Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere: Aesthetic Fiction and the Creation of Social Identities 3030400859, 9783030400859

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 The Cases
1.2 Some Words on Methodology
1.2.1 Translations
References
Chapter 2: Theoretical Considerations
2.1 The Political Foundations of the Social
2.1.1 The Imaginary Dimension of Social Reality
2.1.2 The Political Beyond Institutionalized Politics
2.1.3 Fiction and Aesthetics: Acts of Subjectification
2.2 Constituting Meaning in the Public Sphere
2.2.1 The Public Sphere and Social Reality
2.2.2 Opinion-Forming Media
2.2.3 The Feuilleton: Interface Between the Arts and the Social
References
Chapter 3: Confirming a Secular World Order: Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence
3.1 An Overview: The Issue with Censorship and the Material
3.2 The Paradigm of the Art’s Autonomy
3.3 Sexuality and the Order of Representation
3.3.1 Metaphoricity
3.3.2 Iconicity
3.4 Résumé
References
Chapter 4: A Moving World: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
4.1 Defining Freedom (Differently)
4.1.1 The Dystopian Paradigm of Political Mobilization
4.1.2 Performing Nineteen Eighty-Four Allegorically
4.2 The World as Its Future
4.3 Résumé
References
Chapter 5: The Creation of the Social: Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy
5.1 The Deputy in Context
5.2 The Aesthetics of Immediacy
5.3 Political Commitment
5.4 The Presence of the Past
5.5 Résumé
References
Chapter 6: The Social Visibility of Corporeality: The Rebel Youth Films in the Fifties
6.1 Methodological Particularities
6.2 Youth as a Liminal Figure
6.2.1 The Wild One
6.2.2 Blackboard Jungle
6.2.3 Rebel Without a Cause
6.2.4 Rock Around the Clock
6.3 The Aesthetics of Presence/Appearance
6.3.1 The Wild One
6.3.2 Rebel Without a Cause
6.3.3 Rock Around the Clock
6.4 Résumé
References
Chapter 7: Fiction Between Representation and Quotation: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Garbage, the City and Death
7.1 Chronology
7.2 The Material
7.3 1976: The First Debate
7.3.1 Left Identity in West Germany
7.3.2 Toward a Postmodern Paradigm of Interpretation
7.3.3 The Paradigm of the “Prohibition of the Image”
7.3.3.1 Representing the Other–An Act of Structural Anti-Semitism
7.3.3.2 The Primacy of Context
7.3.4 Résumé
7.4 1984: Interlude
7.4.1 Coming to Terms with the Past
7.4.2 The Failure of Representation
7.4.3 Résumé
7.5 1985: The Fassbinder Controversy
7.5.1 In Support of Garbage, the City and Death
7.5.1.1 The Role of Post-Structuralism
7.5.1.2 The Non-Jewish Addressee
7.5.1.3 Configuring a Critical Identity
7.5.2 The Opposition to Garbage, the City and Death
7.5.2.1 Against Normalization
7.5.2.2 Whose Prerogative of Interpretation?
7.5.3 In-Betweenness
7.5.4 The Controversy as Metaphor: The Meta-Debate
7.5.4.1 The Rift that Divides the Social
7.5.4.2 The Transformation of Jewish Identity
7.5.4.3 Re-Imagining the Social
7.5.5 Résumé
7.6 Fiction and Social Creation
References
Chapter 8: Conclusions
References
Index

Citation preview

Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere Aesthetic Fiction and the Creation of Social Identities Marcela Knapp

Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere

Marcela Knapp

Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere Aesthetic Fiction and the Creation of Social Identities

Marcela Knapp Institute of Sociology Justus Liebig University Giessen Giessen, Germany

ISBN 978-3-030-40085-9    ISBN 978-3-030-40086-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40086-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This book is the result of a dissertation written at the University of Giessen in the Department of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies. My sincerest thanks go to the supervisor of my dissertation, Professor Jörn Ahrens, for his precise and rigorous yet always supportive critique of my work. I would like to thank him for always believing in me and the quality of my work. Thanks also to my second supervisor, Professor Sina Farzin, for investing her time and energy in this project. This research would not have been possible without the generous funding of the Evangelisches Studienwerk e.V. Villigst. I am indebted to my friends and family who advanced my analyses through deep conversations, provided me with feedback, proofread the text over and over again, but most especially helped me recover my energies when needed and gave me their love and friendship. This work is dedicated to my daughter, whose early days were deeply influenced by my absorption in this research.

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Abbreviations

AJW FAZ FR NZZ Spiegel SZ taz Welt WeltaS Zeit

Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Frankfurter Rundschau Neue Zürcher Zeitung Der Spiegel Süddeutsche Zeitung tageszeitung Die Welt Welt am Sonntag Die Zeit

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 1.1 The Cases 12 1.2 Some Words on Methodology 18 1.2.1 Translations 24 References 25 2 Theoretical Considerations 29 2.1 The Political Foundations of the Social 29 2.1.1 The Imaginary Dimension of Social Reality 30 2.1.2 The Political Beyond Institutionalized Politics 38 2.1.3 Fiction and Aesthetics: Acts of Subjectification 43 2.2 Constituting Meaning in the Public Sphere 46 2.2.1 The Public Sphere and Social Reality 47 2.2.2 Opinion-Forming Media 52 2.2.3 The Feuilleton: Interface Between the Arts and the Social 55 References 64 3 Confirming a Secular World Order: Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence 69 3.1 An Overview: The Issue with Censorship and the Material 71 3.2 The Paradigm of the Art’s Autonomy 75 3.3 Sexuality and the Order of Representation 83 ix

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CONTENTS

3.3.1 Metaphoricity 83 3.3.2 Iconicity 88 3.4 Résumé 96 References103 4 A Moving World: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four107 4.1 Defining Freedom (Differently)111 4.1.1 The Dystopian Paradigm of Political Mobilization111 4.1.2 Performing Nineteen Eighty-Four Allegorically119 4.2 The World as Its Future126 4.3 Résumé131 References136 5 The Creation of the Social: Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy139 5.1 The Deputy in Context141 5.2 The Aesthetics of Immediacy144 5.3 Political Commitment151 5.4 The Presence of the Past158 5.5 Résumé163 References170 6 The Social Visibility of Corporeality: The Rebel Youth Films in the Fifties173 6.1 Methodological Particularities176 6.2 Youth as a Liminal Figure179 6.2.1 The Wild One 180 6.2.2 Blackboard Jungle 185 6.2.3 Rebel Without a Cause 194 6.2.4 Rock Around the Clock 200 6.3 The Aesthetics of Presence/Appearance205 6.3.1 The Wild One 206 6.3.2 Rebel Without a Cause 209 6.3.3 Rock Around the Clock 213 6.4 Résumé219 References229

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7 Fiction Between Representation and Quotation: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Garbage, the City and Death233 7.1 Chronology236 7.2 The Material239 7.3 1976: The First Debate240 7.3.1 Left Identity in West Germany242 7.3.2 Toward a Postmodern Paradigm of Interpretation246 7.3.3 The Paradigm of the “Prohibition of the Image”250 7.3.4 Résumé261 7.4 1984: Interlude262 7.4.1 Coming to Terms with the Past263 7.4.2 The Failure of Representation266 7.4.3 Résumé269 7.5 1985: The Fassbinder Controversy271 7.5.1 In Support of Garbage, the City and Death272 7.5.2 The Opposition to Garbage, the City and Death280 7.5.3 In-Betweenness289 7.5.4 The Controversy as Metaphor: The Meta-Debate292 7.5.5 Résumé297 7.6 Fiction and Social Creation299 References309 8 Conclusions315 References325 Index327

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Modern society distinguishes between fact and fiction, between truth and the imagination. Fictional works of art differ from lies and dreams in that the fictional transgressions of social reality are conscious and voluntary acts, open to view for everybody. As a social institution, aesthetic fiction creates a space in which social reality as a reference of the speech act is suspended. While the lie means to deceive, aesthetic fiction does not hide its own fictitiousness. Instead, it is a play–to various degrees–with transgression. And in contrast to the dream, the worlds set up by fiction are products of the alert mind. They originate in a sense of intentionality of the creator, despite the fact that she might not be able to control every aspect of it with the conscious mind. The institution of fiction holds a special place in a world that is oriented toward facticity and the “reality principle” (Cornelius Castoriadis). Yet the existence of the institution of fiction as part of social reality shows that society reserves meaning and importance for fiction, which goes beyond the yearning for entertainment. As a social institution, fiction has brought forth a more or less stable pattern of recurrent practices, expectations, norms, and values. It has brought forth social roles such as artists, critics, and audience, as well as structured fields of production and reception, all of which give aesthetic fiction the authority to be a recognized institution of society. However, the truth of fiction escapes definition. If fiction does not tell us facts, which truth can we gain from it? Or: How can we be moved by fiction, if we know it does not exist? The latter © The Author(s) 2020 M. Knapp, Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40086-6_1

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question has provoked a notable debate about the “paradox of fiction”1 among philosophers of art, who tried to solve the problem of true emotions in the absence of true events. Kendall Walton is probably one of the most prominent spokespersons in the controversy, and his concept of make-believe postulates that–just like children in play–we make-believe that what happens in a novel or on screen is true. This suspension of disbelief generates quasi-emotions, which differ from real emotions in that they lack a motivational force which makes the recipient behave in accordance with the experienced emotion. The emotions raised by fiction, Walton suggests, depend on submitting to the play of make-believe proposed by fiction (Walton 1990). The paradox of fiction, which has been poignantly framed in “How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?” (Radford and Weston 1975), is also at the heart of this work. What position does fiction hold in the constitution of the real? If aesthetic fiction explicitly transgresses the boundaries established by society’s “reality principle,” why do we repeatedly witness large public controversies that originate within fictional works of art? Controversies of this kind cannot lay claim to being based on rational argument and irrefutable facts; indeed, they cannot be tested on social reality. And yet, these controversies participate in shaping society’s symbolic framework, despite the fact that fiction exceeds what is perceived as reality and truth. Central to my research is the question of how fiction has an impact on the social. Not in the sense of the strength of a fictional artwork’s effects, but in the manner through which it transforms the symbolic order. What role does fiction play in the constitution of the social, which the “discourse of reality” cannot fulfill? Fictional artworks (or “aesthetic fiction”) have no meaning in and of themselves. The term “aesthetic fiction” derives from the act of cutting the sign’s world reference in fiction, which leads to the artwork’s subjection to the rule of form (structures, patterns, figurations) and aesthetics understood in a broad sense as sensual or sensory perception. Fiction can only become meaningful for society in the process of interpretation, which is the act of closing the indeterminacy inherent in the fictional text. This claim was put forward by the literary theorist Wolfgang Iser in his inaugural lecture, which was published as Die Appellstruktur der Texte. Unbestimmtheit als Wirkungsbedingung literarischer Prosa (Iser 1970). Accordingly, literary texts always contain gaps in the semantic framework, which can only be filled by the recipient, and which are in fact necessary, so that the recipient can connect her own life experience with the literary

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text and bring it to life. The work’s final meaning is therefore a result of the recipient’s active participation in the creative process of aesthetic fiction. Simultaneously, this means that since a work of art is continually read anew, its meanings are as manifold as the number of readings it has been subjected to. In The Fictive and the Imaginary, Iser perceives the literary text as a performance which is never stable and which cannot be thought of without the act of interpretation. An interpretation of a literary text in fact performs the artwork in its contextual specificity (Iser 1993, esp. pp.  281–296). Following these claims, the social meaning of fiction–from a sociological standpoint–can never be researched without taking into account its manifold interpretations, which are always bound up in a time-space framework. It is only with interpretation that a work of art realizes itself as a particular manifestation of itself, and the interpretation is informed by the social, political, and cultural situation of the recipient. Therefore, if we want to find out how a fictional work of art impacts on the meaningful constitution of the social, we have to look at those instances where interpretation takes place, since it is here that the fictional text is brought into a relation with social reality. As a result of these reflections, I have searched for a social institution in which a collective interpretation of artworks takes place. Every society which values the institution of art as it is discussed here is in need of a discursive space in which the collective interpretation of artworks can take place. If art is deprived of a space in which “reading guidelines” for understanding an artwork can be developed, it becomes meaningless. The location and concrete appearance of this discursive space, however, varies over time and across space. The West German Feuilleton, the feature pages of the national daily and weekly newspapers, combines some characteristics which make it exceptionally interesting for analysis. First, it served as a platform for negotiating the symbolic framework on a nationwide basis. The Feuilleton’s sphere of influence coincided with the country’s political boundaries. Second, although the Feuilleton is the part of the newspaper that is primarily dedicated to cultural journalism, it transcends this limitation and becomes a platform for debates pertaining to the definition of society’s self-image. This is due to the fact that the West German Feuilleton is an intrinsic part of the regular newspaper and hence participates in social and political controversies taking place beyond the limits of a narrow definition of cultural journalism.

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Third, as a politically diverse platform, the Feuilleton takes the shape of an opinion-forming social institution and is geared toward controversy and dispute, which makes it especially significant for making visible the conflicts traversing the social. Controversies and conflicts are events of dense symbolic interaction, providing me (the researcher) with a good site for looking into the processes and dynamics of the transformation of social meaning, which go hand in hand with transformations of the social order. The role played by the public sphere and the feature pages of certain kinds of national daily and weekly newspapers in the constitution of the social will be further explored in the next chapter, which develops the theoretical framework. Controversies and conflicts that have been initiated by a fictional work of art are those incidents where society appropriates a work of art and incorporates it into its symbolic order. It is the moment of the interaction between aesthetic fiction and social reality, in which society negotiates and eventually settles on an artwork’s meaning provisionally. This is, however, always to be thought of as preliminary in the performative sense proposed by Iser. With Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as well as Jacques Rancière, a social conflict may be conceptualized as the encounter of the sedimented practices of the social and the transformative aspirations of the political; or, as the encounter of two or more social identities locked in a struggle to define social reality, in which one side defends the status quo, while the other side envisages a transformation. The social, from this perspective, is constituted by struggle and conflict–by the political–and through scrutinizing these conflicts, the dynamics of social development and transformation becomes visible. Social conflict is always an instance of the political. Examining cultural controversies is therefore not only a means of detecting an artwork’s socially given meaning, but more importantly, it contains information about how society digests and makes fictionality productive for the political constitution of the social. The question to be addressed here may therefore be reframed as: How does aesthetic fiction impact politically on social relations? The central theoretical presupposition to this work is provided by the social philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, whose theorizing of the social as founded in the imaginary establishes the link between the materialized institutions of the social and the human psyche. The imaginary is social creation in its most fundamental sense and the engine for the tension that exists between the movements of institution and institutionalization, between conserving what is and the constant transformation of social

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reality. Social conflict is always oriented toward the formation of meaning, toward how a society imagines itself. With Castoriadis, it becomes possible to understand aesthetic fiction as a meaningful social practice, which is not an accessory to social reality, but can become constitutive of it. The political struggle of social identities becomes an act of the imagination. I have selected and analyzed cultural controversies that took place in West Germany in the period between the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 and the time of Germany’s reunification in 1990. The period under consideration in this research is confined to the “old” Federal Republic of Germany so as to draw the already diverse case studies from a more or less unified social field. I have deliberately excluded the period after reunification since it substantially changed the field and the significance of the Feuilleton as a national platform. It simultaneously coincided with the loss of influence of the German Feuilleton due to the structural transformations of the media landscape since the 1990s. The rise of the internet as well as the structural transformations of the newspaper industry since the early 1990s have fundamentally transformed the functioning of the public sphere. The public reception of cultural works of art has diversified and currently lacks national hegemonic spaces such as the West German Feuilleton in the period from 1950 to 1990. This, however, makes the “old” Feuilleton an all the more crucial field for analysis, because it allows for a scrutinizing of the processes of social reception of artworks in a condensed setting. Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM) has been applied to the material and it has brought forward the “paradigm of art/interpretation” as the central category of the research. The paradigm of art/interpretation is a derivative of Rancière’s “regime of art” and refers to the idea of a specific aesthetic language depending on the development of a “reading guideline.” Any aesthetic expression in art, in order to be meaningful, is in need of a mode of interpretation that is capable of giving meaning to the artwork under consideration. The regime of art gives orientation to the way recipients approach the respective work of art.2 I prefer to speak of paradigms of art/interpretation instead of a regime of art, because here we are confronted with the struggle of different patterns of art/interpretation for acceptance or even hegemony. Regime in Rancière’s terminology, although it may be used literally in the sense of a partial order, is too closely associated with rule and authority to be useful in this context. A paradigm of art/interpretation captures the relation critics establish between the artwork and social reality, and it therefore configures the

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artwork’s socially constituted meaning. The controversies and conflicts in my subsequent case studies are to be seen as conflicts between paradigms of art/interpretation, which represent different social positions and identities. The struggles are indeed struggles for the “correct” paradigm of art/interpretation. Aesthetic fiction, this study suggests, frames the form, mood, or tonality in which a world appears to the senses, and hence creates the framework within which perception takes place. Aesthetics is here conceived of as that which imposes structure, form, rhythm, mood, and metaphor onto the world’s contents and therefore makes it available to being experienced as an affect by the human psyche. A paradigm of art/interpretation is that which creates a specific relation between a fiction’s aesthetics (form, mood, tonality) and social reality. It defines the rules within which the “language” developed by an artwork can be meaningfully applied to social reality. Cultural controversies may be viewed as an interaction, where society– proceeding from an aesthetic provocation–struggles for a common perception of the social. The struggle of the cultural controversies is therefore a struggle for defining what Rancière calls the “partition of the sensible” (Rancière 2004, p. 10). Each paradigm of art/interpretation develops its own discourse, its own interpretation of social reality, a field in which some arguments are plausible and others are not. In this work’s case studies, two or more discourses encounter one another by way of interacting without merging together. Rather, the controversies show how a respective discourse may be developed in distinction from other discourses. Marianne Jørgensen and Louise Phillips describe Laclau and Mouffe’s understanding of discourse first as “always constituted in relation to what it excludes, that is, in relation to the field of discursivity” and second by stating that “the discourse establishes a closure, a temporary stop to the fluctuations in the meaning of the signs” (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, pp. 27–28; see also Laclau and Mouffe (1985) 2001, p. 105). It is in this sense that I use the term discourse. In the analysis of conflicts and controversies, therefore, we are not confronted with a single discourse, but with conflicting and mutually exclusive ones. The discourses are deeply entangled with the paradigms of art/interpretation in which they originate, but differ from these in that they refer to social reality and negotiate the “way things are.” The paradigm of art/interpretation, on the other hand, is a concept that tries to encapsulate the specific relation established between social reality and fiction in the respective paradigm of meaning. The paradigm of meaning

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encompasses the discourses as well as the values and norms which are accepted as true and valid by a certain social identity. This is what constitutes a valid and tangible world of significations for a certain social identity and does not necessarily–or only rarely so, as this book shows–coincide with political boundaries. Aesthetic languages carry social identities locked in antagonistic struggles. They activate, invoke, create, and give rise to social identification. The case studies show that the vehemence of the struggle originates in the constitutive dimension of aesthetics for social identities. Not every aesthetic language originates in fictional works of art, but in societies that distinguish fiction as an institution, artworks can become the social practice that is given priority in formulating them. The five controversies under consideration in this study are informed by three art forms: novels, feature films, and plays. They share the characteristic of being narrative genres and comply with Iser’s characterization of the literary text, which coincides with my notion of aesthetic fiction: “… the act of fictionalizing… appears to comprise three separate acts” (Iser 1993, p.  4). These are selection, combination, and self-disclosure (Iser 1993, pp. 4–21). Every literary text inevitably contains a selection from a variety of social, historical, cultural, and literary systems that exist as referential fields outside the text. This selection is itself a stepping beyond boundaries, in that the elements selected are lifted out of the systems in which they fulfill their specific function. (Iser 1993, pp. 4–5)

Recombining these selected elements is the second step toward fictionalizing. It oversteps the limitations attached to the elements by social reality and hence has to be thought of as an act of the imagination. Finally, what appears most important is the act of disclosing the artwork’s fictionality, which fictionalizes a literary text (and equally applies to film and plays). Through linguistic and non-linguistic signs the aesthetic work of art signals its own lack of a referential truth value and is thus inserted in the socially established institution of fiction. Self-disclosure invokes expectations associated with this particular speech act and a certain attitude toward the text. The act of self-disclosure suspends the sign’s referential dimension and hence separates the text from its bond with social reality. As I have previously mentioned, aesthetics and form are deeply entangled with the institution of fiction in the sense described above, since the

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suspension of the sign’s referential dimension in fiction reflects upon itself as a speech act. By withdrawing attention from the world and its signification, fictionalizing draws attention to the representation of meaning. Aesthetics is structure, form, figurations, all of which can be perceived sensually. In contrast, the notion of representation refers to the form-dimension of social reality. Forms make social reality tangible and enable us to experience and understand the world surrounding us. As opposed to signification, representations do not tell us what the world is, but how we experience it. Representations take the shape of structures, forms, and figurations, since this is the grammar understood by the psyche. The concepts of aesthetics and representation merge in the specific shape a representation takes, since a representation is constituted by its aesthetics. Aesthetics defines which specific shape a representation is given by society, which also means that aesthetics is not limited to the institution of art, but rather is a constant companion of meaning. That being said, it is in art that we can best grasp the role played by aesthetics in social reality, because it is a communicative genre organized around the aesthetic dimension of meaning. In order to find out how fiction alters representations and politicizes social relations, it is crucial to look at the times and places where fiction interacts with the social. This means looking at the concrete practices of reception. Since this research bridges art, aesthetics, and the social, this work is located at the intersection of several areas of research. Most notably, my research question shares interests with the Constance School of reception aesthetics, most notably Wolfgang Iser. And it shows that Iser may not have gone far enough in intertwining fictional work and social practice. His interest in recipients’ responses in contrast to the focus on the literary text’s intentionality refocuses aesthetic fiction as a social practice, which not only represents social reality, but also feeds back into it.3 In fact, aesthetic reception can thus be theorized as a social practice and not merely as an addendum to the text’s production. Reception aesthetics challenges the notion of a stable meaning of a fictional work of art, which exists beyond time and place. Even so, as Robert Holub remarks, “[i]n bracketing the real reader [through the figure of the implied reader, MK] and any predispositions [of the implied reader, MK], however, Iser often comes dangerously close to defining his ‘construct’ in purely literary terms” (Holub 1984, p. 85). The absence of an empirical and social reader in Iser’s reader-response theory leads to the problem that Iser’s theory remains based in the literary text and not in the interaction of text and

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reader (the process of reception), as much as he claims that this is his objective. This is also true with respect to his work The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology (Iser 1993), in which he claims to pursue the task of mapping a framework for literature’s role for the human being. This objective is even closer to the interest pursued by this research, which deals with the role played by literature in the constitution of the social. Instead of focusing on an artwork’s meaning, as reader-response theory does, Iser’s literary anthropology is concerned with literature’s working within and for humanity. However, Margit Sutrop–and I agree with her– blames Iser for losing sight of the recipient. While he investigates the functioning of the fictive, he conceives of it as a text-internal play of the real, the fictive, and the imaginary. The practice of reception disappears from view (Sutrop 2000, pp. 61–62). In his most ambitious work, Iser relapses back into the habit of literary scholars: conceiving of themselves as privileged readers, enabled by expertise to find “objective” meaning within an artwork. Additionally, the use of art in public spaces from an urban studies perspective deserves attention (see, e.g., the anthology Lossau and Stevens 2015). Art’s meaning is here conceptualized as bound to its time and space framework, its contextual positioning, and the uses to which it is subjected (Stevens and Lossau 2015). Art, from this perspective, is made by the recipients, a perspective which very much coincides with my understanding of aesthetic fiction’s meaning. However, while my research looks into the discursive practices of creating paradigms of art/interpretation, which refers to society’s search for a collective agreement about art’s meaning, the scholarship about public art is more concerned with the public artworks’ structuring of public space. Also, media studies in the tradition of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) have prominently engaged in research on the relation of media and their reception by diverse audiences. Stuart Hall’s article “Encoding/Decoding” has proved immensely influential (Lingenberg 2015, pp. 110–111). Hall develops a model of communication in which the act of communication is not a direct transmission from sender to recipient, but where the recipient actively participates in the production of meaning. Transformation of meaning, its individual appropriation, is therefore built into the communication model (Hall 1980). However, Alexander Geimer emphasizes audience research’s “radical contextualism,” which thwarts any ambition to conceptualize a model

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of a comprehensive consensus of meaning. Meaning, in this strand of audience research, is always localized and in the process of subversion. Geimer notes that a stable structure of experience is no longer thinkable (Geimer 2011, pp. 194–196). Swantje Lingenberg points out that cultural studies highlight the creative and emancipatory dimension of media use in contrast to traditional media studies’ conceptualization of reception as a unidirectional relation from media to the recipient (Lingenberg 2015, pp.  109–110). And while cultural studies emphasizes the emancipatory potential of alternative readings, it lacks a concept of social creation. Practices of media use take place in already established social, political, and cultural contexts (Röser 2015, pp. 128–129). This goes hand in hand with the absence of an engagement with fictionality. While particularly film is considered a mass medium by cultural studies, it is characterized by its function as a medium and not by its fictionality (see, e.g., Geimer 2011), a quality which is central to my research design. However, there is, especially in German scholarship, research undertaken with respect to cultural controversies in the Feuilleton, which not only underscores the salient role of the Feuilleton as a German peculiarity, but also shares a similar concern with my work: the relationship between aesthetic fiction and its political impact. However, the studies often remain bound by aesthetic normativity, and criticize the public controversies for being guided by ideological or economic premises instead of by standards of literary value (Papenfuß 1998; Heinen 2007; Meier 2003). This critique implies a normative view of the practice of literary criticism, which the literary critic Sigrid Löffler defines as a mediation between the literary text and the recipient (Löffler 1999, pp. 31–32).4 Thomas Anz’s analysis of the patterns of literary criticism’s argumentation similarly contains a flavor of this normative approach, although he insists that he is taking a neutral position (Anz 1990). Instead of dealing with the social processes taking place in the Feuilleton’s disputes, his approach takes as its starting point a predetermined conception of literary value and criticism’s role in defending it. Schmitt-Sasse’s analysis of the controversy around the film The Silence is more genuinely concerned with the socio-psychological dimension of the controversy (Schmitt-Sasse 1988), yet his approach does not account for the paradox of fiction. Volker Lilienthal’s essay on the controversy about Günter Grass’ novel The Rat (Lilienthal 1988b) and his book Literaturkritik als politische Lektüre (Lilienthal 1988a), which discusses the reception of Peter Weiss’ novel The Aesthetics of Resistance, are exceptional in the sense that they

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understand literary criticism not purely as a mediating agency between literary text and recipient, but as an institution which is generative of social meaning in and of itself. What these analyses are not concerned with, however, is the role played by fictionality–and aesthetics in a more extended sense–in the constitution of social meaning in literary and cultural controversies. Sociology and political sciences, in turn, have been increasingly interested in questions of the imaginary dimension of social life. Let me just mention Charles Taylor’s “Modern Social Imaginaries” (Taylor 2002), Susanne Lüdemann’s Metaphern der Gesellschaft. Studien zum soziologischen und politischen Imaginären (Lüdemann 2004), and Chiara Bottici’s Imaginal Politics: Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary (Bottici 2014). All three are concerned with the foundations of social life in the imagination and in self-images. Fiction as an institution, which discloses itself as fictional, however, is not the imaginary they are interested in. Their imaginary is of the order of the “real,” which is related to our convictions and the (imaginal) concepts that guide our access to the world. Nelson Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking (1978) also falls within this category in that it is concerned with the constitution of the social–the creation of worlds–through language and the symbolic order of the social. The present research is located in the field established by these parameters and aims to bridge the gap between a view of the fictional work of art as self-sufficient and autonomous, and the social as founded upon imaginal factuality.5 This work forms part of the relatively new field of research into social aesthetics. John Clammer’s Vision and Society: Towards a Sociology and Anthropology from Art (2014) formulates a research interest along the same lines proposed in this book. It provides a thorough theoretical framework that grounds the social in arts and aesthetics. The arts are conceptualized as a social agent. As in my work, Clammer is not interested in the textual analysis of works of art in order to find out more about the artwork’s interpretation of society, but takes a pragmatic approach to art. His case studies describe the appropriation of art in different social and cultural contexts. Aesthetic styles are here re-conceptualized as representing specific social structures, with a political impact in transforming societies. Similarly, the anthology The Aesthetics of Everyday Life by Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith (2005) examines the overflow of aesthetics from the sphere of the arts into society and in this sense overlaps with the aims pursued by my own work. However, The Aesthetics of Everyday Life differs

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in its understanding of aesthetics as referring to the beautiful. Therefore, the essays compiled in this book are specifically concerned with conceptualizing social aesthetics as the experience of beauty and the sublime in everyday life. Since they explore and expand the boundaries of the arts into the sphere of the social, they must be considered a contribution to the philosophy of art. The difference between The Aesthetics of Everyday Life and this book is one of category. My own understanding takes aesthetics to mean the realm of sensual perception and therefore conceptualizes aesthetics very broadly. Due to this categorial difference, my work is a contribution to social theory and to a better understanding of social processes in a more encompassing sense. I propose to consider social organization as founded in aesthetic perception, in which the arts participate. Finally, the anthology Political Aesthetics: Culture, Critique and the Everyday by Arundhati Virmani (2016) is concerned with highlighting the connections between aesthetics and politics. The essays compiled in the book range from analyses of the aesthetic dimension of politics to the socio-political impact of aesthetic expressions such as techno raves, to the aesthetics of everyday practices. What is interesting here is the understanding of aesthetics as a component that is not restricted to the arts, but permeates social and political life. This claim is reiterated in my work. Additionally, many of Virmani’s essays derive their theoretical framing of the relation between aesthetics and politics from Jacques Rancière’s notion of the “politics of aesthetics.” These essays apply Rancière’s theory to concrete situations and thereby contribute to a grounding of this highly innovative theory in social reality. My work contributes to both of these themes, but goes beyond these essays in attempting to establish a theory of the social based on aesthetics. Additionally, by focusing on the reception process of cultural products, my work contributes to explaining the processual transformation of aesthetic knowledge into the organization of the social. I will now turn to the fictional works of art that will be analyzed in the following chapters. They form the core of this work, from which I build the theory pertaining to the relationship of fiction, aesthetics, and the structuring of social relations.

1.1   The Cases After considering the theoretical preconditions of this work in the next chapter, the first of my five case studies–in Chap. 3–deals with the dispute about Ingmar Bergman’s film The Silence. It is a remarkable case due to

1 INTRODUCTION 

13

the discrepancy between the film’s critical assessment that it contains a religious message and the Catholic church’s vehement rejection of the film as pornographic and indecent. In this controversy, an interpretation of the film as metaphoric interfered with the church’s perception of the depiction of sexuality as an icon  and hence challenged the church’s claim to social hegemony. We are here confronted with the opposition between a secular and a religious paradigm of art/interpretation. While the former conceives of the artwork as a sign, which stands for something else, the latter attributes (seductive) power to the image, and hence any depiction of sexuality is deemed dangerous to otherwise innocent minds. The vehemence of the church’s response to the film is only explainable if it is accounted for with the identitary dimension of representation, which does not merely represent the world, but organizes and hierarchizes it. It is for this reason that the repudiation of the religious order of representation by the film’s supporters is simultaneously experienced as a challenge to the power of the religious authority. The metaphoric paradigm is the adversary to the iconic paradigm and questions the icon’s claim to power. The instability of this metaphoric fiction can only be thought of as provocative, because it challenges the icon’s founding in the transcendental authority of God. If the iconic paradigm represents the religious and authoritarian dominance of post-World War II society, we can assume a correspondence between the metaphoric paradigm and an aesthetic sensibility of a society moving toward participatory democracy and secularism. The social struggle for a different societal model, starting from the early 1960s, finds its equivalence in the struggle of paradigms of art/interpretation which aesthetically represent the respective models of the social and the political. Chapter 4 is concerned with the scandalization of surveillance society in the year 1983 which continued into 1984. It is inextricably linked with the motto “Big Brother is watching you” and the society of total control described by George Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is the novel’s dystopian reception in particular which sparks political mobilization as opposed to a metaphoric paradigm of interpretation, which defends the status quo. The dystopian paradigm imagines a world in motion, transformable and future-oriented, which triggers action despite the bleakness of its vision. The discourse activates a communication pattern of dystopian fiction, which, already mobilized for the peace movement, has to be thought of as an identitary interpellation of the new social movements. Political mobilization, here, is the result of an aesthetic invocation of the world being indeterminate and future-oriented. It is the result of a

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“partition of the sensible” (Rancière) which conceives of the present in direct and unmediated relation with a dystopian future. The fifth chapter deals with the confrontation of the aesthetic paradigm of universalism with the paradigm of social immediacy engendered by the documentary theater of the early 1960s. Rolf Hochhuth’s drama The Deputy and its documentary realism provoked the aesthetic arrangement of the 1950s and early 1960s which sought post-war stability and moral enlightenment in the classics and in mythical allegories. More than the content of the drama, its formal features of documentary realism elicited controversy about the role of the Nazi past for the post-war present. The immediacy of the documentary form challenged the detachment of a universalist paradigm of art/interpretation as escapist and incapable of facing national guilt. The drama was experienced as provocative because it challenged the attitude of the beholder and demanded engagement, where the recipient’s attitude was one of distanced observation of aesthetic fiction as well as politics. In this sense, The Deputy disrupted the collective “thisness” (haecceity) of uninvolvement, which had been fostered by the Adenauer government of the 1950s. The disruption of temporality by the play, which imagined the co-presence of past and present, interrupted the idea of chronological succession and led to a discourse of renewal, which was to be achieved by politicizing the social. If the Holocaust had become possible by the collective turning of a blind eye to Nazi politics, renewal meant politicization, engagement, exercising the practice of taking a stand. Fiction’s a-temporality disrupted the unceasing succession of social time and made the creative renewal of the social thinkable. Instead of activating, challenging, and reorganizing already existing identitary frameworks, the rebel youth films discussed in Chap. 6 are read as being at the vanguard of a media culture which gives rise to an identity of youth which is spiritually westward-bound. This youth identity has to be conceived as the gateway through which US-American culture could take root in the mid-1950s in traditionalist and conservative West Germany. I discuss the public discourse of four films which exemplarily stand for the genre of rebel youth films. The films under discussion are The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause, and Rock Around the Clock. The public discourse is a discourse about the figure of youth, the nature of its boundary-crossing, but also its association with socio-cultural progress and change. The figure of youth is an ambivalent one and is met with reservations and fear by critics. Yet at another level, the films exert a fascination, which cannot be explained by their narrative content. They

1 INTRODUCTION 

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appear as a “hyperreality” (Baudrillard), which imposes itself as a vivid presence on the spectator. It is a presence of corporeality and physical seduction, which disrupts the moral codes of physical discipline and sexual austerity of the 1950s. The persuasive power of these films lies in their ability to disrupt “rational” discourse about youth with their aesthetic depiction of voluptuousness, sensuality, and bodily exuberance. It is this aesthetic space which creates a region of perception that transgresses the status quo. Rebellion is a rebellion of aesthetic sensation, and youth culture is a cultural rebellion because it engages in the transformation of the way individuals see, feel, and move through social space. Chapter 7, finally, is concerned with the largest theater scandal in West German history, which became known as the Fassbinder controversy, with the two preceding disputes leading to the concluding one in 1985. The opposition to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play Garbage, the City and Death by the Jewish community in Frankfurt (Main) and West Germany has to be thought of as the origin of a Jewish political identity (in contrast to a religious and/or cultural identity) in post-war Germany. The (fictional) figure of the Rich Jew sparked the controversy and paradigmatically exposed the power of the “partition of the sensible” for social identification. While the Jewish opponents charged the play with failing to transgress social reality and merely reproducing the stereotype, the play’s supporters believed that the play did not represent social reality, but quoted it. “Quoting” is here read as a practice that is critical and disruptive of the social status quo. Both sides start from the same ideological ground in that they posit themselves as criticizing anti-Semitism. Fassbinder’s figure of the Rich Jew disrupts this ideological unity in that it gives rise to two different apprehensions of the social. While the play’s supporters conceive the subject as constituted by social discourses (postmodern paradigm of art/interpretation), its opponents hold fast to the idea of the emancipatory subject, which is why the figure of the Rich Jew can appear as a reproduction of the stereotype (paradigm of the “prohibition of the image”). Each paradigm of art/interpretation applied to the play in this controversy mirrors a specific relation of subject and social reality. Social identification, here, crucially depends on which paradigm is applied in the respective context. The aesthetic “partition of the sensible” is the constitutive element of the process of identification and pivotal to the creation of social identities. Originally, the idea for this work was to outline the development of fiction’s role in socio-political processes across the decades from 1950 to

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1990. In the course of this work I abandoned this idea, because the larger lines of paradigmatic approaches to aesthetic fiction co-exist in time and rule out the description of a chronological development. Take, for instance, the early example of the rebel youth films: their reception touches on a postmodern interpretation of art (fiction and the “real” become indistinguishable as the artworks take the place of a hyperreal). The chronologically later example of the 1983/1984 reception of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, on the other hand, remains within the confines of a representational paradigm of art/interpretation, in which the fictional world stands for something “real.” The supersession of paradigms of art/interpretation can only be viewed in terms of ages, for which the period under scrutiny in this work is much too short to be informative. We have to see these forty years as allowing us a small glimpse into the struggles for dominance of paradigms of art/interpretation. With regard to the question of the (socio-)political consequence of fiction, social identities form the stable variable in the question, since–according to Laclau and Mouffe, and Rancière–politics is the emergence and struggle of social identities. The analysis of controversies and social conflicts implies the notion of politics and considers the social as constituted by the political struggle of social identities. Although the politics of aesthetics (Rancière) can form social individuals and haecceities at a subtle level below politicization, controversy is the moment of politicization, in which the politics of aesthetics transform into the aesthetics of politics (see Chap. 2) and transform individualities into social identities. The transformation of social identities over time, however, is not the subject of this research, which is why it cannot and does not want to give answers to the development of social identities in time. For all these reasons, the case studies in this work are not organized chronologically. Rather, they are organized by the type of invocation of social identities and the development moves from the renewal of already established identitary structures toward the generation of new social relations. The controversy regarding Bergman’s The Silence activates antagonism between a religious and a secular world order, which is an antagonism that might have been neglected, but which cannot be called “new.” Instead, it actualizes a power struggle which traverses the history of democratization. The scandalization of surveillance society with reference to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four marks the mobilization of a social identity which had emerged in the context of the new social movements. The term “new

1 INTRODUCTION 

17

social movements” refers to the many different left-wing movements that had emerged since the mid-1960s. They departed from adherence to classical Marxism and instead focused on issues related to human rights. While the controversy actualizes the antagonism between the alternative Left and mainstream society, it expands the alternative Left’s “chain of equivalences” (Laclau and Mouffe). A ‘chain of equivalences’ encompasses the signifiers which stake out the cornerstones differentiating one social identity from others. All signifiers included in a “chain of equivalences” equally identify a social identity. The dispute about Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four includes the theme of data surveillance to the “chain of equivalences” and hence transforms the left-alternative identity of the time. In the case of the dispute about Hochhuth’s The Deputy, although it addresses the antagonism of a political–as opposed to a depoliticized (authoritarian)–world order, the notion of politics is reformulated as exceeding the boundaries of institutionalized politics. Democratic identity is re-conceptualized as participatory, which is tantamount to a transformation of the social relation. Or, we might add, it means the introduction of a new social antagonism between different versions of democracy. In this case, we are confronted with a situation in which activation and creation blend into each other. In the case of the rebel youth films, the creation of social identity becomes the dominant aspect of the relation between fiction and social reality. The “Youth” of the 1950s emerges as a distinct social identity which carries a new world experience, a new haecceity. Youth media such as the rebel youth films are generative of a distinct form of knowledge, which might be called–following a comment in the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung about recent developments on YouTube–Herrschaftswissen (knowledge for the sake of action or control).6 Social identity is here inextricably linked with a distinct aesthetic perception of the world, and aesthetic fiction becomes the origin of a social relation. In the Fassbinder controversy, finally, we can observe the linkage of aesthetic representation and the creation of social identification as an act of original creation. We are confronted with the paradox that (almost) any perspective uttered in the dispute shares the political opinion that stereotyping and anti-­Semitism have to be fought against, yet the different approaches to Fassbinder’s aesthetic representation of social reality lead to the formation of political antagonisms. Antagonism here is therefore not rooted in different political opinions about social reality, but in different ways of representing social reality. Aesthetics turns into identity’s generative moment.

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My research suggests that aesthetic fiction is a protagonist in the formation of social identities and relations as it draws attention to the form-­ figuring dimension of social structuring. Form-figuration is the aspect of meaning that is perceptible to the senses, that which creates affect and makes meaning tangible. While signification positions meaning within the web of social significations (Castoriadis)–that is, within the being of the social–aesthetic form-figurations provide meaning with an “affective texture” (Lennon 2015, p. 3) through which identification can take place. It is that dimension of meaning which relates to the individual psyche, to speak with Castoriadis. Fictional artworks are crucial in this respect, especially since they lack the dimension of truth from which signification in (modern) social reality derives its legitimacy. Fiction does not need to be “true.” It becomes true if it is capable of giving expression to, or even creating, a mood, form, or figure for the individual’s perception of social reality. The suspension of the sign’s world reference in fiction makes it the playground for the aesthetic, form-figuring dimension of meaning. The meaning of the “real” is therefore not solely to be sought in signification, but in the structuring and forming of meaning by aesthetics. What social identities identify with comes into being by how it is represented, the specific language through which a social concern is framed. Aesthetic fiction, therefore, participates in the structuring of the social by creating the languages through which social identities can give expression to their concerns.

1.2   Some Words on Methodology In order to gain access to my material, I have made use of GTM. Most importantly, these are the tools of theoretical sampling and theoretical coding as they have been sketched by Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin (Corbin and Strauss 2008). These have been exceedingly valuable, despite the need for amendments in order to adapt the methodology to the research undertaken. These amendments have in large part been inspired by the critique of GTM’s rhetorics of “emergence” undertaken by Udo Kelle. This enables a non-positivistic adaptation of the theory and an adoption of this methodology for sociological frameworks other than interactionist sociology. I chose GTM because it provides tools for processing material with a very open research question in mind. It allows me to access material without generating hypotheses prior to the analysis. The absence of substantial

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insights into the question of aesthetic fiction’s social import precludes the generation of substantiated hypotheses which can guide the analysis.7 This research has been a venture into an unknown field which lacked models to follow. GTM, with its focus on the expressiveness of the material and the rejection of a theoretical approach to empirical material, enabled me to access the material with a minimum of structure, without stifling the material in a probably inadequate theoretical framework. At the heart of GTM is the procedure of coding, which in theory moves from open coding, via axial coding, to selective coding, while the different steps of coding vary in their respective degrees of abstraction. In practice, the different coding steps interlock and are variably applicable depending on the role played by the concrete data under consideration within the whole research setup (Corbin and Strauss 2008, p. 198). With this in mind, one sees that GTM pivots on the idea of developing theory from the data–letting the data speak, as it were. Glaser and Strauss captured this idea with the term “emergence,” which implies an absence of theory in the coding process. In fact, GTM theorists emphasize the importance of not letting one’s sight be clouded by reviewing the state of the art of research on a topic prior to the process of analysis. This, however, sounds like a rather naive empiricism, as Udo Kelle has pointed out (Kelle 2007, p. 135), which cannot be further upheld bearing the insights of constructivism in mind.8 Researchers always carry their ideological baggage when they access data and apply this perspective to the research topic under consideration. Our view is always guided by previous knowledge and understanding of the world, and the way we create knowledge is always related to this prior perspective. Data does not merely exist with objective meaning to be extracted. The beholder/interpreter actively imprints her own access to the world on the data and hence “creates” it. Furthermore, an unstructured approach to data would be utterly confusing and nonsensical. Corbin and Strauss have made concessions to this critique in establishing the coding paradigm, which should be thought of as a minimum guideline to data analysis, a kind of universal structure of human action. However, Strauss and Corbin’s coding paradigm relies heavily on the interactionist sociology of the Chicago School (Kelle 2007, p.  139; pp.  141–142).9 This concession is made so as to provide a toolbox for unexperienced researchers to grasp the data. Glaser, on the other hand, clings to the notion of “emergence,” although he introduces the notion of “theoretical coding” “whereby

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researchers introduce ad hoc theoretical codes and coding families which they find suitable for the data under scrutiny” (Kelle 2007, p.  142). Therefore, theoretical coding merely tries to hide the fact of pre-­ knowledge, and, as Kelle points out, [the ‘emergence talk’, MK] simply offer[s] a way to immunize theories with the help of a methodological rhetoric: following this rhetoric, a researcher who follows the ‘right path’ of Grounded Theory cannot go wrong since the concepts have emerged from the data. (Kelle 2007, p. 143)

I prefer to follow the middle path suggested by Udo Kelle, which he bases on the idea of abductive inference. It takes account of the fact that the way we view the world is guided by our previous knowledge of it, yet leaves room to create new insights with reference to the data. Abductive inference does not create “new” knowledge ex nihilo, but recombines different elements of previous knowledge into new and creative insights (Kelle 2007, pp. 144–147). For the analysis, he proposes the use of “[t]heoretical concepts with low empirical content” (Kelle 2007, p. 147), heuristic concepts which provide the lenses through which data can be viewed. This approach makes visible a researcher’s presuppositions, while it is open enough not to provide the answers to the research question in advance and hence not to foreclose the creative dimension of the research act (Kelle 2007, pp. 147–151). This approach to analysis is particularly useful to me because the heuristic framework is not restricted to interactionist sociology and can be adapted to the research field in question. In the case of the present study, the heuristic concepts of political identities and paradigms of art/interpretation have proved useful. They provided the two central axes for the case studies. With their help, I was capable of operationalizing the political and the working of aesthetic fiction respectively, since these are the two central components of my research question. They are integrated in a framework which derives from cultural sociology. I will go into detail about the heuristic concepts and their framework in the following chapter. Underlying the whole analysis is also the assumption that texts, utterances, and discourses do something independently of an individual actor, which is an assumption that is central to discourse analysis (Wodak and Meyer 2009, pp. 5–6). Although there are authors with intentions, the intentions are of secondary importance to the text and discourse’s meaning. This is how political identities can emerge

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out of speech acts, despite the absence of individual actors in the theoretical framework. However, this should not sound like a framework set up prior to the research process. It is the result of a process in which heuristic frameworks have been put in place and consequentially disrupted by the material, or found not to be applicable to the social processes happening in the data. The lack of the category “paradigm of art/interpretation” proved especially problematic at the beginning of this research, since I lacked access to the material without this concept at hand. The political and the concept of social identities as they have been described by Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière made it possible to consider the dynamic dimension of social reality, which is crucial in understanding conflict and controversy as struggles for social transformation. These categories are the result of a coding process, in which the origin of social controversies was found within different interpretations of the respective works of art. Interpretation emerged as underlying social struggles. Rancière’s “regime of art” triggered an understanding of the relationship between aesthetics, art, reception, and social transformation, and made it possible to transform the category “interpretation” into a tool for social analysis. The heuristic concept “paradigm of art/interpretation” was thus applied to the category in a second step, resulting from the heuristic concept’s expressiveness in describing the category under consideration. The adjustment of Rancière’s “regime of art” to “paradigm of art/ interpretation,” however, is a consequence of the oscillating nature of the analysis between the material and the theoretical concept, the result of what Udo Kelle describes as abductive inference. Similarly, the conceptualization of the political as the constitution of social identities made the antagonistic relation of the speaking positions in my material explainable as political struggles, which are at the heart of the contingent nature of the social. The heuristic concepts thus made it possible to integrate the case studies into a broader picture of the relation between the arts and social reality. Constant comparison–for Corbin and Strauss this is a guiding principle and crucial to GTM10–allows me to conceptualize different text segments into different “paradigms of interpretation”; although they share the concern of making an artwork meaningful, they differ in how they do it. Comparing these differences makes it possible to discern the relations in which the speaking positions engage–either as antagonistic or indifferent, as reproductive of social relations or disruptive of them. Constant

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comparison makes it possible to establish different types of aesthetic subjectification, different types of “politics of aesthetics.” Constant comparison also takes effect when relating the different paradigms of interpretation to the patterns of aesthetic communication prevalent in society at the time, since this makes it possible to identify the relationship that the respective paradigm establishes with social reality; whether it resists the status quo or confirms it; whether it negates the social order or reproduces it. This is done by recourse to further sources, primarily research undertaken on history, literature, film, theater, and society of the respective time. As Strauss and Corbin emphasize, it does not suffice to merely describe the material, but is of crucial importance to link the material with the broader social structures. This step integrates the material into a dense web of social relations, so as to make it persuasive and relevant (Strauss and Corbin 2008, pp. 90–95). Another principle of GTM as highlighted by Strauss is theoretical sampling.11 This means selecting the data at a point simultaneous to the analysis, so that the early findings can inform decisions on which data is further needed to expand and widen the understanding of the field under consideration. Data analysis and data gathering is thus conceived of as a reciprocal process, in which analysis and data sampling feed into one another. Corbin and Strauss rightly describe this approach to data sampling as a responsive approach (Corbin and Strauss 2008, p.  144), since the sampling is dependent on the analysis. Data is not collected to prove an existing hypothesis in theoretical sampling. It is used to find concepts, variations of already found categories, and counter-examples which might help expand understanding of how the field under consideration functions. Counter-examples, in GTM, do not make the developed grounded theory fail, but provide a challenge to expand the theory. Sampling is stopped when new data fails to create new insights, and hence a state of saturation is achieved. Saturation, however, also refers to the existence of a dense web of relations, variations, properties, and dimensions in the theory, which provide a rich and complex panorama of the topic under consideration. The vast amount of existing cultural production and the inherent claim of aesthetic fiction to be innovative and original forecloses a saturation of concepts in this respect. Any controversy with regard to fiction will be different–and probably original–due to aesthetic fiction’s rule-breaking nature (Ladenthin 2007). The principal originality of aesthetic fiction is theoretically organized in the distinction of three narrative art forms: prose, feature film, and drama. However, this variety has been defined

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prior to the sampling process and results from socially and historically established characterizations between the art forms. The selection of the narrative arts may be thought of as a “theoretical decision.” In fact, I argue in favor of the unity of fiction’s socio-political role despite its variance in content and form. Hence, instead of focusing on the differences in these art forms, I look into what makes them all part of the “aesthetic regime of art” (Rancière 2010, p. 138). My theoretical sampling focused on variance in the aesthetic momentum that provoked the public response. Consulting a range of works on the history of culture, literature, theater, and film, I first selected a list of large controversies and scandalous works of art across the four decades under consideration. This list then served as a basis for the decisions following from theoretical sampling. In one case I discovered, however, that what historians of culture define as milestones in the history of aesthetics does not necessarily correspond with a history of public controversy. The shock momentum of the film Peeping Tom (1960) was such that the public failed to discuss it. The aesthetic horror portrayed in the film appears to have been so upsetting that West German society was incapable of dealing with it discursively. I was unable to find sufficient material for a case study. Hence, my methodology is not suited for situations where society proves incapable of dealing with an artwork due to its utter aesthetic otherness. As we will see–from Bergman’s The Silence, which deals with the representation of a taboo icon, to Fassbinder’s Garbage, the City and Death and the question as to whether it fails to deconstruct an anti-Semitic stereotype–my samples deal with a variety of public responses to aesthetic fiction. If we speak about diversity of aesthetic-social interaction, we come close to the notion of theoretical saturation. Not in the sense of an exhaustive list of aesthetic-social interactions, but in the sense described above of a recurrence of insights in variations. Data collection has been undertaken with the help of the “Dortmunder Autorendokumentation” (DAD) and “Deutsches Filminstitut” in Frankfurt (Main).12 Between the early 1960s and 2014, the DAD systematically assessed more than 40 daily and weekly newspapers and (political) magazines for reviews of authors and their works. The material for the case studies about George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Garbage, the City and Death, and Rolf Hochhuht’s The Deputy was collected in Dortmund’s archives. In the case of Garbage, the City and Death, the material has been complemented by articles that have been assembled in a publication edited by Heiner Lichtenstein, Die

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Fassbinder-Kontroverse oder das Ende der Schonzeit (Lichtenstein 1986). Material pertaining to the rebel youth films and Bergman’s The Silence was collected in the text archive of the “Deutsches Filminstitut,” which is one of the largest film archives and collections of film materials in Germany. The material concerning The Silence has been further complemented by contributions that were reprinted in the documentation of the scandal compiled by Theunissen (1964). I cannot lay claim to the completeness of the material for each case study. These are, however, the most complete collections available and include the most important contributions to the respective controversies. 1.2.1  Translations Quotations of texts originally published in German, such as quotations from the empirical material, but also from scholarly works, have been translated into English by the author of this book.

Notes 1. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “The Paradox of Fiction” (by Steven Schneider), http://www.iep.utm.edu/fict-par/ (accessed March 23, 2016). See this entry for a description of the controversy and the different positions represented here. 2. See Chap. 2 for the theoretical development of this concept. 3. Iser’s work Der Akt des Lesens. Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung (En: The Act of Reading. A Theory of Aesthetic Response) (Iser (1976) 1994) in particular has to be mentioned here. 4. The anthology Gründlich verstehen. Literaturkritik heute is in fact concerned with discussing the normative principles of literary criticism (Görtz and Ueding 1985). 5. The term imaginal is derived from Chiara Bottici’s study Imaginal Politics, in which she argues that the term is better capable of giving expression to the aspect of meaning as founded in pictorial (re)presentations in contrast to the notions of imagination and imaginary, which are based in the individual psyche or the social respectively. The idea of the imaginal avoids taking sides about where the (re)presentations reside, and focuses on the sheer relation of meaning and (re)presentation (Bottici 2014). 6. “This is how he [Felix Kjellberg a.k.a. PewDiePie, MK] literally became a voice of his generation, a voice which is not meant to be understood by the older generation. This is the basic principle of any new pop culture: it is

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this special knowledge that is generative of youth’s control and agency” (Kreye 2016). 7. In fact, in an early proposal of this work, I planned on doing a Qualitative Content Analysis. However, it soon became clear that it was impossible to generate hypotheses from which I could derive the codes for coding. 8. For a constructivist critique of Glaser’s continued adherence to the idea of pure “emergence,” see Bryant (2007). 9. Strauss’ training at the Chicago School is pointed out by Mey and Mruck (2007, p. 23). 10. For a description of and instruction on the use of comparative analysis, see Corbin and Strauss (2008, pp. 73–78). 11. Theoretical sampling is extensively described in Chapter 7, “Theoretical Sampling,” in Corbin and Strauss (2008, pp. 143–157). 12. At this point, I would like to thank both institutions. Without their friendly and competent assistance this research would have been much more arduous.

References Anz, Thomas. 1990. Literaturkritisches Argumentationsverhalten. Ansätze zu einer Analyse am Beispiel des Streits um Peter Handke und Botho Strauß. In Literaturkritik  – Anspruch und Wirklichkeit, DFG-Symposium 1989, ed. Wilfried Barner, 415–439. Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Bottici, Chiara. 2014. Imaginal Politics. Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary. New York: Columbia University Press. Bryant, Antony. 2007. A Constructive/ist Response to Glaser’s ‘Constructivist Grounded Theory’? In Grounded Theory Reader. Historical Social Research/ Historische Sozialforschung, Supplement/Beiheft 19, ed. Günter Mey, and Katja Mruck, 114–132. Köln: Zentrum für Historische Sozialforschung. Clammer, John. 2014. Vision and Society. Towards a Sociology and Anthropology from Art. London/New York: Routledge. Corbin, Juliet, and Anselm L.  Strauss. 2008. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Geimer, Alexander. 2011. Das Konzept der Aneignung in der qualitativen Rezeptionsforschung. Eine wissenssoziologische Präzisierung im Anschluss an die und in Abgrenzung von den Cultural Studies. Zeitschrift für Soziologie 40 (4): 191–207. Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. n.p: Harvester Press. Görtz, Franz Josef, and Gert Ueding, eds. 1985. Gründlich verstehen. Literaturkritik heute, suhrkamp taschenbuch 1152. Frankfurt (M.): Suhrkamp.

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Hall, Stuart. 1980. Encoding/Decoding. In Culture, Media, Language, Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79, ed. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis, 128–138. London/New York/Birmingham: Routledge/Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Heinen, Stefanie. 2007. Kampf um Aufmerksamkeit. Die deutschsprachige Literaturkritik zu Joanne K. Rowling ‘Harry Potter’-Reihe und Martin Walsers ‘Tod eines Kritikers’, Literatur – Kultur – Medien 8. Münster: LIT. Holub, Robert C. 1984. Reception Theory. A Critical Introduction. London: Methuen. Iser, Wolfgang. 1970. Die Appellstruktur der Texte. Unbestimmtheit als Wirkungsbedingung literarischer Prosa, Konstanzer Universitätsreden 28. Konstanz: Universitätsverlag. ———. (1976) 1994. Der Akt des Lesens. Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung. 4th ed. München: Wilhelm Fink. ———. 1993. The Fictive and the Imaginary. Charting Literary Anthropology. Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jørgensen, Marianne, and Louise J.  Phillips. 2002. Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage. Kelle, Udo. 2007. ‘Emergence’ Vs. ‘Forcing’ of Empirical Data? A Crucial Problem of ‘Grounded Theory’ Reconsidered. In Grounded Theory Reader. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, Supplement/Beiheft 19, ed. Günter Mey, and Katja Mruck, 133–156. Köln: Zentrum für Historische Sozialforschung. Kreye, Andrian. 2016. Felix Kjellberg. Internetstar, der als ‘PewDiePie’ Millionen mit Selfie-Videos begeistert. SZ, January 16–17. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. (1985) 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. 2nd ed. London/New York: Verso. Ladenthin, Volker. 2007. Literatur als Skandal. In Literatur als Skandal. Fälle – Funktionen  – Folgen, ed. Stefan Neuhaus, and Johann Holzner, 19–28. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Lennon, Kathleen. 2015. Imagination and the Imaginary. London/New York: Routledge. Lichtenstein, Heiner, ed. 1986. Die Fassbinder-Kontroverse oder Das Ende der Schonzeit. Königstein (Taunus, D): Athenäum. Light, Andrew, and Jonathan M. Smith, eds. 2005. The Aesthetics of Everyday Life. New York: Columbia University Press. Lilienthal, Volker. 1988a. Literaturkritik als politische Lektüre. Am Beispiel der Rezeption der ‘Ästhetik des Widerstands’ von Peter Weiss. Berlin: Volker Spiess. ———. 1988b. Nur verhaltener Beifall für die zahme Rättin. Ein Fall von politischer Gesinnungskritik? Zur literaturkritischen Rezeption von Günter Grass. LiLi: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 18 (71): 103–113.

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Lingenberg, Swantje. 2015. Überblicksartikel: Aneignung und Alltagswelt. In Handbuch Cultural Studies und Medienanalyse, Medien  – Kultur  – Kommunikation, ed. Andreas Hepp, Friedrich Krotz, Swantje Lingenberg, and Jeffrey Wimmer, 109–115. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Löffler, Sigrid. 1999. Die versalzene Suppe und deren Köche. Über das Verhältnis von Literatur, Kritik und Öffentlichkeit. In Literaturkritik. Theorie und Praxis, Schriftenreihe Literatur des Instituts für Österreichkunde 7, ed. Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler, and Nicole Katja Streitler, 27–39. Innsbruck/Wien: Studienverl. Lossau, Julia, and Quentin Stevens, eds. 2015. The Uses of Art in Public Space. New York/London: Routledge. Lüdemann, Susanne. 2004. Metaphern der Gesellschaft. Studien zum soziologischen und politischen Imaginären. München: Wilhelm Fink. Meier, Andreas. 2003. Krieg im Feuilleton? Inszenierung und Repräsentanz der öffentlichen Debatten um Martin Walser und Günter Grass. In Literatur und Journalismus. Theorie, Kontexte, Fallstudien, ed. Bernd Blöbaum, and Stefan Neuhaus, 317–338. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Mey, Günter, and Katja Mruck. 2007. Grounded Theory Methodologie  – Bemerkungen zu einem prominenten Forschungsstil. In Grounded Theory Reader. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, Supplement/ Beiheft 19, ed. Günter Mey, and Katja Mruck, 11–39. Köln: Zentrum für Historische Sozialforschung. Papenfuß, Monika. 1998. Die Literaturkritik zu Christa Wolfs Werk im Feuilleton: Eine kritische Studie vor dem Hintergrund des Literaturstreits um den Text ‘Was bleibt’. Berlin: wvb. Radford, Colin, and Michael Weston. 1975. How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 49: 67–93. Rancière, Jacques. 2004. The Politics of Literature. SubStance 33 (1): 10–24. ———. 2010. The Paradoxes of Political Art. In Dissensus. On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Steve Corcoran, 134–151. London/New York: continuum. Röser, Jutta. 2015. Rezeption, Aneignung und Domestizierung. In Handbuch Cultural Studies und Medienanalyse, Medien – Kultur – Kommunikation, ed. Andreas Hepp, Friedrich Krotz, Swantje Lingenberg, and Jeffrey Wimmer, 125–135. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Stevens, Quentin, and Julia Lossau. 2015. Framing Art and Its Uses in Public Space. In The Uses of Art in Public Space, ed. Julia Lossau, and Quentin Stevens, 1–18. New York/London: Routledge. Sutrop, Margit. 2000. Fiction and Imagination. The Anthropological Function of Literature, Explicatio. Analytische Studien zur Literatur und Literaturwissenschaft. Paderborn: Mentis.

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Taylor, Charles. 2002. Modern Social Imaginaries. Public Culture 14 (1): 91–124. Theunissen, Gert H., ed. 1964. Das Schweigen und sein Publikum. Eine Dokumentation. Köln: DuMont Schauberg. Virmani, Arundhati, ed. 2016. Political Aesthetics. Culture, Critique and the Everyday. London/New York: Routledge. Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe. On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer. 2009. Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory and Methodology. In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 2nd ed., 1–33. London: Sage.

CHAPTER 2

Theoretical Considerations

As outlined in the notes on methodology, this work relies on heuristic concepts for analytical purposes. These concepts support the research in structuring the insights gained from the analysis. The concepts are embedded in a notion of society as a non-stable, dynamic, and contingent entity. The political acts as the institutionalizing force of the social. The political and the social, dynamism and stability, are in constant tension. This understanding of the relationship between the political and the social is informed especially by Cornelius Castoriadis, Chantal Mouffe, and Jacques Rancière. Rancière’s “politics of aesthetics” follows from this conception of the political and provides the central heuristic concept for my analysis. I will conclude this chapter with considerations regarding the role of the public sphere in the constitution of the social. This will explain my choice of material.

