Puo-an Francisca Wu Fu: Digital Platforms and the Geopolitics of English in Mithu Sanyal’s Novel "Identitti"

Puo-an Francisca Wu Fu

Freie Universität Berlin

puo-an.wu@fu-berlin.de

Digital Platforms and the Geopolitics of English in Mithu Sanyal’s Novel “Identitti”

Introduction

This paper explores the role of digital platforms as well as mobile messaging applications in the proliferation of the English language, specifically as imports from the United States of America to Germany’s academic and anti-racist activist sphere in Mithu Sanyal’s political novel Identitti (2021).[1] Sanyal was born in 1971 in Düsseldorf-Oberbilk; she holds degrees in German and English Literature as well as a doctoral degree in Cultural Studies (Kulturwissenschaften).[2] As a journalist and essayist, she has published extensively in both public and private media outlets, predominantly in German. To date, Identitti is the first of her two German-language novels. The author’s academic and journalism background is important to note as Identitti textually incorporates both styles of writing. Its plot revolves around a fictional public debate on the politics of race that very much engages with the political reality in contemporary Germany. The spaces of debate are equally intrinsic to the political nature of the novel’s main theme, which is the relationship between university classrooms, broadcast and print media, and the internet’s digital spaces. Equally central to the novel’s political relevance is its setting in 2020: Identitti textually incorporates reflections on human virtual interactions in the context of the Hanau murders and the COVID-19 pandemic.

At an impressive length of 431 pages (including an afterword by the author and two lists of references and recommendations), Identitti offers ample material for analysis and interpretation. This paper will focus on the use of English in the novel and offer reflections on the geopolitics of language in contemporary Germany. I will draw from critiques of the U.S. dominance from scholars intellectually situated outside of the North Atlantic geopolitical zone centered on the EU and the U.S.A. These are a group of social scientists studying Brazilian, Argentinian, and Chilean academic publishingpractices, philosopher Moacyr Ayres Novaes Filho, and cultural studies scholar 陳光興 / Kuan-Hsing Chen. With Identitti as its primary source, this paper argues that English from the U.S.A. is a geopolitical supra-language, especially when it comes to political discourse on race in Germany. First, Sanyal’s plot offers reflections on the personal impact of newer digital media’s real-time speed over broadcast journalism and the university as a physical space. Second, the novel as a linguistic corpus demonstrates the dominant position of English in German academic and antiracist activist circles, particularly in their online interactions. Following these reflections, the supra-language of English connects digital immediacy with the hermetic nature of academic knowledge and the enduring prestige of film, television, print, and broadcast media.

Contemporary Critiques of the U.S.A.’s Geopolitical Dominance as Reflected in Language

Scholarship on the U.S.A.’s dominance in connection to the current standing of English as a geopolitically hegemonic language is as complex and extensive as the subject itself, even within the country’s borders.[3] Instead of reducing this vast landscape, I will use a framework derived from two standpoints that consider the U.S.A.’s geopolitical standing through the lens of the English language. This framework will serve as a vectorial approach[4] toward the use of English in Identitti. The goal is to approach contemporary Germany’s political relationship to the U.S.A. from a critical distance outside of the North Atlantic geopolitical zone.

First, there is a series of reports based on the Ecapin 2018[5] comparative survey on the role of English-language publications and internationalization in Brazilian, Chilean, and Argentinian universities. These were the result of a collaboration between social scientists Fernanda Beigel, Ana Maria Almeida, Denis Baranger, and Juan Ignacio Piovani (see Almeida, Baranger, and Piovani 2022; Beigel, Almeida, and Piovani 2022). Their analyses identify the origin, practice, and perception of publishing in English as a way to enter the arena they term ciencia mundial (world science). Their investigation centers on questions of language, globalization, and universal prestige. According to their studies, Eugene Garfield and the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI, founded by Garfield in the U.S.A. after the Second World War) developed the criteria and standardized indexation practices that have universal status today. ISI would become the current Web of Science and begin an era of expanding standardization of citation formats on a global scale as well as of the English-language scientific paper as such well outside of its original geopolitical zone (Piovani 2023, 12:07).

