Man schenkt keinen Hund – (No)Bildbeschreibungen und Interviews

The point of departure for the writings, interviews, and artistic contributions in Man schenkt keinen Hund (You Don’t Give a Dog as a Present) are the German language-learning course books which are authorized for use in the so-called ‘integration courses’ for immigrants by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. The textbooks available on the market represent and narrate migration, and those involved in it, primarily through the lens of a national scopic regime: a ‘German’ majority society is here invariably center-staged and framed as representing the norm, apparently unaffected by migrant movements.

Man schenkt keinen Hund brings together a multiplicity of perspectives by the contributors – artists, theorists, activists, and students and teachers in the courses – to question the concept of culture recorded in the course books, in their texts and imagery, as the expression of an ostensibly homogeneous national identity. It gathers analytical observations and artistic propositions to articulate a critique of the ideological concept and governmental instrument of ‘integration’ – especially in light of the recent and cyclically recurring debates in Germany around ‘Wertegemeinschaft’ (‘community of shared values’) and ‘Leitkultur’ (‘core culture’).

The e-book edition Man schenkt keinen Hund – (No) Bildbeschreibungen und Interviews presents itself as an excerpt from the print version. In addition to a conversation about teaching in ‘integration courses’ and a colonial-pedagogical close reading of a selected textbook chapter, the e-book assembles the entirety of the so-called ‘(No)Bildbeschreibungen’ [(No)picture descriptions], a literary-essayistic short format.

Supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the Bezirkskulturfonds Mitte