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Representations of Religion and Culture in Children’s Literature |
95www.jrfm.eu
2018, 4/1, 81–99
flict between faith and rationality. We cannot prove or fathom logically whether God
exists, but there is no evidence that God does not exist.”39
The pupils spend one night at school, where they talk about faith, God and the
infinity of the universe. The last part of the story demonstrates the author’s
intention to represent faith in God as a proper way of life, with monotheistic
religions portrayed as the ideal: “The one great God, the God of Christians, Jews
and Muslims. The God in whom so many people of different religions believe in.
All of them were looking for a way to God. Maybe those who did not believe
also found a way to him.”40 The narration constructs otherness by contrasting
people who believe in God with those who do not.
CONSTRUCTING OTHERNESS
Analysis of these two children’s books in light of culture, religion and migration
reveals processes of othering. All the authors and graphic illustrators tend to
stereotype and exaggerate difference similarly. Although the narrations broach
difference as a central paradigm, each story refers to friendship and sympathy.
Understanding of foreign identities is a product of knowledge about different
ways of life. The teacher in Lara Lustig und der liebe Gott insists upon tolerance
as the children should know each other’s religious practices and cultural tradi-
tions and accept each other’s ways of life. The narrator – a schoolgirl – states:
And when I looked back in the hall, I saw Lara Lustig and our class. Everybody was dif-
ferent. Everybody has his legs, his nose, his thinking and feeling and also his culture
and religion. And everybody had a mind full of images and ideas. Though, we were all
together. Below the great, infinite starry sky.41
Although the narrator mentions difference beyond religion and culture, the de-
mand for broad-mindedness and tolerance of foreigners consolidates and natu-
ralises categories of difference such as culture and religion. People are diverse
and prefer different ways of life, habits and moral concepts. The categorisation
of culture and religion results in a construction of collective singulars, which
are culturalising and essentialising. Culture and religion are fields that appear
inalterable. But identities are interdependent – they are not based solely on
nationality, culture and religion.
The narrations focus on a strong correlation of national, cultural and religious
affiliations in their construction of own and foreign identities. Characters that
represent own identities are not explicitly constituted as German, but, by con-
39 Zöller 2006, 49, emphasis in original.
40 Zöller 2006, 123.
41 Zöller 2006, 122–123.
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/01
- Title
- JRFM
- Subtitle
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Volume
- 04/01
- Authors
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Editor
- Uni-Graz
- Publisher
- SchĂĽren Verlag GmbH
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2018
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Pages
- 129
- Categories
- Zeitschriften JRFM