Friction and Relationality in Juli Zeh's Über Menschen.

This article uses the lens of the rural village to explore the connection between relationality and friction in Juli Zeh's novel Über Menschen which was published in the context of Covid-19 pandemic in 2021. The article analyses how Zeh represents the village in this novel as a relational space where the haphazard social and physical proximity of difference means that people with diverse interests and ideologies brush up against each other. In Zeh's text relationality is thus not just about harmonious co-living, but it emerges as a fractious mode of association that involves social conflict, difference and storytelling. Drawing on Anna Tsing's analysis of the creative possibilities of friction, the article explores the role of social discord and incompatibility in trying to plot a way of connecting across, and living together with, difference. In an attempt to preserve German social diversity, Zeh mobilizes individual encounters, engagements, and disagreements with the other against strategies of total exclusion, emphasizing continued engagement with difference as a way of fostering social cohesion and care. This article debates to what extent Zeh's aesthetics live up to her concern with relational complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]