“The Hill We Climb”

“The Hill We Climb”. On the Potential for Reflections from a Cultural Studies Perspective on the Question of the Translators of Amanda Gorman’s Poem with respect to German as a Foreign Language / German as a Second Language Contexts

by Nina Simon (Universität Leipzig)

Starting with the discussion surrounding the choice of translators of Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb,” this paper outlines how contemplating such questions can be beneficial for reflecting on contexts where German is a foreign / second language (GFL / GSL). Aside from the question of Who (translates / speaks), asking additional questions is productive for increasing the complexity of such considerations through additional questions, such as when (is translated / spoken) and where (is translated / spoken), thus demonstrating these questions’ potential suitability for the discourse goal.

Keywords: Identity; Relationality; Discursivity

1. Introduction: Why the question of Who? falls short

January 20, 2021 – The American poet and activist Amanda Gorman recites her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of Joe Biden. Soon afterwards, a Dutch publisher decides to commission the white poet Marieke Lucas Rijneveld to translate the poem into Dutch, which triggers a debate about who should (not) translate this poem. Taking this incident as a starting point, this paper uses a re-contextualization of both the American and German-language discourse to outline to what extent the contemplation of such questions can be beneficial for cultural-scientific reflections and educational processes in contexts where German is a foreign / second language. More specifically, the issue is how translation can be made beneficial for regional and cultural studies, so-called Landeskunde, by making the case for consistently considering the additional questions of When and Where instead of flattening discourse or diminishing its inherent complexity. These sets of issues should ultimately be viewed as interwoven, even if these questions are separated for analytical reasons. There are two points that should be mentioned at the outset: on the one hand, this is not to suggest that none of the voices within this discourse critically examines the reduction implied in the question of Who. For example, Hadija Haruna-Oelker criticizes the “skin color reduction” in an interview with Oliver Glaap and Katrin Gimpel (2021), while Rasha Khayat expresses criticism of “attaching a label [to herself] and letting herself be pigeonholed about what she can say and do, and assuming credibility just because someone has boiled down her biography to two main points and is assumed to be authentic and an expert on the basis of that” (Khayat 2021). Sharon Dodua Otoo (2021) emphasizes that she is “explicitly not saying that only Black people are familiar with Black issues.”

On the other hand, central elements of the issue of who should or should not translate can be brought into focus using the question of Who, such as with Shirin Sojitrawalla’s problematization of structural racism: “The entire Western literary industry is dominated by white people, this could and should be different" (Sojitrawalla 2021) and the interconnected element of “a majority white society” (Kraft 2021).

However, there is something problematic in this discourse, as it essentializes – even in the same piece in which the aforementioned critique is leveled (cf. for instance, Haruna-Oelker 2021) and, in doing so, makes it less complicated. This simplification can, for example, be seen in Frank Heibert’s (2021) statement that he had “better not” answer the question of whether “Rijneveld” should translate Gorman or not?” (ibid.) or Haruna-Oelker assertion that “Amanda Gorman is Black, she is a woman, she has broad understanding of multiple forms of discrimination. Now the question is: Do we need this knowledge of these positions, her positions, in translation?” (Haruna-Oelker 2021).

Although essentialization can be appropriate for strategic purposes (cf. Spivak 2011), if it goes hand in hand with an ambivalent moment, the practice of making a binary distinction between black and white is, after all, a constitutive element of the racist system. The practice of decontextualization that can be ascertained in discourses such as this one (cf. critically Yazdani 2021) is also one that can be discerned in racist discourses. For instance, when discussing the (il)legitimacy of the practice of black facing in theater, within which the omission of omitting this practice’s historical, i.e., colonial context of origin, often functions as the basis for its legitimate (re)production (cf. Lemmle 2012). After a description of the issue’s relevance (2) that draws on Adichie’s writing (2009), the following, with reference to the poem’s German translator trio, first examines the potential of the question of When (2.1), as well as that of the question of Where (2.2), before reflecting on the question of Who (2.3). Finally, within the framework of didactic consideration, it traces the resulting potential with respect to the goal of discursive ability. The paper closes by demonstrating the potential of such reflections with regard to ambivalences in such contexts.

