This thesis is about the post-war British state’s use of space to organise society and to manage the individual in ways which have been largely ignored within post-war historiography. The thesis shows that the state’s power over the physical fabric of everyday life was deployed in a manner, and in pursuit of objectives, which demand a reassessment of the ways in which the relationship between the state and society in post-war Britain is conventionally understood. Space was used in multiple and sometimes contradictory ways, but state actors evidenced a persistent desire to restructure the physical environment in order to construct normative models of the citizen-subject, to enable new modes of wealth creation, and to disrupt and marginalise unwanted places and practices. Crucially, the thesis argues that state spatial interventions were often used to construct and privilege a model of the citizen-subject as a consuming individual. The thesis focuses on state intervention in four aspects of social experience: shopping, personal mobility, domesticity, and employment. In each case the study shows that reorganising space was viewed as a key tool of government, and was deployed in order to service and manage perceived socio-economic needs. The thesis demonstrates that spatial reordering had identifiable social consequences—spatial projects were not simply indications of the aspirations of governing elites, but reconstituted the material conditions in which a whole range of social, economic, and cultural practices took shape. The thesis argues that historians have not found adequate ways of integrating the structuring force of space into their analyses of socio-historical processes. The focus of much recent historiography on the agency and identity of the individual is in danger of overlooking the ways in social and cultural practices are constrained, shaped, and managed by external factors. This thesis particularly engages studies of post-war consumerism, where the inventive cultural practices of the individual consuming subject have been emphasised at the expense of interrogating how consuming habits were managed and organised by the state and commercial actors. A central claim of this thesis is that, through spatial reorganisation, state actors regulated mass consumerism in the interests of ensuring a continued economic base for deindustrialising cities facing an uncertain political and financial future. This thesis also makes a concerted effort to overcome disciplinary divides, and to demonstrate the value of empirical historical research in testing and revising theories developed in adjacent disciplines. Within urban geography, sociology, and contemporary urban studies, characterisations of the post-war, Fordist, Keynesian, welfare state have been used to construct an influential narrative of epochal social, political, and cultural change across the second half of the twentieth century. An inclusive, collectivist, and redistributive regime is widely understood to have been radically transformed from the late-1970s into a neoliberal, entrepreneurial, consumerist, and individualistic polity. This thesis uses empirical historical research to produce conclusions which challenge this narrative of epochal political and social change.

This thesis examines the history of urban squatting in East and West Berlin from c. 1970 to c.1990. In doing so, it explores the relationship between urban space, opposition and conformity, mainstream and alternative cultures, as well as questions of identity and belonging in both halves of the formerly divided city. During Berlin’s history of division, illegal squatting was undertaken by a diverse range of actors from across the period’s political and Cold War divides. The practice emerged in both East and West Berlin during the early 1970s, continuing and intensifying during the following decade, before the traditions of squatting on both sides of the Berlin Wall converged in 1989-­‐90, as the city’s – and Germany’s – physical division was overcome. Squatting, this thesis argues, provides an important yet little studied chapter in Berlin’s – and indeed Germany’s – post-­‐war history. What is more, it provides an example of the ways in which, during the period of Cold War division, Berlin’s and Germany’s symbolic meaning was not only contested between East and West, but was, within the respective societies, also re-­‐interpreted from below. Drawing on a broad range of archival sources, this thesis compares and contrasts the experience of squatters on both sides of the Berlin Wall, and the ways in which the respective polities responded to this phenomenon. Broadly similar paradigms of urban renewal, this thesis argues, account for not only parallels in the temporality but also the geography of squatting in East and West Berlin. In both Berlins, this thesis demonstrates, the history of squatting was interconnected with that of domestic opposition and political dissidence. Moreover, squatting contributed to the emergence of alternative urban lifestyles, which sustained comparable urban sub-­‐cultures on both sides of the Cold War divide. Perhaps counter-­‐intuitively, this thesis argues that, East Germany’s apparatus of control notwithstanding, the relationship between squatters and the authorities in the GDR was generally more consensual than it was between their counterparts in West Germany and West Berlin. The thesis not only points to the limits of the totalitarian model of interpretation when applied to late Socialist society in the GDR, but also questions the dominant historiographical trend of studying the two Germanys in isolation from one another. Taking its cue from a number of influential scholars, this thesis asserts the importance of incorporating the experiences of both East and West Germany into a narrative of the nation’s divided past. Through identifying and analysing the overarching variable of urban squatting, this thesis attempts to develops a perspective that regards the post-­‐war history of East and West Germany as part of a wider whole.

