AN OLD/NEW VISION OF EUROPE. NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND CULTURAL OTHERNESS

Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s play Perikizi (2010) is a particularly significcant migration story because of its shrewd exploration of European integration, specificcally in Germany. Thee protagonist is a girl who undertakes an adventurous journey from Turkey to Europe in order to realize her dream of becoming an actress. Thee play thus delves into the problem of integration in Europe from both the internal and external perspective of a young woman from a country whose culture and history are deeply intertwined with Europe’s, but are exotic enough to represent the cultural ‘other’ in the eyes of every European. I focus on an issue that is a golden thread throughout the play: the connection between genocide, nationalism and xenophobia, a thematic complex told from the perspective of a character who discovers the chance for change on her journey from East to West. I demonstrate that Perikizi’s journey highlights some structural parallels between East and West with respect to these issues. Thee play opens up a space in which national responsibility and the relationship with cultural otherness are problematized through diffeerent aesthetic strategies. At the end, it depicts a vision of Europe that is an alternative to a past, and a present, of nationalist and racist crimes.


INTRODUCTION
Turkish-born writer Emine Sevgi Özdamar has returned to theatre with her 2010 play Perikizi afteer many years of writing ficction. Thee play is adapted from her most significcant work of ficction (Özdamar, 2006): her autobiographical trilogy Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei, hat zwei Türen, aus einer kam ich rein, aus der anderen ging ich raus (1990), Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (1998), and Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde (2004). Thee play's main character, Perikizi, is a girl who undertakes an adventurous journey from Turkey to Europe in order to realise her dream of becoming an actress. Perikizi has a marked intertextual character, which refers not only to the European literary tradition, but also reworks the biographical material that portrayed the female ego in the novels. However, what makes Perikizi a particularly significcant migration story is its shrewd exploration of European integration, specificcally in Germany, from both the internal and external perspective of a young woman from a country whose culture and history are deeply intertwined with Europe's, but are exotic enough to represent the cultural 'other' in the eyes of every European. In this article, I will focus on an issue that is a golden thread throughout the play: the connection between genocide, nationalism and xenophobia, a thematic complex told from the perspective of a character who discovers the chance for change on her journey from East to West. I will attpempt to demonstrate that Perikizi's journey highlights some structural parallels between East and West on these issues. At the same time, it opens up a space in which national responsibility and the relationship with cultural otherness are problematised through diffeerent aesthetic strategies, in order, ficnally, to depict a vision of Europe that is an alternative to a past, and a present, of nationalist and racist crimes.

I
Özdamar wrote Perikizi for "Odyssee Europa", a theatre festival sponsored by the main theatres of the Ruhr cities in 2010. Six German-speaking playwrights were asked to rewrite the myth of Odysseus in the present day as a modern interrogation of European identity. 1 In Perikizi, Odysseus is portrayed as a young Turkish woman, a radical departure from the modern rewritings of Thee Odyssey (Schlößler, 2010, pp. 79-95). Odysseus' patriarchal myth, an archetype of a quest for knowledge linked to trial and pain, is thus transformed into the story of a young woman's migration, a station drama that sees her leaving Turkey, crossing the war-torn places of the former Yugoslavia, landing in a burnt-out German forest, then descending into the Underworld to ficnally return to her native Istanbul. As evoked by the subtitle, Ein Traumspiel ("A Dream"), Perikizi's journey has clear oneiric traits (Höfer, 2019, p. 127-17*), which make it ficrst and foremost a metaphor for a psychic act. In its both real and mythical dimension, the journey is conficgured as a process of transformation, in which confronting the traumas of the past assumes a central role. 1 Thee play opens with a long scene that evokes recent Turkish history through the experiences of Perikizi's family members. Thee link between Turkish and German history 2 emerges for