@article{202636,
  author = {Barbara N. Nagel},
  title = {Anti-Blackness, Canonicity, and (Mis-)Identification in Emine Sevgi {\"O}zdamar{\textquoteright}s Ein von Schatten begrenzter Raum},
  abstract = {<p>This essay explores the disturbing presence of anti-Black language and tropes in Emine Sevgi {\"O}zdamar{\textquoteright}s recent, celebrated novel <em>Ein von Schatten begrenzter Raum</em>. Drawing on Toni Morrison{\textquoteright}s classic analysis in <em>Playing in the Dark</em>, I argue {\"O}zdamar{\textquoteright}s anti-Blackness is characterized by a double-valence: on one hand, {\"O}zdamar{\textquoteright}s anti-Blackness partakes of the racializing clich{\'e}s anatomized by Morrison and stakes a claim to whiteness and canonicity on their basis; on the other, this anti-Blackness is continuous with a tendency towards racialized self-mockery in the whole of {\"O}zdamar{\textquoteright}s oeuvre, as if {\"O}zdamar imagined these scenes to be produced from within Blackness and/or as a gesture of minoritarian solidarity. The text is structured by a problematic (mis-)identification with Black abjection <em>and</em> a desire for whiteness. {\"O}zdamar thus participates in both an avant-gardist tradition of transgression and a liberal logic of post-raciality in which racializing tropes are free for unlimited literary appropriation.</p>},
  year = {2025},
  journal = {The German Quarterly},
  month = {06/2025},
  url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gequ.70010},
}