Exploring Relational Opportunities for Confronting Violent Histories within Transcultural Contexts from a Third-Generation Jewish Perspective: Mirna Funk’s Winternähe and Zwischen Du und Ich

Abstract

This article analyses Mirna Funk's novels Winternähe (2015) and Zwischen Du und Ich and places them within current discourses and contexts that shape contemporary German-language Jewish literature today. Drawing on Martin Buber's philosophy of encounter and feminist re-conceptualizations of vulnerability and resistance, the article focuses on Funk's relational perspectives on (post-) traumatic recovery and it highlights the timeliness of Funk's relational response to radicalized conflict, violence and trauma. Funk's female characters act as initiators for progressive memory perspectives that build on vulnerability as a platform for solidarity, resilience, and openness. These new perspectives present opportunities for (Jewish) descendants to find relief from the debilitating aftermath of traumatic histories and to emancipate themselves from trauma-and victim-based conceptions of Jewish identity. (DS)