Nomadic Ethics in Contemporary Women’s Writing in German: Strange Subjects by Emily Jeremiah (review)

Alterity, difference, and an interest in “other Germanies” (18) are increasingly the focus of both literary production and scholarship. In recent years, the writing of migrant authors in Germany has received widespread critical attention, while writers moving away from Germany and thematizing this movement in their works have enjoyed less notice. Emily Jeremiah’s Nomadic Ethics in Contemporary Women’s Writing in German contributes to the growing body of research on nationality and gender in German literature in an innovative and insightful way. Her monograph focuses on authors whose leaving Germany and Austria, she argues, enables them to challenge and question notions of home, sexuality, and belonging. She provides a close reading of five very different contemporary writers who live or have lived outside German-speaking countries - Birgit Vanderbeke, Dorothea Grünzweig, Antje Rávic Strubel, Anna Mitgutsch, and Barbara Honigmann - to demonstrate how these authors conceptualize identity in ethically instructive ways. Jeremiah explores different aspects of nomadism, defined as a critical consciousness that questions socially coded modes of thought and behaviour, covering areas such as feminism, ecological thought, memory, religion, and sexual orientation.

In her introduction Jeremiah convincingly argues for the importance of feminist ethics for contemporary German literature and thought. By carefully working through the main concepts of her study, such as “women’s writing,” “feminist ethics,” “nomadism,” and the nation-state, the author gives an excellent overview of the fields of gender and identity while convincingly outlining her theoretical background. In particular, Jeremiah draws extensively on Rosa Braidotti’s work on feminist ethics, mobility, and border-crossing and on Sara Ahmed’s Strange Encounters as well as Judith Butler’s work on the self. Building on Braidotti’s work, Jeremiah argues that the discussed authors suggest ways of conceiving subjectivity that allow for fluidity and mobility in the context of globalization, without disregarding the importance of materiality, home, and relationality. The fictional and non-fictional texts that she explores in her monograph not only thematize nomadic ethics but also practice it.

In the chapter “Seeing Strangely,” Jeremiah analyzes six works by Birgit Vanderbeke which address nomadic ways of knowing and seeing. Citing Das Muschelessen (The Mussel Feast) as one of her examples, Jeremiah successfully demonstrates how Vanderbeke uses oppositional models of identity and community to challenge both gender and nation, which she perceives as restrictive and malignant in their current form. Through a discussion of Die sonderbare Karriere der Frau Choi, Jeremiah highlights the importance of transnational feminist communities and feminine ways of knowing for Vanderbeke’s work. Jeremiah shows how Vanderbeke’s texts expose the absurdity of consumerism, the problems associated with global capitalism, and the connection of both to gender and the nation-state.

The chapter on Dorothea Grünzweig’s poetry explores the intersection of nomadism with ecofeminism. Grünzweig stages strange encounters that overcome the human/non-human divide through her poetry and through translations. By drawing on a wide range of fields and topics in her lyrical production, such as music, Heimat, nature, gender, and human-non-human encounters, Grünzweig problematizes and simultaneously affirms Germanness and formulates a critique of global capitalism. The passages addressing the ways Grünzweig’s poetry conflates German and Finnish are particularly insightful, not least because Jeremiah herself is a prize-winning translator of Finnish poetry and fiction.

The third chapter, “Disorientations: Queer, East German Nomadism in the Work of Antje Rávic Strubel,” introduces the concept of queer nomadism as set in opposition to both nationalism and heterosexism. Jeremiah claims that with regard to East Germany the terms displacement and exile are more suitable than nomadism. Strubel’s work offers a significant perspective on post-unification East German identity and culture. Her fiction stages encounters between East and West Germany and between Germany and other nations. It challenges narrow concepts of national, gender, and sexual identity by transgressing male/female and straight/queer boundaries. Jeremiah...