The skin of the system
Subtitle: on Germany's socialist modernity
By: Benjamin Robinson.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 355
ISBN-13: 9780804762472
Subjects: Fühmann, Franz -- Criticism and interpretation; Socialism and literature -- Germany (East); Socialism -- Germany (East)
Description: This book objects to the idea that there is only one modernity - that of liberal capitalism. Starting from the simple conviction that whatever else East German socialism was, it was real, this book focuses on what made historical socialism different from social systems in the West. In this way, the study elicits the general question: what must we think in order to think an other system at all? To approach this question, the book turns to the writer Franz Fühmann, the East German who most single-mindedly dedicated himself to understanding what it means to transform from fascism to socialism.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : on socialist vacation; title: Utopia and actuality : what is to be done with really existing socialism?; title: Other systems : mud, mana, money; title: The skin of the system and the DIN of the system : a poetics of sovereignty and system; title: Diabolical transformations : a necessary comrade; title: Tertium non datur : the systems erotics of socialism; title: Camps, laws, and plans : the socialist camp; title: Revolutionary laws : emergence and emergency; title: Plans, leaps, heaps : the measure of the human; title: The DIN of the system : the devil's due.