Jenseits der Identität: Radikaler Realismus in Fiston Mwanza Mujilas <em>Tram 83</em>

Abstract

German literary critique reads the work of the Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila through the lenses of his national identity. My paper will demonstrate that, the opposite, Mujila subverts and deconstructs the category of 'Africaness' or identity, narrating a world where the global dimension of late capitalism has inscribed itself into the very fabric of social life. Yet, in doing so, Mujila does not simply negate identity, but develops a new and radical politics of representation. By using a radical realism in a double sense, Mujila mediates the categories of the abstract global (the real abstraction of capital) and the concrete moment of identity. In this regime of representation, the experience of identity is always also the experience of the structural violence of capitalism. By approaching identity through the perspective of capital and dissecting capitalism through the lenses of identity, Mujila, I claim, rejuvenates the ideas of social realism.