Cornelia Isaksson ~ SUBJECT IN VIBRATION: Point it against gravity and watch it fly

This thesis uses theory as well as fiction to explore the milieu of Berlin during the spring of 1929. "Subject in Vibration: Point it Against Gravity and Watch it Fly" is a narrative text that unfolds as a series of diary entries written from a fictional character’s point of view. The narrative follows an anonymous subject torn between the fading embers of a communist revolution and the birth of sexual liberation, all against the backdrop of the impending fascist turnover. The entries explore this turbulent historical, political and social moment through an open-ended enmeshment of fiction with critical theory, psychoanalysis and dramatic theory to reflect on war debts, inflation, political radicalization, gender and consumerism. This thesis aims to challenge the allure of a nostalgic counterculture often associated with Weimar Berlin, while speculating on the inherent potentiality within these social constellations and ambiguous historical situations. Through my engagement with the specificities of the character's then historical present, I attempt to dissect the mechanics of an emerging totalitarianism, producing a site of understanding for the adolescent state of European fascism. The speculative dimension of the narrative I propose, aims at evoking forgotten, erased, or unimagined nuances and potentials that inhere in that moment in time as well as using inconclusive, open-ended and subjective narrative forms as a methodology of resistance to dominant historical accounts.