THE DISPLEASURES OF HYBRIDITY. A CRITICAL APPROACH TO CINEMA BY AND ABOUT PEOPLE WHO MIGRATED FROM THE REGIONS OF TURKEY AND NORTHERN KURDISTAN TO GERMANY

Abstract

The thesis provides a critical perspective onto cinema by/about people who migrated from Turkey and Northern Kurdistan to Germany and their descendants – the post-migrants. As the topic deals with issues of cinema, I first discuss the virtual-real character of images with Slavoj Žižek's take on the Lacanian triad, the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. This leads me to theorize the virtual character of power to underscore that the production of images are a key factor in the creation of European hegemony. I then hint to the danger of victimizing (post-) migrants in the global North as solely located at the margins, which obscures moments of possible complicity in hegemonic forces. In my analysis of current academic literature on the cinema under consideration, I found a predominant teleological narrative of progress to freedom and self-re(-)presentation, which is a frame that re(-)produces colonial concepts of time and development. Despite that more recently produced films are widely theorized to resist the hegemonic notion of monocultural nationality through a celebration of hybridity, I show that this can also be understood as a contribution to the 'ethnic' branding and a re(-)shaping of European virtual power. In the analysis section, a critical examination of Fatih Akın's film Im Juli (2000) in contrast with Yüksel Yavuz's Kleine Freiheit (2003) provides an alternative to the unquestioned application of the myth of equal mobility in Europe. By applying conceptual metaphor theory to Hark Bohm's film Yasemin (1988) and Akın's Crossing the Bridge (2005) I then contrast a multicultural with a feminist decolonial notion of the bridge-metaphor. Finally, I provide a counter-reading of cinematic history in making continuities of Orientalist narratives on (post-)migrant femininities and masculinities visible. The critical economic analysis of discourses on (post-)migrants offers an unconventional reading together of cinematic images and German labor market and citizenship policies.The thesis provides a critical perspective onto cinema by/about people who migrated from Turkey and Northern Kurdistan to Germany and their descendants – the post-migrants. As the topic deals with issues of cinema, I first discuss the virtual-real character of images with Slavoj Žižek's take on the Lacanian triad, the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. This leads me to theorize the virtual character of power to underscore that the production of images are a key factor in the creation of European hegemony. I then hint to the danger of victimizing (post-)migrants in the global North as solely located at the margins, which obscures moments of possible complicity in hegemonic forces. In my analysis of current academic literature on the cinema under consideration, I found a predominant teleological narrative of progress to freedom and self-re(-)presentation, which is a frame that re(-)produces colonial concepts of time and development. Despite that more recently produced films are widely theorized to resist the hegemonic notion of monocultural nationality through a celebration of hybridity, I show that this can also be understood as a contribution to the 'ethnic' branding and a re(-)shaping of European virtual power. In the analysis section, a critical examination of Fatih Akın's film Im Juli (2000) in contrast with Yüksel Yavuz's Kleine Freiheit (2003) provides an alternative to the unquestioned application of the myth of equal mobility in Europe. By applying conceptual metaphor theory to Hark Bohm's film Yasemin (1988) and Akın's Crossing the Bridge (2005) I then contrast a multicultural with a feminist decolonial notion of the bridge-metaphor. Finally, I provide a counter-reading of cinematic history in making continuities of Orientalist narratives on (post-)migrant femininities and masculinities visible. The critical economic analysis of discourses on (post-)migrants offers an unconventional reading together of cinematic images and German labor market and citizenship policies.