Actually existing post-socialism: Producing ideological others in eastern Germany

Abstract

In this article I will argue that we need to continue working with and through the notion of post-socialism as long as local populations are treated as transitional. That is, as long as policy-makers, politicians, managers and academics engage with local people in the belief that their dispositions, behaviours and personhoods in the democratic present are a result of their own or their predecessors’ life in socialism, and as long as they develop initiatives that aim to counter attitudes seen to result from the state-socialist past. Taking this concept seriously in the sense that powerholders believe in ‘actually existing post-socialism’ allows us to explore not only how such perceptions come about but also their lasting effects on local populations, which is relevant to our anthropological understanding of humanity more widely. The article shows how a perception of a transition to democracy that is yet to be concluded has become intertwined with the production of all-Germany as democratic, which therefore rests upon the continuous reproduction of eastern Germans as ideological, democratically deficient others.