Über die Schwelle. Zugewanderte AutorInnen und Texte um das Kulturzentrum exil in Wien

Abstract

This study focuses on selected texts and authors associated with the cultural centre exil in Vienna which promotes the culture of migrants and minorities, mainly Roma and Sinti, in Austria. Since 1997 exil has awarded the annual prize writing between cultures. The literary prize addresses authors with a migrant background’ whose mother tongue is not German but who write in German. Texts entered for this prize should cover (in the broadest sense) one of the following topics: being foreign, being different, identity, flight, expulsion, arriving, integration or living between cultures. Attached to the centre is the publishing house edition exil. The thesis investigates the negotiation of cultural identities of migrants at the intersection of the cultural centre exil individual life histories and literary creations. Tensions and contradictions between institutional and individual discourses are identified and are related to the literary works of the authors Seher Çakr, Dimitré Dinev, Anna Kim, Grace M. Latigo, Julya Rabinowich, Simone Schönett and Sina Tahayori. My analysis is informed by a theoretical framework which incorporates concepts of cultural identity, canonisation and the construction of community, and combines a cultural sociological approach with a textual one: the analysis focuses on qualitative interviews with selected authors as well as literary texts. I hope to demonstrate the tensions between cultural integration and exclusion and to investigate the place authors around exil negotiate for themselves. The aim of the project is to highlight exil’s as well as the authors’ contribution to the Austrian literary field and to provide a better understanding of their early literary works and their self-conception as writers.

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