How Contemporary German Literature Considers the Marginalized

« All the Way Down: How Contemporary German Literature Considers the Marginalized“ est une conférence donnée par le professeur Jan Behrs (Northwestern University).

En voici le résumé :
In a time where literature as a whole seems to be losing ground to other art forms in the contest for the cultural representation of society, contemporary German authors have repeatedly been accused of being overly conformist, producing texts about the middle class for a middle-class audience. What however happens when literature tries to leave the confines of bourgeois introspection to explore the lower rungs of society? Using three contemporary novels and one important pre-text from the 1960s, the talk explores the literary tropes and aesthetic strategies that come with the representation of the marginalized. Furthermore, it asks what specific role literature can play in the larger process of recognition – can it give a voice to the voiceless, or is the current boom in books about the so-called lower class just another form of exploitation?