Sexuality and alterity in German literature, film, and performance, 1968--2000

This dissertation examines the intersections between marginalized sexualities and other modes of alterity in German culture. Looking at texts from a range of subcultural counternarratives, I investigate the ways in which the invocation of multiple alterities can displace, transform, and/or reinscribe the difference of sexual identity. In chapter one I examine the strategic use of stereotype in Fassbinder's Der Mull, die Stadt und der Tod (1976). I read the controversial figure of "the Rich Jew" in the context of the play's marginalized sexualities, arguing that Fassbinder deploys antisemitic stereotype and avant-garde forms in order to critique not only late capitalism but antisemitism itself. Chapter two addresses the intersection of German division and gay sexuality in two films, Wieland Speck's Westler (FRG, 1985) and Heiner Carow's Coming out (GDR 1989), and Friedrich Krohnke's novel P 14 (1992). My analysis shows that gay sexuality and "East Germany" are flexible signifiers whose relationship in a text follows from the demands of a particular cultural and political context. In chapter three I examine the functions of race and nation in gay German fiction of the late 1990s, including texts by Peter Tschiche, Michael Braun, Thomas Plaichinger, and Walter Foelske. I argue that the use of racial Others and "exotic" geographical settings can function to encourage gay German readers to embrace German identity on highly problematic grounds; Foelske's stories arrest this process by portraying a number of potential functions of the black male body in German gay desire. In chapter four I argue that Kutlug Ataman's film Lola und Bilidkid (1999) and the recent cabaret performances of Berlin's Salon Oriental complicate and displace the Turkish/German binary in their portrayals of a subculture within Berlin's Turkish-German subculture: the transgender/drag ( Transe) scene. By foregrounding cultural and sexual "transness," Ataman's film and Salon Oriental's performances highlight the imbrication of sexual and cultural difference, challenging us to consider what is at stake in different models of multiculturalism and sexual freedom. In focusing on sexuality as a common thread across other alterities, this study contributes to a more nuanced and dynamic approach to the study of contemporary German cultural productions.