Out of the several pertinent issues in these reports, I would like to highlight two aspects. On the one hand, journals from the U.S.A. are the utmost legitimate form of scientific production in almost every discipline. Academically speaking, English as linguistic capital is both dominant and hipercentral (hypercentral), aside from minor discipline-specific deviations (such as German for philosophy and French for psychology). In the years leading to the twenty-first century, between 85% and 95% of publications in mainstream circulation were in English (Almeida, Baranger, and Piovani 2022, 68–69). Like Germany, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile are three nations in which English is neither a common nor a state-specific language. According to these studies, written English in these countries is a vital resource (and barrier) within a system that values the world-scale mainstream. Thus, languages are asymmetrical. Each is attributed a hierarchical value. English is a skill cultivated in the spaces where the elite is educated; the language’s value is subsequently linked to other social and political resources within that space (2022, 19).

On the other hand, the studies disprove a correlation between previous instruction in English, language ability, and the quantity of publications. In percentages, 98,2% of scholars surveyed in Brazil, 94,2% in Argentina, and 90,4% in Chile had published in English at least once (2022, 56). However, of those who had minimal or no knowledge of the language, 80% of scholars in Brazil had published in English versus 60% in Chile and 42,9% in Argentina. In view of this contrast, the authors posit that the dominance of English is relative to systems of professionalization and internationalization within individual academic spaces (2022, 67). That is to say, the epistemological hypercentrality of English in academia reflects world-scale power asymmetries. English is a valuable resource that both serves and upholds the elite in non-English-speaking academia, given that it is valued by the culture within that system. In short, they observe that the academic publication system cultivates elitism through the use of English. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the system operates by profusely citing English-language works, such that its legitimacy depends on the prestige of English-language publications, the system itself does not contribute to the dominant English-language mainstream.

A broader consequence of the hypercentrality of English is what philosopher Moacyr Novaes calls a supra-language. Novaes and Piovani have collaborated on several occasions as principal investigators at the Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America (Mecila). In 2023, Novaes hosted Piovani’s Mecila Distinguished Lecture on the Ecapin surveys at the University of São Paulo. The lecture was contextualized in Novaes’s graduate curriculum on the conflict between dominant languages and insubordinate voices. It concluded with a commentary by sociologist and theorist Renato Ortiz, well-known author of the globalization concept mundialização (Piovani 2023). The results of this interdisciplinary discussion on the hypercentrality of English point toward the broad social relevance of the geopolitics of language and dominance. Novaes’s use of the prefix ‘supra’ adds theoretical scope to the Ecapin system-specific approach by emphasizing the position of English as an external, all-encompassing frame that, crucially, is unaware of the makings of its own universality.[6][6] The concept of supra-language thus describes the geopolitical relationship between multiple languages in relational terms, broadening the scope beyond university spaces.

The second standpoint comes from cultural studies scholar 陳光興 / Kuan-Hsing Chen, specifically in his contribution to Kandice Chuh and Karen Shimakawa’s edited volume Orientations. Mapping Studies in the Asian Diaspora (2001). In his contribution “Missile Internationalism”, 陳 / Chen begins his text by indicating that he is “the only author positioned outside the geopolitical space of U.S. academia” (陳 / Chen 2001, 172). He also observes a “lack of acknowledgement of the enunciating site” (2001, 172) as a common practice in the U.S.A., one he terms the “we are the world” trope (2001, 172): A “political unconscious that blocks out reflexivity to utter its own geocolonial location in the nation-state” (2001, 172). Thus, he maintains that “the question of U.S. imperialism has not been adequately posed” and sees “an epistemological break between Eurocentrism and Americancentrism” (2001, 174). The year of publication is important, as 陳 / Chen also observes an “emerging paradigm shift toward the ‘postcolonial’ episteme” (2001, 173). As in the previous case, this one also touches on the hypercentrality of the English language:  

[In 1996] Stuart Hall openly acknowledged the overprivileging of the ‘English’ experience in the current state of postcolonial studies. This overprivileging might have to do with the historical experiences of key proponents of postcolonial studies, who came out of the English (ex-)colonies, or with ‘English’ being the hegemonic language, which has rendered publication in other languages rather invisible. (2001, 174) 

