@article{intel:/content/journals/10.1386/public.25.50.19_1, author = "Smith-Prei, Carrie", title = "A figure of ambivalent retreat: The case of Gisela Elsner", journal= "Public", year = "2014", volume = "25", number = "50", pages = "19-26", doi = "https://doi.org/10.1386/public.25.50.19_1", url = "https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/public.25.50.19_1", publisher = "Intellect", issn = "2048-6928", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "satire", keywords = "anti-fascism", keywords = "West Germany", keywords = "negativity", keywords = "middle class", keywords = "refusal", keywords = "Herbert Marcuse", keywords = "Gisela Elsner", abstract = "Abstract Retreat communicates power through refusal. By turning away or separating from, the subject in retreat engages in an act of negativity that demands a break with dominant modes of thinking and a redirecting of energies towards the messy, diffuse, or unpopular. In the post-1945 German context, such associations carry specific historical and cultural weight, as negation always also denotes a retreat from the legacies of fascism. This article examines the German author Gisela Elsner (1937-1992) as a case study of just such a retreat. As a figure, she enacted retreat through costuming, make-up, and her fierce commitment to the DKP, the German Communist Party, despite her location in West Germany. Her writing also retreats - from representation, from pleasure, from emotion and from interpretation. The article explores Elsner as a figure of retreat that complicates the positive coding of the term's identity-political possibilities.", }