Schreiben in Kontakt- und Konfliktzonen: Marica Bodrožić und Anna Kim

In my contribution attention is focused on writings that develop within or upon areas of intercultural contact and conflict, in particular the territory of the former Yugoslavia which has recently been theatre of war. In the novels of two German language writers, Marica Bodrožić, born in Dalmatia and currently living in Germany, and Anna Kim, born in South Korea and grown up from the age of two first in Germany then in Austria, themes of cultural contact and conflict, migration, and displacement are revised, discussed and renegotiated, outlining new “geographies of memory”. Marica Bodrožić' s "Das Gedächtnis der Libellen" (2010) and Anna Kim's "Die gefrorene Zeit" (2008) offer new configurations of the intercultural experience in German history and literature and create a different poetics of migration, refusing the binary oppositions between nationalities and ethnic groups and subverting at the same time stereotypical images of the Balkan immigrants. These writers are not so much interested in developing a nostalgic dream of another Europe, lost in Dalmatia, Croatia or Bosnia etc., or to rebuild it in Germany or Austria, but in allowing us to think about our position of observers, readers, actors of both a near and far history