2.1   The Political Foundations of the Social I prefer to speak of “the social” instead of society because the notion of “the social” foregrounds the contingent character of social reality, in which the boundaries of society are continually in a process of transformation, adjustment, and renegotiation, and always subject to contestation. While the term “society” nourishes the idea of a closed and stable entity– of the already instituted–the idea of the social emphasizes an understanding of social reality as caught in the dialectic of institutionalization and © The Author(s) 2020 M. Knapp, Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40086-6_2

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institution. Cornelius Castoriadis’ social philosophy provides the theoretical framework for conceptualizing the social within this work. First, as I have pointed out in the methodological reflections, it is imperative to dispose of a notion of the social in order to be able to reflect on it. This work is crucially inspired by the possibility of thinking society as founded in the imaginary dimension of social reality, that which creates the link between the social individual and the institution of society. Additionally, it becomes possible to theorize fiction as a dimension of the social. Second, I will focus on politics as the social practice of institutionalization. Following Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, I distinguish between the political and the social, where the social is the ensemble of sedimented social practices, and the political is the continuous attempt to transform and reorganize instituted reality. Laclau, Mouffe, and Rancière help to conceptualize the political not as restricted to the sphere of political institutions, but as a dimension which pervades the social and can be found within a variety of social practices that critically engage with the status quo. Crucially, the notion of the political surfaces in subjectification and the creation of social identities, which explains the political dimension of cultural debates as they can be found in this work. Third, Rancière’s theorization of the politics of aesthetics links aesthetic fiction with politics and hence with the process of the institutionalization of society. Through Rancière, the aesthetic dimension of fiction takes center stage and hence becomes a central dimension of social reality. Although aesthetics and form-figuration are not unique to the institution of fiction, instead traversing social reality, artistic fiction is founded upon this principle. Rancière’s conceptualization of aesthetics and politics allows me to operationalize the relation of the institution of fiction and social reality as it unfolds empirically throughout the material, thus drawing conclusions about the role of fiction in the constitution of social reality. 2.1.1   The Imaginary Dimension of Social Reality Society, for Castoriadis, is founded upon the institution of the social.1 Unlike conceptions of the social that search for an origin of society in an extra-social foundation, such as biology (race), the genealogy of descent (ethnicity), or God, Castoriadis claims that only the social gives rise to society. The unity of the institution of society, which is “made out of various particular institutions” (Castoriadis 1997, p. 7), receives its internal

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cohesion through a web of meanings which constitutes social life. Significations, for Castoriadis, are not merely designations of “things,” but consist of a second, imaginary, dimension, which creates the meaning of the “thing” referred to: “A Roman man and a Roman woman were and are something totally different from today’s American man and American woman” (Castoriadis 1997, pp.  7–8). The meaning given to men and women at different times and different places depends on the particular institution of social reality of a particular society. That women at all times possessed a vagina and men a penis should not blind us to the fact that the meaning they receive within a particular society is absolutely contingent. The role of nature in social meaning has an “anaclitic” character, a “leaning on,” a term Castoriadis uses referring to Sigmund Freud’s concept of Anlehnung (Castoriadis 1987, p. 186; see also pp. 229–237).2 The biological substrate of social life, although it sets limits on the imaginary, does not determine social life.3 Instead, it may be thought of as providing the possibilities for the imagination to flourish. Jeff Klooger remarks: According to Castoriadis, society is essentially this core of sense, this meaning [of the primary imaginary significations, MK]. The order of society, then, is an order of meaning; or, to put it another way …, the ordering of society is an ordering of, through and in view of meaning. This is why the term ‘definition’ must also be placed in inverted commas; for this is not simply a process of identifying what already exists but of determining what shall be. (Klooger 2009, p. 59)

The primary imaginary significations are imaginary in the sense that they do not represent something else, but are rather the organizing patterns of social reality. It is in relation to them that all other significations derive their meaning, or, as Castoriadis says, they are “the invisible cement holding together this endless collection of real, rational and symbolic odds and ends that constitute every society” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 143). Signification may be split into two dimensions: the symbolic and the imaginary (Klooger 2009, pp. 55–59), or the denoting and the connoting dimension, as Castoriadis would name it (Castoriadis 1987, p. 143). While linguistics mostly focuses on the denoting function of signification, Castoriadis claims that it is the connoting function which creates social reality. God and nation are such primary imaginary significations, their signifieds being non-beings, but around which the religious or national

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reality, respectively, are constructed. They are represented by and brought into visibility through institutions, practices and significations, yet they remain invisible and cannot be reduced to their materializations (Castoriadis 1987, pp. 135–146). Imaginary significations are imaginary, not only because their being is of a non-being, but because meaning here exceeds its denotation. Hence, signification not only points toward something, but brings into being–creates–the objects it refers to. This is particularly relevant for the constitution of a society, which is always related to the creation of a name. The name not only designates the collectivity, but “designates it … as intension, as something, a quality or a property” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 148). An identity’s name is therefore to be conceived of as meaningful. The identity of objects is created through the positing of a sign (a name), because only with respect to the sign can things appear as identical to each other (Klooger 2014, pp. 120–121). Society brings into being a world of significations and itself exists in reference to such a world. Correlatively, nothing can exist for society if it is not related to the world of significations; everything that appears is immediately caught up in this world – and can even come to appear only by being caught up in this world. (Castoriadis 1987, p. 359)

Social reality, a term which refers to the concrete social organization of a particular society, is intricately constituted by signification and meaning. It is through language and the specific configuration of signification, through words and names, that a society’s identity comes into being. Society and identity are deeply interrelated: a particular society only comes into being as it develops a distinct identity.4 Society thus has to be conceived of as self-creating. Contrary to Charles Taylor’s popular use of the term “social imaginaries” (Taylor 2002), Castoriadis uses the term always within the compound “social imaginary significations” or “imaginary social significations.” For Taylor, the social imaginary is the set of social practices, institutions, and significations that constitute a society’s self-understanding (Taylor 2002, pp.  105–111). For Castoriadis, the social imaginary significations can never be a closed and definite entity. The social as a status quo is a non-­ existent phantasm for the sake of creating the illusion of stability; the social can only be thought of as the social-historical, which for Castoriadis means the inseparability of the notion of a being-thus of society and its

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continuous self-alteration, which materializes in the idea of history. History is nothing other than the emergence of new social forms (eide), as he calls it, referring to Plato (Castoriadis 1987, p. 189). The imaginary is creation ex nihilo (Castoriadis 1987, p. 3), and this is as true for the social domain as for the psyche. Castoriadis has been criticized for suggesting that the idea of creatio ex nihilo refers to the capacity of the psyche to give birth to form-figurations without the stimulus of the external world. For Susanne Lüdemann, this is proof that Castoriadis’ philosophy “follows the very traditional, idealistic model of the psyche and the imagination as pure interiority, which has to postulate (‘express’) itself in order to be” (Lüdemann 2004, p. 53). Accordingly, the psyche is an entity closed in upon itself with no connection to the external world beyond signification.5 I believe, however, that Lüdemann misunderstands Castoriadis’ conception of the imaginary. Castoriadis applies the notion of creatio ex nihilo primarily to the social-historical and only in a transferred sense to the psyche. This refers to the fact that the imaginary dimension of primary social significations “organize[s] the world” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 361); it structures what is and what can be into a very specific and non-­determinate order. This organizing takes a very specific form, but it could also be different. This form can neither be reduced to nor can it be deduced from what was before. Similarly, the psyche is “the capacity of being-affected­by” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 283) the world, but the specific organizing into figurations that the psyche undertakes with respect to this being-affected­by is not determined by the worldly effect. The social can create a new form, such as democracy, which cannot be reduced to absolutism. Although the evolution of a democratic social order might be understood with reference to its past, the development toward democracy is indeterminate and hence not reducible to the past. In the words of Angelos Mouzakitis: Castoriadis has repeatedly noted that when speaking of creation ex nihilo, he does not mean creation cum nihilo or in nihilo. At first glance this conception looks rather intriguing, however it merely points to the fact that creation cannot be explained with reference to what already is. Or, we could say that creation is conditioned to various degrees by being but never determined by it. (Mouzakitis 2014, p. 62)

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Taylor conceives of the imaginary as those elements of social cohesion that lack a material foundation and have to be thought of as the collectivity’s shared imagination of itself. For Castoriadis, however, the idea of the imaginary points toward that element of social reality that is indeterminate, unstable and subject to continuous transformation.6 Castoriadis substitutes the ensemblist-identitary logic of the philosophical tradition that he criticizes with a magmatic logic. Ensemblist-identitary logic refers to an understanding of the world in which elements can be clearly determined, identified, and packaged into distinguishable sets. In contrast, magmatic logic frames existence as caught in the tension between institution and institutionalization. While nature lends itself to categorization and classification (ensemblization), magmatic logic acknowledges that how an object is categorized is indeterminate and depends on the social-historical creation of a community. In this logic, the meaning of objects is temporarily determined so that humans can inhabit a world that appears stable. But due to social interaction the meaning of objects is contested and in the process of constant transformation. While social reality is not independent of the “first natural stratum” (biology, nature), it is not determined by it, and it is at this point that Castoriadis’ philosophy dissociates itself from what Castoriadis terms the “classical philosophy” of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, who propose the unity of history, in which A can be deduced from B and in which everything that is can already be found in kernel form in prehistoric times.7 The magmatic nature of the social prevents the object’s closure and folding in onto itself (Castoriadis 1987, pp. 343–344). The institution of the social depends on ensidic logic (another term for ensemblist-identitary logic), on the setting of definite forms, but the shape of these forms and their configuration is indeterminate, which is why every society takes a different shape. This also means that ensidic logic appears static and determinate only from a snapshot in time, that is, from a horizontal perspective on a situation. Especially if traced over time, phenomena show that ensidic logic is never absolute and signification is thus subject to change, which betrays its determined appearance (Klooger 2014, p. 119). If I speak of aesthetic fiction in this work, for instance, I mostly refer to it as if it were a positive, transcultural, and a-historic entity. However, if we look from a vertical as well as from a horizontal angle, we have to acknowledge its contextual dimension. The “aesthetic regime of art” as we know it is an institution that emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe (Stephan 2008a, b) and hence can be

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thought of as being created ex nihilo. In addition, however, it is not a static institution. The dissociation of Romanticism from the arts of the Enlightenment (Schulte-Sasse 1985) and the present postmodern challenge to modern art testify to the aesthetic regime’s dynamism. These different manifestations of art do not destroy the institution, but lead to its transformation and continued adaptation to the needs of society’s present. Historicizing the institution of art means making visible its dynamism and magmatic logic. The shift in perspective from an ensidic to a magmatic logic requires us to reconsider social doing and signification not only in their status quo, which means in their institutionalized form, but also as participating in an ongoing process of transformation. Signification and social doing8 can hence be conceived of as both institutionalized and institutionalizing, and never purely one or the other. The other contribution to social philosophy of interest here is Castoriadis’ conceptualization of the relation between subject and social reality. The psychic reality of the socialized individual has to be thought of as engaged in a relation of mutual inscription with social reality. Susanne Lüdemann rightly describes this relation as a chiasmus and acknowledges the value of this insight for social theory (Lüdemann 2004, p. 59). The psyche and social realities, Castoriadis claims, are of totally different natures. While social reality is constituted by social significations, the psyche is a stream of representations, figurations, and affects that are strongly related to the somatic dimension of the body and its desires. Desires can only materialize in the shape of representations in the psyche and hence form the unconscious dimension of psychic reality. Contrary to Jacques Lacan’s structuralist psychoanalytic theory, Castoriadis claims that the unconscious is not “structured like a language,” but is a force that disrupts the “discourse of the Other,” another term borrowed from Lacan (Homer 2005, p.  66). For Lacan, the unconscious emerges in contact with language and the structuration of the social, and is hence structured accordingly. Yet it is also a gap and a rupture, which creates slippages in signification and hence signifies the breakdown of the function of language (Homer 2005, pp. 66–71). Nonetheless, “the unconscious is something that signifies and must be deciphered” (Homer 2005, p. 69). Castoriadis particularly rejects this understanding of the unconscious as taking place within signification. To him, the unconscious is certainly also a kind of gap or disruption, but cannot signify, since it is the slip-through of the radical, “non-tamed” imaginary, which he opposes to the actual imaginary. Only the latter is organized according to the structures of social

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reality. The unconscious, for Castoriadis, is not a sphere that is inaccessible to the subject and governed by chaos, as Lüdemann suggests (Lüdemann 2004, p. 57), but the irreducible remainder of the psychic monad of the socialized individual or what he instead terms the radical imaginary.9 The elaboration of the imaginary in Castoriadian social philosophy is slightly confusing and marked by the difficulty of conceptualizing the relation and mutual inscription of these two radically different natures, that of the social and that of the psyche. Probably the most enlightening remarks with regard to the imaginary can be found in a footnote. In the main text he writes, “We shall speak of a final or radical imaginary as the common root of the actual imaginary and of the symbolic” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 127), which he comments on in the related footnote as follows: One might attempt to distinguish in the accepted terminology between what we term the ultimate or radical imaginary, that is the capacity to make arise as an image something which does not exist and has never existed, and the products of this imaginary, which could be designated as the imagined. The grammatical form of this term, however, might lead to confusion, and I prefer to speak instead of the actual imaginary. (Castoriadis 1987, p. 388 footnote 25)

Through socialization, the capacity to create images turns into an “actual imaginary,” which is organized like social reality’s world of significations, yet in its irreducible alterity of form-figurations. Freud’s primal phantasy recurs in Castoriadis’ psychic monad and means the undifferentiated appearance of the world to the infant, which we cannot yet call a subject, but rather a proto-subject. The infant fails to distinguish between self and the world (Castoriadis 1987, p.  294). The absence of an actual imaginary means the lack of capacity to create images in the sense of differentiated objects, yet it possesses the original capacity to create images–it is the radical imaginary. It is socialization through which the subject learns to distinguish images and to generate a distinct world. This actual imaginary comes into being through language and signification, in the sense proposed by Lacan of being “structured like a language.” We can sense the actual proximity between Lacan and Castoriadis despite the latter’s vehement rejection of Lacan. This is the point where, I believe, Susanne Lüdemann misunderstands Castoriadis’ conception of the radical imaginary and identifies the Castoriadian radical imaginary with Lacan’s unconscious. To her, the

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radical imaginary is a kind of space inaccessible to consciousness, which serves as a substructure to subjectivity (Lüdemann 2004, pp.  51–59). Instead, the radical imaginary has to be conceived of as a capacity to see forms and figurations where there is magma, and not as a space which is overwritten by the social and hence destroyed. Although Castoriadis fails to provide a convincing narration of the break-up of the original, selfcontained monad in what he calls the triadic phase (see, e.g., Elliott 2002, pp. 155–159)–Lüdemann suggests reading it as a hypothesis instead of a finding (Lüdemann 2004, pp. 57–58)–I believe we should take this image of the psychic monad as a “myth of origin” so as to be able to explain the difference between the radical and the actual imaginary.10 The most marked difference between Lacan and Castoriadis is certainly the fact that Castoriadis believed that the radical imaginary does not signify, because it is of a radically other nature than social signification. The radical alterity of the psyche is the reason that new forms (eide) cannot be reduced to what is, but have to be understood as creation ex nihilo. They have no origin in signification, but in the non-significative nature of the representational-­ affective flux of the psyche (Elliott 2002, pp. 153–155). It is the role of the non-linguistic nature of the subject that provoked Jürgen Habermas’ objection and led to his well-known critique of Castoriadis in Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Habermas 1985, pp. 380–389, En: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity). Since his own account of intersubjective communication is based on the notion of a linguistically constituted subject, Elliot explains, “[Habermas, MK] views the unconscious as a privatized and distorted realm of signification that has been split-off or excommunicated from public, intersubjective communication” (Elliott 2002, p. 147). He therefore negates the alterity of subject and social reality, and Castoriadis’ philosophy is necessarily understood as a challenge to his own theory.11 Yet, as Andreas Kalyvas points out, Castoriadis’ social philosophy can contribute to Habermas’ model of intersubjective communication, since the model of deliberative communication lacks an explanation of how decisions are made. Decision-making is left to politicians, while the public sphere is depoliticized. Habermas fails to explain the irrational element of decision-making, which cannot be fully reduced to rational argument. In contrast to Habermas, Castoriadis pleads for a reintegration of emotions and affects into political theory, instead of their displacement and repression (Kalyvas 2001). It is the radical imaginary, driven by emotions, affects,

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and intentions, that turns subjects into individuals and explains the heterogeneity of opinions and decisions. The heterogeneity of opinions cannot be explained through social determination and the structuring of the subject “like a language.” What is crucial with regard to the present work is the role of the radical imaginary as the capacity to create form-figurations, upon which both the symbolic order and the actual imaginary are based. It is through forms (as opposed to content) that the relation between the social and the psyche is created. It is aesthetic fiction that is centrally concerned with questions of form. It will be the task of this work to show how both things come together. 2.1.2  The Political Beyond Institutionalized Politics Having chosen to analyze cultural controversies, it is now the question of conflict that comes to the fore. In cultural controversies we encounter a density of reception that uncovers the workings of aesthetic fiction within the social. It is for this reason that social conflict takes a prominent role within my research design. In conflict, the fractures and gaps of the social become visible, and in the dynamics of the struggle we can discern the transformative dimension of social reality. It is for this reason that I now turn to a notion of the political as the institutionalizing force of social reality. Just as the social and the historical are different dimensions of the same phenomenon, so are the social and the political. In the theories of Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière, the political exceeds the sphere of institutionalized politics and instead has to be conceived of as a stratum that permeates the social. Although the grain of Mouffe’s conception of the political can already be found in her collaborative work with Ernesto Laclau in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (Laclau and Mouffe (1985) 2001), in her later work she intensively elaborated on the notion of the political and the role of the democratic institutions in taming the potentially destructive nature of political antagonism. I will mostly refer to her essay “Politics and the Political” (Mouffe 2005), in which she outlines the relation of politics, the political, and identity formation. For Mouffe, any social order is founded upon the political practice of antagonism, in which social identities strive for the implementation of their hegemonic project. Mouffe’s starting point is a critique of notions of

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liberal conceptions of democracy, the “aggregative” and “deliberative” versions of which both neglect the political as an irreducible antagonistic force within the social. The “aggregative” version of liberalism believes in the struggle of interests and “envisages politics as the establishment of a compromise between differing competing forces in society” (Mouffe 2005, p. 12). The “deliberative” version of the political, of which Jürgen Habermas is the most prominent theoretical representative, believes in the possibility of establishing a “rational moral consensus by means of free discussion” (Mouffe 2005, p. 13). Mouffe’s understanding of the political opposes the notion of a consensus and instead claims that antagonism is the moving force of the social. Antagonism emerges when two mutually exclusive social identities strive for the implementation of their hegemonic project. For Mouffe, the political comes into being through the struggle of social identities to shape and reorganize social reality according to their liking. Antagonism establishes a relation of friend/enemy, with the enemy serving as the “constitutive outside,” which first and foremost brings into being social identities. Mouffe believes in the “relational nature of social identities” (Mouffe 2005, p. 14), which means that they cannot exist without one another. Contrary to the suppression of the role of affects in liberal conceptions of the political, social identities invest the subject’s affects with a libidinal object, through which identification, as the act of the subject’s adoption of social identities, becomes possible. In fact, Mouffe claims that the proliferation of non-democratic identities in what she terms “post-democratic societies” derives from the failure of society to create democratic subject positions. The current enthusiasm for consensual democracy leads to the blurring of identities into an undistinguishable mishmash and hence fails to create libidinal affection. Libidinal affection thus searches for other investments, and nationalist, racist, and religious extremism does not fail to occupy this space left empty by “post-democracy.”12 Like Castoriadis, Mouffe resorts to Sigmund Freud and his notion of libido, in order to introduce an element that eludes reduction to the social order. The irrational dimension of libidinal affective investment leads to the irreducibility of social antagonisms, since the mutually exclusive hegemonic projects are irreconcilable. Conflict is hence constitutive of the social order, since it shapes and reorganizes the status quo. The conflicts between hegemonic projects cannot be resolved, which leads to a desire for the enemy’s extermination and is hence the origin of war. The

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peculiarity of democracy is, Mouffe insists, the development of social institutions that tame the destructive impulse of antagonism. Democracy institutionalizes conflict and turns antagonists into adversaries. Adversaries struggle for their respective hegemonic projects, but are capable of accepting the other’s existence, as well as being defeated, if the democratic majority makes a decision in the conflict. Democracy turns antagonism into agonism. A well functioning democracy calls for a clash of legitimate democratic political positions. This is what the confrontation between left and right needs to be about. Such a confrontation should provide collective forms of identification strong enough to mobilize political passions. If this adversarial configuration is missing, passions cannot be given a democratic outlet and the agonistic dynamics of pluralism are hindered. The danger arises that the democratic confrontation will therefore be replaced by a confrontation between essentialist forms of identification or non-negotiable moral values. (Mouffe 2005, p. 30)

Democracy is, then, those social practices and institutions that guarantee the non-violent staging of conflict that is inherent in the political. With respect to the relation of the political and the social, Jacob Torfing clarifies Mouffe’s conception: To insist that politics has primacy over the social is not to say that everything is political. Social relations are shaped in and through political struggles. But they cease to be political when over time they become sedimented into an institutional ensemble of rules, norms, values and regularities, which we take for granted in our everyday life. The more the political ‘origin’ of social relations is forgotten, the more sedimented and institutionalized they will become, and the more they will seem to have a life of their own. In other words, social relations become sedimented in so far as they are not subjected to the ongoing practices of constitution and subversion. (Torfing 1999, p. 70)

This relation of the social and the political can be integrated into the Castoriadian model of the social-historical. The social, in both cases, is the status quo of a particular time and place, that which is already institutionalized and which social agents take for granted. Mouffe’s notion of the political, on the other hand, is the creative dimension of social reality, which is the agency of historical development and leads to the emergence

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of new social eide. In fact, Claude Lefort13 and Marcel Gauchet claim that democracy institutionalizes the lack of a transcendental foundation of the social (Lefort and Gauchet 1990), hence institutionalizing what Mouffe calls the political.14 Jacques Rancière, in his seminal work Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, proposes a slightly different notion of the political.15 The established social order also means the existence of a particular “distribution of the sensible”16 (Rancière 2010, p. 140), the particular distribution of bodies, practices, and institutions across the sphere of the social. In the order of the police, there are bodies that count as beings who speak and bodies which are perceived as only making noise. There are those that count and those that don’t count. Politics, in Rancière’s sense, is an act of demanding equality in the face of inequality. Politics happens when the uncounted establish a common stage, in which issues previously deemed private become public–and hence common–concerns. The different parties that come together on this common stage enter into a relationship with regard to the object of common concern. The stage creates the possibility of relating to each other and creating a commonality in the presence of factual disagreement. So while it is important to show … that the police order extends well beyond its specialized institutions and techniques, it is equally important to say that nothing is political in itself merely because power relationships are at work in it. For a thing to be political, it must give rise to a meeting of police logic and egalitarian logic that is never set up in advance. So nothing is political in itself. But anything may become political if it gives rise to a meeting of these two logics. (Rancière 1999, p. 32)

Keeping Torfing’s explanations of the political “origin” of now sedimented rules and norms in mind, we can easily translate Rancière’s terminology into Mouffe’s: the political is the disruptive force in both cases, while the police is another term for the sedimented practices of the social. The important difference between both terms is Rancière’s emphasis on the uncounted’s demand for equality, to be equally recognized as beings who speak despite their difference. Equality serves as an empty formula that creates the point of connectivity between politics and the police, because, due to the term’s emptiness, it can be filled with diverse contents, whether this be gender, capitalist, or race relations. Without the empty form of equality, inequality is unthinkable (Rancière 1999, pp. 34–35).

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Politics is immanently linked with subjectification, which Rancière contrasts with “pure” identity, yet which should be thought of as a process of identification. Subjectification is the process through which the uncounted give themselves a name, through which they may be recognized as the uncounted. This name is not to be mistaken for the identity of the uncounted, but rather de-naturalizes the identity ascribed to them by the police. The name “proletariat” is not a job title, but describes a particular position within the social order. Similarly, the name “woman” replaces the diverse particular positions such as housewife, mother, and nurse and creates a virtuality in which all of these identities are taken up, and hence questions the social order that ascribes an inferior position to “women.” [W]hen demonstrators in the Paris of 1968 declared, against all police evidence, ‘We are all German Jews,’ they exposed for all to see the gap between political subjectification – defined in the nexus of a logical utterance and an aesthetic manifestation  – and any kind of identification. (Rancière 1999, p. 59)

What is crucial about this statement of the demonstrators in Paris of 1968 is that it was declared by subjects independent of their “natural” identity. It was of no relevance whether the demonstrators were Jewish or German (most likely they were neither). Rather, it acted as a ‘name’–an umbrella– under which subjects could form a political identity. Subjectification has to be seen as a separation of the “natural” identity of a person and its political name, with which the group creates a fiction of community with those who are represented by the police. The creation of a name establishes first and foremost the communal stage. It is an act through which the uncounted perform themselves as beings who speak and therefore have to be taken seriously. It forces those that are counted into a relationship (as opposed to the sheer co-existence of bodies within the police order). The self-given name of the uncounted represents the wrong they are subjected to, yet the wrong will only be(come) a wrong once it has been wrested from natural identity. As Rancière remarks: Before the wrong that its name exposes, the proletariat has no existence as a real part of society. What is more, the wrong it exposes cannot be regulated by way of some accord between the parties. … But though the wrong cannot be regulated, this does not mean that it cannot be processed. (Rancière 1999, p. 39)

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Like Mouffe’s conception of the political, the conflictual relation is irreducible and hence irreconcilable: it cannot be resolved in a consensual way. Rancière’s virtual “name” is reminiscent of Laclau and Mouffe’s “subject positions,” which are “discursive conditions of possibility” (Laclau and Mouffe (1985) 2001, p. 115) and which precede subjectification. The “name” and the “subject position” are discursive constructs that exist in the sphere of the social, enabling a process of identification for the subject. It is through them that subjects turn into individuals with a specific identity. With regard to the previous terminology used, we may here speak of the precondition of social identities–which consist of a virtuality–and the concrete subjects that animate that virtuality, without folding in on one another and becoming indistinguishable. Both social philosophies emphasize the constitutive role of social identities in the political. At the most fundamental level, social identities are political, in the sense that they reorganize and transform the social order, or, once established, support and defend sedimented social practices. Social reality is born in the interplay and struggles of social identities, which is why an analysis of social identities is inextricably linked to the analysis of social structures and practices. 2.1.3  Fiction and Aesthetics: Acts of Subjectification Rancière’s theoretical work is singular because it deals with social reality’s perceptual–and what he calls aesthetic–dimension (Rancière 1999, p. 57). In Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy he already speaks of the community of argument (logos) and metaphor (aisthêsis): [Contrary to those spheres where the assumption of mutual understanding poses no problem, MK], there are other areas in which such community [of argument and metaphor, MK] peaks. These are those areas where the assumption of understanding is in dispute, where it is necessary to simultaneously produce both the argument and the situation in which it is to be understood, the object of the discussion and the world in which it features as object. (Rancière 1999, p. 57)

This means that the political is inherently an aesthetic practice, since it associates different spheres of meaning and engages in a metaphorical transposition. It means demonstrating the equality of “the workers” or “women” through the act of naming as opposed to arguing. If the police is “an order of the visible and the sayable that sees that a particular activity

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is visible and another is not, that this speech is understood as discourse and another as noise” (Rancière 1999, p. 28), then the political is the transformation of this perceptual order. In Imagination and the Imaginary, Kathleen Lennon argues, following phenomenologists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Kant, but also Castoriadis, that the objects, for the subject, carry an affective-imaginary texture, by which they orient themselves in the world. The way we perceive the world is guided by this affective framework and it determines the subject’s perception of certain things instead of others, encouraging them to value this and not that (Lennon 2015, pp. 52–70). Politics, in the fundamental sense proposed by Rancière, means transforming the affective order of social reality. Politics, then, is not a purely discursive activity, but an activity that transforms the way subjects perceive the world; it is an aesthetic practice (Rancière 1999, p. 57). In “The Politics of Literature,” Rancière further notes: Politics is first of all a way of framing, among sensory data, a specific sphere of experience. It is a partition of the sensible, of the visible and the sayable, which allows (or does not allow) some specific data to appear; which allows or does not allow some specific subjects to designate them and speak about them. It is a specific intertwining of ways of being, ways of doing and ways of speaking. (Rancière 2004, p. 10)

As the political is an aesthetic activity, so is aesthetics political. More than other social philosophers, Rancière is concerned with the role of aesthetic fiction in the constitution of the social. If the “aesthetics of politics” is concerned with framing “forms of subjectivation” (Rancière 2010, p. 141), the “politics of aesthetics” frames new forms of individuality and new haecceities. … [I]t re-frames the world of common experience as the world of a shared impersonal experience. In this way, it aids to help create the fabric of a common experience in which new modes of constructing common objects and new possibilities of subjective enunciation may be developed that are characteristic of the ‘aesthetics of politics.’ (Rancière 2010, p. 142)

Politics, in the sense described above, is of a secondary nature which depends upon the creation of a substratum of “individualities and haecceities” (“thisness”) which provides the support and conditions to create political subjectivities. In the essay “The Paradoxes of Political Art,”

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Rancière claims that what is commonly called critical or political art misunderstands the working of fiction, which for him is the reframing of “sensory modes of presentation” (Rancière 2010, p.  141). Art overtly self-identifying as “political” believes in its capacity to have a causal effect on political action, in the sense that people become aware of a grievance and start acting politically in the face of this recognition. The politics of aesthetics is of another nature. Aesthetics creates a dissensus between a particular “sensory presentation and a way of making sense of it, or between several sensory regimes and/or bodies” (Rancière 2010, p. 139). Dissensus means to create conflict between a way of sensorially (re-)presenting the world and conventional ways of making sense of it, what Rancière elsewhere calls “regime of meaning” (Rancière 2010, p.  144). New ways of (re-)presenting the world irritate the naturalness with which people experience the world and create a rupture between sense (which simultaneously is making sense of and sensing the world) and its representation. In the essay “The Politics of Literature,” Rancière exemplifies this claim with respect to the emergence of the French realist writers, particularly Gustave Flaubert (Rancière 2004). Similar to my approach here, Rancière takes his starting point from two opposing interpretations of Flaubert’s novels.17 For Jean-Paul Sartre, Flaubert’s work was a manifestation of a desire for the renewal of aristocracy in the face of the advent of the bourgeoisie. The “petrification of words” wrests them from use by the democratic struggles of their time. Contemporaneous critics of Flaubert leveled the same accusation (petrification of words), although these critics were defending the aristocratic order. “Petrification was the symptom of democracy” (Rancière 2004, p. 12). The fact that Flaubert’s prose did not establish a hierarchy between humans and non-humans−that stones may speak as signs just like actors do–disrupted the conventional ways of presenting (and making present) social reality as an ensemble of hierarchies, as high and low subjects, in the belles-lettres. Flaubert substituted style for hierarchy, and it was this egalitarian principle that upset his contemporary critics. Literature, in Flaubert’s sense, was “a new regime of writing in which the writer is anybody and the reader anybody” (Rancière 2004, p. 14), as opposed to the hierarchy of audiences established by the belles-lettres. Flaubert, Rancière remarks, had no political commitment. The politics of his literature were radical in that they destabilized the established modes of making sense of literature–they destabilized and irritated the regime of meaning prevalent at the time.

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Instead of arguing for democratic principles of equality, Flaubert’s aesthetics exposed and presented a world without hierarchies. The hierarchy-­ obliterating style aesthetically reframes social reality and is political while lacking an overt political message or position. Therefore, the politics of aesthetics is the answer of one world-­ presentation (the equality of signs) to another world-presentation (the hierarchies between subjects, audiences, and genres), the reply given from one sense to another sense. Rancière’s understanding of the politics of aesthetics ranges from literature (Rancière 2004) to theater (Rancière 2009) to art (Rancière 2010). As shown by the example of two workers and their philosophical exchange of letters during a holiday, the politics of aesthetics comes to pass when two mutually exclusive spheres of the social are translated into one another and create a previously inexistent relation (Rancière 2009, pp. 29–32). Although aesthetics, for Rancière, pervades the social, it serves as the principle for fiction in the sense it is used here. The “politics of aesthetics” is political in a more subtle way than the political formation of social identities. It creates the individuals (haecceities, “thisness”) who can then be reassembled into a social identity by the aesthetics of politics. The aesthetics of politics refers to the organizing and reorganizing of identities within the field of the political. Mouffe’s democratic antagonism participates in this aesthetics of politics. Meanwhile, the “politics of aesthetics” points to the transformation of the perceptual framework. I hope to shed light on the interrelation of the “politics of aesthetics” and the “aesthetics of politics” as I see it at work in the controversies under consideration.

2.2   Constituting Meaning in the Public Sphere Before starting the analysis, let me add a few words on the role played by the public sphere in this research design. I have chosen to analyze public cultural controversies starting from a few presuppositions which consider the public sphere as a crucial institution in democratic mass societies. I will first describe the role of the public sphere from a rather theoretical perspective, which helps determine the scope of this research. Second, I will delineate the concrete appearance of the public sphere in West Germany and expose its particularities, which helps explain why it lends itself to this research. The third subsection goes into detail about the particular shape of the Feature Pages of the Feuilleton, which illustrates the meeting ground of art and society.

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2.2.1  The Public Sphere and Social Reality How can we find the places, institutions, and practices where the political is acted out? Where does politics become a social practice? The political, in the sense described above, requires spaces, institutions, and practices oriented toward self-rule. In the first place, there are, of course, political institutions and practices such as elections and parliamentary debate which represent the people’s vote. Yet, these highly formalized political institutions and decision-making processes have to be thought of as rooted in a more comprehensive process of formation of political will. A vibrant democracy, which derives its legitimacy from “the people,” depends on a general politicization of the people and on the existence of social places which enable and participate in the general formation of such a will. Jürgen Habermas has to be credited for identifying the public sphere as that sphere of the social which serves the function of creating a space of critical and rational deliberation (Habermas (1962) 1990) and “an arena of collective self-determination” (Fraser 1990, p.  71), as Nancy Fraser aptly remarks. The public sphere is that sphere of the social where society communicates about itself, its values, norms, and self-image, but also the everyday happenings and the responses to be given with regard to them. “It designates a theater in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk. It is the space in which citizens deliberate about their common affairs, hence, an institutionalized arena of discursive interaction” (Fraser 1990, p. 57). In a much-noted essay from 1990, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy” (Fraser 1990), Fraser critically examines Habermas’ conception of the public sphere. While she does not discard the concept as such, she questions the normative ideal of the public sphere as a rational exchange among equals that is posited by Habermas. The term “public” in public sphere picks up on the modern distinction between public and private, in which what is of public concern is also of common concern and which is potentially accessible to everybody (Peters 1994, pp. 43–44).18 It implies the notion of a collective. As the above quote from Fraser shows, she recasts the public sphere as a social performance, a theater, which serves as a reflexive space for society’s consciousness of itself. I will come back to this poetic dimension of the public sphere. Fraser questions some of Habermas’ central assumptions about the bourgeois public sphere, which leads to her

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proposition of a post-bourgeois public sphere, so as to adapt and actualize Habermas’ model. Fraser argues against Habermas’ insistence on the bracketing out of status inequalities in discourse and claims that this posits male bourgeois culture as universal, excluding women and marginalized social classes from participating in the public sphere. She argues for a proliferation of publics, against the notion of a single public. A multiplicity of publics represents the stratification and differentiation of social reality, in which the subaltern groups may create counter-discourses. In other words, Fraser favors exposing inequalities and social stratification instead of bracketing them out, yet by creating differentiated discursive spaces–subaltern counterpublics (Fraser 1990, p. 67)–she conceptualizes spheres of resistance and emancipation. As a result, she questions the distinction between public and private issues and believes that the public sphere can only be thought of as emancipatory if it acknowledges that issues previously categorized as private can become public.19 Fraser calls attention to the social structuring of public space, which inherently links this public “theater” to the social order. The social order, with its distinctions and inequalities, differing needs, interests, and identities, is enacted in the symbolic space of the public theater. While structured by the social order, the public sphere reflects and hence makes visible society to itself. In the essay “Which Public Sphere for a Democratic Society?” (Mouffe 2002), Chantal Mouffe argues in favor of a public sphere as a platform for the agonistic struggles that make up the social. Only by becoming visible in the public sphere can they effectuate politicization. This argument is a response to what she perceives as the movement toward consensual democracy, which hails the lack of contestation and leads to the loss of political engagement. In both cases, the public sphere serves as that sphere of the social in which respective versions of politics materialize. The public “theater” transforms the social order into a metaphor for itself. Michael Warner has written an enlightening essay about the poetic function of publics. In “Publics and Counterpublics” (Warner 2002), he eschews the use of the term “public sphere” and recasts the public as “a space of discourse organized by nothing other than discourse itself. … It exists by virtue of being addressed” (Warner 2002, p. 50). Publics are not enumerable entities with a positive number of bodies that can be counted. Publics emerge by being addressed by a discourse. There is a poietic circularity in this process, since the discourse addresses a public that comes into

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being first and foremost through the discourse’s positing of it: “[Discourses, MK] fail if they have no reception in the world, but the exact composition of their addressed publics cannot entirely be known in advance. A public is always in excess of its known social basis” (Warner 2002, p. 55). Publics carry an imaginary dimension. Warner further notes: “It must be more than a list of one’s friends. It must include strangers” (Warner 2002, p. 55). In fact, publics are explicitly conceptualized as a relation among strangers and are therefore fundamental to the functioning of modern mass societies. While nations, religions, or guilds create a commonality among strangers and make them less strange to each other, the public is “stranger-relationality in a pure form” (Warner 2002, p.  56). Furthermore, a public requires constant imagining. A public is not installed once and for all, but lives off its performance (Warner 2002, p. 57). So the public is poietic (self-generative) and poetic (performative) at the same time.20 The public, which has a concrete (group of) addressee(s) in mind, yet exceeds it, creates a tension between a personal and an impersonal address. While public speech pretends to be universal, it has to carry the personalized language of a particular culture in order to find recipients (Warner 2002, pp. 57–60). This conceptualization of a public as acted out in the tension between the personal and the impersonal mediates between Habermas’ normative ideal of the universal public sphere and its critique, which claims that public discourses are dependent on the particular culture on which they are based. In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson ((1983) 2006) provides a magnificent example of the poietic, world-creating force of public address. In the chapter on “Creole Pioneers,” he describes the emergence of nationalism in the Americas in the eighteenth century. This was a result not only of class hierarchies, where the “creoles”21–America-born people of Spanish descent–ranked lower in the social hierarchy than the Spanish, but also of the spread of print capitalism. The newspapers created a sense of commonality among the “creoles” and they felt connected to the others in different corners of the American colonies by being informed about happenings elsewhere.22 Complete strangers were brought into relation with each other and developed a sense of community. Public discourse created a performative space in which the feeling of discrimination could be acted out into a social identity (Anderson (1983) 2006, pp. 47–65).

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Initiated through public discourses, time and space are reorganized into a continuity. The periodical production on a daily or weekly basis suggests a continuity in time (Warner 2002, pp. 65–69), while different media in space create a sense of unity: Once the background assumptions of public opinion are in place, all discrete publics become part of the public. Though essentially imaginary projections from local exchanges or acts of reading and therefore infinite in number, they are often thought of as a unitary space. (Warner 2002, p. 84)

The fragmentation of the social receives a sense of unity and scope depending on the imaginary of the public discourse. It is in this sense that we may speak of a national public sphere, where it is the positing of the discourse itself as national that brings into being a national public. As an act of poietic world positing, however, it not only defines the extension of its reach, but simultaneously serves as the social sphere in which an identity communicates its social imaginary significations. The emphasis Nancy Fraser and Chantal Mouffe put on the public sphere as a field of contestation opens the possibility of rethinking the public sphere as traversed by affects, emotions, and interests. From another perspective, Warner’s performative design of the public sphere underlines the creative and creating dimension of publics. While both reconceptualizations leave intact the role of the public sphere as an arena of collective self-determination, they challenge Habermas’ ideal of rational deliberation. Andreas Kalyvas and Kenneth H. Tucker, Jr. both address this challenge from a third perspective. They are inspired by Castoriadis’ understanding of social reality being moved by the creative–and hence irrational–impetus of the radical imaginary. Tucker emphasizes the advantage of such an understanding of the public sphere. Instead of performing solidarity among a collective, a creative and creating public sphere makes visible the cultural and individual diversity underlying the social it feeds back into (Tucker 2005). Kalyvas, on the other hand, highlights the importance of Castoriadis’ philosophy in order to explain the moment of decision-­ making. Habermas’ notion of rational deliberation, Kalyvas notes, fails to explain how individuals decide. Although he can account for the process of argumentation, making decisions is externalized from the public sphere and left to politics. This, Kalyvas argues, is a depoliticization of the public sphere, which also means depoliticizing the citizens. Castoriadis’ social psychology is capable of closing this gap, since the affective irrationality of

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desires explains why and how social individuals make decisions (Kalyvas 2001). In this sense, my thesis conceptualizes the public sphere as poietic as opposed to reproductive. It is an arena of collective self-determination which is traversed by conflict and contestation, affects, power relations, and interests. It brings into being what it addresses and exists only as long as its own performance lasts. Some final remarks are due with regard to the role of controversies in the public sphere–or journalistic conflicts, as I prefer to call the events under scrutiny in this work, following Hans Matthias Kepplinger’s distinction between scandals and journalistic conflicts. Scandals disclose social deficits; they are often highly asymmetrical, in the sense that a culprit is quickly named; and there is usually only one legitimate position with respect to the question under consideration. Journalistic conflicts (or controversies), on the other hand, are conflicts composed of two or more adversaries and are staged in mass media (Kepplinger 2009, p.  9). Nonetheless, both give expression to the transformation of social power relations, of “disorder breaking into the social order” (Imhof 2002, p. 73). Burkhardt describes media scandals as elementary narrations of the social system (Burkhardt 2015, pp.  351–352), since they actualize the normative binary code of good and evil, which disperses into the social via this very simple narrative structure. Media scandals, Burkhardt suggests, should be conceived of as early warning systems that provide information about social conflict potential (Burkhardt 2015, p. 353). Kurt Imhof, who analyzes cycles of densification and abatement of scandals, claims that times with high scandal density indicate spaces of opportunity for social transformations (Imhof 2002, p. 85). I believe that this is equally valid for the single scandal (or controversy), although its scope is less far-ranging than a concentrated appearance of scandals/controversies. The scandalization of surveillance society discussed in this work is a case in point. The topic had been present in the public sphere for a decade before an upcoming population census in combination with the approach of the “Orwell year” and a massive politicization of the population in the peace movement would turn data privacy into a topic of wide public concern.23 It is in the scandal and the public controversy that the transformation of social norms and values becomes manifest and erupts in a social struggle.

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2.2.2  Opinion-Forming Media From the above description of the public address’s self-creative (poietic) dimension, the public space my research is concerned with has to address West German society as a whole. In the context of modern nation states this means that it addresses the nation state in its institutionalized borders. The public space we are looking for is a space that posits an inclusive self-­ image representative of society in its (imaginary) unity and political diversity. Additionally, it is to represent democracy’s fundamental political values of contestation and political commitment. In the period from 1949 to 1990, the West German national quality newspapers meet almost all of these requirements. The inclusive unity imagined by the Feuilleton negates its own classist dimension, but it is the closest we can come to an ideal inclusive and non-fragmented public space, which is the methodological premise of this work. The national quality press take a prominent place in the formation of political will in West Germany’s media landscape. It is here that the plurality of political opinions and oppositional contestation is played out. Although the reach of national quality newspapers is not comparable to the distribution of regional newspapers or to the reception of mass media such as TV and radio, they have developed certain qualities that turn them into opinion-forming media and are therefore located in society’s “horizon of orientation” (Jarren and Vogel 2009, p. 79). The term “opinion leader” or Leitmedium refers to its social-scientific use, which distinguishes particular media outlets as opinion-leading authorities. This use of the term Leitmedium is not to be confused with another use, whereby it is conceived of as media invented in the wake of a particular technical development such as print, radio, TV, and internet by the Arts and Humanities (Müller and Ligensa 2009). Within the context of this book, only the former use is relevant. Otfried Jarren and Martina Vogel distinguish four criteria that turn media into opinion-leading media (Jarren and Vogel 2009, pp. 84–88). First, they are mass media, which means that they are defined by universality, actuality, periodicity, and general accessibility. Second, they stand out as providing high journalistic quality. Third–an aspect which is of particular importance for this work–they are normatively oriented, which means that they take a stand on social and political topics and therefore take an exposed position in the media field. Normative orientation and a political program distinguishes leading media from what Jarren and Vogel call

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Forumsmedien (forum media) such as local newspapers, public radio, and TV broadcasts. Jürgen Wilke further emphasizes the leading role of Leitmedien in the formation of political will (Wilke 2009, pp.  47–48). Fourth, leading media constitute an organizational field, that is, a field of reciprocal observation and commentary, which includes reference to leading media from other countries. Wilke, moreover, claims that the position of leading media cannot be explained solely by how many people they reach, but by additional factors. Leading media are overrepresented in the media consumption patterns of social elites. The underlying assumption is that the orientation given and decisions taken by the social elites are of larger consequence to the development of social reality than those of the “normal citizen” (Wilke 2009, pp. 33–34). Another factor is the greater use of some media by journalists. Journalists consume and reference quality newspapers more frequently and hence further increase leading media’s social authority. This greater use is reflected in the notions of inter-media agenda-setting and the frequency with which quality media’s content is quoted and referenced in other media. Both concepts belong to the field of reciprocal observation and commentary. Inter-media agenda-setting suggests that more often than others, some media set the themes that are then taken up by the other media. The second concept of frequency of quotation contends that a medium’s influence shows itself by how often it is referred to in other media, since this is how the proposed opinion circulates in society (Wilke 2009, pp. 35–43). Since the early days of the periodical press in Germany, the local press has been dominant. This was a result of Germany’s scattered regionalism and political and cultural federalism. It was difficult to establish opinion-­ leading media with a national distribution. In the period directly after World War II, under allied rule, the allies attempted to establish print media outlets with a distribution that covered the whole zone for which the respective allied power was responsible. These endeavors by the allied powers were the first steps toward establishing an opinion-leading media with nationwide distribution (Wilke 1999, p.  310). Of these, only the daily Die Welt still exists and is counted among the national quality newspapers. The second newspaper that was founded with a national scope in mind in 1949 was the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). The Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and Frankfurter Rundschau (FR), counted as part of the West German opinion-leading media, are–strictly speaking–local newspapers, both still mostly consumed locally, yet the

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SZ in particular aspires to national reception. Its claim to opinion leadership is substantiated by its content-related originality and the fact that it is the print medium that is most favored by journalists directly after the weekly Der Spiegel. The FR is especially influential among young urban people and is consumed in above average numbers by workers. The only successful founding of a national daily newspaper in the Federal Republic of Germany, after the founding of the tabloid Bild in 1952, is the tageszeitung (taz) in 1979, which has its roots in the left-alternative movement of the 1960s. Despite the small circulation, it belongs to the ten most frequently quoted media in the print landscape and has often been the initiator of new topics, which were then taken up by other left-liberal media. In cases such as these, media scholars speak of “spill-over” effects. The daily Bild is certainly the newspaper with the widest circulation in West Germany, yet it is rarely considered an opinion-leading media outlet. Since it was not a subscription newspaper at the time, but a street trading paper, it had to convince consumers every day anew to buy it. Therefore, instead of setting topics which then generate a social response, the Bild lives off a feel for already existing currents of opinion and amplifies them (Wilke 1999, pp. 310–315).24 Wilke identifies some other print media outlets with a weekly periodicity that can be counted as opinion-leading media; perhaps most importantly, the news magazine Der Spiegel: “Like no other newspaper it became a journalistic institution which has profoundly shaped West Germany’s (post-war) history” (Wilke 1999, p. 318). Already in the streamlined journalistic landscape of the 1950s (Hodenberg 2006, pp.  101–228), Der Spiegel established itself as the most sharp opposition to the Adenauer chancellorship, an antagonism which peaked during the Spiegel affair in 1962, “through which the magazine gained an almost legendary reputation” (Wilke 1999, p. 319).25 According to Frank Bösch, the Spiegel affair marked the founding myth of modern journalism in Germany, a journalism which was critical of government politics and authority (Bösch 2007).26 This role of a leading medium par excellence spans the whole period under consideration in this work. Articles by Der Spiegel can be found in several of the case studies, despite the fact that the news magazine is not normally counted as part of the Feuilleton (see below) since its main concern is politics (in the classical narrower sense of the word) and not culture. The socio-political import of cultural debates becomes visible particularly at those points where it overflows section boundaries and

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thematic responsibilities: culture turns into a concern for politics and vice versa. In the late 1960s, and probably even earlier, the weekly newspaper Die Zeit joined the list of opinion-leading media outlets. It was founded in 1946 and may be categorized politically as representing social-liberal positions (Wilke 1999, pp.  315–317). Among the pictorial magazines only Stern can be counted among the opinion-leading media, since it almost entirely developed from a magazine devoted to entertainment to a political magazine (Wilke 1999, pp.  320–321). Plachta and Albrecht further add the feature pages of the Swiss daily Neue Züricher Zeitung (NZZ), which is distributed in Germany and is acknowledged as a medium of importance with regard to its coverage of cultural topics (Albrecht 2001, p. 24; Plachta 2008, p. 100). Further publishing media that will be encountered throughout the following chapters are the weekly newspapers Der Rheinische Merkur (Rheinischer Merkur) and Christ & Welt, which both have to be considered target-audience media outlets, and hence address a selected social group only. They addressed a Catholic and a Protestant readership respectively. Yet especially in the 1950s and 1960s, when religion was still very much ingrained in West German society, they may certainly be thought of as taking an orienting role for their readership (Wilke 1999, p. 317). The magazine Konkret took a similar role in the student protests in the 1960s (Wilke 1999, p. 322). Other media that have found their way into the data base will be contextualized in the respective chapters. 2.2.3  The Feuilleton: Interface Between the Arts and the Social The literary scholar Peter Uwe Hohendahl defines literary criticism as “public communication about literature, which describes and evaluates literature” (Hohendahl 1985a, p. 2). Although the Feuilleton is not equivalent to literary criticism, their histories are entangled and the one is inseparable from the other. In Germany, literary criticism is that which takes place in the public sphere, while literary scholarship takes place in the universities (Neuhaus 2003, pp. 54–58). Literary criticism was a constitutive part of the bourgeois public sphere as it developed throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Germany. If the public sphere of the enlightenment was concerned with the development of a practice of critical rationality and a culture of debate, the literary public sphere formed as a response to the notion of the technicist dimension of rationality.

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Technicist rationality was increasingly appropriated by the ruling classes, who turned a critical medium into a tool for domination. Particularly during the transformations taking place in the eighteenth century, when instrumental rationality was quickly asserting itself, literature was able to take over the task of reminding society of pushed back forms of collective sociality and frame the memory of them. (Schulte-Sasse 1980, p. 27)

The literary public sphere and therefore literary criticism itself became a tool for social criticism. Similarly, in the Age of Metternich, in which liberal ideas developed and resulted in the March Revolution of 1848/49, literary criticism was used as means to skirt around strict state censorship. Debating literature was the means by which political self-understanding was formed (Hohendahl 1985b, pp. 134–139). The interrelation of literary criticism and a claim to socio-political interpretation (Deutungsanspruch) has a history in the German public sphere; it has a particular tradition of thinking literature together with politics, despite interruptions and discontinuities, or waves of distance and closeness between both spheres of the social. The interrelation of literature and politics might also have been fostered by its placing in the Feuilleton, the feature pages of the daily and weekly newspapers, since the mid-nineteenth century. At that time, the Feuilleton took over as the main medium of the literary public sphere, which had initially developed in a large variety of literary magazines (Plachta 2008, pp.  99–100; Albrecht 2001, p.  20). The literary public sphere forms the foundation of the present-day Feuilleton, which has successively included the reception of other art forms as well. To date, literary criticism in the national Feuilleton still provides the most important platform for literary and cultural debate in the (West) German public sphere (Pfohlmann 2005, p.  61; Plachta 2008, p.  100), despite the fact that audiovisual media pay more for contributions than print media (Albrecht 2001, p. 21). In fact, Plachta remarks that Germany lacks important review media outlets in the manner of, for example, the British Times Literary Supplement or the US-American New York Review of Books (Plachta 2008, p. 100).27 Yet, perhaps the absence of a separation of cultural and political journalism gives cultural journalism in Germany its political dimension. It is here, in the interaction of political and cultural debate, that literature (and the arts

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in a more general sense) impacts on the formation of (West) Germany’s political self-understanding. Even though literary criticism was at the origin of the literary public sphere, the Feuilleton has developed into a platform for cultural journalism which includes not only literature but art, film, and theater. I follow Marcus M. Payk’s assessment of the role of the Feuilleton: Altogether it is to be noted that from the nineteenth century the Feuilleton journalism was established as a public institution which did not hold monopoly of intellectual analysis of the state of contemporary society and the world, but which–far into the twentieth century and to an increasing degree–acted as a handling facility for cultural and intellectual representations of any kind. … And at all times there remained, despite all resentments, an equally subcutaneous and indissoluble entanglement of spirit and politics, of culture and society; political critique and a culturally pessimistic reasoning have always been feuilletonist subjects par excellence. (Payk 2008, p. 34)

This assessment seems valid despite the fact that the Feuilleton is the least read part of the newspaper and is generally evaluated negatively by readers (Stegert 1998, p. 15). If we believe (with the constructivist understanding of social reality) that institutions gain their importance not from “objective facts” but from how people see them, the Feuilleton is considered the platform that “makes” and “unmakes” works of art. The Feuilleton has a gatekeeping function (Albrecht 2001, p. 11). A work of art is ennobled when reviewed in the Feuilleton; it crosses the barrier of mass anonymity in the vast field of cultural production.28 Despite the Feuilleton’s unpopularity and often elitist reputation,29 it remains the only West German public institution with national scope which integrates culture and politics. We should add that the Feuilleton’s importance increases or diminishes with the importance attributed to cultural production by society. Jens Jessen, editor of the Feuilleton of the FAZ from 1988 to 1996, describes the emergence of the political Feuilleton in the early 1990s, which, he claims, goes hand in hand with a loss of social importance of the Feuilleton. The political Feuilleton, in Jessen’s sense, does not mean the interrelation of art and society as described above, but the coverage of political issues in a feuilletonistic manner. Since the politicization of the Feuilleton dissolves the boundaries established between journalistic departments, it also

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dissolves the focus on its own specialization (culture). Cultural journalism, Jessen claims, can only retain its importance if it refocuses on its particularity (Jessen 2002). This essay is not the result of scholarly work, but journalistic experience. These observations are nonetheless valuable, because they not only describe the perceived loss of importance of a once prestigious institution since the 1990s, but exemplify the dependency of an institution’s social role on how the social actors see it. By dissolving the journalistic boundaries established between the departments, the cultural journalists react to a perceived loss of importance of the traditional review-­ Feuilleton and consequently assume the unimportance of the Feuilleton’s genuine topic, cultural production. The public devaluation of the traditional review-Feuilleton by the journalists themselves leads to a downward spiral of social standing and social importance. But as my research focuses on the years until 1990, this shifting of the Feuilleton’s social role is here negligible. Despite the elitism of the Feuilleton, it is that sphere of the social that sets the standards for the interpretation of works of art. It is here that paradigms of interpretation are tested publicly, that struggles for the “right” version of interpretation are fought. Academic literary criticism as well as film and theater studies come in much later in the reception process, after the more general direction of interpretation has already been established. Since we are here concerned with a period prior to the diffusion of the internet, the Feuilleton is the medium which records what is of importance in the cultural field. The paradigms of interpretation developed in the process of public negotiation in the Feuilleton–the guidelines of how to interpret an artwork–further diffuse into the social via educational institutions, schools first and foremost, but also via its agenda-setting function for other media such as regional newspapers. Although artistic reception traverses intricate paths from the Feuilleton via academic institutions and more popular media until it reaches “the masses,” it has its starting point in the Feuilleton. Wolfgang Iser reminds us that there are different ways of approaching a work of art, or “playing the text” (Iser 1993, p. 276). This implies the use of different cognitive functions. While the semantic play is oriented toward understanding the artwork, the mode of gaining experience leads to an exposure of the reader to the artwork. There is the play which is subject to the pleasure principle, self-enjoyment, and the “pleasure of the text,” as Iser calls it following Roland Barthes (Iser 1993, pp. 276–280).30 The struggles in the Feuilleton are struggles over the “correct ways” of

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playing the text(s), which does not preclude different modes of playing the respective artworks by individual recipients. Individual reception is not to be equated with public and what I call social reception. Although the Feuilleton is the primary place of cultural debate, heated controversies often overflow the boundaries established between journalistic departments. This is why my material includes articles from the opinion-­leading media in the more general sense described above. I will continue to speak of the Feuilleton, even when the article under consideration may have been published in Der Spiegel or in the political section of the daily newspapers, because these cases push the Feuilleton beyond the institutional confines set by society and therefore mean an overflowing of culture into other spheres of the social. Since I am particularly interested in this “overflow,” it is not a flaw of data selection, but a necessity inherent to the research question. Let us now turn to these cultural debates and the way they shaped the West German social from 1949 to 1990.

Notes 1. Castoriadis’ theoretical framework can be found in his key work The Imaginary Institution of Society (Castoriadis 1987). If not stated otherwise, the ensuing arguments are derived from this work. 2. See also Klooger (2009, pp. 61–63). 3. According to Chiara Bottici, this is the reason that Castoriadis escapes the danger of idealistic subjectivism, as he conceptualizes the subject as bound to social reality by its somatic capacities. The somatic dimension of psychic reality roots the individual in social reality (Bottici 2014, p. 49). 4. This does not preclude the existence of a plurality of social identities within the sphere of the social that is called “society” here. Social identities divide the democratic social sphere into (collective) actors explicitly or implicitly engaged in a negotiation of the “name” of the social, of the values a society chooses to pursue. As Laclau and Mouffe’s description of popular subject positions shows, however, a social identity can go so far as to break identification with society’s identity and form a society of its own with no identitary connections to the previous social framework (Laclau and Mouffe (1985) 2001, pp. 130–131). 5. Similarly, in Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Habermas 1985, En: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity), Jürgen Habermas rejects Castoriadis’ understanding of the relation of subject and social reality and charges him with falling victim to subjectivism. For Habermas, the radical

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alterity of the psyche proposed by Castoriadis inhibits any kind of contact between the subject and social reality (Elliott 2002, p. 145). 6. Suzi Adams engages in an analysis of the development of the Castoriadian notion of creation throughout his philosophical thought. In The Imaginary Institution of Society, creativity is still conceptualized as a local ontology, applicable to the social-historical. In his later work, however, Castoriadis expands his theory of creation so as to include the different “regions of nature” (Adams 2003, p.  107) and reformulates any being as à-être (becoming) and time. This relativizes determinacy even in the domain of nature. Castoriadis not only asks how the knowing subject has to be constituted, but also how the object must be designed so as to be recognizable by the subject. The fact that the relation between subject and object has to be designed in a way that enables organization and ensemblization makes it impossible to distinguish which element comes from the subject and which from the object. Since different logics may be applied to nature– such as the co-existence yet radical alterity of Newton’s and Einstein’s physical theories–Castoriadis concludes that nature also witnesses the emergence of new forms (Adams 2003). Since I do not follow Castoriadis in these conclusions, I will confine the notion of creativity and creation to the human domain. 7. For a critique of what Castoriadis terms deterministic logic, see Castoriadis (1987, pp.  170–176). In chapter 5, “The Social-Historical Institution: Legein and Teukhein,” especially, Castoriadis develops the idea of the indeterminacy of social meaning and social doing, its historicity (Castoriadis 1987, pp.  221–272), which he terms magmatic logic, which forms the central idea of his argument. For the whole argument see “Part II: The Social Imaginary and the Institution” of The Imaginary Institution of Society (Castoriadis 1987, pp.  165–373). Castoriadis’ relationship with Kant is of an ambivalent nature, since it was largely inspired by Kant’s “discovery” of the imagination. Castoriadis believes that Kant was well aware of the existence of creativity of the social, yet he did anything to re-incarcerate the imagination in ensidic logic (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997)” (by John V.  Garner), http:// www.iep.utm.edu/castoria/#SSH3aii (accessed December 4, 2015)). 8. Making art is the social doing/practice that follows from the signification of art. Signification and social doing belong together as Legein and Teukhein. Making art is a social practice insofar as it is a kind of doing that others in society understand as meaningful. See chapter 5, “The SocialHistorical Institution: Legein and Teukhein,” in The Imaginary Institution of Society (Castoriadis 1987, pp. 221–272). 9. The psychic monad refers to the psyche in its originary state of chaos and anarchy prior to socialization. It experiences itself as omnipotent and

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undifferentiated from the world. The self is the world. This monad is broken up in what Castoriadis calls the “triadic phase,” in which the self encounters Lacan’s Other and which initiates the process of socialization, which means structuring and giving form to the undifferentiated representational flux of the psychic monad (Castoriadis 1987, pp. 294–316). 10. Karl. E. Smith proposes substituting the Castoriadian notion of the monad closed upon itself with a proposition made by Marcel Gauchet. Gauchet does not believe in the originary closed nature of the monad, which is violently broken up in the triadic phase, but claims that the psyche is open to being formed–and hence to being socialized–right from the start. However, it also carries within it the oppositional movement toward closure, toward separation and seclusion from the need to be structured and limited. The tension between openness and closure is thus immanent to the human psyche and therefore “constitutive of being human” (Smith 2005, p. 12). This proposition leaves Castoriadis’ more general social philosophy about the role of the radical imaginary intact, while correcting a problematic aspect in Castoriadis’ thought (Smith 2005). 11. See Whitebook (1989) for a description of the basic controversy in the Habermas-Castoriadis exchange (also Elliott 2002, pp. 144–151). 12. This argument is extensively elaborated in the essay “Which Public Sphere for a Democratic Society?” (Mouffe 2002). 13. With Castoriadis, Claude Lefort was co-founder of the group Socialisme ou barbarie and his longtime intellectual companion. See the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997)” (by John V.  Garner), http://www.iep.utm.edu/castoria/#SSH3aii (accessed December 4, 2015). 14. Although I remain skeptical regarding the applicability of Mouffe’s conception of the political to historical periods (e.g. the Middle Ages), I believe the concept is expressive of present-day democratic societies. I am hesitant, however, to think of the political as a new transhistorical ontology of the social. If a society bases its legitimacy on the law of God, can we legitimately claim that this society merely imagines its foundations to have transcendental origin, while being indeterminate at heart? Or would we force our version of social reality on a social eidos that is actually incompatible with our present-day convictions? It is, in fact, the question that art history is also faced with, when considering the imaging practices of the Middle Ages as works of art, despite the fact that the institution of the arts was thereafter established. The “pictorial” or “iconic” turn in art history since about the 1980s attempts to correct this homogeneous version of imaging practices and do justice to them in their contextualized setting (Meyer 2011, pp. 1030–1031). On the other hand, I fail to get a grasp of a total relativity with regard to the institution of society. Can the ontologi-

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cal foundations of society be subject to transformations, depending on the respective social imaginary significations? Would this mean that the political can only come into being correlative with democracy? I am undecided with respect to this question, but luckily it is not the task of this work to resolve this philosophical question. Since my work is concerned with recent history, Mouffe’s understanding of the political serves well to explain the constitution of the social in (Western) democratic societies. 15. In the following descriptions, I refer to the chapter “Wrong: Politics and Police” in Disagreement (Rancière 1999, pp. 21–42). Politics means the inscription of the uncounted into the common space: the disruption of the social order, while the social order is called the police by Rancière (Rancière 1999, pp. 28–29). 16. In Disagreement, Rancière’s term “le partage du sensible” has been translated as the “partition of the perceptible” (Rancière 1999, p. 26), although more commonly as the “distribution of the sensible,” which is why I will retain this translation. 17. For the description of this example see specifically Rancière (2004, pp. 11–15). 18. Bernhard Peters also critically examines Habermas’ normative model of the public sphere, and modifies and effects restrictions on the ideal posited by Habermas, yet he adheres to the notion of a normative model of public deliberation for modern democratic societies. Politics, Peters demands, has to facilitate a framework that comes as close as possible to the ideal (Peters 1994). What is problematic about this conception is Peters’ adherence to the ideal of rationality, which excludes affects, emotions, and interests from the public sphere and which is therefore incapable of giving an adequate account of real social processes. Rationality and rational deliberation is, as Fraser points out, a tool of male, bourgeois power and should be taken neither as universal nor as inclusive. Rather, it functions as a means of distinction from non-hegemonic modes of expression and argument (Fraser 1990, pp. 59–60, see also Kalyvas 2001, p. 1). 19. This notion has similarities to Jacques Rancière’s understanding of politics, which makes a private social relation a concern of public interest. Politics is the creation of a public stage (Rancière 1999, pp. 21–60). 20. Warner does not distinguish between poietic and poetic, because in practice they are difficult to differentiate. Performing a world simultaneously brings the world into being, as Warner’s section-title implies: “A public is poetic world-making” (Warner 2002, p. 82). 21. This term is used as a marker of social distinction, not as an ethnic or racial ascription. 22. Anderson remarks that the Spanish did not read the newspapers, most likely due to classism.

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23. See Chap. 4 in this work. 24. Wilke notes that in two cases in the history of Bild it has indeed engaged in political campaigns and has sidestepped the “populistic principle”: in 1964 it opposed an increase in telephone charges and thus contributed to the loss of power of then chancellor Ludwig Erhard. In the late 1960s, furthermore, it campaigned against the student protests and consequently turned into the protesters’ main enemy (Wilke 1999, p. 314). Due to its general populist stance and lack of importance with respect to the guidance of opinion in the case studies under consideration, Bild has not been included in my data base. 25. On the role of Der Spiegel see Wilke (1999, pp. 318–320); also Hodenberg (2006, p. 220). 26. The Spiegel affair was initiated by a response of the Adenauer government to an article published by Der Spiegel about the defense capacities of West Germany vis-à-vis the Iron Curtain. Franz Josef Strauß, the Minister of Defence, pressed charges against the author of the article and against the chief editor for treason. However, a search of the magazine’s premises could not substantiate the charges of treason and corruption. Strauß’s dealing with the situation was generally viewed as an abuse of authority, so as to get rid of an inconvenient publishing medium. The affair led to a large public movement of solidarity with the magazine which is often regarded as the beginning of a critical public sphere in West Germany (Pöttker 2012). 27. Marcus M. Payk notes that the Feuilleton is a peculiarity of the continental press as opposed to the English-speaking press. It originally developed in France, but quickly became popular in Germany as well (Payk 2008, pp. 26–27). 28. This does not mean that the Feuilleton substantially influences the sales figures. In fact, Wendy Kerstan’s research suggests that an increase in sales figures of books can only be observed after books have been reviewed on TV, while the market impact of literary criticism in the Feuilleton remains obscure (Kerstan 2006, pp. 132–139). 29. See the research undertaken by Vasco Boenisch about theater reviews in the Feuilleton, which detects a huge gap between the critics’ aspirations and the readers’ expectations (Boenisch 2008). 30. The “pleasure of the text”- play refers to the recipient’s immersion in the text’s linguistic play. The plot is of secondary importance for this disposition. Linguistic structures and word plays dominate the reception and induce pleasure.

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References Adams, Suzi. 2003. Castoriadis’ Shift Towards Physis. Thesis Eleven 74: 105–112. Albrecht, Wolfgang. 2001. Literaturkritik, Sammlung Metzler 338. Stuttgart/ Weimar: Metzler. Anderson, Benedict. (1983) 2006. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London/New York: Verso. Boenisch, Vasco. 2008. Krise der Kritik? Was Theaterkritiker denken – und ihre Leser erwarten, Recherchen 63. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. Bösch, Frank. 2007. ‘Spiegel’-Affäre. In Skandale in Deutschland nach 1945, Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung im Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, Dezember 2007 bis März 2008, im Zeitgeschichtlichen Forum Leipzig der Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Mai bis Oktober 2008, ed. Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 59–67. Bielefeld/Leipzig: Kerber. Bottici, Chiara. 2014. Imaginal Politics. Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary. New York: Columbia University Press. Burkhardt, Steffen. 2015. Medienskandale. Zur moralischen Sprengkraft öffentlicher Diskurse. 2nd rev ed. Köln: Halem. Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1987. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press. ———. 1997. The Imaginary: Creation in the Social-Historical Domain. In World in Fragments. Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination, ed. David Ames Curtis, 3–18. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Elliott, Anthony. 2002. The Social Imaginary: A Critical Assessment of Castoriadis’s Psychoanalytic Social Theory. American Imago 59 (2): 141–170. https://doi. org/10.1353/aim.2002.0009. Fraser, Nancy. 1990. Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. Social Text 25/26: 56–80. Habermas, Jürgen. (1962) 1990. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, stw 891. Frankfurt (M.): Suhrkamp. ———. 1985. Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Zwölf Vorlesungen, stw 749. Frankfurt (M.): Suhrkamp. Hohendahl, Peter Uwe. 1985a. Einleitung. In Geschichte der deutschen Literaturkritik (1730–1980), ed. Peter Uwe Hohendahl, 1–9. Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung. ———. 1985b. Literaturkritik in der Epoche des Liberalismus. In Geschichte der deutschen Literaturkritik (1730–1980), ed. Peter Uwe Hohendahl, 129–204. Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Homer, Sean. 2005. Jacques Lacan, Routledge Critical Thinkers. London/New York: Routledge.

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Imhof, Kurt. 2002. Medienskandale als Indikatoren sozialen Wandels. Skandalisierungen in den Printmedien im 20. Jahrhundert. In Öffentlichkeit und Offenbarung. Eine interdisziplinäre Mediendiskussion, ed. Kornelia Hahn, 73–98. Konstanz: UVK. Iser, Wolfgang. 1993. The Fictive and the Imaginary. Charting Literary Anthropology. Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jarren, Otfried, and Martina Vogel. 2009. Gesellschaftliche Selbstbeobachtung und Koorientierung. Die Leitmedien der modernen Gesellschaft. In Leitmedien. Konzepte  – Relevanz  – Geschichte, Vol 1 of Medienumbrüche 31, ed. Daniel Müller, Annemone Ligensa, and Peter Gendolla, 71–92. Bielefeld: Transcript. Jessen, Jens. 2002. Das Feuilleton: Fortschreitende Politisierung. In Die Kultur der Medien: Untersuchungen zum Rollen- und Funktionswandel des Kulturjournalismus in der Mediengesellschaft, Medien: Forschung und Wissenschaft 1, ed. Michael Haller, 29–40. Münster: LIT. Kalyvas, Andreas. 2001. The Politics of Autonomy and the Challenge of Deliberation: Castoriadis Contra Habermas. Thesis Eleven 64: 1–19. Kepplinger, Hans Matthias. 2009. Publizistische Konflikte. In Publizistische Konflikte und Skandale, Theorie und Praxis öffentlicher Kommunikation 2, 9–28. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Kerstan, Wendy. 2006. Der Einfluss von Literaturkritik auf den Absatz von Publikumsbüchern. Marburg: LiteraturWissenschaft.de. Klooger, Jeff. 2009. Castoriadis: Psyche, Society, Autonomy, Social and Critical Theory 6. Leiden/Boston: Brill. ———. 2014. Legein and Teukhein. In Cornelius Castoriadis: Key Concepts, ed. Suzi Adams, 117–126. London: Bloomsbury. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. (1985) 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. 2nd ed. London/New York: Verso. Lefort, Claude, and Gauchet, Marcel. 1990. Über die Demokratie: Das Politische und die Instituierung des Gesellschaftlichen. (1976) In Autonome Gesellschaft und libertäre Demokratie, ed. Ulrich Rödel. Trans. Kathrina Menke, 89–122. Frankfurt (M.): Suhrkamp. Lennon, Kathleen. 2015. Imagination and the Imaginary. London/New York: Routledge. Lüdemann, Susanne. 2004. Metaphern der Gesellschaft. Studien zum soziologischen und politischen Imaginären. München: Wilhelm Fink. Meyer, Birgit. 2011. Mediating Absence – Effecting Spiritual Presence: Pictures and the Christian Imagination. Social Research 78 (4): 1029–1056. Mouffe, Chantal. 2002. Which Public Sphere for a Democratic Society? Theoria 49 (1): 55–65. ———. 2005. Politics and the Political. In On the Political, 8–34. London/New York: Routledge.

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Mouzakitis, Angelos. 2014. Creation ex nihilo. In Cornelius Castoriadis: Key Concepts, ed. Suzi Adams, 53–64. London: Bloomsbury. Müller, Daniel, and Annemone Ligensa. 2009. Einleitung. In Leitmedien. Konzepte  – Relevanz  – Geschichte, Vol 1 of Medienumbrüche 31, ed. Daniel Müller, Annemone Ligensa, and Peter Gendolla, 11–27. Bielefeld: Transcript. Neuhaus, Stefan. 2003. Vom Sinn und Unsinn der Literaturkritik. Mit einigen grundsätzlichen Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Literatur und Journalismus. In Literatur und Journalismus. Theorie, Kontexte, Fallstudien, ed. Bernd Blöbaum, and Stefan Neuhaus, 53–72. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Payk, Marcus M. 2008. Der Geist der Demokratie. Intellektuelle Orientierungsversuche im Feuilleton der frühen Bundesrepublik: Karl Korn und Peter de Mendelssohn, Ordnungssysteme. Studien zur Ideengeschichte der Neuzeit 23. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. Peters, Bernhard. 1994. Der Sinn von Öffentlichkeit. In Öffentlichkeit, öffentliche Meinung, soziale Bewegungen, Special Issue, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 34, ed. Friedhelm Neidhardt, 42–76. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Pfohlmann, Oliver. 2005. Kleines Lexikon der Literaturkritik. Marburg: LiteraturWissenschaft.de. Plachta, Bodo. 2008. Literaturbetrieb, UTB 2982. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink. Pöttker, Horst. 2012. Meilenstein der Pressefreiheit – 50 Jahre “Spiegel”-Affäre. ApuZ: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 62 (29–31): 39–46. http://www.bpb.de/ apuz/140234/meilenstein-der-pressefreiheit-50-jahre-spiegel-affaere. Accessed 1 Feb 2016. Rancière, Jacques. 1999. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Minneapolis/ London: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2004. The Politics of Literature. SubStance 33 (1): 10–24. ———. 2009. Der emanzipierte Zuschauer. In Der emanzipierte Zuschauer, 11–34. Wien: Passagen. ———. 2010. The Paradoxes of Political Art. In Dissensus. On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Steve Corcoran, 134–151. London/New York: Continuum. Schulte-Sasse, Jochen. 1980. Einleitung: Kritisch-rationale und literarische Öffentlichkeit. In Aufklärung und literarische Öffentlichkeit, Hefte für Kritische Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Christa Bürger, Peter Bürger, and Jochen Schulte-­ Sasse, vol. 2, 12–38. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt (M.). ———. 1985. Der Begriff der Literaturkritik in der Romantik. In Geschichte der deutschen Literaturkritik (1730–1980), ed. Peter Uwe Hohendahl, 76–128. Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Smith, Karl E. 2005. Re-imagining Castoriadis’s Psychic Monad. Thesis Eleven 83 (1): 5–14.

