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Introduction: Kafka in ‘Fortress Europe’—The ‘Other’ Within the Walls

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Abstract

Drawing on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, this introduction presents, in a symbolic way, the notion of the ‘Other’ in ‘Fortress Europe’ and the ambivalent concept of ‘Othering’. It also offers an overview of current European politics, especially the Greek debt crisis and the resurgence of ultranationalism in Europe. This chapter introduces the main hypothesis of my research that is based on the discursive distinction between ‘Us’, the Europeans and ‘Them’, the Muslims as potential threat and explicates that the aim of this study is to examine whether and how a common ‘Other’ can reunify the Europeans and surpass nation state’s imaginaries that have been challenged by multiple European crises. Moreover, it presents the research questions and research platform and assesses the interdisciplinary nature of this study.

Keywords

  • Kafka
  • Metamorphosis
  • Research questions
  • Aims of the study

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Giddens (1994), Beck (1994), and Baumann (1998).

  2. 2.

    I examine as editorials the unsigned leader articles of the newspapers and the opinion articles that are usually written by the editor-in-chief, the publisher or the director of the newspaper or famous/ distinguished editors.

  3. 3.

    A genre is characterized as ‘a socially ratified way of using language in connection with a particular type of social activity’ (Fairclough 1995, p. 14).

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  1. Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

    Salomi Boukala

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  1. Salomi Boukala
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Correspondence to Salomi Boukala .

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Boukala, S. (2019). Introduction: Kafka in ‘Fortress Europe’—The ‘Other’ Within the Walls. In: European Identity and the Representation of Islam in the Mainstream Press. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93314-6_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93314-6_1

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