What literature against propaganda, lies, and verrohte language? In the framework of the German-Israeli literature days, the international writers provide answers for dealing with the populism.
Events such as the German-Israeli literature days will, of course, planned carefully and long in advance. However, as the political spirit of the times the Director would have conducted, fell ill, the opening invited the Austrian writer Franzobel to food poisoning and Basil (article image) was found instead of his Priya on the stage of the Deutsches theater in Berlin. You could currently think of no more suitable replacement than the Indian Background, London-born, Kenya-raised, since 2002, and in the meantime, as a German citizen living in Berlin, writer, journalist and democracy activist.
Because that is not always the most successful, who raises his voice the loudest, particularly in the British Parliament to observe. Painful Basil looks at the split in British society, in the situation change constantly. “It is becoming more and more desperate and insecure,” she States in an interview with the Israeli author Sami Berdugo. The two writers are in the middle of the topic: How to deal with the growing populist voices in Israel and in many countries in Europe? And what response can provide the literature, given the increasing noise level in democratic countries? What can help a writer to avoid increasing polarisation, possibly even a split in democratic societies?
“The culture is put at the service of the national narrative”
“Louder, always louder?”, the question, formulated the Motto of the literature, days of the blade, such as a comment to the European debate culture, says Ellen Ueberschär. The theologian, one of the two Directors of the Green-affiliated Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, opened the event together with the President of the Goethe-Institut Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, the literature days, the eight authors in the Berlin meet. Her recipe: “Accurate Describe, Look, read, but also listen, talk, argue.”
The theologian Ellen Ueberschär calls for “listening, talking, arguing”
What about formulated the archipelago as an “offer to provide the be According to Paroli”, appears a matter of course. How difficult a unideologische dispute actually become in today’s political landscape, explains Klaus-Dieter Lehmann at the example of the debate to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, when it came to the Definition of the Jewish. Also, the openness to controversial discussion belongs to the Judaism in addition to Faith, to criticism? Or the Museum should be a pure Display of Judaism, as one of the right-wing conservative Israeli government-initiated campaign called always loud? Where populist parties formed the government, it would be political influence on the culture observed. “Censorship or self-censorship, and not the freedom of art.” The threat is also currently in Israel.
“We have to find your own voice!”
How does a Concerned? “We need to be more vigilant in terms of the manipulation of language,” asks Sami Berdugo. The 1970, as the son of Moroccan immigrants in Israel-born writer and screenwriter-author of commitment will be entirely to his country, but he is angry. “The Hebrew language is my home language, my life focus is.” But the populism, to use the language of cynical. “All the screaming. Around us it is getting louder and louder. We can’t even listen once more to ourselves. We should stop and our personal votes to re-invent the own voices to the populism to counter it.”
Populism use the language of cynical, criticized the Israeli writer Sami Berdugo
For twenty years we have a government that will always be right, and the turn of their energy in the election campaign waste. “I have the feeling that the party leaders and the Minister to deprive the consistently of the content of political debate.” Look closely and listen, the calls also Berdugo, and of the populists to seduce, the talk seems to be the language of the people. “The people must not enter into any Pact of the language and identity with the domination!”
“We should be brave and free!”
To be different, brave and free, to create more and new spaces for encounters in the policy, for Priya Basil is. A common European holiday could be an invitation to believe you. The British-Indian-German cosmopolitan opened at the end of the Evening, a mental space that made the deferrals and the noise of the populists in the armor and verstieben.
The German-Israeli literature days are a cooperation of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung and the Goethe-Institut. To Dov Alfon, Friedrich Ani, Sami Berdugo, Maayan Ben-Hagai, Franzobel, Dilek Güngör, Mati Shemoelof and Tijan Sila, the on 8 this year. September, the discussion will continue.
Sami Berdugo teaches Creative Writing at the University of Tel Aviv. His award-winning novel, “an Ongoing Tale Upon the country” was published in 2014. It is not in English, a German Translation of it yet.
Priya Basil’s new book, “hospitality” (Be My Guest) – a hybrid Text of Essay and memoir – was published in March 2019 at Suhrkamp / Insel. The English edition will appear in November 2019 in great Britain and in the United States. She is co-founder of Authors for Peace, a political platform for writers and artists, which was founded in 2010.