This critical standpoint is a part of his long-standing body of de-imperialism and decolonial scholarship on the so-called Cold War in the Western Pacific. Hence, 陳 / Chen offers a series of Western Pacific examples for what he terms “colonial identification” as accounting for “the mission of U.S. imperialism in the context of East Asia” (2001, 175). He submits that the geopolitical superpower “in the postwar era has become that central figure of identification,” citing the “X Can Say No” phenomenon, such as “Japan Can Say No” to point out that “the United States is the object-unity of this ‘no’” (2001, 177–178). More importantly, he observes about the “U.S. complex” in Japan:

Not only has [U.S.] American English become the first foreign language to be acquired, that nation’s institutional forms have been ‘copied’. The United States gradually became the routinized, almost the only possible, space for ‘advanced’ education; for both the state bureaucrat and the oppositional elites, ‘American’ experiences have become the reference points of their own legitimation. (2001, 179, italics mine) 

As in the previous comparative case, this author posits a systemic and hegemonic centrality of English in academia in relation to the U.S.A.’s imperialist geopolitics. 陳 / Chen’s arguments about the Japanese elite’s language education and legitimation of power are strikingly similar to those in the first study, especially in terms of the complex relationship with outside dominance. Copying the U.S.A. is, in fact, self-identification; outside dominance becomes as much a colonial identification as a resource.

In combination, these two standpoints suggest that the geopolitics of English can be studied comparatively in terms of academic internationalization through publishing culture; elitism within a system of resources; copying as a form of legitimation and identification; and the social geopolitics of written English in non-English-speaking places. The supra-language concept describes the ensuing result: The “we are the world” trope encoded in English from the U.S.A. becomes a reference point of identification. 

Mithu Sanyal’s Identitti: Plot Summary

Sanyal’s protagonist is Nivedita Anand, a young German university student with German-Polish and Indian parents. Nivedita becomes entangled in a scandal surrounding Saraswati, a professor of postcolonial studies at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf-Oberbilk. Named after the Hindu goddess, Saraswati is famous for her books Decolonize your Soul and PopPostKolonialismus as well as for her essay “White Guilt. Warum niemand weiß sein will.” Nivedita comes to see her as a role model, maternal figure, and eventually an object of sexual desire. Initially, Saraswati is a prominent personality and media darling. Her first appearance in the novel is a televised debate with Jordan Peterson, possibly as a play on Slavoj Žižek and Peterson’s encounter in 2019 and the social media polarization that lead to the event taking place. Her courses center on postcolonial studies and on critical race studies, thus becoming popular among racialized students like Nivedita and her friends. In fact, Nivedita’s blog titled “Identitti” largely deals with her thoughts from the university classroom as well as her romantic relationships, experiences of racism in Düsseldorf, Birmingham, and in her native Essen. Her blog purports to be transcripts of her conversation with the Hindu goddess Kali, who is initially perceived only by Nivedita. Her intimate admiration of Saraswati takes a sharp turn when she is invited to give a radio interview at Deutschlandfunk. Here, Nivedita expresses her unwavering support of her beloved professor.

Unbeknownst to Nivedita, moments before the interview, Saraswati’s brother Konstantin had publicly revealed her true identity. Sarah Vera Thielmann, a middle-class German with no Indian descent. She is instantly and scandalously exposed in every outlet. Comparisons to Rachel Dolezal quickly begin to dominate all print, digital, and broadcast mass media as well as social media platforms. Upon exiting the building, Nivedita’s mobile vibrates with endless messages and notifications, the majority criticizing her apparent defense of Saraswati. Nivedita falls into a personal and social crisis. Her on-and-off periods of doom-scrolling through endless posts from real and fictional personalities eventually take her to Saraswati’s door. A large portion of the novel takes place in the disgraced ‘transracial’ professor’s tastefully decorated apartment, where Nivedita wrings with her fallen idol for both refuge and answers. Soon enough, they are joined by Konstantin and Priti, Nivedita’s Brummie cousin. Even when a protest forms outside the apartment, Saraswati refuses to deliver an honest explanation for her deceit.

