Another map on the Wall: Deleuze, Guattari and Freeman at the Iron Curtain

Abstract

This article draws on personal memory of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War to examine the checkpoint as a dispositive constituted by disparate elements, at the crossing of space, time and social representations. Relying on Deleuze and Guattari’s geophilosophy as outlined in What is Philosophy? and A Thousand Plateaus, as well as on queer theory – and particularly on Eve K. Sedgwick’s notion of queer reading and on Elizabeth Freeman’s notion of queer temporality – it examines the narratives at work in border crossing. In the same way that spatiality for Deleuze and Guattari escapes the historical narratives produced by the state apparatus, the queer body disrupts the normative temporality controlling individual lives. The Berlin Wall and the checkpoints of the Cold War, anchored in spatiality, remain entangled in a series of narratives illustrating this particular tension between time and space, a tension which Deleuze and Guattari’s cartography and Sedgwick’s queer reading help to unfold.

Keywords:

• Queer temporality
• Queer Reading
• Geophilosophy
• Cold War
• Berlin Wall

Notes

1. “Elsa Fraülein”, performed by Les Porte-Mentaux in 1988. “Elsa Fraülein, de l’autre côté, ne pouvait pas penser mais elle savait chanter” [Elsa Fraülein, on the other hand, cannot think, but she can sing], claims the refrain. And sure enough, on these summer nights, we sang and danced obliviously to the band’s “pirate” recording, under the quiet scrutiny of Lenin’s photograph