As representações espaciais em Schönhauser Allee, de Wladimir Kaminer

Abstract

The work Schönhauser Allee (2001), written in German language for the Russian writer Wladimir Kaminer, shows the daily life of the homonymic avenue under the perspective of the foreign glance of his author-narrator. His characters, residents and traders, gain distinction in the narrated histories, becoming relevant figures for the understanding and the discussion about the alteridade and the multiculturalidade there existent. Immigrants from Russia, Vietnam and Yugoslavia, for example, also make up this Berlin microenvironment, passed by events that are permeated by humor and irony. The contribution that the work ficcional of Kaminer brings to the contemporary literature written in German language can be better understood, just as we analyse some concepts that cross the whole work. The presence of humor in the face of delicate topics such as immigration and the attempt to integrate foreigners into German society, the autofiction that raises questions about the concepts of autobiography, the light and relaxed style of his writing, , between the Brazilian chronicle and the German Kurzgeschichte, the conceptions of inter-, trans- and multiculturality, primordial for the debate regarding the coexistence of heterogeneous cultural groups in the city of Berlin and, therefore, the idea of culture and identity, in a so fluid moment of our society, also find reverberations in the work researched here. Besides, the narratives of Schönhauser Allee (2001) drive thinking about questions like the migratory flow for Germany from the decade of 1950, the processes of modernization and globalization which it suffers and it passed the German capital, more specifically the social microspace represented by the avenue of the district Prenzlauer Berg, and, still, it supplies with us literary material in order that we discuss the impacts of the consumption and of the spaces of consumption that there exist. All these considerations open way, for literary roads, in order that we think the social space of Berlin represented by Schönhauser Allee, place of meeting of several cultural groups and stage for the otherness. The space in miniature of the avenue, so, appears, in the present inquiry, like mediator for the events narrated by Kaminer. The objective, here, is to analyse as these foregoing factors are boarded in the work, identifying elements that make possible the interaction between the exophonic literature and some of the main subjects that surround the German society on the current days having, like essential backdrop, the concept of space.