The suspended tension is finally broken when the news of the Hanau terrorist murders of 2020 begins to seep into reality through their screens. The horror of the racist shootings catalyzes Saraswati’s only moment of honesty and leads to the novel’s sobering dénouement. Suddenly, all four characters are able to see Kali, who performs an exorcism to purge Saraswati and force the truth out of Sarah Vera. The plot ends with Saraswati returning to broadcast media where she rebrands her so-called transracial identity as a criticism of whiteness. She accepts the chair of Identity and Solidarity, specializing in Whiteness Studies, at Oxford University. Nivedita, now older and somewhat wiser after the experience, brings the novel to a close with a blog entry in which she reflects on the events and forgives Saraswati / Sarah Vera.

The University, the Internet, and Broadcast/Print Media as a System

Although Identitti is primarily narrated by a sympathetic third person omniscient voice, the novel’s narrative pace is dictated by the insertion of Nivedita’s blog posts (including saved drafts), transcripts of television and radio programs, newspaper headlines, e-mails, search engine results, as well as social media feeds and digital messages that appear in intradiegetic real time. These are differentiated from narration and dialogue via indentation, font type, and font face (cursive, bold, etc.). It is also notable that social media feeds include user handles and multiple answers to individual posts. Some are real and highly recognizable public figures, especially from German anti-racist circles.[7] Their activities appear alongside those of the novel’s characters when a character turns on a device. The novel textually differentiates media in intradiegetic real time through stylistic choices, which creates a visual sense of narrative pace and intertwined spaces. The relationship between spaces changes between the first part, middle, and resolution of the novel. In many ways, it accompanies Nivedita’s journey toward maturity. Nivedita’s initial trust in her professor and her blind admiration of the knowledge contained in books begin to unravel as the tumult of the scandal grows. Her painful journey ends with her gaining insight about the politics between these spaces. Overall, the novel depicts the university, the internet, and media as an elitist system as analyzed by Piovani and his colleagues: a system that depends on an outside legitimacy and mainstream relevance.

I will now contrast the beginning and end parts of the story in order to show the shift in the political relationship between these spaces. In the process, I will seek to answer two questions: In what ways do digital and traditional media compete with one another? How does the relationship between spaces by the end of the plot resemble a system of social and political resources?

At the beginning of Identitti, the stylistic differentiation between media and narration creates a sense of frantic competition between the spaces of the university, the internet, and journalist media. As mentioned in the introduction, Nivedita learns of Saraswati’s scandal much too late. In fact, she stays in her blissful bubble of ignorance for quite a while. After exiting the Deutschlandfunk building, she enters the Museum Ludwig to use the WiFi (“sie mochte fremdes WLAN, das war so demokratisch,” Sanyal 2021, 23) and posts a picture of a kitten on her blog and on Instagram. It will not be until she is back in her apartment that she receives Priti’s call and hears of Saraswati’s brother. This prompts Nivedita to enter “Saraswati” into a search engine to catch up with the news of the last twenty-four hours. The book shows headlines by the Huffington Post, SPIEGEL ONLINE, and taz (2021, 28). Broadcast radio, the internet, the university, and Nivedita’s non-digital life are spaces that constantly protrude into each other, and all compete for the protagonist’s attention. Indeed, in the immediate days after her professor’s fall from grace, the protagonist struggles to keep her devices off as she equally needs and fears to read what the internet and the press are saying about her. She eventually decides to go to Saraswati’s apartment. Here, time grinds to a halt and only periodically restarts once someone dares to turn on a device. Neither Nivedita nor Sarah Vera will find peace or answers until almost the end of the novel.

To make matters worse for Nivedita, the novel textually prolongs her anguish by inserting scenes of the past that depict her relationship with Saraswati, her parents, her friends, and her love interests. It is through these relationships that the reader cumulatively comprehends the severity of her favorite professor’s downfall. These scenes from the past portray Nivedita’s daily experiences of racism and the resulting feeling of never fitting in. They range from intrusive taxi drivers insisting on asking “Wo kommst du her?” (2021, 116) and not accepting her answers to difficult conversations with her parents, both of whom dismiss her experiences as not real violence in comparison to their own during their youth.

