Religious Turns: Immigration, Islam, and Christianity in 21st Century German Cultural Politics

Authors

  • Claudia Breger Indiana University, German

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/konturen.1.1.1291

Abstract

The paper analyzes recent German headscarf legislation in the context of early twenty-first-century religious turns, that is, on the one hand constructions of “Islam/ism” as the newly dominant figure of cultural difference on the political stage, and on the other hand the renewed prominence also of Christianity in public discourse. Against the background of current academic work on and in political theology, I analyze the “post-secular” concepts of collective identity developed under the sign of the headscarf by associating them with two different theoretical models. Berlin’s headscarf legislation can be compared to the French “Law on Laicity,” which has been criticized as a vehicle of hidden political theologies in Carl Schmitt’s sense: The Republic performs its sovereignty through the ways it manages religious exceptions. The openly asymmetrical headscarf bans passed in a number of other German states, however, do not just make “exceptions” for Christianity; rather, they privilege “Christian tradition” as the foundation of the “secular” German state. Critically relating this rhetoric to the ways in which Jean-Luc Nancy and Slavoj Žižek conceptualize the (presumably inescapable) destabilization of secular democracy through the forces of heteronomy and tradition, the paper pleas for replacing such uses of political theology in both politics and theory.

Author Biography

Claudia Breger, Indiana University, German

Claudia Breger is Associate Professor of Germanic Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor of Communication and Culture and Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S.A. Her research and teaching focus on 20th- and 21st century literature, film and culture, with a particular emphasis on the interrelations of gender, sexuality, and race, as well as literary, media, and cultural theory. Her book publications include: Szenarien kopfloser Herrschaft – Performanzen gespenstischer Macht. Königsfiguren in der deutschsprachigen Literatur und Kultur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2004; Ortlosigkeit des Fremden. “Zigeunerinnen” und “Zigeuner” in der deutschsprachigen Literatur um 1800. Cologne: Böhlau, 1998.

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Published

2008-12-14

How to Cite

Breger, C. (2008). Religious Turns: Immigration, Islam, and Christianity in 21st Century German Cultural Politics. Konturen, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/konturen.1.1.1291