Modos de narrar a condição de imigrante em Der enthaarte Affe, de Güney Dal

Abstract

Güney Dal is a Turkish writer who lives in Germany and writes texts, which deal with the situation of Turkish immigrants in that country. For his contribution to the literary imaginary around immigrants in Germany he was awarded the important Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, in 1997. The novel Der enthaarte Affe discusses the ways the Turkish main character deals with the difficulties he finds when trying to settle down in the new country. Hence, this articles aims to analyse the identity construction and its representation in two situations: in the protagonist’s macro-social view in his role as immigrant and in the immigrant’s social interactions with the members of the hegemonic group. In this context, identity is understood as a dialogical principle, in which the subject negotiates meanings and builds an auto-representational narrative. Accordingly, the individual needs to negotiate, for example, questions which involve discursive configurations that characterize the society where he lives and he needs to interact with the social actors who form this space of interaction.