Daily racism and generational disconnect outside the university contrast with what Nivedita experiences within the walls of Saraswati’s classroom. She asks all white students to (temporarily) exit the classroom on the very first day. The university becomes a safe haven, to the point that knowledge becomes refuge and community for her and her classmates. In addition to the blog posts where the protagonist praises Saraswati’s syllabus, several chapters begin with excerpts from Nivedita’s notes. The frequency and extent of Nivedita’s blind exultation of Saraswati’s teachings produce a comical effect not unlike dramatic irony,[8][8] given that the novel almost opens with the scandalous revelation. The narrator enhances this effect by revealing that Saraswati’s students did not actually understand much of the material, but rather felt inducted into a community with its own language: 

Saraswati schenkte Nivedita ein Vokabular und eine Sprache für ihr Leben. Und nicht nur ihr. Im Kreis der von Saraswati ausgewählten Studierenden kommunizierten sie in einem fantastischen akademischen Abkürzungscode miteinander, in dem ein Wort ganze gewaltige Gedankenkonzepte ersetzen konnte: desi, happa, subaltern. Imagined communities, critical race theory, Intersektionalität. Und alle nickten wissend und bei jedem dieser Worte, zwei Silben, drei Silben, ein paar Zungenbewegungen nur, entstand ein ungeheuerliches, nie gekanntes Gefühl von Gemeinsamkeit, auch wenn die meisten nur vage Vorstellungen davon hatten, was eine imagined community sein sollte und Subalterne nicht einmal erkannt hätten, wenn sie ihnen mit Petersilie garniert auf einem Tablett serviert worden wären. 

Even in these moments, the internet protrudes into the university space.  

Was allerdings auch daran liegen mochte, dass sie davon überzeugt waren, in Wirklichkeit selbst die Subalternen zu sein, Saraswati machte das so wütend, dass sie ihnen einen Vortrag von Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, die den Begriff subaltern berühmt gemacht hatte, aus dem Internet zeigte, doch auch Spivak konnte niemals wirklich sagen, wer die Subalternen denn nun genau waren. (2021, 101–102)

Such vulnerable and self-deprecating remarks about the lack of intellect in academia are present throughout Identitti. They take the novel’s humor right to the brink of self-defeating parody. More importantly, such narrative moments establish that the exclusivity of language stems not from a cult-like intellectual elitism, but from the characters’ need for community.

Unfortunately for Nivedita, Saraswati’s past identity is not the only revelation that makes her world fall apart. As tensions move towards their climax in Saraswati’s apartment, Sarah Vera reveals to Nivedita a crucial piece of information about her motivation to teach at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität: 

»Diskriminierung ist keine begrenzte Ressource auf dieser Welt.«

»Ja, aber Professuren für Postcolonial Studies schon!«

»Liebchen, glaubst du, dass es in Düsseldorf überhaupt einen Postcolonial-Studiengang gäbe, wenn es mich nicht gegeben hätte?«

[…]

»Die Uni wollte mich, und sie wollte meinen Bestseller, und sie hatte auch nichts gegen einen Orchideenstudiengang mit einem hippen Namen, der ihr mediales Interesse garantieren würde. Aber ich hätte auch Porn Studies unterrichten können, wenn ich das gewollte hätte.«

»Na, so mutig ist die Düsseldorfer Uni dann doch wieder nicht«, warf Toni [Saraswati’s partner] ein.

»Unterschätz mal nicht meinen Marktwert.« (2021, 223)

This bitter exchange shatters Nivedita’s sense of refuge and community inside the classroom walls. Saraswati’s harsh words reveal the relationship between the university, the publication industry, and mass media outlets as one system that operates in terms of the value that one can bring to another. In view of this market logic, Saraswati’s initial remark about discrimination as a resource comes across not only as a devastating betrayal of her students’ trust and admiration. It also represents a stark shift from the competing spaces at the beginning of the novel to a self-serving complicity between the university and mass media in all its forms. It is neither community nor knowledge that legitimize the university, but its place within a system of interests and resources. This is arguably Saraswati’s more shocking revelation in Identitti. 

