Unlearning Heimat
Unlearning Heimat
Kwan Ling Yan Charis
Abstract
The concept of Heimat has played a significant role in shaping German identity and national discourse. However, it has also been associated with exclusionary and nationalist politics, resulting in the marginalization of minority groups. This essay explores the idea of unlearning Heimat and critically examines its implications for community building and social inclusion. Drawing on the works of Lauren Berlant and Mithu Sanyal, this essay argues that unlearning Heimat requires a process of deconstruction and reconstruction of social structures and identities. It further suggests that this process involves a critical reflection on the historical and cultural roots of Heimat and an exploration of alternative ways of belonging that embrace diversity and difference. Through a close analysis of cultural and literary texts, this essay demonstrates how unlearning Heimat can enable a more nuanced understanding of German identity and foster a more inclusive and just society. Overall, this essay advocates for a transformative approach to community building that challenges the dominant framework of belonging and foregrounds the multiplicity of human experiences and expressions.
With the effects of social polarisation becoming more salient in contemporary society, it should be evident that issues related to immigration and belonging are often weaponized against minority groups. This can be seen in the rhetoric surrounding Heimat, a word that conjures up a sentimental yearning for a long-lost home that memorialises a limited and exclusive view of the German identity. According to Mithu Sanyal, the term Heimat has also been co-opted by far-right political forces to justify exclusionist policies and perpetuate the marginalization of minorities (53). Therefore, to dismantle dominant ways of thinking that support the current structures of power and control, this essay proposes to use Lauren Berlant’s notion of “unlearning” to investigate how the idea of Heimat can be reimagined. Berlant believes that one could unlearn by forging multiple paths available to move forward. In other words, this idea suggests that unlearning requires one to be creative and to seek out a diversity of perspectives and experiences, and it implies that one ought to be willing to engage with people who have different backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences than our own in order to dismantle simplistic understandings of what it means to be in community. This essay will first examine how prejudice against outsiders is created through social infrastructures and language. Next, it will discuss how unlearning can be used to dismantle the dominant framework of belonging to restore equality in interpersonal and communal relationships.
Berlant offers a careful attempt to understand what sustains people’s sense of connection to the world that reflects the social conditions of current capitalist and other structural crises. In particular, Berlant invites their readers to see world-building as infrastructure-making and suggests that “an infrastructural analysis helps us see what we commonly call structure is not an intractable principle of continuity across space and time, but a convergence of force and value in patterns of movements that’s only solid when seen from a distance” (Berlant 25). In Berlant’s interpretation, infrastructures are a crucial element for understanding how power operates in society, one that is both a social and cultural entity that shapes the way individuals perceive themselves and their surroundings. One can certainly see this with the vernacular infrastructures based on one’s communities, such as the concept of Heimat, which are themselves constantly being remade, repaired and rebuilt especially through memory cultures. Through infrastructure, communities, nations and all kinds of collectives materialize and extend their particular ways of reproducing themselves. It is also through infrastructure that marginalization and ostracization occur. Infrastructure may entrench injustice in systems and thus can serve to naturalize those relations, and infrastructure does not simply reflect existing inequality but can engineer new forms. This calls into question the infrastructure of Heimat that is premised upon the “three Hs” (Haut, Haar und Haemoglobin) or in English, “skin, hair and haemoglobin” (the S-H-H formula) (Sanyal 50). As reflected in Sanya’s essay “Home,” this infrastructure has worked to carve up the nation (Germany) into preserves of those who belong, while ingraining and hardening the means of social exclusion into tangible material structures, such as restrictive immigration policies that prevent others from belonging. From being constantly interrogated with questions such as “Where are you from?” to having their loyalty to the German state questioned, these forms of infrastructures surrounding Heimat have perpetuated multiple forms of violence against the migrant group, at the same time serving as a site for fascism and neoliberalism.
Berlant developed the concept “cruel optimism” precisely to capture the “paradox of persisting in practices, regimes, or acts that harm us,” which parallels the dominant discourse surrounding Heimat (Anderson et. al. 131). In a similar vein, Heimat has been invoked as a nostalgic memory term that heavily extracts its value from the past, which simultaneously generates harm in the present by excluding those who are not remembered. By over-attaching to this narrow definition of Heimat, far-right political forces have been able to justify their political discourse that perpetuates the marginalization of others. In the context of Sanyal’s essay, recurring themes such as the lack of respect, prescribed inferiority, and the rendering invisibility of immigrants’ contributions are prevalent in the use of language and other discursive practices that stems from casting some as different on their alleged biological differences—i.e., having a different S-H-H formula. Progressive ideologies, which are often grounded in a tension between demands for equality and a privileging of differences among people, frequently reproduce the idea that all this struggle requires is to establish a level playing field among the people in a society. While equality is an important goal, in order to start thinking about it one first has to self-reflect and unlearn some commitments to hostile structures in which even some of the best of us are often entrenched.
