The Media of German-Language Underground Literature – Networks of Transnational Counterpublics in the 20th Century

Dissertation

The Media of German-Language Underground Literature – Networks of Transnational Counterpublics in the 20th Century

The point of departure for the PhD project is the observation formulated by the German- language alternative scene itself that the journals which began to circulate in 1968 obeyed a staged chaos. Visually, deliberately disordered page contents outlining the political, literary and religious revolution of this time of upheaval are presented to the audience in a page design characterized by thematic pluralism and typographic heterogeneity. Colourful, visually and content-wise, overloaded booklets deliver what at first glance appears to be a confusing chaos compiled in bricolage style. On closer inspection, however, the apparent arbitrariness turns out to be discursively justified, as an element of strategic distinction in the contemporary culture industry. The staged heterogeneity of the journals, the amateurish impression of their design, production and distribution, but also their ostinato tendency to network through mutual citation reveal a logic of their own, their functioning, effect and cultural-historical location of which my project aims to uncover. Particular attention is paid to the formation of networks between supposedly unrelated/incongruent U-journals.

Synchronously published journals such as Ulcus Molle Info (1969-1990), Gasolin 23 (1973- 1986) and Boa Vista (1974-1983), each in their own right, but especially in their perennial interaction with each other, as well as in their exchange with novels and anthologies, shape the transnational underground scene, in the interplay with the cultural artefacts of the English-speaking beatniks of the 1950s and 60s, in the recourse to the surrealists and dadaists of modernism, in the sharp demarcation from high- and mid-culture, their specific understanding of a literature of/in the underground. This rhizome-like network of references, how it establishes itself, how it makes itself known, how it communicates and distinguishes itself, which readings it opens up, what cultural-poetic relevance it has, is what the planned study wants to make visible with the means of a media and material philology, oriented towards cultural history, on the surface as well as in the form of close readings.