Out of the casting show - up to the threshold. Theorizing political agency and post-democracy in Raul Zelik's novel Der Eindringling

How to recuperate perspectives of political agency and emancipation is one of central issues in current theories of postdemocracy. By reading Raul Zelik's novel Der Eindringling (2012) and its portrayal of present "post-political" youth and pop cultures, the article asks how narratives of restricted agency and absent collective political action are updated and challenged by the text. It discusses how the threshold metaphor is used in the novel to theorize current perspectives of political emancipation in "hermetic" times. The metaphor is also employed by Zelik in some of his non-fictional texts, in Der Eindringling, however, it is conjoined with a literary account of subjectivization, feelings, and political emotions, that are crucial to political movement and agency. Thus, alongside its' post-democratic "problem horizon", the article investigates into the productive contribution and textual co-operation" (M. Lffler) of fictional narratives to political theory.