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Dead Center: Berlin, The Postmodern Gothic, And Norman Ohler's Mitte, Steffen H. Hantke

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Cultural critics often frame present-day Berlin as a space of historical discontinuities, a nexus of modernity and postmodernity that, in its orientation toward the future, represents post-reunification Germany in all its complexity. However, this framing tends to suppress Gothic imagery, of which traces can be found in the critical discourse on the city. Recuperating such Gothic tropes from critical discourse, and then consciously and strategically re-deploying them, can be a valuable strategy for opening up new venues of thinking about the lingering presence of the past, the high cost of modernization, and the uncanny emotional and affective dimensions of urban …