Public Lecture by Esra Özyürek: 'Wrong Emotions for the Holocaust: Invisible Contributions of the Turkish- and Arab-Germans to the Cosmopolitan Memory Culture''

Esra Özyürek, Associate Professor and Chair of Contemporary Turkish Studies at the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE, will deliver a public lecture: 'Wrong Emotions for the Holocaust: Invisible Contributions of the Turkish- and Arab-Germans to the Cosmopolitan Memory Culture' It is often assumed in Germany that Turkish- and Arab-Germans cannot or are not willing to relate to the Holocaust, the central negative foundational myth of German and European identity. Fieldwork reveals the actual complex and diverse ways working class minorities emotionally engage with the Holocaust. An analysis of the wide spectrum of emotions, including pride, fear, envy, mistrust, and withdrawal, the Holocaust triggers among different groups reveals the relational and politically contextualized nature of these reactions. By consistently being judged as wrong, amoral, and out of place, minority emotions are stripped of their political capacity to critique contemporary racialization in Germany. Esra Özyürek is Associate Professor and Chair of Contemporary Turkish Studies at the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is the author of 'Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion and Conversion in the New Europe' (2014) and 'Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey' (2007) and the editor of 'The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey' (2007).