SOURCE: Lützeler, Paul Michael. “Multiculturalism in Contemporary German Literature.” World Literature Today 168, no. 3 (summer 1995): 452-58.

In the following excerpt, Lützeler argues that multicultural studies in Germany and Europe have been largely underdeveloped, noting several German authors who have composed works within a multiethnic context.

A striking feature of today's culture debates is the postmodern criticism of the Modern, of the dire consequences of the Modern, of the frequently catastrophic burden of the legacy of their conceptualization of progress. This criticism, which can also be perceived as self-criticism of the Modern, is expressed in ecological, multicultural, feminist, and postcolonial discourses. The universalistic metanarratives of the Modern—to use Lyotard's terms—are being questioned here. Symptomatic of the postmodern frame of mind is the rejection of models of totality, which became most evident in the implosion of the communist states during the eighties and the early nineties.

If...