ABSTRACT
This article charts the importance of Berlin in the constellation of Bowie’s success and probes what stardom means in the context of Berlin. It links what Berlin meant to Bowie with what Bowie’s connection to the city has meant to Berlin in its establishing itself as the ‘poor but sexy’ clubbing capital of Europe. In order to get at the stylistic implications of this form of stardom, I bring together Bowie’s Berlin experiences with those of two countercultural personalities the city brought him together with, who are black stars in their own right: Christiane Felscherinow and Hedi Slimane. In ascertaining that Felscherinow and Slimane share with Bowie a dark aesthetic, which is also a politics and ethics of time and space, I probe the German Romantic lineage of the concepts of constellation and elective affinity and their critical potential via the writings of Berlin-born Walter Benjamin to show that this aesthetic is characteristic of the kind of stardom that the city of Berlin is struggling to maintain in the face of gentrifying pressures. Its appeal, I conclude, lies in the potential it offers for a lifestyle counter to the hegemonic, heteronormative, nuclear-family one of bourgeois modernity.