As one of the central tensions in the concept of Heimat is the struggle between nostalgia and progress, untangling the concept of Heimat would require a shift in German memory culture that moves away from repeating existing narratives but negotiates new and shared narratives instead. This sounds simple on the surface, yet the water immediately becomes murky as one digs deeper into the conversation. As Berlant theorized, by promising us much with a big set of tasks between that goal and our current lived experience, the idea of a commons indeed becomes a burden that slowly wears us down. Therefore, instead of being merely a political goal that stimulates community organizing, the commons would also function well as a site at which to unlearn the world that helps us see what aspects of our lives require reassessment. Unlearning would thereby fostering better relations with other people.
Berlant’s essay and Sanyal’s proposed definition of Heimat share a common thread of challenging prevailing modes of power and envisioning new possibilities for social and political change in contemporary society. In other words, the task is to channel divisive political energies away from their defensive formation and turn them into a more democratic mode of politics, which implies cultivating an ability to embrace the discomfort of true equality—i.e., what Berlant calls the inconvenience of an “equally valued social being” (Berlant 105). As such, building a sustainable version of Heimat could mimic Berlant’s notion of unlearning. At its core, unlearning involves an ongoing process of critical self-reflection and challenging one’s assumptions and beliefs that have been shaped by dominant cultural norms and values. Since the existing discourse around Heimat has mostly been exclusionary in nature, unlearning a monolithic version of Heimat reveals powerful alternatives to the narrow conception of identity and creates a framework for social and political transformation.
One way to use unlearning to break down the existing framework of belonging and restore equality in interpersonal and communal relationships is to create multiple paths available to move forward. Berlant recognises that a commons is a constantly evolving and contested space that requires ongoing effort and a willingness to engage in the messy and often difficult work of political organizing and mobilization. Therefore, they proposed to create a space and time that is open to negotiation rather than “attaching oneself to the meritless and impossible mission of trying to resolve them” (Volpert 2022). Rather than aspiring to achieve an impossible goal, one could unlearn by building new infrastructures, finding ways to disrupt and reorganize existing infrastructures, or creating alternative systems for supporting and valuing diverse communities. By doing so, this could resemble what Sanyal calls “formulating the Heimat in plural,” which refers to cultivating a common understanding that accounts for the lived realities of “an increasing number of Germans by acknowledging how (im)migration enriches the Heimat” (Sanyal 57).
Besides giving voices back to those who feel like they do not belong so that they can speak up about crafting a sustainable future in the political sphere, collectively as a society, one should also readjust their attitude towards the bigger topic of globalisation and immigration with care and prudence as if ‘those people’ were a member of our own kind. Coming from a Canadian perspective, society cannot function without considering immigrants and their gratuitous contributions as they take prominent roles in our communities. Therefore, the involvement of diverse voices is much needed in social conversations to succeed in protecting communities and stopping further degradation in interpersonal and communal relationships. As Berlant wrote, “the repair or replacement of broken infrastructure is necessary for any form of sociality to extend itself” (Berlant 24). Without opening up the conversation to include those who historically have been excluded from the commons, Heimat would only continue to serve the dominant group’s interests at the expense of minorities.
Writers such as Berlant and Sanyal have reflected on the question regarding the ways in which infrastructure has not just been a feature of exclusion but as an organization of collective living. In many ways, the commons and Heimat offer a reimagination of what it means to belong in any community, particularly in contemporary Germany. Ultimately, unlearning involves embracing a more fluid and dynamic understanding of identity, one that recognizes the ways in which individuals and communities are shaped by a variety of means and aspects, including race, ethnicity and class. It also implies that identity does not have to be restricted to one version, but it could be negotiated to allow various individuals to find their place of belonging within a community. By embracing this complexity, individuals and communities can begin to build new forms of solidarity and connection that are grounded in a shared vision of achieving equality.
Kwan Ling Yan Charis is a 4th-year student at UBC pursuing a degree in political science. Throughout her former years, she has lived in several countries across Asia, Europe and North America. Living abroad has exposed her to different cultures, which piqued her interest in identity formation. Identities are fluid and malleable, and this publication encourages her readers to foster a more inclusive and equitable approach to identity formation that is not limited by the confines of the dominant cultural narratives.
Works Cited
Anderson, Ben, et al. “Encountering Berlant Part One: Concepts Otherwise.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 189, no. 1, 2023, pp. 117–42.
Berlant, Lauren. On the Inconvenience of Other People. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022.
Sanyal, Mithu. “Home.” Translated by Didem Uca. Transit: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and
Multiculturalism in the German-speaking World (2021). https://doi.org/10.5070/T70055565.
Volpert, Mega. 2022. “How to Read Lauren Berlant: ‘On the Inconvenience of Other People”. Pop Matters, 2 November 2022.
https://www.popmatters.com/lauren-berlant-inconvenience-oother-people
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