Bowie in Berlin, or, the Postcolonial Intellectual Unmasked

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_chapter_15879
dc.contributor.author	Huggan Graham
dc.title	Bowie in Berlin, or, the Postcolonial Intellectual Unmasked
dc.type	Chapter
dc.language.iso	en
dc.description.abstract	In this chapter, I use the perhaps unlikely figure of David Bowie to test the boundaries of the postcolonial intellectual, referring primarily to his years in Berlin, the city where, in his celebrated 1987 concert at the Reichstag, he sent his “best wishes to our friends who are on the other side of the Wall”. At the same time, I use Bowie’s extraordinary life and work, and the media machinery that surrounded it, to contest the so-called ‘demotic turn’ through which increasing intellectual authority has been given to ordinary citizens, each of whom can become a celebrity, if not necessarily an intellectual, in his or her own right.
dc.relation.ispartof	Studi e ricerche
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.issued	2023-01-26
dc.dateAccepted	2022-10-21
dc.dateSubmitted	2022-07-13
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-678-7/bowie-in-berlin-or-the-postcolonial-intellectual-u/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/978-88-6969-677-0/012
dc.identifier.issn	2610-993X
dc.identifier.eissn	2610-9123
dc.identifier.isbn	978-88-6969-678-7
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-677-0
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Bowie
dc.subject	Celebrity
dc.subject	Intellectual
dc.subject	Postcolonial
dc.subject	Social media

Chapter
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Bowie in Berlin, or, the Postcolonial Intellectual Unmasked

Graham Huggan University of Leeds, UK

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abstract

In this chapter, I use the perhaps unlikely figure of David Bowie to test the boundaries of the postcolonial intellectual, referring primarily to his years in Berlin, the city where, in his celebrated 1987 concert at the Reichstag, he sent his “best wishes to our friends who are on the other side of the Wall”. At the same time, I use Bowie’s extraordinary life and work, and the media machinery that surrounded it, to contest the so-called ‘demotic turn’ through which increasing intellectual authority has been given to ordinary citizens, each of whom can become a celebrity, if not necessarily an intellectual, in his or her own right.

Published

Jan. 26, 2023

Accepted

Oct. 21, 2022

Submitted

July 13, 2022

Language

ISBN (PRINT)

978-88-6969-678-7

ISBN (EBOOK)

978-88-6969-677-0

Keywords: Postcolonial • Celebrity • Social media • Intellectual • Bowie

permalink: http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-677-0/012

Copyright: © 2023 Graham Huggan. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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