Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Gender as a Category of Knowledge

Dr. des. Maja Figge

PhD Project:

Fading-out, Fading-in, Cross-fadings: (Re)Production Processes of Germanness in 1950s West-German Cinema

 

 

Description of the Project

 

How did cinema respond to the need to (re)define Germanness after the Third Reich ? This dissertation focusses on the (dis)continuities of racism within the national self-concept of the early Federal Republic. By analyzing the cinematic configurations of white masculinity as vehicles of the (re)production processes of Germanness, it can be shown that they were performed in a motion of exclusion and inclusion of racialized difference, which offered not only change, but also purification, redemption, and cure. This process works in favor of restating the equation of Germanness with (moral) whiteness, which on an imaginary level serves to distance from racist Nazi ideology while at the same time aiming to overcome the guilt of the crimes committed during the Third Reich and thus seeking normalization. In my dissertation I show that ›race‹ is at the core of the national self-conceptions in the early Federal Republic and address the role cinema played in these processes.

                                             

Particulars

 

Maja Figge, research assistant at the Institute for Art and Visual Culture, Oldenburg University. She studied Cultural History and Theory, Art history and History in Bremen and Berlin. Between 2007-2010 associate member of the PhD-research group „Gender as a category of knowledge“. 2012 PhD at the Institute for Cultural History and Theory, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Teaching assignments in Berlin, Bochum and Vienna. Member of DFG-Young Scholars Network »Black Diaspora and Germany«.

   
Selected Publications

In/stabile Figurationen. Weiße Männlichkeit in bundesdeutschen Filmen der 1950er Jahre. In: Im Netz der Eindeutigkeiten. Unbestimmte Figuren und die Irritation von Identität, hg. v. Michael Andreas und Natascha Frankenberg, Bielefeld 2013. S. 39–65.

 

with Konstanze Hanitzsch a. Nadine Teuber (Eds.): Scham und Schuld. Geschlecher(sub)texte der Shoah, Bielefeld 2010.

 

»Der Konsum hilft!«. Rassismus und ›Heilung‹ durch Integration im Spielfilm Toxi. In: Um/Ordnungen. Fotografische Menschenbilder zwischen Konstruktion und Destruktion, hg. v. Klaus Krüger, Leena Crasemann und Matthias Weiß, München 2010. S. 135–153.

   

Contact

http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/kunst/lehrende/mitarbeiterinnen-und-lehrkraefte/figge-maja/