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- Title
LONGING FOR THE OTHER - COLONIAL FANTASIES IN ARMAND'S NOVELS.
- Authors
Grewling, Nicole
- Abstract
In Friedrich Armand Strubberg's fictional and non-fictional works about the U.S., interactions with Indians and other ethnicities play a crucial role. Nevertheless, the portrayals of such ethnicities consist of a strange combination of presumably unprejudiced personal observations and patronising stereotypical ethnic stock figures, who are depicted in complex and sometimes contradictory relationships with German protagonists. This article analyses these ambivalent representations, employing Susanne Zantop's concepts of pre-colonial fantasies and colonial desire and thus understands such relationships as testing grounds for German colonial ambitions. I show how Strubberg's personal colonial ambitions, a wider sub-conscious German (pre-)colonial discourse, and racial ideas interact in An der Indianergrenze and other works to produce a narrative of German colonial skills, benevolent leadership, and positive interethnic relationships shaped by the other's desire for the self, which serves to promote the colonial discourse. At the same time, the positive image contains ruptures that point to what Homi Bhabha termed the discourse of colonial mimicry, which makes its constructedness visible. In examining images of (pre-)colonial relationships and desire, this article demonstrates how they - including apparent inherent ambiguities - serve to foster German colonial fantasies, allowing Germans to position themselves in a self-assuring way in the international community.
- Subjects
UNITED States; STRUBBERG, Friedrich Armand; IMPERIALISM &; literature; AN der Indianergrenze (Book); AMERIKANISCHE Jagd- und Reiseabenteuer aus meinem Leben in den westlichen Indianergebieten (Book); BIS in die Wildniss (Book); UNITED States in literature; GERMANS; HISTORY of travel writing; NINETEENTH century; HISTORY
- Publication
German Life & Letters, 2015, Vol 68, Issue 3, p370
- ISSN
0016-8777
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.1111/glal.12087