„Should our Antedates Have Been People Like These?“ A Try of Postcolonial Reading of the Story about Darwin by Eberhard Hilscher Cover Image

„Sollten unsere Vorfahren Menschen gewesen sein wie diese?“ Versuch einer postkolonialen Lektüre von Eberhard Hilschers Darwin-Erzählung
„Should our Antedates Have Been People Like These?“ A Try of Postcolonial Reading of the Story about Darwin by Eberhard Hilscher

Author(s): Nina Nowara-Matusik
Subject(s): German Literature, Evaluation research, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: postcolonial reading; Eberhard Hilscher; Darwin; GDR; the foreign; the own; ideology;

Summary/Abstract: The following paper presents a postcolonial reading (combined with the ideology-critical approach) of the little-known story about Darwin by the East German writer Eberhard Hilscher. The analysis focuses on the perception of the foreign and the own by the figures of the story and it also refers to the overlapping of the terms race and class. The considerations lead to the conclusion that in the story the foreign is constructed preferably with the help of the opposition culture (the own) and nature (the foreign), and that hierarchical and dichotomous thinking characterizes also Darwin, even if in his case one can see certain ambivalences.

  • Issue Year: 14/2019
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 43-54
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: German