The first of its kind in English, Beyond No Future explores the texts and contexts of German punk culture. Notwithstanding its ＂no future＂ sloganeering, punk has had a rich and complex life in German art and letters, in German urban landscapes, and in German youth culture. Beyond No Future: A German Punk Reader collects innovative, methodologically diverse scholarly contributions on the life and legacy of German punk cultures. Focusing on punk politics and aesthetics in order to ask broader questions about German nationhood(s) in a period of rapid transition, this text offers a unique view of the decade bookended by the “German Autumn” and German unification.
Consulting sources both published and unpublished, aesthetic and archival, Beyond No Future’s contributors examine German punk’s representational strategies, anti-historical consciousness, and refusal of programmatic intervention into contemporary political debates. Taken together, these essays demonstrate the importance of punk culture to historical, political, economic, and cultural developments taking place both in Germany and on a broader transnational scale.
