Book description
In this compelling study, Damani J. Partridge explores citizenship
and exclusion in Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall. That event
seemed to usher in a new era of universal freedom, but
post-reunification transformations of German society have in fact
produced noncitizens: non-white and "foreign" Germans who
are simultaneously portrayed as part of the nation and excluded from
full citizenship. Partridge considers the situation of Vietnamese
guest workers "left behind" in the former East Germany;
images of hypersexualized black bodies reproduced in popular culture
and intimate relationships; and debates about the use of the headscarf
by Muslim students and teachers. In these and other cases, which
regularly provoke violence against those perceived to be different, he
shows that German national and European projects are complicit in the
production of distinctly European noncitizens.
"Partridge shows how being included in the body politic can
be a form of social control and exclusion.... Provides a case study
for how one can look at identity politics in connection with the
debates about human or national rights for citizens." -Sander L.
Gilman, Emory University
Damani J. Partridge is Associate Professor in the Department of
Anthropology and in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
at the University of Michigan.
