Narrated Political Theory: Theorizing Pop Culture in Dietmar Dath’s Novel Für immer in Honig

• Main Author: Georg Spitaler
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Linköping University Electronic Press 2013-12-01
• Series: Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research
• Subjects: Dietmar Dath; Für immer in Honig; pop; political theory; narratives
• Online Access: https://journal.ep.liu.se/test3212/index.php/CU/article/view/2082

In recent decades, debates on the relationship between pop culture and the political have transgressed academia and have even been prominent in pop (media) discourses and texts, including pop literature. Amongst the contributions at the intersection of art, theory and entertainment are the novels and essays by the German author Dietmar Dath. Taking the example of his novel Für immer in Honig (Berlin 2005/2008), it will be discussed how the book reloads and theorizes pop culture, and how a common cultural-theoretical narrative of de-politicized pop is challenged by the imaginative narratives of the novel. It will be argued that Dath’s references to affective ‘mattering maps’ of pop culture, that on the one hand tend to fall into the pitfalls of exclusive ‘pop sophistication’, nevertheless play a key role for his aesthetical/theoretical project of political emancipation, and that these references can be viewed as examples of why popular passions matter for the formation of political identities/subjectivities as well as for the production and reading of political theory.