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Stegert, Gernot. 1998. Feuilleton für alle: Strategien im Kulturjournalismus der Presse. In Medien in Forschung und Unterricht 48. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Stephan, Inge. 2008a. Aufklärung. In Deutsche Literaturgeschichte. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Wolfgang Beutin, Klaus Ehlert, Wolfgang Emmerich, Christine Kanz, Bernd Lutz, Volker Meid, Michael Opitz, Carola Opitz-Wiemers, Ralf Schnell, Peter Stein, and Inge Stephan, 7th ed., 148–181. Stuttgart: Metzler. ———. 2008b. Kunstepoche. In Deutsche Literaturgeschichte. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Wolfgang Beutin, Klaus Ehlert, Wolfgang Emmerich, Christine Kanz, Bernd Lutz, Volker Meid, Michael Opitz, Carola Opitz-­ Wiemers, Ralf Schnell, Peter Stein, and Inge Stephan, 7th ed., 182–230. Stuttgart: Metzler. Taylor, Charles. 2002. Modern Social Imaginaries. Public Culture 14 (1): 91–124. Torfing, Jacob. 1999. New Theories of Discourse. Laclau, Mouffe and Žižek. Oxford/Malden: Blackwell. Tucker, Kenneth H., Jr. 2005. From the Imaginary to Subjectivation: Castoriadis and Touraine on the Performative Public Sphere. Thesis Eleven 83: 42–60. von Hodenberg, Christina. 2006. Konsens und Krise. Eine Geschichte der westdeutschen Medienöffentlichkeit 1945–1973. Göttingen: Wallstein. Warner, Michael. 2002. Publics and Counterpublics. Public Culture 14 (1): 49–90. Whitebook, Joel. 1989. Intersubjectivity and the Monadic Core of the Psyche: Habermas and Castoriadis on the Unconscious. Revue européenne des sciences sociales, Pour une philosophie militante de la démocratie 27 (86): 225–244. Wilke, Jürgen. 1999. Leitmedien und Zielgruppenorgane. In Mediengeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ed. Jürgen Wilke, 302–329. Bonn: BPB. ———. 2009. Historische und intermediale Entwicklungen von Leitmedien. Journalistische Leitmedien in Konkurrenz zu anderen. In Leitmedien. Konzepte – Relevanz – Geschichte, Vol. 1 of Medienumbrüche 31, ed. Daniel Müller, Annemone Ligensa, and Peter Gendolla, 29–52. Bielefeld: Transcript.

CHAPTER 3

Confirming a Secular World Order: Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence

The 1960s is a decade that holds significant symbolic value for many states and societies in the world. For many of the states in Africa and Asia the 1960s is a period of decolonization, a period which is marked by social and political upheavals of the preceding structures of rule and governance.1 For many Western countries, the decade is associated with the year 1968, which functions as a cipher for the anti-authoritarian revolts that lastingly transformed cultural patterns and hierarchies.2 Timothy Scott Brown therefore speaks of the “Global Sixties,” although he adds that national developments are always the result of international influences and national particularities (Brown 2013, p. 4). Although events escalated around the year 1968, the cultural transformations that were taking place had their starting point long before. This chapter turns to the reception of a film that unleashed the largest film scandal in post-war West Germany, the scandal which even surpassed the one initiated by the film Die Sünderin in 1951.3 Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence featured on West German cinema screens in 1964, at exactly the same time that social transformations were picking up pace. Although the student protests would only erupt at the end of the decade, the cultural field was already preparing the ground. The Spiegel affair in 1962 must be considered a symptom of these changes; it was at this point that a civil society became aware of its right to protest against political authority. Slightly earlier, on February 28, 1962, a group of young filmmakers published the much-noted Oberhausener Manifest (Oberhausen Manifesto), © The Author(s) 2020 M. Knapp, Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40086-6_3

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of which the statement “The old film is dead. We believe in the new one” remains a lasting motto.4 It heralded the beginning of a new kind of film production. Even earlier, leading West German authors published two anthologies, in 1960 and in 1962 respectively, in which they charged the artistic production of the 1950s with being distanced and withdrawn from society.5 They now called for a politically involved literature (engagierte Literatur), a literature which is critical of society. The new representational paradigm was to give workers, mothers, and marginalized people a public voice (Mattenklott 1987, pp. 75–79). The discourse about Bergman’s film The Silence doesn’t quite fit into the pattern of artistic interpretation of the 1950s, nor does it fully align itself with the pattern of the artistic culture of the 1960s. I will come back to this discrepancy shortly. For now, let me note the oddity of this scandal when we look at it at first glance: the film’s presumed message can be localized in a deeply religious context, as a struggle with an increasingly secular world. Its message, if we follow the critical discourse of the time, is highly conservative and exhibits a strong pessimism regarding modernization and the loss of religious belief. That is why it appears as a paradox that this work of art should elicit stark protest particularly from the Christian churches in West Germany. So if this scandal cannot be explained by the plain message of the film, what is it that gives rise to objection and indignation? This chapter is concerned with the struggle of the religious and secular world order at the beginning of the 1960s. It is a struggle which becomes manifest in the confrontational encounter of the metaphoric and iconic paradigms of interpretation in the scandal about The Silence. In the struggle over aesthetic representation, the church institutions attempt to defend their hegemonic grasp of the world, which in the early 1960s is fading. The struggle is not a struggle for meaning, however, but for the aesthetic (re-) presentation of the world, which turns representative of the world order it stands for. The scandal crystallizes in the cinematic representation of sexuality. According to the feature writers, this token–the display of sexuality–fundamentally contributes to Bergman’s form language in the sense that it gives expression to the loneliness of humans in God’s absence. In contrast, the representatives of the church authorities speak of a seductive and threatening image that is capable of disrupting society. While the former paradigm of interpretation conceives of sexuality in the film as a metaphor, a sign, the latter paradigm of interpretation understands sexuality as an icon, which– instead of representing sexuality–makes it present. Sexuality, in this sense, turns into a seductive element, irrespective of its meaning within the film.

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Underlying this difference in interpretation is a divergent conception of the relation of image and social reality, which is directly linked to the assertion of social relations of power. The differences in the paradigms of interpretation make visible the varying approaches to representation which may be thought of as supporting different visions of the social. The aesthetic struggle and its underlying social relations display a shift from a religiously tainted public world to a fully secularized social reality. The churches’ rejection of the metaphoric paradigm has to be read as a rejection of the social order it supports, a rejection of a social order which disregards the churches’ claim to power. If the political institutions implemented by the allies after World War II had been adjusted by Adenauer in order to continue an authoritarian rule in which the churches could find their place as powerful actors, the metaphoric interpretation of sexuality in the conflict would mark the deterioration of this social order and the advent of a more participatory notion of democracy. The scandal under consideration and the victory it represents–that of the modern paradigm of art/interpretation above the religious iconic interpretation of the image–have to be seen as creating harmony between the social and the social individual, whose lived-in world lags behind the possibilities provided by democratic institutions. Through the scandal, the public affirmed the notion of a world in which meaning–hence, being–is secularized, subjected to metaphor’s contingency and ambivalence, in contrast with a notion of meaning which is subject to God’s transcendental and iconic order. The order of representation is brought into correspondence with a democratic paradigm of meaning, in which the lack of a transcendental foundation and a fully humanized political power is institutionalized.

3.1   An Overview: The Issue with Censorship and the Material The scandal’s structure is anticipated by the first article that was published about Bergman’s film The Silence in West Germany, which begins with the remark: Maybe his new film ‘Tystnaden’ (The Silence) really is Bergman’s masterpiece, maybe it is only the work of a man possessed by the potential of film; propelled by the crudest effects and the most primitive instincts. Is it the oeuvre of a god-seeker or the deception of a demon?6

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This question emerges in response to the decision made by the Swedish body of censors, who refrained from censoring the contested sex scenes, acceding to the Swedish public’s desire for an unabridged version of Bergman’s film. The body of censors, however, did not hide the fact that this decision was not unanimous.7 This decision, and the screening of the film in Sweden a few months prior to the West German premiere, formed the opening of the West German reception of the film. Underlying the censors’ selection criteria is the question of “whether the contested scenes really are ‘artistically justified’ or whether they are ‘morally damaging and pornographic’; whether the censors have fulfilled their responsibility to protect public morals or not.”8 The tension between these opposing poles marks the area of conflict within which the controversy takes place. The West German counterpart of the Swedish body of censors, the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle (FSK), decided in the same way as their Swedish colleagues and released the film without cuts. Further, the film was awarded a “besonders wertvoll” (outstandingly valuable) classification by the Filmbewertungsstelle der Länder, a committee that rates the artistic value of film or other media prior to screening. The status given to The Silence is the highest accolade that can be given to a film and goes hand in hand with tax reduction. In contrast to the Swedish disagreement about the judgment among the body of censors, the unanimity of this decision is particularly highlighted in the statement given by the committee: The assessment board awarded ‘The Silence’ the highest classification. – In the case of such an extraordinary film, the statement mostly tends to begin with a notice about a prolonged discussion among the committee members. This time, however, the impression left by the  film was so intense that a longer break had to be inserted, because the committee members first had to break away from the film’s immediate grasp. Even after the longer break the committee was not inclined to discuss the film extensively, in part since the committee members agreed on its extraordinary artistic value. The highest classification was therefore unanimously awarded almost through voting by acclamation.9

The critical discourse in the Feuilleton almost unanimously seconds this judgment and thus defends the film against a religious and social sensibility that perceives the film as a threat to the moral order–especially in its sexual explicitness. In his book on scandal films in the history of film, the film critic Stefan Volk adds that initially the comments of the clerical film

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critique were favorable and at times even enthusiastic toward The Silence. With this assessment, however, the clerical film critique opposed the opinion of the leading representatives of the church institutions, who condemned the film. With respect to the relationship between clerical film critique and the religious institutions, Volk writes: In light of the often blatant discrepancy between the assessment of the Protestant and Catholic film review and leading church representatives, the quarrels within the churches about The Silence marked an important phase in the confessional film work’s path towards emancipation from the sovereignty of interpretation of the Protestant and Catholic church respectively. (Volk 2011, p. 150)

My material, for instance, shows a negative evaluation of the film by several representatives of the Protestant as well as the Catholic church,10 in addition to a rejection of the film by the then Federal Minister for Family Affairs.11 The film premiered in West Germany on January 24, 1964. On February 16, the Protestant commissioner for film, Hermann Gerber, ranked the film with Strindberg or Goya and Hieronymus Bosch in painting (Volk 2011, p. 150), but this could not appease the clerical opponents to the film. By May 5, the daily SZ reported 108 complaints to the police against the film, although in all cases the proceedings were closed.12 Similarly, confronted by the delegates in the Bundestag (German Federal Parliament), the Ministers of the Interior, Hermann Höcherl (Christian Social Union, CSU), and of Justice, Ewald Bucher (Free Democratic Party, FDP), refused censorship.13 They argued that the government was not authorized to commission either the Federal States (that can independently decide to take legal action against the film) or the FSK, since it is an independent body.14 Höcherl and Bucher both reject a political intervention in the issue and thus confirm the freedom of the arts that is codified in the West German constitution. Volk believes that after these declarations by leading political representatives of the Federal Republic of Germany, the controversy might have been stopped had not the film 491 premiered in Sweden, which was believed to be even more libertine regarding sexuality. This served as a catalyst for the ensuing protests (Volk 2011, p. 152). Volk describes the atmosphere as follows:

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The Ministry for Family Affairs and the President of the Federal Republic of Germany received bucket loads of letters of complaint. These denounced the ‘unrestrained debasement of morals’, they warned about the ‘total collapse of the moral standards that had been valid until now’ and evoked ideas of a ‘dictatorship of dirt and vice’. Cinema owners received threatening calls, Local Action Committees were founded, who mobilized protest activities, collected signatures and put up placards against The Silence, criticizing the policy of approval exercised by the FSK [Voluntary Self-Control, MK]. (Volk 2011, p. 152)

In the administrative district of Bernkastel, the District Administrator went so far as to attempt to ban the film. He is quoted as having argued: The concentration camp prisoners in Auschwitz had to line up naked and flayed in front of their torturers. Nowhere does the degradation of humans become as visible as in this process. This degradation of the human is continued in the Swedish director’s sexual acrobatics. Basically, we are confronted with the same attitude of mind.15

The relativizing comparison with the Holocaust is certainly not worth discussing here, since it is obviously absurd–but it would not have been unusual at the time (Volk 2011, p. 154). The lawsuit against the ban was successful.16 However, the district commissioner was not successful in banning the film from cinema screens. The legislature as well as judiciary took a clear stance for the freedom of the arts. The democratic mechanisms were effective and the social was forced to confront its notion of the arts and the liberties that a democracy has to grant its citizens. At about the same time, in September 1964, the Aktion Saubere Leinwand (Campaign for a Clean Screen) was founded. It organized further resistance against The Silence and 491, but its attempt to change the constitution and stop the screening of the film was unsuccessful. In terms of audience numbers, The Silence became the most successful film of the year 1964 (Volk 2011, pp. 155–156). The film screening was accompanied by a heated public debate. My material quite strictly follows the criteria established in the methodological framework formulated at the beginning of this work. Additionally, I have included the contributions published in the magazines Film-Dienst, the medium for Catholic film critique, and Filmkritik, critical organ of representatives of the “new film.” Both have to be considered representatives of “interest groups” within the discourse. As the material shows, the

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Feuilleton from the national daily and weekly newspapers became established by the beginning of the 1960s as a medium that was capable of providing West Germany with substantial cultural journalism that was lacking in the mid-1950s.17 The greater coverage of cultural issues and a continuing engagement in larger controversies by the diverse print organs over a longer period of time make observable the firm establishment of the Feuilleton as a structured public platform. This is why my material displays an engagement with the film and its reception in Sweden prior to its premiere in West Germany by four print media in six contributions. The daily Welt, for example, dedicates a total of three articles to the reception in Sweden and the film’s content. All in all, the material included in this case study consists of thirty-six contributions.

3.2   The Paradigm of the Art’s Autonomy The scandal that seized the screening of the film The Silence in 1964 is of a highly paradoxical nature. The film is generally viewed as a confirmation of a theological worldview, yet protest against the film was spearheaded by the Christian churches in West Germany. Instead of welcoming the film as a support of religious dogma, the churches–incensed by the sex scenes– viewed the film as leading the spectators astray. The explanation of this paradox might be sought in a struggle of paradigms of art/interpretation, in which an iconic understanding of the (moving) image is opposed to a semiotic understanding of the arts. In other words, it is the struggle of a religious notion of the image with an aesthetic paradigm of art/interpretation. The journalistic discourse is deeply concerned with the definition of the film-as-art, in order to distinguish it from the 1950s hegemonic perception of film-as-popular-culture. The definition of the film-as-art is crucial to the ensuing argument that the sex scenes inherently belong to the film’s message, which is why I first turn to the investigation of the definition of art as it is developed by the critics, since it constitutes the subtext that makes the controversy comprehensible. The double demarcation of The Silence from the affirmative popular (mass) culture of the 1950s and religious iconicity of the church discourse marks the framework within which the metaphorical character of sexuality is defined. Karl Korn has been an influential critic in West Germany for decades (Payk 2008). His cultural journalism argues eloquently for the film’s meaning in a nutshell when he writes:

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Theologically, ‘Silence’ could be taken to mean the universal ‘Mysterium iniquitatis’. The fall for one’s drives, angst, death remaining unresolved. Light only enters through a tiny chink. The Lord’s invocation from the depths is nowhere to be found. Bergman bears witness to hell. Dramaturgy and editing follow the logic of the diagnosis. Already in ‘Winter Light’18 Bergman had made a man kill himself without personal reasons, because there is the nuclear bomb and because it had been dropped once. ‘Silence’ closes the electric circuit. The inability to love and the modern internecine war are two manifestations of the same thing. We live in hell.19

Korn leaves no doubt that The Silence has to be firmly rooted within theological discourse as it proposes a vision of hell on earth. Yet, in its form-­ language, the film is clearly posited as a literary film,20 Bergman: a film poet21 and a “wizard of film.”22 The journalistic discourse confirms that The Silence has to be subjected to the institution of fiction, of aesthetics, of the arts. The film’s poeticity, its semiotic dimension, transforms its auditive and visual language into metaphors which point beyond themselves. They become signs that can be deciphered; they signify. The film’s aesthetic dimension contains a diagnosis of the condition of social reality and the signs of the times. This way of “reading” the film turns the form-­ language into its meaningful dimension, while the content is of secondary importance. The film’s journalistic reception is clearly rooted in a literary understanding of poetics, in which the work of art refers to the world, with a resultant metaphorical tension that creates new relations between different fields of knowledge. The film is subjected to a particular relation of fiction/social reality, in which the fictional world turns into a metaphor for a/the social world. The paradigm of art/interpretation invoked here is one that understands the film’s elements as establishing a structure of signs, which reorganizes meaning in its “true” sense. Unlike the belles-­ lettres, which Rancière describes as literature’s counter-aesthetics, literature does not represent social hierarchies through the depiction of action, but approaches social reality with an intrinsic indifference toward social hierarchies. The belles-lettres of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries represented the social hierarchy of the time in content, addressee, and even genre. Rancière sets the belles-lettres against the modern writing of Gustave Flaubert and his contemporaries, where writing became a mode of

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describing the elements of the world as equal to each other: within the structure of the novels, a stone became an agent and human beings became subject to the world, “petrified.” Among Flaubert’s contemporaries he was deemed a “democratic writer” (rather a derogative term at the time), because elements in his writings shared equal importance. He disrupted the conventional mode of representing social reality, in which human beings–especially the aristocracy–were the sole agents of a play. He re-­ conceptualized the way of perceiving the world. Literature, contrary to the depiction of action in the belles-lettres, “is displaying and deciphering the symptoms of a state of things” (Rancière 2004, p. 18). In literature, hierarchies only emerge in and through the artist’s action; they are not pre-given. This is an understanding of the relation of representation/social reality which “democratizes” social reality because it enables a perspective without predefined hierarchies. All hierarchies originate in the artist’s (the human’s) will, in contrast to the belles-lettres in which social relations are transcendentally predetermined and therefore find representation in the hierarchy of high and low subjects, high and low genres, and high and low audiences (Rancière 2004). Modern literature does not represent, it gives expression to, and the paradigm shift from belles-lettres to modern literature originates in this difference. Korn himself confirms this modern understanding of art when he claims: One of the reasons for the merciless revelations of the diabolical in modern works of art is to be found in the fact that art cannot be satisfied with the widely disseminated ‘principles’ of our dolce vita. Art has to penetrate the grounds of human existence.23

For Korn, art’s function is to look behind the curtain of appearances and expose humanity’s condition. Art means occupying a critical place vis-à-vis society; it presupposes an attitude of distance instead of affirmative acquiescence. Art means arousing resistance and being inconvenient, so as to make society recognize its hidden structures. This understanding of art is crucial to the argument. It is the key to discovering a re-politicized and secular social order. Korn’s is a bourgeois notion of literature and the arts, which became institutionalized in the mid-eighteenth and especially throughout the nineteenth century. In Germany, literature emerged in distinction to courtly literature and went hand in hand with the creation of a public sphere in which a critical, civic society could form (Stephan 2008a,

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pp. 149–159). The development of modern literature was accompanied by a secondary discourse about criteria of quality. Up to the present day, this depends on a critical discourse that explains the work. Literature in the modern sense is only meaningful when it is embedded in a secondary discourse that mediates between the work and the reader, which also distinguishes it from the self-explanatory and purely entertaining popular literature. The distinction between aesthetic and popular literature, Inge Stephan notes, is a development of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Stephan 2008b, pp. 188–189). It marks the establishment of aesthetic literature as a practice devoted to cultural reflexivity, in which the citizenry could recognize itself (Stephan 2008b, pp. 197–200). The origin of modern literature in the eighteenth century explains why the seminal anthology of the history of literary criticism edited by Peter Uwe Hohendahl begins its narration in the eighteenth century, as literary criticism emerges parallel to the formation of literature as an art form (Hohendahl 1985). Contrary to the primary function of the plot in popular literature, aesthetic literature draws attention to the form in which content is expressed, and relies on critical discourse to create meaning. Form–metaphors, images, symbols–begins to speak. If we conceive of the diverse media of modern aesthetic representation (visual arts, literature, film, modern drama) as subject to a single regime of art (in the sense of a regime as a hegemonic, though not undisputed, structure), we might even find its starting point with the Reformation and the iconoclasts (Belting 2005, pp. 162–167).24 Although Martin Luther relieved the visual icon of its function to mediate the presence of God, he re-conceptualized the image as subservient to the (biblical) word. Images need text in order to be meaningful (also Meyer 2011, pp. 1038–1039). Literature, in as much as it produces a complex image, has to be seen as the logical consequence of the primacy of the word above the image, one that has been robbed of its spiritual function as the visual presence of God. In as much as the (secularized) image turns into a metaphor in need of textual explanations, literature is the textual counterpart of a secularized version of the image. Since the loss of God as a transcendental origin of the world, the (modern) visual arts as much as literature have to be thought of as subject to (or of giving rise to) the same paradigm of art/interpretation, which is the cultural expression of the bourgeois claim to power. The unity of the paradigm of the (modern) arts becomes visible when Gert H. Theunissen argues for Welt that:

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Generally speaking and in order to soothe troubled minds, let me explain that the significance of the artwork is determined by the measure of its beauty. This is also the case when content and topic, matched against the realities in and around ourselves, are found to be dreadful, shameless, disgusting, morbid or simply ordinary and non-classical, such as van Gogh’s pipe on the shabby chair. Form is when every detail is part of a whole, and when the extraction of a single detail makes the whole waver. Only when all of what can be called revolting has completely become form can we speak of a work of art.25

The film as an audiovisual medium with a narrative structure makes obvious this unity of the Rancièrean regime of art, in which the relation of fiction to social reality is one of metaphorical representation. By this I mean the fictional work of art points beyond itself and refers to a reality that is filtered through its metaphorical relation. The apparent need to confirm this unity, even for the medium of film, demonstrates the need to subsume film under an established framework of aesthetic fiction so as to make it meaningful and legitimate at the same time. Only from within the language of aesthetic fiction can the critics speak of a religiously motivated message in which Bergman is believed to struggle for God, “for the ‘ancient tower’, [he] begs, pleads, maligns, whimpers and curses.”26 Here we witness the actualization of the notion of art in the medium of film. This has to be regarded as the general movement that motivated the emergence of the New German Cinema, which was preceded by the proclamation of the Oberhausener Manifest in 1962. Even though The Silence as a Swedish production did not participate in the conditions of production of the New German Cinema, it was received within the framework established by the paradigm of interpretation that called for a new understanding of cinematic production. A new cinematic production requires an audience that is capable of generating meaning from the audiovisual representations. Just as modern literature was in need of the critical discourse of the nineteenth century so as to put in place the structures of reception, the New German Cinema as much as the Nouvelle Vague in France depended upon an audience capable of deciphering the form-language proposed by the filmmakers. The appeal of the Oberhausener Manifest was directed against the superficiality and escapist romanticism of 1950s film production, which predominantly invested in Heimatfilme (sentimental films in an idealized regional setting), Schlagerfilme (Schlager music films), and Edgar Wallace

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productions of crime fiction, which served the audience’s desire to be entertained without being confronted with social reality. Enno Patalas and Ulrich Gregor were two important figures of film critique and the history of film in 1962. Contemporaneous with the manifesto, they noted: The artistic insignificance and antiquity even of the ambitious part of West German film production [of the 1950s film, MK] is the irremovable flip side of its ideologic fixation. The rigorous refusal of authors and directors to confront themselves and their audience with the truth about prevalent conditions creates half-truths in the cabaret-style and realism that captures the moment. (Gregor and Patalas 1962, p. 379)

These remarks illustrate the young filmmakers’ frustration with a style of film that refused to engage with the social conditions of its environment. The new film was to be an “engaged film,” a diagnosis and dissection of society’s shortcomings. The “reading guide” applied to The Silence by the journalistic discourse originated in this aesthetic departure as it manifested itself in the Oberhausener Manifest. As a “literary” or “poetic” film, The Silence’s reception followed in the tradition of modern literature, which has previously been described, with Rancière, as a “democratic” form-­ language, due to the indiscriminate subjection of elements to the rule of the sign. The discourse that frames the film as “literary” and “poetic” should be considered an actualization of the notion of modern literature in the medium of film. In view of the challenges of everyday life in 1950s post-war Germany entertainment was required to provide a mental refuge from the daily hardships. In retrospect, Alexander Kluge, co-initiator of the Oberhausener Manifest and leading figure of the New German Cinema of the 1960s, describes this relation of social hardships and cultural production in the 1950s, which he then explicitly contrasts with the cinematic production of the 1960s: The sixties are determined by a rich emotional turn towards real conditions. These real conditions are examined with curiosity, unruliness, rebelliousness. The very reality of things is what warrants attending to them. Aside from a few years in the twenties, when something like a new objectivity developed, there wasn’t a decade in this century that disposed of such a relation to reality. The illusionist film of the Ufa was a reply to the economic disaster of 1929; the more terrible the war, the more cheerful the

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entertainment. Or, like [the films, MK] ‘Opfergang’ (En: Self-sacrifice), ‘Kolberg’,27 ‘Heimat’ (En: Homeland) etc., tragic, similarly receding from reality in a more remote way. (Kluge 1987, pp. 210–211)

Irmbert Schenk puts this assessment into perspective when he suggests that 1950s cinematic production was ambivalent: while on the one hand it provided the utopia of a stable and backward-looking world–a world of stagnation–it also negotiated modernization. Modernization has to be thought of as a subtext of the 1950s films (Schenk 2008). In contrast, the Oberhausener Manifest marks a departure from the affirmative dimension of the 1950s film production and is hence a movement toward (critical) engagement with the social environment, which was to be expressed through the creation of a new form-language (see also Fehrenbach 1995, pp. 223–233). The awakening pronounced by the manifesto is thus also a departure from a particular paradigm of art with its particular relation of representation and social reality.28 The Silence disrupted the cinematic mainstream of the 1950s, providing a critical view of society that diverges from the affirmative attitude toward society and modernization that prevailed in 1950s popular film. Contrary to the 1950s conception of the film director as artisan, Bergman was considered a role model as film author. Bergman is at the forefront of a time which reinterprets the role of the film director as that of a film author. He is also at the vanguard of the development of a new radical form-language (Gregor and Patalas 1962, pp. 369–375). Re-conceptualizing the film director as an artist is an explicit concern of the critical discourse of the time, characterized by an innovative impulse: This film is an assembly of images derived from an abundance of filmed material; a work which lasted for many months. Bergman worked on every scene like on a sculpture. Once again, the comparison with the cathedral builders of the Middle Ages is forced upon us. Again, Bergman appears as the artist tormented by visions, who works on a piece of art that is never finished and can never be finished; the artist who troubles himself and others almost to the brink of destruction.29

Art, this critic suggests, means creation. The reference made to the Middle Ages is inappropriate in the context of the argument, since this critic

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means the modern artist-as-creator as opposed to the artisan, who is the executor of God’s will.30 These critics draw on the tradition of the ingenious artist so as to overcome the commercial film production culture of the 1950s. Equating Bergman with the “artists” of the Middle Ages is a way to recuperate the notion of the “High Arts” from its ‘degenerate’ popular version, drawing continuity between an esteemed art form and the popular medium of film. It is for this reason that the SZ quotes the Swedish censors: “A creator of films should be classed alongside the painter or the poet. He is an artist, and we do not have the right to cut his work’, the Swedish body of censors writes.”31 The feature writers of the 1950s and early 1960s, who conceived of themselves as middle-class intellectuals (Hodenberg 2006, pp. 229–236), recognized in The Silence a way to incorporate the medium of film into the notion of the arts. In this sense the metaphoric paradigm of art/interpretation is considered an actualization of a tradition and is by no means imbued with an iconoclastic impetus as is the case in the dispute about The Deputy.32 It is for this reason, in fact, that the Feuilleton almost unanimously defends the film against the attacks from the churches. The function of art is here redefined as the language of form in contrast to the language of plot. Film turns into a medium of art in which the film author creates a new vision of the world. The artist is conceived of as autonomous, accountable only to his artistic creation. The medium of film is subjected to a bourgeois paradigm of art/interpretation that invokes a bourgeois social order. If we understand a regime of representation as supportive of a particular social order (Rancière 2004), the notion of the autonomous arts is one that is closely linked with the emergence of bourgeois society, as I have shown before. The literary scholar Klaus L.  Berghahn33 claims that during absolutism, the literary public sphere emerged as a means to develop a critical attitude toward political rule, while it hid political criticism under the cover of the autonomy of the arts. Through the literary public sphere, the bourgeoisie expressed its claim to power, as it placed the notion of (literary) criticism at the heart of its self-­ understanding. Power was to be seized through the exercise of criticism. The political public sphere, argues Berghahn following Habermas, came out of the literary public sphere and has since served as the means for the social communication of a bourgeois society (Berghahn 1985, pp. 13–21). In as much as the critics hail The Silence as an example of “art” in the bourgeois sense, they invoke the claim to power of the bourgeoisie, a return to a world order governed by rationality, secularism, and the ideal of the

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critical citizen, to which the distinction of “high culture” versus “popular culture” is immanent. In the beginning of the 1960s, however, the invocation of a bourgeois world order must be conceived of as a counter-movement to an authoritarian conception of the social as it was prevalent in the era of Adenauer. The invocation of a bourgeois social order marks the departure from political apathy and the recapturing of the political as a means to shape and transform the social.34 The proclamation of the autonomy of the arts oscillates between its rebellious and progressive ideals and the hegemony of the middle classes that are blind to their own mechanisms of exclusion. This explains why The Silence receives almost unanimous approval from feature writers across the political spectrum covered by the West German print media. It allows conservative critics to identify with the aesthetic paradigm of the autonomy of the arts proposed by the film and represents the claim to power of the middle classes.

3.3   Sexuality and the Order of Representation The above explorations into the nature of the journalist’s understanding of the film-as-art form the background to their positive assessment of the film, including their assessment of sexuality depicted in the film. The depiction of sexuality on screen forms the pivot of the scandal. The (Catholic) church felt offended by it and feared a negative impact on youth, in the form of a renunciation of religious dogma. Central to the scandal, I propose, is a split in the perception of the audiovisual representation of the sexual act. Yet this cleavage is also one of different conceptions of the art’s function, which in the religious discourse means the image’s function. It is the difference between a religious and a secular paradigm of art/interpretation. In other words, it is the difference between an iconic and a metaphoric (artistic) conception of the image. I speak of the (audiovisual) image here, because it is in the image that the religious icon appears. And it is to this aesthetic tradition that the religious discourse refers when it rejects the film-as-art. 3.3.1  Metaphoricity For the film’s supporters, its metaphorical nature makes it a work of art, which gives aesthetic form to the concept of silence. The Silence depicts a world abandoned by God. The plot as much as the form-language works

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toward a universal meaning. They reach beyond themselves and represent not the figures on screen, the act of sexuality, or the death of one of the film’s protagonists, but God’s silence. “God, who Bergman still equates to love in ‘Through a Glass Darkly’, is silent in the town of Timuka; he is not appealed to any more and neither does he give answers. Quietness, the big silence, has befallen man.”35 And a critic in Welt agrees: In ‘Silence’, God remains silent. Where God is silent, human beings have no more to say to each other. They silently shout at each other. Man then lives in a world, in which he fails to be understood and which he fails to understand; fails to understand in the most simple sense of the word.36

The world depicted in The Silence metaphorizes hell, or God’s inexistence. Translating the film’s signs into a meaningful language is the “reading guide” applied to Bergman’s film by journalistic discourse. The search for meaning is a search for meaning in the tension that is created between the represented (fictional) world and the idea of the absence of God, the tension between the literal and the metaphorical use of terms, images, and concepts. Paul Ricoeur traces three dimensions of the tension that can be found within metaphorical discourse: [P]oetry, in itself and by itself, sketches a ‘tensional’ conception of truth for thought. Here are summed up all the forms of ‘tensions’ brought to light by semantics: tension between subject and predicate, between literal interpretation and metaphorical interpretation, between identity and difference. Then these are gathered together in the theory of split reference. They come to completion finally in the paradox of the copula, where being-as signifies being and not being. (Ricoeur (1975) 2004, p. 370)

The metaphor simultaneously is something and is-not something, which “means being and not being” (Ricoeur (1975) 2004, p. 351). For The Silence this means that the brutality and sadism, bleakness and lack of tenderness between the figures are not just a governing silence, but the silence of God. The metaphorical use of words suspends the reference to the world, and in tension with the literal meaning of the word(s) a ‘split reference’ destabilizes the literal meaning and “opens the way to a redescription of reality” (Tengelyi 2007, p. 163).37 Being is here emptied of an ontology and becomes dynamic, since it does not just mean one thing, but

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simultaneously something else. The metaphorical mode of thought forces contingency upon its objects, since it provides the objects with a surplus of meaning. Literally, hell is a place separate from social reality, a place beyond the world, but the hell of The Silence is hell on earth, the present world of the living being. The present/present age enters into a relationship with the concept of hell as a place in the afterworld. The tension created between social reality and hell motivates the journalistic discourse. The conception of the arts that underlies the critical discourse of The Silence is indeed a conception of art as metaphorical, while metaphoricity is itself a figure of instability, motion, and ambivalence. The critical discourse acts as witness to the radical destabilization that is engendered by The Silence–of indecision, ambiguity, and polyvalence. As a contributor in FR puts it: “Hardly any of Bergman’s films are as ambiguous, as ruthless, as stimulating or so close to the border of the inconceivable.”38 The lack of determination unsettles established viewing conventions, disturbing subjectivities, and certainties about self and other. The anger that is expressed by Hans-Dieter Roos in SZ at the incapacity to pin the film down to a single meaning is informative about the dependence of subjectivities on conventions of representation, since they confirm or deny the subject’s relation with the world: The Swede that reported on her twofold disappointment with the film in an opinion poll initiated by a newspaper, said: ‘the first time, I did not understand anything, and the second time, I did not understand much more’. Undoubtedly, she speaks for many film-goers. The film’s most evident weakness is its pervasive lack of clarity. Thus far the director has abandoned the overly opulently proliferating finery of his earlier films; as his language becomes more austere and terse, it likewise becomes more coded and therefore more ambiguous. Once more, Bergman surrounds his protagonists with an abundance of mysterious signs; but his metaphors are neither suitable for sensual contemplation, nor is their meaning precisely identifiable. They remain random pieces of scenery of narrative arbitrariness. Bergman’s talent to never commit himself to anything, his tendency towards coding opens a wide field for speculative interpretation.39

He concludes the essay as follows: “What makes this film unacceptable in my opinion is its lack of honesty. The frigidity and brutality of the portrayal appears to me less shocking than the frigidity and brutality within the portrayed world.”40 The critic is disturbed by the film because it redirects his relation with social reality, which he experiences as insincere

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(toward himself). In fact, he feels deceived by the film in not having confirmed his relation with the world. However, the approval with which parts of the public discourse greets the film as well as the high audience numbers point toward the fact that in 1963 large parts of West German society were prepared to be confronted with ambiguity. Certainly, especially among the spectators we might find many that failed to engage with the film’s metaphoricity and deeper meanings. Some might have been motivated to watch the film for voyeuristic rather than artistic or critical pleasure. These viewers especially signal the lessening of religious authority, and it is for them that the (Catholic and Protestant) churches fear. The interpretive vacuum that results from the disregard for the iconic taboo is counterbalanced by the metaphorical paradigm of interpretation. The question of the iconic taboo and religious dogma’s loss of authority will be further developed in the next subsection. In an essay about popular cinema around 1960  in West Germany, Irmbert Schenk observes a newly emerging openness in society. His example is the “commercial” Edgar Wallace films that were screened from 1959 onward and displaced the Heimatfilm in popularity. According to Schenk, the crime films provided a mixture of security and instability. While the form-language of the films was rather traditional and their endings restored the social order, the Edgar Wallace films created a sinister tension, allowing the audience to experience threat and insecurity as joyful play (Schenk 2010). The actualization of art as ambiguous and polyvalent can be seen in this same context of a society saturated with the comfort of economic well-being, but also increasingly confronted with fast changes to which it was forced to adapt. Metaphoric discourse, as shown by the above remarks about The Silence, serves as a testing ground for the play of ambiguities. The “scandalous” sex scenes in the film form part of the metaphorical image of hell. Instead of depicting sexual eroticism, the discourse claims that the sex scenes represent bestiality when human communication and bonding has broken down; they represent humiliation, since bodies are reduced to their drives: No film in the world has previously shown a compendium of scenes of erotic-sexual over-pressure such as this one without objections. … Bergman deliberately shocks in ‘The Silence’ with brutal visual revelations of sexual drives. He shows pure carnal desire, rough, repulsive, revealing, because he gropes after the question: Is God still present in the midst of this human hell? Bergman replies: God is absent!41

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Just like the rest of the film, the scenes do not represent themselves, but stand for something else: human hell in which God is absent. The metaphorical character legitimizes the scenes’ presence and constitutes the film as a coherent aesthetic totality. Karl Korn in FAZ similarly argues that the war scenes in the film actually comment on the sex scenes: “[t]he brutality of naked sexuality finds its counterpart in the brutality of war. Bergman has good reasons to make the tanks raise their menacing gun barrels when humans copulate without love.”42 And Gert Theunissen in Welt goes further into detail about the process of denaturalization that transforms the ordinary into art, and which simultaneously transforms the elements within the fictional narrative into signs without reference that engage in a play of significations. The coital voyeur scene is interrupted by the lonely, but by no means discontented, Johan in the hotel. These and other interruptions in The Silence fulfill a function amidst aesthetic presentations, which is not to be ignored. … These interruptions absorb the ‘human’ – or clerical, or moral – shock and transpose it into artificial integrity. In The Silence this is consistently and unexceptionally the case. But then the presentation of the ‘common’ continues, which now ceases to appear common. Had it not continued, obscenity would have triumphed. As it is, it is formally (not formalistically) tamed.43

Theunissen leaves no doubt about the artificiality of the sex scenes, which cannot be separated from the overall metaphorical meaning of the film. The sex scenes hence become signs like any other element of the artwork; they are poeticized in the bourgeois sense of literature, and it is this separation of sexuality and eroticism from its referent that is vehemently opposed by the church authorities. If we return to Ricoeur’s conception of the metaphor, the process of metaphorizing includes a notion of creation. Based on Nelson Goodman’s explications of metaphorical language, Ricoeur defines metaphorical speech as that which simultaneously denotes and exemplifies what it refers to. It gives expression to and illustrates its reference, and Ricoeur then concludes: “It would seem that the enigma of metaphorical discourse is that it ‘invents’ in both senses of the word: what it creates, it discovers; and what it finds, it invents” (Ricoeur (1975) 2004, p. 283). As a result, the world loses its transcendental appearance and is subjected to humans’ creative agency. In the conscious act of literary metaphorizing, humanity emerges as a creator, meaning moving from godly to human hands:

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meaning–through metaphor–is secularized. Secularization can occur even when the content of meaning supports theological reasoning, as is the case with The Silence. Literary metaphorizing evidently undermines the power of theological authority to explain the world, since it makes visible the human act of creating meaning. The institution of aesthetic fiction objectifies the act of metaphorizing and foregrounds the form of the message. It makes the medium of the message visible (Koch and Nanz 2014), so that medium and form become evident as structuring elements of social reality. While the metaphoric paradigm of art/interpretation was well-­ established in German culture by the beginning of the 1960s, the dispute shows that there are still certain tokens (e.g. the depiction of sexuality) that are barred from entry into a secular order of representation and which demonstrate the lasting presence of a religious order of representation. The dispute also shows, however, that these last remnants of religious authority were highly contested and in the process of being swept away by the liberal movement that seized West German society from the end of the 1950s onward. The fact that this happens through the dispute about images proves the power of paradigms of art/interpretation to give expression to and shape social relations (hence their affiliation with particular social interests). 3.3.2  Iconicity In my data material, there are few contributions directly by members of the two churches, but there are several news notices by journalists which inform the public about the churches’ position and arguments. Additionally, critics engage with the churches’ position in order to disprove it. It is from these contributions that I can reconstruct the religious discourse about The Silence. The opposition to The Silence emanates from a religious paradigm of art/interpretation, in which the image becomes a placeholder for the absent object. The paradigm of art with which we are dealing goes back to the religious practice of the late Middle Ages, and it is for this reason that the term “art” is in fact somewhat misleading. I will, however, continue to use the terms “paradigm of art” and “regime of art” when referring to the relation of the image and social reality in the Middle Ages, since the overlap of paradigmatic approaches to images in this discourse establishes a relation of equivalence (in difference) between both paradigms.

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To understand the discourse of religious authority in relation to The Silence as a remnant of a medieval paradigm of meaning, we have to delve into the question of the relation of the image and religious reality as it was experienced by popular piety in the Middle Ages. Since the religious paradigm of meaning experienced its heyday in the Middle Ages, it is here that we can best observe the religious paradigm of art/interpretation. Piety, the historian Bob Scribner suggests, was a practice that was in its first instance a sensual practice, and the desire for the sensual experience of sacraments materialized into a desire for vision. Images realized the reference; God and the saints materialized through the contemplation of the sacramental icons. The images created a personal relation with the saint depicted, and in this sense the image was conceived of as an agent. Through contemplation, the believer could encounter the saint (Scribner 1990). Similarly, the art historian Hans Belting describes the image’s power that was attributed to the images of Jesus throughout the history of Christianity, disturbed only by the Reformation. Although the concrete relation of the image with its referent changed, it was always conceived of as in some way witnessing the being of Jesus Christ, making the absent body present. The image was an icon that covered over the figure’s absence, but it did not have a semiotic aspect. It made present what it referred to (Belting 2005, pp. 45–85 (Chapter I) and pp. 86–132 (Chapter II)). Images were the mediating agents between social reality and the Holy Spirit. The iconoclasts of the Reformation turned against religious images, because they were perceived as mediating between the word of God and the believer and thus distorting the primacy of the word into a sensual experience (Belting 2005, p. 167). The critique of idolatry was furthermore a critique of the sensuality with which prayer and devotion were imbued (Scribner 1990, p. 18). It was a critique of a particular order of the visible and the sayable (Rancière), and hence a critique of a particular order of meaning. The iconoclasts strove to extinguish the sensual dimension of belief, which is why they needed to dismantle the iconic character of the image. Martin Luther, horrified by the destruction committed by the iconoclasts, suggested that the image should turn into a sign for something else, so that it would be in need of explanation by the word. The image could only be tolerated if subjected to the word, so as to retain the purity of the reformatory innovations (also Meyer 2011, pp. 1038–1039). Martin Luther prepared the ground for an artistic notion of the image in the modern sense of the term.

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It is this iconic conception of the relation of image and social reality that recurs in the critique of the sex scenes in The Silence. This opinion is given expression in a contribution in SZ, and since it is the only example among my sources that candidly seconds the churches’ critique, let me quote extensively: But a film is more than a man’s solitary examination of his complexes; it is a mass medium, accessible to everyone who is 18 years old and can buy himself a ticket. Does anyone believe that the masses are interested in the ‘artwork’, the symbol-laden examination of the loss of sisterly love and the hate which results in the merciless desertion of a dying person? … Does anyone believe that the masses of visitors receive this message? The masses did not rush to ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ and ‘Winter Light’. Then again, these were only concerned with spiritual examinations. In this case, however, we are dealing with photographed libido. Certainly, we do not see a reality show, secretly filmed by a Candid Camera. Masturbation and sexual acts are as much performed as the death throes of the dying woman. The verity, with which the scenes are performed and surely rehearsed many times take by take …; the verism with which the scenes are eventually filmed, put together and synchronized with sounds that are simultaneously human and inhuman, gives them a repulsive touch of reality. Yet, the verism does not heighten the message of total absence of love in the world. It makes the message inaudible, corrupts it, extinguishes it entirely.44

This quotation exemplifies the different modes of perceiving the cinematic image: a metaphoric and an iconic vision. It exposes the schism that crosses the discourse and hence makes transparent the rift that disrupts the unity of the social. We can also find the fear of the film as a mass medium and its potential influence, which distinguishes this art form from literature and the visual arts. In an interview, Ingmar Bergman himself remarks that the visual arts have always dealt with sexuality and eroticism.45 Thus, it appears that it is the medium that is scandalous, not the depiction of sexuality per se. Literature and the visual arts have traditionally been products of bourgeois society, which was versed in art interpretation, but which also excluded the “unlearned” masses. The film, meanwhile, has a much larger scope, in particular because it had been established at the latest from the 1950s as a popular medium. The fear of the representation of the sexual act on screen is the fear of a mass audience unskilled in the interpretation of the (modern) arts, an audience that lacks the knowledge to decipher high culture.

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The second dimension addressed by this quotation is the aspect of what this critic terms “verism,” and which can be recognized in phrases such as “clippings of reality”46 or in pornography.47 Theo Fürstenau further argues that “these scenes are fundamentally unnaturalistic, being comprised of something horribly ceremonial. They designate indecency, but do not show them as a naturalistic indiscretion.”48 “Naturalist indiscretion” refers to the argument brought forward by the church representatives, whose fear is that the appearance of sexuality on screen would refer directly to the real sexual act. What opposes the metaphoric paradigm of interpretation is an interpretation that conceives of the image as a copy of social reality, where the image materializes its reference. Crucially, the dimension of the icon’s power to seduce the recipient is part of the threat that emanates from the depictions of the sexual act, as shown in the reproduction of a statement given by the general vicariate of Cologne: “The vice’s description exceeds what is artistically and morally permissible. It is fit to endanger the young person’s sound attitude towards questions of sexual life and leaves a lasting mental burden.”49 The (cinematic) image not only substitutes the real sexual act, it also exerts power over the recipients. It is conceived of as a seductive agent, which influences and endangers immature youth. The sexual act is iconized. The singularization of the sexual act mirrors the central role that sexuality and gender roles played in the churches’ teachings. Since the mid-­ nineteenth century, the restriction and control of sexuality by the church(es), especially the Catholic church, has been a central pillar of religious dogma. In his study on the disintegration of the Catholic Youth movement in the post-World War II era, The Wayward Flock, Mark Edward Ruff extensively elaborates on the development of the Catholic church’s gender conceptions since the mid-nineteenth century (Ruff 2005, pp. 86–120). Teachings on gender conceptions and gender relations concentrated on women, who became the main target of the church leaders, as they remained behind when their husbands left home for work elsewhere during industrialization. Women were to uphold the family as a space of religious beliefs. They were conceptualized as being responsible for the moral purity of the community. The Virgin Mary was turned into the ideal of femininity: chaste, humble, and selfless. This ideal image of the Virgin Mary was opposed to that of Eve, who seduced Adam into original sin. Sexuality was crucial, dividing women into saints and sinners. This hostility toward female sexuality remained absolute within the Catholic doctrine and hegemonic within West German society far into the 1950s.50

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The 1950s are often considered a period of “Restoration,” in which the social order of the pre-Nazi era was restored.51 “Restoration” should not be thought of as an unbroken continuity with the political culture of the Weimar Republic, however, but rather as the hegemonic withdrawal from the public sphere and the retreat into private life, in which the Catholic church’s teachings provided almost the only stability in a country disrupted by war and confronted with the challenges of an accelerated modernization. The historian Thomas Großbölting, author of the book Der verlorene Himmel: Glaube in Deutschland seit 1945, gives a good overview of the developments of religious belief in the Federal Republic of Germany since World War II. He describes the role of the Catholic church in the mid-1940s in a country devastated by war and shocked by violence and brutality, both executed and experienced: Against the backdrop of these material difficulties, disorientation and the breach of civilization, one institution stood out from the others: the Catholic church. Materially, the church had also come to harm. … But as an institution, the contemporaries of the time reported that it experienced a ‘religious spring’. The conditions were good. In its self-image as well as in the public perception the Catholic church was regarded as not corrupted by National Socialism. To large degrees it had known how to preserve its structures between 1933 and 1945 and to tie believers to the church. Although we cannot speak of a systematic refusal either of the hierarchy or of the believers, the impression of steadfastness and resistance against the Nazi-­ dictatorship was dominant. This partly romanticized view of the church would become the reason for severe church-internal and public debates only decades later. Since the church was regarded as a non-nazified institution in public opinion, it was assigned special authority not only by the German population. (Großbölting 2013, p. 22)

Due to the great success of chancellor Adenauer, whose political leadership was closely connected with Catholicism, the growth of membership as well as the general recollection of family values traditionally strong within Catholic dogma made the Catholic church appear as the new constitutive pillar of the new republic.52 It is closely associated with the Adenauer era and the conservatism that went hand in hand with both politics and society. However, Ruff (2005) as well as Großbölting (2013) remark that appearances and reality diverged from the start. In the intermingling of religious confessions in the aftermath of the war, the pre-war Catholic milieu could not be fully restored (Ruff 2005, pp. 187–202), and

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neither did the numbers of membership in the Catholic church and its subordinate institutions ever reach the numbers of the pre-war period (Großbölting 2013, p. 27). The end of the 1950s witnessed the beginning of a change in mentality from a strict belief in (religious, political, patriarchal) authority to the student protests at the end of the 1960s, protests that opposed everything smelling of authority and control. The Catholic church in particular experienced a loss of influence and power. Its absolute position within West German society was decentralized. It turned from a total institution that was capable of social control to a partial institution–an interest group among many.53 While the church tried to reinstate the ideal of the nuclear family with its traditional gender roles and strict morals in relation to sexuality, social reality diverged from these ideals. Women and young girls in particular increasingly failed to reconcile the teachings of the church with the changes in patterns of consumption and sexual behavior (Ruff 2005, pp.  86–120).54 This divergence of appearance and social reality became more pronounced with the onset of the 1960s and exercised pressure on the Catholic church due to the loss of influence (Großbölting 2013, p.  43). The beginning of the 1960s marks the beginning of the end of religious hegemony of the post-war period.55 The control of sexuality by Catholic teachings may be considered the central pillar of the religious exercise of power, and it is for this reason that sexuality turns into an icon for the Catholic church’s supremacy. The power of disposal over the representation of sexuality is a means to confirm the power of the church institutions. The Silence, at the level of meaning, affirms the religious dogma, but it disrupts the paradigm of representation that establishes the depiction of sexuality as a taboo within the religious order of representation. If sexuality is subjected to the paradigm of representation of the autonomous arts, as the secular as well as the religious film critics propose, its metaphoricity threatens the prerogative of interpretation of the Catholic church. The metaphorical character deprives the church of its access to the interpretation of the token, which simultaneously demonstrates the end of the religious claim to totality. To subject the representation of sexuality to the regime of the modern arts means to subject sexuality to a secular worldview, which at the beginning of the 1960s is clearly perceived as a threat to the Catholic church’s hegemony. In fact, the film turns into a success with regard to audience figures, but also in terms of political discourse. Neither politics nor the law nor the

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supervisory authority of the film industry (FSK and Filmbewertungsstelle der Länder) is willing or able to put a stop to the screening of the film. The order of representation of secularism, represented by a metaphorical paradigm of interpretation, is endorsed at all levels of West German society. What we experience here is a clear commitment to a secular social order and a renunciation of a world governed by total institutions. In the case of The Silence we can observe how the political commitment to democracy is taking root in West Germany’s cultural self-conception– how the secular-democratic order that was imposed by the allies is being translated into cultural consciousness, how the political structure receives its cultural equivalent. Claude Lefort and Marcel Gauchet describe democracy as that political system that institutionalizes the lack of a transcendental seat of power. God has vacated the seat of power and it is now empty. Totalitarian regimes attempt to fill this vacancy with total rule, in which the regime (in persona or as a party) takes the place of “the people,” pretending to merge with the people so as to minimize the ambivalence that comes into being with the absence of a transcendental foundation of the social. Democracy is the other side of the coin, in that it institutionalizes the emptiness and puts in place temporary representatives of power. The space of power effectively remains empty and is only filled symbolically by the political representatives. It is a political structure that acknowledges and institutionalizes contingency as the mode of social existence (Lefort and Gauchet 1990). One might object that Lefort and Gauchet’s notion of democracy re-ontologizes the institution, since it presupposes a particular manifestation of democracy, even though it does not derive its basis from a transcendental source. One might also object that an institution is only what the social actors make of it. However, these questions appear of secondary importance. I suggest accepting this version of democracy as an analytical tool to conceptualize the difference between the religious-­ authoritarian version of social reality and West Germany’s democratic “revolution” since the early 1960s (Turek 1989; Zoll 1999). The metaphorical character of the arts as it is conceptualized by the discourse about The Silence is the cultural equivalent of the democratic system of power. It privileges ambivalence and ambiguity over stability and ultimate foundations. It is an exercise in enduring ambivalence, an exercise in living with contingency and instability. And it is a rejection of the total claim to power of religious dogma, which is given expression through the acknowledgment of a secular paradigm of interpretation above a religious one. Breaking the taboo, as it was often called, effectively means including

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the token (sexuality) in a secular paradigm of interpretation. The secular paradigm of interpretation as we experience it here prioritizes the oscillating character of the metaphor, which imagines the world as devoid of transcendental foundations and unlike the (religious) paradigm of interpretation, that perceives the image as the substitute for an absent object. The metaphor, which is privileged by the discourse, formally conceives of the world as devoid of foundations and thus closes the ideological gap between the political system and cultural representation. The metaphoric discourse disrupts the consensus of the authoritarian regime56 of meaning, which in a way can be thought of as existing in a relationship of estrangement with its democratic institutions. We might reframe: democratic institutions contain the possibility of being less authoritarian and more participatory. In positing an alternative order of representation, the metaphoric discourse creates a dissensus with the prevalent regime of meaning. It irritates the viewing conventions of Adenauer’s Germany, which are informed by the religious order of representation, an order of representation that rules by means of iconic taboos. Insofar as The Silence disregards the iconic taboo, it disregards the religious order of representation. The religious meaning attributed to the film cannot compensate for the crossing of representation’s boundaries. The disruption of the aesthetic order of representation outweighs the rather conservative meaning of the film. The metaphoric paradigm of interpretation proposes an alignment of West Germany’s order of representation with the potential indeterminacy and instability of the institution of democracy. It proposes an opening up of the regime of meaning to an understanding of the world as subject to human–and not God’s–will. It performs meaning as oscillating and in movement, as lacking a transcendental origin, and hence creates an analogy between the potentiality of the institution of democracy and the individual’s apprehension of the world. It proposes an aesthetic sensitivity which brings forth what might be called “democratic” haecceities, individuals who comply with the already existing political institution of democracy. Certainly, this effect is not solely the result of a single scandal, but of a more encompassing aesthetic movement which can be observed across the artistic genres, as well as the transformations of social behavior.57 However, the fictional/aesthetic dimension of this controversy is crucial because it exposes the importance of the aesthetic dimension of social transformations. The Silence becomes a scandal because it interrupts a central dimension of religious social authority–its capacity to control the

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order of representation. Social authority is challenged through contesting the aesthetic rules underlying its authority.

3.4   Résumé In the discourse about The Silence we are confronted with a situation at the junction of three different paradigms of art/interpretation. First, there is the implicit and unacknowledged transition from a paradigm of entertainment to a paradigm of committed arts, which serves as a background to the commitment to a secular paradigm of art/interpretation. It is especially propounded and defended by the feature writers, who–as journalists–are a professional group that sees itself in the tradition of the bourgeois intellectual. The notion of the modern and autonomous arts, a direct result of bourgeois society, in the 1950s took a back seat to a commercialized and affirmative cinematic production. For the feature writers, The Silence provides the chance to incorporate the mass medium of film into the corpus of artistic media–to redefine the medium of film as part and parcel of the notion of the arts. Film is reformulated as generative of form-­ languages–of translating a social diagnosis into aesthetic form and signification. Second, the critics’ distancing from the commercial arts paradigm participated in the atmosphere of departure created by the Oberhausener Manifest and the declarations of literary authors slightly earlier. However, the paradigm defended by the metaphoric discourse is not to be confused with the paradigm of “committed arts” of the Young German Cinema. Rather, it evokes the notion of the autonomy of the arts, in which the fictional world establishes a world of signs. Form turns into a language. Content retreats behind aesthetic form. Third, the controversy is engendered by the clash between a secular and a religious paradigm of art/interpretation. The secular paradigm places great importance on the metaphorical character of the “scandalous” sex scenes. It proposes a vision of the arts that permits ambivalence and the loss of certainties. The religious paradigm of interpretation opposes this conception of representation as open and indeterminate: the representation of the taboo equaled the invocation of the act that was subjected to a strict moral order. The depiction of sex in The Silence was hence a challenge to the religious paradigm of art/interpretation. While the churches, in a semi-secular world, could not control the order of representation in its totality, they still retained representational control over the sexual act.

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The aestheticization of the sexual act in The Silence means disrupting the religious control of representation. In a secular order of representation, the depiction of sexuality is wrested from its elevated position and becomes a sign equivalent to any other sign. In its radical poeticity, The Silence obliterates the remnants of the religious order of representation and inadvertently makes visible the collapse of religious authority at the beginning of the 1960s.

Notes 1. The extent to which anti-colonial processes went hand in hand with a transformation of cultural and representational patterns remains an open question in scholarship. The term “post-colonial” in Postcolonial Studies, for instance, is quite often used to refer to the continuing impact of colonialism within a post-independent political environment (Ashcroft et  al. 1998, s.v. “post-colonialism/postcolonialism,” pp.  186–192), which implies a gap between the social and political institutions on the one hand and the socialized individual on the other. Let me draw attention to Achille Mbembe’s excellent book On the Postcolony (Mbembe 2001), in which he describes the violent and often absurd modes of power, representation, and subjectivity in post-colonial African states. He insists that the brutal exercise of power in present-day African states is the legacy of colonial rule. Colonial rule not only implemented its rule through physical violence, but created rituals of representation in which the colonial master appeared as a king. Together with authoritarian rule, these rituals of representation were adopted by the post-colonial rulers and appear archaic and ridiculous from a modern, democratic perspective. This Eurocentric perspective, however, masks the fact that these modes of rule and rituals of representation are a legacy of colonial rule. 2. Western countries refers to an “imagined community” (Anderson 2006) of countries generally believed to be related by shared values, culture, and history. It is not to be understood in the sense of a community with an ontological existence in a geographical location of “the West,” but in Charles Taylor’s sense of a shared social imaginary (Taylor 2002) of democracy, rule of law, equality, individualism, etc. However, in his essay “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power,” Stuart Hall claims that “the West” serves as a marker of differentiation of hegemonic and nonhegemonic countries and/or cultures. The West represents a culture of imperialist universalism, which rules by claiming universal validity in contrast to the ethnic particularism of the rest of the world. In this sense it represents a structural location in a global relationship of power (Hall 1992).

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3. Although cultural memory has it that the scandal was provoked by the display of the actress’s naked breast, the historian Heide Fehrenbach explains that contrary to this popular history, the film Die Sünderin was scandalous because of its depiction of a female figure in control of her sexuality and hence appearing as an agent. Although this image of female independence might have partly correlated with circumstances in post-war Germany (where men were absent or invalids and women had learned to be self-­sufficient) this depiction was in opposition to the attempted renewal of patriarchy and a heroic image of masculinity (Fehrenbach 1995, pp. 92–117). 4. The text can be viewed at the website instituted by the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, on occasion of which the declaration was first published in 1962 (accessed March 29, 2016. http://www.oberhausenermanifest.com/fileadmin/Kurzfilmtage/Kurzfilmtage_allgemein/ Manifest/heller_ob_manifest_text.jpg). It was also reprinted in Eue and Gass (2012, pp. 15–16). 5. In 1960, Wolfgang Weyrauch published an anthology in which he collected some early attempts to create a political literature (Weyrauch 1960a). He justifies the call for a critical literature with the author’s role as a critic of society (Weyrauch 1960b, p. 8). He reinterprets the poet’s social role and frames the ensuing literary essays in this sense. The second anthology was edited by Hans Werner Richter (Richter 1962), central figure of the Gruppe 47, a group that created the ground for West Germany’s literary renewal. Of particular interest is an article by Peter Rühmkorf, one of the most important poets of the post-war era. He depicts the development of poetry since 1945 and states that West Germany’s poetic life has locked itself in an escapist aesthetics. He claims, however, that some more recent developments create a new aesthetic language that is simultaneously the development of a new interpretation of the world (Rühmkorf 1962, pp. 473–474). In literature as much as in film there is dissatisfaction with the aesthetic expression of the 1950s and a call for a new beginning. 6. Grill, Martin. 1963. “Meisterstück oder Blendwerk. Ingmar Bergman’s neuer Film ‘Die Stille’ erregt den Norden.” FR, October 4. 7. Salzer, Michael. 1963. “Kunstwerk oder Pornographie? Bergman’s ‘Schweigen’ und die Moral  – Der Ruf nach dem Zensor.” Welt, November 23. 8. Ibid. 9. Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden. 1964. “Im Verfahren des Zurufs.” SZ, February 3. 10. hdh. 1964. “Verwechslung.” Welt, February 20; KNA. 1964. “‘Seelische Belastung.’” Welt, March 4; Nachrichtendienst der Welt. 1964. “Strafanzeige gegen ‘Das Schweigen.’” Welt, April 23; dpa. 1964. “Bischof fordert Austritt.” Welt, May 16.

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11. dpa. 1964. “Heck zum ‘Schweigen.’” FAZ, May 14. 12. “108 Anzeigen gegen ‘Das Schweigen.’” 1964. SZ, May 5. 13. The CSU is a party which competes in elections in Bavaria only, but enters into a union with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at the Bundestag. They are located at the conservative spectrum of West German politics, and for decades no other party right of the CSU would enter a parliament in Germany. The FDP is a liberal party, which throughout its history in the Federal Republic of Germany has oscillated between social liberalism and economic liberalism. 14. O.D. 1964. “‘Das Schweigen’ im Bundestag. Diskussion um den schwedischen Film in der Fragestunde.” FAZ, March 20. 15. Ungureit, Heinz. 1964. “Bernkastels Landrat vergleicht ‘Das Schweigen’ mit Auschwitz. Prozeß um Aufführung im Juli / Bis zum Bundesverwaltungsgericht?” FR, June 24. 16. AP. 1964. “‘Das Schweigen’ darf in Bernkastel gezeigt werden.” FR, July 6. 17. For a description of the media landscape of the 1950s see Chap. 6 about the rebel youth films. 18. Together with Through a Glass Darkly the film forms part of a trilogy, of which The Silence is the last film. 19. Korn, Karl. 1964. “Hölle, in der wir leben  – ‘Schweigen’ von Ingmar Bergman.” FAZ, January 27. 20. “Ein Prüfstein für Zensoren. Schweden diskutiert Ingmar Bergmans Film ‘Das Schweigen.’” 1963. SZ, November 26. 21. Ibid. 22. Grill, “Meisterstück oder Blendwerk.” 23. Korn, “Hölle.” 24. The chapter “Kontroversen der Reformation. Porträt und Karikatur” (En: Controversies of the Reformation. Portrait and Caricature) (Belting 2005, pp. 173–216) further describes the development of the modern notion of the image as art. 25. Theunissen, Gert h. 1964. “‘Je tiefer er sich ängstigt, um so größer ist der Mensch.’ Ein Nachwort zu Ingmar Bergmans Film ‘Das Schweigen.’” Welt, February 22. 26. Ramseger, Georg. 1963. “Was Psychiater und Anwälte schon lange wissen: Wer spekuliert, wird fürchterlich bestraft.” Welt, November 23. 27. The film’s title refers to the Polish town Kołobrzeg. These three films are all productions of the Nazi period. 28. The aesthetic movement that took the Oberhausener Manifest as its point of departure is the cinematic equivalent of the social awakening of the (documentary) theater in the early 1960s, as will be shown in Chap. 5 on The Deputy. 29. Grill, “Meisterstück oder Blendwerk.”

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30. Since the late 1980s, art history has turned away from a de-historicized understanding of the role of the artist and has taken into account the relations between pictures and people as contextualized practices. Meyer calls this reorientation of art history the “pictorial” or “iconic” turn (Meyer 2011, pp. 1030–1032). 31. “Ein Prüfstein für Zensoren.” 32. See Chap. 5. 33. Klaus L.  Berghahn is not to be mistaken for the literary critic Wilfried Berghahn, who contributed an article to this case study and who was a co-­ founder of the film magazine Filmkritik, which accompanied the New German Cinema throughout its development. 34. The documentary theater of Rolf Hochhuth, Peter Weiss, and others is imbued with the same rebellious impetus against the de-politicized Adenauer society. However, the aesthetic paradigm it proposes differs from that of The Silence in its radical claim for participatory democracy and the closing of the distance between spectator and play. 35. Grill, “Meisterstück oder Blendwerk.” 36. Ramseger, “Was Psychiater und Anwälte.” 37. Ricoeur derives the notion of “split reference” from Roman Jakobson’s poetic function of language (Ricoeur (1975) 2004, pp. 261–265). 38. Grill, “Meisterstück oder Blendwerk.” 39. Roos, Hans-Dieter. 1964. “Wer hat Angst vor Ingmar Bergman? Deutsche Erstaufführung des schwedischen Films ‘Das Schweigen.’” SZ, February 3. 40. Ibid. 41. “Ein Prüfstein für Zensoren.” 42. Korn, “Hölle.” 43. Theunissen, “Je tiefer er sich ängstigt.” 44. Kempe, Fritz. 1964. “Die erbarmungslose Sex-Masche. Pervertierte Liebe als verfilmter Geschäftsartikel.” SZ, March 15. 45. Salzer, Michael. 1964. “‘Das Schweigen’ soll für sich sprechen… Interview mit dem Regisseur Ingmar Bergman über die Reaktion auf seinen umstrittenen Film.” WeltaS, March 28. 46. hdh, “Verwechslung.” 47. Ramseger, “Was Psychiater und Anwälte.” 48. Fürstenau, Theo. 1964. “Ingmar Bergmans ‘Das Schweigen.’ Denunziation der Unmoral.” Zeit (13), March 27. 49. KNA, “Seelische Belastung.” 50. I have described the developments resulting from the Rock’n Roll era in the 1950s in the chapter on rebel youth films in Chap. 6. These developments constitute the beginning of the challenge to the hostility toward ­sensuousness, which, however, turned into a proper and discursively elaborated antagonism only by the end of the 1960s.

