Jan Lensen | Freie Universität Berlin (original) (raw)

Jan Lensen

Jan Lensen is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institut für Deutsche und Niederländische Philologie of the Freie Universität Berlin. He is the author of De foute oorlog: Schuld en nederlaag in het Vlaamse proza over de Tweede Wereldoorlog (2014) and has widely published about contemporary Dutch and German literature and cultural memory in international peer-reviewed journals, such as Journal of Dutch Literature, Comparative Literature and Modern Language Review. He is currently finishing a monograph entitled The Generation of Meta-Memory: Contemporary Fiction about World War II in Germany, Flanders, and the Netherlands.

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Papers by Jan Lensen

Research paper thumbnail of ‘ACCEPT THE VIRUS’: TRAUMA, MIMETIC VIOLENCE, AND THE PARADOX OF CULTURAL MEMORY ON THE MOVE IN PETER VERHELST’S ZWERM

Research paper thumbnail of De zoektocht naar het midden - Nieuwe perspectieven op de herinnering aan de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Vlaanderen en Duitsland

Internationale Neerlandistiek, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of 'With a stretched arm. Like Superman, not like Hitler’. The Politics of Commemorative Irreverence in Astronaut van Oranje (2013) by Andy Fierens and Michaël Brijs

This essay offers an analysis of the aesthetical and political implications of the seemingly rand... more This essay offers an analysis of the aesthetical and political implications of the seemingly random use of names of figures from Belgian collaborationist history in the novel Astronaut van Oranje (2013) by Flemish authors Andy Fierens and Michaël Brijs. More specifically, it investigates the framing of the memory of World War II in Belgium by means of a satirical fantasy story that fuses elements from the dystopian imagination, science fiction, Gothic horror, and popular culture. Drenched in satire, hyperbole, absurdities, coarse humor, and blatant clichés, the novel eschews historiographical relevance and deliberately ignores the sensibilities that govern public and political discourses about this war past. By doing so, so I argue, it offers a provocative engagement with established practices in both Belgian and Flemish cultural memory, implementing what I will call a ‘politics of commemorative irreverence’.

Monographs by Jan Lensen

Research paper thumbnail of De foute oorlog. Schuld en nederlaag in het Vlaamse proza over de Tweede Wereldoorlog (The Wrong War. Guilt and Defeat in Flemish Prose Fiction about the Second World War)

Research paper thumbnail of ‘ACCEPT THE VIRUS’: TRAUMA, MIMETIC VIOLENCE, AND THE PARADOX OF CULTURAL MEMORY ON THE MOVE IN PETER VERHELST’S ZWERM

Research paper thumbnail of De zoektocht naar het midden - Nieuwe perspectieven op de herinnering aan de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Vlaanderen en Duitsland

Internationale Neerlandistiek, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of 'With a stretched arm. Like Superman, not like Hitler’. The Politics of Commemorative Irreverence in Astronaut van Oranje (2013) by Andy Fierens and Michaël Brijs

This essay offers an analysis of the aesthetical and political implications of the seemingly rand... more This essay offers an analysis of the aesthetical and political implications of the seemingly random use of names of figures from Belgian collaborationist history in the novel Astronaut van Oranje (2013) by Flemish authors Andy Fierens and Michaël Brijs. More specifically, it investigates the framing of the memory of World War II in Belgium by means of a satirical fantasy story that fuses elements from the dystopian imagination, science fiction, Gothic horror, and popular culture. Drenched in satire, hyperbole, absurdities, coarse humor, and blatant clichés, the novel eschews historiographical relevance and deliberately ignores the sensibilities that govern public and political discourses about this war past. By doing so, so I argue, it offers a provocative engagement with established practices in both Belgian and Flemish cultural memory, implementing what I will call a ‘politics of commemorative irreverence’.

Research paper thumbnail of De foute oorlog. Schuld en nederlaag in het Vlaamse proza over de Tweede Wereldoorlog (The Wrong War. Guilt and Defeat in Flemish Prose Fiction about the Second World War)

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