The politics of discourse

«New Subjectivity» was the salient signifier employed by German literary critics in the 1970s to signal a shift from the discourses of «engagement», which had characterized the previous decade, to a paradigm of self-focus. This book explores the interface between the discursive field and its critical participants. In retrospect, the «New Subjectivity» discourse marks a significant watershed in the pre-history of a united German future whose discourses will be mediated between split pasts and imperfectly fused presents. «Third thoughts» names an interdisciplinary approach which penetrates the illusion of discursive unity without presuming that its reifying power will thereby be neutralized.