the ficrst time when Perikizi's grandmother recalls the alliance between the two countries in the First World War and the genocide of the Armenians and other minorities by the Ottpoman Empire. Perikizi's grandmother lost her husband and seven children in the war; she is still haunted by the ghosts of the past and by the violence she witnessed as a young girl, particularly her traumatic memory of the Armenian genocide. Thee trauma, evoked by a single word, is expressed in physical reactions, such as her nose bleeding when she speaks. She also voices her experience of violence with a repetitive litany reminiscent of a death march during which two young Armenian women from her village died:  (Özdamar 2011, pp. 275-276) Thee grandmother's nightmares also torment her granddaughter, who at times takes on her ductus and voice, reporting the events of the genocide in a sort of unconscious re-emergence of the trauma, which extends 1 On the phenomenon of transnational identity building in Özdamar's ficction see recently Genz (2016, pp. 91-114). 2 Thee theme of the connection between German and Turkish history is dear to Özdamar, as it is told also in the novel Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde (Konuk, 2010, pp. 221-242). * "Aboo" is a Turkish colloquial exclamation indicating great astonishment, consternation and despair. 4 "How the Armenian brides threw themselves offe the bridges. How the Armenian brides threw themselves offe the bridges. Theey saw hell and ficre on this earth with their young eyes that longed to be blind; their aprons still over their clothes, barefoot, their eyes bulging, their hands and feet swollen from the death march, their children, skeletons at their feet, the ficre they walked through on their endless march burned seven times ficercer than the ficres of hell. [...] We were good neighbours to these brides. When they were alive, Armenian newspapers came to our village from Istanbul. When they died, no more newspapers came. Where did all these people go, where?" (Author's translation, like all those from Özdamar).
at an unconscious level from one generation to the next. Once awake and conscious, Perikizi dismisses her grandmother's memories, which are steeped in a violence that has never been processed. Her desire to emigrate to Europe arises ficrstly from this suffeering, and secondly from the need to seek alternative possibilities of existence and new models of identificcation. Perikizi's passion for theatre is also an expression of this quest. When the play opens, she has a copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream under her arm and reads the role of Titania, the fairy queen, who enchants with her voice and words. Perikizi means "daughter of the fairies" in Turkish. When she was a child, her mother shut her in a tomb to cure her of an illness, an event that emphasises her liminal existence. Perikizi is suspended between life and death, reality and dreams, past and future, between the world of her childhood (Turkey), and the destination of her journey (Europe).
In the second part of the scene, Perikizi's parents take the stage. Theeir opening words make it clear that the events of the war, their own parents' death, and the subsequent historical developments in Turkey embody a central part of their generation's identity, as well. Her parents are also scarred by the trauma of a great loss that resurfaces in their harsh reaction to Perikizi's desire to emigrate to Europe: "Sie werden goldene Sterne auf dein Haupt schüttpen, wohlan zu dieser Europa. Die Toten, die sind unsere Göttper, nie werden sie dir verziehen, du Ruhelose. " 1 (2011, p. 285). Thee mother's words refleect the tendency to shifte the blame for the war onto others and to completely exonerate their own country of any guilt. Her parents' arguments, full of prejudice and racist clichés, are a clear example of the nationalistic rhetoric of blood and soil (Blut und Boden) that still exists in Turkey today. As part of these arguments, Perikizi's father warns of the loneliness, alienation and discrimination that await her in Europe. He uses the example of Odysseus, who calls himself "Nobody" to escape from the Cyclops' lair: Perikizi's father fears that his daughter risks losing her individuality, with her being reduced to a stereotype and forced to occupy a subordinate position in society: Nehmen wir an, du schreibst einen Roman, mit all deinen Phantasien, deinen empficndsamen Gefühlen […] Diese Schöpfungen, die du aus deinem eigenen Körper ausgraben wirst, werden unter Türkisch registriert. Sie werden sagen: "Schauen Sie, wie schön die türkische Sprache ist. " Keiner kann Türkisch, aber plötzlich wissen sie, dass es Türkisch ist.
