Nocturnal Transgressions: Nighttime Stories from Berlin, the New European Nightlife Capital
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Nocturnal Transgressions: Nighttime Stories from Berlin, the New European Nightlife Capital Enis Oktay Goldsmiths, University of London MPhil Thesis March 2015 I declare that the work presented in this doctoral thesis is my own. Enis Oktay 2 Acknowledgements The pages you are about to read are the result of a (way too) long process to which many people have contributed. I would like to dedicate this dissertation to all those dear ones – both known and unknown to me – who, in very different ways, have been a source of inspiration and have provided me with the motivation and patience to confront the difficulties of this tumultuous personal journey. First off, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisors John Hutnyk and Klaus-Peter Köpping for their constructive guidance, critical appreciation, challenging input, and encouraging support as well as for their friendship since they have wonderfully dismantled the hierarchy between student and teacher. I would also like to thank them for helping me overcome bureaucratic obstacles, e.g. visa problems, funding difficulties, recommendation letters, etc. In addition to this, I would like to thank everyone at the Centre for Cultural Studies for striving to mesh academics with politics and for challenging me to think differently, thereby fulfilling the department’s initial promise. I would also like to thank deeply my friends Emre Gözgü, Erdem Evren, Philip Hager and Dimitris Exarchos for our endless musings and discussions, our customary record-playing and intoxications, our nocturnal drifts and excursions, our chronic pessimism and melancholy as well as our redemptive laughter and joy, and our trust in and appreciation of the night. But above all, I would like to thank them for their fraternity as they have been there for me during dark times and have helped me through personal crises; this thesis would never have seen the light of day without their support. The encouragement and aid of Sophie and Susanne Wilhelm have been a constant source of inspiration and confidence. Without them, I probably would have been somewhere else, doing something completely different. Most importantly, I would like to thank my parents Ahmet and Şule Oktay who have always offered me unconditional love and support. Not only have they tolerated my endless days (and nights) of idleness, the ethico-political ideals and intellectual values they have passed onto me as a child in rudimentary form have had significant effects on my future toils and motivations. Without them, this dissertation would never have started. Here, I should also acknowledge the crucial role my late grandfather Sabih Oktay played in kindling my disdain for authority and my sympathy for transgression. I would also like to thank all my remaining family members and friends, especially Âkos Göbel, Mircea Coza, Nicholas Hautop, Jeannette Haller, Andrew Delaney and Sebastian Klapcia for being part of my life. Last but certainly not least, I must pay my respects to all those wonderful nocturnal characters I have had the privilege of encountering and all those priceless nocturnal experiences I have had the delight of undergoing for inspiring and compelling me to become the writer of these words. Here, I must also thank that wonderful nightspot called Kaffee Burger and its patrons (or to be more precise the way they used to be between 2003 and 2005) for opening up my eyes to the ecstatic fraternity and fabulous dream logic of the night. And of course, special thanks go out to the magical city of Berlin for giving me so much happiness and for changing my life. All German texts have been translated by me unless stated otherwise in the bibliography. 3 Abstract Throughout history, nighttime has been considered by many to be antithetical to daytime; it has been regarded as a notorious interval, enabling and characterized by transgression. With the birth of the metropolis and the commercialization of nocturnal activities, nighttime – no longer considered daytime’s complete negation but rather rendered partially heterogeneous and acceptably infamous – has been blessed with its own economy and politics as well as its unique social and cultural dynamics. The urban night, as it were, has a life of its own. Indeed, nightlife is marked by the promise of seduction and eventfulness as well as by the pursuit of ecstatic fraternity with likeminded strangers resulting in self-loss and rediscovery. Therein lies its potential for transgression retained by urbanity. But therein also lies the potential for spectacle as well as the incentive for institutionalizing transgression, thereby taming it and generating profit. Using the city of Berlin as a case example, the thesis explores how this nocturnal duality manifests itself in the late capitalist metropolis. As Berlin has recently become the number one nightlife destination in Europe as well as a neo-bohemia harboring numerous privileged migrants (in terms of various types of capital as well as the right to mobility) linked with the creative industries and the arts; various historical, cultural, economic and socio-political factors have come into play in generating Berlin’s nocturnal libertarianism which is perceived by many to be exceptional in its aptness for (institutionalized) transgression. The thesis reveals by way of ethnographic evidence how these factors have come into play in creating the relatively exceptional and debatably trangressive realm that constitutes the Berlin night. This is supplemented by the additional ethnographic goal of critically assessing the subversive potential – or the lack thereof – pertaining to these nocturnal events. Within this context, the repercussions and politics of the Berlin night are further explored. Finally, the dissertation seeks to employ continental philosophy and critical theory to make sense of the self-loss and ecstatic fraternity associated with certain instances of (institutionalized) nocturnal transgression as well as to explore the nightly potential for resisting the spectacle. 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................3 Abstract ...........................................................................................................................................4 Introduction: Notes from Weichselstraße ...................................................................................7 Chapter 1 The Dark Night – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ..............................................................................19 1.1.A Nocturnal Journey through History ..............................................................................21 1.2.Nighttime in the Metropolis .............................................................................................32 1.3.Dionysian Rituals of Transgression – The Importance of Lived-Experience and Profane- Illumination .......................................................................................................................39 1.4.The Post-Structural Turn: Nietzsche meets Deleuze ........................................................59 1.5 Nocturnal Eventfulness ....................................................................................................78 Literary Excursion No.1: Lightness and Weight ......................................................................88 Chapter 2 The Unbearable Hipness of Being Light: Nighttime in Creative World City Berlin ............94 2.1.Berghain: Vatican of the Techno Faith ..........................................................................101 2.2.A New Metropolis is Born .............................................................................................105 2.3.Rave Tourists of the World Unite! Brave New Germania Welcomes You with Open Arms! ..............................................................................................................................117 2.4.The Benefits of Being Creative ......................................................................................130 2.5.Macht (immaterialle) Arbeit wirklich frei in dieser materiallen Welt? ................................150 Chapter 3 Nocturnal Recurrence: Lightness, Heaviness and the Night ................................................161 3.1.Hedonism Replaces Tragedy ..........................................................................................164 3.2.Check out the Scene .......................................................................................................176 3.3.Back to the Nineties – The Beginnings of Techno Fetishism ........................................184 3.4.Urban Gentrification – Bar 25 & co. under Threat and Carnivalesque Dissent .............204 3.5.The Lightness of Nocturnal Forgetfulness .....................................................................227 5 Literary Excursion No.2: Anarchist Evening Entertainment – The Steppenwolf Learns to Lighten Up ....................................................................................................................242 Conclusion: From Kaffee Burger to Burger King ..................................................................258 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................270 Images .........................................................................................................................................288 6 Introduction: