Article
"Black Lines Matter: Poetry, Racism, Genocide, Cultural Zionism, and Anti-Colonial Solidarity in Else Lasker-Schüler's "Hagar und Ismaël" (1919)." MLN 136, no. 3 (2021): 729-743. doi:10.1353/mln.2021.0050.
MLN
(2021)
Abstract
Abstract
Black Lines Matter: Poetry, Racism, Genocide, Cultural Zionism, and Anti-Colonial Solidarity in Else Lasker-Schüler’s “Hagar und Ismaël” (1919)
An interpretation of Else Lasker-Schüler’s 1919 poem “Hagar und Ismaël” as a response to the 1904 genocide of Herero and Nama people in colonial German Southwest Africa. The poem’s Orientalist images are analyzed as critical undoings of European supremacism. Lasker-Schüler’s anti-colonial solidarity is related to her Judaism, cultural Zionism, and fear of rising antisemitism.
Keywords
- German,
- Jewish,
- poetry,
- colonialism,
- genocide,
- Bible,
- modernism,
- antisemitism,
- anti-Semitism,
- Africa,
- race,
- racism,
- Namibia,
- Zionism,
- solidarity,
- Hagar
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring April 1, 2021
DOI
10.1353/mln.2021.0050
Citation Information
Jonathan Skolnik. ""Black Lines Matter: Poetry, Racism, Genocide, Cultural Zionism, and Anti-Colonial Solidarity in Else Lasker-Schüler's "Hagar und Ismaël" (1919)." MLN 136, no. 3 (2021): 729-743. doi:10.1353/mln.2021.0050." MLN Vol. 136 Iss. 3 (2021) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jonathan_skolnik/9/