Ghosts and Miracles

The Volkswagen as Imperial Debris in Postwar West Germany

Bibliographic Data

ID2109191
AuthorsNatalie Scholz (0009-0000-0846-8749, University of Amsterdam, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume62
Issue3
Pages487-519
Publication date2020-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417520000158
OpenAlexW3039968165
LanguageEN
References cited63

Starting with the author's own experience of ghostliness in the archive, the article explores the political meaning of the postwar Volkswagen in West Germany as embodiment of the country's 'economic miracle.' The investigation follows the uncanny in texts and images about the Volkswagen between 1945 and 1960 and argues that the car carried with it a 'public secret' as a 'debris' from the Nazi empire that silently transcended the 1945 divide. This reading of the Volkswagen as well as the methodological path toward it highlight a phenomenon that postcolonial scholars have described as 'haunting': a confusion about the relationship between past and present that also bears on those who study the past. Taking this analysis as an encouragement to revisit the powerful myths and 'miracles' of postwar consumer cultures in the West from a new angle, the article calls for historical genealogies of these myths that conceive of the postwar West as a-not yet-postcolonial space and that cross the 1945 threshold

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Art · Confusion · Economic history · Empire · Epistemology · Literature · Meaning (existential · Miracle · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Reading (process · Sociology · Uncanny · Classics · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · European history and politics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Philosophy

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