On the one hand, he insists that identity is individual research and work, thus undermining the idea of a homogeneous, exclusive nationality; on the other hand, he clings to his belief in a "true" Turkish identity constructed through a rigid, clear-cut dichotomy between the "self" and the "other". His beliefs include denigrating Turkish migrants, who are guilty, in his view, of creating a reductive and pejorative image of Turkey in Europe: Wir sind hier modern, wir haben unsere Geschichte, unsere Reichtümer, unsere Kultur. Die, die weggegangen sind, sind die Armen, die Kulturlosen, die Sklaven. Durch sie wird in Europa unsere wahre Identität, unsere reiche Geschichte klein gemacht. Plötzlich schrieb Europa unsere reduzierte Geschichte. Ridicule. 2 (2011, p. 288) Perikizi's father is therefore the spokesman for an identity discourse founded upon the belief that the mixing of cultures is potentially dangerous and destined only to produce violence: During Perikizi's journey, her father's vision of individual identity is taken to extremes by characters she meets along the way; these extremes, however, are mocked and ridiculed at the same time. Thee settping of the opening scene, the city of Istanbul, is immediately connoted as a place of cultural contamination. Theis connotation is almost satirising her father's words. Two musicians, one Greek and one Turkish, then appear on the scene singing traditional Greek, Turkish and Armenian songs, as if to recall and celebrate the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural roots of modern Turkey. Thee relevance of this scene thus lies in its reminding the audience that Turkey's multi-cultural history has been removed. Perikizi's response to her father's words "Vater, ich mache die Geschichte wieder groß" 2 (2011, p. 288) can be therefore be interpreted as ironic.
On the one hand, the journey depicted in the subsequent scenes becomes an opportunity to tackle the nationalistic discourses conducted in Europe, both among native Europeans and migrants; on the other, it sheds light upon the deep connection between the past of two countries. Turkey is stained with guilt that has been erased from the collective memory, and Germany continues to struggle with the ghosts of its past. Along her journey, Perikizi is accompanied by the shadows of the representatives of the war: a young soldier -her deceased grandfather -followed by a donkey, and the two young Armenian women who died on the march. Perikizi is endowed with an uncommon sensitivity, as she interacts with the dead and becomes their spokesperson, thus reaffirrming the liminal nature of her existence. Theis theme is dear to Özdamar, as in her ficrst novel, Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei, she describes the intimate bond between granddaughter and grandmother, the slender thread that united Perikizi's existence with that of the dead. During a later scene, entitled "Perikizi's Dream" (Perikizis Traum), the two Armenian women are given a voice for the ficrst time, but they can only hint indirectly at the violence they suffeered: "Wir dürfen nicht. Wir dürfen nicht sprechen. / Schon ewig lange dürfen wir nicht sprechen. " * (2011, p. *12). Significcantly, the death march on which the two young women died is told by the moaning of two ficg trees that watched them pass. Theis strategy represents the extent to which Turkey has removed the genocide from its history, with the scene concealing a pregnant allusion to current events, i.e. the Turkish government's refusal to recognise the genocide, and thus to the possible risks that talking openly about it may have. However, the dream also plays an important part in helping Perikizi to mature (Jonczyk, 2015, pp. 117-1*2), as afteerwards she accepts the reality of the past, i.e. the deads' testimony of the horrors of war and genocide. Theerefore, Perikizi contrasts the collective removal of the historical traumas of her native country and its current nationalistic and xenophobic tendencies, gaining a new awareness of the past by searching for alternative possibilities for the present in her Fremde, 1 her migration.

