‘Elective affinities’: interdiscursive dynamics between football, the economy and nationalism in Germany

Published online: 16 Nov 2018After WWII, nationalism in Germany was frowned upon as a phenomenon of the extreme right. For the critical voices at the end of the sixties and in the seventies, national identity meant more than ever to constantly ask oneself what it meant to be German. However, almost thirty years after reunification, nationalist tendencies have quickly reached the midst of society. The article argues that nationalism did not manifest itself in political or cultural discourses due to post-war taboos, but rather in surrogate ones, especially in football and the economy. Perceived as ‘neutral fields’ in contrast to politics, they paved the way to the ‘normalisation’ of national feelings and the gradual re-definition of the German post-war identity – an identity largely based on a narrative of competition, success, and ‘German virtues’

The Calibanisation of the South in the German public ‘Euro crisis’ discourse

Published online: 19 Sep 2017This article highlights the renaissance of the essentialist topos of the ‘lazy and irrational’ ‘Südländer’ (Southerner, Southern countries, South) in the German political and media discourses during the ‘Euro crisis’. It argues that it served to legitimate the political and economic measures taken in Southern European countries that pushed them into still more peripheral positions within the European Union (EU) and deepened the cleavage between North and South. Culture, or better culturalism and racism as its political ideological version, thus were used as a trap, as an intellectual battleground for justifying extremely complex economic and political decisions in a simplistic fashion throughout a crucial period of European history. The article furthermore demonstrates how a postcolonial reading may productively decode the processes of Othering taking place within Europe itself, especially between the so-called core and peripheral countries

"Vor den Kopf Stossen" : das komisch als Schock im Werk Thomas Bernhards

Tese de doutoramento em Letras (Línguas e Literaturas Modernas - Literatura Alemã) apresentada à Fac. de Letras de Coimbr