The Summer of Theory

'Theory' - a magical glow has emanated from this word since the sixties. Theory was more than just a succession of ideas: it was an article of faith, a claim to truth, a lifestyle. It spread among its adherents in cheap paperbacks and triggered heated debates in seminar rooms and cafés. The Frankfurt School, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Adorno, Derrida, Foucault: these and others were the exotic schools and thinkers whose ideas were being devoured by young minds. But where did the fascination for dangerous thoughts come from?

In his magnificently written book, Philipp Felsch follows the hopes and dreams of a generation that entered the jungle of difficult texts. His setting is West Germany in the decades from the 1960s to the 1990s: in a world frozen in the Cold War, movement only came from big ideas. It was the time of apocalyptic master thinkers, upsetting reading experiences and glamorous incomprehensibility. As the German publisher Suhrkamp published Adorno's Minima Moralia and other High Theory works of the Frankfurt School, a small publisher in West Berlin, Merve Verlag, provided readers with a steady stream of the subversive new theory coming out of France.

By following the adventures of the publishers who provided the books and the reading communities that consumed and debated them, Philipp Felsch tells the remarkable story of an intellectual revolt when the German Left fell in love with Theory.

Autorentext
Philipp Felsch is Professor of Cultural History at Humboldt University, Berlin.

Zusammenfassung

'Theory' a magical glow has emanated from this word since the sixties. Theory was more than just a succession of ideas: it was an article of faith, a claim to truth, a lifestyle. It spread among its adherents in cheap paperbacks and triggered heated debates in seminar rooms and cafés. The Frankfurt School, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Adorno, Derrida, Foucault: these and others were the exotic schools and thinkers whose ideas were being devoured by young minds. But where did the fascination for dangerous thoughts come from?

In his magnificently written book, Philipp Felsch follows the hopes and dreams of a generation that entered the jungle of difficult texts. His setting is West Germany in the decades from the 1960s to the 1990s: in a world frozen in the Cold War, movement only came from big ideas. It was the time of apocalyptic master thinkers, upsetting reading experiences and glamorous incomprehensibility. As the German publisher Suhrkamp published Adorno's Minima Moralia and other High Theory works of the Frankfurt School, a small publisher in West Berlin, Merve Verlag, provided readers with a steady stream of the subversive new theory coming out of France.

By following the adventures of the publishers who provided the books and the reading communities that consumed and debated them, Philipp Felsch tells the remarkable story of an intellectual revolt when the German Left fell in love with Theory.

Inhalt
Introduction: What Was Theory?

1965: The Hour of Theory

1. Federal Republic of Adorno

   Reflections from Damaged Life

   Culture After Working Hours

   In the Literary Supermarket

   Adorno Answers

   Are Your Endeavours Aimed at Changing the World?

2. In the Suhrkamp Culture

   New Leftists

   He Didn't Write

   School of Hard Books

   Paperback Theory

   Birth of a Genre

   1970: Endless Discussions

3. Ill-made Books

   Theoretical Practice

   Smash Bourgeois Copyright!

   Mondays, Fridays and Sundays

   The Disorder of Discourse

4. Wolfsburg Empire

   Proletarian Public Sphere

   In the Land of Class Struggle

   The Lightness of Being Communist

   A Fateful Stroke of Luck

   1977: Reading French in the German Autumn

5. (Possible) Reasons for the Happiness of Thought

   All Kinds of Escapes

   Intensity Is Not a Feeling

   The Laugh of Merve

   Vague Thinkers

6. The Reader as Partisan

   The Death of the Author

   The Pleasure of the Text

   Children's Books

   A Different Mode of Production

   Lying on Water

7. Foucault and the Terrorists

   A Schweppes in Paris

   Political Tourists

   Vermin

   On Tunix Beach

   1984: The End of History

8. Critique of Pure Text

   The Master Thinkers

   Adults Only

   Sola Scriptura

   Aesthetics of Counter-Enlightenment

   A Little Materialism

9. Into the White Cube

   The Mountain of Truth

   Be Smart Take Part

   German Issues

   The Island of Posthistoire

   The Trouble with Duchamp

10. Prussianism and Spontaneism

    War in the Time of Total Peace

    Machiavelli in Westphalia

    The Wild Academy

    In Search of the Punctum

    Jacob Taubes's Best Enemy

11. Disco Dispositive

    Tyrannies of Intimacy

    Pub Blather

    The Art of Having a Beer

    In the Jungle

    Above the Clouds

    Epilogue: After Theory?

    Bibliography

    Appendix: Translations of Illustrations

    Notes

    Index