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51. This is, however, only half the truth. The historian Axel Schildt asks us to reconsider the term “Restoration” in the 1950s as the hegemony of a renewed and modernized conservatism which entered into an alliance with Christianity (Schildt 1998). Political conservatism came out of the Nazi era deeply compromised by its involvement in and quiet acceptance of the atrocities committed by National Socialism. It had to leave behind its aggressive, anti-liberal, and anti-democratic appearance of the pre-Nazi era, which had complied with and therefore supported Nazi ideology. It had to undergo changes not only so as to be in conformity with the postwar constitution, but also in order to be morally sustainable in the face the most recent history. It reacted with a liberalization and democratization of its ideology. For a detailed description of post-war political conservatism in West Germany see also Lenk (1998). On a political plane, similarly, there is a discontinuity in relation to the political environment of the Weimar Republic. The hostilities between Left and Right that dominated the interwar years were not renewed. The ideals of democracy, tolerance, and willingness to debate progressively pervaded West German politics (Schildt 1998, esp. p.  630). Marcus Payk provides an insightful analysis of these developments within the Feuilleton that served as a platform for the negotiation and renewal of cultural and social identity (Payk 2008). 52. The Protestant church did not lend itself as easily to the reconstruction of society, partly because its role in the Nazi era was far from clear. During the time of National Socialism, the Protestant church was internally split into the Deutsche Christen (German Christians) that supported the Hitler regime and the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church) that resisted incorporation into Nazi society. The authoritarian Hitler regime had artificially kept the disunion suppressed. After the end of World War II it finally came out into the open. From this angle, the Protestant church lacked the authority and unity to provide sorely needed security. For the first time in German history, this opened the path for a position of leadership for Catholicism, which previously had derived its strength and influence from an oppositional stance on power and elitism (Großbölting 2013, pp. 21–94; also Ruff 2005, pp. 192–193). 53. The “revolution” that took place throughout the “Long Sixties” actually has to be thought of as a multitude of revolutions that encompassed society as a whole and permeated culture, society, and politics. The rise in living standards as much as the revolution of consumption, both of which originated in the “economic miracle” of the 1950s and 60s, have to be counted among these revolutions (Marwick 2006). According to Marwick, the “Long Sixties” begin in approximately 1958 and end in 1974 with the ­economic depression, which was also the time when the high hopes of the previous decade shattered and dreams of changing society ended (Marwick

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2006, pp. 41–43). In reference to the chapter about the rebel youth films (see Chap. 6 in this work) we can pinpoint the commencement of the change in mentality in the second half of the 1950s, with the symptomatic emergence of the phenomenon of teenagers and the changing habits of consumption and leisure behavior. These developments accelerated through the 1960s leading toward the years 1967 and 1968. While globally “1968” has become the symbol for the revolutionary atmosphere of the decade, Timothy Scott Brown points out that the concrete year in which these developments reach a climax differs. For West Germany the year 1967 is of greater importance, as this was the year in which the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot by a police officer, sparking the outbreak of the student protests (Brown 2013, p. 4). Independent of the concrete dates of periodization, what seems clear is that change announced itself long before historiography could note concrete events that uncovered the changes taking place. In the year 1964, when The Silence played on West German cinema screens, the change was well under way. 54. Female occupation became socially accepted as shopping desires became more pronounced and “the post-war decades [were] also the time during which a new industry, which dealt in love and lust, established itself, such as Beate Uhse’s mail-order business and comparable companies” (Großbölting 2013, p.  38). The Kinsey report that was published in German in the mid-­1950s offered an alternative reading of sexuality as a necessary component of personal happiness (Großbölting 2013, p.  38). Knut Hickethier further adds that the beginning of the 1960s witnessed a rapid increase in the phenomenon of Frühehe, the marriage of very young people (which is, however, not further defined), which could be read as an expression of the wish to be sexually active and escape from parental control (Hickethier 2003, p. 24). 55. Let me just mention in passing two more events that further unsettled the Catholic dominance in the early 1960s: first there was the resignation in October 1963 of Konrad Adenauer, who for a decade represented a Christian and conservative social, political, cultural, and economic stability. Since his chancellorship was closely tied to Catholicism in West Germany, his resignation may also be read as a marker for the end of Catholic sociocultural hegemony. Second, in February 1963 the documentary drama Der Stellvertreter by Rolf Hochhuth premiered in West Berlin. It questioned the innocence of the Catholic church–especially the Pope–during the Holocaust and unleashed the largest theater scandal in West Germany (see Chap. 5 in this work), which was only surpassed by the almost-premiere of Fassbinder’s Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod much later in the mid-1980s (Chap. 7).

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56. “Regime” here refers to the hegemonic status of the authoritarian paradigm of meaning. 57. A further example of this period is the controversy about Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy; it will be analyzed in Chap. 5.

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Scribner, Bob. 1990. Das Visuelle in der Volksfrömmigkeit. In Bilder und Bildersturm im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 46, ed. Bob Scribner, 9–20. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Stephan, Inge. 2008a. Aufklärung. In Deutsche Literaturgeschichte. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Wolfgang Beutin, Klaus Ehlert, Wolfgang Emmerich, Christine Kanz, Bernd Lutz, Volker Meid, Michael Opitz, Carola Opitz-Wiemers, Ralf Schnell, Peter Stein, and Inge Stephan, 7th ed., 148–181. Stuttgart: Metzler. ———. 2008b. Kunstepoche. In Deutsche Literaturgeschichte. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Wolfgang Beutin, Klaus Ehlert, Wolfgang Emmerich, Christine Kanz, Bernd Lutz, Volker Meid, Michael Opitz, Carola Opitz-­ Wiemers, Ralf Schnell, Peter Stein, and Inge Stephan, 7th ed., 182–230. Stuttgart: Metzler. Taylor, Charles. 2002. Modern Social Imaginaries. Public Culture 14 (1): 91–124. Tengelyi, László. 2007. Rediscription and Refiguration of Reality in Ricoeur. Research in Phenomenology 37 (2): 160–174. https://doi.org/10.116 3/156916407X185629. Turek, Jürgen. 1989. Demokratie- und Staatsbewußtsein: Entwicklung der Politischen Kultur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. In Politische Kultur und deutsche Frage. Materialien zum Staats- und Nationalbewußtsein in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ed. Werner Weidenfeld, 233–248. Köln: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik. Volk, Stefan. 2011. Skandalfilme. Cineastische Aufreger gestern und heute. Marburg: Schüren. von Hodenberg, Christina. 2006. Konsens und Krise. Eine Geschichte der westdeutschen Medienöffentlichkeit 1945–1973. Göttingen: Wallstein. Weyrauch, Wolfgang. 1960a. Bemerkungen des Herausgebers. In Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik. Fünfzehn Deutsche über Deutschland, ed. Wolfgang Weyrauch, 7–9. München: Paul List. ———, ed. 1960b. Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik. Fünfzehn Deutsche über Deutschland. München: Paul List. Zoll, Ralf. 1999. Vom Obrigkeitsstaat zur entgrenzten Politik. Politische Einstellungen und politisches Verhalten in der Bundesrepublik seit den sechziger Jahren. Opladen/Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.

CHAPTER 4

A Moving World: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Few fictional works of art have left such a lasting impact on the conceptual framework of Western societies as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The term “Big Brother” is included in the German Duden as well as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Both dictionaries are authoritative works of reference in their respective languages. The OED gives the following definition of the term Big Brother: [After the name given to the head of state in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.] Usu. with capital initials. A political or administrative authority, esp. the State, exercising strict supervision of and total control over people’s lives; (hence) the agencies, institutions, etc., used by such an authority to monitor and control people’s behaviour.1

Similarly, the Duden notes: “Meaning: observer, controller. Origin: English, derived from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by the British novelist G. Orwell (1903–1950), in which Big Brother incarnates the totalitarian state’s authority.”2 More recently, a TV show entitled Big Brother became a major talking point, because it translated the highly politicized image into popular culture without retaining its critical impetus. In the show, a group of people are (voluntarily) locked in a house for a couple of weeks and submitted to around-the-clock video surveillance. The TV audience is then asked to vote for or against the house’s inhabitants and the winner of the show is the person who “survives” the longest. Total surveillance here becomes the basis of entertainment. © The Author(s) 2020 M. Knapp, Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40086-6_4

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Despite the show’s popular success, descriptions of the term “Big Brother” by the OED and the Duden do not make reference to the term’s recent association with the TV show. The dictionary descriptions ignore the transformations that the term has undergone since the novel’s publication in 1949.3 By contrast, this chapter pays homage to the term’s more recent linkage with technological surveillance, a development that started in the late 1970s/early 1980s, when computer technology experienced a sudden and wide distribution within West German society. In particular, Big Brother and surveillance technology in West Germany are strongly linked to a social movement that struggled against the realization of a population census planned for April 27, 1983 (Deutscher Bundestag 2012). A selection of international criticism of the novel at the time of its publication in the 1950s suggests that Nineteen Eighty-Four was primarily associated with totalitarian state control in a more holistic way, and raised discussions about the nature of power and corruption. It was also read as an allegory of Soviet communism or Hitler’s fascism (Meyers 1975). With the advent of a wide distribution of personal computers in the early 1980s and their deployment in state administration, police work, and companies, Nineteen Eighty-Four began to appear in a new light. Big Brother turns into the epitome of information and surveillance technology. The census boycott movement began suddenly in December 1982 and became a mass movement through the first third of 1983. Several constitutional complaints at the Federal Constitutional Court resulted in the adjournment of the census as well as the formulation of the right to “informational self-determination” (Recht auf informationelle Selbstbestimmung) in December 1983. In an analysis of the boycott movement, Otwin Massing describes the escalation of the situation as a matter of a few weeks: Media outputs appeared totally indifferent to the topic. It was neither regarded as breaking news nor as a suitable long-running story. It was not even remotely expected that by addressing the subject, or even politicizing it, it would develop into a hot media topic. The law enforcers were able to positively think themselves safe. But then, within a few weeks, the situation drastically changed. Something occurred that until today remains a mystery. The ordinary status-quo of non-perception, non-addressing, non-protesting, suddenly began to change. The political apathy, commonly considered normal and ‘healthy’, even conducive to democracy, transformed – virtually overnight – into the dangerous energy of a politically charged organized protest-movement. (Massing 1987, p. 96)

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The political apathy Massing speaks of refers to the indifference toward questions of data privacy since politicization reached its peak at the beginning of the 1980s in the peace movement. But Massing’s remarks give expression to the incredible speed with which a previously neglected political discourse turned into a distinct social movement. The critical reception of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Massing suggests, had decisively intensified the escalation of events (Massing 1987, pp. 97–98). In fact, a much noted issue of the political magazine Der Spiegel was published in the first week of the year 1983 and carried the title “Der Orwell Staat” (En: The Orwell State). The publication took place only a few weeks after the first action group against the census was founded in December 1982.4 Marcel Berlinghoff outlines the history of computerization and privacy and notes that the year 1984 experienced a boom: The faster the supposedly disastrous year approached, the more the year [1984, MK] gained in popularity as a cypher. Der Spiegel, for instance, opened the 1983 (!) issue with a cover story, in which it explored how closely reality had already approximated the ‘Orwell state.’ (Berlinghoff 2013, p. 18)

Crucially, peace activists of the Internationale der Kriegsdienstgegner (IDK, German section of the War Resisters’ International) in West Berlin had already initiated an appeal against the population census in September 1982 and demanded that citizens should withhold data from the census as an act of civil disobedience. They reasoned that the state should obtain its data only in exchange for information as to the whereabouts of new nuclear missiles that had been deployed on West German ground. However, the call was not very successful and lacked the capacity to become a popular topic. Nonetheless, even though the peace topic failed to mobilize against the census, the resistance to the census lined up with an already existing “general distrust of the state,” as Frank Patalong astutely notes in retrospect of the census boycott movement in “Zensus-Debakel in den Achtzigern. Und bist du nicht willig…” (En: Census debacle in the 80s. And if you’re not willing…) published on Spiegel Online on May 8, 2011.5 The atmosphere of distrust characterizes the left-alternative social struggles of the time.6 The eye-catching temporal simultaneity of the beginnings of the boycott movement and the publication of the Spiegel article about the Orwell state in the first issue of 1983 poses the question of the role played by the

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novel in energizing the movement. In what way does fictionality interlock with social reality to serve the mobilization of the population? How is the novel used argumentatively in the movement if not for the sake of facts? The continued association of surveillance society and electronic data processing with Big Brother points toward the formative nature of Orwell’s fictional vision for the discourse about data privacy, of which the planned population census of 1983 is a manifestation, but not the sole target. The material consists of ten contributions in which the aforementioned article published by Der Spiegel plays a pivotal role. This article based its whole argument on the association of Big Brother and technological surveillance, and hence established this argument as a paradigm. In the following part of the chapter, the paradigm of art/interpretation proposed by the Spiegel article is compared with contributions that refute Orwell’s vision/diagnosis of contemporary society: instead, this other paradigm perceives Nineteen Eighty-Four in an allegoric sense mostly as a symbol for the Soviet Union. The Cold War discourse can be seen as the paradigmatic opponent to the surveillance discourse. Such contrary paradigmatic interpretations should not be conceived of as antagonists in a struggle. Although the allegoric paradigm can be read as a reply to the dystopian paradigm, the dystopian paradigm primarily is oriented towards establishing an antagonism with the state. It mobilizes the new social movements against the state. It remains to be seen in which way the pattern of interpretation established by the surveillance discourse created an aesthetic paradigm that was capable of representing a world experience of political mobilization and in this sense constituted an identitary framework. I have refrained from analyzing the novel’s reception at the time of its publication in 1950. A glimpse at the international reception of Nineteen Eighty-Four suggests that a conflict of interpretation could be found between communists and non-communists (Meyers 1975), but this dissent confirmed rather than disturbed the established geo-political boundaries of the Cold War. The allegorical paradigm did not disrupt the conventional order of representing established social and political boundaries. It appears that in 1950, Nineteen Eighty-Four rather preserved and supported the social order instead of challenging it. This does not disprove the hypothesis of this work, but with the methodology it is impossible to causally prove the maintenance of social relations through the novel’s aesthetics. The methodology applied depends on the existence of

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a conflict, through which the disruptive effect of aesthetics becomes visible.

4.1   Defining Freedom (Differently) “On the last day before the ominous year ‘1984’ we ask: ‘Are we free?’ There is not an easy answer, because there are many understandings of freedom.”7 This quotation, published on December 31, 1983, encapsulates the discourse’s essence. From the early to the mid-1980s, the novel raises the question of freedom. Where does it begin and where does it end? Of which elements is it comprised? Beyond all political differences, this is the central question that the discourse is concerned with. Yet, the descriptions of social reality and the respective notions of freedom appear in manifold shadings and adumbrations, as a cacophony of appearances, incapable of being pinned down to a single perspective. The sole classification that may be useful is the distinction between those contributors that conceive of Orwell’s novel as a prophecy applicable to society in the 1980s, and those who deny any analogy between the (contemporary) present and the fictional world. The distinction between both versions of Nineteen Eighty-Four is the difference between paradigmatically different patterns of reception, which give expression to a distinct relation between social reality and the work of art. 4.1.1  The Dystopian Paradigm of Political Mobilization The protests against the population census that was planned for April 27, 1983 were not an invention of the Feuilleton. Late in 1982, citizens’ groups formed in opposition to the “total census” (Totalerhebung) that the German Federal Parliament had resolved in March 1982 (Deutscher Bundestag 2012). The first citizens’ group was founded in September 1982 by the already mentioned IDK–the German War Resisters’ International–who demanded the disclosure of the government’s position on nuclear weapons in exchange for personal data. The second wave was registered in December 1982, when the first citizens’ group (Volksinitiative) formed in Hamburg. At the time, citizens were summoned by the West German state to act as census takers for the upcoming census in 1983. At a public meeting a teacher raised the question of how to react to the summons, as she opposed the realization of the census due to ideological

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reasons (Hubert 1983, pp.  255–258). The founding of this citizens’ group lit the spark for the mass protests. The impact of the Spiegel article entitled “Die neue Welt von 1984” (En: The New World of 1984) on the development of mass protests against the population census cannot be precisely measured. Yet the proximity of the formation of the pioneering Volksboykotteure, the initiative of census boycotters, in December 1982, and the publication of the January issue of Der Spiegel points toward the emergence of synergies between public discussion of Orwell’s dystopia and the protest movement.8 The particularly explosive potential of the Orwell topic should be highlighted. It was not the first time that Der Spiegel was concerned with data surveillance, as, for example, the article entitled “Gläserner Mensch” (En: Transparent Person) from July 1982 shows.9 The explosiveness of the article from January 1983 must be read in the context of the political atmosphere as it developed throughout the last third of 1982. The article derives its importance from invoking a dystopian vision of social reality, in which Nineteen Eighty-Four serves a temporal mirror-­ function for social reality. The development of social reality makes the fiction look real. The opening remarks of the article read as follows: In 1948 George Orwell wrote the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. His vision of the total surveillance state has come very close to reality. The transparent citizen is there, his data is recorded. The perfect technical surveillance apparatus awaits political abuse: 1983 is Nineteen Eighty-Four.10

These words set the tone for the ensuing debate. Fiction and social reality appear in a line of continuity. We are here confronted with a sense of foreboding emanating from technical surveillance. Orwell’s vision couples the means of technical surveillance with a political will to exploit the technical possibilities, which deprives the individual of their individuality and thus the freedom of movement and thought. Technological development, this contribution claims, has in fact far exceeded the technical capacities described in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and its political exploitation is but a stone’s throw away. The threat described by Orwell is a danger well within reach, a possibility instead of merely fiction. Similarly, Horst Herold, the former president of the Federal Criminal Police Office (whose quote is taken up by the Spiegel article as an epigraph), confirms this paradigm of interpretation when he remarks already in 1980: “The dangers of ‘Big Brother’ are no

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longer mere literary fiction. If we consider the status of technology today, they are real” (Herold 1980, p. 81). Fiction becomes real; the threatening moment is that in which the institutionalized limits of fiction are broken down and the fictional world becomes thinkable as a possibility of the real. This may best be imagined if we consider Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s conception of dreams and other “provinces of meaning” (Berger and Luckmann 1967, p. 114), to which we may add fictions. They turn into institutions that are integrated into the overarching symbolic universe of social reality which determines the institution’s meaning and importance within the overall symbolic setup: The provinces of meaning that would otherwise remain unintelligible enclaves within the reality of everyday life are thus ordered in terms of a hierarchy of realities, ipso facto becoming intelligible and less terrifying. This integration of the realities of marginal situations within the paramount reality of everyday life is of great importance, because these situations constitute the most acute threat to taken-for-granted, routinized existence in society. (Berger and Luckmann 1967, pp. 115–116)

The overarching symbolic universe presents itself as “objective” reality to the individual, while alternative realities such as dreams and fictions are excluded from the notion of objectivity. Cornelius Castoriadis argues in a similar fashion that the distinction between “objective” social reality and alternative realities is one that is established by society, since the “monad” (the pre-social psyche) is incapable of drawing a distinction between “true” and “untrue” representations. Especially while dreaming, when the filters established by consciousness are broken down, the “madness” of the psyche forges ahead and creates the images that appear to us as dreams. The psychic monad is fed by the “fictive” imagination and social reality alike (Castoriadis 1987, p. 293). In as much as Der Spiegel and Herold characterize Orwell’s fictions as real, they disrupt the social order of realities in which fiction is an integrated yet separate enclave within the symbolic universe. Nineteen Eighty-Four can appear threatening only because the institutionalized boundaries established between social reality and fiction (partially) break down, fiction playing society’s shadow, the figurative expression of society’s deepest fears. Fiction becomes an extension and intensification of social reality.

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Hans Weder from Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) describes this feeling of loss and control in the face of an expanding sphere of technological surveillance. The fear of external control is the fear of the loss of humanity in the face of an all-encompassing quantification of the human body: Apparently, since the computerization of life’s processes has begun, Orwell’s vision has gained topical relevance. Many see that the realization of Orwell’s nightmare is nearing its completion. The exponential growth of computer capabilities stands for a likewise exponentially growing monitoring capacity. Trust is good, surveillance is better. … Thus, Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a symbol for the abyss of a technological development, which is inscrutable to the majority. The idea that the police state is a technologically conditioned phenomenon arises.11

Weder does not second this notion, although he acknowledges the existence of an atmosphere of social control which has been merely heightened and improved by technological means, but does not spring from technology itself. The reason for the feeling of estrangement results from the rationalization of the human being which neglects her unquantifiable humanity. Karl Steinbuch, a computer scientist and guest author in Die Welt, adds another element of human incapacitation to the developing antagonism between technology and human agency. For him, the problem is one of information technology in general. Information technology provides the human being with a wealth of information that the single mind is incapable of processing. This leads to the need for electronic data management, which is always a process of pre-classifying information. The pre-­ classification of information eventually leads to standardized information and hence to standardized knowledge. Simultaneously, it confronts the individual with a “quasi-authority” from which the individual struggles to free herself. Individual knowledge is therefore standardized by electronically classified information which impedes deviant processing of the information in order to produce deviant and individual knowledge.12 The deprivation of the individual is, therefore, a logical consequence of the expansion of information technology, where political will is of secondary importance. Freedom is conceived of as the freedom of individual deviance and deviant knowledge; of individuality as something more than the subject’s quantifiable dimensions. The suspension of the institutionalized barrier

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between fiction and “objective” reality turns Nineteen Eighty-Four into the incarnation of the fear that this freedom will be lost. It is through the figurations of the novel that society is confronted with this fear and it is from here that Nineteen Eighty-Four derives its vehemence in the discourse. The fear of computerization is felt in the face of a new and expanding medium that heralded a “mediarevolution” (Faulstich 2005, p. 242). The transformations that went hand in hand with the expansion of computers were experienced as “culture shock” (Faulstich 2005, p. 235). The 1980s, Werner Faulstich notes, mark the triumphal march of the personal computer, first forming a game culture and partly a work culture, before it permeated all aspects of life. The threat of surveillance technology and total control was in the air as a topic at the time. The editorial of an issue of the magazine Technologie und Politik from 1982, for instance, notes: This volume shows how the net of information technologies is capable of changing the human being. The large electronic depoliticization of citizens could harm democracy more effectively than the executive’s excess of authority: it could suddenly be possible that there are no longer any people who protest when they are monitored. (Duve 1983, p. 6)

The Spiegel article popularized what had previously been only an expert discourse. The threat posed by electronic data processing was very real, with West Germany already in contact with computer-aided dragnet investigation, for instance, which coupled non-normative behavior with suspicion. Further discourses about the dangers of computerization were, first, the rationalization of work processes, which was accompanied by the fear of the replacement of the human work force by computers; and second, the tendencies of isolation especially among youth who engaged in computer games (Faulstich 2005). The critique of technology is fed by a further source. By the end of the 1970s the policy of détente of the Cold War came to an end. The US presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan implemented a confrontation policy with the Soviet Union. In 1979 NATO agreed upon the Double Track Decision, which included the positioning of nuclear medium-range missiles on West German ground. This kicked off the peace movement of the 1980s, which evolved into the largest protest movement since the end of World War II (Fahlenbrach and Stapane 2012, pp. 230–231; Mende and Metzger 2012). Its strength may be explained

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by the synergies between the environmental movement and the earlier peace movement in relation to the “nuclear question,” which combines the critique of nuclear energy–a field traditionally occupied by the environmental movement–and the critique of nuclear armament, which was the original topic of the peace movement. The link materialized in the term “ecopax,” and the term “nuclear” was now associated with a threat to humanity instead of with human progress as in earlier decades (Mende and Metzger 2012). In fact, Marianne Zepp notes that fear was the driving intellectual foundation of the peace movement, and the critique of technology its identitary essence (Zepp 2012). Philipp Gassert further remarks that West Germany at the conclusion of the 1970s was seized by a general feeling of crisis, from which the peace movement derived. “It was a world experienced in terms of loss and in view of a global increase in crises and war” (Gassert 2011, p.  183), which resulted in a marked cultural pessimism (Gassert 2011, pp.  182–187). The political party “The Greens” developed directly from the new social movements in 1980 (Lemke 1999, p. 448), and it entered the West German parliament for the first time in March 1983, which in the Federal Republic of Germany presupposes an election result of more than 5% of the votes. The peace movement thus concentrated diverse elements that provided the background for the protests against electronic data processing: critique of technology, susceptibility to horror scenarios and scenarios of crisis, and an atmosphere of massive political activism, which includes the presence of structures of mobilization. Although the protests against surveillance technology were carried by a broader alliance than the peace movement (yet smaller in size) and attracted protesters from beyond the left-alternative milieu (Berlinghoff 2013, p. 18), the sudden mobilization in early 1983 took place in the light of existing political structures within the peace movement. The critical discourse about data surveillance as it was generated by the Spiegel article can be understood as a hegemonic practice in the sense determined by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. A hegemonic practice articulates floating signifiers into a chain of equivalences. This means that signifiers which do not yet “belong” to a social or political identity (floating signifiers) are incorporated as identity markers into an existing or an emerging identity. Social identities come into being through the ideas, concepts, and topics that represent them. In this sense they are imaginary. Identification takes place along these markers. The articulation of social

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identities, however, is a relational act, since the identification with some signifiers also requires the positing of antagonistic signifiers. Political identity, according to Laclau and Mouffe, comes into being only as a self— other relation (Laclau and Mouffe (1985) 2001, pp. 134–145). The idea of hegemonic practice draws attention to the fact that social identities are never stable and positive entities, but always in the process of transformation and change, in a process which is subject to human agency. In as much as the scandal redefines surveillance technology as a critique of the state, it builds on the structure of antagonism established by the peace and environmental movements. Simultaneously, it makes use of the social dystopia as the pattern of communication which has been popularized by the peace movement. We will be further concerned with this aspect at a later point. The scandalization of surveillance society, the loss of individual agency in the face of an omnipotent authority (which can take the shape of technology, politics, or social values respectively), is the floating signifier that is reorganized into a “moment” in the chain of equivalence of a liberal-left political identity. It is introduced as an identity marker. In as much as the dystopian paradigm picks up on the communicative pattern of the peace movement, the hegemonic practice described here is made possible by the dystopian discourse emerging from Nineteen Eighty-­ Four. This pattern of communication enables the establishment of an equivalence between different topics such as peace, ecology, and the struggle against data surveillance. It is a paradigm that disrupts the institutionalized relation between fact and fiction and postulates a continuity between social reality and the work of art. This mode of performing (“playing”) the text (Iser 1993, p. 273) disregards the conventional relation of fiction and social reality as of a metaphoric nature. While in the case of Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence the metaphoric paradigm of art/interpretation represented the more progressive, democratizing position, the metaphoric paradigm here serves as the background from which the dystopian paradigm dissociates itself. If the metaphoric paradigm conceives of fiction as a doubling of social reality which creates a gap between the fictional world and social reality, the dystopian paradigm removes this gap. Fiction escalates social conditions and is therefore a continuation of social reality. Although we cannot speak of a new paradigm of art–the novel was first published in 1949 (English)/1950 (German)13–the dystopian paradigm of interpretation disrupts the conventional ways of making Nineteen Eighty-Four meaningful. The paradigm of interpretation established by the Spiegel article may be seen as giving expression to the version of

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meaning (of truth) as it prevailed among the new social movements. What distinguishes the dystopian paradigm from the metaphoric paradigm applied to the novel by the Cold War discourse (see next section) is the lack of distance between the fictional world and social reality. The paradigm of interpretation that the surveillance discourse establishes is a paradigm that creates proximity and even identity between social reality and the fictional world, which is the reason that the threat posed by surveillance society can be experienced as real. Identity, this claim also suggests, should not be understood as full identity in the sense that Orwell’s fiction coincides with social reality. Instead, the threat that is represented by Nineteen Eighty-Four crosses the border established by the psyche’s “reality testing” to become real. The threat, not the fictional world, crosses over the institutionalized distinction established between “objective” reality and fictional imagining. The surveillance discourse transforms the threat presented by Nineteen Eighty-Four into an imaginary signification that is subjected to what Castoriadis calls the ‘reality principle’ (Castoriadis 1987, p. 312). Borrowed from Freud, the reality principle means the shaping and the form (eidos) taken by a particular appearance of reality. It defines the terms for “reality testing,” and defines what is considered part of “reality” (part of the public world of the social-historical) and what is not (Castoriadis 1987, pp.  311–316). The reality principle, for Castoriadis, means the break-up of the private world of the psychic monad for the socialization of the psyche, which splits the world of psychic representations into a public and a private world. Consequently, the “madness” of the private world finds expression only in social enclaves such as dreams and fiction, while it otherwise remains unrepresentable. The public world of the psyche, on the other hand, effectively means the “reign” of the institution. Simultaneously, this means “that there is never any reality other than socially instituted reality” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 312). On a theoretical level, Castoriadis is careful to remark that socially instituted reality should not be mistaken for “natural reality,” as he believes Freud erroneously did. In everyday life, however, socially instituted reality is the result of social negotiations, which explains why there are societies in which myths are real and why in capitalist societies the symbolic value of money is taken for real worth, which constitutes its fetish-character. On the other hand, Western societies distinguish between fact and fiction, a distinction that is not universal. What a society takes for real or unreal is hence socially institutionalized and the institution thus

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finds representation in the social significations.14 The surveillance discourse transforms Orwell’s private yet publicized fictions into social signification, which establishes the fictions as part of the social institution. They signify the threat posed to the social self by electronic data processing, and can only be an effective threat due to the direct relation with society’s identity. 4.1.2  Performing Nineteen Eighty-Four Allegorically The replies to Der Spiegel’s use of Nineteen Eighty-Four invoke an interpretational pattern that conceives of West German social reality as a place of freedom and individual liberty, rejecting application of the novel’s dystopia to the social self. As an allegory for totalitarian state structures, Nineteen Eighty-Four remains within the paradigm of poetic language (Ricoeur), which in this context maintains the distinction of fiction as an alternative reality within the overall symbolic horizon. As an allegory, Nineteen Eighty-Four stands for something else: a literal meaning is replaced by a metaphoric meaning, with the meaning of the substitution found in the tension between both meanings.15 In metaphor (in which allegory participates), we are confronted with a split reference, through which the literal meaning is destabilized and the object of reference constitutes itself in the gap between both meanings (Ricoeur (1975) 2004, pp. 255–302). When Nineteen Eighty-Four is read as an allegory of totalitarian state structures, it is a metaphorical approach to the work of art, which retains the gap between the social self and the fictional metaphor. Let me go into detail. We can trace both the allegoric and the dystopian paradigm already in the discourse of the 1950s when Golo Mann (Thomas Mann’s son) writes, in a review of the novel from November 5, 1949 published by FR: It is much more important that his vigorous intuition, clear vision, sympathy and anger have exposed dangers which are present everywhere, and that he has sharpened our eyes so that we can see them. The author is too deeply and too seriously an enemy of Bolshevism and of any kind of mass tyranny for his book to be merely anti-Russian. … Orwell’s only theme is the totalitarian danger that lies within ourselves and in all the political systems of our time. (Reprinted in Meyers 1975, pp. 277–281, quotation on pp. 280–281)

These words that were still written under the influence of the Nazi period and the beginning of the Cold War clearly have a self-critical impetus and

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remind us of the dystopian paradigm of the surveillance discourse. Nineteen Eighty-Four served as a (future) threat. However, while Mann pleads in favor of a dystopian reading, which destabilizes the self’s certainty, his pleading is oriented against an allegoric paradigm that was already intact in the 1950s and used as a means to evade self-criticism. This configuration repeats itself in 1983/1984. In fact, while the dystopian paradigm of interpretation has adapted the topic of self-critique to the present (surveillance technology instead of the totalitarian danger of all political systems), the allegoric paradigm sticks to the association of Nineteen Eighty-Four with the communist Soviet Union. In Welt am Sonntag, Helmut Schoeck, for instance, claims that the left intellectuals in West Germany have given up their capacity for individual thought to the ruling elite in Moscow and thus closed their eyes to the atrocities committed by socialist totalitarianism. He particularly attacks the liberal-left “alliance” of Social Democrats and the Greens for repeating the behavior that Orwell decried in his satire Animal Farm, which can be thought of as a prototype for Nineteen Eighty-Four. The liberal left “alliance” is accused of paying court to totalitarian states in South America simply because they are committed to a socialist ideology. Schoeck explicitly positions his contribution as a counter-discourse to the dystopian paradigm, as it materializes in the surveillance discourse: The hysteria about Nineteen Eighty-Four is always directed at the inside, at one’s own country, yet where it is least appropriate. … The [Western intellectuals, MK] lament when faced with the computer-readable ID card. All the while, the same people start prattling about the Cold War that shall not be recreated when a calendar about 1984, that is supposed to be distributed in schools, shows as much as the fence of a pen in which real Nineteen Eighty-Four victims [referring to the USSR, MK] are being kept.16

Contrary to the Spiegel diagnosis, the threat described by Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four alike derives not from surveillance technology, but from a false loyalty to socialist-totalitarian regimes. The threat of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Schoeck suggests, is the threat of communism and socialist totalitarianism.17 Schoeck prefers to refer to Nineteen Eighty-Four in an allegoric sense in contrast to a dystopian understanding of the novel as a deferment of the present. To him, the novel does not describe a possible future of the social but the totalizing of socialism.

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Similarly, Wolfgang Bergsdorf in Die Zeit rejects the prophetic qualities of Nineteen Eighty-Four and hence a dystopian interpretation. He believes that even though many of Orwell’s “prophecies” appear to have come true, the novel’s aim to contain the expansion of totalitarianism has been successful: To date, Orwell’s calculations work out. Totalitarianism exists as a powerful political order. Its sphere of influence is larger than ever. But the idea of civic liberties is its counterpart. To this day it has been able put a halt to totalitarianism’s quest for territorial expansion.18

And the continued uprisings in the Eastern “socialist” countries prove that people are still capable of individual thought.19 Totalitarian control has not yet been able to achieve its goal. Similarly to Schoeck’s interpretation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the novel is conceived of as a contribution to Cold War politics. In as much as the novel is associated with the ideological outside, its threat is exterritorialized and could be called, with Laclau and Mouffe, the constitutive outside.20 It constitutes the identity of the social insofar as identity is defined in a negative relation to its outside–it is society’s radical other and engages the social in a relation of antagonism. The antagonistic relation stabilizes and confirms the identity of self. The identity of the self is here conceptualized as lacking a positivity, and therefore continually needs to find a cause for the lack of a foundation. This leads to an unceasing deferral of meaning with respect to identity. Within a secular social, this identity takes the form of differential relations, while Mouffe reminds us that these relations do not necessarily develop into friend/enemy relations, but can be of a friendly nature (Mouffe 2005, pp. 15–16). The Cold War discourse is clearly of an antagonistic nature, which conceives of its constitutive outside as a threat, but which simultaneously constitutes Western identity as united in the struggle against totalitarianism. Nineteen Eighty-Four as an allegory of (Eastern) socialism stabilizes Western identity.21 Staging the novel as part of Cold War discourse not only means confirming the geo-political status quo but first and foremost expressing the desire to make social identity appear as a positive entity: stable and determining. The negation of the novel’s reality maintains the institutionalized distinction of fiction and social reality, which is why fiction fails to provoke. It remains within the hierarchies established by the overarching symbolic

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universe and hence does not destabilize significations or institutions. The allegoric paradigm neutralizes the threat posed by the novel, since it re-­ establishes fiction as cutting the signifying world reference. The relation of fiction and social reality is performed as make-believe–or more accurately: fictional. The heterogeneity of the allegoric  paradigm, however, prevents the possibility of defining a unified discourse. What unites the reviews is the acknowledgment that Nineteen Eighty-Four cannot be applied to the present, that it cannot be called a prophecy or a vision of the future, that it fails to live up to its (presumed) visionary quality of becoming real. In this sense, the comments made by the then general secretary of the Italian Communist Party, Enrico Berlinguer, who is interviewed by the liberal-­ left daily FR, can be classified as supporting the allegoric paradigm, although he only fleetingly mentions the symbolic dimension of the novel referring to authoritarianism and despotism: Certainly, world history has experienced a strengthening of authoritarian and despotic tendencies, but its primary feature … is a different one: think of the overwhelming liberation process in the course of the collapse of colonial rules and thereby of the awakening of by then humiliated people (and they had surely not been humiliated by computer applications); think of the new objectives that were achieved by the liberation of the proletarian and poor masses of the industrial countries; think of the women’s liberation movement. Considering these pieces of information in their entirety, it means nothing other than a general, worldwide process of human, cultural advancement. If we look at post-war history, we find that the world has disproved Orwell’s ‘prophecy’. The world has moved in another direction.22

Berlinguer’s comments are remarkable, because he goes beyond the Eurocentric perspective of his contemporaries and observes global and historical developments from a broader perspective. He further argues that it is wrong to talk about the loss of individuality in the present because the realization of individuality has always been open only to a minority in the world. Prominent examples of de-­individualization are the slaves in the ancient world as well as in America. In the developing world, hunger, civil wars, and diseases, as well as the lack of access to education, inhibit human life. From this perspective, the threat of surveillance technology in particular appears as an exaggeration, especially since Berlinguer believes that technology is nothing but a politically neutral

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medium. Politics is an ongoing process of self-rule, and the panic encountered in the face of technology, the panic of de-individualization, Berlinguer claims, is nothing but the fear of the intellectual class in losing its unique characteristic.23 However, just like the Cold War discourse, Berlinguer rejects a quasi-­ prophetic reading of the novel, its appraisal as a future version of the world. To him, the novel stands for authoritarianism and despotism. In fact, while his interpretation does not coincide with the allegoric interpretations of the Cold War discourse, it does align with them, and establishes a gap between the fictional world and social reality. Once this gap is established discursively, Nineteen Eighty-Four loses its threatening capacities. It appears that the scandal over surveillance society and its relation with the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is located in the dystopian and prophetic interpretation, an effect which is not evoked by the allegoric-metaphoric reading. The common thread running through the different interpretations is the struggle for the definition of the term “freedom.” While freedom served as an integrating force for the constitution of West Germany from its founding in 1949, in the Orwell controversy of 1983/1984 this consensus is newly negotiated. In the post-war period, anti-communism was the political rationale to which all ideological currents succumbed. Anti-­ communism was accompanied by the slogan “Defense of freedom.” Instead of invoking democracy as the alternative to a socialist political structure, freedom from communism served as a point of consensus for West German national identity (Schildt 1998, pp. 630–632; Franz 2014).24 The ensuing transformations of West German culture, politics, and society, which are commonly symbolized by the student protests, already targeted the association of “freedom” with the authoritarian Adenauer society. The protests set the notion of participatory democracy against a version of freedom that implied freedom from socialism only, but not freedom of the emancipated citizen.25 The dystopian paradigm stages freedom as the freedom from (or absence of) state control. If the Cold War discourse upholds the distinction between democracy and totalitarianism, which equates democracy with freedom, then the surveillance discourse challenges this equation. The fleeting appearance of freedom, however, cannot be reduced to these poles in the controversy. Berlinguer’s understanding of freedom, for instance, foregrounds the right to individuality as an expression of freedom, and the IT specialist Steinbuch defends the absence of standardization as an element

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of freedom. We can here observe work on and a struggle for signification. With Castoriadis we might say that the institutionalizing dimension of social reality is at work here: that dimension which makes history and which is responsible for the dynamism, for the magmatic nature of social reality. Similarly, the question of the relation between private and public, which is at the heart of the surveillance discourse, is not new. Knut Hickethier, for instance, says about the sexual provocations of the Kommune 1, the first West German political commune, that what provoked public concern was not the details of the actual sexual life of the members of Kommune 1, since this can be described as rather ascetic, but the fact that they publicly discussed the misery of West German sexual life (Hickethier 2003, pp. 24–25). The provocation can be found in the displacement of established notions of private and public. As Marcel Berlinghoff argues, the struggle against data surveillance has to be seen in the context of redefining notions of privacy, and he claims that with the judgment which formulated the right to informational self-determination in 1983, we witness a paradigmatic change in the understanding of privacy: The ability to freely combine information led to a renunciation of the private sphere model and a leaning towards a broader understanding of privacy, one that does not define specific information as private and as specifically worthy of protection. Privacy essentially meets the processes of raising, collecting, and evaluating information with suspicion. From these considerations, the Federal Constitutional Court formulated the right to informational self-determination in 1983 and expanded it within its jurisdiction to this day. (Berlinghoff 2013, p. 19)

The notion of privacy proclaimed by the surveillance discourse expands the understanding of the emancipated citizen, and the right to informational self-determination confirms the transformed notion of the citizen as capable of determining her own affairs. The freedom proposed by the surveillance discourse conceives of the individual as a carrier of freedom, while the anti-communist conception of freedom proposes society as carrier and guarantor of freedom. The latter notion of freedom is based on a strong state and a unified society which cannot afford internal strife. The social struggles that challenge the conservative notion of an internally unified and patriarchal state must be understood as diversifying identification. In as much as they are directed against the West German state,

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they disrupt the ideal of a unified national identity. The new social movements that have proliferated  since the late 1960s are motivated by the acknowledgment of the limits of capitalist economies and the institutions that have developed in their support (Kriesi 1987, pp.  323–325). They may be called “post-materialist,” since they struggle not for sectional interests, but for collective and universal goods such as the environment, peace, equal rights for women (Kriesi 1987, p. 320), or, in the case of the population census boycott, the freedom from acquisition of data by the state. They may be understood as attack on the self-conception of Western societies, and are hence of a different order than the antagonistic identities of Cold War politics. Cold War politics attempted to create an appearance of positivity, of full identity between a society and its citizens. Following Laclau and Mouffe ((1985) 2001), this politics can be read as a hegemonic practice, which– like most hegemonic practices, in fact–works on the basis of positivity for the sake of persuasiveness. The new social movements, on the other hand, challenge the notion of a “positive” Western identity and conceive West German society as internally split into a plurality of identities (and identitary struggles), while none of these struggles and identities fully merges with the state. The social–which is here identified with the nation state– remains empty and lacks full identity with itself. It can never fully come to itself, since the different struggles and identities continuously defer the social. The questioning by the new social movements of the full identity of the nation state with itself should not belie the fact that these movements themselves engage in a hegemonic practice of their own. And this hegemonic practice likewise works in the form of positivity. What comes into view when we compare the dystopian and the allegoric paradigm is the mobilizing impact of the dystopian paradigm, which finds no correspondence in the allegoric paradigm. The case of Nineteen Eighty-Four particularly shows that the reception of an artwork is more than just an interpretation, since the specific paradigm of reception constitutes the particular relation of social reality and fiction. The use of an artwork is subjected to the social realm which constitutes the artwork’s meaning and is determined by the particularities of its reception. The allegoric paradigm is of no consequence to social developments; it fails to mobilize or shape and transform a social identity. In the surveillance discourse, however, we can observe the development of a coherent paradigm of interpretation which gives expression to a

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specific “reality principle”–a specific logic of the world. Here we experience the creation of a consensus between the order of representation and the sensual experience of the world. Rancière remarks with respect to the notion of consensus: Consensus, as a mode of government, says: it is perfectly fine for people to have different interests, values and aspirations, nevertheless there is one unique reality to which everything must be related, a reality that is experienceable as a sense datum and which has only one possible signification. (Rancière 2010, p. 144)

I will now turn to the positing of this alternative consensus of the order of representation and the sensual experience of the world by the dystopian paradigm.

4.2   The World as Its Future The removal of the institutional barriers between fiction and social reality should not mislead us to think that Nineteen Eighty-Four is mistaken for reality. As a dystopia, it continues to exert pressure on the conception of the social that can only be explained by its fictionality, even if fictionality overflows the limits set for it by the social institution. Fiction turns into an option of the “real.” If we look at the structural arrangement of fiction and social reality in the Spiegel article, what is most obvious is the mirror-function of the fictional world. The fictional world serves as a mirror and as the standard to which social reality can be compared. Mirror and standard, reflection and fixation: Nineteen Eighty-Four comprises both, a benchmark for a particular social development and a sign for these developments: Nineteen Eighty-Four, conceived as a warning and written as a satire, became a cypher for everything that the world had invented in relation to totalitarianism and personal monitoring, terror of ideology and bureaucracy, ministerial dishonesty and manipulation of historical truth, psychological horrors and man’s injured dignity, extinction of liberality and personality, whether in love or religion. It is a cypher because many of Orwell’s visions have long since been present to some extent, often already tested and more often overtaken by reality. Because on closer inspection there are elements that appear more terrible than the vision itself.26

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Central to the argument in this quotation is the term “cypher.” I have previously quoted Marcel Berlinghoff, who claims that the year 1984 had become a “cypher” for the disastrous reality depicted in the novel. If the dystopian narrative becomes a cypher, it exposes this relation of signification and origin. The cypher is a code, but unlike the sign, it lacks the metonymic dimension of language which enables deferral and shifting of meaning, since its reference is stable (Jakobson 1956). In fact, in comparison to the “cypher,” the social reality of 1983 appears dynamic. It overtakes Orwell’s visions, which remain stable. The representative dimension of the sign and the presumed stability of the origin coincide and make Nineteen Eighty-Four an anchor against which social reality can be measured. Simultaneously, the relation of social reality and the dystopian vision conceives of social reality as in a temporal development, where social reality overtakes and leaves behind the horrors of Orwell’s Oceania. The dystopia functions as society’s future alter ego or even–as in the case of the Spiegel article–as its own past, because social reality has already outpaced Orwell’s dystopia. The fact that social reality–for the authors of the Spiegel article–has already outpaced the fictional horror scenario does not alter the assessment of future, since the future has to be read as a placeholder for the notion of progression, which is the pivotal argument of the dystopian paradigm of interpretation. In this sense, Nineteen Eighty-Four substitutes the idea of the development of the social toward an unbearable future. Nineteen Eighty-Four should not be imagined as the final destination of the development (although the comparisons between social reality and the fictional world at a primary level suggest just that). Rather, it takes the place of social development itself, a figure of thought for the potential alterity of social life  with itself. Similarly, Karl Steinbuch, the expert in information technology who guest authors in Welt, warns that [d]ue to the development of information technology in the present and in the foreseeable future, our image of the world becomes more and more the mirror of something concurrently occurring somewhere  – and constantly less of an image of the world that displays cause and consequence, human behavior and its implications.27

Nineteen Eighty-Four serves as an absent foil so as to make visible the development and (negative) transformations of social reality. In as much as

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Orwell’s dystopia is stable, social reality appears to be in movement toward coincidence with its own dystopian alter ego. Wolfgang Iser has developed the idea of the “doppelgänger” structure of literary fictionality. Literary fictionality, he argues, is an act of doubling through which the human being mirrors herself in the manifold roles of literary fiction. This brings to view the groundlessness of her subjectivity. Especially through keeping both the horizon of social reality and the fictional figure present (unlike for the dreamer, who is taken up in his dream), literary fictionality brings to cognition the inherent emptiness of the subject and simultaneously the subject’s capacity to become the roles she plays. “With literary fictionality, the process of stepping out of and above oneself always retains what has been overstepped, and in this form of doubling we are present to ourselves as our own differential” (Iser 1993, p. 86). Literary fictionality exposes the “constitutive dividedness of human beings” (Iser 1993, p. 84), while the “ecstatic” condition of the human being in fictional roles makes it possible for her to overstep her own boundaries and become aware of herself as a subject.28 In the closing remarks of his book The Fictive and the Imaginary, Iser calls literary fictionality an act of staging: Staging is the indefatigable attempt to confront ourselves with ourselves, which can be done only by playing ourselves. It allows us, by means of simulacra, to lure into shape the fleetingness of the possible and to monitor the continual unfolding of ourselves into possible otherness. We are shifted into ourselves, though this transposition does not make us coincide with what we are able to observe; it simply opens up to us the perceptibility of such self-­ transposing. (Iser 1993, p. 303)

Indeed, it is this confrontation of the social self with its own otherness that distinguishes the dystopian paradigm from the allegoric paradigm. The confrontation with society’s own otherness takes place at diverse levels: first, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a staging of society’s future, one of the possible alternatives to current social reality. It marks a difference from social reality, and this is true also in the case of the Spiegel article, where social reality is conceived of as having surpassed its own future. Second, the temporal difference between social reality and the “vision of the future” makes social reality visible as in movement and transformation. Otherness, here, means the otherness of stability and stasis. The confrontation with society’s own otherness exposes society to itself: as without foundation and

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as dynamic, transformable, and changing. While, as Castoriadis remarks, social reality continuously pretends to be determined and institutionalized, it possesses a second dimension, which is the making of history, the emergence of new social forms: institutionalization. It exists in tension with the already instituted. The dystopian paradigm uncovers this normally hidden dimension of social reality and makes it productive for the political transformation of society. Politics as a conscious re-­articulation (transformation) of social identities (Mouffe 2005, p. 17) can only be thinkable with a conception of the social that acknowledges society’s alterable nature, its institutionalizing dimension. Third, as opposed to other interpretations, the application of Nineteen Eighty-Four to West German society focuses particularly on society’s identity. The social self experiences a destabilization in as much as it turns into its own otherness. This differs, for instance, from the interpretations that create an identity between the fictional world and the Soviet Union. In the latter case, the social identity remains untouched: fiction functions as the (almost) identity of the social other, while in the former case it is the otherness of the social self. The use of Nineteen Eighty-Four as an alternative, dystopian version of social reality is not singular in the context of the new social movements. In Der Atomkrieg vor der Wohnungstür, Susanne Schregel describes the widespread use of dystopian narratives in the peace movement, that imagined the scenario of nuclear explosion in regional contexts. These narratives were heavily based on scientific publications and aimed to make a nuclear war tangible for the individual. It meant to exemplify what a nuclear war would mean for each and every individual in her immediate environment. These narratives were often illustrated with charts and diagrams that indicated the extent of destruction. These visualizations highlighted the menace that radiated from nuclear armament and its “apocalyptic consequences” (Schregel 2011, p. 150). The scenarios made everyone an imaginary target of a nuclear war and transformed observers of international politics into personally affected citizens (Schregel 2011, pp.  139–154). Novels about nuclear war are professionalized narratives of local war scenarios, which draw on and further popularize the genre. Schregel remarks in relation to one of them, a novel by Gudrun Pausewang entitled Die letzten Kinder von Schewenborn (En: The Last Children of Schewenborn), that [n]ot the possibility, but the ability to imagine this annihilation appeared doubtful. It was the aim of the nuclear war novel to jar the imagination and, after all, to make the nuclear war imaginable in the face of the human’s

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limited perceptive capabilities. This connected the nuclear war novel to local nuclear war scenarios of the peace movement. (Schregel 2011, p. 159)

The use of fictional narratives for the purpose of mobilization had precursors in the peace movement, on which the reception of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four could build. The census-boycotters and their media supporters seized upon a prevalent structure of representation through which the addressees were propelled into a state of immediate alarm, but which went hand in hand with the belief in the possibility of political influence at a grassroots level. The personalization of the threat, which made the consequences of social, political, and cultural developments tangible to the individual, recurs in the discourse about data surveillance, as when Der Spiegel writes: Without further ado this conjunction of data [from police checks, book clubs, sports clubs or health insurance, MK] would turn many into suspects who, by pure chance, meet certain criteria which also pertain to a wanted criminal. Unaware, an innocent and completely unsuspicious person gets registered in the police database, and by itself this can be the foundation for new dissensions. … Occasional participation in political demonstrations or in events of groups under surveillance can count as severe prior charges. There, the police not only collect data, they also take photographs. … But ten years later, this photograph can seal an applicant’s fate in public service.29

The regionalization of a global threat turned the peace movement into the largest mass movement of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the scandalization of data surveillance similarly works with the personalization of the threat, turning an expert discourse into a social movement.30 The narrative tactics of the peace movement had already created a social atmosphere in which horror scenarios and narratives of destruction not only spread fear and anxiety, but also the belief in the modifiable nature of society. Threat turned into a motivating force and hence sparked political mobilization. The discourse about Nineteen Eighty-Four combines this mixture of threat and the conceptualization of the world as indeterminate and consequently subject to change. It activates an already instituted paradigm of interpretation so as to benefit from a particular relation of fiction and social reality, a relation which conceives of the literary text and social

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reality as temporally related. The aesthetic paradigm of mobilization represents reality as dynamic and convertible, and effectively urges the recipient to feel responsible for the fate of society. In as much as it creates a reality principle of mobility and political agency, the dystopian paradigm is a means of identitary communication. More important than the topic is the structure of communication, which creates a “chain of equivalence” between the peace movement and census boycott movement. This communicative strategy possesses a recognition value, through which the actors acknowledge the legitimacy of the political concerns. The consensus established between the dystopian paradigm of representation and the reality principle of political commitment creates a community that acknowledges the truth of this relation of representation and “reality” and is hence identitary in nature. Through the dystopian paradigm, the politicized actors of the new social movements recognize each other as sharing a sensual perception of the world. In this sense, it must be read as invoking a particular political identity.

4.3   Résumé The discourse about Nineteen Eighty-Four is a discourse of political mobilization. The scandalization of data surveillance with the help of Nineteen Eighty-Four takes place in the atmosphere of the climax of the peace movement, a politically tense atmosphere with high mobilization rates. In this context, the scandalization of data surveillance makes use of an established pattern of communication among the politicized population which has already been instituted by the peace movement. The dystopian paradigm of mobilization is the cultural expression of a paradigm of meaning (or “reality principle”) in which political activism is coupled with a mistrust of the state’s willingness to serve the average citizen. The mistrust of the state can be thought of as a pivotal element of the new social movements: it could be found in the environmental movement of the late 1970s (Engels 2006, pp. 392–399), the peace movement (Mende and Metzger 2012), and eventually the census boycott movement. Through localizing strategies it created a political culture that gave priority to political activism and the belief in the collective power of non-parliamentary protest. The use of dystopian narratives communicated the urgency and hence legitimacy of the protests to the community of protesters and those sympathetic to their struggles.

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We can speak, with Jacques Rancière, of the creation of a consensus between modes of representation and the sensual experience of the world. The apocalyptic scenarios of the peace and boycott movements gave representation to the experience of the world as threatening, but simultaneously conceptualized the world as subject to political agency. With the apocalypse looming on the horizon, political involvement became a priority in preventing the dystopia from coming true. It is certainly a reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four that had already been prepared by Orwell himself, who wrote in 1949: “I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe (allowing of course for the fact that the book is a satire) that something resembling it could arrive” (Orwell 1968, p. 502). The genre of anti-utopias and horror scenarios generates an attitude toward the world that–despite the seemingly total defenselessness of the individual in the face of the dystopian visions–provokes the political agency of the normal citizen and gives origin to the politics of small scale (Schregel 2011). The census boycott movement and its media supporters make use of this language of mobilization, and hence address a population that identifies with this particular reality principle. Through the use of the same pattern of communication as the peace movement, the boycott movement establishes itself as a moment within the chain of equivalence of the green-­ alternative milieu and hence derives its energy from within this field, although–as I have mentioned earlier–this movement is not exclusive to the milieu but gathers support from beyond the confines of the new social movements. Although this paradigm of interpretation tears down the barriers between institutionalized fiction and social reality, the dystopia is certainly not mistaken for social reality, but turns into the fiction of the future. A fiction, however, that exceeds the limits conventionally set for it by the social institution: symbol, metaphor, and allegory. In the dystopian paradigm of interpretation, fiction becomes a dimension of social reality. It is this trespassing of boundaries that unleashes the novel’s menace. The dystopian paradigm of interpretation brings to bear the effect of doubling as it has been described by Wolfgang Iser in his analysis of the pastoralist eclogues. In the census boycotters’ dystopian media discourse, the relation established between world and fiction is one of the world and its differential. The world, here, appears in the shape of the dystopian narration as its own otherness. The ecstatic position taken up by the fictional world makes visible the groundlessness of social identity and hence its

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indeterminacy. This notion is further emphasized by the temporal dimension of the anti-utopia, which–through its own stability–imagines social reality as dynamic and in movement. Speaking with Castoriadis, the dystopian paradigm of interpretation–paradoxically in opposition to the bleak vision it proposes–restores a notion of human autonomy since it destabilizes the petrified appearance of the social institution. It foregrounds society’s institutionalizing dimension and it is this effect that lends itself to mobilization, since a world that lacks determinacy is subject to human agency.

Notes 1. OED Online, March 2016, s.v. “Big Brother, n.,” entry 2c. http://www. oed.com.331745941.erf.sbb.spk-berlin.de/view/Entry/18848?redirecte dFrom=big+brother& (accessed March 23, 2016). 2. Duden, s.v. “Big Brother, der,” http://www.duden.de/node/802008/ revisions/1602580/view (accessed February 16, 2016). 3. The novel was published in German translation in 1950. 4. Noted by “Ohne Drohgebärde, ohne Angst.” 1983. Spiegel (16): pp. 17–23, April 18, 20. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-14019545.html, 20; also Hubert (1983, pp. 258–259). 5. http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/zensus-debakel-in-denachtzigern-und-bist-du-nicht-willig-a-754320.html. 6. Massing also points toward the close association between the peace and the boycott movements when he speaks, referring to a terminology coined by Josef Isensee, of a movement that in large parts consists of a “‘bio-pacifist’ fundamental opposition” (Massing 1987, pp. 96–97). 7. Burgess, Anthony. 1983. “Von der Ohnmacht unserer Eierköpfe.” Welt, December 31. 8. A contemporary Spiegel article from April 1983 is oblivious to the initiative of the IDK in September 1982, which emphasizes the importance of the date December 1982 for the kick-off of the protest movement (“Ohne Drohgebärde, ohne Angst.” 1983. Der Spiegel (16): pp. 17–23, April 18, quotation on p.  20. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/ d-14019545.html). 9. “Gläserner Mensch.” 1982. Der Spiegel (29): pp. 64–66, July 19. http:// www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-14349954.html. In fact, the topic of data surveillance can be traced even further back in the history of Der Spiegel. There is another article entitled “Gläserner Mensch” from February 1978, and already in 1978 Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is not far away: “Indeed, after the preliminary decision in Hinterzarten [where a confer-

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ence of the interior ministers of the German Länder took place, MK], the Federal Republic of Germany has come a bit closer to Orwell’s nightmare scenario of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Because Maihofer’s law [Maihofer: Federal Minister of the Interior, MK], which most of the ministers responsible for the police wish to deploy as a weapon against terrorism, is supposed to nationally standardize the law for registration and to adapt it to the ‘progressing automation’. After a first reading of the draft, the law professor Wilhelm Steinmüller says: ‘Total surveillance of the individual would be possible’” (“Gläserner Mensch.” 1978. Der Spiegel (7): pp.  32–33, February 13. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/ print/d-40616382.html, quotation on pp. 32–33). 10. “Die neue Welt von 1984.” 11. Weder, Hans. 1984. “Orwell und Zwingli. Betrachtungen zu einem merkwürdigen Zufall.” NZZ, March 24. 12. Steinbuch, Karl. 1983. “Wir haben die Söhne dem Mond geopfert.” Welt, December 31. 13. Furthermore, Orwell is hardly the first to write dystopian novels. Prominent precursors are Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (first published in 1924 in English translation) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (published in 1932). 14. These arguments can be found in Castoriadis (1987) in the subchapters “The Break-Up of the Monad and the Triadic Phase” (pp.  300–308), “The Constitution of Reality” (pp.  308–311), “Sublimation and the Socialization of the Psyche” (pp.  311–316), and “The Social-Historical Content of Sublimation” (pp. 316–320). 15. The distinctions drawn by literary criticism between metaphor, allegory, and symbol (see, e.g., the respective entries in Metzler Literaturlexikon 1990) are of secondary importance for this work, since what is relevant for the question under consideration here is that something is made to stand for something else, which may generally be summarized under the term “metaphor.” 16. Schoeck, Helmut. 1984. “Der Mann und sein verkanntes Werk. Vor 36 Jahren schrieb George Orwell ‘1984’. Was von seinen Visionen wurde bis 1984 Wirklichkeit, was blieb Utopie?” WeltaS, January 1. 17. However, he believes that there is no need to overemphasize this threat. More importantly, there is yet another strand of development in the Western societies of the 1980s which deserves attention. Accordingly, instead of a prophecy, the novel is a description of the past, because the present is characterized not by an abundance of control but by an absence of it. This can be gathered from the treatment of young hackers in the USA, for instance, who are treated with utmost care, “because the geniuses of the nation shall not be offended.” See Schoeck, “Der Mann.”

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18. Bergsdorf, Wolfgang. 1983. “Zweck der Macht ist die Macht. George Orwells Roman ‘1984’ – Prophetie oder Utopie?” Zeit (10), March 4. 19. Ibid. 20. For a description of the development of the concept in the theories of Laclau and Mouffe see New Theories of Discourse by Jacob Torfing (1999, pp.  124–131). In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau and Mouffe ((1985) 2001) did not explicitly develop the “constitutive outside.” However, in their ensuing work both further developed the term, especially in the sense that the dislocations the social develops to cover up its immanent lack can, but need not, be antagonisms. Torfing focuses on Laclau’s developments, while for the further use of the term by Chantal Mouffe see her essay “Politics and the Political” (Mouffe 2005, pp. 14–16). 21. The Western left-intellectuals are here defined as puppets of the Soviet Union, which again dislocates the internal threat to the outside. 22. D/R/S. 1984. “Die Welt hat die ‘Prophezeiung’ Orwells widerlegt. In einem ‘l’ Unità’-Interview formuliert der Generalsekretär der Kommunistischen Partei Italiens, Enrico Berlinguer, seine Vorstellungen von der Zukunft.” FR, February 22. 23. Ibid. 24. Corinna Franz remarks that for the first West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the architect of post-war West Germany, stability, security, and prosperity served as the bulwarks against the “communist seduction” (Franz 2014, pp. 150–152). The patriarchal and authoritarian structures of the Adenauer state can be traced back to the general search for stability (Doering-Manteuffel 1991, pp. 16–17). The paradox that we encounter between Adenauer’s notion of freedom and his authoritarian political style may be explained by his understanding of religion as the guarantor of freedom (Franz 2014, pp. 148–150), in which freedom has to be seen as the freedom to believe in God. Communism was thus the natural antagonist to this conception of freedom. 25. For an overview of the social developments of the 1960s see Hickethier (2003). 26. “Die neue Welt von 1984.” 27. Steinbuch, “Söhne dem Mond.” 28. The notion of doubling has been developed by Iser in the chapter “Renaissance Pastoralism as a Paradigm of Literary Fictionality” (Iser 1993, pp. 22–86, see esp. pp. 79–86). 29. “Die neue Welt von 1984.” 30. See Berlinghoff (2013) for a description of the development of surveillance as a discourse among experts to one that mobilized lay people.

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References Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books. Berlinghoff, Marcel. 2013. Computerisierung und Privatheit  – Historische Perspektiven. APuZ: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 63 (15–16): 14–19. Deutscher Bundestag. 2012. Beschluss des Volkszählungsgesetzes 1983. Web- und Textarchiv. http://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2012/38024038_ kw10_kalender_volkszaehlung/207898. Accessed 16 Feb 2016. Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1987. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press. Doering-Manteuffel, Anselm. 1991. Strukturmerkmale der Kanzlerdemokratie. Der Staat 30 (1): 1–18. Duve, Freimut. 1983. Katalysator gegen den Orwell-Staat. In Die Volkszählung. Rororo aktuell, ed. Jürgen Taeger, 25–30. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Engels, Jens Ivo. 2006. Naturpolitik in der Bundesrepublik. Ideenwelt und politische Verhaltensstile in Naturschutz und Umweltbewegung 1950–1980. Paderborn: Schöningh. Fahlenbrach, Kathrin, and Laura Stapane. 2012. Mediale und visuelle Strategien der Friedensbewegung. In ‘Entrüstet Euch!’ Nuklearkrise, NATO-­ Doppelbeschluss und Friedensbewegung, ed. Christoph Becker-Schaum, Philipp Gassert, Martin Klimke, Wilfried Mausbach, and Marianne Zepp, 229–246. Paderborn: Schöningh. Faulstich, Werner. 2005. Die Anfänge einer neuen Kulturperiode: Der Computer und die digitalen Medien. In Die Kultur der achtziger Jahre. Kulturgeschichte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, ed. Werner Faulstich, 231–245. München: Wilhelm Fink. Franz, Corinna. 2014. ‘Wir wählen die Freiheit!’ Antikommunistisches Denken und politisches Handeln Konrad Adenauers. In ‘Geistige Gefahr’ und ‘Immunisierung der Gesellschaft’. Antikommunismus und politische Kultur in der frühen Bundesrepublik, ed. Stefan Creuzberger, and Dierk Hoffmann, 145–160. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. Gassert, Philipp. 2011. “Viel Lärm um Nichts? Der NATO-Doppelbeschluss als Katalysator gesellschaftlicher Selbstverständigung in der Bundesrepublik.” In Zweiter Kalter Krieg und Friedensbewegung. Der NATO-Doppelbeschluss in deutsch-deutscher und internationaler Perspektive, Philipp Gassert, Tim Geiger, and Hermann Wentker, Instituts für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin und des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Washington, 175–202. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. Herold, Horst. 1980. Polizeiliche Datenverarbeitung und Menschenrechte. Recht und Politik 16 (2): 79–86.

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Hickethier, Knut. 2003. Protestkultur und alternative Lebensformen. In Die Kultur der sechziger Jahre, ed. Werner Faulstich, 11–30. München: Wilhelm Fink. Hubert, Eva. 1983. Politiker fragen  – Bürger antworten nicht! Die Boykottbewegung gegen die Volkszählung. In Die Volkszählung. Rororo aktuell, ed. Jürgen Taeger, 254–266. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Iser, Wolfgang. 1993. The Fictive and the Imaginary. Charting Literary Anthropology. Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jakobson, Roman. 1956. Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances. In The Fundamentals of Language, ed. Roman Jakobson, and Morris Halle, 55–82. The Hague: Mouton & Co. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 1987. Neue soziale Bewegungen: Auf der Suche nach ihrem gemeinsamen Nenner. PVS: Politische Vierteljahresschrift 28 (3): 315–334. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. (1985) 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. 2nd ed. London/New York: Verso. Lemke, Christian. 1999. Neue soziale Bewegungen. In 50 Jahre Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Rahmenbedingungen – Entwicklungen – Perspektiven, ed. Thomas Ellwein and Everhard Holtmann, 440–453. Opladen/Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Massing, Otwin. 1987. Von der Volkszählungsbewegung zur Verrechtlichung oder: Öffentlichkeit, Herrschaftsrationalisierung und Verfahren. In Freiheitssicherung durch Datenschutz, Edition suhrkamp, ed. Harald Hohmann, vol. 1420, 85–109. Frankfurt (M.): Suhrkamp. Mende, Silke, and Birgit Metzger. 2012. Ökopax. Die Umweltbewegung als Erfahrungsraum der Friedensbewegung. In ‘Entrüstet Euch!’ Nuklearkrise, NATO-Doppelbeschluss und Friedensbewegung, ed. Christoph Becker-Schaum, Philipp Gassert, Martin Klimke, Wilfried Mausbach, and Marianne Zepp, 118–134. Paderborn: Schöningh. Metzler Literaturlexikon. Begriffe und Definitionen. 1990. ed. Günther and Irmgard Schweikle. 2nd rev. ed. Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Meyers, Jeffrey, ed. 1975. George Orwell. The Critical Heritage. London/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. Politics and the Political. In On the Political, 8–34. London/New York: Routledge. Orwell, George. 1968. The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. IV. In Front of Your Nose. 1945–1950, ed. Sonia Orwell, and Ian Angus. London: Secker & Warburg. Rancière, Jacques. 2010. The Paradoxes of Political Art. In Dissensus. On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Steve Corcoran, 134–151. London/New York: Continuum.

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Ricoeur, Paul. (1975) 2004. The Rule of Metaphor. The Creation of Meaning in Language. Trans. Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin, and S.J.  John Costello. London/New York: Routledge. Schildt, Axel. 1998. Ende der Ideologien? Politisch-ideologische Strömungen in den 50er Jahren. In Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau. Die westdeutsche Gesellschaft der 50er Jahre, ed. Axel Schildt, and Arnold Sywottek, Rev. ed., 627–635. Bonn: Dietz. Schregel, Susanne. 2011. Der Atomkrieg vor der Wohnungstür. Eine Politikgeschichte der neuen Friedensbewegung in der Bundesrepublik 1970–1985, Historische Politikforschung. Vol. 19. Frankfurt (M.): Campus. Torfing, Jacob. 1999. New Theories of Discourse. Laclau, Mouffe and Žižek. Oxford/Malden: Blackwell. Zepp, Marianne. 2012. Ratio der Angst. Die intellektuellen Grundlagen der Friedensbewegung. In ‘Entrüstet Euch!’ Nuklearkrise, NATO-Doppelbeschluss und Friedensbewegung, ed. Christoph Becker-Schaum, Philipp Gassert, Martin Klimke, Wilfried Mausbach, and Marianne Zepp, 135–150. Paderborn: Schöningh.

