Publications

Research in African Literatures, the premier journal of African literary studies worldwide, serves as a stimulating vehicle in English for research on the oral and written literatures of Africa. Reviews of current scholarly books are included in every number, and a forum offers readers the opportunity to respond to issues raised in articles and book reviews.

In the face of growing populism and right-wing radicalism, the fight against historical forgetfulness in thought and action is once again highly topical. At first glance, however, historical forgetfulness – at least in relation to the pre-modern era – hardly seems to exist: The Middle Ages, Renaissance and early modern period are experiencing a boom in novels, dramas and popular media. But here in particular, there is an urgent need for an active response to simplifications, mythifications and falsifications. The contributors to this volume show that it is essential for a critical consciousness to be aware of historical difference and media filters and to reflect on their effects. In the face of growing populism and right-wing radicalism, the fight against historical forgetfulness in thought and action is once again highly topical. At first glance, however, historical forgetfulness – at least in relation to the pre-modern era – hardly seems to exist: The Middle Ages, Renaissance and early modern period are experiencing a boom in novels, dramas and popular media. But here in particular, there is an urgent need for an active response to simplifications, mythifications and falsifications. The contributors to this volume show that it is essential for a critical consciousness to recognize historical difference and media filters and to reflect on their effects.

Der Fokus des Bandes liegt auf Widerspruch als Gegenstandsbereich, unter den sprachliche Ausdrucksformen von Entgegensetzung, Paradoxie, Lüge und Einspruch ebenso fallen wie linguistische Methoden des Umgangs mit Widerspruch und Widersprüchlichkeiten in der sprachwissenschaftlichen Disziplinengeschichte. Dabei stellt sich die Linguistik nicht als homogene, sondern vielmehr als eine heterogene, vielseitige Disziplin dar, die es erlaubt, den Forschungsgegenstand aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln zu betrachten; die Beitragenden präsentieren insofern verschiedene innerdisziplinäre Schwerpunkte von linguistischer Widerspruchsanalyse, darunter der Blick auf Sprachhandlungen zum Ausdruck von Widerspruch in wissenschaftlichen, historischen, (post)kolonialen, narrativen oder alltäglichen Diskursen. Es werden einzelsprachliche Untersuchungen nicht nur europäischer Sprachen vorgenommen, sondern auch die crosslinguistische Vielfalt von widerspruchsindizierenden Konstruktionen betrachtet.

This article gives an overview of francophone African diasporic websites such as Africultures.com, africavivre.com and other digital magazines, networks and blogs that are present on different platforms. Taking recent novels, texts of liter- ary criticism, reviews and comments as examples, I analyse in what way they share in discourse about diasporic and migratory identity positions of Afropéens (‘Afropeans’) (and differ therein from other readings of the same novels). Methodologically, I draw on Stephen Greenblatt’s concepts of self-fashioning and circulation of social energy as well as on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the produc- tion of social capital. With respect to socially preformed discursive formation of Black people as an ostensibly homogeneous minority in the twenty-first century France, I refer to Pap Ndiaye’s ground-breaking study La condition noire from 2009 which closely analyses the complex situation of the Black migrant and post- migrant population. I focus on two narrative texts which are widely perceived both in France and on an international level: First, the autobiographically inspired novel Le Ventre de l’Atlantique (The Belly of the Atlantic) by Fatou Diome and second, Marie Ndiaye’s narrative triptych Trois femmes puissantes (Three Strong Women). Studying remarks and comments of literary criticism concern- ing these texts on francophone African diasporic websites, I raise the following questions: What relevance do these narrated characters (still) have today? To what extent do they shape the discourse of Black migrants in France? What kind of interpretation of the colonial history and context do they offer? And which emancipatory moments and decolonial strategies create a new, proper symbolic capital and, thus, add to the Imagined Community of ‘Noirs en France’ (‘Black people in France’)?

Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift 39. 309–335. ISBN: 9783110787108

This book extends the contemporary debate on the global concept of religion, conducted in the context of religious studies, to the field of the theology of religions. In applying poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives, it seeks to deconstruct central categories such as truth, universality, or religion, in order to contextualize them by making transparent their historical genealogy and entanglement with political, social, and scientific discourses. Further, it aims to outline new areas of thinking, which can serve as the experimental basis of an alternative, non-essentialist form of theology (of religions).

In Ingrid Bennewitz & Detlef Goller (eds.) altiu maere heute. Die Nibelungen und ihre Rezeption im 21. Jahrhundert.(Bamberger Germanistische Mittelalter- und Frühneuzeitstudien 6) 11-43. Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press. ISBN: 978-3-86309-884-1 DOI: 10.20378/irb-57732

Well-being depends not only on what happens but also on when it happens. There are temporal aspects of well-being, and to a large extent those aspects are about relative timing—about being “in-tact.” On the one hand, there is a perspectival aspect about being in-tact with one’s past, present, and future or, in a less involved sense, with one’s life as a whole. On the other hand, there is a synchronization aspect of being in-tact; and this aspect occurs on different levels: It might be about the alignment between different temporal domains—such as time as individually perceived and physical or intersubjective time. Or it might be about a single domain, especially the inner dynamics of individual time. The danger of not experiencing and acknowledging the relational character of these different timings likely leads to a substantial loss in the variety of human experience. Important aspects of subjective and intersubjective experience might fade away. The present paper discusses these aspects of well-being along the lines of distinctions and concepts prominently used in the metaphysics and the phenomenology of time. Thus, the paper also aims to complement the existing literature by bringing together important strands of current philosophical research.

