hem|mungen

What strange stuff you give us your readers. Top banana.

How can she be so sure that the "social enagagement" of the DDR was accepted by a population that felt in large numbers that the party itself was removed from society (or at least the people )and exactly this individualism was lacking and demanded. If she defines autonomous art and its removal from society as a negative then the dice are well and truly loaded, especially if the socialist realism is deemed to be the therefore positive counter.

I think that most people would claim that this autonomus aspect of art is in fact one of the most important aspects of art. I also question how autonomous art (or politics) can truly be autonomous anyways as the artists (or activists) must be a part of a society themselves. Hmmmm Reminds me of critic of Indymedia which argues that media cannot be independent and any political movement shouldnt be aiming to be so anyways.

But art shmart. I dont know much about it but i know what i like still seems to me to be the best attitude to have :-)

Yeah, it's hard to draw any conclusions since I haven't read the thing--I'll report back when I do. And you know, I think that often, no matter how one argues as a scholar, it comes down to "I know what I like" and its presumed converse, "I know what I don't like." This must be true of any scholarly pursuit, right? I mean, why else would we spend time on it?

Hello Heather,
I'm reading your blog for the first time. One niggle on this post - refering to the Berliner Zeitung as the "BZ" is a bit annoying or just wrong. While in the DDR the abbreviation was (reasonably) used, sinc e the Wende it has to call itself the "BLZ", as obviously the Springer-Tabloid in (West) Berlin is the "B.Z." (with the subtitle "Berliner Zeitung", bizarrely). The (East) BErlin tabloid, which like the Berliner Zeitung belongs to the Berliner Verlag, the "Berliner Kurier", used to be called the "BZ am Abend" or "BZ am Mittag" when it was an afternoon paper, until reunification forced it to to rename itself.

The BBC News website often gets the B.Z. and the Berliner confused, quoting from Berliner Zeitung articles and then linking to the Springer Drecksblatt. So you're excused!

Aha, but my "BZ" doesn't have periods in between the letters, as the Drecksblatt does (on their Redaktion page, and in the stylized logo on the actual paper). So there was a method to my madness, and I used that abbreviation knowlingly. Still-you're right that it's an annoying source of confusion; and let's face it, nobody wants to get caught quoting the B.Z. ;)