Marusjas Strebergarten: German for foreigners or language destabilization in the theatre of Nino Haratischwili

Abstract

In Die Barbaren. Monolog für eine Ausländerin, German dramatist and writer born in Tblisi, Nino Haratischwili (1983), deals with intercultural tension among natives, migrants and refugees in the current German society. She also builds a monologue which can be read as a criticism of integration policies through foreign language learning. Through the otherness discourse (Hamed, 2016) of a foreigner woman, the play represents tensions around ideological uses of the word, and symbolic disputes among its speakers. The monologue voice undermines the language semantic hierarchy through glossing the speech of the other, according to what Jacqueline Authier-Revuz (2011) calls discursive heterogeneity. This resource, typical of the scenario set by postdramatic theater (Lehmann, 1999), works along with other discursive mechanisms such as displaying signifiers as objects and a persistent parody reflection articulated by as if. Through analysing these ways of language destabilization, I suggest to make a dissenting enunciation space visible; one which projects, beyond the scenic space, the contest between the migrant enunciating subject and the discursive network of main languages.