Das Medium barbarisieren

Abstract

This article analyses the peculiar writing processes of Tomer Gardi in his novel Broken German as a broken mediality. Through the interaction of theoretical tools proper to Media Studies with perspectives of so-called Betroffenheitsliteratur and postcolonial theory, I claim that the novel can be seen as example of how the affection (Betroffenheit) of migrants facing discrimination due to their broken language can be not only picked out as a central theme of postmigrant narrations, but also performed through the medium itself. Here, through its own body, language actually becomes capable of performing what it is talking about. My reasoning starts from Dewey’s reflections on the role of medium in the aesthetic experience, from the concepts of Automedialität and Mikropolitik der Betroffenheit, as theorized by Jörg Dünne, Christian Moser and Andrea Seier, researching how individual and collective subjectivities are constituted through their cultural, linguistic and medial genealogies, in the wake of theorists like Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Butler and Spivak.I argue that Gardi’s case shows that the dynamic constitution of the writing subject always implicates a radical and violent transformation of the medium, in a process of mutual breaking and becoming-each-other.