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Europe Week Lecture: De-Integration and the Theater of Memory. The Making and Breaking of Jewish Identity in Present-Day Germany
March 21 @ 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Moderated Discussion with CES Director Priscilla Layne | CLE Credit
Reception to Follow
Poet, activist, and cultural critic Max Czollek is a leading voice in current conversations about the nature of Jewish life in present-day Germany. Czollek holds a PhD from the the Center for Reseach on Antisemitism at the Technische Universität in Berlin and has published several poetry volumes as well as three books that offer a critical view of Germany’s memory culture and how it shapes the minority position of Jewish people currently living in Germany. His 2018 book Desintegriert euch! was recently translated into English as De-Integrate! A Jewish Survival Guide for the Twenty-First Century (Restless Books, 2023). It insists on the diversity of Germany’s contemporary Jewish population and criticizes the German “Theater of Memory” that reduces this diversity in order to perpetuate Germany’s narrative of reconciliation and integration after the Holocaust. Czollek’s talk will elaborate on themes from De-Integrate! as well as from his two more recent books, Gegenwartsbewältigung (Overcoming the Present, 2020) and Versöhnungstheater (Reconciliation Theater, 2023), which continue to challenge dominant German narratives of integration, migration, and minority culture, and argue instead for radical diversity as a means to counter hegemonic culture.
Reception to Follow
Poet, activist, and cultural critic Max Czollek is a leading voice in current conversations about the nature of Jewish life in present-day Germany. Czollek holds a PhD from the the Center for Reseach on Antisemitism at the Technische Universität in Berlin and has published several poetry volumes as well as three books that offer a critical view of Germany’s memory culture and how it shapes the minority position of Jewish people currently living in Germany. His 2018 book Desintegriert euch! was recently translated into English as De-Integrate! A Jewish Survival Guide for the Twenty-First Century (Restless Books, 2023). It insists on the diversity of Germany’s contemporary Jewish population and criticizes the German “Theater of Memory” that reduces this diversity in order to perpetuate Germany’s narrative of reconciliation and integration after the Holocaust. Czollek’s talk will elaborate on themes from De-Integrate! as well as from his two more recent books, Gegenwartsbewältigung (Overcoming the Present, 2020) and Versöhnungstheater (Reconciliation Theater, 2023), which continue to challenge dominant German narratives of integration, migration, and minority culture, and argue instead for radical diversity as a means to counter hegemonic culture.
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