This thesis probes how recent experimental American "crisis fictions" from authors including Mark Z. Danielewski, Kathryn Davis, and Evan Dara reformulate transatlantic Romantic literary debates about technological and environmental change. Arguing that such texts extend previously theorised ties between Romanticism and postmodernism, it identifies enduring ties between late-postmodern accounts of crisis and those of Romantic predecessors. Responding to the upheavals of digital revolution and ecological risks, these texts, published between 1995 and 2012, inventively engage several linchpin constructs in transatlantic Romantic writing: chiefly, the imagined supersession of subjective and temporal boundaries; a sense that the natural and non-human world is of crucial importance; and a reliance on idioms of sublimity to suggest the unrepresentability of the aforementioned crises. Although numerous critics have traced similarities between Romantic and postmodern modes, this thesis considers those resonances as deeper questions of cultural and literary history. It proposes to more carefully historicise the Romantic intellectual heritage in late postmodernism, identifying intermediating moments that inform contemporary accounts of crisis. It unearths how late postmodern technocultural and environmentalist imaginaries were always already Romantic. Deeply informed by countercultural, mid-century American movements and ideas that themselves drew significantly from transatlantic Romanticism, contemporary figurations of upheaval, syncretically figured in mid-century publications such as the Whole Earth Catalog, are indebted to both Romantic and neo-Romantic heritages. This thesis additionally argues that the digital revolution and unprecedented environmental crisis act as pressures on postmodern literary practices from the mid-1990s onward. Digital speeding and a looming sense of ecological risk register as even earlier crises than the terrorist attacks of "9-11", requiring a recalibration of what the postmodern might mean and do. Crucially, in their preoccupation with embodied realities and environments, including natural ones, the contemporary narratives examined here diverge from the assumption that the natural world bears little importance in postmodern fields of representation. Finally, many recent literary experiments figure themselves as materially participating in the technological and medial systems they respond to; formal experimentation is, accordingly, another centre of interest. This research examines how select texts deploy formal strategies to "materially instantiate" Romantic ideas, to borrow Katherine Hayles's term. Although numerous critics have suggested that Romantic discourse permeates digital cultural imaginaries, existing scholarship devotes little attention to how formal experimentation intersects with narrative strategies.

This thesis demonstrates the aesthetic impact of crisis on Ingeborg Bachmann's late verse and prose. It examines poetic drafts written during a period of personal breakdown in the 1960s, which have largely been received as documents of personal suffering, and identifies these texts as a radical stage of writing that was to prove formally significant for Bachmann's development of the prose "Todesarten"-Projekt. This thesis draws on the new material made available with the publication of these poetic drafts to chart the genesis of Bachmann's acclaimed late oeuvre. By selecting and grouping lyric fragments, the thesis defines recurrent features in this verse and accounts for the texts as a body of writing that forms a radical, yet undocumented, part of this oeuvre. In terms of both their form and of their content, the fragmentary drafts are shown to reflect new engagement with aspects of experience conventionally excluded from High Art. In light of Bachmann's growing preoccupation with the need for aesthetic engagement in the post-war era, close readings reveal how she set about taking her subjective suffering as a basis for a critique of the social order. The thesis outlines how, during the 1960s, Bachmann pioneered a symptomatic expressive mode that - in the disrupted form of the writing - found an indirect means of manifesting the wider origins of subjective disturbance. The ambiguous aesthetic status of these poetic drafts, which were never finished by Bachmann, is related to an inability to establish structural distance from crisis in lyric form. Building on its readings of the poetic drafts, the thesis traces Bachmann's prose experimentation with the same motifs. It identifies how, ultimately, the prose medium enabled the author to resolve problems of aesthetic form raised in the verse. Parallels with the work of other writers and thinkers illuminate the development of a reflexive mode where sophisticated aesthetic strategies enable the oblique expression of cultural critique.

