishgrandfather(imposedon him, as it were, by
the Germannotarywho handedhim the silver box with the notebooks)
encounteredthat other genocide as part of his own diasporicgenealogy
27. Senocak,GefahrlicheVerwandtschaft
134.
28. ClearlyneitherSenocak nor his work are to be considereddiasporicin the simple traditionalsense. He is a Germanwriter.The questionto whatextenthis work still participatesin a changingdiasporicconditionor is somethingentirelydifferentwill no doubt
be raisedby othersmoreconversantwith the field of Turkish-German
studiesthan I am.
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89 f.
$enocak,GefahrlicheVerwandtschaft
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