The Politics of Remembrance in the Novels of Günter Grass - Under Contract at Routledge

Abstract

In this manuscript, I argue for the importance of Nobel laureate Günter Grass as a political thinker in addition to his considerable status as a novelist and public intellectual, capable of forming ethical responses to contemporary issues like neoliberalism and place of the petit bourgeoisie in social life. By tracing the importance of three “moments” or “themes” under the banner of “class, politics, and memory,” I define Grass’s trajectory as a thinker through his novels and speeches. Primarily, I draw attention to the role memory plays in Grass’s thought: that his work represented an intellectual and aesthetic response to the role Nazism continued to play in West German politics in the post war era. To Grass, Nazism (and later, neoliberalism) represented a resurgent threat not properly addressed in the years following the end of World War II. Grass sought to explain his own involvement with Nazism as a teenager in addition to what he considered the widespread complicity of petit bourgeoisie society through writing and political action. Later, Grass distanced himself with his political mentors, including West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, when he opposed German Reuinification on the grounds that it represented an “annexation” (Anschluß) of East Germany by the capitalist West. At this point, Grass amended his concept of memory politics to address neoliberal capitalism, reiterating his radicalism and affirming the need for German society to more adequately resist the rise of extreme ideologies.

In Print

“Amor Bellitās: Arendt on Kant and Aesthetic Judgment in Politics.”  Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 65 (156).

"Fictional Commodities: Victorian Utopian Fiction and Polanyi's Great Transformation." With Eliza Dickinson Urban. Utopian Studies, forthcoming.

“Günter Grass’s Literary Nationalism: The Kulturnation from Westphalia to Berlin.” German Politics and Society. Forthcoming.

Under Preparation

“From Anarchy to An-Archy: Albert Camus and the Kingdom.” (With Cecil L. Eubanks)

“Saint Sisyphus: Günter Grass’s Absurd History” in The Cambridge Companion to Absurdist Literature.

"Finding the Other in Literature: Albert Camus and Immanuel Kant."
Welcoming the Other: A Conference in Honor of Cecil Eubanks. LSU French House. 2021.

"Günter Grass’s Literary Nationalism: The Kulturnation from Westphalia to Berlin."
Midwest Political Science Association, Virtual. 2021.

“Günter Grass, Class Historian: Reflections on the Petit Bourgeoisie in Grass’s Danzig Trilogy."
Southern Political Science Association, J.W. Marriott Austin. 2019.

“A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow: Victorian Utopian Fiction and Polanyi’s Great Transformation.” 
With Eliza Dickinson Urban.  Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies, Hotel Whitcomb. 2018.

“Not Forbidden but Permitted: The Thirty Years' War in Schiller and Grass.” 
Southern Political Science Association, Hyatt Regency New Orleans. Panel Chair and Discussant. 2018.

“From Kingston to the Caliph: Diasporic Identities in Beckford's Vathek and Earle's Obi.”
LSU Mardi Gras Conference, Louisiana State University. 2017.

“Constructivism and Counter-Constructivism.”
Southern Political Science Association, Hyatt Regency New Orleans. 2017.

“What Iron Cures Not: A Polanyian Analysis of the Early Schiller.”
Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hotel. 2016.

“Religious Institutions and Welfare States, Britain, Germany, and France, 1870-1914.”
Southern Political Science Association, Hyatt Regency New Orleans. 2015.

“Moral Opacity in the Thought of Kant, Rawls, and Aristotle.”
Southwest Social Science Association.  San Antonio Grand Hyatt.  2014.