Research Seminar in Post-Kantian European Philosophy, 2019/2020
Unless otherwise stated, Post-Kantian European Philosophy Research Group seminars take place on Tuesdays, 5:30–7:30pm in Room S0.11 (ground floor of Social Studies). All welcome. For further information, please contact tbc
CRPLA Event - Helmut Schmitz: 鈥楬ow To Have One's Cake And Eat It: Navid Kermani's Gro脽e Liebe, Sufi Mysticism, And Paradoxical Cultural Identities鈥�
Navid Kermani鈥檚 novel Gro脽e Liebe (2014, Love Writ Large) charts the development of a young teenager鈥檚 infatuation with an A-level student in the early 1980s in Germany. The love story is refracted through the adult narrator鈥檚 reflections and through readings from Sufi mysticism and Nizami鈥檚 12th ct. epic poem Lail茂 and Majn没n. This creates a narrative framework in which (Iranian and Muslim) cultural sources and (West German) cultural memory subtly comment on one another, allowing Kermani to ironically undermine both contemporary masculinity and his narrator鈥檚 former self as lover while simultaneously reflecting on the cultural and religious traditions of his own background and their relations to a Western tradition of love. The paper examines Kermani鈥檚 ironic narrative construction in the context of his construction of a paradoxical cultural identity.