by Peter Schweppe
University of Michigan Press, 2026
Cloth: 978-0-472-07817-2
Paper: 978-0-472-05817-4
eISBN: 978-0-472-90596-6 (OA)
By analyzing how protest fused the politics of reading and writing in 1968 West Germany, author Peter Schweppe uncovers the vibrant history of an alternative literary form during a watershed moment of social upheaval. Out of Line interlinks the politics of reading and writing with the verve of Global Sixties’ protest, where fringe books, underground newspapers, incendiary flyers, and furtive graffiti galvanized readers and writers alike. The phrase “out of line” scrutinizes the emerging performative relationship between visual and textual media in the late 1960s as it metamorphosed modes of West German literary production, channeled the agenda of the protest movement, and, in doing so, shaped new kinds of textual meaning. Through its engagement with theories of materiality and “things,” Out of Line interrogates the dynamic ways that protest readers and writers pushed and broke conventional boundaries. Schweppe’s exploration of form discloses how reading and writing out of line implicates a textual and material history of protest and the lessons it offers protest histories to come.
“Taking stock of underexamined literary and media practices, Schweppe adds a necessary supplement to the study of twentieth-century cultural history and West Germany’s volatile place within it. The book looks through the prism of 1968 to illuminate for English readers the importance of German ideas from our AI present back to the invention of the Gutenberg press.”
— Charity Scribner, City University of New York“Peter Schweppe's superb book enriches the scholarship on West Germany in the Global Sixties. Exploring modes of radical communication in which process, form, and function converged, Schweppe demonstrates that around 1968, new media and new politics were one and the same.”
— Timothy Brown, Northeastern University“Peter Schweppe’s material and paratextual history of literary form in the West German Protest Movement is meticulously researched and generously illustrated. It goes beyond the well-travelled explorations of the Global Sixties to offer a timely reminder of the human capacity to imagine alternative forms of resistance that challenge hegemonic discourse by developing disruptive modes of communication.”
— Ingo Cornils, University of LeedsLicense: CC BY-NC
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