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On remembering Hanau and being an emotional academic
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Choukri, Meryem (2022) On remembering Hanau and being an emotional academic. The German Quarterly, 95 (4). pp. 431-434. doi:10.1111/gequ.12306
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12306
Abstract
I must confess I hesitated to submit this piece. As a racialized, rather young female postgraduate academic working on issues of racism, resistance, and remembrance, I have been told quite a few times that my research is too political and that I supposedly do not speak from a neutral point of view. But what others see as a weakness, I see as a strength. In making ourselves vulnerable and being open about how research affects us, makes us sad, excited, or angry, we can produce research that is more transparent and comprehensible. “The personal is political” is an often-repeated feminist phrase. But the personal is also part of research, and academia as research is personal. This insight is nothing new, but instead an important starting point for works of researchers like Saidiya Hartman, Grada Kilomba, Sara Ahmed, and many more feminist, queer, critical race, post- and/or decolonial scholars.
This became particularly graspable for me in the aftermath of the right-wing terror attack in Hanau, a city located close to Frankfurt am Main, on 19 February 2020. During this night a terrorist murdered nine people in a Shisha bar, on the streets, and in a kiosk. He later killed his mother and himself. After reading the news the next morning while sitting in the train on the way to conduct archival research for my PhD in Berlin, the world stopped for me briefly. Even though I did not know any of the victims of the attack personally, I could not understand how everybody, or maybe, more accurately, every white body, kept going and expected me to work on my dissertation as if nothing had happened. How could I not be affected by this? And how did so many others remain unaffected?
| Item Type: | Journal Item | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DD Germany H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > German Studies Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures |
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| SWORD Depositor: | Library Publications Router | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | College teachers -- Psychological aspects, Hanau (Germany), Right-wing extremists -- Germany, Multiculturalism -- Political aspects | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | The German Quarterly | ||||||
| Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc. | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0016-8831 | ||||||
| Official Date: | 14 November 2022 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 95 | ||||||
| Number: | 4 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 431-434 | ||||||
| DOI: | 10.1111/gequ.12306 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 10 January 2023 | ||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 10 January 2023 |
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