II
During her journey, Perikizi encounters two central features of European identity: the tendency to exclude otherness, which originates from the perception of identity as something homogeneous and static; and the bureaucratic regulation of migratory fleows. On the train through the former Yugoslavia, three prostitutes tell Perikizi that in Europe she will be reduced to a passport and a stay-and-work permit, words that suggest her father's warning is about to come true. Indeed, Perikizi remains invisible to most people, as we can observe it in the scene "In the half-burnt forest" (Im halb verbrannten Wald). Thee forest is reminiscent of the settping of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a mythical place in a fantasy world, but one that is scarred by the devastation of war. Moreover, the forest is also one of the most significcant symbols of German culture, with its destruction symbolising a nation still deeply troubled by the crimes of its past. Thee burnt-out forest is the settping for a meeting between Perikizi and the spokesmen for discourse on the Holocaust and Nazism. Theese spokesmen are three one-eyed giants, an image that recalls the Cyclops in Thee Odyssey mentioned by Perikizi's father. Significcantly, they are referred to as "guilt giants", and portrayed as red-faced intellectuals who swallow sausages, drink, and even wash themselves in beer. Theey speak in unison and drill holes in their heads to drive out traumatic memories, thus deleting them. Theeir choral speech on Nazism and the Holocaust resembles a funeral song and is nothing but empty phrases and platitudes:  (Özdamar 2011, pp. *01-*02) Theis scene, which can be read as an adaptation of the episode of Odysseus and the Cyclops in Thee Odyssey, has two meanings: ficrst, selfaggression and sterile ficxation on collective guilt are the main ways in which Germany has dealt with its past crimes; second, the giants' pathological concentration on themselves and their obsession with guilt and pain make them blind to the point that they do not even notice the migrant, thus producing a new form of exclusion and violence.
Thee following scene takes place in a guesthouse for female workers (Gastarbeiterinnen) in Germany. Theis is a key-place in Özdamar's both real and symbolic topography. In the novel Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn, the protagonist lefte Turkey for Berlin in the mid-1960s, ficnding a new community of belonging among the girls living at the guesthouse. In the play, however, the guesthouse is where Perikizi ficrst comes into contact with Turkish ultra-nationalism. One of the three Turkish workers appears on stage in a chicken costume and waves a Turkish fleag, asking Perikizi aggressively if she is an ethnic Armenian. Thee girl also wears a bandage over a bleeding eye, another reference to the Cyclops, but also, most significcantly, to the three guilt-giants. Therough the motif of the blinded eye, Özdamar establishes a connection between current Turkish nationalism and the similarly blind and violent self-hatred of the representatives of Holocaust discourse in Germany. Theis connection is further developed by a later scene entitled Die Sprachlosigkeit im halb verbrannten Wald ("Speechless in the half-burnt forest"). A wolf, dressed as an intellectual, clearly representing the Turkish nationalist movement the Grey Wolves, puts on an anti-German show, as he makes obscene and provocative gestures at the giants: "Meine lieben abendländischen vernünfteigen Freunde, ich bin gegen die Aufkllärung. Ihr seid traditionsbewusst, wauwauwauwau, unser gemeinsamer Kampf geht weiter, Freiheit für viele Moscheen, aber mit Minarettp, bittpeschön, wauwauwau. Freiheit für Schamtücher der Frauen, wauwauwauwau. " 2 (2011, p. *29) Theis scene shows how a dogmatic, pseudo-intellectual confronting of the past both 1 "GUILT CHOIR: We are the guilt of war. / We hate our fathers / our mothers, they sinned, / sinned.
