Sitting in a bar1

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Abstract
This paper describes a bar in the small Polish border-town of Slubice. The bar is presented as a social space betwixt and between everything. It belongs neither to the past, nor to the present. It belongs neither to here, nor to there, and it most certainly belongs neither to “us” nor to “them”. The bar is described as a social space and time in transformation, where inherited frames of orientation are remade. Three different perspectives will be developed and contrasted. Firstly, the author will try to make sense of what he can see. He provides commentary on the bar guests, who come from many walks of life. They will be presented as being engaged in a playful contest of established classifications, and even in a playful contest of establishing classifications. Secondly, there are German intellectual commentators – the author, of course, being one of them – who have a certain admiration for what they perceive to be an emancipatory fluidisation of classifications. Thirdly, there are Polish intellectual commentators, for whom the social space of the bar demonstrates less of a condition of fluidisation than of greater alterity.

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