CHAPTER 5

The Creation of the Social: Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy

The genocide of the Jews committed during the Nazi period plays a pivotal role in the historical memory of the Federal Republic of Germany. Avishai Margalit and Gabriel Motzkin speak of it as the founding myth of the post-war world, the “constitutive narrative” (Margalit and Motzkin 1997, p.  18) that provides the framework for the moral foundations of the societies that emerged on the same ground touched by the Holocaust (Margalit and Motzkin 1997, pp.  16–18).1 For West Germany, we can diagnose this rationale in its external politics (embedment within the European community, Israel as special responsibility of German politics), but also internal cultural developments such as the strong role the Nazi period plays in school curricula and public commemoration. The German Constitution, the Grundgesetz, in large part attempts to remedy the defects of the Weimar Republic. The political setup of the Weimar Republic made possible the Hitlerian coup d’état and hence the interruption of the social (Zivilisationsbruch, Diner 1988, p. 9) that is symbolized by the Holocaust. The Holocaust disrupted the fundamentals of social togetherness, the trust in the recognition of mutual humaneness (Diner 1988, pp.  7–9). The Holocaust therefore marks a constitutive break that informs (West) German national memory. Margalit and Motzkin speak of the Holocaust as a “negative myth of origin,” which “lends expression to the intuition of culture’s fragility and preliminarity” (Margalit and Motzkin 1997, p. 16). This is an exceptional approach to national identity, since national identity is normally founded © The Author(s) 2020 M. Knapp, Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40086-6_5

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on memories of the “golden age,” of glory and of heroism.2 Despite the fact that the Holocaust has been a controversial myth of origin throughout the history of the Federal Republic of Germany,3 it must be thought of as a new eidos of the social, a new conceptual paradigm that had no models prior to its emergence.4 It emerged as a result of the Holocaust, but not as a necessary and rather as a contingent development. The play The Deputy, written by Rolf Hochhuth and first staged by the stage director Erwin Piscator in Berlin in 1963, marks the beginning of this search for a new national narrative. The staging of The Deputy unleashed the largest theater scandal in West Germany, surpassed only by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Garbage, the City and Death in 1985.5 The play provoked the Catholic Church and its social, political, and cultural hegemony and involved all those interested in the preservation of the post-war social order. It provoked the Catholic Church and its members because it targeted the Pope of the war period, Pope Pius XII, accusing him of having contributed to the genocide because he refused to publicly speak out against Hitler. The Pope, the (fictional) argument goes, preferred political pragmatism to ethical involvement and thus made the Holocaust possible. The second provocation was an aesthetic one, because the documentary style of the play negated its own fictional character and thus claimed to bring reality on stage. In contrast to the a-historical arts production that dominated the 1950s, this was a challenge to conventionalism and thus also to the interpretive models it represented. The play’s supporters demanded the implementation of a new approach to the past and to the past as part of the present: a new political imaginary, one of society and politics united, an imaginary that broke the boundaries established between society and politics, between society and history, and thus re-arranged the social relations of the “old” society so as to create a new imaginary of the social-political-historical. The singular accomplishment of The Deputy in public discourse can be seen in its capacity to make newness and the notion of (social) creation thinkable, of shaking the certainties of a stable continuity of the social. The Deputy and its reception proclaimed the need to re-invent national identity so as to be able to overcome the past. The discourse of the singular event (the Holocaust) that requires a new conceptualization of personal involvement, guilt, and the past-as-the-present establishes a reflexive space in which self-invention and self-alteration question the notion of society as an uninterrupted continuity. Instead, society comes to the fore as the result of individual and collective acts and as capable of re-constituting

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itself. Society-as-fate is rejected in favor of a notion of society-as-­ autonomous. The instituting forces of society are momentarily uncovered and society appears to be subject to human will, rather than constituted by its condition.

5.1   The Deputy in Context The Deputy initiated what came to be known as the “documentary drama,” an aesthetic innovation that lacks precedence, as Bernd Balzer explains: In the history of drama the political play which deals with its own time and context is a rare phenomenon. Not because the playwrights would have a higher estimation of the patina of the past over the problems of their own times, but because only anachronism could provide the necessary protection from the countermeasures of those possibly criticized, the powerful ones. Lessing could not put on stage the priest Goeze, so he created the character of the patriarch in Nathan instead. The critical representation of well-known people in drama not only requires courage, it also depends on a social environment that not only proclaims the freedom of art, but to a large extent guarantees it. (Balzer 1986, p. 38)

Although public discourse variously complained about censoring mechanisms, these could not be located in judicial or political institutions, but came from within society, voices that critiqued the play as lacking artistry and called for boycotts. These, however, could not prevent the play from being performed. The institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany guaranteed the freedom of the arts, and in the case of the performance of this play, West Germany was capable of living up to its constitutionally inscribed principles. The play was staged by Erwin Piscator, an eminent authority in the field of political theater of the 1920s, but who experienced difficulties in establishing himself in the theater of the Adenauer era after his return from exile in the USA.6 With The Deputy, Piscator experienced his comeback and initiated the genre of “documentary theater.” In his late work he distanced himself from the term “political theater,” which had been explicitly conceptualized as a worker’s theater, and characterized the “documentary theater” as Bekenntnistheater (confessional theater). He repudiated a decidedly Marxist approach and rearranged the interventionist theater for

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the needs of the economically prosperous society of post-war Germany. The play was staged in 1963 at the Freie Volksbühne Berlin where Piscator was director from 1962. At the same time as the play’s premiere, it was published as a text, in order to provide the full text that had been radically abridged by Piscator so as to be able to perform it in one evening. Although Piscator had previously worked with documentary material in order to actualize and politicize classic dramatic texts, or as educational material for the worker’s theater, Rolf Hochhuth carried this element to a new extreme insofar as large parts of the dramatic text comprised documentary material. Hochhuth thus provided Piscator with a text that worked well with Piscator’s previous theater work, yet proved an innovation—transforming the documentary material into an aesthetic principle—and thus went far beyond Piscator’s previous “political theater.”7 Although The Deputy is generally attributed to its author Hochhuth, we can here witness the beginning of the director’s theater, in which the play’s text is subjected to collective reworking by the stage director and the actors. The radically abridged version of the play presented on stage is witness to Piscator’s new interpretation of the stage director’s role as a co-­ producer of the text and not merely its executor (a view prevailing in the 1950s) (Wannemacher 2004, pp. 232–240). The success of The Deputy thus has to be ascribed to both Hochhuth and Piscator. The play not only built on Piscator’s experience with “political theater” but also fitted well with his reputation and interventionist ambitions. The staging of the play by the well-known stage director Piscator generated synergies without which the first work of the unknown writer Hochhuth would have remained an unknown work by an unknown author. In fact, the publication of the play’s text was stopped by the publishing house Rütten & Loening, which had first accepted the play for publication, fearing its Catholic readership. The text was then forwarded to the publishing house Rowohlt, which released the play’s text at the same time as the premiere in Berlin in 1963. The refusal of Rütten & Loening to publish the play was an act of self-censorship, and shows that it was recognized as a potential controversy prior to its staging. Even though the constitution guaranteed freedom of the arts, society was still capable of exerting implicit pressures in order to suppress potentially dangerous works of art. Piscator had asked the public not to applaud at the end of the performance. Despite this, the play provoked “an emotional, persistent, and cordial applause”8 at the premiere, as one critic remarked. Rumors of

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the scandalous nature of the play that had previously made the rounds did not negatively impact on the play’s first audience, who were apparently moved by it. Descriptions of the premiere only speak of a few interjections from the audience during a critical scene with the Pope character, while otherwise it remained quiet: “The protest could not prevail.”9 Nonetheless, the public debate developed into the largest controversy of the young republic and lasted for several months. It is significant that contributions to the debate were not only made by established theater critics. Members of both churches received publicized attention as well as other figures from public life, such as Albert Schweitzer and the author and environmental campaigner Carl Amery. Some of the contributors to the debate had not seen the play on stage, but referred to the published text of the drama. This demonstrates that for the purposes of this dispute, the theatrical medium is of secondary importance to the aesthetics inscribed in the text. For this reason the controversy could become a national topic, with participation in the debate not confined to attendance of the performance in Berlin. The printed materiality of the play’s text ensured the play’s widespread distribution and accessibility, while the reduction to the linguistic medium does not inhibit the social appropriation of its fictional dimension. The play’s fictionality is not bound to its intended medium, but inscribed in the mode of the genre. Since the play’s aesthetics are inscribed in the text, the aspect of performance is of secondary importance.10 Although the meaning of a play may change with its staging, its meaning is not bound by the staging, but can also emerge from the written text. The performance of a dramatic text is described by Peter M. Boenisch as a “hypermedium,” because it doubles the aesthetic speech act and therefore intensifies the processing function of the original medium (text in the case of The Deputy). Theater had an intensifying effect on the development of media technologies, training the audiences in their ability to consume novel media. The turn toward performativity in theater is an adaptation of theater to the electronic present, which is in the process of replacing written culture (Boenisch 2003). In the case of The Deputy, which is still firmly grounded in the aesthetics of written culture, this means that the theatrical aspect of the play intensifies and stabilizes the signifying dimension of the underlying literary text. But the basis for interpretation remains the printed version of the play.11 Of the eighty-one contributions that can be found in my sample, only fifty-one found their way into the analysis. These are the contributions

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that constitute the instantaneous controversy that resulted from the play’s performance staged by Erwin Piscator in Berlin and which showed the dividing line between both fields with the greatest clarity. The controversy was vehement from the day of the premiere on February 20, 1963 to the end of May 1963 and then slowly subsided in June 1963. Afterwards, the material only witnessed scattered instances of testimonies, such as Albert Schweitzer’s at the end of September 1963. The other material in my sample comprises descriptions of performances of the play in London, Basel, Paris, New  York, Vienna, and Tel Aviv, performances in other German cities, descriptions of the international echo of the German controversy, and a few contributions that can be subsumed under the header “Miscellaneous.” The descriptions of performances abroad and in other German cities do not markedly contribute to the controversy because they generally refrain from formulating a position with regard to society, but function primarily as a means of information or of judging the particular quality of the performance under consideration. Of the fifty-one contributions to the analysis, the publishing media mostly complies with the criteria established in my methodology. Additionally, contributions in Evangelischer Literaturbeobachter12 and the Israel-Forum13 were added to the list.

5.2   The Aesthetics of Immediacy Hochhuth’s drama claims that Pope Pius XII could have prevented the death of many Jews if he had openly condemned the Hitler regime. According to Hochhuth, he was guilty by non-involvement. The political declaration is turned into the antidote to crimes against humanity, and political uninvolvement is framed in a causal relationship to the genocide. But Hochhuth’s The Deputy provokes on two fronts: on a primary level it attacked Catholicism as an institution, which was hegemonic in West Germany at the time. And second, it irritated on a more subtle level of aesthetic politics. It broke with the conventions of post-war theater, which can be characterized as unpolitical and mythologizing in the sense that it concentrated on the a-historical staging of classics (Hickethier 2002). The theater of universal timelessness was countered by particular, time-bound theater, which proclaimed a politicization of the stage. The controversy is structured by a clear antagonistic divide. While for the play’s opponents the Pope’s absent condemnation of the Nazis is a matter of verity or falsity, for the play’s supporters, the dilemma in which

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the Pope decides for political pragmatism and against ethical commitment is a metaphor for collective guilt in the face of the Holocaust. The dividing line is drawn between a literal and a metaphorical reading of the play— either as a distortion of the truth and defamation of a historical person, or as a new route to understanding the Holocaust, which involves each and everyone. Political pragmatism becomes the buzzword of the Pope’s defense. A contribution in FAZ paraphrases a much publicized statement given by Father Leiber, the former secretary of the Pope. His statement is ascribed particular importance in the public debate, because he functions as a witness to the Pope’s pure motivations. This sets the agenda of the Pope’s defense: But principally, Father Leiber points out that the Holy See had to consider the damages inflicted by a public protest in view of ‘Hitler’s frenzied impulse for revenge’. ‘In mid 1942 the Dutch bishops had bravely raised their voice against the persecution of the Jews. The reaction was not a long time coming. Wasn’t it then better to keep silent and save human lives?’ The thesis proposed by Hochhuth’s play, that a papal protest would have swayed Hitler to stop the persecution of Jews, belongs to the ‘realm of fantasy’. In this judgment, Father Leiber declares, he fully agrees with the best Jewish connoisseur of these questions, Leon Poliakov.14

Leiber calls upon Leon Poliakov, French Jewish historian and leading authority in research on the history of anti-Semitism. Poliakov’s opinion is used to legitimate Leiber’s defense of the Pope and provide him with moral integrity. However, Poliakov as moral authority in this question is ambivalent, since Hochhuth’s charges against the Pope were first voiced by Poliakov himself in 1950: “It is painful to have to state that at the time when gas chambers and crematoria were operating day and night, the high spiritual authority of the Vatican did not find it necessary to make a clear and solemn protest that would have echoed through the world” (Poliakov 1950, p.  443). In 1963, however, Poliakov turned away from the claim and backed the defendants of the Pope.15 Another reproach against The Deputy is added by Msgr. Erich Klausener, whose speech is reported thus: Klausener accuses the author of mingling historical figures with figures of his fantasy in his play. Since the historical figures are additionally depicted in situations that are invented only by the author, the spectator no longer

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knows where history ends and Hochhuth’s fantasy begins. ‘This does not contribute to contemporary history, but fabricates legends.’16

The fact that the journalistic articles paraphrase or quote declarations made by others does not impede their efficacy as contributions to the debate. As members of the church, their declarations have the authority to influence the opinions of the journalists. The journalists retreat behind the churchmen’s declarations, covertly speaking through them. They back up their position with the power of the institution. The paradigm applied to the play by the Pope’s defendants is a paradigm that speaks in terms of truth. The play is assessed as a factual document that has to be proven right or wrong. The interpreters therefore call upon the social authorities from science and the church institutions to reject the truth value of Hochhuth’s play. The immediacy feigned by the documentary character of the drama confuses its reception as a fiction. It is assessed according to a standard of evaluation extrinsic to fiction by the church witnesses and thus inserted into the frame of reference of historical accuracy. This interpretation ignores the fact that the play has been situated within the institution of the arts, which demands the application of a different set of rules. The (voluntary or involuntary) misreading of the play as a historical account already points toward the friction that Hochhuth’s play reveals: The Deputy balances on the brink between fact and fiction, between the appearance of truth and the rules applicable to the field of fiction. It mimes the framework of historiography, while it is firmly set in the institution of aesthetic fiction. It disrupts conventional modes of representing social reality and thus challenges a different mode of reception. As an aesthetic innovation, The Deputy incorporates its own misunderstanding. The introduction of a new aesthetics intervenes in the conventions of reception and produces a group of recipients unable and unwilling to adapt to the new aesthetic representation of social reality. By questioning the particular representation of the Pope by The Deputy, these critics also question the legitimacy of historical immediacy within fiction. Fiction, these contributions claim, cannot be concrete and particular but has to interrupt the referential function of speech so as to be fictional. This line of argument is a defense and continuation of the paradigm of art (Rancière) prevalent in the theater of the 1950s. According to Knut Hickethier, the 1950s theater was characterized by a continuity of personnel from the Nazi period and aesthetically dominated by the a-historical

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staging of classical texts. Performing classical drama was designed to give the theater directors an impression of innocence: It has often been assumed that many theater makers’ fear to be preoccupied with their own past and the question as to what they thought of the ‘Third Reich’ led to a thirst for classical texts. By staging the classics after 1945, the theater makers legitimized their assertion that they had been allegedly ‘unpolitical’ prior to 1945. (Hickethier 2002, p. 44)

A paradigmatic example for this practice is the actor-manager and director Gustaf Gründgens, who could look back on a successful professional history during National Socialism, but who continued work in the post-war period without interruption. In the manifesto he published in 1952 (Düsseldorfer Manifest), Gründgens defines authenticity to the text as the principle for the drama of his time (Hickethier 2002, p.  44), and as Dorothea Kraus adds, progressive stage directors such as Fritz Kortner and the Brechtian Harry Buckwitz also subscribed to this aesthetic principle (Kraus 2007, p. 64). Classical humanism was meant to contribute to the democratic education of the German population in the spirit of timeless intellectuality. Political actuality was not a part of this aesthetic principle. On the contrary, the unpolitical and a-historical adaptation of the classical texts promised a “return to normality” (Kraus 2007, p. 56) of the most recent past. Not only the verbal composition, but also the means of portrayal were widely stylized and anti-illusionistic. This accentuated the timeless allegorical character of the events. The allegorical character especially stressed the sign character of theater, above all, through the almost religious-submissive emphasis on the poet’s words. (Kraus 2007, p. 59)

Theater was directed at the abstract and universal, and thus withdrew from concrete particularity and present responsibility for the contemporary past.17 The countercurrent of this evasive classicism in the 1950s, the political theater of authors such as Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch, exhibited the same structure of universality. Hickethier speaks of it as “verklärende[s] Parabeltheater” (transfiguring parable theater) (Hickethier 2002, p. 47). The allegorical nature of its aesthetic representation sidestepped the concrete reference and remained vague. Although a figure like Fritz Kortner

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might be thought of as a precursor to the revitalized drama of the 1960s, his work could not break the dominance of figures such as Gründgens and Sellner (Hickethier 2002, pp. 49–50). Questioning The Deputy on account of its realism must therefore be read as an affirmation of the aesthetic and social status quo. If the “authentic” mise-en-scène of the classical text meant evading the need to face historical guilt, contesting aesthetic realism meant refusing the impetus to get involved in questions of guilt. This position is refuted by the play’s supporters. To show this I need to quote extensively from the Evangelischer Literaturbeobachter. Its lengthy argument stands in exemplary fashion for the emerging discourse of a collective guilt amassed by a silent population. God’s deputy (the Pope) turns into everyone’s deputy: We have to concede to the author the notion of entitlement, that he, the young man, asks the old ones: why did you refrain from resistance, why did you not even resist verbally, which would have been a deed at the time? With respect to this question, however, by no means only the Catholic church has to repent. … The Roman Catholic Carl Amery has brought the question to the heart of the matter when he demonstrated that Pius had to act like this, because German Catholicism’s time had come for surrender. Who would have followed the voice of the Holy Father? In his play, Hochhuth gives a convincing reply, which is adequate to push forward the collective advancement of all Christians: it is always just individuals who defy evil ’till the open abyss of their own doom. The life journey of the martyr and Jesuit priest Riccardo Fontana is the leitmotif of Hochhuth’s play; everything else is decorum.18

Contrary to the importance of the factual figure of the Pope in the arguments of the Pope’s defendants, this interpretation foregrounds the fictional figure Riccardo Fontana. It reads the figures as locked in a text-internal signifying relationship, in which the Pope represents the pursuit of interests, while Riccardo Fontana represents ethical commitment. The figures become metaphors of values and principles of action. We can here recognize the aesthetic principle of metaphor as it has been described in the chapter on Bergman’s The Silence. This critic firmly roots the play in the institution of aesthetic fiction, which interrupts the world reference. What distinguishes this interpretation from the secular paradigm of the interpretation of The Silence is the element of proximity evoked by the aesthetics of documentation. From this angle, the documentary character of the play becomes a stylistic means of representing social reality, a means

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of creating an aesthetic effect. The Deputy becomes a document of dismay. The paradigm of humanistic classicism of the 1950s is countered by a paradigm of involvement. Personal involvement in the drama directly refers to the question of complicity, as Joachim Kaiser remarks in SZ.19 This personal involvement is further explained by a participant in an event: In the discussion, a young man (who had previously introduced himself as a worker in youth welfare) said, that the most impressive aspect of the ‘Deputy’ is that it is dealing with historical figures. The spectator cannot escape into a distance, which is normally facilitated by the anonymity of invented figures. Hochhuth calls upon the spectator to follow the thoughts, to submit to the question, how he would have behaved in place of the Pope, faced with the persecution of Jews. Because to this day everyone is confronted over and over with decisions of this kind. Identification was consistently confirmed in the discussion, right up to the sentence: ‘Everyone of us was Pope, everyone of us was bishop.’20

Personal involvement is generated specifically by the aesthetic principle of historic particularity, while the documentary character of the play is not taken as a marker for its truth value. While the play’s opponents believe that the play fails as an artwork because it creates a feeling of proximity to the historical context, the play’s supporters consider this characteristic its particular challenge to the audience. Concrete particularity generates an immediacy which refers back to the recipient’s emotional involvement. At a panel discussion Rolf Hochhuth explains how his commitment to this idea emerged: “[Hochhuth] related, that friends had advised him not to make the Pope appear, maybe even not to identify him by his name, but to call him ‘master’. He, however, had deemed concreteness important and stylization a step towards non-commitment.”21 Concreteness is a means of forcing the recipient to confront herself. The structures of reception that encounter each other in the dispute appear as a fundamental opposition: intellectualism is opposed to bewilderment; a focus on subjectivity replaces the notion of objectivity. The perspective switches from distanced observation to the dissolution of the subject being represented as the recipient identifies with the events on stage. Aesthetically, the participant in the discussion reminds us, this is achieved by concreteness and particularity, by historical closeness as opposed to mythical distance. The documentary character of the play is a

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stylistic device. By taking the play seriously as a fictional work of art, realism surfaces as a means of generating closeness to the events on stage. Embedded in its social context, the play opposes the conventional regime of writing. In his analysis of the development of the topic Geschichtsaufarbeitung (historical reappraisal) in West German theater, Klaus von Schilling criticizes The Deputy for a closed structure which does not transcend conventional aesthetics and is thus incapable of aesthetically representing the Holocaust. If signification became questionable after the Holocaust, the production of signification and representation had to be reconsidered and be reflexively put into play by theater.22 The Deputy, Schilling claims, fails in that task. It is still bound by traditional bourgeois aesthetics that conceive of the recipient as a beholder and not as an active participant in the performance (Schilling 2001, pp. 173–195). Schilling here neglects The Deputy’s capacity to unsettle the ways of seeing the world (differently). If we follow Schilling, the closed structure of the play means a continuation of the bourgeois aesthetics that survived the Holocaust. His methodology proceeds from an interpretation of the text which conceals its own historicity, and he is thus incapable of seeing the play’s contemporary reception context. Only if we approach the play through its reception as an empirical event can we perceive the break it introduced into the contemporary regime of writing. The Rancièrean “regime of writing” conceptualizes the relation of the arts and social reality as a particular aesthetic mode of representing social reality. While the belles-lettres disregarded style and prioritized plot, the development of modern literature reorganized the order of representation and proposed the equality of the sign within the text. Similarly, the regime of writing proposed by documentary theater (which is of course different to the kind of realism of Flaubert to which Rancière refers) disrupts the escapist representation of social reality associated with the “universal truth of the classics,” and proposes a representation of social reality requiring emotional involvement. The immediacy of documentary aesthetics breaks the barriers established between beholder and play, and thus between beholder and social reality, which is immediately invoked on stage. In as much as the play bridges the distance between fiction and social reality, it politicizes the relation between spectator and stage and conversely politicizes the relation of individual and society. The claim made by the play’s opponents that it resembles more of a polemic than an artwork should be considered a delegitimizing attempt, undermining Hochhuth/ Piscator’s claim that art turns into a medium of politics.23 If a paradigm of

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writing is a specific mode of representing social reality, it also gives expression to a particular way of relating to social reality. Flaubert’s “democratic” writing refers to the transformation of social relations, the leveling of hierarchies between status groups. Similarly, the immediacy of documentary theater proposes a different relation of individual and society—or of individual in society: the individual as a responsible (and political) agent within society. Although the image of history that is proposed here appears as a recurrence of idealism, in which the human being is an autonomous, moral being (although in the face of and despite an evil world, as Bernd Balzer (1986, pp. 39–42) remarks), it differs from idealism in the sense that ethical concerns become politicized. The boundaries of politics experience a dissolution and become a social principle.

5.3   Political Commitment The question of the potency of the public statement is the key element of the dispute. Giving a statement, taking a stand on what is going on in the social world, is turned into a political act of primary importance, a political act that decides on the fate of a nation, a state, or any other political entity. Stellung beziehen, which means taking a stand on social and political issues, becomes the key term of the debate. The emphasis placed upon the political statement is provocative because it provides a new narrative of the Nazi period. If in the 1950s the social narrative shifted responsibility for the genocide to Hitler and the institutions that executed his politics, the proposed narrative redistributes responsibility to include everyone who remained passive in the face of the atrocities committed. Passivity meant silent acquiescence and therefore the collective guilt of all those who did not actively oppose the terror regime. Paradigmatically, this is put in a nutshell by a contributor in Israel-Forum: It is a welcome sign that the author of the now controversial play intends to reveal the roots that nourished the most terrifying incident of the twentieth century. What has happened cannot be portrayed with words – and most say: I did not want this and wash their hands of it. But they did contributed in putting things on the right track, over which drove the train and dumped its freight in Auschwitz. It is not our fault, after all – so they say – that the train could depart. So the tormenting question remains: How could this happen?24

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Hochhuth’s narrative of the Holocaust is one of the denial of assistance, pragmatic politics, and indifference. It is a discourse that was introduced by the philosopher Karl Jaspers in 1946 with the publication of a series of lectures under the title Die Schuldfrage (Jaspers 1946, En: The Question of German Guilt). Of particular importance for the Hochhuth controversy is Jasper’s differentiation of metaphysical guilt as opposed to juridical, political, and moral guilt. Metaphysical guilt emerges from evading the principle of solidarity and from not preventing violence. Metaphysical guilt is the guilt which results from passivity and it is subjected to God’s judgment, since it is the guilt of non-intervention (Jaspers 1946, pp.  63–72; also Agazzi 2013, p.  302). While the guilt discourse was overridden by society’s escapism in the 1950s, in the early 1960s several events created the breeding ground for a resurrection of the discourse. The second half of the 1950s witnessed an increase in trials of Nazi perpetrators (Wittmann 2002, p. 349), and the General State Attorney of the federal state of Hesse, Fritz Bauer, had been preparing the large Auschwitz trials of the early 1960s since at least 1958 (Wittmann 2002, p.  346). The final version of the indictment was announced on April 16, 1963 (Wittmann 2002, p. 347), just two months after the premiere of Hochhuth’s The Deputy.25 Additionally, the Eichmann trial had taken place in Jerusalem in 1961, an event that had a significant effect on the West German public, even before Hannah Arendt’s publication of the German translation of Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1964 (Arendt (1964) 1978). What distinguished these trials from those of former Nazi trials was the presence of victims, whose experience gained visibility through the trials and was hard to bear for the West German public (Karstedt 2009, pp. 34–35). In her lecture “Persönliche Verantwortung in der Diktatur” (En: “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship”) delivered in 1964 and 1965, Hannah Arendt continued the guilt discourse and sided with Hochhuth (Arendt 1991, pp. 11–12). Her own thoughts, about the need to be able to make judgments independent of the ruling moral and political order, echo the discourse under discussion here. The Deputy was embedded in an already existing discourse about guilt and responsibility with respect to the Nazi atrocities, which had, however, lived more of an intellectual existence prior to the play’s staging. The Deputy in fact popularized the discourse. If these events might be called the content dimension of social transformation, they are accompanied by an aesthetic departure, which

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has already been addressed in the chapter on Bergman’s The Silence. The wake-up call for an involved literature and the Oberhausener Manifest find an equivalent in the dramatic movements of Fluxus, Happenings, and Pop Art, which announce themselves in the early 1960s. Although these art forms represented the performative tendencies of the visual arts, they substantially influenced the transformation of the notion of theater and the stage in the 1960s: “Located at the interface of visual arts and theater, this current also influenced political and performative tendencies in contemporary drama” (Klessinger 2015, p. 107). Wolf Vostell’s influential theater happening In Ulm, um Ulm und um Ulm herum was only performed in 1964, but it had its beginnings in the USA and Europe from the late 1950s.26 “The Happening movement’s mission demanded that the boundary between art and life be erased: Everyday tasks were dramatized and exposed” (Klessinger 2015, p. 107).27 In a similar manner as documentary theater, performance art aimed to de-differentiate art and social reality, and to expose social reality as a performance and art as an extension of social reality. Across art forms, a reorganization of aesthetic (re-)presentation and social reality—the regime of meaning, or of the reality principle—took place. Art was conceptualized as a continuation of social reality and the recipient was required to involve herself in the happening of the artistic event, whether in literature, film, theater, or visual arts (in the shape of performance art). The aesthetic movement transformed the recipient’s approach to the artwork, which, due to its aesthetics of proximity and immediacy, stood for social reality. While in the “mimetic” paradigm of art/interpretation, the artwork’s content metaphorically referred to social reality, in the aesthetics of political commitment, the medium-as-such metaphorically stands for social reality. What is subject to scrutiny is not the meaning of the world, but the recipient’s relation to the world. The aesthetics of political commitment reorganized the recipient’s perception from a focus on meaning/signification to a focus on the relation of self and society. The development of a paradigm of interpretation which is capable of conceiving of The Deputy as a meaningful work of art and not as failed historical documentation is further given expression in this description of a public discussion of the play: And yet, something very important arose [from the discussion, MK]. One recognized that, for the first time, this strident and controversial play

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touched a nerve that indicated just how painful the so-called process of coping with history was supposed to be. There was somebody who did not engage in a superficial redemption, but sought to analyze, with an angry consciousness, one part of this past. There was one who left aside the allegoric non-commitment, which has become customary in dealing with such themes, and called out people, places, proceedings by name. He has ‘induced an event, not a sensation’. … Three hours, in which the highly charged atmosphere conveyed to the audience how much this unresolved past continues to be present, even in the future. But when the moderator attempted to smooth out too much, someone, a Jewish citizen, said the sentence: ‘[Dealing with, MK] such a topic is not possible without emotions. The lethargy of the heart is, after all, the most important reason why this topic is under discussion today.’28

The excerpt demonstrates that anger and dismay at political indifference demand involvement and concern. Ethical responsibility is rededicated as a political act. Personal responsibility becomes the means of overcoming the past.29 Involvement in the happenings of the play refers to involvement in and concern for society’s history, present, and future. Hochhuth’s supporters do not claim knowledge or understanding about what happened as a primary necessity for dealing with the past. They demand a transformed approach to social reality; they demand alignment and partisanship—even in the absence of complete knowledge of the details. Furthermore, the dispute turns the statement into an act. In an interview given to FAZ, Heinrich Grüber, Protestant theologian and opponent of the Nazi regime, claims: And yet, it is only important what the Vatican did and expressed loudly and clearly for the whole world to see and hear. A Catholic in the most remote village thought and did what he heard from the Vatican. Condemning the Nazi regime could not depend solely on confidential protests and secret documents.30

Grüber acknowledges the power of the word, and especially the word of the Pope as moral, and not merely political, authority. Grüber further adds: “Those who remain silent for diplomatic reasons and spare themselves have no right to speak of Jesus’ succession.”31 If the legitimacy of the church is based on the function of moral guidance, it has to act not as a political institution, but according to its own standards. Grüber refers to

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Jesus in order to highlight that publicly standing up against the violation of human integrity is a fundamental Christian value. Pragmatism, the political principle preferred by the Pope, is denied status as a principle and redefined as an interest, which ethically ranks below the principle. While a principle is charged with ethical concerns, an interest primarily serves one’s own group. In the face of the widespread toleration of the Nazi atrocities by the German population, the Pope’s principle of diplomatic pragmatism appears as a failure. This thought is seconded by Carl Amery in a contribution in SZ: The voice of the church is only crucial to a minority. This minority will be smaller, the more drastically the church turns against its own mundane vital interests. In the conflict between precept and interest, interest will always prevail. Rome’s wisdom in the course of the centuries lay, if nothing else, in never forgetting this circumstance. There can come, however – Hochhuth says so, and so we have to say, if we are serious – times and situations, in which precept and interest have to confront one another. Such situations sort the wheat from the chaff. Whoever strives against this separation, i.e. strives against it in the professed interest of the church, struggles on the wrong frontline.32

Ethical considerations, especially of social, political, and cultural authorities, are reformulated as political acts because they impact on society, while diplomatic pragmatism is displayed as another term for ethical collapse in the face of the Holocaust. Favoring the former path of political responsiveness over the latter means figuring an alternative to the past, proposing a different vision of social doing. Social doing is one dimension of what Castoriadis terms the ensemblist-­ identitary logics of the social institution. It refers to the particular ways that a society does things, a web—or a matrix—of institutionalized acts that relate to the imaginary significations of a society. Institutionalization provides social doing with an appearance of stability and “naturalness” (Castoriadis 1987, pp. 260–272). The critique of the Pope’s pragmatism is a means of destabilizing the habitual ways of doing politics, so as to be able to introduce another way of political doing into the ruptured matrix of social doing. It cancels the notion of naturalness so as to insert a new way of social doing into the gaps of signification that come into existence through destabilization.

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Opinion ceases to belong to the individual’s private sphere. It becomes public and hence political: politics with Rancière “consists of calling the social/political, private/public divide into question” (Rancière 2004, p.  7). Politics means transforming the common ground of the social, transforming the order of the visible and sayable, and introducing onto the “common stage” assumptions that were previously considered private. In the Hochhuth debate, the ethical relation between the individual and her consciousness becomes a public concern. The statement, the voice, the word are the means of making the relation between the individual and her consciousness public and political—even in the view of utter impotence, as Carl Amery notes in another contribution: It would have done good to Hochhuth’s dramatic composition (in the Christian sense), had he committed to the ultimate borderline situation: to the situation of total impotence, in which German Christianity found itself at the time – and in which they still would have been obliged to stand by the side of the last Jew gassed in Auschwitz.33

The discourse about the power and importance of partiality is thus also a discourse about a restructuring of the political: a democratization of politics.34 Castoriadis remarks that the political is the (partial) visibility of society’s forces of institutionalization to itself. In politics, the transformation of society becomes institutionalized and subject to human will (Castoriadis 1988, p. 93). However, when the ethical declaration becomes a political act, this is not only a political act as such but a transformation of the notion of politics in general, because it redefines what politics means. Politics itself becomes subject to transformation, and it is from here that we can speak of a transformation of the political imaginary.35 Politics ceases to be limited to a few “experts” and the institutions in which they operate, but involves each and everyone. The simple personal opinion is defined as a political act: the political imaginary experiences a “democratization” and the dissolution of boundaries. The social and political merge into a correspondence, which emphasizes the social as instituting, instead of as instituted. The subjection of the social to the principle of politics makes visible the magmatic dimension of the social and shows society its capacity for transformation. This takes place in light of, and as a reaction to, the political culture of the 1950s and early 1960s in West Germany, which has been variously

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described as an “authoritarian state” (Zoll 1999; Schissler 1978) and a “culture of subordination” (Turek 1989, p. 234). It consisted of a strong bureaucracy and legal institutions, but lacked a participatory nature (Schissler 1978, pp. 160–163). Beyer and Holtmann add, with respect to the years between 1945 and 1950, that in many cases the post-war period must be considered a period of transition, and what is generally interpreted as political apathy should rather be seen in the light of an active refusal of politics (Beyer and Holtmann 1987, p. 149). Although this is stated in relation to the second half of the 1940s, the cultural break with this “period of transition,” I believe, does not take place until the 1960s. The West German citizens of the 1950s—although they respected the democratic institutions in the post-war era in contradistinction to the Weimar Republic (Schildt 1998, pp.  627–629)—withdrew from the sphere of politics into the sphere of privacy (Schildt 1998, p. 631). Political commitment consisted in delegating political power to the professional politicians, which was convenient for the Adenauer administration and generally in accordance with a conservative notion of politics, as Kurt Lenk points out: Although his [Adenauer’s, MK] politics were clearly founded on a constitutional order, he strove to secure and consolidate a rule of the elites, for the political neutralization of conflicts of interests in society as a whole, for ‘de-­ ideologizing’ the public and for the politics, as well as the reinforcement, of the state’s executive agencies by rejecting demands and functions of social welfare. (Lenk 1998, pp. 636–637)

The strength of conservatism during the 1950s may be explained by a political culture that welcomed the rule of elites preferred by conservatism and which otherwise did not ask for further engagement with political issues. This mode of governance fits well with the expectations of a population whose major concern was economic stability. As long as the state was able to provide rising living standards—and the Wirtschaftswunder, the economic miracle of the 1950s, delivered—people were content with the way they were ruled. This changed when economic needs were saturated and gave rise to new expectations, which the political status quo was suddenly unable to fulfill (Schissler 1978, pp. 162–166). At the beginning of the 1960s, the first symptoms of the gap between provisions made by the political system and expectations can be witnessed. The Deputy, and the controversy it gave rise to, crucially intervened in social dissonance in

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as much as it proposed a political imaginary that highlighted the autonomous nature of the social and the active role of the citizen within it. Zoll (1999), Turek (1989), and Schissler (1978) all identify a change in the political culture of the 1960s, which changed from a passive delegation of democratic rights to participatory democracy. The discourse initiated by The Deputy thus shows that the play and the discourse are not primarily oriented toward the past but rather the present in light of the past. When it comes to evaluating the impact of The Deputy on the social reality of the 1960s and onward, what becomes clear are the limitations of an approach to works of art that attempts to draw inferences about the relation of art and society from direct interpretations of the text. It shows the limitations of a reception that posits the literary scholar as the paradigmatic recipient. Contrary to the requirements for a successful process of coming to terms with the past that has been postulated by Klaus von Schilling (2001), the public discourse under consideration in this case study does not ask primarily for an intellectual assessment of the structural conditions that made fascism and the Holocaust possible. It deals with the structures of individual involvement and guilt. Instead of rationally understanding the past, the discourse is oriented at restructuring emotional patterns vis-à-vis the social and thus takes a different route to accounting for the past than the one demanded by Schilling.36 This case shows that scholars such as Schilling approach historical reworking with a normative model of what reworking entails and are hence blind to the contingent routes this might take. It uncovers the limitations of a methodology that is in need of constructs such as “audience expectations,” in which a particular approach to a work of art is presumed. This is not only a-historical and neglects the particular modalities of reception, but also bypasses the role played by “society” in the process of reception.

5.4   The Presence of the Past While the 1950s had been under the influence of the stabilization of the economic situation and the reconstitution of day-to-day life, in the early 1960s we can witness what Brigitte Marschall calls the “power of the suppressed” (Marschall 2010, p.  31)—a return of what had been deemed overcome. The Deputy revives the past so as to express a “critique of the concealment, the lies, the distortion of history” (Marschall 2010, p. 18). The documentary character of the play introduces the past into the present and pretends to make it tangible. It proposes rethinking the past as

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unfinished. Through the stylistic device of historical documentation, the drama stages history as available to the present. The clear distinction between past, present, and future is torn down so that the boundaries between temporal modalities cease to be effective. The dispute about fact and falsity described above is subtextually crossed by the disclosure of the availability of the past in and for the present. When Hochhuth’s supporters and their opponents engage in a struggle of empirically unprovable theses, history unfolds as subject to its own narrative. The narrative of the past in the present determines the present perception of the past. When subjected to the plasticity of narrative, the past is molded by the present. Historical truth, the dialectics of this dispute shows, will never be neutral, but always subject to the perspective through which we focus history. Nowhere in the discourse under consideration is this more explicit than in a publicly staged exchange between Hochhuth and Wilhelm Alff.37 The notion of a universal and impartial truth, in which Alff believes, is questioned by Hochhuth, who affirmatively quotes the historian Golo Mann: “Even narrating what truly happened is always also poetry, because the way things really happened in their amorphous infinity cannot be grasped.”38 Universal truth, this quotation says, is nonexistent because it cannot be recognized without the concrete partiality of a narrative. Alff, on the other hand, questions the legitimacy of “enriching the idea [of a combination of Auschwitz and the Pope, MK]”39 with historical details. What for Hochhuth comprises a notion of partial truth for Alff is an empirically unproven idea, which is not false per se, but which sidesteps neutrality and therefore cannot be “true.” Alff’s account of history can only appear neutral because it is a hegemonic perspective. Stuart Hall describes the process of creating a hegemony as follows: “[i]deas only become effective if they do, in the end, connect with a particular constellation of social forces. In that sense, ideological struggle is a part of the general social struggle for mastery and leadership – in short for hegemony” (Hall 1986, p. 42). Hall here uses Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, which means a position of (ideological) domination, and includes the process of the construction of a collective social identity which does not exist prior to the construction process. Alff and Hochhuth, as representatives of opposing interests, engage in an ideological struggle for the truth of the narrative about the Holocaust. Simultaneously, however, this struggle discloses the dependence of the past on the present, which, in other terms, means the availability and

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subjection of the past to the present. The past is thus not a finished sequence in the chronology of time, but an unfinished project. The public engagement with the question of collective responsibility in the face of the Holocaust further enhances the deconstruction of the notion of the chronological succession of time. As The Deputy presents the past as unfinished, it requires the recipient to relate to it, to find a position vis-à-vis the present history. Some of the contributions quoted above show that the play is indeed capable of engendering a discourse of personal concern and involvement, which is a particular manifestation of relating to the past. This is why I disagree with Marschall’s estimation that the play’s delegation of the scapegoat role to the Pope—a person in a very powerful position—relieves the normal, powerless recipient of her responsibility (Marschall 2010, p. 139), a charge that has been variously leveled by contemporaneous critics. Once the play’s documentary aesthetics are read as a manifestation of fiction, it points beyond itself and functions as a metaphor. The discourse transforms this metaphor into a reading of personal guilt with respect to history. If the culture of the 1950s was keen on concluding the past and establishing a notion of sequential time, in which a sequence is closed once it is over, The Deputy disrupts this perception of time—as we have seen— and proposes that the past continues into the present. It is not merely a question of exerting unconscious influence on the present, but has to be conceived more broadly as responsibility to face the past that results from a responsibility for the future. Past, present, and future are thus neither a continuum nor a series of sequences, but co-exist and assume diverse constellations. In the performance of The Deputy, the political imaginary experiences a dissolution of boundaries; it spans the social order (the synchronic dimension of the Castoriadian social-historical, which includes the notion of space) and the tenses of past, present, and future (the diachronic dimension of the social-historical, which comprises the notion of time).40 Castoriadis notes that in classical thought, society negates its own historicity because it wishes to present the social as unchanging and unchangeable, as instituted and as imbued with an unalterable essence. This is why the narrative of history (in societies that are described as historical societies) is reduced to the presentation of events within identitary time. In Western societies, identitary time is the time of the calendar. The succession of time in the writing of history covers over the ruptures that take place in the evolution of the social-historical. The social-historical,

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Castoriadis claims, is the ongoing emergence of new forms, the self-­ alteration of the social. The self-alteration of the social, however, does not find representation in historiography, in which a society represents itself as emanating from its past in a direct relation. The public performance of The Deputy demands a disruption of contemporary historical memory (which is part of historical representation) which presents Nazi history as an episode without further consequences. This representation of history can be exemplified by a much quoted declaration by Robert Leiber, once secretary to Pope Pius XII. He believes that: Pius XII, I repeat, – looking into the distance and the future – considered Bolshevism the more dangerous system between National Socialism and Bolshevism. This can be confirmed by the allied soldiers, politicians and statesmen who have visited the Holy See since June 1944 in great numbers. He has always pointed out that, as National Socialism has come to an end, the world’s heavy task of fighting Bolshevism still remains. However, he was misunderstood back then.41

This quote suggests that Soviet Bolshevism succeeded Hitler as an agent of evil. It relativizes the Holocaust in the hierarchy of atrocities. Similarly, Karl Hardt from Welt claims that the Pope did well to remain neutral, because otherwise he would have had to protest not only against the deportation of Jews, but also against the bombing of civilians and the killing of prisoners of war.42 These comments are representative of the political culture of the 1950s, in which anti-communism turned into a cross-sectional phenomenon. It became the unifying element across party affiliations and the term “freedom” (from communism) became the guiding principle of 1950s politics (Schildt 1998, pp. 630–632).43 The national rationale of the Adenauer era does not result from the Holocaust, but from anti-communism. What I have termed, following Margalit and Motzkin, the “founding myth of the post-war world” in the introduction to this chapter is a rationale that was established in the 1960s, but which was not yet valid in the 1950s. The discourse that emerges from Hochhuth’s Deputy protests against this narrative of the equivalence of evils. When the discourse thematizes the Holocaust as demanding a break with the Pope’s principle of neutrality, the Holocaust is posited as a breach in the succession of social time. The Holocaust is redefined as the singular event which constitutes the meanings, practices, and institutions in present-day society. By disrupting

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the mode of historical representation, the play and its public performance claim a different narrative of history that marks the Holocaust as a rupture from which society has to recreate itself: its history as much as its present. The Holocaust is proposed as the new founding principle of the Federal Republic of Germany, as the singular event from which the organizing schemes of a new social are derived. The Holocaust, this discourse suggests, has to become the primary social imaginary signification (Castoriadis), the guiding principle of the social institution. In as much as the play unsettles conventional modes of narrating history, it enforces a new narrative of national identity and national history. Recreation of national identity in relation to the Holocaust amounts to the creation of a new social-historical, which is a new paradigm of social being (eidos). The disruption of the mode of representation opens the represented object/idea/concept to contingency. The social-historical that turns into a signification through representation becomes thinkable as magmatic, as “indefinitely determinable (and the ‘indefinitely’ is obviously essential) without thereby being determined” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 346). The appearance of society as a determined institution is destabilized. The discourse generated by The Deputy opens a reflexive space in which society appears in its institutionalizing dimension. Hence, the discourse is not only concerned with the content of “society,” but with its underlying operating structures of openness and closure. While representation (of which language is the most fundamental tool) functions from the basis of the fiction of stability and closure, The Deputy generates a discourse in which social institutions are conceivable as open and undetermined. Crucially, representing history as an unfinished project, in contrast to the chronological sequence of events, has direct repercussions for what is represented. The act of representation appears as prior to what is represented, as the medium of worldmaking.44 History becomes the medium through which society imagines its time-­ framework. Through discourse, time becomes visible as a coordinate of the present. Hence, it creates a new time-framework, which incorporates the Holocaust as a break and a rupture, as a zero hour, from which society reimagines itself as a political society. As a fictional work of art, The Deputy contributes to the discourse of the renewal of national identity in its capacity to uncover the social as autonomous in relation to its own imaginary. It imagines society as fundamentally alterable and hence destabilizes the myth of society as forever already instituted. Fictionality, in the shape of

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the co-presence of past, present, and future, results in the exposure of the social as a self-creating structure.

5.5   Résumé The breach that The Deputy helped integrate into the cultural framework of West Germany in the 1960s was the beginning of a reformulation of its socio-political determinants. Documentary theater may not have had  a long history—Arnold Blumer (1977) claims that the end of the 1960s already witnessed the end of the genre’s heyday—but it initiated a culture of accounting for the past, which lastingly transformed Germany’s national self-conception.45 Therefore, I disagree with scholars such as Jan Berg (1977), Klaus von Schilling (2001), and Arnold Blumer (1977) who conclude that The Deputy lacked a long-lasting impact on West Germany’s public formation of will. This might be legitimate, if we consider the relative strength of the antagonists of the controversy. Those that defend the Pope and the old social order can certainly be seen as superior in number, although those that welcome Hochhuth’s play are surprisingly well-­ represented in the controversy. These scholars, however, neglect the power of an already instituted social imaginary. The emergence of new ideas, the transformation of imaginaries, cannot take place within a few months. The fact that the discourse of a new political imaginary initiated by The Deputy that is “new” in relation to the old order does not mean that it is purely the brainchild of Hochhuth. As we have seen, Karl Jaspers first raised the question of metaphysical guilt in 1946, and Leon Poliakov’s critique of the Pope’s diplomacy during the Holocaust dates from 1950. But the vehemence with which the controversy was fought must be seen as a breakthrough, through which the germ of the new imaginary was introduced into the public so as to take root and further develop in the environment of the 1960s. And if we consider the individualization of guilt in the reportage during the Auschwitz trial, we cannot say that the topic (content) alone has the strength to disrupt the national consensus to evade questions of collective guilt. The role played by aesthetics appears all the more important. The order of representation proposed by documentary theater is responsible for the explosive nature of the play. By redirecting perception from the signifying dimension of the world to the individual’s relation with social reality, it shatters the security which allows the recipients to negotiate occurrences without disturbance.

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The Deputy introduces a rupture into the fictional representation of the social-historical: the politicization of the stage demanded the politicization of the social. The discourse that originated from The Deputy reformulated the political imaginary and pulled down the barriers that separated the social from the sphere of politics. In effect, the political itself became the target of the discourse: the political was politicized. The social was redefined as political, and the personal opinion of every single individual became a political act. Most importantly, this redefinition of the social-as-political resulted from the disruption of notions of temporality by the play. The presentation of history on stage actualized the past as part of the present. History had to be re-thought as an unfinished project that impacted on the present and which enforced its own recognition. The singularity of the Holocaust, the discourse claims, demands the recreation of a social imaginary that accounts for its past. Effectively, the representation of social reality, as it materializes in the play and its discourse, posits a new beginning for the social and thus foregrounds the social as self-creation and self-alteration. It encourages a view of the social as autonomous from its institutionalization. The new political imaginary of intervention amounts to giving a chance to the social as creation. If the Holocaust is proposed as the founding myth, this challenges the recreation of national identity in a new shape— or a new eidos. Although the term renewal is not explicitly addressed in the discourse, the break with the behavior of the past implies the element of newness, of creation. Creation—or what Castoriadis calls ontological genesis (Castoriadis 1987, p. 372)—becomes thinkable. The Deputy provides a reflexive space, in which the notion of social creation or social genesis becomes topical. The dispute between the parties is actually nothing other than the friction between those who welcome newness and those who prefer the old order. The Deputy thus works contrary to the stabilizing mechanisms of social temporality. As Castoriadis remarks, “everything happens as if society were unable to recognize itself as making itself, as instituting itself, as self-instituting” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 213). The play and its discourse breaks with this rule of the social and proclaims the need for self-alteration. Society appears in the shape of a new beginning and thus autonomous in the choice of its fate. At the beginning of the 1960s, a new West German social eidos was about to emerge.

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Notes 1. The historian Jörn Rüsen rejects the term “myth” for the description of innerworldly events, although he agrees with Margalit and Motzkin that the Holocaust turned into the constitutive incident of West German identity of the second generation after the war (Rüsen 2001, p. 292). I prefer the term “myth” as defined by Margalit and Motzkin (1997, p.  16), because it develops a symbolic—mythical—dimension and hence points beyond itself as an empirical event. 2. See Anthony Smith’s National Identity (1991) for a description of the importance of cultural heritage and myths of origin for the development of national consciousness and identity (esp. chapter 4 “Nationalism and cultural identity,” pp. 71–98). 3. The Historian’s Debate in 1986 as well as the atmosphere of historical revisionism in the early to mid-1980s stand out as prominent examples of attempts to re-narrate national identity in a more positive light (Baldwin 1990, pp. 21–30). 4. I will not judge the success of this attempt to rethink national identity. Klaus von Schilling, for instance, claims that at the heart of the German self-image is the failure to find a new national identity and it is thus constituted by a lack (Schilling 2001, p. 7). My methodology only allows me to think the contemporary present and the initial spark that set in motion the process that Schilling later classifies as a failure. This does not mean that the process of rethinking national identity has come to a halt and remains static. On the contrary, the constitution of national identity is an ongoing process in a society’s history. 5. See Chap. 7, “Fiction between representation and quotation,” in this work. 6. Klaus Wannemacher (2004) has written a book that addresses Piscator’s developments in the 1950s and 1960s in West Germany, of which the documentary theater is the most important. Brigitte Marschall (2010) follows up on the developments of the political theater after 1945 and dedicates a chapter to Piscator’s late work (pp. 83–118) and a second chapter to his staging of The Deputy (pp. 119–162). 7. The aesthetic language proposed by The Deputy refers to and expands the aesthetic tradition of proletarian art. In this sense it differs from the aesthetics of the film The Silence discussed in Chap. 3. The Silence actualizes a rather classical paradigm of art/interpretation with which a conservative audience can identify, despite the aesthetic invocation of secularism. It supports a version of social reality governed by civil society and the middle classes. Despite the temporal proximity of The Deputy’s premiere and The Silence’s screening, The Deputy clearly challenges the bourgeois world order invoked by The Silence.

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8. Hildebrandt, Dieter. 1963. “Bruchstücke eines großen Zorns. Erwin Piscator inszeniert ‘Der Stellvertreter’ von Hochhuth.” FAZ, February 22. 9. Jacobi, Johannes. 1963. “Zwei junge deutsche Dramatiker. Rolf Hochhuth: ‘Der Stellvertreter’ in Berlin, Dieter Wellershoff: ‘Anni Nabels Boxschau’ in Darmstadt.” Zeit (9), March 1:9. 10. Indeed, I claim that this is different in the case of performance art such as Happenings and Fluxus, which are primarily concerned with performativity. In these cases, reception implies presence at the performance, and those absent can only access the performance via second-hand descriptions. The descriptions (first-hand reception) then mediate between artwork and second-­hand recipient. 11. In cases where the journalists indeed review the staging of the play, there is still a comparative aspect in the reviews, referring the staging back to the play’s text. The text, therefore, serves as the play’s final reference. 12. Because it eloquently conveys the position of the play’s supporters. 13. Which had a very low circulation, but which was the only publishing medium at the time that explicitly engaged in favor of German—Jewish reconciliation. 14. dpa. 1963. “‘Stellvertreter.’ Eine Stellungnahme aus Rom.” FAZ, March 4. 15. See also Graubart (1989, pp. 1216–1218). 16. hdt. 1963. “Gegen den ‘Stellvertreter.’” FAZ, March 2. 17. Of importance was also Gustav Rudolf Sellner, who directed the theater in Darmstadt (Hesse) from 1951 to 1961 and whose aesthetic concept was based on the absolute focus on the content of the classic text. “In this encounter between the human being and his fate, Sellner’s theater considered itself as a bridge builder, a catalyst, as a pure intermediary. Accordingly, he resorted to a decluttered stage of abstract symbolism, which in most cases was repeatedly built into this austere, aloof room of the orangery by Franz Mertz. The room denied itself any physical and spiritual comfort as well as all representativeness, hierarchy, and distraction from the essentials” (Koneffke 2012, p.  55). He continuously referred to a “zero hour” (Stunde Null) that the end of the war had produced and which was imagined by Sellner as the new birth of the drama in Germany. However, the invocation of a zero hour cannot hide the fact that Sellner had been deeply involved in the cultural politics during National Socialism as the director of several theater houses (Lazardzig 2012, p. 38). 18. Hampe, Johann Christoph. 1963. “Rolf Hochhuth und mit Recht kein Ende.” Evangelischer Literaturbeobachter, June: 1025–1026. 19. Kaiser, Joachim. 1963. “Pius XII. und die Pforten der Hölle. Die Katholische Akademie in Bayern veranstaltet eine Diskussion über Hochhuths ‘Stellvertreter.’” SZ, April 24.

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20. Hildebrandt, Dieter. 1963. “Wider die Unverbindlichkeit. Berliner Diskussion über Hochhuths ‘Stellvertreter.’” FAZ, March 29. 21. Ibid. 22. This idea is reminiscent of the “Adorno-dictum,” in which Adorno questions the unbroken continuation of cultural production after the Holocaust and questions the sheer possibility of culture after the atrocities committed (Adorno 1983). 23. In Theater-Proteste. Zur Politisierung von Straße und Bühne in den 1960er Jahren Dorothea Kraus deals with the politicization of the stage in the 1960s. She observes the reassignment of purpose and function of theater and theatricality. In fact, she claims that the politicization of the stage transforms the appearance of politics, since the political only becomes operative as a performance (Kraus 2007, esp. pp. 16–17). Similarly, Jürgen Habermas reasons, in his famous warning of the radicalization of the student protests, that the protests’ potential is the creative performance and the symbolic act. Its playful character is its strength, a weapon which is effective in the “peculiar virtual character of a play, which can only be genuinely employed as a political instrument if the other partner is not coerced to enter the play, but joins in willingly. The weapons can only injure because they do not kill” (Habermas 1969, p. 7). 24. K.H. 1963. “Christliches Trauerspiel eines begabten Dilettanten.” IsraelForum 5 (8), August: 11–14. 25. The first Auschwitz trial would start on December 20, 1963 and last for two years. Devin O.  Pendas notes, that the public coverage of the trial emphasized the individual guilt of the defendants, while the social and structural dimensions of the Holocaust remained underrepresented (Pendas 2006, pp.  291–305). Similarly, Rebecca Wittmann concludes: “There is no doubt that the Auschwitz Trial did, at least for a short time, bring the atrocities of the Nazi regime to the fore. The daily press coverage and most especially the widely staged, important, and sensational play The Investigation, by Peter Weiß, provided constant reminders to the public of the crimes committed by former Nazis who were living in freedom in Germany. Many commentators made a genuine attempt to draw people’s attention to Auschwitz, in order that they might learn lessons about the human capacity for evil. At the same time, though, most people saw the grisly crimes of the sadistic defendants as if they were part of a macabre fantasy world … and did not make a connection between the perpetrators on trial, the harmless neighbors living peacefully beside them, and their own role in the Nazi past. To them the trial seemed to have done its job, properly punishing the real monsters and leaving the rest, people who had been confused, coerced, or brainwashed into collaborating with the Nazis, to go on with their lives. These mixed results were a reflection of the trial itself, and a debate surfaced about both the legal and the historical effectiveness of the trial” (Wittmann 2005, p. 247).

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26. A documentation of Fluxus, Pop Art and Nouveau réalisme published by Jürgen Becker and Wolf Vostell in 1965 provides a panorama of the vivid creativity and the movement of performance art at the time (Becker and Vostell 1965). 27. Hanna Klessinger describes performance art as the founding phase of postdramatic theater. In Chapter 2 of her book Postdramatik she explores the interrelation of performance art and theater (Klessinger 2015, pp. 101–193). 28. Hildebrandt, “Wider die Unverbindlichkeit.” 29. At this point I do agree with Klaus von Schilling, who criticizes the belief in a possibility of “overcoming” the Holocaust, as if there was something that had to be done to then open up into a (new) positive national identity. Schilling exposes the development of this kind of thinking throughout theatrical production in the Federal Republic of Germany and states that later dramatists—especially George Tabori—were better equipped to aesthetically question the sheer possibility of “overcoming the past” and the re-­ acquisition of a positive national identity. Vergangenheitsbewältigung (overcoming the past) was then imagined as something that was principally doomed to failure (Schilling 2001, pp. 173–195). 30. Probst Grüber, Heinrich. 1963. “Entscheidend ist nur, was laut gesagt wurde. [Reply to Pater Leiber, “Der Papst”].” FAZ, March 27. 31. Ibid. 32. Amery, Carl. 1963. “Der bedrängte Papst.” SZ, March 3. 33. Amery, Carl. 1963. “Unsere eigene Schuld.” Zeit (11), March 15:9. 34. In Theaterproteste. Zur Politisierung von Straße und Bühne in den 1960er Jahren Dorothea Kraus puts forward a similar thesis. The aesthetic rupture taking place in theater of the 1960s is concerned not only with the redefinition of the social role of theater, but “in a more narrow sense, it is a matter of interpreting and reinterpreting the political through new forms of performing, shaping, and presenting the political” (Kraus 2007, p. 16). 35. Castoriadis reminds us that the imaginary does not refer to “the ‘fictive’, the ‘illusory’, the ‘specular,’ but rather the positing of new forms” (Castoriadis 1997, p. 84). 36. For an early appraisal of the play as meaningful beyond provocation, see Hannah Arendt’s article “The Deputy: Guilt by Silence?”, published in The New York Herald Tribune in February 1964, in which she claims that it was eye-opening to many about the “frightening equanimity which the Vatican and its nuncios apparently thought it wise to affect, the rigid adherence to a normality that no longer existed in view of the collapse of the whole moral and spiritual structure of Europe” (reprinted in Arendt 1987, p. 52).

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37. Alff, Wilhelm. 1963. “Richtige Einzelheiten  – verfehltes Gesamtbild. Historische Anmerkungen zum ‘Stellvertreter’ von Rolf Hochhuth.” FAZ, May 11; Hochhuth, Rolf. 1963. “Ein Gesamtbild gibt es nicht. Antwort an Wilhelm Alff.” FAZ, May 30 and Alff, Wilhelm. 1963. “Antwort auf Hochhuth.” FAZ, June 13–14. 38. Hochhuth, “Ein Gesamtbild gibt es nicht.” 39. Alff, “Antwort auf Hochhuth.” 40. Castoriadis’ understanding of the social-historical is described in Chap. 4 “The Social-Historical” in The Imaginary Institution of Society (Castoriadis 1987, pp. 167–220). 41. Pater Leiber, Robert. 1963. “Der Papst und die Verfolgung der Juden. Die Erklärung von Pater Robert Leiber zu Rolf Hochhuths Schauspiel ‘Der Stellvertreter.’” FAZ, March 27. 42. Hardt, Karl. 1963. “Was tat der Papst zur Rettung der Juden? Ein Jesuit setzt sich mit dem Drama ‘Der Stellvertreter’ auseinander.” Welt, March 16. 43. Creuzberger and Hoffmann (2014) have dedicated a whole anthology to the pervasive presence of anti-communism in the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany. 44. The term worldmaking derives from Nelson Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking, in which he discusses the role of style and representation in shaping perception and thereby creating worlds (Goodman 1978). 45. These developments, naturally, do not go unchallenged, as shown by the new “pride” in national identity that could be witnessed, for instance, during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Suddenly, pride in national symbols such as the flag again became socially acceptable. What appears normal in other nation states has long been considered an indecent attitude in Germany due to its historical legacy. From the interrupted pride in national symbols speaks the continuous (yet productive) failure to come to terms with the past (this notion has been derived from Schilling 2001), which occupied the German national identity: a necessary unease in the face of national identity which kept the past present in collective memory. The “normalization” of Germany’s approach to its national symbols during the World Cup could be seen as the desire to finally overcome the past, which in this context arguably means leaving the past behind. It thus runs counter to the paradigm initiated by The Deputy of keeping the past present and of making the Holocaust the “founding myth” of the nation state.

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References Adorno, Theodor W. 1983. Cultural Criticism and Society (1951). In Prisms. Trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber, 17–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Agazzi, Elena. 2013. Karl Jaspers: Die Schuldfrage. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Frage. In Handbuch Nachkriegskultur  – Literatur, Sachbuch und Film in Deutschland (1945–1962), ed. Elena Agazzi, and Erhard Schütz, 300–304. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Arendt, Hannah. (1964) 1978. Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. ———. 1987. The Deputy: Guilt by Silence? In Amor Mundi. Explorations in the Faith and Thought of Hannah Arendt, Boston College Studies in Philosophy 7, ed. James W. Bernauer, 51–58. Boston/Dordrecht/Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1991. Persönliche Verantwortung in der Diktatur (Vortrag 1964/65). In Israel, Palästina und der Antisemitismus. Aufsätze, ed. Eike Geisel, and Klaus Bittermann, 7–38. Berlin: Wagenbach. Baldwin, Peter. 1990. The Historikerstreit in Context. In Reworking the Past. Hitler, the Holocaust and the Historian’s Debate, ed. Peter Baldwin, 3–37. Boston: Beacon. Balzer, Bernd. 1986. Rolf Hochhuth: Der Stellvertreter. Frankfurt (M.)/Berlin/ München: Diesterweg. Becker, Jürgen, and Wolf Vostell, eds. 1965. Happenings. Fluxus, Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme. Eine Dokumentation. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Berg, Jan. 1977. Hochhuths ‘Stellvertreter’ und die ‘Stellvertreter’-Debatte: Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Theater und Presse der sechziger Jahre, Scriptor-­ Hochschulschriften: Literaturwissenschaft 17. Kronberg (D): Scriptor. Beyer, Jutta, and Everhard Holtmann. 1987. ‘Sachpolitik’, Partizipation und Apathie in der Nachkriegsgesellschaft. Special Issue PVS: Politische Vierteljahresschrift, “Politische Kultur in Deutschland. Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung” 18: 144–153. Blumer, Arnold. 1977. Das dokumentarische Theater der sechziger Jahre in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Meisenheim am Glan (D): Anton Hain. Boenisch, Peter M. 2003. Theater als Medium der Moderne? Zum Verhältnis von Medientechnologie und Bühne im 20. Jahrhundert. In Theater als Paradigma der Moderne? Positionen zwischen historischer Avantgarde und Medienzeitalter, Mainzer Forschungen zu Drama und Theater 28, ed. Christopher Balme, Erika Fischer-Lichte, and Stephan Grätzel, 447–456. Tübingen/Basel: Francke. Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1987. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge/Malden, MA: Polity Press. ———. 1988. Pouvoir, politique, autonomie. Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale 93 (1): 81–104.

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———. 1997. The Greek and the Modern Political Imaginary. In World in Fragments. Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination, ed. David Ames Curtis, 84–107. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Creuzberger, Stefan, and Dierk Hoffmann, eds. 2014. ‘Geistige Gefahr’ und ‘Immunisierung der Gesellschaft’. Antikommunismus und politische Kultur in der frühen Bundesrepublik. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. Diner, Dan, ed. 1988. Zivilisationsbruch. Denken nach Auschwitz. Frankfurt (M.): Fischer. Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. Hassocks: Harvester Press. Graubart, Judah L. 1989. The Vatican and the Jews: Cynicism and Indifference. In Bystanders to the Holocaust, The Nazi Holocaust 8, ed. Michael R. Marrus, 1214–1226. Westport/London: Meckler. Habermas, Jürgen. 1969. Die Scheinrevolution und ihre Kinder. Sechs Thesen über Taktik, Ziele und Situationsanalysen der oppositionellen Jugend. In Die Linke antwortet Jürgen Habermas, provokativ, ed. Oskar Negt, 5–15. Frankfurt (M.): Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Hall, Stuart. 1986. The Problem of Ideology  – Marxism Without Guarantees. Journal of Communication Inquiry 10 (3): 28–44. https://doi. org/10.1177/019685998601000203. Hickethier, Knut. 2002. Das Theater der Bundesrepublik in den fünfziger Jahren. In Die Kultur der fünfziger Jahre, Kulturgeschichte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, ed. Werner Faulstich, 35–51. München: Wilhelm Fink. Jaspers, Karl. 1946. Die Schuldfrage. Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider. Karstedt, Susanne. 2009. The Life Course of Collective Memories: Persistency and Change in West Germany between 1950 and 1970. Polish Sociological Review 1 (165): 27–38. Klessinger, Hanna. 2015. Postdramatik. Transformationen des epischen Theaters bei Peter Handke, Heiner Müller, Elfriede Jelinek und Rainald Goetz. Berlin/ Boston: de Gruyter. Koneffke, Silke. 2012. Von Ruinen und variablen Instrumenten. Über das Theater als Probenraum der Demokratie in den 50er Jahren. In Ruinierte Öffentlichkeit. Zur Politik von Theater, Architektur und Kunst in den 1950er Jahren, ed. Claudia Blümle, and Jan Lazardzig, 51–71. Zürich: diaphanes. Kraus, Dorothea. 2007. Theater-Proteste. Zur Politisierung von Straße und Bühne in den 1960er Jahren, Historische Politikforschung 9. Frankfurt (M.)/New York: Campus. Lazardzig, Jan. 2012. Die Neue Stadt. Nr. 7 (1952). Johannes Jacobi: Theaterbauten der Restauration. Gustav Rudolf Sellner: Zeitgemäßes Theater – zeitgemäße Theaterbauten [Prologue]. In Ruinierte Öffentlichkeit. Zur Politik von Theater, Architektur und Kunst in den 1950er Jahren, ed. Claudia Blümle, and Jan Lazardzig, 38. Zürich: diaphanes.

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Lenk, Kurt. 1998. Zum westdeutschen Konservatismus. In Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau. Die westdeutsche Gesellschaft der 50er Jahre, ed. Axel Schildt and Arnold Sywottek, Rev. ed, 636–645. Bonn: Dietz. Margalit, Avishai, and Gabriel Motzkin. 1997. Die Einzigartigkeit des Holocaust. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 45 (1): 3–18. Marschall, Brigitte. 2010. Politisches Theater nach 1950. Wien/Köln/ Weimar: Böhlau. Pendas, Devin O. 2006. The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963–1965. Genocide, History, and the Limits of the Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Poliakov, Leon. 1950. The Vatican and the Jewish Question. The Record of the Hitler Period – And After. Commentary 10: 439–449. Rancière, Jacques. 2004. Introducing Disagreement. Angelaki 9 (3): 3–9. Rüsen, Jörn. 2001. Zerbrechende Zeit. Über den Sinn der Geschichte. Köln/ Weimar/Wien: Böhlau. Schildt, Axel. 1998. Ende der Ideologien? Politisch-ideologische Strömungen in den 50er Jahren. In Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau. Die westdeutsche Gesellschaft der 50er Jahre, ed. Axel Schildt, and Arnold Sywottek, Rev. ed, 627–635. Bonn: Dietz. Schilling, Klaus von. 2001. Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit auf dem Theater. Die Kultur der Bewältigung und ihr Scheitern im politischen Drama von Max Frisch bis Thomas Bernhard, Forum Modernes Theater 29. Tübingen: Narr. Schissler, Jakob. 1978. Zu einigen Problemen der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Zeitschrift für Politik 25 (2): 154–167. Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National Identity. London: Penguin Books. Turek, Jürgen. 1989. Demokratie- und Staatsbewußtsein: Entwicklung der Politischen Kultur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. In Politische Kultur und deutsche Frage. Materialien zum Staats- und Nationalbewußtsein in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ed. Werner Weidenfeld, 233–248. Köln: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik. Wannemacher, Klaus. 2004. Erwin Piscators Theater gegen das Schweigen. Politisches Theater zwischen den Fronten des Kalten Kriegs (1951–1966), Theatron. Studien zur Geschichte und Theorie der dramatischen Künste 42. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Wittmann, Rebecca. 2002. The Wheels of Justice Turn Slowly: The Pretrial Investigations of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial 1963–1965. Central European History 35 (3): 345–378. ———. 2005. Beyond Justice. The Auschwitz Trial. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Zoll, Ralf. 1999. Vom Obrigkeitsstaat zur entgrenzten Politik. Politische Einstellungen und politisches Verhalten in der Bundesrepublik seit den sechziger Jahren. Opladen/Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.

