Envisioning social justice in contemporary German culture

摘要

This collection of 13 essays on contemporary German culture offers in-depth examinations of representations of topics of social justice in recent works of German-speaking authors and artists from various realms since the turn of the millennium. The contributors explore how these works 'promote an understanding of how Germany as a European country is currently wrestling with its socioeconomic, political and cultural issues'(5). Adopting Empter and Schraad-Tischler's (2010) paradigm of social justice, i.e. that 'all members of a society must be included in that society by being offered the chance to develop their mental and physical abilities to the fullest possible extent'(3), it is this concept of social inclusion that the authors and artists discussed in this volume perceive as a shortcoming within German society. Following the editors'thorough introduction (1-21) which discusses the development of the concept of social justice and the 'ethical turn' paradigm shift that argues for the relocation of ethics to the centre of our engagement with literature (e.g. Booth 1988,1998), and by extension to all cultural media, the volume is divided into five thematic parts: Part Ⅰ on the legacy of the 1968 generation includes two essays on UweTimm's novels, investigating his vision of a post-socialist society in the 2001 novel Rot (Albrecht, 47-67) and his reflections on mistaken identities and cultural revolution as the dominant themes in the 1996 novel Johannisnacht (Janson, 21-47). Germany as a home to citizens who previously belonged to two distinct German states and as a place of large-scale Eastern European post-wall immigration and high immigration numbers in previous decades, is the environment where Timm's protagonists predominantly experience social injustice.