Paul M. Farber. A Wall of Our Own

In A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall, Paul Farber traces the rich tapestry of experiences of Jewish American photographer ­Leonard Freed, African American activist Angela Davis, ­Japanese American sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri, and Caribbean American poet Audre Lorde. These “American Berliners” “shared a focus on divided Berlin informed by their sustained, critical engagement with American and German historical ideas, places, problems, and modes of power and belonging” (6). He provides a biographical sketch of each of these figures and their symbolic, political, artistic, and cultural engagement with Berlin and its wall. Their experiences in the city helped them draw attention to the material impact of American military power and race relations. Interweaving the rhetoric of the wall on both sides of the Atlantic and close analyses of their cultural productions, Farber considers how these American Berliners pursued “circuits of alternative cultural diplomacy,” which were “an interconnected system of overlapping networks and practices of American culture in divided Berlin, which prompted ongoing visits from hundreds of artists, writers, thinkers, and activists, and initiated a shadow roadmap of detours and improvisations” (7). These American Berliners remained on the margins of official or state diplomacy, but at times their diplomacy intersected with state-sponsored organizations or initiatives—namely, the Amerika Haus or the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Indeed, they used Berlin to explore different meanings about borders while also remaining critical about Cold War geopolitics.

Art history · Berlin wall · Cold war · Diplomacy · German · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Psychoanalysis · Shadow (psychology) · Sociology · State (computer science) · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies