Contemporary German Literature and Postcolonialism: Images of Masculinity and Colonial Desire in Christian Kracht’s “Imperium” and Steffen Kopetzky’s “Risiko”
Project no. 944 · Status: Kapanmış · 2016
Summary
The study focuses on two novels of contemporary German literature: Christian Kracht’s novel “Imperium” (2012) and Steffen Kopetzky’s novel “Risiko” (2015). These two novels deal with the colonial discourses of the Wilhelminian Era and constitute in this perspective a critical view to the colonial ambitions of Germany in the time of World War I. Kracht’s “Imperium” tells of the historical figure August Engelhardt, who tried to build an imperium in New Guinea. In the meanwhile, the novel “Risiko” of Kopetzky tells of a German-Turkish expedition to Afghanistan in the beginning of World War I. Both of the novels can be described as critical narratives of the colonial ambitions of Germany. This critical dimension of the novels can be read with reference to the postcolonial theories of Edward W. Said, Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak. By analyzing these two novels from a postcolonial perspective and in view of the conceptualization of the masculine figures, the study makes a significant contribution to the field of the German postcolonial studies.