Thesis title: House of Difference. Intersectionality as a Tool for Literary Criticism in Contemporary Belgium and Germany
This dissertation explores intersectionality as an analytical framework for contemporary Belgian and German literature, focusing on narratives by women writers from diverse backgrounds – Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Chika Unigwe, Rachida Lamrabet, and Sharon Dodua Otoo – who employ German and Dutch as their literary languages. Grounded in Kimberlé Crenshaw’s foundational scholarship and enhanced through engagement with Black feminist epistemologies and postcolonial critiques, the study demonstrates how intersecting systems of oppression, based on race, gender, class, disability and more, shape both lived experiences and literary representations in European contexts.
The research is structured in three main sections: establishing a rigorous theoretical framework that moves beyond reductive definitions of intersectionality; analysing spatial and corporeal dimensions in selected novels to reveal how urban spaces restrict or enable mobility for marginalised protagonists; and examining how these texts challenge dominant historical discourses through counter – narrative and strategies of rememory. Through close readings contextualised within historical and socio – political frameworks, the study aims at showing how literature functions as a site of negotiation where power relations are both inscribed and contested.
Methodologically, the thesis avoids essentialist categorisations whilst exposing structural mechanisms that marginalise subaltern subjects. It argues that intersectionality, when applied to literary criticism, exposes the interconnectedness of systemic inequalities and amplifies voices traditionally excluded from European literary canons. Preferring a decolonial literary criticism that centres marginalised agency, the research demonstrates how literature can reimagine social hierarchies within the European narrative traditions. Supplemented by interviews with authors Chika Unigwe and Rachida Lamrabet, the study reveals literature’s capacity to challenge hegemonic structures and foster newer and more diverse narratives.