| This dissertation uses postcolonialism as its theoretical framework to analyze the formulation and representation of alterity in Uwe Timm's seminal works. The postcolonial analysis of these select works involves a sustained attention to the subaltern, and/or the idea of the subaltern in the narrative. Questions pertaining to how alterity functions in the text, how it is determined, positioned, and revealed are explored in an effort to disclose Timm's critique, reversal and/or subversion of colonial hierarchical relationships. The results uncover a postcolonial perspective informed by the contradictory experiences of childhood indoctrination in colonial fantasy and adult participation in the German Student Movement's anti-imperialist sensibilities. Whether foregrounded against the backdrop of Germany's colonial past or neocolonial contemporary reality, representations of and encounters with alterity reflect Timm's dichotomized exposure to the Third world. Timm disrupts Western dominated discourses of power while simultaneously revealing the ambivalence and interdependencies residing at the intersections of Self and Other. With his use of mimicry, hybridity, and ironic reversals, Timm reveals the paradoxes behind the colonizer/colonized duality that had defined Third World discourse in simplistic binary terms. In so doing, Timm manifests postcolonialism's applicability to the First World with his insertion of an unwavering set of discursive practices devoted to the resistance of colonialism, colonialist ideology, and their contemporary forms and legacies. |
