Writing from the Margins – and Beyond …

Abstract

In 1987 José F. A. Oliver published his first poetry volume Auf-Bruch in Germany. His standing as a German-speaking poet from Spanish- Andalusian stock was linked to the Gastarbeiterliteratur, or migrant worker literature in Germany, a literature that writes from the margins of both the literary and economic world of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Developments within Oliver's oeuvre over the past twenty years, however, indicate a movement away from the literary periphery into mainstream German literature. This article explores these dynamics, using José F. A. Oliver's writings to illustrate this conjecture.
The problematic boundaries of modernity are enacted in [the] ambivalent temporalities of the nation-space. The language of culture and community is poised on the fissures of
the present becoming the rhetorical figures of the national past. (Bhabha 1990: 294)

Journal for the Study of Religion Vol. 19 (2) 2006: pp. 115-124