Radical Self-Determination. The Case of Berkeley, California

Abstract

The City of Berkeley thrives on self-determination, so much so that it passes resolutions and ordinances that appear to be trying to determine the lives of those far outside the city’s boundaries: Selbstbestimmung als Fremdbestimmung. In trying to understand why this is the case, this contribution first suggests one needs to look at the terms themselves – the context in which they emerged in German, the difficulty of finding a good English equivalent for Fremdbestimmung, the conflation in key uses of Selbstbestimmung – and then at the development of the city, and the university it is known for, since the 1930s. While it became known for student unrest on campus during the 1960s, aspects of which still echo in the city’s self-image and political commitments, the university has also had a lengthy involvement in matters nuclear: this came to a head in the city by the mid-1980s. All of this is meant to explain how, in order to obtain a job building a wall for the city, a contractor has to – rather unusually – swear he does engage in work for nuclear weapons or maintain business relationships with morally repugnant regimes.