ABSTRACT
The chapter reflects on an emerging vulgar public sphere in small-town East Germany as people take to the streets, cursing and insulting, in the name of protecting their towns, their occidental values and their people. Building on fieldwork in public urban gatherings, I conceptualize such activity as an ‘act of affective presencing’ and follow an apocalyptic orientation towards ‘the truth’ amongst the orators and the crowds. This ‘truth’ – detached from facts or arguments – returns in a prophetic fashion that Foucault thought had long passed.