CHAPTER 6

The Social Visibility of Corporeality: The Rebel Youth Films in the Fifties

The 1950s in West Germany are generally associated with the social, political, and economic reconstitution of society after the turmoil of World War II and the post-war period in the second half of the 1940s. The social atmosphere is characterized as a time of restoration, in which order and traditional values such as family and religion or the withdrawal from the public sphere reigned supreme. This attitude went hand in hand with a kind of austerity and self-restraint with regard to personal desires, not only at an economic level, but also regarding notions of behavior such as the strong sense of duty toward the social order or sexual asceticism. On the other hand, the 1950s is the decade of Elvis Presley, Coca Cola, and the Rock ’n Roll wave, spearheads of the “American (cultural) way of life.” While the older generation had welcomed the US-American economic scheme (the Marshall Plan), it continued to uphold European cultural values and to turn up its nose at the “shallow” US-American mass culture. Axel Schildt suggests that this dismissal of the “American way of life” was a means of regaining a feeling of self-worth and agency in the face of the challenges of modernization (Schildt 1998a, pp. 631–632) and, I would add, after the loss of political and social self-determination owing to the allied victory over Nazi Germany. The rejection of US-American popular culture by the older German generation thus provided an ideal point of departure for a youth trying to break free from restrictive moral values and the constraints of family and home via the consumption of and identification with this very pop culture. © The Author(s) 2020 M. Knapp, Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40086-6_6

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In this chapter I will look at four films that are generally acknowledged as having kicked off the Rock ’n Roll feeling (Schildt 1998b, pp. 343–347; Baacke 1999, pp. 55–56). These were generative of a genre that came to be known in Germany as Halbstarkenfilme. These films dealt with the troubles and joys of youth in a time of modernization; they depicted the young generation as in conflict with the rest of society. The actors Marlon Brando and James Dean, in particular, developed into idols due to their performance in these films and–if we believe the critics–these films, conversely, only developed into blockbusters because of the power of fascination that radiates from these actor-figures. The screening of the films in West Germany antedates the emergence of a genuine youth culture, which suggests a link between the films and the process of generational stratification of the late 1950s. In the context of this work, we have to ask how to imagine this particular relation between a fictional artwork and the generation of a (youth) identity as a response to identity-specific media. Since all films under consideration in this chapter are US-American productions, they can hardly be taken as representations of West German social reality. Despite the fact that the critics are keen on pointing out differences and commonalities between the US-American and the West German contexts, the notion of mimetic representation of social reality does not suffice to explain the films’ fascination as given expression in the Feuilleton. In the English-speaking press, three of the four films under consideration here were classified as films about youth delinquency (The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, and Rebel Without a Cause; see, e.g., Biltereyst 2007). The German term Halbstarke is more open to negotiating the limits between delinquency and non-criminal deviance from social norms. An early formal definition of Halbstarken riots from 1956/1957 is formulated by Curt Bondy and others and it gives expression to that particular ambiguity in definition: [Halbstarken riots are, MK] disturbances of public safety and order, … that were provoked by fifty or more young people in the age between 14 and 25 years (youth), that do not constitute a closed group and do not intend to assert a demand with their behavior. (Bondy et al. 1957, pp. 10–11)

In this instance, riots are defined as an offense, but it is an offense between legality and illegality. Most contemporary commentators did not distinguish between the youth who engaged in riots and those who did not. Particular attire–or the mere fact of being young–could be enough to be

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called a Halbstarker. The vagueness and blurred meaning of the term give expression to the social negotiation of the status of the newly emerging youth culture. It exposes the undecidedness of society vis-à-vis this newly emerging social form. In public discourse, the rebel youth films were received with a mixture of resistance and fascination. Resistance was caused by the simplicity of the films’ plots and the violence depicted on screen. Yet resistance was subverted by an acknowledgement of the fascination that radiated from actors such as Marlon Brando and James Dean or from the rhythms of Rock ’n Roll (in Rock Around the Clock). The discourse that arises from the films is a discourse that is forced to acknowledge the power of corporeality and the vitality of youth, beyond or prior to its moral classification as good or evil. Performance and the play of signs, as I will show, develop into an alternative to the pure paradigm of signification. I will consider the films The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause, and Rock Around the Clock. They differ substantially from one another: The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause feature the star-idols of youth culture, Marlon Brando and James Dean. While Rebel Without a Cause is set in a well-to-do family somewhere in the USA, Blackboard Jungle is set in an urban inner-city school with pupils coming from a poor milieu. Rock Around the Clock is a musical and dance film that is, despite its triviality, connected with Blackboard Jungle’s earnestness through the music. Bill Haley’s Rock ’n Roll song, from which the film derives its title, framed the film Blackboard Jungle at beginning and end, but started its triumphant march with Rock Around the Clock. According to public discourse, the four films greatly differ in quality: while Blackboard Jungle is generally well-received, the best that is said about Rock Around the Clock is that it is entertaining and gains its fascination primarily through the soundtrack. In The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause, on the other hand, the actor’s vital presence is at the center of attention. Nonetheless, I will subsume them under a single case study, first because there are diverse cross-references to be found within the public discourse that point toward a unified discourse which builds on the sequence of films. Second, these films stand at the beginning of a film genre that then became a filmic institution. They may be thought of as prototypes for the genre and they are examples of the paradigmatic relation of fiction and social reality in the genre. The Wild One initiated the genre of the rebel youth and popularized it in concert with the other three films. They are not only the most remembered films of the genre,

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featuring the undisputed actor-idols of the time and popularizing Rock ’n Roll as youth-specific music (see, e.g., Faulstich 2002, pp. 282–285), they also cover a wide range of ways of imagining the figure of youth. Although Blackboard Jungle is now the least well-known, it gained its contemporary importance by blending Rock ’n Roll and rebellion. It is worth explaining why I have not included filmic examples from the West German context for comparative reasons. If we talk about Halbstarken films, the West German film Die Halbstarken automatically comes to mind. Die Halbstarken is deemed a classic of German cinema (see, e.g., Hembus and Bandmann 1980, pp.  175–176; Giesenfeld 2006, pp. 316–318). We would here be dealing with a film that originated in the West German context and thus might well depict differences in the conceptualization of the rebel youth in comparison to their US-American counterparts. In particular, the clear educational aspect of the film will have appeased the parent generation, because it reconfirmed the social values of good and evil that had been erased by the other films. However, I have opted against this move because I am interested in the generative moment of fictional works of art. Although Die Halbstarken was screened slightly earlier than Rock Around the Clock in 1956, it is nonetheless considered a (West) German reply to Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle (Hembus and Bandmann 1980, p. 176), a kind of imitation with a contextual difference. It is therefore to be considered a consecutive national extension (and not the generation) of the cultural phenomenon of youth media. As I am here interested in the element of primary formation, the further intertextual development of a genre is of secondary interest for the underlying research question. The sample for this case study consists of eleven articles about The Wild One, twenty-seven articles about Blackboard Jungle, twenty-two articles about Rebel Without a Cause, and twenty-three articles about Rock Around the Clock. I have dedicated a subchapter to particularities of the selection of publishing media as they diverge from the criteria underlying the methodological framework of this work.

6.1   Methodological Particularities For the purposes of this case study, I had to adapt the criteria for material selection, because research in the archive showed that the criteria developed at the outset of the research would not, in this case, yield the best results. Looking through the selected material on the four films, it became

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obvious that what has been termed the Feuilleton in the nationally distributed daily and weekly newspapers, that is, the quality newspapers, played only a marginal role in the public discourse about the Halbstarke films. The material had to be expanded so as to include newspapers that are regional or church publications, but should still be thought of as influential due to their relative size and distribution. What appears to be a methodological inconsistency may be explained by the procedure of selecting the case studies. The selection of cases was conducted by making recourse to works on cultural history. These works retrospectively evaluate the impact of certain cultural works on social reality. My work attempts to answer why they became relevant to society. The fact that I could not find sufficient material in the newspaper corpus identified in the methodological section therefore showed me that, in this case, the corpus had to be adjusted. This means taking the particular media landscape of the 1950s into account. From the end of the license period in 1949 to the mid-1950s, print media in West Germany was dominated by small newspapers.1 Traditionally, print media in Germany was characterized by very small and local newspapers, and this tradition was only interrupted during the time in which the allied powers controlled the German media by subjecting print media to licensing. This traditional media landscape was finally broken with the onset of processes of press concentration in the mid-1950s which came to a preliminary halt in the mid-1970s (Jarren 1998, pp. 433–436).2 This situation suggests that in the 1950s the print media market was still in the process of re-constitution after the upheavals of the Nazi and post-World War II periods. Journalism in the 1950s was subjected to what Christina von Hodenberg calls “journalism of consensus.” Although the notion of journalism in Germany traditionally included the idea of forming opinions in the shape of Gesinnungsjournalismus (ideologically colored journalism), in the Adenauer era this entailed the support not only of democracy, but of the Adenauer government in particular. The authoritarian rule of Adenauer’s governance held fast to the belief that the media served the needs of the government and was not supposed to critically examine its particular politics. Investigations into the engagement of politicians in National Socialism were understood as denigrating and as defamation. Adenauer punished critical media by withholding information from them, while he supported favorable media financially and with

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exclusive information. In fact, the political magazine Der Spiegel was the only medium that openly questioned this journalistic attitude and provoked a new and “Western” style of journalism. The other media–print, audio, and audiovisual–were more or less streamlined to consent to Adenauer’s politics, and this kind of journalism was supported not only by the Obrigkeitsmentalität (authoritarian mentality) of West German journalists, but also by a society that was eager for harmony and to retreat into privacy, happy to leave politics to the politicians (von Hodenberg 2006, pp. 101–228). Furthermore, since economic reasoning dominates the strategies of the publishing houses, journalistic competition takes a backseat to being attractive for advertisers. It is the era of the Generalanzeiger, the general gazette, which characterizes itself as independent and überparteilich (non-­ party). As opposed to the Weimar Republic, where the press competed along ideological lines, the post-war period is characterized by a renunciation of political alignment. Jarren further remarks that a nationwide print medium could not take hold anywhere in West Germany and in Berlin; print media remained regionalized (Jarren 1998, pp. 433–436). Indeed, except for the decidedly left newspaper Die Andere Zeitung, the differences between the published opinions in my material do not seem to derive from (institutionalized) ideological convictions, but from–not yet institutionalized–personal beliefs and moral values. The regionalization of interests may be thought of as a result of what has come to be known as the atmosphere of restoration in the 1950s. Retreating into privacy, overcoming the extraordinary condition of the Hitler years, and re-establishing order became the prime moves of the Adenauer era (Doering-Manteuffel 1991, pp.  16–17). The Catholic church benefited, taking the role of providing orientation and a moral order presumedly untainted by National Socialism (Großbölting 2013, pp. 21–94). This explains the importance of regional newspapers on the one hand and religious ones, such as the reactionary Protestant weekly Christ & Welt or the Catholic weekly Rheinischer Merkur, on the other. The Catholic and Protestant churches also published influential film magazines–Film-Dienst and epd FILM respectively–which contributed to a film’s failure or success. In accordance with this socio-political atmosphere as well as the print media landscape in the 1950s, the empirical material for this case study consists of a selection of regional newspapers that addressed regional urban centers or regions with high identificatory potential, such as the

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newspaper Badische Zeitung. Similarly, SZ and Die Welt have to be regarded as regional newspapers as well due to the fragmentation of the print landscape in the 1950s. The abovementioned confessional weekly newspapers are as much part of this bundle of material as the religious film magazines and the expert media Film-Echo and Der neue Film which were published so as to inform cinema owners and the film industry respectively. They influenced the discourse at the level of decision making, because it was here that the cinema programs were decided upon and the future of the German film was molded.

6.2   Youth as a Liminal Figure The developing discourse of the Halbstarke, the rebel youth teenager, is deeply entangled with the popularity of the rebel youth films and figures such as Marlon Brando and James Dean and Rock ’n Roll. In what follows, I am first going to track the development of the figure of youth as it becomes visible in the critics’ reception of the films and its impact on the imagination of West German society and culture. This chapter’s first analytical section deals with the films’ realist aesthetics, while the second section is concerned with what might be termed an aesthetics of corporeal performance. The analysis of this case study diverges from that of the other cases, since there is no controversy to be delineated. The critical reception of the films was identical across the material. The interruption of the discourse takes place within the reviews, unacknowledged as a disruption by the reviewers. The coding brought to light a difference between the generation of meaning–the interpretation–of the films as significant with respect to a certain social phenomenon and the fascinated appreciation of performance, presence, and corporeality, which escapes signification. The difference can be described as two different moods active within one and the same review, which play against each other. In other words, we encounter two paradigms of art/interpretation within the same review. While the paradigm that generates discursive meaning draws on an already established relation of fiction and social reality, the non-discursive nature of the performative paradigm disrupts the coherence of the former paradigm. Although the aspect of presence is certainly inherent to the medium of film as such, it is striking that this aspect is not incorporated into the discursive interpretation of the film. If we remember the metaphoric discourse about Bergman’s The Silence, the expressive aspect of the film is

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transformed into a signifying dimension of the film’s meaning. Silence, fragmentation, and alienation become signs and messages that make it possible to decode the film’s meaning. This is not the case here. Sensuality, voluptuousness, eroticism, and corporeal devotion do not contribute to meaningful discourse, but remain alien to the interpretations, unconnected to the films’ meanings. On the contrary, the actors’ physical and sensual appearance on the screen at times even contradicts the meaning of the films. It is for this reason that I speak of this dimension as the discourse’s otherness, which attempts to capture a different way of experiencing the films, an experience closer to what the films mean for young people rather than the generation of their parents. 6.2.1  The Wild One Among the West German public, the film The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando as the motorcycle gang leader Johnny, was generally well-received. It was considered a brave3 and realistic4 film that is critical of society.5 This does not mean, however, that it was welcomed by everyone–some critics feared it would incite West German youth to imitate the motorcycle gang’s behavior.6 But the diverging opinions on whether the film is recommendable or not take a back seat in the face of attempts to make sense of this youth behavior. One of the central notions surfacing from the discourse is the image of a generation driven by boredom and lust for adventure: “[They are] aimless and adventurous, causing mischief out of an uninhibited feeling of being alive,”7 and an “excess of strength,”8 deriving from “vocational dissatisfaction and boredom resulting from inward emptiness,”9 but also the “passion for the mastery of the machine and the allure of the machine’s roar on foreign streets.”10 The Wild One is a film about a generation that refuses to be confined by laws. It is wild and raw, a kind of modern Western, as a contributor in Rheinische Post remarks,11 where the “Urtriebe,” the basic instincts, the pre-civilization drives, that which lies prior to the distinction of good and evil, are depicted. Good and evil, separated by the law, come into view as social institutions, and the motorcycle gang appears so as to disrupt them. In the discourse about The Wild One, the figure of youth becomes a metaphor for society’s edge. If West German society of the early 1950s could be described as rather homogeneous and only delimited by the ideological boundaries of the Cold War, the discourse about Brando’s

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motorcycle gang performs youth as an alternative social boundary which is unrelated to ideological boundaries. The social order is imagined as surrounded by an untamed wilderness, an alterity that threatens and provokes social cohesion. A critic notes: “Despite all civic progress [this modern Western, MK] retains its attitude of brutality and lack of respect for the law.”12 The law appears as antagonist to the youth rebellion, the youth rebellion as a “rough challenge to any civil order”.13 In his book Wie aus Wildnis Gesellschaft wird (En:  How Wilderness Becomes Society), Jörn Ahrens describes the Western as a film genre that depicts the imaginary founding act of US-American (Western) civilization: the Western wilderness is tamed by the imposition of the law, through which civilization can come into being. Taming wilderness constitutes the myth of origin of (US-American) society (Ahrens 2012, esp. pp.  213–239). Even if West Germany’s myth of origin is not explicitly subject to negotiation in the discourse under consideration, it clearly scrutinizes society’s self-image as founded upon the legal code. Despite the discourse not calling into question the primacy of the social order, it decenters its omnipresence and places the rebel youth alongside the social order as an alternative figure to the law. It is through this decentering of the law that society can come into being as a negotiable figure. Zygmunt Bauman describes modernity as a period which is guided by the topos of order versus chaos. Modern society is obsessed with establishing a clearly defined (total) order, which, Bauman claims, is normally achieved by creating structural dichotomies. Though they feign symmetry, they only hide the asymmetry inherent in social dichotomies: Dichotomy is an exercise in power and at the same time its disguise. Though no dichotomy would hold without the power to set apart and cast aside, it creates an illusion of symmetry. The sham symmetry of results conceals the asymmetry of power that is its cause. Dichotomy represents its members as equal and interchangeable. Yet its very existence testifies to the presence of a differentiating power. It is the power-assisted differentiation that makes the difference. It is said that only the difference between units of the opposition, not the units themselves, is meaningful. Thus meaningfulness, it seems, is gestated in the practices of power capable of making difference – of separating and keeping apart. (Bauman 1991, p. 14)

Furthermore, order demands the abolishment of ambivalence. Ambivalence, the state of undecidability, cannot be tolerated. The objects

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and subjects classified belong to the one-or-the-other of dichotomy; there cannot be an in-between state. Alterity as defined by Emmanuel Levinas, the figure of the absolute other, which remains an enigma but nonetheless invokes an ethical obligation (Levinas 1983, pp. 209–235), appears in Bauman as the figure of the foreigner, which is, however, a fictive figure. Once “the foreigner” has been classified as something (e.g. as a Jew), she is no longer foreign or unfamiliar, but belongs to the social outside. Bauman’s figure of “the foreigner” is a figure of ambivalence, which modern society attempts to extinguish through classification into an inside and an outside. Normality is what is inside; deviation from the norm is to be found on the outside. The discourse about The Wild One activates a dichotomy of inside and outside, of society and wilderness. The normality of the social order is confronted with the deviance of unbound lust for living and spirit of adventure–in the atmosphere of the 1950s, which is driven by the search for stability and security, this suffices to appear as a threat. Yet, despite the apparently clear hierarchy between law and outlaw, the figure of the rebel youth does not give in to such a simple classification as outside. The motorcycle gang’s behavior is discussed as a balancing act between imprudence and carelessness on the one hand and crime on the other.14 From this perspective, the so-called lost generation takes a position of liminality that is on the verge of the social. It is almost, yet not quite beyond. Whether the youth gang operates in a time-space prior to civilization or on the threshold between lawfulness and crime is just a matter of nuance. Both perspectives apply the image of the edge that negotiates the boundaries of the social. The youth gang operates neither fully within nor fully beyond the social. The figure of youth is thus discussed as ambivalent and the emerging ambivalence is not neutralized through the discourse. Ambivalence is kept active within the discourse, as when a contributor in Hamburger Abendblatt asks who is responsible for the death of an innocent citizen in the film: “Everyone. The young ones who are bursting with strength; … And a social order that can only provide, besides wars, an uncontrollable civilization’s hazardous toys to young men, so that they may let off steam and prove their enviable energy.”15 The youth’s exuberant energy is a threat because it resists control (“who are bursting with strength”), but the same energy is also enviable. It is the social order that appears lacking as it does not provide socially accepted paths to give expression to this energy. Similarly, Film-Dienst remarks: “There is a sense that life’s expressiveness fluctuates between Bebop-silliness and alcohol on

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the one hand and breakneck sport and aggression on the other hand.”16 Foolery and sports can be found on this side of legitimacy; alcohol and violence in the sphere beyond. Youth, especially in the character of the gang leader Johnny, figures ambiguity and polyvalence: The leader Johnny … certainly appears to be a gangland boss, yet on weekdays he is, most likely a reliable employee, just like his unpleasant comrades. In the course of this turbulent plot he meets a girl who manages to throw all his nothingness right in his face, without rejecting him altogether. Almost tenderly the closing scene indicates that positive possibilities can be effected even by an exemplary representative of this generation.17

The discourse about youth is a discourse about youth’s liminal appearance. It is constructed as an ambivalent figure, which has to be endured as indeterminable and which is neither within nor without the social. The term “liminality” is derived from Victor Turner’s cultural anthropology and his studies of rituals. It was later appropriated by Richard Schechner for theater studies so as to be able to create a framework for the space established by theater and theatrical performances (Wagner-Willi 2001). Liminality–as derived from Turner–refers to an unstable in-between state of social actors, in which the actor transforms her social status. The actor performs a ritual, through which she acquires a different position within society. Liminality can thus be read as a figure of transformation. Homi Bhabha locates one of his most important concepts–cultural hybridity–in a liminal in-between space. The liminal in-between space is inhabited by the disruptive presence of the post-colonial other, which does not lead to a transformation of the agent, but to that of colonial culture. The in-betweenness cannot be neutralized, since the post-colonial other will never fully be accepted into the colonial master’s culture, as much as she tries. She will remain a disruptive presence to the colonial order (Bhabha 1994). The position attributed to the rebel youth in the discourse can be more accurately described with Bhabha’s conception of liminality taken as an indissoluble in-betweenness that is a disruptive presence on the borderline of the normative order and which forces it to transform itself into another shape. Youth, in this context, is not discussed as a stage in the life-cycle of a human being, but as a presence on the border of the social that disrupts its presumed stability.

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We can here observe the formation of a social figure which is characterized particularly by its ambivalence, a figure which eludes strict classification and hence the positing of a clear dichotomy. It is a figure which positively introduces an element of the undecidable into West Germany’s web of social significations. The challenge posed by the figure of youth can be assessed if we consider the patterns of cinematic film consumption in the mid-1950s. Knut Hickethier describes the role played especially by Heimatfilme (sentimental films in idealized regional settings) and war films.18 While Heimatfilme served as a means to escape reality, war films provided specifically the male recipients with a feeling of adventure. By positing soldiers as adventurers, participation in the war turned into a heroic act (Hickethier 2010, pp. 254–259). Similarly, the US-American Western became popular in the mid-1950s and provided West German men with a new image of a “positive” manliness; it “was part of the reconstruction of a new, post-fascist cold war West German masculinity” (Poiger 1998, p. 162), as Uta Poiger points out. All three genres created figures of stability. The Wild One breaks this pattern and creates a figure of instability. Youth, which walks on the borderline of the social, is neither fully evil nor fully good. The motorcycle gang’s lust for adventure, although in part disdained by the critics, is not literally speaking beyond the law. In the descriptions of youth’s excess zest, derision is combined with a suppressed desire for youth. This is even more pointed when society is portrayed as incapable of providing free spaces for youth to act out its vitality, which becomes a sign that society is falling apart. The figure of youth, personified by Marlon Brando, in the West German discourse becomes a figure of indecision. It breaks into the imaginary of stability and security, which covers the de facto precariousness of social and material life in the 1950s.19 As society normally imagines itself as stable and unchanging, foregrounding the institution above institutionalization, the search for stability is represented in society’s world of significations. Signification is determination, so as to underline society’s foundation in a “real.” The design of the figure of youth as ambivalent breaks this notion of the determinacy of signification. While ambivalence is part of any social process, it rarely finds its way into the imaginary significations of a society. Here, however, we can witness how social imaginary significations are enriched with a figure of instability: youth becomes a reflexive space in which Castoriadis’ notion of instituting society (in contrast to instituted society) finds representation.

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6.2.2  Blackboard Jungle The film Blackboard Jungle is of a different order to The Wild One, dealing explicitly with youth delinquency, the sphere of the social outside. It was almost unanimously classified as a brave socio-critical work of art that depicts the fight of a single teacher against the violence and disinterestedness of his students in a poor, inner-city school. The public discourse about Blackboard Jungle revolves around the question of social authority and the lack thereof in post-World War II society. The central problem depicted in the film, according to the critics, is a youth that has lost its sense of a social and civilized order and expresses a crisis of authority through the enactment of violence, brutality, and sadism: Distrustful and isolated young people, deprived of an inward regulatory picture and without authorities that they accept or in which they can believe, search for a new romanticized authority from within their own ranks. The boxer’s ethics and the ordinary muscular strength, which are the decisive regulatory elements of the jungle, profoundly fascinate the youngsters. The law of the adults, at first intuitively hated ‘with good reason’, is put to the test in perpetual friction with the ‘minor’ paragraphs of the Civil Code.20

Self-given authority antagonizes social authority: autonomy is opposed to heteronomy. The point is that while autonomy or self-rule is of a positive nature for Castoriadis, it is perceived as a failure of the social by the Frankfurter Abendpost. The film appears to depict a lack of accord between the social institution and the social individual. Through socialization, the monadic psyche develops into an individual who is organized according to the laws of the social, Castoriadis claims (Castoriadis 1987, pp.  273–339). Without this (partial) accordance between psyche and the social, individual survival would be impossible. Any particular society can survive only insofar as there are individuals who have internalized its laws and logic. A heteronomous society disallows the divergence of the social order and the social individual. Deviance has to be minimized and authority is not to be questioned. Blackboard Jungle is described as being concerned with the opening of a gap between the social institution and the “youth’s” psyche. The youth depicted differs from the average West German individual of the mid-1950s in that it questions authority and thus heteronomy–the rule of the eternal institution.

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Deviance is the discontinuity of conformity between the psyche and the social order, and hence an attack on the homogeneity of the social. Reading the film as an example of a realist aesthetic paradigm turns the film into a direct and unmediated comment on social reality. The application of the realist paradigm has already been observed in relation to The Wild One. It makes it possible to derive meaning from the direct reference of the fictional world’s signs to social reality, as the following contribution in Der neue Film shows: This film is a stark social critique of a condition which is here shown most ruthlessly using the US-American example, but which can be found, undoubtedly, – in another form, though with the same central problem – in Italy as much as in France or in Germany. Because the subject of this discussion with cinematic means is the problem of the unrestrained growing up of youth. It is the collision of the ‘Halbstarke’, the rowdies, with a society that whilst adhering to a civic order has become feeble and has given up.21

The above quotation depicts a social reality that cannot be strictly distinguished from the fictional world; fiction and social reality blend into each other. Aesthetic realism serves as an extension of the discourse about youth and deviance in Western countries. “The problem of youth” is here constructed as a common problem. Fiction is not something imaginary, but a comment on social reality. The film is thus seamlessly incorporated into a discourse about the (perceived) failure of social authority and the youth’s wish for an alternative, self-given law. The film becomes a tool for giving meaning to the social transformations that are announcing themselves in the mid-1950s, in which one group of the social, which is characterized by age, begins to develop its own responses to the challenges of modernity. Axel Schildt comments on the changes: Repercussions of the socio-historical ‘structural break’ were particularly noticeable in the changes in young people’s conduct and attitudes. Yet it was not solely a ‘rebellion’ against their father and mother’s generation, but a social search for landmark security in the period after reconstruction, in which the young generation led the way. (Schildt 1998b, p. 348)

To these critics, Blackboard Jungle demonstrates the drifting apart of generations and makes visible the rupture that is breaking into the social.

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The tone adopted by these articles, which characterizes the entire discourse, is one of a collapse of the social capacity to be responsive to the needs of one of its parts. Youth, though deviant, is part of society. Its liminality, however, disrupts the security with which society perceives itself as in unity with itself and its institutions. Youth is deviant because society’s institutions have become defective. Blame is sought in adult negligence during the war and the turmoils of its aftermath. The following quote from the weekly Christ & Welt is representative of the public mood in this respect: What remains is the figure of youth, who has been forsaken by the adults in the decisive stages of his life: The adolescent, who has experienced the war in his early childhood years and who, so to say, embodies the incarnate memory and deposit of what happened back then; of what the adults have by now successfully forgotten and suppressed by the pressure of work, by striving ahead, and also by the new prosperity; the spiritually malnourished child, who only stays with his family as bed lodger and remains alone through the daytime as an artificial orphan, because father and mother go to work; the pupil, who senses the insecurities, anxieties, and also experiments of his teachers and unwittingly adopts them into his own nature and life, without being able to cope with this burden. Not only in America, where the child notoriously stands at the center of family attention and can ‘take the liberty of doing anything’, but also in our post-war country, pressed by work and lack of time, there are parents who buy themselves out of their educational duties with a few pennies for the cinema, which are hurriedly slipped in the child’s pocket, or with an explosive fatherly sermon at the dinner table.22

Material prosperity is here played off against spiritual leadership in education. We can recognize the beginning of the idea of Wohlstandsverwahrlosung (Schildt 1998b, p.  346), an idea which refers to neglect through affluence–a topic that will become more pronounced in Rebel Without a Cause. It is interesting that Blackboard Jungle is associated with neglect through affluence, since the pupils depicted in the film can hardly be thought of as coming from a wealthy background. However, this transfer is expressive of the process of generating meaning, of creating a horizon of understanding, of the social changes taking place. The film’s structure, which posits youth against adult, is recognized by the critics in their own society. The different “content” (poor background versus aspiring background) is lost in the moment of transfer.

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While the beginning of the 1950s in West Germany was characterized by a structural indistinguishability between youth and adults (and is therefore marked by the absence of a phenomenon of “youth”), the last third of the 1950s witnessed the separation of youth from adult behavior. The transformations undergone by society at this time are described by Axel Schildt: During the last third of the 1950s it became increasingly palpable that youth began to search for new, distinct paths of dissociating from the adults. Two circumstances convened to bring this about. For one, a new youth generation of those born around 1940 entered the stage. This generation had spent the largest part of its childhood in the post-war period and had been socialized by the West German reconstruction society. On the other hand, in the last third of the 1950s a time of particularly fast social transformations began, which were also significant for the youth. Due to the reduction in working hours taking effect everywhere and the transition to a five-day week many youth enjoyed more free time. While living conditions were still characterized by density and sparseness, young people had more and more money at their disposal. (Schildt 1998b, p. 343)

When Franz Norbert Mennemeier from Rheinische Post claims that the film depicts “a very typical and very threatening modern situation: the recent instability in the relation between the generations,”23 he picks up on the moving ground on which West German society is situated. And he further introduces the notion of a struggle of ages when he remarks: The teacher Dadier, who is to be ‘worn down’ by the American rowdy class, represents nothing other than traditional spirit and traditional education. This teacher represents the last bits of humanity that have survived two world wars and which is now confronted with the hard, savage style of our materialist age, hypnotized by technology, crime, and sex.24

The youth figures in Blackboard Jungle symbolize the origin of a new form of social institution: a symbol for the age of materialism, technology, crime, and sex. The polarity of youth versus adult visualizes the happening of the social-historical in Castoriadis’ sense. It visualizes the movement to which society is subjected, the substitution of social eide, while the figure of youth symbolizes modernity–a modernity which appears threatening to the adult generation.

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In fact, Schildt (1998b, p. 348) concludes that what is at the heart of the stratification process is different approaches to modernization that challenged post-war society. While youth welcomed modernity, consumer culture, and the promise of independence, the adult generation felt threatened by cultural change. What is culturally externalized as “Americanization” conceals the fear of the young people’s aspirations to independence and autonomy. This is particularly true of the youth phenomenon of the early years starting from the mid-1950s, which has been associated with the term Halbstarke. It must be understood in the context of opposition and rebellion, as Thomas Grotum exemplifies on the basis of the youth riots in Lower Saxonia (Grotum 1994). The Halbstarke phenomenon was dominated by youth from the working class milieu, which demanded participation in society and consumption. Youth culture, with the Halbstarke phenomenon at the fore (see also Faulstich 2002, pp.  286–288), was thus certainly initiated by an oppositional impetus. Youth’s challenge of the hegemonic status quo was thus correctly identified by the critics of Blackboard Jungle. We may conceptualize this antagonism between youth and adult, as it is experienced by the critics, as a struggle for the future imaginary of West German society. While the critics mostly adhere to (an imaginary) old social order, they acknowledge social reality as deviating from the ideal. Most gloomily, a contributor in Bremer Nachrichten remarks: [Young people, MK] fight against a world that they do not understand, a world assuming that this youthful mob is nothing but a wayward waste-­ product of its own – fairly dubious – achievements. Yet this world forgets that this youth is its own progeny, which in the film becomes an anarchic mass, ruled by primal drives, tickled by stimuli; a mass curled by impulses stemming from sadism and which heads for nihilism.25

This claim is seconded in Rheinische Post by Franz Norbert Mennemeier, who claims that the film is “[a] massive attack against a generation of adults who have nothing to offer to their children and who have lost face.”26 In both cases, the analysis of the film blurs with the description of social reality. This underlines the film’s function as representing and describing social reality, as a realist mirror of the social, for the discourse. The plot’s thrilling tension, the narrative-fictional dimension (e.g. the fight between the teacher Dadier and his pupil West), is of secondary importance. Where it is thematized, as in the earlier quotes from the Frankfurter Abendpost and Rheinische Post, the tension between Dadier

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and West is hypostatized as a metaphor for the struggle between youth and adult, thereby confirming the realism of the film’s depiction. Through Blackboard Jungle, youth is imagined as society’s dystopian alter ego. It is described as a mass, estranged from society, but simultaneously as its product and hence as part of its own becoming. Youth opposes the social, yet is inherently linked with, and inseparable from society. Its fear of this estrangement comes from the recognition of its own failure to integrate this youth. Youth mirrors society’s dysfunctionality. The notion of society as self-instituting, which is eloquently paraphrased by the search for a romanticized authority from youth’s own ranks, unsettles the normal order of representation, in which society with its laws, values, and codes appears as given and as the superior authority to the individual. Youth turns into the symbolic figure for the disruption of established rule and thus a figure of transformation. Castoriadis notes: Each society is a construction, a constitution, a creation of a world, of its own world. Its own identity is nothing but this ‘system of interpretation’, this world it creates. And that is why (like every individual) it perceives as a mortal threat any attack upon this system of interpretation: it perceives such an attack as an attack upon its identity. (Castoriadis 1997, p. 9)

Despite the sympathies the critics exhibit toward youth, youth and adulthood/modernity and humanism are posited as antagonists, in which the critics side with the ideal of humanism. Youth, as it stands for Americanized modernity, is viewed as an attack upon West Germany’s identification with spiritual values and cultural depth. What these explanations point to is the search of the adult generation (represented by the critics) for an understanding of the transformations society is undergoing. The figure of youth unsettles the certainty of a homogeneous society indebted to humanism and a superior, more profound culture. Gudrun Kruip describes German identity after the war as constituted by an understanding of self as intermediary between Western rationality and belief in progress and Eastern emotionality and spiritual profundity. This identity was crucially unsettled by West Germany’s political alignment with the West during the Cold War (Kruip 1999, pp. 19–33). The discourse about the figure of youth is to be understood as a discourse that sees the need to reorient West Germany’s social imaginary significations away from the East, without succumbing to an assimilation with US-American culture. I will come back to this aspect later.

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The figure of youth makes visible the instability of the social ground and opens up a rethinking of how things are done in the social sphere. To make use of Castoriadian terminology, society searches for new ways of teukhein, of social doing. The social is composed of two dimensions that belong to an ensemblist-identitary logic, meaning deterministic logic or the logic of the institution–as opposed to the magmatic logic, which is the logic of institutionalization or indeterminacy. Castoriadis names these two dimensions legein–social saying/identifying–and teukhein–social doing. Far from being reducible to code and technique, these dimensions comprise a signifying dimension, which results from their relation with the imagination. They mean something beyond pure identification of things or the instrumental execution of acts.27 The gap that is perceived by the critics between society and youth destabilizes the security with which conventional ways of doing things are experienced. Apparently, society fails to “correctly” socialize its youth, which is why the manner in which young people are treated is scrutinized. Education becomes the key term of the dispute. A contributor in the only decidedly left publishing medium of this sample, Die Andere Zeitung, formulates the import of the resulting universalization of the notion of education with eloquence and irony28: The story of a young teacher, who, in the maze of anarchic-proletarian, anarchic-pubertal ‘self-indulgence’, is threatened with falling prey to despair; likewise, it is the story of a group of young gangsters … who are wrested from the thicket, not without offering up two of them as a sacrifice to justice – wherein lies a secret hint of violence as well. Altogether, this is the story of education’s venture into the chaos of violence which still lurks at the periphery of humanity. At the end of the road lies, as a promise, the world which has turned into a province of education; a model which has been forestalled in the High-Schools of American medium-sized towns.29

Unsurprisingly, the article’s author, Gerhard Brandt, renounces such a positive assessment of education. For Brandt, while the film appears to depict youth delinquency and violence, the teacher’s victory in the struggle for the youth’s souls is also a victory that unmasks the bourgeois order and its system of education as an order of violence. Brandt’s rejection of (bourgeois) society and its ideal of education is the most radical manifestation of the challenges with which society is confronted. Classical education

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represents authoritarian and heteronomous society; the rejection of one of the terms implies the refusal of the other term. The very conservative paper Christ & Welt puts forth the opposite opinion. Education can only be considered as such if it provides the rules and laws of social co-existence. The subject is required to obey: “Every child needs authoritative guidance. This is also indirectly confirmed by the fact that – if it has not been properly educated – it feels an intense desire to exert tyranny.”30 Implicitly, democracy is here associated with an attitude of “laissez-­ faire,” which was highly suspicious to a society that valued order and strict hierarchies. As the description of the discourse about youth has shown, deviance from the norm was regarded with suspicion. Democracy and “laissez-faire” hence stand for a society out of order–an attitude that correlates with the high levels of consent for Adenauer’s conservative conception of politics. As Kurt Lenk remarks, the post-war West German conservatism can be characterized by a belief in the necessity for an authority “from above” and the leadership of the elites. Democratic participation was thus restricted to casting a vote during elections and otherwise discouraged. Lenk further characterizes conservatism as the ideological primacy of social totalities over and above individual needs. In return, this means that the subject is conceptualized as “free” only insofar as it is entangled in social relations and subject to these relations. Consequently, conservatism believes in the legitimacy of the exertion of social and political authority for the sake of the proper socialization of the individual (Lenk 1998). Since conservatism was pervasive in West Germany in the 1950s (see Schildt 1998a), “laissez-­ faire” and “democratic education” meant chaos and anarchy, and free will a means of social destruction. Society was hence conceptualized as bound together by the force of the law (codified and non-codified). Society reigned as the supreme and everlasting entity to which the individual was to be subjected. The role of education for society clearly results from its power to produce the social individual that willingly subjects itself to the rules and laws set by the social. The challenge of how education is to be constituted is thus also a challenge to the particular eidos of society, because a transformed education produces different social individuals and hence a different society. Günther Geisler, a contributor in Berliner Morgenpost, takes the middle way between the demand for strict authority (the “old” path) and the radical rejection of society and education, however tentative his plea in favor of the “new path” to education might be:

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An all the more inevitable question becomes whether, following demands in discussions and in reader’s letters from a majority of the audience, to educate by authority and strictness or if it is time for education to take a ‘new path’. The youth’s powers of aggression – are they to be repressed, or should they be absorbed and directed? The film decides, even if cautiously, in favor of the ‘new path’, in favor of the attempt, therefore, of finding inward access. However, it leaves no doubt that it is a path full of self-denying, misjudged, ridiculed efforts; that it is not always successful.31

The “new path” to education is conceived of as a new conception of the social, which directs attention to the individual. The social becomes secondary to the subject and her individuality. As opposed to the authoritative model of education, difference and the inner particularities are to be channeled, but not to be suppressed. The film’s clear reception within the realist paradigm of art/interpretation creates a direct relation between the fictional world and social reality. Interpretations of the film refer directly to social reality, which becomes visible in the indistinguishable blending of fictional and social analysis in the reviews. In as much as Blackboard Jungle is interpreted as a social critique, it functions as a comment on a discourse about youth, in which youth turns into a symbol for society’s own future. It captures the notion of social transformation in a figuration through which transformation becomes part of the magma of social significations. Youth as a figure, although depicted as a threat by the discourse, carries the promise of autonomy as a counter-vision to authoritarian society that is in the process of losing attractiveness. Youth grows into a symbol that synthesizes democratic education, cultural change, and “Americanization” into the signification of transformation. Youth is inserted into the web of significations as an (imaginary) figure that reorganizes society’s world of signification. To the extent that the figure is posited as a new eidos, it deranges the instituted order of significations and enforces a reordering and re-structuring of the “matrices of signification” (Castoriadis 1987, p.  340). This has repercussions for the self-conception of the society in question. The figure of youth becomes the carrier of a new temporality, which substitutes transformation for stability and openness for closure. In fact, it uncovers the magmatic being of the social and introduces this dimension as a figure of thought into the web of social significations.

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Blackboard Jungle provides the discourse with a form-figuration that makes it possible for critics to capture the transformations under way in West German society. Through the form-figuration of youth, the changes in society become processable. Youth is the foil for society to negotiate its hopes and fears of “modernization” as well as its vision of an adapted and modernized social reality. Only if it is present as a figure of thought–as a signification–can the symbolized process become a mode of thinking the social and hence transform the particular imaginary world of a society. The fact that the figure of thought is mostly discussed in a negative way by the critics under consideration does not inhibit the figure from proposing an alternative model of the social world, through which it simultaneously carries the threat and promise of another vision of life. 6.2.3  Rebel Without a Cause When the film Rebel Without a Cause premiered in West Germany, James Dean had already died young. In fact, his untimely death certainly contributes to a blurring of the line between Dean’s fictional roles and his personality, resulting in a mythical aura that has since accompanied the figure-actor. The film is a tragedy set in a wealthy US-American neighborhood and thus starkly contrasts with the setting of Blackboard Jungle. It may be thought of as its counterpart and complement. The wealthy background of the film’s setting has been remarked upon by the majority of critics and sets the tone for its reception. It withdraws attention from the social margins and focuses on society’s functional core: the middle classes. Here, poverty and marginalization cease to serve as explanations for deviant behavior and the youth rebellion comes into perspective as a phenomenon that transcends class-specific explanations. Youth rebellion is the parents’ and teachers’ fault, a collapse of adult responsibility toward their progeny: “[The parents] are cowardly, withdrawn, disinterested. They do not understand their children. They do not take them seriously and forsake them.”32 Even though they care materially for their children, the parents neglect their emotional needs: love, understanding and the need for role models.33 A critic in Hannoversche Presse puts it thus: Finding his parents to be lacking is what drives Jim [performed by James Dean, MK] to participate in the ‘coward’s chase’. In the eyes of the son, the father becomes a coward, because he is a resigned man, given to compro-

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mises, who walks the path of least resistance, indulgent and not prone to fight. To resemble him, for the son, is a stigma, a disgrace. A lack of love and understanding is to blame for the deadly game, or the parents, who are incapable of giving meaning to forms and conventions; instead these were mechanically transferred to son and daughter. The technical environment requires a degree of domestication, which comes at the expense of vitality and an unspoilt nature and in turn leaves the fathers virtually incapable of being role models to adolescents, to boys who cannot comprehend the complexities of modern life.34

Several elements from Blackboard Jungle and The Wild One reappear: in the film, the parents represent domesticated society, which makes them fail in investing the social with appeal and attractiveness. They are presented as empty shells since they do things without filling them with meaning. In a slightly different form, society is depicted as an institution lacking a firm ground, an institution that has departed from its vital origins. Youth, represented by Jim and his friends, are liminal figures which disrupt the normal order yet cannot be clearly classified as delinquent, but rather as deviant and in search of self-affirmation. The critics of Rebel Without a Cause, however, place special emphasis on parental neglect and lack of love as the causes of Jim’s disorientation, and hence the critique of materialism is foregrounded in the discourse. Adults, parents in particular, fail as role models, and in opposition to them, Jim seems likeable and his desires for attention reasonable. His rebellion against an empty materialism appeals to a West German society in search of its national particularities in the face of an economic system that indeed provides wealth, but which is also clearly subject to US-American hegemony. Jim’s search for a deeper meaning in life–beyond material wealth– finds resonance with a traditional West German self-image of being more spiritually profound than “the West.” Jim’s belief in the profundity of life and his struggle with the emptiness of pure capitalism corresponds to the German valuation of cultural depth described above. It resonates with West Germany’s desire to find a Western identity which does not succumb to US-American mass culture. Jim’s unideological rebellion makes him an admissible critic of US-American culture, while he does not interfere with the integrative force of anti-communism in West Germany. As previously mentioned, in the 1950s anti-communism had turned into the single integrating element of the Adenauer society and the raison d’être of the West German state: its means of survival (see, e.g., Schildt 1998a, pp. 630–632;

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Creuzberger and Hoffmann 2014). Jim’s criticism of capitalism and Western culture is hence acceptable because it is not a critique that links to a communist critique of capitalism. Similar to the weekly’s reply to Blackboard Jungle, here again Christ & Welt responds to Jim’s struggle against life’s emptiness with a call for stricter parental authority, since it is authority that provides depth and orientation: In the evening, on the edge of a cliff outside town, an even more lunatic duel plays out; one boy crashes with his car into the sea. And while the young man [his opponent, MK] wants to go to the police and admit his guilt and the parents attempt to appease him with all the weak phrases of bourgeois ideology, the decisive words of the film are dropped. For once in my life I want to do the right thing, the boy cries; for once I don’t want to shirk the truth, take a stand and be responsible. It is the cry for authority that is uttered here, the desperate call for a life that is more than a comfortable provisional arrangement, and for a father who is more to the son than a ‘comrade’.35

Parents, adults, and society fail as role models because they lack the belief in anything: the belief in principles, morals, and values, the belief in the rightness of society. Society is described as degenerate and full of compromise. As the quotation from Hannoversche Presse shows, compromise and an empty civilization appear as opponents to the profundity and authenticity of life. In fact, compromise and domestication are life’s foes, since they inhibit the emergence of a direct access to life. G. Geisle adds in Berliner Morgenpost: [During the first half of the film, MK] much is captured well: the excessive power that can easily change into rawness in a group or a collective. The originally healthy urge to do something grand, something special and dangerous (but what?). The youth’s wild, unconditional straightforwardness that finds little support from the compromise-clouded parents.36

Masculinity, nativeness, adventure, and straightforwardness are romanticized against the backdrop of a society that has lost its “masculine” (and hence “true” and upright) backbone. In fact, Rebel Without a Cause can be tied in with what Heide Fehrenbach has called the “crisis of masculinity” (Fehrenbach 1995, p.  95). Discourses of national identity in the 1950s strongly revolved

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around family values and domestic life, since the allied occupation and the resulting geo-political division of the country along Cold War lines left little space for political and ideological self-definition. The militarized masculinity of the Weimar Republic and National Socialism had lost its appeal after the unconditional surrender and the atrocities committed during the war and in the concentration camps.37 Susan Jeffords notes in this respect: It is no accident, then, that narratives attempting to resolve those ambiguities [of ‘German manhood’, MK] should focus not on those whose affiliations with Nazism made them perhaps least credible but on those whose positioning on the margins of manhood  – children, adolescents, and [Prisoners of War, MK] – made them most readily available for reconstructing the status of German manhood. (Jeffords 1998, p. 164)

The romantic ideal of legitimate (adolescent) aggressivity represented by Jim appeals to the mostly male critics38 and provides a certain positive image of a renewed masculinity. Youth, here, is a utopian promise of masculine renewal. Compared to Blackboard Jungle, it is a reversal of roles: youth no longer represents a primitive version of society, but a challenge to weakness and neglect. It thus turns into a positive figure. Rebel Without a Cause suggests a narrative of youth as a heroic response to society’s failure. The realist interpretation blends with a romantic touch. Youth turns into a subject position, which Laclau and Mouffe describe as a “discursive condition[ ] of possibility” (Laclau and Mouffe (1985) 2001, p. 115). The sign, Castoriadis claims, precedes identity (Castoriadis 1987, p. 244). Without the sign, the naming of an object, and hence its identification, is impossible. Jeff Klooger further explains that “[t]he object is identical to itself, is determinate and definable, because of its relationship with a sign” (emphasis mine, Klooger 2014, p. 120). The sign makes it possible to identify two objects as identical, since they can both be named by the same sign. Through this relation of sign and identity, youth turns into an identificatory possibility (Identifikationsangebot) and hence brings into being in the first place the subject it proposes to represent. The figure of youth simultaneously signifies a better version of society and a role model for masculinity. The polyvalence of youth as standing for a heroic version of society and as providing an acceptable image of masculinity is not a counterargument to its function as an identificatory

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possibility. In fact, it suggests a gender-biased conception of national identity as a response to the transformed gender roles as they emerged during the war and its aftermath. Due to the absence of a large mass of men during the war and their subsequent imprisonment, women had become heads of household, breadwinners, and those that rebuilt the nation (see, e.g., Moeller 1998). The West German discourse about youth should be considered in the context of this threatening female dominance and as an attempt to re-conceptualize national identity as virile, male, and imbued with an excess of life. Youth brings into being this other, utopian version of society, in an act of self-affirmation in the face of a precarious and insecure national identity. Romanticism and tragedy break into the realist appearance of the rebel youth films, through which the figure of youth becomes a tragic figure, a figure of accusation: Rather, the teen tragedy wants to expose the fragility and emptiness of a family life that does not deserve this name any more. The young people have all the luxury that they can wish for, they only lack one thing: parental love and understanding. Their goodwill notwithstanding, the fathers and mothers do not even recognize the boys’ and girls’ heartaches. These young ones want plain answers to their questions. By no means do they want to get up to nonsense, but they feel abandoned, because, like Jim, they are scolded or receive mere phrases instead of a plain word, or, like Plato, a check instead of a reply. Unquenched desire for truly understanding love makes them grow so desperate, that they don’t know any more what they are doing.39 This leads to the gruesome duel of the two car drivers at the precipice and the tragedy of the small Plato can take its course. There he stands, the tender boy, who has no one in the world, sobs are shaking his body, tears fall from his eyes, and he shoots, shoots at those who are his enemies, and at those, who wish him well. … A scene that summarizes the meaning of the film drama like a crystal, an accusation that hits prosperity’s house of cards like a bomb.40

In as much as youth is described as a figure that quarrels with the “promises” of American culture, it gains the critics’ acceptance. Jim’s presumed struggle with the emptiness of prosperity gives expression to the reservations of a conservative West German public over the “material culture” that is associated with the USA.  Youth turns into a figure of mediation between the value of high culture and the (materialist) American (mass) culture. Jim and his friends (Judy and Plato) become mouthpieces of a

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critique of what is perceived as a soulless culture. However, the anti-­ heroism of the heroes prevents Jim and his friends from being appropriated as representatives of the “old” German culture. They remain phenomena and the progeny of materialist culture. As they do not represent materialist or high culture, Jim, Judy, and Plato take an in-between position, which oscillates between the two imaginary significations of culture. As its own internal critique, youth transforms into a renewed version of modernization, a modernization that does not neglect the inner values of humanity, and it is through this figure of youth that “Westernization” becomes acceptable for the German discourse. In the discourse it functions as a symbol for the rapprochement and convergence of differing performances of culture and is hence also a figure that symbolizes cultural hybridity. Youth thus marks the intrusion of a notion of openness and mixture into the social imaginary significations, through which modernization can be reimagined as a blend of US-American and West German aspects of culture. Through Jim, the meaning of modernization is opened for a national adjustment which makes it socially more acceptable. The hardening of the Cold War throughout the 1950s forced the West German state to develop an identity that markedly dissociated it from its Eastern counterpart; an identification with the Western Allies, with the USA at their head, became mandatory for survival (Kruip 1999, pp. 30–33). The political orientation toward the West that was initiated by the Adenauer government thus enforced a cultural dealing with “Western” (especially US-American) values. The tension that subsequently existed between a politics of clear attachments and a culture that experienced the “American way of life” as utterly foreign to its national identity could no longer be maintained, and the figure of youth turned into a figure negotiating German versus Western values. In the discourse, the “Western” figure of youth diverges from the ordering figure of the sheriff as a figure of insecurity, in-betweenness, liminality. In her discussion of the reception of the Western in West and East Germany in the 1950s, Uta Poiger notes that because they depicted a clear picture of good and evil, order and disorder, the law-and-order Westerns especially can be considered as a gate-opener, through which US-American culture could take hold in West Germany. The figure of the sheriff in particular provided a positive image of an aggressive yet legitimate masculinity, which is subject to the state and the law. The Western was thus able to renew a patriarchal image of social order with strong men and weak

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women who are in need of protection and help. The gendered social order of the law-and-order Western allows the West German public to adjust its masculine ideal while restoring certainty (Poiger 1998). In contrast, the figure of the rebel youth serves the need to give expression to the instability that goes hand in hand with cultural opening and transformation as well as with modernization. It entrenches the fundamental social movement toward ambivalence in the imaginary world of West German society. The sheriff thus characterizes the status quo and the (imagined) stability of the past, while youth characterizes the future and movement. 6.2.4  Rock Around the Clock The film Rock Around the Clock is less of a drama and more of a musical and dance show. The plot is about the successful management of a rock band, with a love story as a side narrative. The public discourse assesses the film’s soundtrack, and especially its title song “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets, as the exciting element of the film. Although Dieter Baacke notes that Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” became a kind of “Marseillaise of the Rock Revolution” through Blackboard Jungle, which unintentionally bracketed Rock ’n Roll and youth’s feeling of alienation from society (Baacke 1999, p. 55), the link with Blackboard Jungle is not significant in the discourse about Rock Around the Clock. Moreover, the film’s plot receives little attention in the discourse. The narrative is described as unidimensional, subject to the needs of entertainment, but without further artistic value. In fact, several critics claim that the film is rather boring and weak. The film’s importance to the public discourse is its soundtrack on the one hand, and the reports of youth riots after the screening of the film in other countries, especially in Great Britain, on the other. The film was thus nervously anticipated in dread of a similar response by German youth. Most strikingly, critics note, the music which is introduced by the film is a new music style: “here we deal with the most modern of the modern.”41 Ruhr Nachrichten adds: “For months, Jazz-fans have been swallowing reports about a wave that comes without a stop sign from America, one that has already swept through England and is just now hitting West Germany’s shores. The wave is called Rock & Roll.”42 The topic of US cultural influence is much more present and much less discursively veiled than in the discourses about the other films. Rock ’n Roll is defined as the spearhead of modernity and indistinguishable from “Americanization.”

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The image of the unstoppable wave that washes over a country proposes an acceptance of what is to come. It gives expression to a feeling of irreversibility, but not in a culturally pessimistic way and rather with curiosity and a sense of gleeful anticipation. Although the article in Ruhr Nachrichten playfully accuses the producers of the film of being economically clever, it nevertheless welcomes the rhythms and dance as a means of joyful activity. Rock ’n Roll introduces an element of innocence and naiveté as opposed to the notion of destruction, despair, and rebellion that had otherwise radiated from the rebel youth films. British youth moving the chairs in film theaters is not considered riotous behavior by this critic but as a means to create space for dance. I will return later to the struggle about the notion of destruction and rebellion (see subsection 6.3.3). For the moment, it suffices to remark that Rock Around the Clock makes it increasingly difficult to speak of youth and “Americanization” in purely derogative terms. On the contrary, even though Rock ’n Roll is viewed with skepticism by the general public, the film Rock Around the Clock with its trivial yet romantic plot serves as a means to popularize and make acceptable the newly emerging youth culture. The emphasis that some critics put on the innocent and simple-minded appearance of Rock ’n Roll as an expression of youth culture challenges the established notion of the youth rebel and marks the introduction of another figure into the web of social significations: the figure of the teenager. This figure effectively domesticates the social indeterminacy of the figure of youth. The distinction between the two figures finds representation in German through the terms Halbstarke versus Teenager. While the teenager remains a figure within the boundaries of the social order, Halbstarke is a figure of transition. The ambivalence inscribed in this figure could not be endured by society on a long-term basis. In contrast to the rebel youth, the teenager does not appear as a challenge to, and rebellion against, the social order. Most visibly, this opposition is voiced by a critic in Sonntagsblatt who notes: “By the way, the so-called ‘Halbstarke’ were not in the cinema, there were only boys and girls who wanted to have fun, and they had it.”43 This critic also points toward the inescapability of the emergence of this new phenomenon when he concludes: “For the obstinate ones: whoever is interested in youth will have to deal with this kind of music, no matter if he likes it or not.”44 Further becoming apparent here is the detection of an identifiable and distinct youth culture, which develops its own means of cultural expression. Der Spiegel speaks of the new music as a “Weltanschauung”45–a philosophy of life–and thereby points in the same direction.

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With the identification of the youth phenomenon as a distinct “culture,” youth is categorized as an entity with distinct modes of expression. From the figure of cultural in-betweenness that was deployed by Rebel Without a Cause, the discourse develops youth into a concept of culture which is the carrier of newness, future-orientation, and (cultural) openness. What appears as a paradox–that a culture is characterized by cultural openness–points toward a change in the concept of culture. It disrupts the notion of culture as a closed entity, instead opening a space in which culture reflects upon itself. This shift in the meaning of youth marks the transformation of the idea of society from an entity closed in upon itself to an open collective where different life scripts and identifications co-exist. It is a shift from identity to identification, from determinacy to indeterminacy. If the former idea of the social conceptualized membership in society as inevitably sharing in society’s culture, the latter idea of the social conceptualizes identification as an act of choice and is therefore indeterminate. Of course, I am not speaking of a conscious re-shaping of concepts of the social, but of the way (fictionalized) figures enforce social re-­ conceptualizations so as to accommodate these figures.46 The shift that can be observed is a shift from a nationally oriented–closed–society to one that opens up toward the “West” and begins to welcome transformation. Of particular interest is the soothing description of the film’s audience by the critics. If the reports about youth riots in connection with Rock Around the Clock in Great Britain and Scandinavian countries in particular startled the West German public prior to the film’s screening, the critics appear intent on reassuring the public (and themselves?) of the inoffensive nature of the film’s audience. The fact that West Germany also witnessed youth crowds/riots and conflicts between youth and the police after the screening of the film (Kaiser 1959, esp. pp. 28–47) was widely ignored in the film’s critique.47 Only one article in my sample makes reference to “youth riots” in German cities, while it is eager to convince the public of the film audience’s docility: Most of the young people in the parquet around began to tap their feet with the rhythm and to sway, or rather, roll on their seats. The less animated ones saw that they were wedged in and occasionally threw concerned looks at the exit, but the momentum remained gentle. It was rather a sentimental sway to and fro in the audience, somewhat American, but essentially only because everyone was anxious to show how modern they are and that they are not shy.48

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Similarly, the Stuttgarter Zeitung reported: And in Stuttgart? – Many young people came to the first show, apparently Jazz experts, but also elderly folks were among them, most notably curious ones. And precisely these ones were enlivened with a laugh. But everything remained calm and civilized, in the end there were a few approving whistles, that was all. However, one could sense the restrained unrest and the annoying duty to remain seated, while the music and the dance was experienced as a flexible rhythm by some visitors. But, as I said before, no one rocked around the clock, let alone lost shirt and skirt.49 That was the job of those on screen.50

These statements fit well into the discourse of “Americanization” in that they attempt to retain a sense of national particularity in the face of the intrusion of the foreign. Since national identity is losing appeal among a certain age group and the struggle against otherness proves to be lost, “Americanization” has to be pragmatically accepted. The emphasis that is placed on West German youth’s docility has to be seen as a means of shaping the process of cultural transformation with a national particularity. These statements appear to be an attempt to retain a certain national sovereignty with regard to the patterns of cultural communication. The message is: contrary to youth in other countries, West German youth know how to behave. This does not mean that skepticism and rejection of “Americanization” have disappeared from the discourse. A report in Badische Zeitung, which is concerned with the impact of the film in Great Britain, gives expression to the fear caused by Rock ’n Roll: It has become insufficient to explain Rock & Roll’s impact on youth with natural exuberance. The rock-twist-fever is not a mere display; it is an explosive material that blasts all safety valves; it is a narcotic that disables reason. It is possible that all this is a temporary confusion. But what if it is in parts an expression and symptom of a time of jet engines and nuclear bombs – a time that has just begun?51

The discourse about youth is thus also a discourse about modernization, a discourse that seeks means of adapting to a changing world. It displays the older generation’s attempt to negotiate the “structural break” (Schildt 1998a, p. 348) of the 1950s. While the younger generation was able to welcome the transformations, the older generation, this quotation shows,

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was anxious and bewildered in the face of modernization. Rock ’n Roll became a symbol for modernization, a symbol for the changes West German society was undergoing. The figure of youth as it develops from the rebel youth films is not to be confused with the phenomenon of youth as such. What I am concerned with throughout this chapter, however, is the description of the emergence of the specific configuration of youth in the 1950s as it develops from the rebel youth films. As media produced specifically for youth as a target audience (Faulstich 2002, pp.  282–285), the rebel youth films not only contributed to the generation of a subject position “youth,” but also to the creation of youth as a signification in the symbolic order of society. With Rancière, the figure of youth may be called a surplus subject (Rancière 1999, p. 58), a discursive signification as well as a figure which creates its subjects. The figure of youth is clearly a fictionalized figure, as the above discussion has shown, which does not derive its appearance from empirical reality but from the type(s) provided by the films. The figure of youth serves the need to redefine the concept of the social. Castoriadis’ social imaginary is at work when youth is turned into a figure of social relevance–first in the shape of the rebel youth, which challenges the conception of the social as a closed entity through its ambivalence and ambiguity, and later in the shape of the teenager, who stabilizes the notion of an open society. The teenager takes an unambiguous place within the social imaginary signification of cultural openness. The figure of youth, therefore, becomes a site of reflection, in which society comes to objectify itself. Society recognizes itself in this figure. And it is that which engenders the Castoriadian “circle of creation,” of which Fabio Ciaramelli says: The origin must come to itself without, however, starting from anywhere while nevertheless having within itself that from which it detaches itself so as to exist as origin, to go out of itself and to come into being. It is precisely in this sense that origin is creation and that, consequently, origin as creation presupposes itself. … To produce oneself while self-presupposing oneself, to precede oneself – this is the paradox and the aporia of Ur-sprung as radical commencement. Hence, to exist as origin, to go out of oneself while positing oneself as the spontaneous source for this exiting that produces the very consistency of prime impulsive existing would be impossible without already having, within oneself, the resources to detach oneself from oneself, to pro-ject oneself outside. (Ciaramelli 1997, p. 46)

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The moment of creation is generative of a world preceding and following the moment of creation, and hence doubles the world. The Castoriadian concept of doubling is the creative moment in which past and present are brought into being as elements in temporal successions. Present and past, meanwhile, emerge simultaneously as part of the same process of origination. This diverges from the doubling of worlds in fictional works of art, as it has been described by Wolfgang Iser (see Chap. 4 on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four). In fiction, doubling refers to the co-presence of two worlds which exist in a tension-filled relation. The tension-filled relation in fiction wrests signification from its referential stability and begins the play of signs. The figure of youth as it emerges from the discourse engenders such a new form (eidos) of the social. It is the figure of an open society which carries within itself its own past. The doubling of worlds that takes place in the “prime impulsive” movement (Ciaramelli) brings into being a past society of closure and at the same time the imaginary of a modern society for the present. The figure of youth transforms cultural change into a figure-form-eidos, through which cultural change is established meaningfully within the web of social significations. Cultural change becomes an element with which affective-intentional identification can take place. And at the same time, youth incorporates the notion of a modern world, which has to be thought of as a new version of the social. Youth functions as a conceptual alternative to a society of closure and challenges the social to reconsider its eidos. The doubling of the social in the figure of youth is both a moment of creation and a challenge to the social to objectify itself–to outwardly pro-­ ject (Ciaramelli) itself. Outside pro-jection initiates the “circle of creation,” through which a new social eidos is created.

6.3   The Aesthetics of Presence/Appearance The emergence of the figure of youth that has been described in the above section is the discursive dimension of the rebel youth films, the dimension of conventional ways of creating meaning from fictional works of art. The present section deals with another dimension of the rebel youth films’ discourse: the dimension of perception, of bodily expressivity and physical appearance. As pointed out above, this dimension–which I have previously classified as a different pattern of art/interpretation–traverses the reviews, without being reducible to the interpretation; in fact, they

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even contradict and play against the interpretations. The hyperrealism of Johnny/Marlon Brando and Jim/James Dean as well as the expressive music and dance of Rock ’n Roll radiate a fascination that fails to be explained in terms of “Americanization” or the figure of youth. Brando, Dean, and Rock ’n Roll, even though they are signs of the 1950s youth culture, redirect the perception of the world and establish this other pattern of reception as the guiding paradigm of the new conception of the social. In contrast to the discipline of desires and bodily humility of the Adenauer era, the new paradigm is characterized by voluptuous eroticism, physical attraction, and body-movement. Expression, appearance, outwardness oppose the order of discipline of 1950s body culture. The discourse about Blackboard Jungle lacks this dimension in an extended manner and will thus not find representation in this section. The effect that has been remarked on by Dieter Baacke (1999, p. 55), that the association of Rock ’n Roll with Blackboard Jungle created the image of Rock ’n Roll as a rebellious music, cannot be validated through the discourse and requires other methodological approaches. 6.3.1  The Wild One If the discourse about the figure of youth is largely informed by a social realist mode of interpretation, the articles about The Wild One display elements that interrupt the notion of a direct communicability between the fictional and the social world. These elements may be described with the term “hyperrealism” (Baudrillard) as an enhanced realism and as the creation of an appearance that is more real than reality. Intensely fascinated by Marlon Brando’s skills, the Hamburger Anzeiger notes: [The film director, MK] Benedek wonderfully directs the young proto-man Brando and stages commotion that gains density and life through improvisation. Brando strides, sleek like a panther. Even his back is (pardon me) full of expression. His rhythm of speech has been perfectly translated: it evokes his abounding masculinity: a male uniqueness in film.52

Brando’s performance brings to life a model of pure manliness which captivates emotions instead of the intellect. The description creates an aura of perfection and absorption in the appearance of Brando’s Johnny. His heroism and native manliness counter the social realist simplicity of the film’s plot. They highlight expressiveness, appearance, singularity; the critic

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draws attention to the way Brando moves. Attention is redirected from plot and meaning to the body as a means of expression. Similarly, the Rheinische Post remarks: By contrast, the role of the gang leader Johnny is tailored to suit Marlon Brando – the incarnate beau, the unredeemed thug with a soft heart. This cunning, tender, evil face, these lanky controlled movements, the secure walk of a person who knows the countless horsepower at his command, again and again silently pose the question [of good and evil, MK], that the film avoids.53

Facial expression and Johnny/Brando’s knowledge of his energetic body turn into means of communication: they “speak” and hence become meaningful. Bodily articulation–the sign of appearance–imposes itself as a new language, which suggests a new order of visibility. This claim goes beyond the notion of the Castoriadian magmatic creation of new eide. The expressive body as it is described here is not a new form-figure that enters the web of social significations and thus forces the social to redesign itself. These descriptions suggest a new way of perceiving and describing the world, a new filter that is applied to the world. This “new” world is one of looks and signs that are expressive without relating to an idea of inner truths. In fact, the lack of a boundary between the person of Marlon Brando and the character Johnny (“the role of the gang leader Johnny is tailored to suit Marlon Brando”) points toward the dissolution of being and appearance. The person Brando impersonates his characters and becomes indistinguishable from the figure of the rebel youth as depicted in his films.54 This phenomenon, which recurs with James Dean, is a phenomenon of the new order of visibility, to borrow from Jacques Rancière. It leads to the indistinguishability of being and appearance, and appearance actually turns into the defining element of being. Particular modes of aesthetic representation accompany respective paradigms of meaning, specific ways of seeing, saying, and doing things in the common world, the consensus of one “unique reality” (Rancière 2010, p. 144), of a single possible signification of the world, even if people differ in interests, aspirations, and values. Aesthetic representation gives expression of a particular paradigm of meaning, a particular paradigmatic way of appropriating the world via the artwork. It is political if it creates a dissensus in the relation of representation and the prevailing paradigm of

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meaning. If aesthetic expression deviates from conventional modes of representing the world, it must be read as an assault on the dominant paradigm of meaning. The paradigm of meaning that is prefigured here may well be conceptualized with Jean Baudrillard’s simulacrum as it has been developed in Simulacra and Simulation (Baudrillard 1994).55 The simulacrum simulates reality, through which reality and its representation become indistinguishable. The instituted difference between social reality and the representing function of the sign in media and communication collapses. The sign loses its referential dimension; we might say that it becomes fictionalized. And this sign without reference is creative of worlds in which the copy (representation) becomes more real than reality and reality is organized by the copy instead of by reality. Reality, in fact, becomes an effect of a play of models. Since the models created in media can be continuously reproduced, they create a reality-effect. Yet, reality–in the simulacrum–does not draw its energy from any kind of “real” origin, but is energized by the copy-function of the sign. The sign, representation, becomes more real than reality–it creates a hyperreality–through which reality and the sign blend in a confusion of source and copy, cause and consequence. Baudrillard claims, it is now impossible to isolate the process of the real or to prove the real. This is how all the holdups, airplane hijackings, etc. are now in some sense simulation holdups in that they are already inscribed in the decoding and orchestration rituals of the media, anticipated in their presentation and their possible consequences. In short, where they function as a group of signs dedicated exclusively to their recurrence as signs, and no longer at all to their ‘real’ end. (Baudrillard 1994, p. 21)

Meaning ‘implodes’ (Baudrillard 1994, p.  31), and this is what we can specifically witness in the discourse about The Wild One, when fascination for performance–the hyperreality of performance–supersedes and substitutes traditional meaning.56 The implosion of the traditional relation of cause and consequence has, in fact, already been noted by the British censors, as reported by a contributor in FR: The body of censors does not object to the film’s plot … ; likewise, it does not disapprove of the end, because justice and civilized order again find their way into the small town. The English guardians of film reason differently: as

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the youth rowdies’ boss, Marlon Brando is so persuasive and fascinating that he would come close to the point where the play’s illusion gets lost in an almost disturbing authenticity, that – despite the unambiguous moral conclusion – the imitation of the pernicious events literally forces itself on the film-goers (especially on the not yet mature individual!).57

The two paradigms of representation, of realist meaning and of appearance (of the simulacrum, in which reality and representation become indistinguishable), meet in the public discourse and contradict each other. The meaning generated by the paradigm of appearance cannot be harmonized with the framework established by the realist paradigm of meaning with its clear morals. Appearance, the censors claim, is capable of producing reality independent of the morality of the realist paradigm of meaning. The “new” order does not comprise terms such as morality or the distinction of good and evil (they dissolve in the figure of Johnny, as the above quotation from Rheinische Post suggests). The order of appearance dispenses with these notions and instead works upon the questions of being and guise and the collapse of a distinction between outwardness and inwardness. If Baudrillard speaks of the “era of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and the Kennedys” as a mythical era now long gone, their death was still a real death (a death with substance) due to the “mythic dimension that implies death” (Baudrillard 1994, p. 24). The era of the postmodern, in which medium and message, sign and referent collapse, however, finds its starting point in the performance of these figures on screen, in which the figure of the actor and her screen presence fuse and the performance is generative of reality instead of representing it. 6.3.2  Rebel Without a Cause The discourse about Rebel Without a Cause is almost better suited to depicting the critics’ verbalized gap between a disappointing plot/message and the fascinating presence of appearance and performance–between the paradigm of discourse and the paradigm of mediality. In the case of Rebel Without a Cause, the film’s plot is often classified as exaggerated and overdrawn, with James Dean’s screen presence “saving” the film from irrelevance and mediocrity. The representative dimension of the film is described as implausible, while the hyperpresence of Jim/James Dean appears as a mediatized reality, and in this sense inverts the distinction of reality and representation.

