The geopolitics of improvised language: President John F. Kennedy’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ address

Abstract

AbstractIt is shortly after 13.00 outside Berlin’s Schöneberg Rathaus (City Hall) on 26 June 1963. A strong breeze tosses the banner which hangs behind a narrow speaker’s platform as some 450,000 people listen expectantly to the figure standing before them. Having already been speaking for just over eight minutes, President John F. Kennedy has reached the closing lines of his address: ‘All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner”.’ Although Kennedy’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ address has gained something of an iconic status, few are aware of its improvisational and contentious nature. Crucially, the U.S. President would follow only a quarter of the prepared text during its delivery, and geopolitically frame Berlin in such a manner as to imperil his own foreign policy. Developing insights from the so‐called ‘more‐than‐representational’ turn and informed by materials from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library (JFKPL), this paper records both how and why Kennedy elected to stray from the script. More specifically, it examines those agencies – the objects, atmospheres, emotions, and affects – which converged during Kennedy’s address and led him to employ an improvised, geopolitically volatile mode of language.