The Politics of Authenticity: Countercultures and Radical Movements across the Iron Curtain, 1968-1989

309 Pages·2019·1.69 MB·English

by  Joachim C. Häberlen

The Politics of Authenticity
Protest, Culture, and Society
General editors:
Kathrin Fahlenbrach, Institute for Media and Communication, University of
Hamburg
Martin Klimke, New York University, Abu Dhabi
Joachim Scharloth, Waseda University, Japan
Protest movements have been recognized as significant contributors to
processes of political participation and transformations of culture and value
systems, as well as to the development of both a national and transnational civil
society.
This series brings together the various innovative approaches to phenomena of
social change, protest, and dissent which have emerged in recent years, from
an interdisciplinary perspective. It contextualizes social protest and cultures
of dissent in larger political processes and socio-cultural transformations
by examining the influence of historical trajectories and the response of
various segments of society, political, and legal institutions on a national and
international level. In doing so, the series offers a more comprehensive and
multi-dimensional view of historical and cultural change in the twentieth and
twenty-first century.
For a full volume listing, please see back matter
The Politics of Authenticity
Countercultures and Radical Movements
across the Iron Curtain, 19681989
Edited by
Joachim C. Hberlen, Mark Keck-Szajbel,
and Kate Mahoney
berghahn
N E W Y O R K O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2019 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
2019 Joachim C. Hberlen, Mark Keck-Szajbel, and Kate Mahoney
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hberlen, Joachim C., editor. | Keck-Szajbel, Mark, editor. |
Mahoney, Kate, 1989- editor.
Title: The politics of authenticity : counter-cultures and radical movements
across the Iron Curtain, 1968-1989 / edited by Joachim C. Hberlen, Mark
Keck-Szajbel, and Kate Mahoney.
Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2019. | Series: Protest, culture and
society ; volume 25 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018018980 (print) | LCCN 2018042198 (ebook) | ISBN
9781789200003 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785339998 | (hardback :alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Counterculture. | Social movements--Europe. | Social
movements--Communist countries. | Authenticity (Philosophy)--Social
aspects--Europe. | Authenticity (Philosophy)--Social aspects--Communist
countries.
Classification: LCC HN373.5 (ebook) | LCC HN373.5 .P63 2018 (print) | DDC
303.48/4094--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018980
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78533-999-8 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78920-000-3 ebook
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Joachim C. Hberlen and Mark Keck-Szjabel
Chapter 1. Revolution as a Quest for an Authentic Life: The
1960s and 1970s in Italy 25
Angelo Ventrone
Chapter 2. Authenticity through Transgression: Small Acts of
Resentment in Post-1968 Czechoslovakia 45
Barış Yrmez
Chapter 3. The Political, Emotional, and Therapeutic: Narratives
of Consciousness-Raising and Authenticity in the English
Womens Liberation Movement 65
Kate Mahoney
Chapter 4. A Genealogy of a Politics of Subjectivity: Guy
Hocquenghem, Homosexuality, and the Radical Left in Post-
1968 France 89
Antoine Idier
Chapter 5. New Feminism, Womens Subjectivity, and Feminist
Politics: Conceptual Transfers and Activist Inspirations in
Yugoslavia in the 1970s and 1980s 110
Zsfia Lrnd
Chapter 6. Womens Bodies and Feminist Subjectivities in West
Germany 131
Jane Freeland
Chapter 7. The Rise of a New Consciousness: Lesbian Activism in
East Germany in the 1980s 151
Maria Bhner
Chapter 8. The Italian Movement of 1977 and the Cultural Praxis
of the Youthful Proletariat 174
Danilo Mariscalco
vi | Contents
Chapter 9. The Struggle for the Minds of the Youth: The Securitate
and Musical Countercultures in Communist Romania 191
Manuela Marin
Chapter 10. Punk Authenticity: Difference across the Iron Curtain 212
Jeff Hayton
Chapter 11. Humanitarianism on Stage: Live Aid and the Origins
of Humanitarian Pop Music 233
Benjamin Mckel
Chapter 12. Embedded Abstractions: Authenticity, Aura, and
Abject Domesticity in Hamburgs Hafenstrae 256
Jake P. Smith
Afterword. Concluding Thoughts: Authenticitys Visual Turn 278
Sara Blaylock
Index 287
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the institutions and individuals who have sup-
ported the project that resulted in this volume, namely the European Union
whose generous funding of a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant for the
project Politics of Emotions helped support this project in its initial stages.
We would also like to thank Lewis Smith for careful proofreading of the
entire manuscript. Finally, we would like to thank the three anonymous
peer reviews for very thorough and thought-provoking reviews that helped
improve the book.

Introduction
Joachim C. Hberlen and Mark Keck-Szajbel
I want to learn how to be myself, wrote five seventeen-year-old girls from
West Berlin in a 1977 report about their experiences in a womens group.
The group had helped them learn, they claimed, to relate to their feelings and
their bodies in a different, more positive, and authentic way.1 Similar groups
existed throughout Europe. Consciousness-raising groups in the womens
liberation movement in England and elsewhere offered their members
opportunities to express themselves and thus develop a new sense of self-
awareness.2 Meanwhile in France, the radical gay activist Guy Hocquenghem
proposed a reconceptualization of politics that would foreground personal
transformation in daily life. Expressing what we are, what we feel and
thus being able to express an authentic sense of selfhood became essential
for the politics Hocquenghem demanded.3 Radical activists in Italy worried
about inner harmony that political activism might restore. For the authors
of A/traverso, one of the leading radical magazines in the 1970s, liberation
was a form of de/lirium, because being in a state of de/lirium meant
leaving a predestined order behind.4 All over Western Europe, radical activ-
ists believed that they lived in a world that destroyed inner harmony and in
which expressing ones true feelings and desires was impossible. Restoring
the sense of inner harmony and expressing feelings and desires thus became
a central facet of their politics. In the process, activists developed both a
new understanding of the political and new political practices for which
questions of subjectivity became central.
We find strikingly similar arguments on the other side of the Iron
Curtain. Indeed, one could argue that due to both the repressive nature
of state socialism and the states demand for conformity, questions of self-
awareness and self-realization became one of the paramount concerns for