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When the Hannoversche Allgemeine, for instance, demands a balanced depiction of social reality, this is a demand for a social realist paradigm, which the film fails to live up to: However, we cannot fail to see that the plot appears construed several times. The events’ and the dialogue’s persuasiveness would undoubtedly be greater if the characters were more balanced altogether. There is hardly anyone in this film that comes out unbroken, everyone is more or less burdened with complexes. Certainly, the difficulties of a youth that withers from emotional agony amidst abundance are meant to be revealed by means of hyperbolic examples. But the danger of one sided generalizations was not averted. Because, thank God, youth is not only as it is depicted in the film – not even in America.58

The Mannheimer Morgen argues similarly: The parents bear the blame, but they are not that senile. The youth is forlorn and condemned, but they are not that evil. The authorities are understanding and psychological, but they are not that kind-hearted. The youth’s arguments with their parents are laden with emotional dynamite, but they are not that frenzied. And this frenzy of US-American character interferes with this otherwise brilliantly interpreted drama of passions (directed by Nicholas Ray), because it exaggerates and therefore paints the wrong picture. The overexcited events appear overwrought and make the actors revel in temperamental outbursts. In the rough reality – which is – fortunately less rough here than in America  – the things that are at stake stir more so beneath the surface. Reality is more concealed than it appears judging by the outward emotional explosion. It follows that the inner evolution remains lacking, because it is crushed by the sensational element.59

The social difference between the USA and West Germany is of secondary importance for the argument in this section. The latent anti-Americanism has been discussed above. Central to the critics’ argument is the claim that social reality is not recognizable in the film. Hence, it fails as a realist film. Fiction may be fictional at the level of the plot, but not at the level of form. The hyperbole is tantamount to an irrealism that fails to convince. Crucially, Blackboard Jungle succeeded particularly within the social realist paradigm of art/ interpretation, and it may be asked whether this is due to the depiction of

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the urban poor, instead of the middle classes. The hyperbole of Rebel Without a Cause, in contrast, is a hyperbole which makes the middle classes look like a failure. The break-up of the identity between fictional and social reality–the film’s irrealism–becomes the germ of a new genre. And it is as a new genre that the rebel youth films can eventually give rise to a new paradigm of interpretation which I will call the performative paradigm. This search for a new paradigm is hinted at in a remark made by a critic in FAZ: the sensational element, which has also been noted by the above critic in Mannheimer Morgen, subordinates the film to the market dynamics and hence lessens its realist convincibility: “[Y]outh’s rowdiness appears as an end in itself, at best a means for this kind of entertainment that the ordinary crime story grants the fan.”60 The film, this remark suggests, is caught between two different audience expectations: social realism and the detective story. It is neither purely the one nor the other. In a way it appears as unclassifiable. While The Wild One and Blackboard Jungle appear as instances of social critique, Rebel Without a Cause oscillates between both genres. These comments on Rebel Without a Cause show how the film disrupts viewing conventions and therefore initiates the search for new ways of making the film meaningful. Similarly, a (female) critic in the Frankfurt Abendpost is incapable of comprehending the youth’s behavior in the film, which points toward her lack of a suitable “reading guide” to decode the film’s meaning: “Put coolly, they demand to be insane (or to be made insane by insane parents) – and they scream, the world had better be on its guard, if they are – alas! – let loose! … Are we to get ourselves involved in a discussion about this kind of erring youth? If there is a problem at all, it is an American one.”61 By claiming that the phenomenon is an American one, this critic remains true to the realist paradigm of interpretation and hence evades the need to search for a more suitable paradigm. But it also means that to her, Rebel Without a Cause is utterly meaningless. The emergence of the new, performative paradigm can be discovered between the lines of the following comment. As with The Wild One, it is the leading actor who turns into the pivot of fascination. It is James Dean’s acting and screen presence which makes the film meaningful in the absence of (conventional/discursive) meaning: The temperamental outbursts are, however, masterfully performed, and James Dean (‘East of Eden’), through his nuanced life on screen, compensates for many flaws of direction and script. We believe his bitter and sweet

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words, we believe in his anxiety of being called a coward like his father; we believe, that this acting talent who died young was one of Hollywood’s biggest hopes. But we also believe him when he glorifies a youth that has become evil through external influence, and this is a large threat going beyond the film.62

There is an element of hyperreality–the originary representation without an origin–that James Dean shares with Marlon Brando. His screen presence is so convincing that it becomes more real than reality. And it is from the excessive screen presence that the threat emerges because it creates reality instead of reproducing it. It generates identity, as a critic in Welt does not fail to note: “James Dean … has an uncanny, frightening power of identification. With his peculiar, troubling, aggressive character, he elevates the film’s very accurate, exact sketches of milieu and character staged by Nicholas Ray to an extraordinary rank.”63 The perfection of the performance strikingly contrasts with the critique of the unbalanced depiction of reality. If the depiction of social reality appears biased, the (unreal) perfection of Dean’s performance causes admiration and eventually provides the meaning of the film. “James Dean is so compelling that we believe everything about him and additionally confuse him with his film.”64 Meaning is, in effect, the wrong terminology, because it is a terminology that derives from the “old” paradigm of representation. The meaning created by Jim/Dean is a meaning of appearance, a fascination with performance and expression–the sign without a reference. The “genius” of Dean, as a commentator in FAZ states, turns into the legacy of the film: Again, he faces us, an energetic, audacious fellow, with a spark of genius in his cunning glance. The film entirely glorifies him as a hero, a Siegfried among the defiant gang, who could never find his vulnerable spot. He’s the linchpin of the film; without him it would have entirely lapsed into the depths of pulp fiction’s romanticism.65

In the essay “Medientransformation und Subjekttransformation” (En: Media Transformation and the Transformation of the Subject), Andreas Reckwitz describes the transformation of notions of subjectivity as a response to the emergence of different media. With regard to the medium of film he claims that the subjectivity proposed is based on external appearance and focuses on the skill of an outgoing personality. In contrast to the skills taught by the literary medium, the film represents not introspection

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and the skill of abstract transferral from the sign to an imagination, but the effect of apparition and the externalized dimensions of communication. It teaches a visual and outgoing focus on the world (Reckwitz 2008). The remarks about Rebel Without a Cause confirm this effect of the medium of film. The substitution of performance for meaning (Dean’s performance is the meaning of the film) is a substitution of exteriority for abstraction. The opposition generated between the negative appraisal of the film’s plot and the positive appraisal of Dean’s performance brings meaning and performance into a relation of difference and hence opens a space for reflecting on these different modes of world appropriation–different ways of seeing, saying, and doing the world. The critics who express incomprehension with regard to the film’s meaning give voice to this element of struggle. They fail or refuse to get involved with the new aesthetic paradigm. The contrary appraisal of the film’s plot and performance–in fact, the retreat of the dimension of meaning behind the dimension of performance–brings both paradigms face to face with each other. Hand in hand with the emergence of the rebel youth film as a genre is the proposition of a new paradigm of meaning, a new framing of “sensory data” (Rancière). The act of abstraction that accompanies the interpretation of the plot is countered by the focus on presence, appearance, and performance. The pictures on the screen take on the appearance of reality, while the representative dimension, which Rancière describes in the notion of literature and which can be detected in the realist discourse about Rebel Without a Cause, dissipates. The attempt to interpret the rebel youth films as social realism is informed by the notion of aesthetic representation as developed by literature–as the analysis of the “character of a time or a society” (Rancière 2004, p. 18). The focus on appearance and performance in the rebel youth films, however, interrupts the relation of fiction and social reality as it has been established by literature. With the new paradigm of aesthetic representation, which sidesteps interpretation and celebrates performance, Rebel Without a Cause participates in a paradigm of meaning which disdains truth and notions of origin and establishes the happenings on screen as a reality of their own–as a hyperreality. 6.3.3  Rock Around the Clock A similar disruption of aesthetic conventions can be observed in the discourse about Rock Around the Clock, yet more at the level of music–a crucial element of the intermediality of the dance film. Rock ’n Roll is

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perceived as a “degenerate” “Pseudo-Jazz,”66 an adulterated version of jazz subjected to the needs of commercialization: “Bill Haley, whose industrial music products make the earnest lovers of Jazz pale with rage, personally performs on stage.”67 The Kölnische Rundschau uses terminology that is clearly derived from National Socialism: “At its heart, Jazz is already degenerate here.68 Jazz is, albeit collective in its effects, in its essence unthinkable without artistic individuality, without the personal, free, skillful improvisation.”69 It is remarkable that jazz–previously despised and devalued, because it was Black Music–suddenly receives a revaluation in relation to Rock ’n Roll70 and appears as pure and “artistic” in comparison with the commercialized Rock ’n Roll. Likewise, the Stuttgarter Zeitung comments: Friends of concert jazz are likely to be disappointed, since this over-hot is not an advancement, a differentiation, but a headlong fall into slapstick and primitiveness. The harmonics follow the old … Blues with its tonic, dominant, and subdominant progressions and the phrasing of the boogie-­woogie, yet without further rhythmic refinement. What is new, however, is the frantic monotony, the repetition of the shortest phrases till unconsciousness, till frenzy.71

The reservations in view of commercialized arts may certainly be seen in the context of anti-Americanism: as the preservation of the distinction between a “high” and a “low” culture, that serves as an element of distinction between the USA and Western culture. In the context of Rock Around the Clock, “pure” (Black) jazz is, paradoxically, appropriated as a means to give renewed expression to the value of “high” culture versus the US-American commercialized “copy” of jazz, Rock ’n Roll. “What happens here is the attempt to popularize jazz and make a business out of it. But it thereby loses its substance. What remains is cold, generated boogie-­ woogie ecstasy.”72 More importantly, the notion of a loss of “substance” points toward the origin of the “simulacrum.” The opposition of substance and surface that this critic detects displays his being caught in a paradigm of meaning in which truth derives from a source, and he can thus distinguish between truth and falsity. The world-creating dimension of the simulacrum–the copy without a reference–is hidden from this critic. The result of the “pseudo jazz” is cold frenzy, which is devoid of a true spirit. The degradation of Rock ’n Roll as “pseudo jazz” devoid of life, artistry, and truth is a means to fend off the paradigmatic change of world perception that goes along with “Americanization” and modernization.

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In effect, it is a cultural transformation, which goes beyond adaptation of and assimilation to “foreign” cultural artefacts. Cultural change, this example shows, encompasses the transformation of the hegemonic paradigm of meaning. However, there is also the attempt to give meaning to the film in the new import of the term “meaning.” The new paradigmatic approach to the film is one of affect and fascination. I will quote extensively from a report authored by a correspondent in London for the Badische Zeitung, as it vividly describes the response of British youth to the film. It describes pure excess and insanity in the face of the corporeality that becomes visible in the audience’s response: Drums and the contrabass stamp the heavy, brutal rhythms – unceasingly, monotonous, roaring: rock-rock-rock-rock. The clarinet shrieks in between, with a melody that only goes up and down a few tones, subdued by the rhythm, while the hollow romm-romm-romm-romm of a bass tuba makes the air tremble. You can take it for half a minute. Then the foot taps the rhythm, the fingers cramp, the hand twitches and pounds the rhythm on the table with short, hard blows. The head gets hot. And it still goes rock-rock-­ rock-rock, harder, more relentlessly – and romm-romm-romm-romm. This is ‘Rock & Roll’, rocking and twitching, the new ecstatic dance, born out of boogie-woogie, uncontrollably exaggerated. It descended upon England like a storm tide, sweeping with it the youth of both sexes. It is the reason for the transformation of cinemas into madhouses, for the flying squads in the streets and the presence of fire brigades with water guns. It all started with a film which revolves around ‘Rock & Roll’. … The 16, 17 and 18 years olds sit and watch with an open mouth and glazed eyes, the arms and legs shiver and quiver. Hundreds of feet stamp the beat. And suddenly, some cannot bear it any longer. Suddenly they dance in the aisles, on stage in front of the screen, in the aisles in front of their seats. The limbs strain. The boys groan, moan, and scream – a collective hysteria. … The film does not comprise any indecent parts, the pictures are entirely innocent. It is the music and the unnerving, numbing rhythm that arouses this incredible, indescribable effect.73

At the heart of this description is the notion of the break-up of the contract of bodily discipline deeply ingrained in 1950s (West German) culture. The description of youth’s “ecstasy” and “madness” gives expression to true bewilderment in the face of a youth that appears to be out of control.

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The obsession with disinhibited physical movement is also present in the descriptions of Rock & Roll as a dance: The members of the Bill-Haley band proceed to acrobatics. The saxophonist slumps to the ground and kicks his legs at his wild runs. The bass player lays his instrument to the side and himself on top, so as to bask on it, twitching and fiddling, in a vulgar eroticism. And the whole band, the bodies bent to a Z, contorts in spasms. For the eye it is a relapse to the stage of the hominid, the utmost negation of human dignity that had hitherto never been seen on stage or screen.74

More than the music, it is the body-movement that is perceived as indecent and offensive. To others, meanwhile, it is amusing and stimulating, as an affectionate depiction of a film screening shows: The boys and girls jump on the dance floor, the musicians jump at and with their instruments on the stage – and it is a wonder that the screen does not also join the jumping. After watching the jumping for two hours, one is earnestly tempted to join the jumping, even if it is only across the street. If many are tempted to do this, the police come and call it a ‘Rock & Roll riot’.75

Common to all of them is the concern with a certain deviant behavior which is induced by the music and the rhythm. Body-movement and joy become the essence of the film. There is no deeper (true) “meaning” behind music, dance, and film. Effect is the film’s essence, its capacity to induce “ecstasy” and exultation. Werner Faulstich articulates the provocation that is inherent in Rock ’n Roll: “The new dance style of Boogie-Woogie and Rock & Roll was physical and with its undisguised sensuality violated all norms of established bourgeois dance culture” (Faulstich 2002, p. 281). Sensuality is thus the antithesis to the order of civility, security, and order, which is, however, marked by the suppression of desires. It is from here that Rock ’n Roll derives its capacity to shock, since it provides a utopia of bodies out of bounds. It opens a space beyond social control in which bodies can be experienced and moves can be felt. Speaking with Rancière, the discourse about Rock Around the Clock introduces bodily expressiveness as an element of a new and modern way of inhabiting and perceiving the world. This paradigm of art/interpretation focuses on the film’s and music’s appeal to sensuality. The paradigms can be distinguished by the form through which they organize social reality. While the realist interpretation

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emphasizes the discourse, the performative paradigm focuses on the corporeal presence (dance, eroticism, vitality, etc.) conveyed by the film. While the “traditional” approach to films asks, “What does the film mean?” the new paradigm that develops from the rebel youth films deals with the film’s capacity to affect the senses. In accordance with the above remarks about the simulacrum, fiction turns into the origin of a social phenomenon. In fact, the distinction between fiction and reality is lost in the sequence of events, since the jumps performed on the screen effect “real” jumps by the audience in the film theater and in the streets. The “Rock ’n Roll riot” appears to originate in fiction and in the spirit of the medial phantasm. As Baudrillard remarks, simulacrum is more threatening to the social order than the order’s transgression, because it “always leaves open to supposition that, above and beyond its object, law and order themselves might be nothing but simulation” (Baudrillard 1994, p. 20). From this perspective, the challenge of Rock ’n Roll/youth/riot (a distinction proves impossible due to the mutual cross-referencing) is a challenge to the social order as such, since it proposes not chaos, but the inexistence of a foundation of the social (youth) beyond its phenomenological being-there. Youth lacks a proper “origin” beyond its screen presence; youth as an identity originates in the film’s performance. The discourses about Rock Around the Clock–as much as those about Rebel Without a Cause and The Wild One–bring the mediality of youth culture into perspective. Youth’s mediality unsettles the distinctions of fact and fiction as much as that of representation and the real. Werner Faulstich claims that the youth culture of the 1950s was indeed the first media culture (Faulstich 2002, p. 285). He further describes the “problem of the rebel youth” (Halbstarkenproblem) as a journalistic phenomenon, in which media staging and the self-staging of youth engaged in a relation of complicity (Faulstich 2002, pp. 286–288). It is from this phenomenon of medial simulation that the phenomenon of youth derives its appearance as an aesthetic phenomenon. In his seminal and classic Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige claims that: [s]ubcultures represent ‘noise’ (as opposed to sound): interference in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenomena to their representation in the media. We should therefore not underestimate the signifying power of the spectacular subculture not only as a metaphor for potential anarchy ‘out there’ but as an actual mechanism of semantic disorder: a kind of temporary blockage in the system of representation. (Hebdige 1979, p. 90)

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The spectacular presence of subcultural style disrupts the discourse because it violates authorized codes and disturbs the semantic order of a society (Hebdige 1979, p. 91). Here again, one of the notable characteristics of youth subcultures is that they interrupt the relation of social reality and representation. Hebdige analyzes particularly white, working-class youth cultures in Great Britain with a semiotic approach.76 He focuses on their “spectacularity,” which means their identification and distinction through style, and thus their constitution through appearance. In his study on the Halbstarke phenomenon in Lower Saxonia, Thomas Grotum similarly concludes that style played an outstanding role in the motivations behind the phenomenon (Grotum 1994, pp. 224–229), thus allowing us to draw a parallel with the subcultures analyzed by Hebdige concerning the importance of “spectacularity” for their existence. Similarly, Werner Faulstich argues: For the first time in the history of culture youth obtained a fashion, a code of conduct, films, music, dance and, a magazine of their own. … Parents, teachers, and other traditional authorities had long ago lost their function as role models. The media celebrities substituted them as new models and idols. We can summarize: In the second half of the 1950s, media decisively in parts amplified and expanded, in parts initiated and in any case multiplied  – globalized  – the new youth lifestyle. The new youth culture was essentially a new media culture. (Faulstich 2002, p. 285)

What distinguishes the teenager from former configurations of youth is, according to Faulstich, his or her mediatized character. It thus appears that youth as a phenomenon of the 1950s is constituted by a new paradigm of meaning, which grounds reality in the appearance of things. Youth is constituted not by reference to an origin and a positive being, but by style, spectacularity, and corporeality effected by the Rock ’n Roll rhythms. It is in this sense that the aesthetics transform into a version of social reality, a social reality in which positivity has lost its power to define the world. Instead, this paradigm of meaning constitutes a social reality in which appearance and being converge. Youth identify with youth-specific media, with Marlon Brando and James Dean, because they identify with the language developed by the performative paradigm of art/interpretation, which is a language of corporeal emphasis. The paradigm creates a consensus between the identity’s sensing of and inhabiting the world and the way that this sensing and inhabiting is represented. The performative

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paradigm of art/interpretation is creative of identity because it gathers the haecceities of youth developed through the structural transformations of the 1950s under the umbrella of a distinct language, which is characterized by bodily expressiveness. In the sense that it positively refers to modernization, this language is capable of giving expression to the youth’s opening toward new patterns of cultural communication.

6.4   Résumé The discourse about the rebel youth films is of a twofold nature, while both dimensions blend in the process and turn into a sign of cultural transformation.77 The discursive dimension generates a new figure of youth (not to be mistaken for empirical youth), which is transfigured throughout the discourse, or we might say, it changes its relation vis-à-vis the social. It negotiates the passage from an ambivalent status at the border of the social to the figure’s inclusion in the web of social significations, which roots the notion of cultural change within the social imaginary significations of West German society. Cultural change hence becomes a dimension of West Germany’s self-image, which encompasses an orientation toward the future. The figure’s voyage begins with the discourse about The Wild One, in which youth originates as a figure characterized by its liminality–at the margins of the social, deviant, yet not fully beyond, localized in the gap between the social and its transgression. The figure of youth as represented by Marlon Brando and the motorcycle gang threatens the social order not because it violates the law, but because it disrupts conventions without being criminal. Youth appears as an ambivalent figure, and it is the ambivalence that has a disruptive effect since society’s borders become porous and permeable. In the discourse about Blackboard Jungle the arrangement is different. The order of youth becomes an alternative and draws its fascination from its oppositional status. In fact, more than just being a conceptual alternative, it turns into society’s own alter ego, the image of its future, through which it imprints a vision of progressive development onto the figure of youth. The topic of Americanization is most pronounced in Rebel Without a Cause. The figure of youth represented by James Dean criticizes the characteristics attributed to “the American way of life,” while also showing that it is its own progeny and hence the result of “Americanization.”

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Youth thus represents the incarnation of “Americanization.” From this in-between space, the figure of youth mediates between the culture of the West and Germany’s national culture, which distinguishes itself as the last refuge of high culture threatened by Western mass culture. Through this particular figuration of youth, the West German discourse negotiates cultural hybridity not only as assimilation to the other culture but as a process of selecting and transforming the tokens presented by Western culture. This process is further enhanced in the discourse about Rock Around the Clock, where the figure of youth loses its ambivalence and liminal status and is revived in the figure of the teenager. If youth signifies modernity and Western culture, the inclusion of the teenager in the web of social significations as a stable figure opens up the social imaginary significations to modernization. The teenager is a domesticated version of the rebel youth. It concludes the journey of an eidos which started out as a figure of ambivalence and society’s future Doppelgänger, which was then altered to embody the (abstract) notion of cultures-in-transformation and eventually turned into a figure of a stabilized modernization. The figure of (the rebel) youth is thus a figure through which society’s adaptation to the new era takes place and through which it reconceptualizes its notions of culture and national identity. The rebel youth films are crucial in this respect because their fictional nature allows the discourse to transform fictional characters into signifying figures and hence produces an engagement at the level of signification. The cancellation of reference, which characterizes fictionality, enables the discourse to conceive of youth as a (new) sign which thus contests the established order of social significations from within. In this chapter we can witness the search for an appropriate place for the newly emerging signification, which has repercussions for the conception of national identity which are clearly unforeseeable to the participants in the discourse. The transformation of the figure traces the transformation of the conception of culture from a notion that is closed upon itself to a notion that opens up toward modernization (hidden behind the term “Americanization”) as a positive value. In this sense the films can be seen as contributing to the changes that are becoming visible in the last third of the 1950s. The expansion of a youth culture is the phenomenon most related to the films’ discourse, but it also involves such phenomena as the transformation of journalistic practice (von Hodenberg 2006, pp. 229–292) and the changes that pervade the conception of political culture in the 1960s (Turek 1989; Zoll 1999).

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The second aspect of the filmic discourse is concerned with another paradigm of art/interpretation proposed by the films, which reconfigures the perception of the world. The generation of a new paradigm is not through open attack; instead it is formed through a subtle seduction of the recipients who submit to the fascination that radiates from the actor-­ figures Marlon Brando and James Dean and the rhythms of Rock ’n Roll. The distinction proposed by the critics between plot and appearance points toward the emergence of a new regime of meaning, in which the world is not experienced through signification (the “law” of the social), but through the subject’s senses. The films are neither reducible to social realism nor do they fully fit into the existing framework of genre categories (melodrama, Western, thriller, musical and dance film). As a result, the traditional interpretation of the films considers the film’s plot to be of poor quality, since it fails to be meaningful within conventional fictional frameworks. This is especially obvious in Rebel Without a Cause, but also in The Wild One the dimension of meaning recedes behind another, mediatized, dimension. The screen presence of Brando and Dean as well as the rhythms of Rock ’n Roll are so compelling that they create a reality-phenomenon, instead of merely representing reality. They turn into models “more real than reality,” which threaten social reality with this hyperpresence. They overturn the chronology of referent and representation, of cause and consequence, since they blur the distinction of fact and fiction. Performed fiction in theater and film certainly more often than not depends on overacting, on corporeal and affective experience. What distinguishes the “overacting” described in this chapter is the transformation of how it is read, interpreted, transformed into “meaning,” into modes of making the world meaningful (which is an understanding of meaning that goes beyond the sheer production of signification). “Overacting” and affective experience no longer serve as a means to create signification (subject to the principle of reference), but are transformed into style and appearance. The meaning that “overacting” generates is a meaning of the body, of expressiveness, of corporeality, and it gives rise to a social phenomenon (youth) which begins to experience the world as a space, in which the body can move, feel, and appear. The meaning of social space changes. It becomes a space for the subject’s (self-)experience of corporeality in contrast to the hegemonic paradigm of meaning at the time, in which the body is subjected to discipline and order.

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The phenomenon of youth originates in performance, which is why I believe that the application of Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum is appropriate here. Fiction affects social reality, serving as a model for endless reproduction–for Jean Baudrillard this is the condition of the postmodern. Appearance precedes being, and this perspective draws attention to the creative dimension of the sign. Similarly, the rhythms of Rock ’n Roll in Rock Around the Clock force physical engagement; they are the cause for “Rock ’n Roll riots” and hence provoke a phenomenon of reality. We may here speak of a mediatized reality, in which fiction and reality cannot be distinguished and intertwine in an indissoluble embrace. In the discourse we can observe the first cautious steps of the development of a new social language. It is a language that makes visible corporeality in contrast to the discursive nature of morality and values which guided social life in the (early) 1950s. The “language” redirects the gaze, perception, and expression. Remembering Rancière, we may say, that the performative paradigm of art/interpretation initiated by the rebel youth films reorganizes the “partition of the sensible, of the visible and the sayable” (Rancière 2004, p. 10). It is a new filter that mediates the relation between social reality and the “real,” which is forever inaccessible to human perception without the mediating force of a paradigm of meaning. In as much as the sign becomes the paradigm of world creation, fiction turns into a poietic power. The institution of fiction loses its distinguishing mark as a mirror and reflection of social reality and instead turns the image into the origin of “real” phenomena. The rebel youth films and the resulting Halbstarken phenomenon turn upside down the traditional understanding of origin and representation. The figure of youth (which is itself a sign) turns into the carrier of this paradigm of meaning, which redirects perception toward the world-creating dimension of appearance(s). The co-existence of both paradigms of meaning leads to a blending of youth’s signifying and its performative dimension. Youth both is and stands for Western modernity. It performs modernity through style, allure, and corporeal (self-)awareness, while it simultaneously stands for (and hence signifies) a modernized society. The postmodern condition identified by Baudrillard is characterized by the creation of social reality by the play of signs in performance. This play of signs finds its early confirmation in the 1950s figure of youth.

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Notes 1. Kurt Koszyk, for instance, notes that only during the licensing period between 1945 and 1949 did the newspapers with circulation figures above 50,000 copies prevail (80.6%). In 1952 only 12.3% of the newspapers remained with circulation figures above 50,000 (Koszyk 1998, p. 441). 2. A good introduction to the print media landscape in the 1950s is given by Steininger (2002). 3. Schwerbrock, Wolfgang. 1955. “Phänomen Motorrad. Zu dem Film ‘Der Wilde.’” FAZ, May 16. 4. Talmon-Gros, Walter. 1955. “Der Wilde (The Wild One).” Film-Echo, January 22. 5. “Sie gehen um Haaresbreite am Zuchthaus vorbei. ‘Der Wilde’, ein Problemfilm um die ‘Halbstarken.’” 1955. Hamburger Abendblatt, January 15. 6. Sa. 1955. “Der Wilde (The Wild One).” Film-Dienst, January 28; K.H. 1955. “‘Der Wilde.’” Rheinische Post, April 16 and ila. 1955. “Capitol: ‘Der Wilde.’” Mannheimer Morgen, November 2. 7. H.S. 1955. “Der Wilde.” Hamburger Anzeiger, January 15. 8. Talmon-Gros, “Der Wilde”; also Sa.., “Der Wilde.” 9. Sa., “Der Wilde.” 10. K.H., “Der Wilde.” 11. Ibid. 12. B.-B. 1955. “Der Wilde (Wild One),” Der neue Film, February 3. 13. Sa., “Der Wilde.” 14. “Sie gehen um Haaresbreite...”; ila., “Capitol.” 15. “Sie gehen um Haaresbreite....” 16. Sa., “Der Wilde.” 17. Ibid. 18. Hickethier also refers to the importance of crime films, yet Irmbert Schenk (2010) limits the role of the crime film to the end of the 1950s, which is beyond the period under consideration here. 19. The imaginary I refer to is given expression in the anti-communist rationale of the Adenauer era, the figure of thought that helped consolidate a nation state in the post-war era. It integrated conservatives as much as Social Democrats and the Nazis that were tacitly rehabilitated (Creuzberger and Hoffmann 2014, esp. pp. 5–6). It is further given expression by the importance played by the (Catholic) church(es) for social cohesion and moral stability (Großbölting 2013, pp. 21–94), and the role played by the family as incarnation of wholeness, which Adenauer transferred to his own role as chancellor. As chancellor, he became the nation’s fatherly patriarch (Doering-Manteuffel 1991, pp. 16–17).

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20. Thien, Willy H. 1955. “Zur Psychologie der Halbstarken: Im Dschungel der Großstadt-Schulen gedeiht die ‘Saat der Gewalt.’” Abendpost (Frankfurt/M.), November 8. 21. Bayer-Berger, E. 1955. “Die Saat der Gewalt (Blackboard Jungle).” Der neue Film, November 24. 22. K., “Zu dem amerikanischen Film....” 23. Mennemeier, Franz Norbert. 1955. “Die Krise der Autorität. Anläßlich des amerikanischen Filmes ‘Die Saat der Gewalt.’” Rheinische Post, November 12. 24. Ibid. 25. Busch, Ulf. 1955. “Dynamit auf der Leinwand.” Bremer Nachrichten, November 5. 26. Mennemeier, “Die Krise....” 27. Ensemblist-identitary logic and the role of legein and teukhein is described in chapter 5, “The Social-Historical Institution: Legein and Teukhein” (Castoriadis 1987, pp. 221–272). 28. Die Andere Zeitung is the only (relatively) influential and explicitly left medium at the time to be found within my material. Not much information can be gathered on the quality and political orientation as well as financial dependencies of the weekly, which is why I have to refer to an article published by SoZ–Sozialistische Zeitung. Christoph Jünke, the article’s author, did a doctorate about Leo Kofler, one of the newspaper’s regular authors. Jünke argues that Die Andere Zeitung began its short journalistic career in 1955 with the aim of providing a platform for the socialist Left in West Germany that was split into a diversity of factions and which was–for the most part–disunited. It was to be a newspaper that encompassed the different left movements and ideologies so as to bring them into a productive dialogue. However, it was only able to retain this plural and independent character for about three or four years before the dominance of the Marxist-­communist faction among the Left discredited the non-conformist contributors to such an extent that they withdrew from their involvement in the newspaper and it became more and more streamlined by the ideology of East Germany. This led, eventually, also to a dependence on East German funding and thus to the loss of its original (independent) aspirations (Jünke, Christoph. 2005. “Die etwas andere Zeitung.” SoZ – Sozialistische Zeitung, June: p. 24. Online at Linksnet–Für linke Politik und Wissenschaft. http://www.linksnet. de/de/artikel/19215). Yet, the time under consideration in this chapter falls into the weekly’s years of ideological independence, which is why it proves an interesting addition to the general empirical material. 29. Brandt, Gerhard. 1955. “Die Saat der Gewalt.” Die Andere Zeitung, November 17.

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30. K. 1955. “Zu dem amerikanischen Film ‘Die Saat der Gewalt.’” Christ & Welt, December 1. Further, the critic positively cites an educationist who is in favor of an authoritative style of education: “In his book ‘Crisis of Education’ published in 1949, the American educationist Bell has taunted the infantilism of our age, in which parents borrow the models from their children and are only ageing adolescents themselves. They are not children any more, but at the same time incapable of growing up, − while the teachers set out their ambitions not to impart knowledge and standards of judgment, but ‘child-oriented’, ‘true-to-life’ vague ‘orientations’, and they are even proud of their ‘progressiveness’. ‘An improvement cannot occur so long as the character-molding institutions – the family homes, the church and the schools – do not recognize that democratic education is not just about being democratic but also educative.’” 31. Geisler, Günther. 1955. “Die Saat der Gewalt / Im Gloria-Palast.” Berliner Morgenpost, December 3. 32. NN. 1956. “Und wieder behauptet ein Film: Eltern sind schuld! Delphi und Titania-Palast: ‘... denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun.’” Der Abend (West Berlin), March 31. 33. For example, Mg. 1956.“Rebell ohne Grund. Im Ufa-Palast: ‘... denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun.’” Kölnische Rundschau, April 28. 34. Merseburger, P.X. 1956. “‘... denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun...’ Deutsche Erstaufführung in den Regionalichtspielen.” Hannoversche Presse, March 31. 35. K., Barbara. 1956. “Die Saat der Langeweile / Zu dem amerikanischen Film ‘Denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun.’” Christ & Welt, April 19. 36. Geisler, G. 1956. “‘Denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun.’” Berliner Morgenpost, April 1. For this critic, the second part of the film is subjected to a “whiny heroization” that fails to keep up the realism presented in the first part of the film, and for this reason diminishes the quality of the film. 37. The journal Signs published a special issue in 1998 entitled “The ‘Remasculinization’ of Germany in the 1950s,” which includes, among others, the essays by Jeffords (1998) and Poiger (1998). (The latter is already mentioned in the subsection to The Wild One.) 38. Hodenberg confirms that during the 1950s, mass media was an almost exclusively male domain, characterized by a cross-generational ideal of masculinity that excluded women from the prestigious departments of politics and economics. The few female journalists were responsible for clearly “female” topics, such as family, children and household, and this labor division was not questioned by the female journalists, who conceived of themselves within the prevalent gender framework (von Hodenberg 2006, pp. 236–244).

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39. The German film was titled … denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun (En: … for they don’t know what they do). This sentence in the quotation is certainly to be taken as an allusion to the German title of the film. 40. Lange, Rudolf. 1956. “Jugend ohne Liebe. ‘... denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun’ in den Regina- und Luna-Lichtspielen.” Hannoversche Allgemeine, March 31. 41. st. 1956. “Außer Rand und Band.” Münchener Merkur, November 13. 42. stp. 1956. “Außer Rand und Band. Der Film um die neue Jazz-Richtung ‘Rock- and Roll.’” Ruhr Nachrichten, October 4. 43. Borg. 1956. “Andere Zeiten, andere Schritte. Zu dem Film ‘Rock around the clock.’” Sonntagsblatt (Hamburg), October 21. 44. Ibid. 45. “Außer Rand un Band (USA).” 1956. Der Spiegel, October 3. 46. Let me point to Susanne Lüdemann’s Metaphern der Gesellschaft (En: Metaphors of Society), in which she analyzes the role played by metaphors for conceptualizing the social, such as the notion of society as an organism or as a contract. The particular form of the metaphor, she claims, envisions society’s mode of being to itself and therefore configures its appearance. Society’s self-image is therefore constituted by the metaphors it uses to describe itself (Lüdemann 2004). 47. Kaiser examines the Halbstarke phenomenon from a criminological perspective and is thus mostly interested in those incidents that became relevant in a legal context. In addition, he investigates the phenomenon independently of the film’s screening. He only counts those instances where more than fifty youth were involved. At the climax of the Halbstarke incidents, from April 1956 to March 1957, he lists eighty-one major incidents with more than fifty participants. More than 25% of them fall in the month of September when the film Rock Around the Clock premiered in Germany (Kaiser 1959, p. 105), which gives reason to believe in a certain causality between the film’s screening and the incidents. Kaiser writes about one case where the press consciously did not write about an incident in agreement with the police, so as to diminish the bandwagon effect that could be witnessed among the youth and which was strengthened by press coverage of such incidents (Kaiser 1959, p. 173). In agreement with the ‘journalism of consensus’ (von Hodenberg 2006, pp.  183–228) which prevailed in the 1950s, the print media perceived its role as supporting the government and its policies, and would subordinate its press coverage to the demands of the state authorities. The concealment of these incidences might certainly have contributed to an appearance of German order and discipline. 48. Niehoff, Karena. 1956. “Blick auf die Leinwand: Halb so wild. Außer Rand und Band.” Tagesspiegel (Berlin), December 5.

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49. In the German quotation it says “… ganz außer Rand und Band, geschweige denn außer Rock und Hemd kam niemand.” This is an allusion to the German film title Außer Rand und Band, which means ‘going wild’ in English. I have attempted to maintain the allusion to the film title in this translation. 50. G-z. 1956. “Neu auf der Leinwand: Verwilderter Jazz.” Stuttgarter Zeitung, October 12. 51. JFR. 1956. “Die Kinos wurden zu Tollhäusern. Eine Massenhysterie der Jugendlichen, ausgelöst durch einen neuen Film.” Badische Zeitung (Freiburg), September 15. 52. H.S., “Der Wilde.” 53. K.H., “Der Wilde.” 54. Although in retrospect Marlon Brando appears as the alternative to John Wayne, it is interesting that the public discourse makes no reference to John Wayne and his impersonation of the American way of life. It is crucial to note, however, that John Wayne only became a national legend after winning the Oscar award for his movie True Grit in 1970. In the 1950s he was certainly thought of as a great actor, but not a national hero (Levy 1988, pp. xv–xix, esp. p. xvi). Considering this, the personification of youth culture (Brando) takes antecedence to the personification of the American way of life (Wayne) and intertextual reference within the public discourse cannot be expected here. It would of course be highly interesting to scrutinize the emergence of the American man Wayne in relation to the felt dissolution of white, middle-class hegemony in the USA, in which Brando and the youth culture might have its share, but this question lies beyond the scope of this work. 55. For a short introduction to Baudrillard’s theoretical framework and his style of writing see Schetsche and Vähling (2006, esp. pp. 69–70) which deals explicitly with the notion of the simulacrum and hyperreality. 56. Baudrillard’s description of the simulacrum is rather negative, his examples are mirthless and leave a sense of emptiness. He acknowledges that the simulacrum can be fascinating, yet he does not take pleasure in it. Instead, he conceives this fascination as a challenge (Baudrillard 1994, pp. 83–84). From my standpoint, I refuse to share this bleak version of hyperreal phenomena, because I refuse to accord primordial meaning to “the real.” However, the notion of the simulacrum and hyperreality is of analytical use for this chapter, since it enables conceptualization of the reversal of cause and consequence, origin and representation in the discourse of the rebel youth films. 57. H.H. 1955. “Für England zu wild... Laslo Benedeks Film ‘Der Wilde’ mit Marlon Brando wurde verboten.” FR, February 17. 58. Lange, “Jugend ohne Liebe.”

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59. Beck, H.W. 1956. “Filmischer Hektizismus: Die Jugend ist gut, die Eltern sind böse. ‘... denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun’ in Alter und Capitol.” Mannheimer Morgen, June 30. 60. Ruppert, Martin. 1956. “Mörder aus gutem Hause. Der Film ‘... denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun.’” FAZ, March 31. 61. Geier, Ellen. 1956. “Neuer Film: ‘... denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun.’” Abendpost (Frankfurt/M.), April 1. 62. Beck, “Filmischer Hektizismus.” 63. K.H. 1956. “Vier Filme für jeden Geschmack.” Welt, May 16. 64. Geier, “Neuer Film.” 65. Ruppert, “Mörder aus gutem Hause.” 66. Groll, Gunter. 1956. “Viel Krampf um Nichts. Außer Rand und Band.” SZ, November 11. 67. Niehoff, “Blick auf die Leinwand.” 68. In the German original it says “entartet” (degenerate). This is a term which Hitler and the Nazis used to classify “non-German,” or “non-völkisch” art. The term was charged with racial theory. The argument was that “degenerate art” was made by “degenerate people.” Most modern and avant-garde art was considered “Jewish-Bolshevist” art and was therefore banned from public space, at times even destroyed (Eitz and Stötzel 2007, s.v. “Entartete Kunst,” pp. 186–196). 69. L.G. 1956. “Auf den Funken wartend. In zwei Theatern: ‘Außer Rand und Band.’” Kölnische Rundschau, October 13. 70. A fact that does not coincide with a revaluation of Black people, however. 71. G.z., “Neu auf der Leinwand.” 72. E.K-r. 1956. “‘Außer Rand und Band.’ Ekstase auf kaltem Weg erzeugt.” FR, September 22. 73. JFR, “Die Kinos....” 74. G.z., “Neu auf der Leinwand.” 75. sil. 1956. “‘Außer Rand und Band.’” Weser-Kurier (Bremen), November 3. 76. The work undertaken by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University has come under heavy attack for its semiotic approach, which leads to an over-valuation of representation and (unpolitical) resistance. The CCCS attributed subcultural status almost exclusively to youth subcultures that are located in the working class and neglects the element of accommodation of consumer culture and conventionality within certain subcultures (see the “Introduction to Part II” and the “Introduction to Part III” by Ken Gelder in The Subcultures Reader (Gelder and Thornton 1997, pp. 83–89 and pp. 145–148)). The insights produced by the CCCS are nonetheless valuable here because I am dealing explicitly with the emergence of those subcultures that are the primary focus of the CCCS agenda.

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77. I will subsume all four discourses displayed in this chapter into a single discourse of the rebel youth films, since the origination of a genre means just that: the emergence of a single–yet in the best of cases, differentiated– discourse about the relation of fiction and social reality.

References Ahrens, Jörn. 2012. Wie aus Wildnis Gesellschaft wird. Kulturelle Selbstverständigung und populäre Kultur am Beispiel von John Fords Film ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Baacke, Dieter. 1999. Jugend und Jugendkulturen. Darstellung und Deutung. 3rd Rev. ed. Weinheim/München: Juventa. Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1991. Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture, Routledge Classics. London/ New York: Routledge. Biltereyst, Daniel. 2007. American Juvenile Delinquency Movies and the European Censors: The Cross-Cultural Reception and Censorship of The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, and Rebel Without a Cause. In Youth Culture in Global Cinema, ed. Timothy Shary, and Alexandra Seibel, 9–26. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bondy, Curt, Jan Braden, Rudolf Cohen, and Klaus Eyferth. 1957. Jugendliche stören die Ordnung. Bericht und Stellungnahme zu den Halbstarkenkrawallen, Schriftenreihe der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Jugendpflege und Jugendfürsorge 1. München: Juventa. Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1987. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press. ———. 1997. The Imaginary: Creation in the Social-Historical Domain. In World in Fragments. Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination, ed. David Ames Curtis, 3–18. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ciaramelli, Fabio. 1997. The Self-Presupposition of the Origin: Homage to Cornelius Castoriadis. Thesis Eleven 49: 45–67. Creuzberger, Stefan, and Dierk Hoffmann. 2014. Antikommunismus und politische Kultur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Einleitende Vorbemerkungen. In ‘Geistige Gefahr’ und ‘Immunisierung der Gesellschaft’. Antikommunismus und politische Kultur in der frühen Bundesrepublik, ed. Stefan Creuzberger, and Dierk Hoffmann, 1–13. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. Doering-Manteuffel, Anselm. 1991. Strukturmerkmale der Kanzlerdemokratie. Der Staat 30 (1): 1–18.

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Eitz, Thorsten, and Georg Stötzel. 2007. Wörterbuch der ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’. Die NS-Vergangenheit im öffentlichen Sprachgebrauch. Vol. 1. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Faulstich, Werner. 2002. Die neue Jugendkultur. Teenager und das Halbstarkenproblem. In Die Kultur der fünfziger Jahre, Kulturgeschichte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, ed. Werner Faulstich, 278–290. München: Wilhelm Fink. Fehrenbach, Heide. 1995. Cinema in Democratizing Germany. In Reconstructing National Identity After Hitler. Chapel Hill/London: University of North Carolina Press. Gelder, Ken, and Sarah Thornton, eds. 1997. The Subcultures Reader. London: Routledge. Giesenfeld, Günter. 2006. Die Halbstarken (D 1956 (27.9.1956) f 97 min). In Filmklassiker. 1946–1962, ed. Thomas Koebner, vol. 2, 5th ed., 316–318. Stuttgart: Reclam. Großbölting, Thomas. 2013. Der verlorene Himmel. Glaube in Deutschland seit 1945. Bonn: BPB. Grotum, Thomas. 1994. Die Halbstarken. Zur Geschichte einer Jugendkultur der 50er Jahre. Frankfurt (M.)/New York: Campus. Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London/New York: Routledge. Hembus, Joe, and Christa Bandmann. 1980. Klassiker des deutschen Tonfilms. München: Goldmann. Hickethier, Knut. 2010. Heimat-, Kriegs- und Kriminalfilme in der bundesdeutschen Rezeption der 1950er Jahre. In Film  – Kino  – Zuschauer. Filmrezeption/Film – Cinema – Spectator. Film Reception, Zürcher Filmstudien, ed. Irmbert Schenk, Margrit Tröhler, and Yvonne Zimmermann, 245–260. Marburg: Schüren. Jarren, Otfried. 1998. Medien und Kommunikation in den 50er Jahren. In Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau. Die westdeutsche Gesellschaft der 50er Jahre, ed. Axel Schildt, and Arnold Sywottek, Rev. ed., 433–438. Bonn: Dietz. Jeffords, Susan. 1998. The ‘Remasculinization’ of Germany in the 1950s: Discussion. Signs 24 (1): 163–169. Kaiser, Günther. 1959. Randalierende Jugend. Eine soziologische und kriminologische Studie über die sogenannten ‘Halbstarken’. Ed. Studienbüro für Jugendfragen e.V. Bonn: Quelle & Meyer. Klooger, Jeff. 2014. Legein and Teukhein. In Cornelius Castoriadis: Key Concepts, ed. Suzi Adams, 117–126. London: Bloomsbury. Koszyk, Kurt. 1998. Presse und Pressekonzentration in den 50er Jahren. In Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau. Die westdeutsche Gesellschaft der 50er Jahre, ed. Axel Schildt, and Arnold Sywottek, Rev. ed., 439–457. Bonn: Dietz.

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Kruip, Gudrun. 1999. Das “Welt”-“Bild” des Axel Springer Verlags. Journalismus zwischen westlichen Werten und deutschen Denktraditionen. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. (1985) 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. 2nd ed. London/New York: Verso. Lenk, Kurt. 1998. Zum westdeutschen Konservatismus. In Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau. Die westdeutsche Gesellschaft der 50er Jahre, ed. Axel Schildt, and Arnold Sywottek, Rev. ed., 636–645. Bonn: Dietz. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1983. Die Spur des Anderen. Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Sozialphilosophie. Trans. and ed. Wolfgang Nikolaus Krewani. Freiburg/München: Karl Alber. Levy, Emanuel. 1988. John Wayne: Prophet of the American Way of Life. Metuchen/ London: Scarecrow Press. Lüdemann, Susanne. 2004. Metaphern der Gesellschaft. Studien zum soziologischen und politischen Imaginären. München: Wilhelm Fink. Moeller, Robert G. 1998. The ‘Remasculinization’ of Germany in the 1950s: Introduction. Signs 24 (1): 101–106. Poiger, Uta G. 1998. A New, ‘Western’ Hero? Reconstructing German Masculinity in the 1950s. Signs 24 (1): 147–162. Rancière, Jacques. 1999. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Minneapolis/ London: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2004. The Politics of Literature. SubStance 33 (1): 10–24. ———. 2010. The Paradoxes of Political Art. In Dissensus. On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Steve Corcoran, 134–151. London/New York: Continuum. Reckwitz, Andreas. 2008. Medientransformation und Subjekttransformation. In Unscharfe Grenzen. Perspektiven der Kultursoziologie, 159–176. Bielefeld: transcript. Schenk, Irmbert. 2010. Populäres Kino und Lebensgefühl in der BRD um 1960 am Beispiel des Krimigenres. In Film – Kino – Zuschauer. Filmrezeption/Film – Cinema – Spectator. Film Reception, Zürcher Filmstudien, ed. Irmbert Schenk, Margrit Tröhler, and Yvonne Zimmermann, 261–277. Marburg: Schüren. Schetsche, Michael T., and Christian Vähling. 2006. Jean Baudrillard: Wider die soziologische Ordnung. In Kultur. Theorien der Gegenwart, ed. Stephan Moebius, and Dirk Quadflieg, 67–77. Wiesbaden: VS. Schildt, Axel. 1998a. Ende der Ideologien? Politisch-ideologische Strömungen in den 50er Jahren. In Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau. Die westdeutsche Gesellschaft der 50er Jahre, ed. Axel Schildt, and Arnold Sywottek, Rev. ed., 627–635. Bonn: Dietz. ———. 1998b. Von der Not der Jugend zur Teenager-Kultur: Aufwachsen in den 50er Jahren. In Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau. Die westdeutsche Gesellschaft der 50er Jahre, ed. Axel Schildt, and Arnold Sywottek, Rev. ed., 335–348. Bonn: Dietz.

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Steininger, Christian. 2002. Die freie Presse: Zeitung und Zeitschrift. In Die Kultur der fünfziger Jahre, Kulturgeschichte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, ed. Werner Faulstich, 231–248. München: Wilhelm Fink. Turek, Jürgen. 1989. Demokratie- und Staatsbewußtsein: Entwicklung der Politischen Kultur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. In Politische Kultur und deutsche Frage. Materialien zum Staats- und Nationalbewußtsein in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ed. Werner Weidenfeld, 233–248. Köln: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik. von Hodenberg, Christina. 2006. Konsens und Krise. Eine Geschichte der westdeutschen Medienöffentlichkeit 1945–1973. Göttingen: Wallstein. Wagner-Willi, Monika. 2001. Liminalität und soziales Drama. Die Ritualtheorie von Victor Turner. In Grundlagen des Performativen. Eine Einführung in die Zusammenhänge von Sprache, Macht und Handeln, ed. Christoph Wulf, Michael Göhlich, and Jörg Zirfas, 227–251. Weinheim/München: Juventa. Zoll, Ralf. 1999. Vom Obrigkeitsstaat zur entgrenzten Politik. Politische Einstellungen und politisches Verhalten in der Bundesrepublik seit den sechziger Jahren. Opladen/Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.

CHAPTER 7

Fiction Between Representation and Quotation: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Garbage, the City and Death

My second cousin, just like his father, has continued to lead a completely apolitical life in the Frankfurt neighborhood where he rents a small office and an even smaller apartment. His distancing from any political controversy and entirely privatized existence extended to all issues related to Jews as well. … But the Fassbinder controversy suddenly changed all this. Although he did not participate in the occupation of the Schauspielhaus stage on the night of October 31, 1985, my cousin demonstrated in front of the theater on behalf of the stage occupants and demanded the permanent banning of Garbage, the City and Death. Clearly, this incident must have touched something very deep in my cousin for him to abandon the comfort of his well-heated Mercedes and walk up and down on a cold Frankfurt sidewalk with a placard around his neck. Was it because he, like Fassbinder’s Rich Jew, was a real estate developer making deals with the city? Was it because he, too, was rich and a Jew? Or was it perhaps that for the first time the controversy surrounding the Fassbinder play conveyed to him – albeit in a rather paradoxical way – that Frankfurt was indeed his home? (Markovits in Markovits et al. 1986, p. 6)

This personal statement by the Jewish US-based political scientist Andrei Markovits was given at a Roundtable Discussion at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, in December 1985. It gives an impression of the Fassbinder controversy and its impact on German society. It can be considered the date that the Jewish community in Germany © The Author(s) 2020 M. Knapp, Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40086-6_7

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reconstituted itself as a political community in post-World War II Germany which claimed equality in the face of particularity. It can probably best be described as the beginning of what is known today as Jewish “identity politics” (Elsaesser 1996, p. 190) and, to use Michael Töteberg’s term, “the political emancipation of the German Jews” (Töteberg 2002, p. 102). On the other hand, the play “seems at the heart of the intervention which ‘Fassbinder’ (as author, media-figure and absent center of a body of work) represented for the 1970s and the struggle for West Germany’s cultural identity in the shadow of Nazism” (Elsaesser 1996, p. 179). On May 8, 1985, the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II, Chancellor Helmut Kohl had met US-President Ronald Reagan at the former concentration camp Bergen-Belsen and the commemoration included a visit to a soldier cemetery in Bitburg, where members of the Waffen-SS were also buried. This act broke with customary commemorations of the event as for the first time in post-World War II history the perpetrators of the Holocaust were remembered alongside the victims. The redefinition of German Nazi history as a common fight with the USA against Soviet communism can be read as the political expression of historical revisionism which was about to pervade West German society (Elsaesser 1996, pp. 193–195; Baldwin 1990, p. 271). Yet, while the Bitburg event raised little and belated protest in West Germany, the Fassbinder controversy two months later escalated to become one of the largest debates on the character and meaning of anti-Semitism in the history of the republic. For months in a row the controversy engaged the media, politicians and even law courts, starting in about July 1985 to the end of the following year, while the most heated debates took place from September to November of the year 1985. The plan to put Garbage, the City and Death on stage is the spark that set the cultural scene on fire. A character in the play, who is known only by the name of the Rich Jew, invokes the history of Jewish life and its extinction in Frankfurt as well as the unilateral declaration of “normalization” at the exclusion of Jews. The controversy documents the emergence of a Jewish-German political subjectivity in post-World War II Germany, which inscribes itself into the German narrative and renders visible a rupture that divides the social. The difference in the interpretation of the fictional figure of the Rich Jew marks a difference in the perceptual framework of the play’s supporters and its opponents. While the “Jewish” paradigm emphasizes the subject’s individuality, the postmodern paradigm of the supporters highlights the subject’s subjection to the order of social discourses.

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The different interpretations of the figure of the Rich Jew have their starting point and reference (it is a double movement) in distinct haecceities (Rancière), diverse individualities, that form into social identities alongside the aesthetic structuring of social reality. The opposing discourses about the fictional figure of the Rich Jew organize aesthetic perception into a consensus of world representation and world experience, and thus introduce two new social subject positions into the social structure: a political Jewish identity and a left-alternative German identity, critical of anti-Semitism. What makes this case study a particularly striking example of the identity-forming nature of aesthetic representation is the fact that both the Jewish and the critical German identity originate from the same ideological ground. Both claim to fight anti-Semitism, yet their aesthetic responses differ, effectively positioning them as antagonists in the social field. Social identity, therefore, originates purely in the different perceptual–aesthetic–frameworks of the social agents. Two public debates precede the large controversy of 1985. The first takes place in 1976 on the occasion of the publication of the play’s text by the publishing house Suhrkamp, while the second antecedes the one in 1985 in close temporal proximity, taking place in 1984, and it already carries certain features that will gain importance in 1985. All three public events will be submitted to analysis, because they build upon each other and are explainable only within the genealogy of reception. The analysis of all three controversies crucially brings to view the development of a new paradigm of art/interpretation, namely the postmodern paradigm. While it may be considered absent in the first controversy in 1975, in 1985 we are confronted with contributions that are capable of meaningfully arguing in favor of Fassbinder’s aesthetics. It is no accident that the city of Frankfurt (Main) forms the background to the controversies. In the 1970s Frankfurt was–next to West Berlin–the hub of cultural and political developments in the wake of the student revolt of 1968. On the one hand, it was the stronghold of a radical democratic tradition, trade unionism, of the left social critique known as the Frankfurt School, as well as a center of the squatter movement. On the other hand, it was the commercial capital of West Germany known as Mainhattan. Manfred Kittel points out that the tension between these poles made Frankfurt a laboratory for social and (multi-)cultural change (Kittel 2011, p. 4). Hilmar Hoffmann, Frankfurt’s city councilor for cultural affairs from 1970 to 1990, and who we will encounter as participant in the Fassbinder controversy, established a far-reaching cultural politics of

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“culture for all” in the city’s cultural institutions, particularly in the museums and theaters. In his early years he vehemently believed in a democratizing role for cultural institutions and “democratized” the hierarchies and decision making structures. Although these far reaching developments had to be partially withdrawn due to their failure in practice, the utopian Frankfurt model served as an example for other cultural policies in the Federal Republic (Kittel 2011, pp. 452–456) and consolidated Frankfurt’s role as “magnifying glass of the republic,” as Günther Rühle aptly put it.2 Beyond Frankfurt’s role in post-war Germany, there is a second aspect that added to the explosiveness of the situation: prior to the Holocaust, Frankfurt was one of the most vivid centers of Jewish life in Germany. It counted the second largest Jewish community in Germany which constituted 6.3% of the whole population of Frankfurt. According to Heuberger and Krohn, the expression “in Frankfurt at home” described the sense of belonging of the German Jews during the Weimar Republic (Heuberger and Krohn 1988, pp. 145–146). The extent of the destruction becomes clear if we look at the numbers of Jews in Frankfurt prior to the Nazi period and at the end of World War II: in 1925 Frankfurt Jews numbered about 30,000 (Heuberger and Krohn 1988, p. 145); by the end of March 1945 only 140 Jews remained after deportation and forced exile (Heuberger and Krohn 1988, p. 201). As a journalist from Stern writes: “Frankfurt’s history is also the history of German Jews.”3 Frankfurt here becomes the “magnifying glass of the republic” in a second sense. All these developments crystallize in Garbage, the City and Death, which is why the play is deeply entangled with Frankfurt as a social space.

7.1   Chronology In terms of chronology, the controversy about the play begins about ten years prior to the Bitburg affair. In 1973 the author Gerhard Zwerenz published a novel called Die Erde ist unbewohnbar wie der Mond, which inspired Rainer Werner Fassbinder to write the play Garbage, the City and Death. At the time, Fassbinder was the artistic director of the theater Theater am Turm (TAT) in Frankfurt (Main), which was known for its experimental performances and its intellectual proximity to the student protests of the 1960s (Friedrich 1976, pp. 24–27; in addition Töteberg 2002, pp. 87–88). Fassbinder planned to stage the play, but failed to do so due to the premature termination of his contract at the TAT in June 1975.4

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The play was finally published in March 1976 by the publishing house Suhrkamp and provoked the first public reaction on March 12, 1976 by FR (see also Bodek 1991, p. 250).5 It was, however, a contribution in the newspaper FAZ from March 19, 1976 by Joachim Fest that started the controversy, as it considered the play to be an expression of Linksfaschismus (fascism from the left).6 Unlike the later controversies in the 1980s, the controversy in 1976 revolved around the play’s text only, since no attempt to perform the play was made at the time. Due to the early ceasing of distribution by Suhrkamp, the text was available to a few journalists only and discussion took place in the restricted sphere of the Feuilleton without–in large parts–the direct involvement of the Jewish community (Elsaesser 1996, p. 179; Hargens 2010, p. 74). In May 1976 the film Schatten der Engel, based on the play and directed by Daniel Schmid, competed in the Cannes Film Festival and led to the Israeli delegation leaving the screening (Filmverlag der Autoren 1976, p. 151). On September 3, 1976 the film began a run in German cinemas, yet it did not provoke a larger controversy and went–apart from a few outright critiques–largely unnoticed. The play remained unheard of for a period of eight years. All this changed when in 1984 the general director of the concert hall Alte Oper in Frankfurt (Main), Ulrich Schwab, planned to stage the play during the festival Frankfurt Feste. A formal agreement from 1981, which prohibited the concert hall from staging spoken theater, was the reason that Schwab’s contract was terminated without notice and the play was taken off the schedule. The city mayor, Walter Wallmann, defended the termination of the contract because he was frustrated by the lack of trust characterizing the relationship between the supervisory board and the management of the Alte Oper.7 It is not unjustified to suggest that the formal reasons were mere foils to be able to prevent the staging of the play yet escape the necessity of exercising censorship, as contributors in Der Spiegel8 and Stern9 assume. The largest and most powerful debate surrounding the play, however, took place in 1985 and stretched into 1986, while lawsuits were still scheduled at the end of 1986. By about mid-July 1985 the director of the Schauspielhaus in Frankfurt (Main), Günther Rühle, announced that he intended to stage the play in the coming season. Ironically, Rühle had just recently changed employer: from 1974 to 1985 he had been the head of the Feature Pages of FAZ and had backed Joachim Fest’s allegations of anti-Semitism and ‘left fascism’ in Garbage, the City and Death. His later

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advocacy for the play’s performance in 1985 with the argument that it initiated dialogue appears opportunistic.10 Almost immediately, the Franz-Oppenheimer-Gesellschaft, an organization which is dedicated to the maintenance of German-Jewish cultural values, publicly protested against these plans. In the following months the political parties joined the debate. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) as well as the Christian Democratic Union took a critical stance, yet they also acknowledged that there was no legal basis to prohibit the staging of the play. The political involvement went so far that the play was put on the agenda of the first meeting of the city council after the summer break before even the city’s budget draft. Other interventions in the debate were made, among others, by Peter Zadek, an influential (Jewish) stage director at the time, both Christian churches in Frankfurt, the president of the Deutsche Akademie der Darstellenden Künste, and the Jewish community in Frankfurt, as well as the chair of the directorate of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. The Roma and Sinti Union as well as the chairman of the Turkish Community Berlin expressed solidarity with the Jewish community. The Berliner Jüdische Kulturforum (Berlin Jewish Cultural Forum) pressed charges against the play’s performance and the mayor of Tel Aviv (Israel) appealed to the mayor of Frankfurt to prevent the performance. The premiere was scheduled for October 31, 1985, but before the play could start, the stage was occupied by protesters and a heated discussion took place instead of the performance. Further stagings, scheduled for November 4 and 6, 1985, were subsequently canceled. A staging exclusively for representatives of the media took place on November 4, and remained the only performance of the play in Germany for decades. Yet the public debate continued until about the beginning of 1986. Although the debate slowly abated, the issue remained present in the media: Gerhard Zwerenz, the author of the initial novel, filed a lawsuit against the Verlag der Autoren concerning copyright issues.11 Also, Henryk M. Broder, a well-known author and journalist of Jewish heritage, published an article in SZ12 and a book entitled Der ewige Antisemit (En: The Perpetual Anti-Semite) (Broder 1986), in which he claimed to quote Rühle as having said: “The grace period is over,”13 which Rühle denies.14 “The grace period is over” suggests the re-instigation of shooting permission. A further debate ensued about this quotation from about October to December 1986.

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The play was finally staged in an Off-Broadway theater in New York in 1987 without much notice from the public there. This event now made it possible to stage the play anywhere, as Fassbinder is said to have directed verbally that the world premiere was to take place in Frankfurt, Paris, or New  York (Chronologie der Ereignisse 1998, p.  105). In Germany, it premiered in 2009 at the Theater an der Ruhr in Mülheim (Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation n.d.). This chronology of events shows the breadth of the affair, which cannot be reduced only to a media event but encompasses central social institutions such as politics and the law, as well as diverse large organizations from the spheres of religion and the arts. Fassbinder had broken into a taboo zone: His play discharged emotions that pointed beyond the occasion towards something repressed, towards anxieties and resentments that had so far been veiled by the gestures of reconciliation and reparation payments. The play tore open a wound that had never healed. (Töteberg 2002, p. 100)

7.2   The Material The material for this case study encompasses a total of 146 contributions. They are distributed quite unevenly across the three controversies: twenty documents from 1976, sixteen documents in 1984, and 110 documents in 1985/1986. The wide range of coverage surrounding the attempted performance confirms the last controversy’s importance within the public sphere. Yet, the analysis of the first two debates is no less important than the last. While the social process of the constitution of a political Jewish identity (social dimension) manifests itself primarily and with force only in the 1985/1986 controversy, the debates from 1976 and 1984 provide relevant information on the fictional dimension of the dissent, in which the controversy of 1985 originates. In addition to the regular print media, the weekly Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung (AJW) was included in the corpus as mouthpiece of the Jewish community in Germany, as well as the weekly magazine of the Social Democratic Party, Vorwärts, which actively participated in the debate and was cross-referenced by other media.15 It thus partakes in the national discourse. The monthly magazine Theater heute was also included in the corpus because it is considered the most important and most read

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trade magazine for theater issues in Germany. In this function it was cross-­ referenced by the regular print media as well.16

7.3   1976: The First Debate The controversy started on March 19, 1976 with a contribution by Joachim Fest in the FAZ, which–though not the first input on the play– raised the strongest and most antagonistic reactions. Fest, senior editor of the features section of FAZ and journalist of the first hour of the Federal Republic of Germany, launched a serious attack on the political Left of the 1970s when he claimed: In whichever shape fascism from the Left hitherto manifested itself, it had largely been free of anti-Semitic emotions. Only the politics of the Soviet Union against the state of Israel, which impassionately mobilized anti-­ Semitic affects, has distributed an awareness in the Federal Republic’s left scene, that anti-Semitism is an element of the world revolution and has nothing to do with the Third Reich’s hatred against Jews. This gives left anti-Semitism its good conscience. Besides, however, the anti-Semitism of Fassbinder’s play is less a question of resentments, but one of tactics and of radical chic. It may be motivated by the fact that for a considerable time the Left has lacked a suggestive bogeyman; and it requires a figure of the perceivable enemy, in order to compensate the evidentially small appeal of its own ideology. For the first time this is now again ‘The Rich Jew.’17

Fest creates the equation “fascism = the Left = anti-Semitism,”18 as Wolfram Schütte aptly remarks in a reply to Fest’s polemics. Against the backdrop of Fest’s conservatism, his charges of left fascism can only be read as an attempt to disqualify the Left. In retrospect, Fest’s remarks are poisoned by the fact that his seminal Hitler biography (published in 1973) refers to the Holocaust on only 3 of 1280 pages (Bönisch 2006/2007, p. 1274).19 Furthermore, in the historians’ quarrel of 1986 he took sides with historical revisionism, which attempted to re-signify German national identity and relativize the singularity of the Holocaust (Baldwin 1990, pp.  21–30). Nonetheless, and probably due to Fest’s position of authority within the West German public sphere, this statement provoked a public response that eventually led Suhrkamp to stop the distribution of the text of Garbage, the City and

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Death–not because they agreed to the charges, but because Suhrkamp feared that the play might be misunderstood.20 Fest’s simultaneous attack on the political Left and Fassbinder’s Garbage, the City and Death provides two different starting points for the replies. First, it gives rise to a contemplation of the condition of the political Left, and second, we can observe the search for an appropriate approach to the play, which is itself split into the two strands of the play’s supporters and opponents. This structure of oppositional paradigms of interpretation recurs in the 1985 controversy. Tracing the development of left identity alongside the reception of Garbage, the City and Death helps understand the role played by aesthetic representation for the constitution of identity. In 1976, the Left’s reaction to the play’s aesthetics as well as to a broader conception of anti-Semitism is dominated by helplessness. The conflict shows that the Left fails to scrutinize anti-Semitism as something structurally traversing society, and therefore as something that also implicates left identity. Anti-Semitism, the Left claims, is something that belongs to the other, to conservatism and right-wing politics. The second strand of discourse, while rather uninterested in the play’s ideological implications, is concerned with the play’s aesthetics, which–the critics claim–should not be mistaken for those of a realist play. Theirs is a search to make the play meaningful, although they lack a language to give expression to a paradigm of art/interpretation that positively generates meaning from the play. This strand will, in 1985, develop into a fully developed paradigm of art/interpretation that encompasses an ideological stance against anti-Semitism and an aesthetic paradigm of quotation as its expression. The development of the new paradigm, in 1985, marks the establishment of a new left identity. The incapacity of the Left to deal with Fest’s charges convincingly in 1976 shows the absence of a paradigm of interpretation capable of dealing with Fassbinder’s aesthetics, which goes hand in hand with the absence of haecceities, individualities, capable of inhabiting the space proposed by Fassbinder. The third strand of discourse, finally, seconds Fest’s charges, yet in a much more differentiated manner. It develops an understanding of anti-Semitism as not only physical violence against Jews, but as a mode of representing Jews as the social Other. This broader understanding of anti-Semitism will be shared, in the 1985 debate, by both the play’s opponents and its supporters, a crucial spread of the concept of structural anti-Semitism across critically minded parts of society.

