REWRITING THE "GUEST WORKER": TURKISH-GERMAN ARTISTS AND THE EMERGENCE OF MULTICULTURALISM IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, 1961-1989.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Between 1961 and 1989, nearly 1.7 million Turks settled in the Federal Republic of Germany. By the official end of recruitment in November 1973, Turks had become the largest group of non-German workers residing in the Federal Republic.
My dissertation, a cultural history, focuses on the Turkish-German artistic community, and more specifically, its central role as a mediator of images of the Turkish migration within the Federal Republic. Occupying a unique social position in German society as highly educated intellectuals who are also members of a minority population, Turkish-German artists are marginal to both the larger community of Turkish laborers, whom these artists often represent in their work, and the general German public, which provides the primary audience and market for that work. My study examines each of these relationships. It considers not only the ways that these artists have attempted to represent the “guest worker” experience, but also the self-conscious gaps between the ordinary “guest worker” and the “guest worker” characters who appear in the cultural representations. It considers, moreover, how these gaps—between typical experience and representation—have grown out of the demands of the marketplace. Without suggesting that Turkish-German artists simply cater to preconceived notions of the “guest worker,” my study underscores and explores the complex dynamic that again and again arises out of these artists' competing concerns: their desires to add Turkish voices to the public debate about the long-term presence of foreigners in the Federal Republic; their often problematic efforts to become self-sufficient artists and intellectuals, an endeavor which requires a sensitivity to the demands and expectations of their German audience; and their attempts to use their work as an instrument of social critique.
Ultimately, my dissertation tells a central story in the history of postwar Europe, one that chronicles the emergence of something called <italic>multiculturalism </italic> in the Federal Republic as well as the mediating role of the Turkish-German intelligentsia in shaping this discourse. I claim that what has been referred to as multiculturalism in postwar Germany is actually the intersection of two on-going public discussions—one about the labor migration and the permanent residence of Turks, and the other about German national identity. By the late 1980s, these two discussions came together explicitly in a vigorous debate over the question of the Federal Republic as a multicultural society. One of the central arguments of my study is that the presence of large numbers of minorities alone does not automatically produce multiculturalism. While the massive migration of the Turks took place in the early 1970s, ten to fifteen years passed before this demographic transformation prompted an earnest rethinking of the boundaries of German identity and culture. The rise to prominence of a number of Turkish-German artists and the wide circulation of their works drove this redefinition process, not only adding a “Turkish voice” to the public conversation about the “guest workers,” but also challenging the previously accepted conception of German society. Far from being a superstructural reflection of demographic changes, the cultural production of Turkish-German artists has served as one of the primary provocations towards a more fundamental reconsideration of German identity. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).