“Everything has its Limits!” The Berlin Wall and the Problem of Desire

Authors

  • John Griffith Urang Worcester Polytechnic Institute

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/konturen.4.0.2441

Abstract

By the East German authorities’ account, the “Anti-Fascist Wall of Protection,” or Berlin Wall, was built to thwart hordes of anti-communist commandos poised to invade the socialist republic. If the Party acknowledged the stream of refugees from East to West at all, it was only to decry the efforts of paid agitators luring or coercing skilled East German workers over the border. These paranoid scenarios, I will argue, represented more than just hard-line propaganda and political expediency; they arose from fundamental assumptions about the psyche and society. Through an exploration of East German cultural responses to the construction of the Wall, my paper outlines the ideological fantasies of the individual and social body that precipitated this drastic measure.

Author Biography

John Griffith Urang, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

John Griffith Urang is an Assistant Professor of German at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2005, he taught at Reed College in Portland, Oregon until 2011. His book, Legal Tender: Love and Legitimacy in the East German Cultural Imagination, was published by Cornell University Press in 2010. His new book project looks at tropes of domesticity in East and West German New Wave film.

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Published

2013-10-16

How to Cite

Urang, J. G. (2013). “Everything has its Limits!” The Berlin Wall and the Problem of Desire. Konturen, 4, 108–145. https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/konturen.4.0.2441