2. Cultural Studies Reflections on Questions of Translators of Amanda Gorman’s Poem and Their Potential for German as a Foreign/Second Language Contexts

In her lecture “The Danger of a Single Story” (2009), the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie problematizes the interaction of power dynamics and stories. Aiming to animate processes of reflection regarding this interaction, she suggests the following questions: How are stories told? Who tells these stories? When are these stories told? How manystories are told? (cf. Aichie 2009: 3, my emphasis). Starting from the fact that stories – at least when conceived of as an abstract topic and when it is assumed that the practice of translation can be reflected upon as one of telling stories– are constantly being generated discursively, questions such as the ones proposed by Adichie can be made beneficial for thinking about the discourse surrounding the question of translators. However, because the re-contextualization carried out below is one in which the questions of When and Where should be given centrality in their intertwining with the question of Who, the questions proposed by Adichie are modified to the extent of adding the question of Where, while the questions of How and How many are abandoned. This is not because they appear insignificant for considerations such as those outlined in this paper, but rather because the questions of When, Where, and Who are a more productive starting point for this paper’s central concern of reflecting on identity as a complex, relational, and ambivalent product of discourse, and because additional questions would go beyond the scope of this paper. Keeping in mind that the goal of discursivity (Hallet 2008; Altmayer 2010) in the context(s) of German as a second / foreign language, I illuminate the potential of such engagement with German-language discourse in order to demonstrate that the choice of translators commissioned by Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, which published the German-language translation of the poem in late March 2021, is no coincidence. More precisely: using the question of When and Where, it becomes understandable why, in addition to Hadija Haruna-Oelker and Uda Strätling, Kübra Gümüşay was commissioned to translate the poem with them. And this why a reflection like the one proposed here can be made beneficial in GFL / GSL lessons for the purpose of reflecting on the interaction of discourse(s) and subject(s). In doing so, the following considerations assume that professional expertise – in this case that of translation and knowledge of power dynamics – is indispensable - Strätling is a poetry translator, the work of Haruna-Oelker and Gümüşay is influenced by their knowledge of power criticism. At the same time, it is necessary to include marginalized actors in such enterprises: not because they (even automatically) think, act and/or translate, or simply are, but because an exclusion of the subject(s) from the discourse(s) – like Haruna-Oelker and Gümüşay – who have the needed expertise, represents a (re)production of structural racism.

2.1 Diversity sells! #BlackLivesMatter and the National Socialist Underground (NSU) – On the Relevance of the Question of When

If one directs, as suggested, the focus of contemplation toward the question of When, and with that, the temporal context surrounding the translators, they reveal both parallels and differences with respect to the contexts in which the poem itself (USA) and its German translation (Germany) were written. This discourse surrounding translators is embedded both in the US-American and the German context in a time of increased criticism of exclusionary mechanisms. These criticisms have, notably, been increasingly formulated by groups that have been marginalized by these mechanisms. In both contexts this discourse is also embedded in a time, in which neoliberalism has recognized that diversity sells very well. Conversely, things that are not staged with (sufficient) diversity no longer sell (quite so) well (cf. Michaels 2008; Ahmed 2011). Because publishers can (also) be seen as neoliberal actors whose primary goal is to increase their financial output, focusing on the When reveals that in both the American and German contexts, it is not primarily the critique of exclusionary mechanisms that is causing companies such as publishers to start considering issues such as who translates a poem (into German). Rather, it is the dynamics of liberalism illustrated above.

With the differences between these two contexts in mind, it can be noted that especially the US was significantly and strongly influenced by the Black-Lives-Matter movement. This movement was also taken up and continued in Germany, but in Germany, there was not only this movement: By focusing on the question of When in the German context, it becomes apparent that the time in question is not only influenced by the Black-Lives-Matter movement, but also by the NSU attacks (cf. Funke 2015; Dürr / Becker 2019). This means that considerations about the question of translators should consider the question of When in the form suggested or in some similar form. Whereas the trigger for the Black-Lives-Matter movement was the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by police officers in the context of an official operation, then one can also note that the NSU was significantly focused on the murder of (assumed) Muslims and that it is thus significant for the German-language translation (based on the aforementioned assumptions) that Kübra Gümüşay, a Muslim woman who is an expert on anti-Muslim racism, was also commissioned to work on it.