Sin is all around us, here. / Sin runs deep, far too deep, / Our history has a bittper fate. / Our forest is burnt, no one can save it, / trampled underfoot by wicked fathers. / Our heads are empty, but / burdened with a thousand/ questions. What happened in our forest?" 2 "My dear reasonable Western friends, I am against enlightenment. You are tradition-conscious, woof woof, our common struggle continues, freedom to build hundreds of mosques, but with minarets, here you go, woof woof. Freedom for women to wear veils, woof woof woof." obstructs an equal relationship between migrants and non-migrants, and provides fertile ground for the emergence and growth of extremist positions and radical exclusionary attpitudes on both sides, as the only means it has of combattping the ideology of racial superiority is collective self-aggression and self-humiliation. Perikizi's experience in a foreign land thus sheds light on the intrinsic dynamics governing relations between migrants and non-migrants in Germany. She is ofteen reduced to clichés and stereotypes, with this being particularly evident when two German girls ask her questions that she does not understand and can only answer in monosyllables. Thee girls' questions reveal all of the stereotypes Germans have about migrants, such as whether Perikizi wears a veil. 1 Yet, she also experiences discrimination in the shape of aggressive and violent Turkish nationalism, 2 which prospers in Germany because of the unhealthy relationship Germans have with historical collective guilt and, as a consequence, with cultural otherness. Significcantly, the guiltgiants refuse to help Perikizi and even take the wolf's side when he binds a veil around her head, saying: "DIE DREI SCHULDGEFÜHLE-GIGANTEN: Steh doch, steh doch zu deiner wahren Identität. Keine Angst vor uns Abendländern. Keine Angst vor uns Abendländern. " * (2011, p. **0) In the ficnal scenes, however, it becomes clear that Perikizi's journey has not been in vain despite the humiliation she has suffeered. During her migration journey, she learns to deal with her grandmother's trauma, embracing her perspective and allowing memories to emerge and become part of her own identity. In the conciliatory scene that takes place in the Underworld (Im Hades), which is interspersed with verses from Hölderlin's Hyperion, the two Armenian women and Perikizi's grandfather appear alongside with Hölderlin himself. Thee encounter between Perikizi and the dead women represents a past experience being handed down from generation to generation; it is wisdom that cannot be silenced and beneficts both parties as it enables them to process what happened: "SOLDAT: Wenn Du nicht weiß, wie es weitergeht, musst du zu den Toten zurückkehren, mit uns sprechen. So leben wir auch in dir weiter.
[…] Nicht nur du lernst von den Toten, die Toten lernen auch von dir. " 4 (2011, p. **2) Thee episode ends with a verse from Constantine Cavafy's poem Ithaca, which celebrates being on a journey and the experiences had along the way 1 Özdamar's works deconstruct binary oppositions and envision an alternate third space that allows to break out of the conficnes of organized religion (Murti, 2012, pp. 41-100). 2 On the theme of violence in Özdamar works see Weber (201*,. * "THE THREE GUILTY GIANTS: Stand up, stand up for your true identity. Don't be afraid of us Westerners. Don't be afraid of us Westerners." 4 "SOLDIER: If you don't know how it goes on, you must return to the dead. Speak to us. Theis way we live on in you. [...] Not only do you learn from the dead, but the dead learn from you. " rather than the desire to reach the destination quickly: 1 "Ithaka hat dir eine schöne Reise beschert. / Ohne Ithaka wärest du nicht aufgebrochen. / Jetzt hat es dir nichts mehr zu geben". 2 Thee scene clearly refers to current developments in Turkish society, but also functions as a warning, since it points to the need to discuss what has been at long last. Thee ficnal scene of the play, however, reconnects with the ficrst, as it shows Perikizi sittping in front of a mirror and reciting Titania's words. It is a rejection of the harmonious conclusion suggested in the conciliatory scene in the Underworld, restoring it to nothing but a utopia. By almost entirely reproducing the opening, the ficnal scene removes any teleological purpose from the dramatic action. More realistically, it makes the spectator aware once and for all that it is impossible to come to terms with the past, especially when nationalism and racism are integral parts of a country's history and identity.