Abstract This study demonstrates the various facets of mediality in post-1945 German-language literature, using as examples seven works of prose by Nicolas Born, Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Handke, Bodo Morshäuser, Uwe Johnson, Heinrich Böll and Martin Walser. The thesis is divided into two major sections: a theoretical section and a text-oriented research section. In the theoretical section, a positioning of media and literature is carried out in the context of history and the history of literature. Starting from the relationship between fiction and reality, a distinction is made between generative and classical mediality. In the research section, mediality in literature is analyzed under the following three thematic criteria: “attention”, “distance” and “reality”; each criterion is addressed using two works of prose as examples. The relatedness of these criteria is analyzed on the basis of the seventh book. This study reveals the diversity of the layers of mediality in the literature of the era and places the individual works of prose in an over-all literary context. / Abstract Die Untersuchung zeigt am Beispiel von sieben Prosawerken von Nicolas Born, Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Handke, Bodo Morshäuser, Uwe Johnson, Heinrich Böll und Martin Walser verschiedene Facetten von Medialität in der deutschsprachigen Literatur nach 1945. Die Arbeit gliedert sich in einen theoretischen und einen textbezogenen Teil. Im theoretischen Teil wird eine Positionierung von Medien und Literatur in einem historischen und literaturgeschichtlichen Kontext vorgenommen. Ausgehend von der Fiktionsfrage wird eine Unterscheidung zwischen generativer und klassischer Medialität vorgenommen. Im textbezogenen Teil wird die Frage nach der Medialität in der Literatur unter den drei thematischen Schwerpunkten „Aufmerksamkeit”, „Distanz” und „Wirklichkeit” abgehandelt, wobei jeweils zwei Prosawerke zur Geltung gebracht werden. Die Bezüge zwischen diesen Schwerpunkten werden an einem siebten Prosawerk untersucht. Die Untersuchung zeigt die Vielfalt der Medialitätsschichten in der Literatur der Zeit und gestattet eine Positionierung der einzelnen Werke im gesamtliterarischen Kontext. / Tiivistelmä Tutkimus osoittaa mediaalisuuden erilaiset mahdollisuudet seitsemän proosateoksen avulla vuoden 1945 jälkeisessä saksankielisessä kirjallisuudessa. Tutkimus jakaantuu teoreettiseen ja proosakirjallisuutta tutkivaan osaan. Teoriaosassa mediat ja kirjallisuus sijoitetaan historian ja kirjallisuudenhistorian kontekstiin. Lähtökohtana on kysymys fiktion ja todellisuuden välisestä suhteesta, ja tässä yhteydessä tehdään ero generatiivisen ja klassisen mediaalisuuden välillä. Teoksiin keskittyvässä osassa kirjallisuuden mediaalisuutta tutkitaan kolmen temaattisen aspektin kautta: tarkkaavaisuus, distanssi ja todellisuus, joita tutkitaan aina kahden teoksen avulla. Näiden aspektien välisiä suhteita tarkastellaan sitten seitsemännessä proosateoksessa. Tutkimus osoittaa mediaalisuuden tasojen moninaisuuden aikamme kirjallisuudessa ja auttaa yksittäisten teosten sijoittamisessa kirjallisuuden koko kontekstiin.

Abstract This thesis is a study of the phenomenon of prosaicness in the works of Martin Walser. The concept of prosaicness is based on an analysis of the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger. This concept is the basis of the interpretation of selected texts. Walser's description of prosaicness is examined in depth in two subject areas: Firstly, the phenomenon of anonymity in his radio plays; secondly, experiences of deprivation in Walser's novels. Special emphasis is placed on the disappearance of the subject in everyday life, on childhood, on homeland and on the reunification of Germany in 1989/1990. Walser's existentialist writing is seen as a literary expression of coming to terms with occurrences of crises in modern times. / Abstract Die Studie untersucht das Phänomen der Alltäglichkeit im Werk Martin Walsers. Der Begriff der Alltäglichkeit wird aus einer Analyse der Existenzphilosophie Martin Heideggers gewonnen und als Leitbegriff zur Interpretation ausgewählter Texte herangezogen. Walsers Beschreibung der Alltäglichkeit wird in zwei Themenbereichen vertieft: In einem ersten Schritt wendet sich die Studie dem Phänomen der Anonymität in den Hörspielen zu; in einem zweiten Schritt wird nach Mangel-Erfahrungen in den Romanen gefragt. In den Blick geraten dabei das Verschwinden des Subjekts im Alltag, Kindheit und Heimat sowie die Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands 1989/90. Walsers existenzialistische Schreibweise wird als Ausdruck und als literarische Bewältigung von Krisenerscheinungen der Moderne verstanden. / Tiivistelmä Väitöskirjassa tutkitaan arkipäiväisyyden ilmiötä Martin Walserin teoksessa. Arkipäiväisyyden käsite pohjautuu Martin Heideggerin eksistentiaalifilosofiseen analyysiin ja sitä käytetään pääkäsitteenä valittujen tekstien tulkinnassa. Walserin arkipäiväisyyden kuvaukseen syvennytään kahden aihealueen myötä: ensiksi kuunnelmissa esiintyvään anonymiteettiin, toiseksi puutteen kokemuksiin romaaneissa. Tässä tutkimuksen kohteena ovat subjektin häviäminen arkipäivässä, lapsuus ja kotiseutu sekä Saksojen yhdistyminen 1989/90. Walserin eksistentialistinen kirjoitustapa ymmärretään modernismin ilmaisuksi ja kriisi-ilmiöistä selviytymiseksi kirjallisuuden avulla.

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