2.2 Racism, Workers, and Hegemonial Languages – On the Relevance of the Question of Where

When our gaze is directed to the Where in the sense of asking about geographic context, one can extract parallels and differences in this regard as well. For instance, parallels arise from the colonial past – which, though different in both cases, is still present – and the subsequent and ongoing (re-)production of racism at the individual, structural and discursive levels. Additional similarities can be found when examining systemic racism: in both contexts, for example, a reduction of racism to the individual level can often be identified, that reduces racism to personal attitudes of members of right-wing groups, and in this way omits the structural and discursive level of racism (cf. Arghavan et al. 2019). With regard to the differences, these can be determined with respect to migration patterns, such as the migration to Germany that occurred following the finalization of the so-called guest worker recruitment agreements in the mid-1950s. Workers were systematically recruited as part of these agreements, but it was long assumed that they would return to their countries of origin after their work had been completed. This assumption, and Germany’s accompanying refusal to regard itself as a country of immigrants (unlike the US) was reflected, among other things, by the dearth of German languages classes for the guest workers (cf. Tagesschau 2015), and the prevalence of segregated classes, so-called ’Ausländerregelklassen’ (regular classes for foreigners) (cf. Karakayali et al. 2017: 225) that the children of guest workers had to attend instead of mainstream classes. These classes were taught in their respective native languages to facilitate the most rapid and seamless re-entry into schools in their respective countries of origin. Within the context of contemporary discourses on Germany as a society of immigrants, concerning policies of language(s) in school institutions, for instance, the focus is now on so-called language promotion, which usually solely involves promoting German language acquisition. The exclusionary mechanisms outlined above have not disappeared. Instead, they are shifting: Now it is first and foremost the “monolingual habitus of schools” (cf. Gogolin 1994) and (neo-)linguistic practices (cf. Dirim 2010) that lead to structural exclusions – and this also occurs in cases of school children who are privileged in terms of class, often fluent in English, but not (yet) sufficiently fluent in German. They are excluded by the aforementioned aspects, such as in school contexts (on the “continuity of separation” see Karakayali et al. 2017: 223–236), while individuals with this status in the U.S. experience little to no exclusion with regard to hegemonic language. If these and similar topics that come into focus are addressed through the question of Where, then it is also possible using the geographical context. This is why Kübra Gümüşay, granddaughter of a Turkish guest worker, who works on issues such as racism, was commissioned to translate the poem.

2.3  Complexity and Relationality – On the Relevance of the Question of Who

Before I reflect on the question of Who, here are two quotes that I will later refer to: 

(1) Julia Wissert, currently the Artistic Director at Schauspiel Dortmund and the first Black person to hold this role for a German theater, stated the following regarding her experiences during a research trip to Windhoek, Namibia. “[I] knew that I was the whitest Black person in that gallery. I have privileges that my Namibian colleagues don’t have. I have connections that they don’t have.” (Wissert 2018, 254)

(2) In her novel “Identitti,” Mithu Sanyal has one of her protagonists, the white professor Saraswati, tell Oluchi, one of her Black students: “Then try walking down a street in Lagos, where you will most certainly not be seen as a Black tourist – you’ll be seen as a white woman, a white German tourist.” (Sanyal 2022: 295)

These suggest that the question of Who should constantly be considered after the When and the Where, at least if the revealed complexity and relationality of identity are not eventually ignored. While in both the case of Wissert and that of the fictional character Oluchi, the focus on the When would be a matter of reflecting on the fact that both were born in Germany and therefore the neoliberal, rich North. A focus on the Where could, furthermore, bring to light the fact that holding German citizenship – according to Brecht, the passport is the “most noble part of a person” (Brecht 2003: 7) – leads to a (more) privileged, white(r) position than the Black individuals who encounter them: In the one case real, in the other, fictional, but in both cases in the global South. The complexity and relationality of identity can therefore be conceived as something that understands the question of Who as fundamentally connected with that of When and Where. This is regardless of whether these considerations are made by the Black Artistic Director Julia Wissert or by a white fictional character in a novel. It becomes clear through an examination of the German-language discourse on the question of the translators of Gorman’s poem and can correspondingly be integrated into GFL/ GSL lessons: The quality of an argument – in this case for considering the complexity and relationality of identity – is not dependent upon the speaker’s position as white or Black (essentialized). Instead, it simply depends on understanding such questions as complex and relational. In addition, this illustrates that Kübra Gümüşay’s position in the US is whiter than it is in Germany, and why this is the case. Cf. an observation by Sanyal: “I can remember conferences where Americans complained that there were no PoCs on the podium although there were people on the panel whose families came from Greece or Turkey. In America they would be white, here they are PoCs. There is a completely different history of migration and colonialism, which means completely different political entanglements than in the US” (Schlüter 2021).

