Chapter 4 Berlin Stool: Neoliberal Cosmopolitanism, Affective Pessimism and Abjection in Dogs of Berlin

In: Cultural Responses to the Far Right in Contemporary Germany
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Gozde Naiboglu
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Abstract

This essay explores the affective assemblages of abjection and pessimism in the Netflix series Dogs of Berlin. I argue that the series offers a critique of neoliberal cosmopolitanism and its narratives of progress both on the level of narration and on the level of affect, sensation and temporalities. With its pre-emptive narration, its evocation of complex factual and fictional temporalities of Berlin and its emphasis on abjection, Dogs of Berlin questions and challenges the promises of neoliberal cosmopolitanism, foregrounding its intensely corrosive and fatal forces from precarity to racism and homophobia. Engaging with theories of abjection, particularly those pertaining to the questions of migration and alterity such as Peter Nyers’s framework of “abject cosmopolitanism”, I view Dogs of Berlin as a powerful intervention into reconciliatory narratives of neoliberal discourse.

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