English as the Supra-language of Identification and Legitimacy

These excerpts show how stylization and plot end with a brusque experience about the systemic relationship between the university, the internet, and mass media. They are also examples of the innumerable instances where words and phrases in English are not marked as a foreign language (via italics or punctuation, for example), except for the one use of “subaltern” where it could equally be read as a German adjective. The language of community in Saraswati’s university classroom is predominantly English, as is the case in the novel’s social media interactions. The disconnect between the need for identification among the students and Saraswati’s awareness of the resource system in its totality is addressed in two emotionally heightened moments. The first is Saraswati’s high-strung response to Priti’s challenging attitude during one seminar session:

All euer Wissen über Rassismus und Kolonialismus ist importiert! Ist das deutlich genug für dich? […] Genauso wie eure Fixierung auf Hautfarbe! Importiert aus den USA! Bloß bedeutet Color dort etwas anderes als hier, und PoC [Person of Color] ebenfalls. (2021, 166)

The second is a pleading statement by a devastated Nivedita to Saraswati in her apartment:

Aber du hast mir überhaupt erst eine Sprache gegeben, um über meine Opfererfahrungen zu sprechen (2021, 282)

With 陳 / Chen in mind, this may also be read as a case of the U.S.A.’s dominance becoming a reference point after the Second World War. Or they could invoke the imported legitimacy and experiences that act as means of self-identification. Indeed, the fact that “Color” (U.S.A.’s and not British spelling of the word) is capitalized (as German nouns are) but not italicized to mark it as a foreign word could be interpreted as a stylistic expression of adopted and adapted identity through an external reference point. Still, however apt陳 / Chen’s concept of colonial identification may be, Identitti presents another layer of complication to the use of English from the U.S.A., one that makes it difficult to discern the exact power dynamics at play. Despite the heavy-handed adaptation of English terms and words in Identitti ’s fictional depiction of a real university, and even despite 陳 / Chen’s anecdote about Stuart Hall and the dominance of English-language publications in Postcolonial Studies, there is one place where English remains even more dominant: the internet. This is arguably the most important place in the novel, even more so than the university. In the uncomfortable opening to Nivedita’s interview at Deutschlandfunk Radio, the interviewer first problematizes the question “Wo kommst du her?” (2021, 15) and asks Nivedita to explain the term “PoC” (2021, 15). Nivedita’s displeased knee-jerk reaction is to answer that they are the people who are always asked where they are from, to which the interviewee responds by asking her that very question. Defensively, our protagonist answers: “Aus dem Internet. Ich lebe im Internet” (2021, 15).

In Identitti, the space of the internet adds another level of geopolitics to the well-established paradigm of the postcolonial episteme as predicted by 陳 / Chen two decades ago. Following Novaes’s understanding of “supra-language,” English operates as a geopolitical supra-language. The novel shows and is itself an example for English as the supra-language of the North Atlantic geopolitical zone, as the primary language of the German anti-racist activism community, and as the principal reference point for Nivedita’s internet identity. The internet in Identitti is what happens when the experience of geopolitical unconsciousness in the U.S.A. becomes the standard in politicizing German antiracism.

There are two cases in the novel that are representative of the use of supra-language in the antiracist German internet. Nivedita often refers to her “digitale Community” (2021, 84) or “digitaler Clan” (2021, 85), by which she means her followers on social media platforms. All of these platforms are owned by the big tech industry in the U.S.A.: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, along with Etsy and YouTube which only occasionally appear throughout the novel. As with the university space, the enveloping hyper-centrality of English on the internet is also treated with a touch of humor. One of Nivedita’s blog entry reads:

Bisher gab es drei Wahrheiten in meinem Leben:

1. Kapitalism kills

2. Books can save your soul

3. Saraswati is one of us

Keine Ahnung, warum Wahrheiten wahrer erscheinen, wenn sie auf Englisch sind. Und ja, ich weiß, dass Kali dazu eine Theorie hat, die etwas mit Kulturimperialismus zu tun hat. »Das ist keine Theorie, das ist eine Analyse«, korrigiert mich Kali.