2.4 Didactical Considerations

Regarding potential for GFL / GSL contexts emerging from these kinds of reflections, it thus initially becomes apparent that this potential can be realized in relation to what has been mentioned by linking to what is known. Although the focus of this article is on the American context due to its subject matter, the question of translators of Amanda Gorman’s poem can, in principle, be considered in a variety of contexts, i.e., the context of the respective GFL / GSL learners in particular.

Throughout the course of lessons and units, students can engage with a discourse they are already familiar with, in which identity becomes virulent in one way or another and is initiated by interacting with fragments of this discourse, such as newspaper articles. Here, one possible challenge lies in the selection of i.e., newspaper articles written in languages that the teacher might not be able to speak. To the extent that this cannot be accomplished by working with an instructor with native language stills, an alternative approach is to identify the specific discourse with the students during a class session, then have them select fragments from that discourse, bring these examples to class, and present them. Analogous to the structure of this paper, which initially focusses on the When, the resulting interaction with various discourse fragments has potential. This is because students can initially engage with a discourse, they are familiar with, and recall or introduce its specifics during the GFL / GSL lessons to acquaint themselves with how the discourses function (cf. Altmayer et al. 2016: 15). This can then be followed by engagement with the German-language fragments from the discourse in question – with divergent parameters depending on the GFL / GSL students’ specific language level. If choosing newspaper articles as discourse fragments in the first instructional step, articles should also be chosen in the next step (concerning German-language discourse fragments) and no other text type – such as tweets – should be chosen, because otherwise the differences between the various text types would also have to be considered in the lesson. This could unnecessarily increase the complexity, at least in the context of an initial occupation with this field, and thus possibly lead away from the actual teaching goal. Furthermore, newspaper articles are particularly well-suited as exemplary discourse fragments for such a project in class, because the selection of linguistically texts with differing prerequisites that are available in newspapers enables the implementation of such a lesson at different language levels.

In addition to the parallels – in this case the strengthened criticism of the exclusion mechanism and the “diversity sells!” formula propagated by neoliberalism – which can be covered in class using questions like “Which similarities can be found regarding the discourses?,” there are also differences. In this case, these differences include the respective time periods following the killing of George Floyd and the NSU murders, as well as the specifics of German-language discourse. This engagement encourages GFL / GSL students to reflect on subjects and discourses as unavoidably interconnected, as well as to be able to critically relate to these discourses and therefore critically participate in social discourses.

Regarding the question of Where, these considerations can also be implemented toward the goal of enhancing discursivity in GFL / GSL contexts by means of the instructional approaches mentioned above, and in the context of a second step. The significance of engaging with the question of Where also consists in not only demonstrating parallels between different languages that are indicated based on colonial history and the (re-)production of racism. The aim is also to illuminate specifics – for example, the various migration movements and different interactions of cultural capital, hegemonic language(s) policies in institutions of learning – using German-language discourse. Julian Warner (2021: 7) aptly writes that “discourses migrate”:  

 “They travel along with their transporters along routes used by air, ship, and undersea cables, from port to port, to new regions and contexts. Their concepts are picked up, abbreviated, revised, and re-read. They are urgently needed, not heard, expanded, or discarded. […] The experts are hyped, invited […]. They represent their discourse. They become the subject of ‘their’ discourse.”

This suggests that engaging with the question of Where in GFL / GSL instruction can lead to developing a more elaborate understanding of discourse and the corresponding interconnection between discourse and subject. Possibly this could also be made productive in contexts that focus on translation practices in textbooks or an instruction setting, and thus not on so-called regional and cultural studies. This is because considerations such as the one outlined could bring into focus that the practice of translation, similar to the traveling discourses described by Warner, also constantly creates something new, and for that reason also requires continuous critical examination.

