WE WERE DANCING IN THE CLUB, NOT ON THE BERLIN WALL: Black Bodies, Street Bureaucrats, and Exclusionary Incorporation into the New Europe

Abstract

In this essay, I explore the micropolitics of citizenship and sovereignty via the emerging street bureaucratic status of “white” German women in relationships with “black” men in Germany and Berlin. In the midst of the fallen Berlin Wall and increasing Europe‐wide restrictions on immigration and asylum, it examines further the extent to which a consistent “black” male hypersexual performance is necessary for legal recognition via “white” German women who, taking on an informal bureaucratic status, ultimately decide which “black” subjects to marry. A history of desiring “black” bodies, the essay argues, coincides with several important moments of sexual liberation (incl. post–World War II African American military occupation, 1970s West German feminism, and the fall of the Berlin Wall), which make these relationships both possible and public; however, the hypersexualized conditions under which “black” subjects get incorporated into contemporary German life are also ultimately exclusionary.

Travel as an Analytic of Exclusion: Becoming Noncitizens, and the Politics of Mobility After the Berlin Wall

“…Traveling through the "Black" body references the hypersexuality that "Black" bodies represent in European spaces (Partridge 2008; Linke 1999;Gilman 1985;Fanon 1967), as "Blackness" (in Northern Europe, in particular) must always represent some exotic there and not here, as well as the suggestion that "Black" bodies have traveled from somewhere else in order to come here. The journey I have taken will allow the reader to see citizenship via "Blackness," when "Blackness" signals travel.…”

Citizenship

“…Culturally, the presence of 'outsiders' within an imagined 'national body' is often not constituted as a problem for the dominant group of citizens, but for the non-citizens themselves. They become ciphers, representing threat, hypersexuality, cultural backwardness, or diversity and multiculturalism (e.g., Partridge 2008). They are marked out, subject to discrimination and racism, which persists even when they have become fully legal citizens, over generations.…”

After Wisconsin

“…Partridge (2008) explores processes of 'exclusionary incorporation' among Turkish and African immigrants in the German context. 2 For a compelling example, see Sikh model Sonny Caberwal posing for the Kenneth Cole campaign, 'We Walk in Different Shoes'.…”