Chapter 6 Feridun Zaimoglu’s “Kampfansage an die Rechten”: Politics, Affect and “Der Wert der Worte”

In: Cultural Responses to the Far Right in Contemporary Germany
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Joseph Twist
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Abstract

Feridun Zaimoglu’s “Rede zur Literatur”, held as part of the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis festival, shows how literature’s creative intervention in language can allow for new avenues of thought and political possibilities. The speech, entitled “Der Wert der Worte”, makes visible the power dynamics within language use, demonstrating that, alongside the far right’s physical threats, their dehumanising language also constitutes a form of violence, in its attempts to fix and control its objects. Yet his speech also highlights how we are not fully in control of our use of language, undermining ideas of the sovereign subject that shape our understanding of how identities are ascribed. Zaimoglu chooses words carefully to make their histories and ambiguities felt, demonstrating both how they exceed the sovereign subject and how they have the potential to be creatively reworked. This challenge to subjective autonomy has consequences for how we position ourselves in relation to far-right violence. The fictionalised ways of engaging with violence proposed in this text impedes us from attempts to distance ourselves from violence, either through presumed understanding or total incredulity. What remains is the galvanising potential of collective affects, such as anger, which can point towards a new sense of justice.

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