Foucault in the Bush. The Social Life of Post-Structuralist Theory in East Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg

This essay seeks to make critical theory an object of ethnographic con-textualization and inquiry through an exploration of the social life of post-structuralist theory in 1980s East Berlin. The 'Prenzlauer Berg Scene' of artists and writers utilized post-structuralism as a distinctive register for defining their social identity and as an analytical and interpretive paradigm for articulating their alienation from the state-crafted language of GDR public culture. The essay discusses how the subversive practice of post-structuralism in the Prenzlauer Berg came at the price of linguistic exclusion and political withdrawal from mainstream GDR society. In conclusion, it is argued that the Prenzlauer Berg case emblematizes the difficulty of politicizing expert theoretical registers since these registers' objective critical 'power' relies upon structures of epistemic inequity that cultivate distinctions between critical experts and naïve practitioners.

本文试图通过探究20世纪80年代东柏林后结构主义理论的社会生活，将批判理论作为民族志语境化和探究的对象。普伦茨劳贝格的艺术家和作家群体利用后结构主义作为一种独特的语域来界定他们的社会身份，并作为一种分析和解释范式来表达他们与民主德国公共文化中由国家塑造的语言之间的疏离。本文探讨了普伦茨劳贝格的后结构主义颠覆性实践如何以被主流民主德国社会在语言上排斥和在政治上疏离为代价。最后，文章认为，普伦茨劳贝格的案例象征着将专业理论语域政治化的困难，因为这些语域客观的批判“力量”依赖于认知不平等的结构，这种结构造成了批判专家和天真的实践者之间的差异。