Mediating ›Foreign‹ Histories

»Otherwise, of course you can despair.
Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, 
and look around you. What you've got to 
remember is what you're looking at is also you.
Everyone you're looking at is also you.
You could be that person. You could be that 
monster, you could be that cop.
And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be«. 

James Baldwin 

As a writer, essayist, and advocate for overcoming racial barriers, James Baldwin (1924-1987) critically and passionately accompanied the American civil rights movement of the 1960s, dissecting the relationship between the black population and the white majority with passion and sharpness. In his very personal and provocative text The Fire Next Time (1963), which he dedicates to his 15-year-old nephew in the form of a letter and in the style of tender urging, Baldwin invokes a powerful evocation of his past life and explains why one must carry on the legacy of the past. Only someone who knows where they come from, Baldwin says, has no limitations and can go anywhere. Harlem, police violence, and the criminalization of blacks—these are areas where I am a stranger. And despite his inspiring voice, James Baldwin is also a stranger to me. As a friend of murdered African American figures and activists Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., Baldwin experienced important social and cultural movements of the 20th century, migrated into European exile, and died when I was young and unfamiliar with his work. Although my life is in a different context, I am drawn to Baldwin's style of thought. He always works out the distances between seemingly exclusive positions, seeks differentiations, and does not aim for generalizations. I, too, do not want to attempt to homogenize different historical contexts in my exploration of specific perspectives but rather consider the gaps between them as necessary elements that provide a tool for a thinking that tests the validity of what is believed to be known. 

In an analysis of the concept of foreignness, one must first refer to a paradox, which consists of the fact that foreignness can always only be defined in relation to the ›own‹. While the ›own‹ represents the known and familiar, the ›foreign‹ forms its complementary counterpart. Simplified, the ›foreign‹ then appears as the unknown and excluded, which does not belong to the ›own‹ and also does not correspond to one's own imagination. But who are ›we‹, and what are ›our‹ ideas? The so-called Others serve as reference points and form the necessary contrast foil. They could be socially and economically weak, non-Catholic, or female. They could deviate from heteronormative sexual orientation or come from afar. They could be intellectuals, have different political ideas, and appear either individually or in groups – this list could go on for a long time. Their exclusion ranges from exoticization, stigmatization to exploitation, deportation, and even murder. There are countless documented examples, but I would like to start with my own family history: Marked as ›foreign‹ by Stalinist terror and deported from Ukraine in the interwar period, my German maternal family and my Ukrainian paternal family lived in Kazakhstan and migrated with me to Germany when the Soviet Union collapsed. Another migration led me independently of my family to Austria, where I became a ›stranger‹ again but also learned to draw from my fluid identities. 

Female migrant, German, with the more specific designation Kazakhstan- and Ukraine-German – living in Austria. When I look at Austria, I am just one of many with intertwined cultural backgrounds and references. Therefore, I would like to confirm: I live in a country of migration. What sets Austria apart from classic immigration countries is merely a self-image based very strongly on a perceived stability and homogeneity of the population, which has never existed in this form. Paradoxically, the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (1867-1918) and the associated influx to Vienna are perceived as identity-defining, while the more recent history of immigration in the 1960s through labor migration from Turkey or former Yugoslavia is ignored. In official historiography, issues such as immigration and migration, therefore, have only a low priority, which is also favored by the fact that many members of the majority society still do not expect a differentiated engagement with (national) history but only a confirmation of familiar narratives that do not endanger their national identity. In other words: »The demand for immigrant history among a larger national audience is probably limited as an effect of fairly fixed national identities in Europe. The reader seeks confirmation and reaffirmation of the already known«. How, then, can the history of Austrian society, which is changing through migration, be adequately represented?

A strategy for making migration-specific content visible in collective memory could be to include migration history/histories in the already existing national »master narrative« to create a strong integrative element. Now the memory of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust is an elemental part of Austrian and German state doctrine and contributes to the democratization of society. In this context, I am particularly interested in how this memory can address not only the autochthonous Austrian society but also migrants and their descendants, who have different references to the past of the majority society. How is it possible to uncover the myths brought along and include them in the history-generating space of a memorial site? In order not to fall into clichéd ascriptions and to be able to interpret certain experiences of migrants respectfully, an understanding of the respective individual experiences as well as knowledge of the official narratives of their countries of origin is needed. This approach carries great political weight. Since certain narratives from the present are related to the past, they also reach into a future and establish expectations of how the present should develop. Thus, there is no neutral way to make history because every narrative about the past privileges certain experiences over others. Selections and highlights, therefore, have an elemental significance for the present in which they are made. What does the past, echoing in the present, mean, especially for the mediation of monstrous historical events from the Nazi era in a heterogeneous society where people from various cultures live together and draw from different contexts? Sometimes speaking about violence is violent in itself, and the process of inscription into (national) history always brings with it the danger of essentialization. What sensitivity is therefore needed for language, and how can I, a familiar stranger, act in this context? What relevance would there be, furthermore, in formulating a European memory in which nationality no longer functions as the predominant logic for segregation and discrimination? The quality that could unfold from a post-national memory would, not least, also make it possible to shape new narratives...