Tales that Touch: Migration, Translation, and Temporality in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century German Literature and Culture ed. by Bettina Brandt and Yasemin Yildiz

Abstract

Reviewed by: Tales that Touch: Migration, Translation, and Temporality in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century German Literature and Culture ed. by Bettina Brandt and Yasemin Yildiz Ela Gezen Tales that Touch: Migration, Translation, and Temporality in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century German Literature and Culture. Edited by Bettina Brandt and Yasemin Yildiz. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022. Pp. 354. Hardcover €99.95. ISBN 978-3110778236. Divided into four riveting parts, this co-edited volume in honor of Leslie A. Adelson centers migration, translation, and temporality as key terms emanating from the main areas for her interventions which are also presented as threads that appear in a variety of thematic, disciplinary, and analytical guises. Scholarly contributions are framed by two literary tributes from Yoko Tawada (“Der Name und die Zeit,” The Name and the Time) and Zafer Şenocak (“Ausreisen und Reißaus nehmen,” To Exit or to Escape) who “stand out for their recurring place in her scholarship from the 1990s to the present” (19). Thanks to English translations provided by co-editor Bettina Brandt, these original literary texts are accessible to a broader readership and can therefore be included in a variety of courses and curricula, while also paying homage to Adelson’s own critical contributions as translator (which Deniz Göktürk also takes up in her contribution). The first section, “Reframing Time and Exile,” “take[s] up writing about exile and refuge in different constellations and literary modes” (14) with contributions by Jamie Trnka, Anna M. Parkinson, and Bala Venkat Mani. The ensuing part, titled “Multilingualism, Translation, Transfer,” reflects on linguistic dimensions of translation and multilingualism, featuring chapters by Ulrike Vedder and Erik Porath, John Namjun Kim, Göktürk, and Yuliya Komska. The third section, “Narratological Itineraries,” illustrates literary close readings in a narratological framework consisting of chapters by Claudia Breger, Katrina L. Nousek, and Paul Michael Lützeler. The fourth and final section, “Communities/Constellations on the Aftermath,” where “different constellations of the aftermath of catastrophe and hope are at stake” (17), comprises chapters by Barbara Mennel, Brett de Bary, Gizem Arslan, and Damani J. Partridge. Apart from thematic and/or methodological intersections within each section, the co-editors illustrate further connections between contributions across these four sections, foregrounding the “presence of ‘migration’” (11) in particular. “Tales that touch are . . . something being explored with the tools of literary and interdisciplinary cultural scholarship” (5), as co-editors Brandt and Yasemin Yildiz underline in their introduction. They further emphasize as commonality across all contributions the disciplinary expansion of German Studies in transnational, multilingual, and intermedial terms in their exploration of touching tales (which is highlighted in the title, in addition to the key terms included in the subtitle). This conceptual tool and mode of inquiry is characterized by its openness in resisting restrictive binaries, categorizations, and essentializations including singular national frameworks, instead shifting the attention to the exploration of the “cultural labor [End Page 338] [texts] . . . perform” (Adelson cited on p. 3). As readers, we are not only given the opportunity to re-engage and re-examine Adelson’s signature concepts including touching tales, future sense, and the riddle of referentiality, but also to discover new “touches,” proximities, and modes of contact this volume engenders: from Chilean writer Carlos Cerda and his exile in the GDR (Trnka) to German-Jewish writer Hans Keilson’s publication history (Parkinson) and Anita Desai’s novel of refuge (Mani); Uljana Wolf’s poetic insights on Bertha Pappenheim (Vedder and Porath); betweenness and lines of literary affiliation in Yoko Tawada (Kim, de Bary); Saša Stanišić’s exploration of fabulation and the significance of intermedial archives (Nousek and Breger); the relationship between theory, the everyday, and artistic practice in Irene von Alberti’s essay film (Mennel); José F.A. Oliver’s intertextual tributes to Rose Ausländer and Paul Celan (Arslan); intertexts in Peter Schneider’s literary engagement with the student movement (Lützeler); translation and multilingualism in Şenocak’s recent Turkish-language novels (Göktürk); multilingual archives in connection to H. A. Rey’s line drawings (Komska); and anthropological (re)considerations of touch to comprehend relatable experiences (Partridge). Not only do we encounter different disciplines ranging from Film Studies, German Studies...