Hypersexuality and Headscarves: Race, Sex, and Citizenship in the New Germany

210 Pages·2012·2.304 MB·English

by  Damani J. Partridge

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Hypersexuality
and Headscarves
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New Anthropologies of Europe
Matti Bunzl and Michael Herzfeld, editors
Founding Editors
Daphne Berdahl
Matti Bunzl
Michael Herzfeld
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Hypersexuality
and Headscarves
Race, Sex, and Citizenship
in the New Germany
DAMANI J. PARTRIDGE
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
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This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
© 2012 by Damani J. Partridge
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American
University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
o∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Partridge, Damani J., [date]
Hypersexuality and headscarves : race, sex, and citizenship in the new Germany /
Damani J. Partridge.
p. cm. — (New anthropologies of Europe)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-35708-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-22369-2 (pbk. : alk.
paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-00531-1 (electronic book) 1. Political anthropology—Germany.
2. Race discrimination—Germany. 3. Sex discrimination—Germany. 4. Citizenship—
Germany. 5. Minorities—Germany. 6. Foreign workers—Germany. 7. Post-communism—
Germany. 8. Germany—History—Unification, 1990. 9. Germany—Politics and
government —1990– 10. Germany—Race relations. I. Title.
GN585.G4P28 2012
305.800943—dc23
2011032354
1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 12
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This book is dedicated to the four generations of women who have sustained
and supported me: Jasmine Josephine Bose Partridge, Sunita Bose Partridge,
Dr. Josephine Aona Valiera Allen, Carrie Gwendella Allen, and Dr. Deborah
Partridge Cannon Wolfe.
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue 1
Introduction: Becoming Noncitizens 17
1. Ethno-patriarchal Returns:
The Fall of the Wall, Closed Factories, and Leftover Bodies 29
2. Travel as an Analytic of Exclusion:
The Politics of Mobility after the Wall 50
3. We Were Dancing in the Club, Not on the Berlin Wall:
Black Bodies, Street Bureaucrats, and Hypersexual Returns 72
4. The Progeny of Guest Workers as Leftover Bodies:
Post-Wall West German Schools and the Administration of Failure 95
5. Why Can’t You Just Remove Your Headscarf So We Can See You?
Reappropriating “Foreign” Bodies in the New Germany 108
Conclusion: Intervening at the Sites of Exclusionary Production 133
Epilogue: Triangulated (Non)Citizenship:
Memories and Futures of Racialized Production 142
Notes 155
References 167
Index 181
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Acknowledgments
Writing this book has taken much longer and has been much more arduous
than I expected. I would like to begin and end by thanking my daughter, my
partner, my mother, my grandmothers, my father, my siblings, my nieces, my
aunt, my uncle, my cousins, and my friends for creating an environment that
helped me to know that writing this book wasn’t the only story. I would like to
also thank all of those who participated in the research that led to this book.
While some of the people overlap, I owe its completion to both of these groups.
Specifically, I thank Eka Neumann, without whom this book would not
have been possible. She introduced me to many of my major contacts and dis-
cussed my ideas with me in detail from the perspective of an activist and an
intellectual. I also thank Anthony Kwame Kongolo, who was an engineering
student and student advisor at the Technical University in Berlin at the time; he
introduced me not only to Eka, but also to a side of Berlin life that has become
central to my understanding of citizenship and processes of exclusionary incor-
poration in Berlin and post-unification Germany. I thank Barbara and Erhard
Friedemann and their children, my host family in East Berlin with whom I
lived for several months when I arrived in 1995, for taking me in as a “for-
eign” son and introducing me to a critical history of the German Democratic
Republic and German “re”unification as they lived it and reflected on it. I also
thank my first host families, the Moritzes (including Andreas Wünderlich), the
Tamgüneys, and the Beckhusens in Brake and Frieschenmoor, who cared for
me and made me feel at home when I arrived in West Germany as a sixteen-
year-old Rotary Youth Exchange student in 1989. Thank you to the members
of the Initiative of Black Germans (now known as the Initiative for Blacks in
Germany) for granting interviews and allowing me to participate in some of
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