Journalistic Forms of Theory. The journal “alternative” (1958–1982)

The dissertation project studied the relationship between theory formation and the publishing of periodicals at the intersection of political movements, academia and public intellectualism in the second half of the 20th century, focussing on the Marxist-structuralist literary journal alternative. Published in West Berlin from 1958 to 1982, the journal’s life span covers the early years of the so-called New Left, i.e. the time of the student movement and the 1970s, a decade of crisis for the post-68 Left. The New Left mediasphere in which alternative operated was explored by taking into account processes of transfer and distinction between journals and other media. Thus, alongside alternative, pioneering publications such as the British journals Universities & Left Review, The New Reasoner and New Left Review, the French Arguments, the West German konkret and Kursbuch, as well as intellectual role models such as Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les Temps Modernes, were also reviewed. Since the theory and practice of journal publication can be located in a longue durée of political media history, the study examined references to socialist-Marxist as well as Young Hegelian traditions of publishing.

It is important to not consider periodicals as mere passive or neutral entities, mirrors, or containers of thought but instead as dynamic sites of production. Structured by their own temporalities and modes of intellectual production, they yield content and forms that are specific to their medium. Along with aspects concerning the medium itself, this study explored material, social and discursive contexts in which various actors directed expectations toward publishing projects and in which they shared experiences relevant to theory formation. Occasionally, journals themselves became objects of theory, especially in moments of elevated temporal significance, such as beginnings, endings or even the afterlives of defunct periodicals. Ultimately, it can be shown that theory, in the sense of the collective singular and generic term that arose in the 1960s and 1970s, was an intellectual phenomenon that developed through a constitutive relationship with its use of the journal as medium.

Fig. above: © Moritz Neuffer