Conference
Literature and Violence: Comparative Reflections of Contemporary Turkish and German Literature
Interdisciplinary Conference at the Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany, 14 – 15 November 2025
Organisers: Prof. Dr. Petr Kucera und Dr. Anna-Lena Eick
The conference is dedicated to the comparative analysis of the representation of violence in contemporary German and Turkish literature. The focus will be on works by German-Turkish and Turkish authors who deal with the political, social and/or cultural situation in Germany and Turkey and whose literary texts revolve around themes of violence on an individual and collective level. The concept of the “triangle of violence” developed by Johann Galtung (Strukturelle Gewalt 1975) – which includes direct, structural and cultural violence – provides a basis for analyzing and identifying different forms of violence. In addition, the productive extension of Galtung’s triangle to include further dimensions such as psychological violence, media-mediated violence, and systemic discrimination and draws attention to those aspects of violence “that are anchored in social structures and are not linked to specific acting individuals” (Theunert, 1987, 41). The above-mentioned triangle and its theoretical extensions, which are predominantly of sociological provenance, can also be made productive in the analysis of mechanisms of (narrative) representation in art and literature. They thus support an examination of the negotiation of forms of violence in the German-Turkish literary context.
The conference will focus on contemporary literary works by German, German-Turkish and Turkish authors published in the first quarter of the 21st century that deal with aspects of violence, identity and belonging, among others especially from a post-migrant perspective. The aim of the conference is to identify the specific narrative strategies and thematic foci with which violence is depicted and reflected upon and to probe a possible connection between the increasingly excessive (narrative) depiction of violence and genre attributions (as in the case of the Turkish “underground” or “yeraltı” literature, cf. Fethi Demir Yeraltı Edebiyatı 2023). Special attention is to be paid to the intercultural aspects that arise from the interweaving of German and Turkish perspectives or against the background of the respective socio-cultural contexts. In this way, the question of how violence is addressed and negotiated in literature as an expression of cultural and social (in)security can be examined.
A further focus will be on how the selected authors translate violence aesthetically and literately in order to address social grievances, individual and collective inequalities, and, more fundamentally, the resulting rise of ‘rage’ in contemporary literary works. In his debut novel Die Ungehaltenen (2014), for example, Deniz Utlu explores the sometimes undirected frustration and sometimes desperate anger of young people with a migrant background as they confront the origins of their parents’ generation, while Fatma Aydemir’s Ellbogen (2018) traces the increasingly and ultimately escalating spiral of violence of a young German-Turkish woman who flees from Germany to Turkey as a result of her crime. Works of contemporary Turkish literature, such as More (Daha, 2013) by Hakan Günday, a novel that unsparingly deals with violence against (and among) refugees, can serve as a backdrop for dialogical comparison. Interestingly, in these texts, the causes of violence are not to be found exclusively in the dark corners of the human psyche or in concrete institutions and structures such as the hierarchical order of society, the repressive state apparatus or patriarchal power structures, but rather, significantly, seem to run capillary through all levels of society.
The following questions (without being exhaustive) can serve as a stimulus for a productive dialogue between contemporary German literature and the (German-)Turkish context:
- How is violence (and as triggering emotions such as fear and anger) represented and reflected in contemporary German and Turkish literature?
- What transcultural aspects emerge from the interweaving of German and Turkish perspectives in relation to the representation of violence?
- How is violence thematised in literature as an expression of cultural and social (in)security?
- How do authors use violence narratively to address social grievances and inequalities?
- What characterises the relationship between the excessive depiction of violence and genre classification? What does the labelling/classification of German-language literature translated into Turkish (as in the case of Deniz Utlu) as “Underground Literature” in Turkish academic discourse/academia suggest?
- What dynamics emerge when we compare Turkish underground literature (e.g. Günday) with German works that are also classified as such? What are the similarities/differences?
- How are racism, state control, and abuse of power reflected in contemporary literary texts in the German-Turkish context?
The conference will conclude with a reading by Anna Yeliz Schentke, who will read from her novel Kangal (2022).
Selected papers will be published as a special issue of Diyâr. Zeitschrift für Osmanistik, Türkei- und Nahostforschung / Journal of Ottoman, Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies (Ergon-Verlag) (peer-reviewed).
We welcome innovative, theoretically grounded contributions in German or English from (German and Turkish) literary and cultural studies. Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes in order to leave enough time for discussion and exchange. If you are interested, please submit an abstract (max. 450 words) and a short CV with bio-bibliographical information and selected publications by April 30, 2025 to Petr Kucera (pekucera@uni-mainz.de) and Anna-Lena Eick (aeick@uni-mainz.de). Proposals from early-career researchers are strongly encouraged!
The acceptance of conference contributions will be communicated in May 2025.