Eine Analyse, die wahrscheinlich sogar stimmt.

»Wahrscheinlich?«

Okay, okay, du hast recht, Kali. Aber hier geht es gerade gar nicht um Kulturimperialismus, sondern…

»Nicht?«

Ja, verdammt, auch damit hat Kali leider recht. Denn wenn stimmt, was wir in den letzten Stunden über Saraswati erfahren haben, dann muss ich ernsthaft anfangen, mir Gedanken über kulturelle Dominanz und Imperialismus und all das zu machen, nur halt invertiert und auf den Kopf gestellt und… und hier explodiert mein Kopf, weil er gar nicht erst anfangen will, sich die Implikationen auszumalen. (2021, 65–66)

Nivedita’s hesitation to consider the greater implications contrasts with the consistent barrage of phrases and posts entirely in English, some humorously crass:

Frau Kunkel @TruthFinder2 I LOOKED EVERWHERE BUT I COULDNT FIND A FUCK #boring (2021, 268)

Some comically undercut a tender sentiment, such as Nivedita’s (italicized) re-post on her blog of a poem by Instagram user empathey_galore (not italicized):

Aus den

Äußerungen vieler

BIPoC zu

#Saraswatigate

geht ein Schmerz

hervor, der

offenbart, wie

verzweifelt wir

nach Vorbildern an

deutschen

Universitäten

Suchen müssen.

Ich fand das so auf den Punkt gebracht, dass ich den Post ausdruckte und über meinen Schreibtisch hängte. (Er ist übrigens in Baker-Miller-Pink mit weißer Schrift, sehr nice.) (2021, 401) 

In these and many such posts throughout the novel, English is used without further explanation or translation, along with specific cultural and political references to the U.S.: the acronym “BIPoC” for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; “gate” as a suffix and reference to the Richard Nixon Watergate scandal; “Post” for Beitrag; Alexander G. Schauss’ invention of “Baker-Miller-Pink” to reduce aggressive behavior in Washington and California correctional facilities (Schauss 1985); and the interjection “nice.” It is in this politicized space that neologisms such as “Rollenmodelle” (Sanyal 2021, 35, 401–402), “trenden” (2021, 210) or phrases such as “toughere Menschen” (2021, 119) and “keine woken Studierenden” (2021, 210) become common practice. The purpose is not so much meaning of the words, but to use the supra-language that carries the legitimacy of a universalized experience, one that acts as a reference point for identification in the German internet. 

Conclusions: “Saraswati go home!”

Identitti—which, according to Sanyal, is pronounced like the English word ‘identity’—is a novel that does not shy away from undermining its characters for comedic effect or to sway the reader to their side. The novel achieves this despite the highly political events surrounding both Saraswati’s Dolezalian scandal and the right-extremist murders of Gökhan Gültekin, Sedat Gürbuz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kenan Kurtović, Vili Viorel Păun, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Ferhat Unvar, and Kaloyan Velkov on February 19, 2020 in Hanau. One may conclude that Sanyal does not try to offer any answers or impose any judgements, but that the author rather portrays the state of things without taking herself or her novel too seriously.

Thus, the crowd chanting “Saraswati go home!” (2021, 252) outside of her apartment evades any attempt to conclusively interpret the meaning of the gesture. On the one hand, this is a clear reference to the West-German anti-occupation and anti-war chant ‘Ami go home!’ On the other hand, this premise exists precisely because of the dominance of the U.S.A. through its supra-language. It is very much because of the U.S.A. that Saraswati is in Düsseldorf, not Sarah Vera. And she cannot go home because she is German and is therefore already home. This is why the humor in Sanyal’s unpolitical attitude toward her political novel becomes somewhat bittersweet.

This does not mean that the characters’ actively repressed geopolitics cannot be teased out. If anything, the stark contrast between Nivedita’s understanding of the university, the internet, and mass media at both the beginning and end of the novel provide the reasons why we must examine the spaces of language, politics, and identification more critically.

Works Cited

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