After the revolutions of 1917 and a bloody civil war, the Soviet Union was founded on December 30, 1922. It dissolved on December 21, 1991. In between lay 69 years in which it left its mark on the world – through Stalinist terror, through its victory over the armies of Hitler’s Germany, as a nuclear power in the Cold War and with Gorbachev’s policy of détente. Its legacy still weighs heavily on the post-Soviet space today. Internally, under Stalin, it brought famine, deportations, the Gulag and arbitrary executions. But at the same time, the country underwent a fundamental modernization and the first man in space was a Soviet man. Susanne Schattenberg traces the years under the Soviet star and shows how they still have an impact today.

The chapter discusses the use of photographs in research on Linguistic Landscape. Based on the observation of a widespread use of photographic documentation, the status of photographs is critically reflected. The focus lies on a reading of Susan Sontag’s ([1977] 2014) Melancholy Objects. Here, conceptions of description and documentation are questioned, as they are common for some linguistic works, especially in the field of Urban Studies. Of particular importance is the examination of the tension between realism and surrealism as well as the question of the extraction of reality. The text, which is a remix of Susan Sontag’s ([1977] 2014) thoughts, is complemented by twenty photographs that address the limits of photographic representation in the linguistic text.
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

In Febel, Gisela, Sonja Kerth & Elisabeth Lienert (eds.) Wider die Geschichtsvergessenheit. Inszenierte Geschichte – historische Differenz – kritisches Bewusstsein. 39-53. Bielefeld: transcript. DOI: 10.1515/9783839459294-003

“She was a poet as great as Joseph Brodsky and a human rights activist as fearless as Andrei Sakharov. Unlike Brodsky, however, she did not receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, and unlike Sakharov, she did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize. However, her name is associated with a unique event in the Soviet Union: On August 25, 1968, she and seven other young people came to Red Square to demonstrate openly against the regime – and against the suppression of the Prague Spring by tanks from the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries.”

In L. Auteri, N. Barrale, A. Di Bella & S. Hoffmann (eds.), Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik: Wege der Germanistik in transkultureller Perspektive, Akten des XIV. Kongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung für Germanistik (IVG), Vol. 6, 511-515. Bern: Lang. DOI: 10.3726/b20759

In the face of growing populism and right-wing radicalism, the fight against historical forgetfulness in thought and action is once again highly topical. At first glance, however, forgetting history – at least in relation to the pre-modern era – hardly seems to be an issue: The Middle Ages, Renaissance and early modern period are experiencing a boom in novels, dramas and popular media. But here in particular, there is an urgent need for an active response to simplifications, mythifications and falsifications. The contributors to this volume show that it is essential for a critical consciousness to recognize historical difference and media filters and to reflect on their effects.

When calculating structural or spectroscopic properties of molecular crystals, the question arises whether it is sufficient to simulate only a single molecule or a small molecular cluster or whether the simulation of the entire crystal is indispensable. In this work we juxtapose calculations on the high-pressure structural properties of the (periodic) HCN crystal and chains of HCN molecules of finite length. We find that, in most cases, the behavior of the crystal can be reproduced by computational methods simulating only around 15 molecules. The pressure-induced lengthening of the C−H bond in HCN found in calculations on both the periodic and finite material are explained in terms of orbital interaction. Our results pave the way for a more thorough understanding of high-pressure structural properties of materials and give incentives for the design of materials that expand under pressure. In addition, they shed light on the complementarity between calculations on periodic materials and systems of finite size.

Zeit spielt eine grundlegende Rolle im menschlichen Leben. Zu bestimmen, was ihr Wesen ausmacht, ist bekanntermassen nicht einfach – und ist vielleicht auch nicht die philosophisch interessanteste Herausforderung. Wichtiger scheint es, verschiedene Lebensbereiche zunächst auf ihre unterschiedlichen Zeitauffassungen hin zu untersuchen und sich zu fragen, wie sie sich aufeinander beziehen. Für unseren Umgang mit Zeit ist das Entscheidende: Wie lassen sich Ereignisse sinn- und taktvoll aufeinander abstimmen?

Dealing with auditory oddities and ambiguities is not only entertaining, it is also an important driver for basic auditory research. The same acoustic stimulus can actually be perceived in different ways. We not only hear “with our ears”, but various other physical, physiological and cultural factors also play an important role. This directly gives rise to broader philosophical questions, for example on perception – and the enduring appeal of pieces of music is also based in many places on such ambiguities [13].

In Martin Nonhoff, Sebastian Haunss, Tanja Klenk, Tanja Pritzlaff-Scheele (eds.) Politik und Gesellschaft verstehen. Frank Nullmeier zum 65. Geburtstag. Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 49–64. printISBN: 9783593516660 eBookISBN: 9783593453088

In Brühne, Julia, Christiane Conrad von Heydendorff & Cora Rok (eds.). 2021. Re-Konstruktion des Realen: die Wiederentdeckung des Realismus in der Romania (Romanica Band 11). Göttingen: V&R unipress, Mainz University Press. 151–178. ISBN: 978-3-8471-1352-2

In Flügel-Martinsen, Oliver, Franziska Martinsen & Martin Saar (eds.) Das Politische (in) der Politischen Theorie. Stuttgart: Nomos. printISBN: 978-3-8487-8414-1 ebook ISBN: 978-3-7489-2790-7