CONCLUSION
Like Özdamar's other plays, the hallmark of Perikizi is its surreal, grotesque style. On the one hand, this style takes its cue from Brechtian estrangement (Gezen, 2018, pp. 77-10*); on the other, its mixture of the grotesque, fantastic and carnivalesque is inspired by Bachtin's carnival aesthetics (Mecklenburg, 2007, pp. 85-102). Perikizi wears a donkey mask that she repeatedly takes offe and puts on, ofteen referring to herself as a "Schelm" or a "Narr" (i.e. a rascal or a fool); many of the on-stage characters have the appearance of animals; and bodies are ofteen shown naked performing the most basic human functions. However, these carnivalesque elements are only predominant on Perikizi's journey to Europe in the second part of the play, whereas the ficrst long scene in Istanbul is mostly realistic, with the characters' traumatic experiences retaining a tragic aura. Özdamar succeeds in re-establishing history's tragic nature by recounting the unspeakable trauma of the Armenian genocide from the victims' perspective. Thee function of Perikizi's grandmother and the two Armenian women is to give voice to a past, discussion of which is still forbidden in Turkey. In the second part of the play they act as a tragic counterbalance to German society, whose stereotypes and clichés are ridiculed. * Theis demonstrates that the two nations take a contrasting approach towards their relationship with the past. Thee representatives of Holocaust discourse and collective guilt in Germany are grotesque, ridiculous ficgures, while the Armenian genocide has a painful on-stage presence, as it mourns its victims. Thee diffeerent aesthetic representation of Журнал Фронтирных Исследований. 2021. No 2 | ISSN: 2500-0225 Пограничные исследования в современной европейской литературе | Doi: httpps://doi.org/10.4653 *9/jfs.v6i2.299 a similar historical event is indicative of how this event is perceived in the respective countries: Turkish society keeps silent about it, but German society talks about it too much, thus draining the discourse of all meaning. Perikizi's journey symbolises the dangerous consequences resulting from both attpitudes: the emergence of fresh nationalist and extremist positions in Turkey and an uneasy relationship with cultural otherness in Germany. Perikizi's naive yet sensitive gaze -the gaze of someone who, as her deceased grandfather says, "has a heart" -succeeds in displaying these issues in all their current urgency.
Critics have pointed out that the play's intertextual variety clearly responds to an intercultural strategy of hybridisation (Schlößler, 2010, pp. 79-95). Theis strategy is intended to create a plurality of voices, implying a rejection of the high register in Thee Odyssey, and thus of ancient Greek culture, which was the ficrst to produce a clear cultural dichotomy between West and East, centre and periphery. Theis intertextual strategy evidently contains a critique of the use of myth as a factor of continuity / a direct link from the Greeks to the Europeans, and consequently of a vision that excludes 'barbarians' from the path of civilisation. It is no coincidence that one of the poets quoted in the play is Constantine Cavafy; significcantly, Ithaca is not the only one of his poems quoted, as the play also features verses from Waiting for the Barbarians, which presents the arrival of the 'barbarians' as the solution to the inertia of the present. "Worauf warten wir, versammelt auf dem Marktplatz? Auf die Barbaren, die heute kommen. Warum solche Untätigkeit im Senat? Warum sitzen die Senatoren da, ohne Gesetze zu machen? […] Warum jetzt plötzlich diese Unruhe und Verwirrung? (Wie ernst die Gesichter geworden sind.) Warum leeren Sich die Straßen und Plätze so schnell, und Warum gehen alle so nachdenklich nach Hause? Weil die Nacht gekommen ist und die Barbaren doch nicht Erschienen sind. Und nun, was sollen wir ohne Barbaren tun? Diese Menschen waren immerhin eine Lösung." 1 (Özdamar 2011, *26) Perikizi's experience makes it clear that confronting the past lays the foundations for the construction of individual and collective identity. It should make people rethink the crimes of their predecessors so that the negative parts of their legacy can be cast offe and new one can be sought. Thee reference to Cavafy's poems both contrasts with the discourses Perikizi hears in Germany and reveals that Özdamar's proposed connection to the past departs from a vision of Europe characterised by hierarchical and centralised structures, replacing it with one of Europe as thousands of nonlinear paths moving in all directions, just like the people who embarked on 20th and 21st century migrations and diasporas. Her aim is thus to revive an understanding of Europe's mixed and multiple origins and of the connections between cultures.