Katrin Sieg is a professor of German and European studies at Georgetown University. She has published three books on 20th-century German theater and performance, which explore nationality, race and gender.
This Friday at 4 p.m. she will deliver a free public talk entitled "Queering Asylum: Refugees in Recent European Cinema" in the Pugh Hall Ocora.
AM: From your long list of publications, which do you think are required reading before your talk?
KS: My talk is on a new topic I’m currently researching (titled "Decolonizing the Fortress Europe: stage, screen, museum"), so I haven’t published anything yet. I spent last summer examining the decolonization of ethnology museums in Europe.
I ask how these museums — which were founded during the Colonial Era and often acquired their collections by violent means and bolstered European cultural and racial superiority over "primitive" cultures — are now transforming themselves into intercultural contact zones that foster civic skills for a multicultural world.
Whereas indigenous people and their political struggles are the driving force behind the decolonization of museums in former settler-colonial countries such as Australia or the U.S.A., European museums are engaging only very reluctantly with calls for repatriation, for community co-curation and for more critical reflections on colonial violence. However, I argue that artists have often stepped in to prompt changes.
AM: Could you briefly define "ethnic drag?"
KS: My book, "Ethnic Drag," examines a range of theatrical, journalistic and cinematic examples of racial crossdressing in postwar Germany. Most of the examples I discuss concern white Germans dressing up as Native Americans, Jews or Turks in order to put themselves in the shoes of a particular ethnic or radicalized group, experience social interactions from the perspective of the oppressed and criticize German racism from that perspective.
In more theoretical terms, I consider ethnic and racial identity as performance rather than expressions of a deeper truth. I treat ethnicity and race the way Judith Butler treats gender, namely as a "series of performative acts repeated under duress."
AM: You ask how queer cinema can pose more LGBTQ+-friendly alternatives to the current European asylum system. What problems does the current asylum system pose for them?
KS: The duress derives from societal norms and expectations. For instance, gay, lesbian and transgender asylum seekers are expected to conform to European norms of what a gay man or lesbian looks and acts like to qualify for refugee status in the category of a persecuted social group. If a European judge doesn’t think they behave like lesbians, this would have dire consequences for lesbian asylum applicants. For instance, if you don’t know where a lesbian bar is, how to style your hair or how to describe sexual acts, you might not strike that judge as sufficiently lesbian. If you have been married or have children, those factors could also disqualify refugees, even if their resistance to heterosexual social scripts originally impelled them to flee their countries of origin. The concept of ethnic drag can help us to expose such Eurocentric norms as arbitrary or absurd, in order to question or challenge them.
AM: In your work on the Eurovision (Song) Contest, you discuss definitions of cosmopolitanism that go beyond ethnic diversity. What is wrong with popular ideas of cosmopolitanism?
KS: Cosmopolitan norms and values have guided Europeans towards overcoming the ethnocentrism, racism and nationalism that resulted in mass destruction in the 20th century.
The public memory culture dedicated to coming to terms with the Nazi past, and the multiculturalism that emerged in the past 25 years or so, have helped Europeans embrace cultural diversity and democratic transformation. So there’s nothing wrong with cosmopolitanism. Problems arise when cosmopolitanism is claimed as an innate property of European societies and contrasted with those civilizations supposedly incapable of cosmopolitanism — such as Muslim societies. In that case, cosmopolitanism can serve as exclusion rather than inclusion.
AM: You ask why filmmakers would question the notion of a cosmopolitan, ethnically diverse Europe. However, the migration crisis has made even more Americans aware of the strength of nationalist, neo-fascist movements in Europe. Are these serious challenges to cosmopolitanism in Europe?
KS: Right-wing groups like Pegida and extremist parties like Front National, True Finns or Golden Dawn are opposed to the migrants and refugees arriving in Europe, and seek to repel them with violence in word and deed. But even more moderate or liberal thinkers in Europe often deny Muslim immigrants the capacity for respecting ethnic, cultural and sexual diversity as the prerequisite of participating in a democratic and cosmopolitan society.
Ann Manov is a UF French, English and Spanish senior. Her column appears on Mondays.
