No/A way back? Aliyah, migration and further chronotopic considerations about German-Jewish history

Abstract

Is there a specifically Jewish space-time relationship? Since Mikhail Bakhtin’s theorisation of the chronotopos, we know that the categories of time and space are deeply inscribed in narrative texts. A chronotopos in Bakhtin’s sense conveys a genuine narrative worldview. This has implications for our reflections on Jewish exile and migration, and, more specifically, for reflections on the Israelkorpus, which consists of biographical narrative interviews. Like other experiences of exile, the Jewish exile in the 1930s was an experience of displacement, yet it also meant a shift in the understanding of time and history. Migration to Mandatory Palestine/Israel meant, for Jews, a symbolic and mythical ‘return’ to another, mythical time. My point is hence to question overly linear notions of time and history with regard to Jewish migration history and to consider the multiplicity of layers of past that made the (German)Jewish experience of exile a temporal kaleidoscope.