The Hand that Rocks the Cradle? Aras Ören’s “Europa”

Abstract

The chapter reviews the prominent and diverse images of “Europa” in Aras Ören’s texts of the 1970s and 1980s. Ören locates the experience of labor and other migration as part of the “blutende Wunde” of European history, the continuum of class and ethnic exploitation (Ören, Berliner Trilogie 218). At the same time, though, the inequalities of labor migration generate economic, demographic and cultural dialectics which eventually transform the colonizing as well as colonized society. “Europa” is, moreover, a place of critical reflection on the complex relationship between Turkish, German, and Turkish-German experiences and histories. The apparent exhaustion of the political project within which Ören’s early work was predominantly seen has undoubtedly contributed to its recent relative neglect, despite the prominent role writing of migration, including Turkish-German writing, has assumed in contemporary German studies. Against this, the chapter seeks to demonstrate the continued importance of his poetic visions of a Europe in transformation. (MM)