Finally, in a third step regarding the question of Who, parallels can also be produced by engaging with the selected and/or additional successively augmenting discourse fragments. On the one hand, the existence of power dynamics shapes resulting positions of privilege or marginalization. On the other hand, there are differences that can be illustrated by means of the procedure above, which stimulates reflections on power dynamics, including the development of subjects’ interwoven positions (historical, geographical, and always discursive), and therefore complexity and relationality as well. The shortest way to formulate such a consideration and therefore a possible teaching task is: Who is where, when, and why (not) (so) Black or rather white (and how is this related to discourses)?Here the challenge consists in not letting these undertakings devolve into an arbitrary anything goes and is not limited to GFL / GSL instruction. Instead, these questions should inspire reflections using a cultural studies approach, such as those that are based on a specific (poststructuralist) understanding of the subject.

Following a critical examination of the production of scholarly knowledge (GFL / GSL), it would also be possible to explore the extent to which the aforementioned results could possibly even be crucial for GFL / GSL contexts. It also appears worthwhile to initially deal with the question ofWhoin particular, within the framework of 1) university GFL / GSL contexts and 2) with parallels to other modes of oppression, such as the existence of power dynamics and the resulting positions of marginalization and privilege, to explore the specifics of German-language discourse. This means becoming familiar with, for example, the (if nothing else, discursive) evolution of the power dynamics of immanent subject positions, yet it represents the main prerequisite for the subsequent practical teaching considerations that aim to enable GFL / GSL students to participate in German-language discourse on identity, and therefore position themselves critically.

3. Summary: Reflecting on Identity as an Ambivalent Construct

An approach such as the one outlined above can in GFL / GSL contexts contribute to developing a critical awareness of the dilemma inherent in focusing on a single power relationship (here racism) and the resulting omission of other power relationships, including their interaction. This could also help the problem of a direct transfer of discourses – in this case, the transfer of the American discourse to the German-speaking context. However, this leads, among other things, to us “first associating racism with Black bodies. When one considers the massive Black-Lives-Matter mobilization in response to the killing of George Floyd and the respectively weak societal reaction to the attack in Hanau, it provokes the question of how limited our discourses are if we cannot even talk about the racist exploitation of those who fix our cars, deliver our packages, or harvest our asparagus” (Warner 2021: 11 f.).

Ultimately, what is perhaps the best among such approaches consists of stimulating (self-)critical reflections on the ambivalence of such contexts, and therefore the question of Who and of identity. In this way, reflections such as those set out in this text can be aimed at (re)thinking simplified positions in complex ways and criticizing the problems associated with discourses that omit ambivalence. At this point, it is perhaps hardly surprising that Wissert’s aforementioned considerations are followed by this sentence: “I was and am aware of this and will try to find a way to deal with my own position’s ambivalence” (Wissert 2018: 254), and that the character of Saraswati in Sanyal’s novel is also depicted in an extremely ambivalent way (cf. Hartauer 2021; Kramatschek 2021).

Using such approaches, it is possible to stimulate a reflection on the GFL / GSL that is integral to postcolonial and migration-societal relations, including the moments of ambivalence that they form a part of, and in this way possibly at least arrive at insights similar to those described by Kwame Anthony Appiah in The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity(2018: 32): “However much identity bedevils us, we cannot do without it. You’ll recall the old joke. A man goes to see a psychiatrist. He says, ‘Doctor, my brother’s crazy – he thinks he’s a chicken’. The psychiatrist says, ‘Well, why don’t you bring him in?’ And the fellow replies, ‘Oh, I would, but we need him out there laying the eggs’.”

This text is a slightly modified translation of the following text:
Simon, Nina (2022b): ‚Den Hügel hinauf.‘ Zum Potential kulturwissenschaftlicher Reflexionen auf die Frage der Übersetzer*innen des Gorman’schen Gedichts für DaF/DaZ-Kontexte. In: Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Zeitschrift zur Theorie und Praxis des Faches Deutsch als Fremdsprache. 4/2022, 228-237.

Translated by Bradley Schmidt
www.bradley-schmidt.com
https://www.philol.uni-leipzig.de/institut-fuer-anglistik/institut/abteilung-sprachpraxis

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ZDF Aspekte (2021): Wer darf wen übersetzen? Die Debatte um Amanda Gorman. Unter: https://www.zdf.de/kultur/aspekte/amanda-gorman-debatte-wer-darf-wen-uebersetzen-100.html [04.05.2021].