Ideology within a Pluralist State Apparatus: The Goethe-Institut Constructing, Deconstructing and Reconstructing the German Nation-State

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the ideological workings of Germany’s main public diplomacy organization, the Goethe-Institut. Drawing upon his experience doing fieldwork at the Goethe-Institut in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and employing discourse and semiotic analysis, the author identifies four ideological currents within the organization. Relating these currents to four specific interest groups for which the Goethe-Institut is a strategic point of operation, and examining their complex interrelation, allows for an analysis of how their interplay at once constructs, deconstructs and reconstructs the notion of the German Nation.