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7.3.1  Left Identity in West Germany In a reply to Fest’s contribution, Wolfram Schütte (FR) claims that the Left, by definition, cannot be fascist because it is a phenomenon with clearly defined “historic, social, and economic roots.”21 Left-wing currents which incorporated fascist tendencies no longer existed. The Left’s critical concern with Israel’s politics is neither a peculiarity of the Left nor an expression of anti-Semitism. He charges Fest with not having an understanding of the Left, since he neglects its diversity and is thus ill-equipped to judge. Similarly, Gerhard Zwerenz, the author of the novel Die Erde ist unbewohnbar wie der Mond (En: The Earth is Uninhabitable Like the Moon, published in 1973) which served as a model to Garbage, the City and Death, is outraged at the charges voiced by Fest. He claims that left anti-Semitism is impossible, because left critique “cannot argue on the basis of racism, biology, nationalism.”22 The play, as well as his own novel, only attempts to grasp social reality where Jewish involvement in Frankfurt’s speculation in real estate cannot be denied. He claims that both works have to be regarded as realist works and on these grounds are not directed against the Jews in general, but against speculators in particular: “Critical realism is innocent of its subjects, just like the younger generations of Germans are innocent of the Third Reich. It is insane to encumber the younger Germans and Fassbinder with any blame for anti-Semitism.”23 Zwerenz proposes the aesthetic paradigm of “critical realism” for an understanding of the play, and it is this realism that makes his dismissal of left anti-Semitism a genuine example of what he purports to dismiss. Critical realism, he claims, is a means of disclosing a misguided “truth,” and part of this truth is the involvement of Jews in the speculation in real estate. The world/image-relation is the relation of world and representation. Fiction, according to Zwerenz, represents the world and uncovers its hidden ugliness. Aesthetics refers to a truth that substantiates the words. The world precedes signification. This is the reason why mentions of the dramatic figure’s characteristics such as “Jewish” are not considered problematic, since “being Jewish” is deemed an intrinsic characteristic of the person depicted. Zwerenz’s remarks depict an absence of awareness of the power of social discourse, and hence a lack of awareness of discourse as a mechanism of power. It is this gap that constitutes the difference between the paradigm of critical realism of the old Left and the post-structural paradigm that will develop in the mid-1980s. Since realism speaks of the

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“real world,” the fictional figure of the Rich Jew necessarily has to appear as an individual, and hence precludes an interpretation of the play that denies the figure’s intrinsic motivation. Zwerenz is not capable of giving a persuasive, non-anti-Semitic account of the Rich Jew’s role in the play, which is why he resorted to a polemic claim of the inexistence of left anti-­ Semitism, which lacked a substantiated argument. The notion of critical realism should be framed in the tradition of documentary theater since the 1960s.24 Documentary theater and performance art had been established as representing left criticism of social reality and as giving expression to the left world experience of transformation (Marschall 2010). Zwerenz links Garbage, the City and Death to this aesthetic paradigm, and it is here that he is misguided in his endeavor to save Fassbinder from Joachim Fest’s charges. For the moment we have to assume that Fassbinder’s play is not a failure and that it contains a critical surplus value,25 but Zwerenz and Schütte show that they fail to reconcile their paradigm of meaning–the way they make the world meaningful–with the image proposed by Fassbinder. They have no key to unravel Fassbinder’s suggestions. This is not to deny that there are rampant anti-Semitic attitudes to be found among the Left. The Left, in whose name these authors speak, lacks not only a “reading guideline” to the play, but also a clear concept of anti-­ Semitism. Perhaps, in fact, both “lacks” belong together, if we consider anti-Semitism as part of the subtle structures and discourses that pervade society in its entirety and not only as a fringe phenomenon. The failure of the Left in confronting anti-Semitism may be assumed to have a long tradition. The political scientist Wolfgang Kraushaar writes that anti-Zionism has been prevalent among the Left since the Six-Day War of Israel against Egypt and gained decidedly anti-Semitic tendencies with the terrorist attack of the Tupamaros West-Berlin on the Jewish community center in Berlin on November 9, 1969. Yet, anti-Jewish sentiments did not serve as identity markers for large parts of the Left, and anti-Zionism was pushed to the margins of the militant Left (Kraushaar 2007). However, the education researcher and active member of the Sozialistische Büro in the 1970s and 1980s Micha Brumlik remembers that into the late 1980s the members of the editorial team links, a magazine of the Sozialistische Büro, which aimed at a unification of the new Left in Germany, refused to engage in a controversy about left anti-Semitism (Brumlik and Simbürger 2007, p.  195). As a central institution of the new Left in West Germany, the

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dealings of the Sozialistische Büro with regard to the question of anti-­ Semitism have to be thought of as paradigmatic. Anti-Semitism, although openly discredited, could thus continue a hidden life among the Left. This explains Zwerenz’s and Schütte’s lack of a conceptual framework of structural anti-Semitism beyond the claim that left anti-Semitism is impossible. The responses to Fest’s charges make visible the absence of a left attitude toward structural anti-Semitism, which results in insubstantial slogans and fail the argument. The incongruence between the aesthetic paradigm of art/interpretation and the paradigm of meaning, as it can be observed in the argument proposed primarily by Zwerenz, heralds the estrangement of new and old Left. The late 1970s witnesses the emergence of a political Left that no longer feels indebted to Marxian materialism and comes together in what came to be known as the new social movements. In contrast to the particularist interests of the Marxist workers’ movement, the new social movements are defined by “post-materialist” concerns and struggle for the realization of collective goods, such as the protection of the environment, peace, and female equality (Kriesi 1987, pp. 320–321). Although individuals certainly might have benefited from the successful struggles’ results such as the feminist movement, what takes priority for these movements is the transformation of values. The political scientist Hanspeter Kriesi suggests that the new social movements were driven by the awareness that capitalist growth and the institutions that supported it were subject to limitations, and they strove (and strive) to transform this belief in unlimited capitalist growth and expansion (Kriesi 1987, pp. 323–325). Additionally, they critique the centralized and bureaucratic organization of the Marxist and Social Democratic workers’ movement, while also not aiming for the revolutionary transformation of the social as the workers’ movement did. Instead, they support radical democratic demands and an anti-authoritarian policy which aims for a self-­determined life (Rucht 2013, p. 479). On a theoretical level, the new Left was influenced by post-structuralism and criticized Marxism for its belief in rationalism, the belief in progress and the identity of the subject with itself, which implies the full availability of the psyche to the subject (Neumeister 2000, pp. 49–145, esp. p. 54). The term new social movements was coined at the beginning of the 1980s and hence in a period in which they experienced a social climax (Lemke 1999, p. 440). The early formation of a new left political identity in the 1970s is already visible in the controversy, which to a certain degree revolves

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around the discontinuity of left identity. In a contribution from April 10, 1976 in FAZ, Joachim Fest observes a shattering of left ideology, which he believes is the origin of anti-Semitism. In 1976, the political Left appears to him to have reached the end of the road.26 As yet, he is unable to perceive the newness of the developments, while he acknowledges that fundamental transformations are jolting the Left. His assessment of a wretched and desperate state of the Left is seconded by the novelist, journalist, and Holocaust survivor Jean Améry, yet from a slightly different angle and ideological perspective.27 Améry is sympathetic with what he calls the old, authentic but lifeless Left (which means the traditional Left: Social Democrats and Marxists). This “authentic Left,” he claims, loses in the face of what he perceives to be a fraternization between the “new Left” and the right-conservative “philistines,” both of whom approve the anti-­ Semitism revealed in Fassbinder’s play.28 Indeed, Améry’s early essay on anti-Semitism from 1969 “Der ehrbare Antisemitismus” (En: The Respectable Antisemitism) already senses the rupture that is developing among the Left.29 His essay even precedes the assault on the Jewish community hall in Berlin committed by the Tupamaros West-Berlin on November 9, 1969, during a commemoration of the Pogrom Night of 1938, which Wolfgang Kraushaar designates as the beginning of militant anti-Semitism among the Left (Kraushaar 2007, p.  337). For Améry, it was the beginning of a division in which parts of the Left abandoned their commitment to standing on the side of the weak. Améry’s discomfort with Garbage, the City and Death seems natural in the face of the militant anti-Semitism of groups such as the Tupamaros West-Berlin and the Red Army Faction (Kraushaar 2007, pp. 335–343) and the spread of anti-Zionism after the Six Day War of Israel against Egypt. This might explain his unequivocal classification of Fassbinder’s play as anti-Semitic. The absence of a “reading guideline” to Garbage, the City and Death makes visible the drifting apart and diversification of perceptual frameworks within left identity. 7.3.2  Toward a Postmodern Paradigm of Interpretation There is, however, a second approach to Fest’s charges, an approach that foregrounds the play’s anti-realism and postmodern character. It is the tentative search for an interpretation that conceives of the play in positive terms. It points toward the transformation of the perceptual framework of parts of the political Left, although–as yet–it comes in a non-ideological

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guise. Only in the Fassbinder controversy/ies of 1984/1985 will we be able to witness the politicization of this paradigm of art/interpretation. It is a paradigm that breaks with the realism and the promise of revolution inherent to critical art of the time–documentary theater as well as performance art–and introduces a vision of the world as neurotic, apocalyptic, and beyond redemption.30 The paradigmatic shift in aesthetic representation announces a transformation of social criticism and therefore marks the opening of a gap between the aesthetic expression of the old and new Left. In 1976, the ideological impact is as yet invisible. We can observe, however, a tentative search for the formulation of a paradigm that positively refers to the play’s aesthetics. I use the term “postmodernism” in the sense given to it by Scott Lash as a movement toward de-differentiation (Lash 1988). If modernism is characterized by differentiation–differentiation of fact and fiction, culture and society, signifier, signified and referent–postmodernism should be regarded as modernism’s counter-movement. In postmodernism, the distinctions established between world and text, recipient and text, referent and signifier, collapse. Art ceases to function as the world’s double, but rather functions as a supplement, an extension of the world. Lash claims that modernism has to be thought of as a discursive order, while postmodernism is a regime of figural signification: To signify via figures rather than words is to signify iconically. Images or other figures which signify iconically do so through their resemblance to the referent. And signifiers (figures) which resemble referents are less fully differentiated from them than signifiers (words, discourse) which do not. (Lash 1988, p. 331)

When I speak about the postmodern character of the reception of Garbage, the City and Death, I do not want to indulge in a discussion about the nature of postmodernism or its characteristics. Neither do I want to suggest that Garbage, the City and Death is indeed a postmodern drama. It is not for me to judge the play’s classification within literary history. I am here concerned with a specific paradigm of interpretation. The Fassbinder controversy shows that a variety of paradigms may be applied to the work of art. Only when a paradigm of interpretation eventually asserts itself as the “correct” paradigm to be applied to a specific artwork will it go down in the history of theater and literature as, for example, a postmodern work of art. Yet the assertion of a specific paradigm is the result of social

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struggles and is not inherent to the artwork. I want to refer to this highly contested term postmodernism as a pattern of aesthetic interpretation, as a “reading guideline” to artworks, which foregrounds the figural element of de-differentiation, without judging the “correctness” of this paradigm. And neither do I intend to compare this postmodern paradigm with the paradigm of hyperreality in the previous chapter, despite Baudrillard’s characterization of postmodernity as hyperreal (Baudrillard 1994). It is not my aim to prove or to disprove this claim. Hyperrealism, in the chapter on the rebel youth films, served a descriptive need. It helped me identify the particularity of the paradigm of art/interpretation as it developed through the rebel youth film discourse. Similarly, the identification of a postmodern paradigm of art/interpretation as de-differentiation in the case of Garbage, the City and Death is a means to differentiate the paradigmatic approaches to the play. Let me call it an analytical tool. I do not intend to create a line of continuity between the hyperreal paradigm of the rebel youth films and the postmodern paradigm under consideration in this chapter. And neither are these descriptions meant to describe a chronological succession. Rather, this work has shown the simultaneity, co-­ existence, and continuous struggle of paradigms of art/interpretation throughout time and space. Fassbinder himself opts for the postmodern paradigm when he writes, in a statement published as a response to Fest’s allegations: The thing itself, albeit on a new level, is a repetition of the developments in the 18th century, when Jews were only allowed to trade in monetary transactions, while in the end these monetary transactions … provided arguments for those who had essentially forced them into this occupation and who were actually their adversaries. This is just what the city does in my play.31

Fassbinder draws attention to the process of stereotyping, in which the ways of being of a social group are predetermined by the dominant society. But conversely, group building is used as a reproach against that group, which leads to marginalization. The figure of the Rich Jew, Fassbinder implies, must be read as the victim of a society that provides determined paths of development for certain social types, yet uses these determined paths as markers of exclusion. Fassbinder propounds a de-differentiation of the categories of subject and society. The subject is deprived of her individuality, while individuality marks difference between the subject and

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the social. The subject, from this perspective, is totally reduced to the social discourse. In a further interview, Fassbinder adds: “The Jew is the only one in this play, … who is capable of recognizing the language he speaks as a convention between people.”32 Fassbinder suggests a reappraisal of the role of language. He de-ontologizes language’s reference and foregrounds the constitutive nature of language for the social. The contract underlying the joint use of language is also a contract of sociality. Language turns into the social and society turns into a language. They become indistinguishable. Fassbinder reimagines the social as based on a social act and not as a natural given. The social, he suggests, cannot be derived from biology and descent. Language, quotation, and reflection turn into the creative elements of the social. Fassbinder’s testimony plays a double role in the discourse, since Fassbinder is not only the play’s originator, but simultaneously actively engages in the discourse about the play’s meaning. As a participant in the interpretive discourse, he signals the intentions he pursued with the play’s text. This does not mean that we can resort to the notion of an authentic meaning underlying the text. Yet Fassbinder’s acquaintance with anti-­ Semitic structures and his rejection of anti-Semitism with regard to these arguments suggests the possibility of a relation of world/image which does not coincide with Joachim Fest’s charges of anti-Semitic aesthetics. It does not mean that Fassbinder is right, or that it is therefore impossible for him to reproduce structural anti-Semitism. Yet the awareness of a problem already uncovers what can only do its work undercover and insinuates an aesthetics that transgresses established modes of representing social reality. Fassbinder’s discursive contribution provides the emerging paradigm of interpretation with an authority that cannot be easily brushed aside. Yet, simultaneously, it shows that new aesthetic paradigms cannot be established self-referentially and “autonomously,” but require trendsetters who develop the respective “reading guidelines” which are necessary in order to make the work of art meaningful. Lothar Schmidt-Mühlisch from Welt attempts to draw lines of continuity in Fassbinder’s oeuvre in which Garbage, the City and Death may be integrated. Similar to Fassbinder, he argues that his oeuvre dissolves the distinction between appearance and being, between image and world: The play is about the reality of human standardization. Petra von Kant’s tears are no less real, no less painful, because they are the tears of the cliché. …

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Fassbinder’s films are, barring a few exceptions, ballads. They are unpsychological, unsociological, and without a historical dimension, because they got involved with the world of styling, which is unpsychological, unsociological and unhistorical. Petra von Kant, for instance, walks straight out of the consciousness-designer’s chamber of horrors. Correspondingly, his works consist of quotations, findings, narratives that he has heard.33

From this perspective, subjectivity appears as designed by stereotypes, clichés, identity frameworks, subject to the normative power of society’s language. But the “design” should not be understood as a cover for an intrinsic existence, but as reality itself. Similar to the appearances of Marlon Brando and James Dean in the discourse about the rebel youth films, the distinction of origin and representation blurs. Reference and reflection become indistinguishable and representation, language, and standardization turn into the modeling agents of subjectivity.34 This is reminiscent of Lacan’s conceptualization of the unconscious as the discourse of the Other. “Unconscious desire,” Sean Homer notes in that regard, “therefore emerges in relation to the big Other – the symbolic order. It is the discourse of the Other, insofar as we are condemned to speak our desire through the language and desires of others” (Homer 2005, p. 70). The postmodern paradigm of art/interpretation may be thought of as the aesthetic representation of Lacan’s thought. In an article in Die Zeit Benjamin Henrichs contributes to what I have termed the postmodern paradigm of interpretation as well, despite the fact that he dislikes the drama: “[Fassbinder] is only interested in the sentimental or the obscene effect, only solemnity and brutality, pathos and pathetic anti-pathos.”35 Henrichs perceives the play’s function in its search for effect and what Lash would call, following Teresa de Lauretis, the “spectacle” (Lash 1988, p. 328). It is not critical distance and objective analysis that matters, as in the realist arts, but the relation the play establishes with the recipient in the shape of the recipient’s involvement with the play. Here again it means the dissolution of boundaries, de-­ differentiation of text, and the psyche of the recipient. What disrupts Fassbinder’s relation with (old) left identity and further demarcates the emerging division between new and old Left is the “lack of ideology” that Henrichs testifies to in the play. Accordingly, Garbage, the City and Death depicts a world in which cause and consequence cease to be distinguishable, which paints the picture of a world unassailable by human agency. Henrichs fails to perceive a point of anchorage for social

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struggles in Garbage, the City and Death, since if there is no perpetrator of deficiencies, there is no target for action. Post-war political drama was positioned in a decidedly realist and ideologically conforming aesthetic paradigm, as in the shape of documentary drama or in performance art (Marschall 2010). For instance, performance art–also Fassbinder’s antiteater of the late 1960s–was always concluded by a message of revolution, transformation, and social change (Marschall 2010, pp. 255–282 chapter 8 on Fassbinder’s antiteater; pp. 285–308 chapter 9 on Living Theater). Garbage, the City and Death irritates these realist (although utopian) reading conventions. Fassbinder’s play does not carry a message of transformation or the vision of a healthy future. Instead, the aesthetic paradigm proposed by Fassbinder captures the apocalyptic feeling of the 1970s (Zepp 2012), and in Garbage, the City and Death transforms this fundamental feeling of the new social movements into an aesthetic representation that precludes the idea of a last resort. It is this perception of the world as beyond salvation–and hence devoid of the utopia of revolution– that makes the difference between the old left haecceity and the new one. It is in aesthetic representation that this fundamental gap finds representation. 7.3.3  The Paradigm of the “Prohibition of the Image” In 1976, however, we can also witness the emergence of a discourse about the nature of the hidden structures of anti-Semitism, which will form the discursive foundations of the Jewish protests in 1985. Already at this stage a distinct Jewish voice emerges opposing the figure of the Rich Jew which will provide the intellectual framework for the politicization of the Jewish community in 1985. This discourse cannot reconcile Fassbinder’s representation of the Rich Jew with the Jewish interest in being recognized as individuals with the interest in not being perceived as society’s Other. Fassbinder’s aesthetics, to Jews and to those who declare their solidarity with them, is a reproduction of stereotyping, a renewal of ethnic marginalization. Though this paradigm recognizes the impact of representation on society, it joins the old Left in reading the play as a realist one, which depicts individuals. This is the reason for arguing that Garbage, the City and Death is anti-Semitic and reproduces anti-Semitism. I will call this paradigm the paradigm of the “prohibition of the image,” since it follows in the footsteps of the Adorno dictum. It claims that artists must refrain

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from stereotypically representing Jews, because any unbiased depiction of markers of the Holocaust is an impossible endeavor. The first part of the following section deals with the new definition of anti-Semitism as structurally embedded in social reality. The second section is concerned with the relation of aesthetic representation and social reality, that is, with the function fulfilled by fiction for the social in a stricter sense. It is here that we will encounter the Adorno dictum, which complements the diagnosis of structural anti-Semitism of the first section. 7.3.3.1 Representing the Other–An Act of Structural Anti-Semitism An important aspect in the discourse surrounding this particular paradigm is the acknowledgment that anti-Semitism is not, and never was, solely a phenomenon of the extreme political Right. It is the result of a far-­reaching history, which did not start with and was not an invention of Adolf Hitler. Anti-Semitism is the outcome of collective work by intellectuals and the bourgeoisie, as well as politicians and theologians, which led to the Holocaust. Martin Stöhr, director of the Evangelische Akademie Arnoldshain (Protestant Academy in Arnoldshain), paradigmatically gives expression to these thoughts. The publishing of Stöhr’s contribution in AJW, a weekly published by the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has to be read as a demonstration of solidarity of the Protestant church with Jewish interests. Stöhr’s contribution is not meant to replace the Jewish voice; rather it develops and exemplifies the argument and hence serves well to expose the thoughts that substantiate Fest’s charges of anti-Semitism, without taking recourse to pure polemics. Stöhr claims that to anti-Semitism-as-mentality Hitler added ideology and a never before seen degree of violence combined with industrial precision. The continued presence of Hitler’s victims in Germany makes it necessary to be cautious with how non-Jewish Germans relate to Jews. Of course Jews may be criticized, he continues. Not to be able to criticize Jews because they are Jews would retain them within (a mental) ghetto and keep them from social inclusion.36 The problem with Fassbinder’s play is the typification of the persona, the de-individualization of the Rich Jew: Do Fassbinder’s name and quality guarantee that hatred against Jews and antiSemitic prejudice are less dangerous than in the case of swastika scribblers? Even if Roeder37 has no dealings with Fassbinder (and vice versa), so can hostile brothers play into each other’s hands. The Hitler-Stalin Pact also operates on other levels than the political one. The demons too can appear spirited.38

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Anti-Semitism here is reconceptualized not as bound to intentionality, but as an act that can also happen unwillingly. Since socialization creates a structural analogy between the psyche and social reality (Castoriadis 1987, pp. 273–339 chapter 6 “The Social-Historical Institution: Individuals and Things”), these remarks, in logical consequence, mean that anti-Semitic acts derive from the structural foundations of society. This thought is further enhanced when Stöhr writes: “And between the (extreme) Right and the (extreme) Left there is not the happy medium. There is the thoughtlessness, the resigned silence, and the lack of moral courage that looks the other way when old and new hatred against Jews are not only resurrected, but also conjoin.”39 For Stöhr, Fassbinder does not recreate anti-Semitic structures for the sake of criticism. He cannot perceive an objectifying distance between “fact and fiction,” which is why the play acts as the reproduction of social reality. The way Stöhr reads the play is one that creates a direct relation between sign and reference. Aesthetic representation directly refers to the world’s substance(s). The relation between image/ world is an immanent relation, which is why the figure of the Rich Jew functions as the representation of a real Jew. Stöhr’s claims run counter to the mood in West Germany since the Auschwitz Trial at the beginning of the 1960s. German law is founded upon the identification of subjective motivations for a crime and the prohibition of ex post facto law. West German law, in the Auschwitz trials, had to acknowledge the laws of the Nazi regime as binding with respect to the deeds perpetrated during the Nazi period. Devin O. Pendas argues that the trial against the Auschwitz perpetrators in Frankfurt, due to these restrictions imposed upon it by the law, created an atmosphere that condemned the deeds of the perpetrators but exculpated the large majority of the West German population, who could continue to claim to have known nothing of the Holocaust until 1945 (Pendas 2006, p. 291). Rebecca Wittmann further describes the different reactions that were beginning to show between the older and younger generations and which would later characterize the student protests of the late 1960s. While the older generation made weak excuses, the younger generation was eager to know more about Auschwitz, but refused to be implicated in collective responsibility (Wittmann 2005, pp.  261–263). Stöhr disrupts this notion of personal uninvolvement and brings history into the

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present. History matters not so much in and of itself, but as a precondition for present-­day action. Similar to Martin Stöhr, Jean Améry sends a message of warning against the play, since it may be misunderstood and misused: “A failed Shylock-­ drama can also promote anti-Semitic tendencies, which range from the philistines’ regulars’ table to the advanced graduate seminar and the commune.”40 Unlike Stöhr, he would not say that the play deliberately reproduces anti-Semitism, yet he believes that it may be misread and in this respect unintentionally points toward that dimension of aesthetic reception that underlies the controversy. Misreading the play implies the existence of a “correct” reading. Misunderstanding implies the importance of “reading paradigms” for a “correct” reception of aesthetic works of art. Aesthetic paradigms have to be seen as reading guidelines, which are developed in order to make misunderstandings less probable. And once established, they provide models to be adapted through a social learning process. Establishing a new aesthetic style goes hand in hand with the generation of paradigms of art/interpretation, through which artworks receive their respective and contextualized meaning. The meaning of works of art is to be understood as subject to the development of frameworks which give direction to the recipient’s attention. Aesthetic reception is a social process and hence, as I have outlined before, aesthetic meaning does not derive from the artwork, but from society’s development of “reading guidelines.” A statement by Fassbinder himself shows that he is fully aware of the existence of hidden aspects of anti-Semitism, quoting Robert Neumann in an interview: “Philo-Semites are anti-Semites who love Jews.”41 This quotation by Fassbinder in fact gives the whole issue a new spin–he is fully aware of the processes of Othering, where positive stereotypes are as prescient a category as negative stereotypes. Both create the figure of Jewishness as a social Other, who does not partake in the notion of a social “we.” “The Jew” is everything “we” are not and hence “the Jew” is introduced into a social relation that creates a sham symmetry, while the Other represents those aspects beyond the norm. As mentioned earlier, Zygmunt Bauman claims that the symmetric appearance merely conceals the factual asymmetry beneath the binary of Self and Other (Bauman 1991, p. 14). Fassbinder’s statement shows that he is aware of these structural foundations of anti-Semitism, which make the charges against his play all the

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more interesting. Fassbinder himself explicitly positions Garbage, the City and Death as a play that makes visible the hidden structures of anti-Semitism, and hence proposes a reading of the play that runs counter to the charges put to him by Stöhr, Fest, and Améry. Although Fassbinder and his opponents perceive the play differently, they share a mutual understanding of anti-Semitism as structurally based on prejudice, which presupposes a social foundation which nourishes prejudice. The origin of this paradox, I hope, will be resolved by the end of this chapter. Anti-Semitic prejudice, as it can be found in Garbage, the City and Death, is based on two characteristics: typification and ethnicizing. Stöhr, whose contribution is highly informative and representative for the diagnosis of latent anti-Semitism, accurately summarizes the aspects of typification: Fassbinder uses the G. Zwerenz’ novel ‘Die Erde ist unbewohnbar wie der Mond’ (En: The Earth is Uninhabitable, Like the Moon) …. If Zwerenz still depicted varied colors  – also colored clichés –, Fassbinder’s play has become a primitive decal. … The Rich Jew is insincerely portrayed, because he is not portrayed as a human being with a name and individuality. He becomes a type. His associated properties are derived from the arsenal of Christian (‘bloodsucker’), bourgeois (randy, fat), left and right hatred of Jews (corruption, capitalist reproach).42

Hellmuth Karasek, editor of Der Spiegel, foregrounds the second problem to be found in Garbage, the City and Death, ethnicizing, which is– similar to typification–a question of representation as well: Among Frankfurt’s speculators there are (dominant) Jews. True. But do we mention ethnic characteristics when we speak of the Steglitzer Kreisel,43 the apartment usurer Kaußen and the tax-fugitive brothers Sachs?44

Heinz Galinski, representative of the Jewish community, is paraphrased as expressing the same concern: Ordinarily, delinquents or immoral acts of a person living among us are not associated with his being Catholic or Protestant or whether he is of German or another nationality. Equally, an offender’s affiliation with the Jewish faith is of no significance for his deed.

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Fassbinder’s examination of real estate speculation would even have been meritorious, writes Galinski, had he not designated the figure of the real estate speculator as ‘The Rich Jew’ which is reminiscent of the practices of anti-Semitic demagogues.45

In a contribution in AJW he adds that in general it is not usual (because it would be off topic) to mention a criminal’s ethnic background.46 Ethnicizing underlines the continued exposed exclusion of Jewish people in Germany, the continued creation of sham symmetries. Both ethnicizing and typification are part of the practice of Othering, a practice that establishes naturalized hierarchies between social groups and organizes the world according to a binary schema. It is a practice that will only have effects if undertaken from a privileged and dominant position, but which simultaneously enforces this position of dominance. In relation to post-colonial Othering, which can be applied to the German—Jewish relationship as well, Leela Gandhi says that ethnic Othering, which includes exotism, confirms social power relations even in the absence of formalized power hierarchies. It posits the ethnicized identity as marginal and decentered in the face of “white” (which is the German identity in the case of German—Jewish relations) normality (Gandhi 1998, pp. 127–128). To posit a relation of Self and Other47 not only constitutes the Other, but also the Self. Bernhard Waldenfels suggests that identification emerges through the dissociation from an Other (Waldenfels 1997, p. 22), yet the Other is subjected to classification by the Self, which means she is subjected to the discursive organization of the dominant social group. This Otherness is to be distinguished from radical alterity, which is that which cannot be classified and is thus outside of the discursive organization of the social. Radical alterity, for the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, is the enigmatic appearance of the other, which is foreclosed to the self. The self will never gain full access to the other’s pure existence. However, the enigma of the other forces upon us an ethical responsibility which we cannot escape (Levinas 1983, pp.  209–235 chapter 8 “Die Spur des Anderen”). Only radical alterity can disturb the order of the social, because it exists in between the binary (discursive) organization of Self and Other (Jentsch 2005, pp. 11–38). When Galinski, Karasek, and Stöhr describe anti-Semitism as the reproduction of socially established types or as the ethnicizing of acts, they put on display the social act of Othering in Gandhi’s and Waldenfels’ sense.

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Othering is described as a social practice which emerges through a particular kind of representation. Representation surges forth as an act of social determination as opposed to the radical alterity of individual existence. They reject Fassbinder’s play, because according to their paradigm of interpretation, the figure of the Rich Jew is read as an individual who is brought into coincidence with the social stereotype, and it is from this coincidence that they can claim that Fassbinder behaves just like the demagogues of the Nazi propaganda. In the play, representation and existence coincide, which deprives the individual of its agency and free will. The discourse reinforces the element of the psyche which Castoriadis calls the monadic core, that element which pre-exists socialization and makes every person singular. Through socialization, the monadic core of the psyche is disrupted in its unity, wholeness, and mastery of the world. The primal scene of omnipotence becomes unrepresentable in the process of socialization, when the social institution reorganizes the psyche as differentiation and separation and according to its ensemblist and identitary logic. This monadic core is rendered unrepresentable, yet it remains present in the unconscious (not as the unconscious) as psychic processes and as the private world of the individual–as opposed to the public world of the social institution. It is this private “madness” of the psyche that continuously strives for unity and closure, which is capable of detecting analogies, where the social institutes disjunction. It is in this monadic core that creativity and flexibility has to be located–and as the private element of the psyche it is purely singular and individual (Castoriadis 1987, pp. 294–300, esp. p. 298). The discourse that rejects Fassbinder’s play starts from the premise that the social does not have admission to every part of the individual, that the Castoriadian “private worlds” co-exist with the public world and should in fact be given priority over the determining impact of the social institution. It is the coincidence of private and public world of Fassbinder’s Rich Jew that disturbs these critics and hence runs counter to the paradigm of meaning they adhere to. 7.3.3.2 The Primacy of Context In as much as the journalists deal with the impossibility of representing a historical stereotype, they invoke Adorno’s “prohibition of the image.” This discourse asks how representations of the Jew in fiction can take place. Regarding the stereotype in particular, they argue that after 1945

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this remains an indecent fictionalization, since the figure of the Rich Jew served as a central figure to the Nazi propaganda. The Holocaust as the historical context of Garbage, the City and Death is crucial, because its singularity overshadows all other moral and ethical concerns. For Castoriadis, society can only be thought of as the social-­ historical, because no society will ever be static and unchanging. The current state of a society is never more than a snapshot in time that is at that moment already changing and transforming, instituting itself. Yet, society has its means to cover its instituting tendency so as to enable the fiction of stability and continuity. In order to function, societies need ensidic logic as the logic of the institution that momentarily fixes and determines what is (Castoriadis 1987, pp.  167–272). For the discourse under consideration, however, the continuity (stability) perceived by the interpreters of Garbage, the City and Death between the Rich Jew and anti-Semitic thought patterns that go back at least to the Holocaust is cause for disturbance. Lothar Schmidt-Mühlisch, critic in Die Welt, acknowledges Fassbinder’s pursuit of the examination of clichés and normativity imposed on each individual through society. He even claims that with his artistic work, Fassbinder confronts his own thinking within stereotypical and normative models, his embeddedness in social discourses, and thereby problematizes it. Garbage, the City and Death is thus not intended to be anti-Semitic, yet: The cliché-descriptor, Fassbinder, gets involved with a cliché that had a deadly impact on millions of victims. … Only Fassbinder has, despite the consistency of his behavior, retreated offside. Such a Jew, as Fassbinder presents us with here, is a historical cliché. It was historically charged with meaning and is therefore unrepresentable without this historic dimension. Considering the millionfold suffering and dying as a result of the apocalyptic-neurotic impact of a cliché forbids getting involved in this cliché.48

Schmidt-Mühlisch acknowledges Fassbinder’s critical attempt to expose and uncover the cliché, yet the a-historical proposition of the cliché negates its historical efficacy. Schmidt-Mühlisch touches on the notion of the impossibility of stylized cultural production as a means for “overcoming the past.” His is not a radical proposition of the “prohibition of the image” as insinuated by Theodor Adorno when he claimed in 1951 that “[t]o write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the

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knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today” (Adorno 1983, p. 34). Schmidt-Mühlisch adjusts this motto insofar as he believes that representation is possible, but only within the very strict limitations of context. However, he retains a notion of the impossibility of representation of the Holocaust. Reworking the past precludes formal experimentation. The Adorno dictum is a most contested sentence. It may be read simultaneously as a prohibition of cultural production, as a reflection on the aporetic nature of cultural production after the Holocaust, and as a provocation (see Kiedaisch 1995, pp. 12–16; Röger 2007). The understanding of the Adorno dictum as a “prohibition of the image” mostly resulted from an abbreviated version of the sentence, yet for a long time this interpretation was canonical (Röger 2007). Adorno adjusted this statement throughout his life and partially withdrew from its implications. These amendments suggest the second meaning of the sentence, as the simultaneous impossibility of aestheticizing the Holocaust in art and the necessity of giving (cultural) expression to the suffering initiated by the Holocaust (Kiedaisch 1995, pp. 12–16). For Adorno in 1951, culture had failed in countering and preventing the Holocaust (Röger 2007). Cultural production had contributed to the establishment of racist Nazi society, and had in fact been an agent in the service of National Socialism. In this context, cultural production was considered a continuation of National Socialist propaganda, the depiction of a cliché its reproduction. If we think of the Nazi propaganda film Jud Süß, for instance, the difficulty in perceiving a difference between reproduction and critical quotation becomes obvious. In Jud Süß, the concrete figure is the cliché and vice versa. Individual and representation coincide, form and content are indistinguishable (Wildmann 2015). From this perspective, the prohibition of the image is a necessary consequence of the propagandistic anti-­ Semitic representation of Jews. Adorno’s statement must be seen against the background of this history. Yet, until the end of the 1980s, when Günter Grass reconsidered and hence revived the debate about the meaning of the sentence, it was taken as influential support for the “prohibition of the image,” especially with regard to the depiction of the Holocaust (Röger 2007). Schmidt-Mühlisch’s plea against the aesthetic representation of Jews is indebted to Adorno’s dictum, although he principally acknowledges Fassbinder’s critical engagement with the act of stereotyping. The echo of Nazi cultural production is more acute than Fassbinder’s innovative approach to the figure of the Rich Jew.

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Wilfried Wiegand from FAZ speaks explicitly in defense of the use of taboo and hence posits the “prohibition of the image” as an act of humanity. The “prohibition of the image” goes hand in hand with the belief in an ethical responsibility of the arts, in which the artwork may only disrupt the taboo if the representations emancipate the victim community: It is [the artist’s, MK] right [to break taboos; MK], but occasionally it conflicts with society’s right to omit some themes. Surely, taboos may be born of cowardice and hypocrisy, but in many cases there is good reason for the silence: because the scab of painful experiences still clings to these themes. … The roots of this speechlessness are not to be sought in the realm of taste, since there is no accounting for taste as is well known. Instead, in the case of these essential taboos, which belong to the substance of any human society, they are deeds of humaneness, of discretion, and of protecting the victims and those affected that still live among us. In their name, society can and has to demand that, if these themes may be spoken about at all, it has to happen in a way that helps the persons concerned, or in a way at least that does not harm them. Specifically, this means that the more delicate an artist’s theme is, the bigger the requirements attached to his art.49

And similarly, Jean Améry writes: “[Fassbinder] would have had to recognize that you don’t play with a fire that emits lethal gas.”50 Naturally, the prohibition of the image calls for control mechanisms and censorship. In this sense, Joachim Fest is at the forefront of demands for institutional control when he asks the publisher directly how this play could be published in the first place.51 Fest’s colleague from FAZ, Wilfried Wiegand, believes that it is a legitimate control mechanism to inhibit the production of this kind of art. In a democracy, institutions can be made to “act” according to the values a democracy represents, with the implication that responsibility is not only in the hands of the law, but is executed by the collective.52 Friedrich Uttitz even fears that a judicial sentence against the play would be counterproductive as it would heroize the artist, which would not be a satisfying solution. Instead, a public rejection of the play would be more expedient. Within a democracy, the public sphere is considered the appropriate platform to set the limits within which arts are deemed appropriate.53 Hans Lamm, the president of the Jewish Community in Munich, even rejects the stopping of the play’s distribution by Suhrkamp, which he believes is an act of censorship in an anticipatory kind of obedience. It inhibits potential readers from having access to the book and thus being able to draw independent conclusions. Civil society, Lamm claims, has other means to resist artistic offenses.54

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The controls these critics call for are thus the control mechanisms of social society. The citizen as the state sovereign is not only responsible for the enforcement of existing law, she is also responsible for the continuous defense or recreation of society’s values on which codified law is based. We may here speak of the internalization of democratic principles by the participants in the discourse, as opposed to the controversy about Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy, in which the defendants of the church reflexively appealed to the law to prohibit the performance of the play. The Spiegel affair in 1962/1963 is generally marked as the key event of this democratizing development of the media, in the sense that it constituted a new self-understanding of the profession and the media, especially among the younger generation of journalists. It is the point of culmination of diverse liberalizing developments of post-war West German society through which society became aware of the advent of a new democratic era (Bösch 2007, pp. 66–67). The stopping of the play’s distribution, initiated by the publishing house Suhrkamp in March 1976, shows the authority of mediatized civil society and the transformation of the public sphere symbolized by the Spiegel affair. The different reactions of the critics with regard to censorship in 1963 (The Deputy) and 1976 (Garbage, the City and Death) show the changes West German society has undergone on its path toward the institutionalization of democracy. 7.3.4  Résumé Garbage, the City and Death provokes, because it disrupts the hegemonic paradigms of social realism and of the prohibition of anti-Semitic significations. Yet, it lacks a language, a reading guideline, with which subjects can identify. In the public dispute in 1976, Garbage, the City and Death encounters only a configuration of two already established paradigms of art/interpretation. On the one hand, there is the realist paradigm, which is, however, incapable of creating a convincing narrative of the play as a non-anti-Semitic work of art. Instead, the responses from the Left to Joachim Fest’s allegations that the play is anti-Semitic revolve around spurious polemics that left politics can never be anti-Semitic and opinions that exclude Fassbinder from a left consensus. A realist interpretation of the play in the tradition of documentary theater, for instance, effectively fails in providing a narrative of social critique. In the left discourse, however, the differentiation of left identity into an old (Marxist) and new Left

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(which gathers under the umbrella of the new social movements) that takes place from about the mid-1970s emerges clearly. In 1976, this differentiation is only rudimentarily visible, a destabilizing movement of the old Left, while the new Left has not yet taken concrete shape. The old Left is represented by the social realist paradigm of interpretation, which–as a symptom of the loss of influence of the old Marxian Left–lacks a meaning-­ creating power with respect to Fassbinder’s play. On the other hand, in the paradigm of the “prohibition of the image,” the realist paradigm meets ethical considerations regarding the Holocaust and aesthetic representation. The Adorno dictum prominently established in 1951 and controversially discussed since then takes effect here. Perceived as an intrinsically motivated individual, the Rich Jew is a reproduction of the Nazi propaganda figure “Jud Süß.” The “prohibition of the image” transforms the relation of aesthetic representation and anti-Semitism into a meaningful narrative, which will later, in the 1985 controversy, provide the argumentative framework for the development of Jewish political identity. The third paradigm discussed here disrupts the configuration of the realist paradigm and that of the “prohibition of the image.” It is, at first, a search for a positive framework in which to understand the play, a search for a new path to Fassbinder’s aesthetics. This approach is reminiscent of poststructuralist thought. From this perspective, the Rich Jew appears as a reflection of social discourse, gaining shape only in and through discourse. The subject is here conceptualized as coming into being through the pressure of language and the social. With Lash, I have spoken of it as a mode of dedifferentiation, which he characterizes as the postmodern. While post-structuralism has drawn attention to the constitutive power of representation for social reality, in 1976 (post-)structuralism was not yet widely received in West Germany beyond the restricted sphere of some left circles (Neumeister 2000, pp.  49–145). It is for this reason that Wiegand, Améry, and Schmidt-Mühlisch prioritize the Rich Jew’s doubling nature in the aesthetics of social realism above its function as a critical quotation. The quotation, in its proximity to social reality, should be understood in Lash’s sense as a supplement to social reality and hence as a postmodern aesthetics. Although structural anti-Semitism gains importance in the discourse, as can be seen by discussions of the social impact of group representation in the paradigm of the “prohibition of the image,” the postmodern form language of Garbage, the City and Death cannot yet

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assert itself as a valid means of representation. Suhrkamp’s discontinuation of the text’s distribution, resulting purely from public pressure, is a symptom of the postmodern paradigm’s incapacity to be meaningful to a substantial base of individuals. As we will see, this changes within a decade, when the play is not only fiercely opposed by the Jewish community in Frankfurt, but when a political identity loosely associated with the party the Greens and the successors of the Sponti-movement occupy the postmodern paradigm so as to conceptualize a left identity that is critical of structural anti-Semitism.

7.4   1984: Interlude The 1984 controversy can be considered a small interlude, or a prelude, to the large debate that was to follow in the year 1985. Though on a timeline located in close proximity to the large 1985 controversy, the 1984 debate can be thought of as bridging both discursive events. In comparison, the data corpus/volume is rather small, with only eleven articles included in the analysis. But a few unique characteristics emerge that distinguish this controversy from the controversy of eight years earlier. The issue of the condition of the political Left is absent from the more recent debate, as well as the question of the definition of anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitic character of the play, although not unanimously accepted, remains an undisputed probability. This shows a similarity to the controversy to ensue in 1985. The theme of social control mechanisms continues to be debated, although its importance appears diminished in the 1984 data record. I will forgo a discussion of the call for control mechanisms as the arguments are a repetition of those arguments voiced in the 1976 controversy. A new dimension raises the question of the means by which society can engender the process of coming to terms with the past. Most important for my concern is, however, the fragile turn toward the question of why the play fails as a fiction. 7.4.1  Coming to Terms with the Past Responsibility with respect to the past is a generally acknowledged credo of the 1984 debate, yet the question of how this is to be done is subject to debate. The year 1984 is witness to the emerging notion of the necessity to confront the play in order to start a social process that is reminiscent of

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Freud’s psychoanalytic concept of working-through (durcharbeiten, Freud 1946) so as to eventually overcome the existence of anti-Semitism. The change in attitude toward dealing with the past can be traced back to the screening of the TV mini-series Holocaust in 1979 on German television. The US-American production resulted in a “media event,” as claimed by Jürgen Wilke. Half of the German adult population saw at least parts of the series and a third saw all four parts (Wilke 2005, p. 14): Widespread consensus holds it that only the American TV series ‘Holocaust’, which was broadcast in January 1979, succeeded in evoking a feeling of general ‘dismay’. Until then, the Germans had frequently been blamed for inclining towards ‘silencing’, even for an ‘inability to mourn’. Admittedly, this blaming frequently overlooked that journalistic mass media, literature, and film had previously repeatedly addressed Nazi history. But it was only now that the public reactions to the series seemed to indicate a readiness to face up to German guilt for the extermination of the European Jews. In any case, no other event has inscribed itself to such an extent into the ‘collective memory’ of the post-war process of accounting for the past like this TV-series. (Wilke 2005, p. 9)

The 1984 debate about Garbage, the City and Death is witness to this transformed approach to history and the past. While the notion of “respecting Jewish sentiments through maintaining silence” prevailed in the 1976 debate, in 1984 a discourse of the past asserts itself that propounds the belief in the non-Jewish German’s need to face the deeds of the past. It is in this sense that we have to understand Peter Iden’s plea in FR, when he writes: “There is no getting around the play for Frankfurt: It is too much concerned with the city’s history and its present, too much concerned with all of us (and therefore also with the Jews), that it cannot be simply pushed away. … We have to take it [the performance, MK] on.”55 Performing the play means facing historical responsibility and thus turns around the argument which is put forward by the opposite side to plead against the play’s performance. From this perspective, historical responsibility now means facing and confronting the difficult issues of the past. Iden, however, refrains from a judgment of the play’s content, but argues in favor of the freedom of artistic expression: “The pressure that has now been applied constrains the freedom of the arts and of speech. This ought to be felt also in the Jewish Community, which is not very

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confident in this respect. A right of veto against artistic plans may not be granted to any social group, not even to the Jews.”56 As opposed to 1976, the maintenance of the taboo now appears as a means to evade responsibility, because the concealment of anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitic past in fact means the continuation of anti-Semitic structures. This  argument implies a  reading of Garbage, the City and Death which attributes an enlightening effect to the play. Similarly, Oliver Tolmein in taz and Rolf Michaelis in Die Zeit voice charges of hypocrisy with regard to the calls for censorship. The former criticizes the paradox that Ernst Jünger was given the Goethe award57 while Fassbinder’s play remains barred from the public despite Fassbinder’s vehement denial of an anti-Semitic motivation.58 And Michaelis claims that: Our national history has again caught up with us. … After the crimes committed by Germans on their Jewish fellow citizens, that which must not be, cannot be. If for twelve years the equation: Jew = bad was valid, many Germans now, driven by either bad conscience or a noble mind, do the opposite equation: Jew = good. In both cases, life and the Jews are distorted. Is the philo-Semitism that is blind to reality better than anti-­ Semitism? … Displacements of this kind can only have bad consequences. Fassbinder’s play should be put to the test as a stage play for once, even if only to destroy the legend which has formed over this last of Fassbinder’s plays that has not been performed yet. It is called ‘Garbage, the City and Death’. The garbage of our national history’s displacement covers the land, preventing enlightenment.59

We can sense the struggle to find words for an understanding of the play that moves beyond the paradigm of the “prohibition of the image,” although Michaelis cannot escape the danger of anti-Semitic ethnicizing as when he draws on realism’s argument that in Frankfurt’s Westend there were indeed Jewish real estate agents. It escapes his attention that the anti-­ Semitic aspect of a realistic argument is particularly mentioning the Jewish background of the criminal, which is–as Galinski and Stöhr have pointed out in 1976 already–in fact irrelevant to the criminal act. Yet, this quotation also shows the difficulty the proponents of the play face in the mid-1980s of finding a path that formulates a non-anti-Semitic attitude which overcomes the embarrassed silence that has surrounded the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in Germany since World War II.  It is the

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search for a language that is capable of critically dealing with anti-­Semitism. In the presence of the paradigm of the “prohibition of the image,” any representation of the Rich Jew will automatically lead to charges of anti-­ Semitism. Yet, the play’s supporters’ failure to fully avoid the pitfalls of anti-Semitic language (as in the above case of Michaelis) makes the (Jewish) critique of the emerging paradigm of interpretation all the more legitimate. The emerging paradigm of representation builds its argument upon the notion of the relentless exposure of the causes of the Holocaust as a means to overcome the past. Overcoming the past means creating a break and discontinuity between the social eidos of the present and that of the past. It means disrupting the invisible flow of the social-historical and making transformation visible. The term “revelation” goes hand in hand with enlightenment, visibility a counter-strategy to the culture of suppression. One of Adorno’s reasons to proclaim the “prohibition of the image” might have been a self-protective measure in the temporal proximity of World War II. As the temporal distance to the Holocaust grew, he dissociated from the statement, which shows the increasing inadequacy of the paradigm with respect to a critical approach to history. If we think of contributions such as that of Joachim Fest in 1976, for instance, it is reasonable to suggest that for the non-Jewish population the paradigm of the “prohibition of the image” had turned into a comfortable means of evading the uncomfortable question of historical continuity, a comfortable means of silently closing that chapter of West German identity. As hinted at previously, the situation differs for the Jewish participants in the discourse, which is a topic that will become crucial in the controversy of 1985. The proponents of the new postmodern paradigm of art/ interpretation face the problem of the dual history of the paradigm of the “prohibition of the image,” its purpose to protect Jews by avoiding representation. This may be summarized as a legitimate disturbance in the face of the breakdown of culture during the Holocaust in theory, and the avoidance of facing history in practice. While the play’s supporters perceive themselves as sharing the motivations of the Jewish side, their understanding of the paradigm of the “prohibition of the image” is shaped by figures such as Joachim Fest, whose motivations in this respect are highly suspect and tend toward evading the confrontation with historical guilt. It is this paradigm of meaning that Fassbinder’s supporters wish to overcome, while they fail to see the dual meaning of the paradigm of the

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“prohibition of the image” and hence overlook the protective meaning it has for the Jewish participants in the discourse. The transformed awareness of the past, which gains acceptance presumably since the screening of Holocaust, forms the prerequisite for the development of a social matrix in which the postmodern paradigm can become meaningful. The discourse about confronting history in the 1984 interlude is the attempt to make Garbage, the City and Death productive for the discourse, while simultaneously it has to be seen as an application of the discourse to a current topic. The strength with which the postmodern paradigm was defended in the 1985 controversy is only explicable in the context of the spread of the new approach to history. The discourse of history to be confronted, in fact, provides the framework through which the postmodern paradigm of art/interpretation can be charged with an ideological aim, through which it can be politicized. If we recall the early formulations of the postmodern paradigm in the 1976 debate, it was devoid of a political direction. The historical discourse changes this, as we will see in the large Fassbinder controversy of 1985. 7.4.2  The Failure of Representation The play’s opponents build on a paradigm which brings into perspective the difference that exists between representation and what is represented, the immanent gap between the sign and its referent. Representation and referent become visible as different, yet locked in a dynamic of mutual dependency, which effectively attributes responsibility to the act of representation. Michael Raab (Vorwärts) argues that Fassbinder fails to represent fascism because he remains caught in the pattern of thought of abstracting from reality, instead of taking individual fates into account. Quoting the stage director George Tabori, he continues: George Tabori deplores ‘this whole sado-masochistic charade which poisons our relations, the official piety that veils all our sorrow and hatred as well as our love.’ The man of the theater demands that we transgress our taboos and clichés and encourages the ability to consider ‘one another as humans and not as abstractions’. Only when we dispose of plays that comply with these requirements will the hype about works such as Garbage, the City and Death sort itself out.60

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The role of art is to look beyond the abstractions into which taboos and clichés squeeze the individual. The human being is opposed to its abstracted representation. Raab and Tabori demand the perception of the other as a subject opposed to the object that it is in the case of the abstracted representation. When Raab takes an individualized representation of subjects in the arts as the means of empowerment, he starts his social analysis from the individual’s interaction with the social. It is this definition of the relation of individual and society that differentiates the play’s opponents from its supporters, as will become clear in the Fassbinder controversy of 1985. At the risk of oversimplifying this argument and for the sake of clarity, this conception of the individual is based on the enlightened (and revolutionary) subject that is fully available to itself. It is the subject conception of the old Left which believes in rational human agency as the means of human development toward a “good” society. It implies the capacity of agents to rationalize emotions and social restraints and hence to overcome the irrational aspects of human existence (Neumeister 2000, p. 54). Clinging to the notion of a revolutionary subject appears crucial from the perspective of the subaltern, as we might provisionally classify the Jewish perspective (and the perspective of those in solidarity with Jewish interests). The idea of subalternity, although it derives from Antonio Gramsci, is here understood in the non-essentialist sense of Gayatri Spivak and as defined by its difference from hegemony. The subaltern groups lack (full) access to the means of their representation and hence remain dependent on the hegemonic structures and languages of representation, which they may appropriate, but not escape (Ashcroft et  al. 1998, s.v. “subaltern,” pp. 215–219).61 If we perceive the development of a Jewish perspective in the debate as the development of a subaltern perspective as a means of resistance against the hegemonic representation of Jews as “Others,” the notion of a rational identitary subject is the counter-vision to the factual impotence in the face of and subjection to hegemonic representation. Individuality is the counter-­discourse to the uniformity proposed by stereotyping. This is the essence of Friedrich Uttitz’s remarks in AJW: “[I]s it acceptable that in a country, where only a few decades ago millions of Jews were systematically murdered because they personified all evil in the world, the nameless ‘Rich Jew’ can serve as a symbol for evil again? The only nameless figure among countless names.”62

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Uttitz’s colleague Boike Jacobs speaks of Fassbinder’s Jew as a “trashy fictional character”: “[i]t is a myth of a rich, perverted, vengeful wandering Jew.”63 When Jacobs speaks of the Rich Jew as a social myth and an artificial character, he in fact emphasizes stereotyping as an act of fictionalizing. He denies the “natural” character of the stereotype and recreates the stereotype as a fictional–ergo, wrong–representation. The appearance of unity inherent to the sign and its referent collapses and makes representation visible as an act dependent on the beholder. Jacobs explicitly raises the question of representation: “‘May the Jew be evil?’ asked the ‘Stuttgarter Zeitung’ in a comment on Frankfurt’s theater dispute. Of course, he may – who in the past years would have shied from publicly criticizing Jews?”64 While the rhetorical question posed by the Stuttgarter Zeitung seems to refer to the unity of sign and referent, it is clear by Jacobs’ reply-question that he is in fact concerned with the question of the critique of Jews as a representation. In these comments we can witness the preoccupation with questions of (social) identity. Identity is caught between heteronomy and autonomy, between the (repressive) representations of the dominant social groups and the struggle to take possession of representation for the sake of an autonomous definition of Self. In as much as identity branches out into representation and unrepresentable singularity, the possession of the means of representation emerges as the path toward emancipation. In these terms, Fassbinder’s Garbage, the City and Death fails, because it does not provide an emancipatory vision for Jewish identity. This failure results from the incapacity to represent the Jewish emancipatory project. Representation of Self and Other turns into the mechanism that distinguishes between hegemony and subalternity (in Spivak’s sense). Aesthetic representation here becomes the crucial element of dis-identification, and hence demonstrates the important relation between the angle from which reception takes place as a dimension of aesthetic representation and identity formation. 7.4.3   Résumé The debate of 1984 already exhibits the larger trends that will become prominent during the Fassbinder controversy of 1985. Although the play’s supporters do not yet dispose of a convincing interpretation of the play, their defense of the play displays the search for a critical German

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identity and is hence concerned primarily with the process of coming to terms with the past from a non-Jewish German perspective. Confronting the past is redefined as relentlessly uncovering what is shameful, and therefore includes a dimension of pain. Garbage, the City and Death is perceived as representing this experience of ruthless self-exposure, and hence provides a point of origin for a self-critical German identity. The Jewish opposition to the play, in contrast, explicitly negates the correspondence between experience and representation and hence the coming together of aesthetic paradigm and the perception of the world. Since the representation of Jewish identity in Garbage, the City and Death forecloses the idea of self-determination via self-representation, the play cannot serve as representing an identity that envisages an emancipated existence. Support or rejection of the play becomes the nexus of identification, and hence the respective paradigm of interpretation is constitutive of identitary frameworks. As much as the play’s aesthetic representation turns into a moment of dis-identification for the Jewish community, it proposes a critical German identity. The play’s aesthetic exposure of the historical stereotype represents non-Jewish Germans’  search for a confrontation with guilt, shame, and the brutalized self. In his essay “The Paradoxes of Political Art,” Jacques Rancière writes about the politics of art: It is not a term that designates the imaginary as opposed to the real; it involves the re-framing of the ‘real’, or the framing of a dissensus. Fiction is a way of changing existing modes of sensory presentations and forms of enunciation; of varying frames, scales and rhythms; and of building new relationships between reality and appearance, the individual and the collective. This intertwining frames a new fabric of common experience, a new scenery of the visible and a new dramaturgy of the intelligible. It creates new modes of individuality and new connections between those modes, new forms of perception of the given and new plots of temporality. (Rancière 2010, p. 141)

The results of this subchapter, however, suggest that the creation of a dissensus between modes of representation, or between representation and perception, gives rise to social identification. In as much as individuals feel represented by the paradigms of aesthetic (re)presentation, the paradigms become markers of social distinction.

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Paradigms of art/interpretation are hence more than an addendum to social existence, constituting identity, in that they not only give expression to a particular shared world experience, but are representative of this world experience. They formulate the respective identity’s conceptualization of the relation of representation and social which gives orientation to the paradigm of meaning at a very fundamental level. The particular conceptualization of the relation between representation and social reality provides the lens through which a particular identity perceives its world. It provides the lens which determines what is visible and what is sayable from within a specific identity. For the opponents of the play, the depiction of the stereotype reproduces the violence of the stereotype. For the play’s supporters, meanwhile, the depiction of the stereotype means confronting the historical impact of the stereotype. We can see the shift in perspective from the one paradigm to the other, which is a shift from the dis/unity of sign and reference toward the scrutiny of the sign as an agent independent of the reference. Underlying this paradigmatic shift is, as will be shown, the conceptualization of fiction as a (metaphoric) representation (realistic paradigm/ paradigm of the “prohibition of the image”) or as a quotation (postmodern paradigm). The paradigm of representation and that of quotation stand for the respective relation of fiction to social reality. They stand for the conceptualization of the relation of representation and meaning. While the former conceives the relation as a reference, the latter relation conceives the “real” as consisting of discourses, which may be quoted by fiction.65

7.5   1985: The Fassbinder Controversy In 1985, finally, the series of events took place that came to be known as the actual Fassbinder controversy. It propels a social dynamics from which a new political subjectivity enters the scene of West German politics. For the first time in post-World War II Germany, Jews gather under the umbrella of protest and formulate political demands: the removal of Fassbinder’s Garbage, the City and Death from the playbill of the Schauspiel Frankfurt because of its anti-Semitic character. The emergence of Zionism at the end of the nineteenth century can be considered a Jewish political identity, yet this identity was conceptualized as a Jewish nationality (Brumlik 2007, pp. 45–70), while the political subjectivity that develops

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during the Fassbinder controversy is explicitly delineated as a Jewish identity of German nationality. The apparent triviality of the event markedly contrasts with such a broad term as “the constitution of a political subjectivity,” yet it highlights and emphasizes the role played by aesthetic fiction for the constitution of social and political identities. Large parts of the debate revolve around the issue of revisionist “normalization” on the one hand and the attempt to normalize German— Jewish relations without abandoning the notion of the singularity of the Holocaust, on the other. In the introduction to Bitburg and Beyond. Encounters in American, German and Jewish History, Ilya Levkov highlights two issues that are relevant for the German context during the Bitburg affair. First, it was an act that resulted from a “clash between conventional politics [the need for Reagan to be on good terms with Kohl due to foreign affairs, MK] and a moral issue [the commemoration of World War II with Nazi-symbolism, MK]” and second, the “clash between two national memories  – that of the Jews and that of the Germans” (Levkov 1987, p. 25). This clash of national memories recurs during the Fassbinder controversy and is crucial for an understanding of it. The protests against the play are, in the final instance, protests against the dominance of the non-Jewish German narrative of national memory. As will be shown, the Jewish struggle must be conceptualized as the inscription of a political Jewish identity onto the body of the (West) German national narrative. 7.5.1  In Support of Garbage, the City and Death The play’s supporters are primarily to be found among the staff of the theater and on the left side of the political spectrum–the Greens in particular, but also the members of the Sponti-movement, left-alternative activists who stood in the tradition of the protests of 1968.66 In the press, positive contributions were published primarily by FR and Die Zeit as well as in Vorwärts, which nevertheless attempted to provide a differentiated account of the debate by publishing critical voices as well. The spectrum here ranged from outright anti-Semitic contributions67 to self-critical contributions by Gerhard Zwerenz,68 who had changed his opinion and now claimed that the play could only be performed with the consent of the Jewish community, not against it.69 This diversity, with a slight turn toward a positive reaction vis-á-vis the performance of the play, does not coincide

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with the position of the Social Democrats on the Frankfurt City Council, who voted against the play’s performance. Interestingly, the left-liberal daily SZ is not among the list of the play’s supporters. 7.5.1.1 The Role of Post-Structuralism In 1985 we can observe the emergence of an enhanced version of the postmodern paradigm of interpretation. The pattern foregrounds the power of social structures over and above individual agency. In fact, the individual is lost in the network of social discourses that overlap and intersect. The social appears as an impenetrable network of discourses that leaves no room for the “madness of the psyche” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 336). The paradigm develops significant parallels to post-structuralist philosophy and underscores post-structuralism as the philosophical foundation of postmodernism. The programme to the play authored by the Schauspiel Frankfurt (reprinted in FR) reads: Looking behind the sexually provoking vocabulary and the brutality with which Fassbinder likes to stuff his plays and films, we see a panorama of figures that are linked to each other through history, contemporaneity, sympathies, antipathies and prejudices. … In this panorama, Fassbinder provides the image of a society, in which interests, aggressions, the old roles and rules of the game, the obtuseness and the stupidity prevent the necessary humanizing. The play is permeated by a single lament: the longing for love, which remains unfulfilled. … Fassbinder puts us face to face with an image of the city, its swamp, its hardships, the risings and disappointments, the loss of identity, the web of guilt and thirst for revenge, of transformations and of frontier crossings, of life’s harshness and the desire for death…. He was keen to make us think, to make us determine our relation with a figure on stage such as the ‘Rich Jew’ and recognize ourselves in it.70

The impossibility of love and humanity can be read as the impossibility of individuality in the face of the determining influence of the social, which is circumscribed by interests, social roles, and rules of the (social) game. Furthermore, this interpretation redirects attention from the play’s figures as intrinsically motivated, toward the audience and her relation with the figures of the play. The audience is not meant to accompany the figures on stage in their development, but is re-conceptualized as having a relationship to the fictional figures and hence required to reconsider their relationship with social stereotypes that are embodied by the figures on stage.

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The political scientist Caroline Williams identifies the “question of the subject” as the unifying element of post-structuralist philosophy. For post-­ structuralism, she claims, the subject is dislocated; it lacks a determinate being and becomes a subject only through the mechanism of society’s invocation via modes of identification and subjectification. It is hence intrinsically dependent on social discourses that subject the subject to its rule, but simultaneously enable the process of subjectification (Williams 2002, esp. pp. 34–35). In this sense, the subject depends upon social discourses and can only exist as a subject in a web of relations with other subjects and subject positions. The interpretation proposed by the Schauspiel Frankfurt encourages a view of the figure of the Rich Jew as existing purely through the discourse’s and the audience’s projections, and hence suggests a reappraisal of the notion of the subject as dislocated. It exposes the subject as a masquerade, a double meaning of subjectivity as Peter von Becker notes in theater heute: The ‘Rich Jew’ as well appears masked as a type – but at the same time … discernible as a stereotype. He is a figure of projection for many prejudices: for instance, for the superstition that Jews were specifically potent, greedy in business, or deceitful. Fassbinder shows the prejudice, exposes it, with sympathies however for the figure’s imputed weaknesses and deficiencies and which therefore appears more human, more seductive, more ambiguous.71

The proximity of this position to post-structural philosophy is obvious, and indeed, in the mid-1980s the public reception of post-structuralist philosophy was at its height in West Germany, initiated by Jürgen Habermas’ critical reflections on contemporary French philosophy (Neumeister 2000, pp. 147–152, esp. p. 151). In contrast to the play’s opponents’ “realist” paradigm of interpretation, the figure of the Rich Jew appears empty of an intrinsic motivation. Representation does not refer to a previously constituted identity, but identity is constituted by the others’ discourses. Subjectivity is re-conceptualized as devoid of full identity with the self and imbued with an ambivalence of subjection and agency: “Subjection signifies at one and the same time, the mechanism of becoming subordinated to power and the process of becoming a subject” (Williams 2002, p. 35). Subjectification simultaneously limits the agency of the subject as much as it provides the subject with a framework within which agency is possible at all. Post-structuralism dismisses the idea of a subject folded in upon itself, a subject in which knowledge originates.

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Instead, the subject is crisscrossed by social discourses, interpellated by “subject positions,” which are discursively constituted “conditions of possibility” (Laclau and Mouffe (1985) 2001, p. 115). Knowledge, power, and agency do not derive from the subject, but from subject positions which are adopted and occupied by the subjects, through which they come into being as subjects within a social structure. Yet, the dislocation of the subject vis-à-vis itself precludes the possibility of the subject ever coming to itself, which is the reason for the incessant contingency of the subject. In the 1970s, the post-structuralist conception of the subject attracted the criticism of critical theory and the old Left on charges of being reactionary, since the notion of critical action was strongly tied to a revolutionary subject, which was capable of critical and rational distance toward its conditions of possibility. The authority given to social discourses by post-structuralism appeared to rob the subject of its critical capacity to transcend the prevalent social structures (Neumeister 2000, pp. 49–145). The supporters of Garbage, the City and Death, however, although they foreground the inescapable imprint of the social discourse on the subject, re-conceptualize this understanding of the subject as a critical discourse. The “post-structuralist subjectivity,” though it appears determined by the social discourse, gives rise to the discourse’s critical assessment and the attempt to subject it to transformation. 7.5.1.2 The Non-Jewish Addressee Despite the critical impetus, however, supporters of the play fall into their own trap. In as much as they wish to overcome the heteronomous constitution of Jewish identity, they more or less neglect the particularity of the Jewish perspective. Instead, the notion of dialogue is invoked as a counter-­ strategy to the concealment of German guilt by German conservatism. In fact, the dual meaning of the “prohibition of the image”–for the Jews, on the one hand, and the conservative Germans, on the other–becomes a problem for the argument here, since it leaves room for the neglect of Jewish interests. Günther Rühle, the director of the Schauspiel Frankfurt, acts as an example of the problems faced by the postmodern paradigm in its rebellious impetus against the paradigm of the “prohibition of the image.” In a statement published in FR he claims: This play designates, among other things, the tabooed and functionalized relation between non-Jews and Jews and the concealed anti-Semitism in our

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country. Not to stage it would have meant to renounce an undoubtedly provocative impulse for dialogue. The numerous conversations we have had with this city’s Jewish and non-Jewish citizens throughout the last weeks encourage us. The desire for a dialogue about a more open relation with each other is larger than the anxieties.72

Rühle clearly mentions both possible addresses when he says that the play deals with the relation between Jews and non-Jews and with the hidden structures of anti-Semitism. But he reduces the required dialogue to one between Jews and non-Jews, although the provocative dialogue would be one among the non-Jewish population, since the hidden structures of antiSemitism are of non-Jewish making and require a critical self-­assessment. To claim that it is a dialogue between Jews and non-Jews means addressing the wrong addressee. Similarly, in the program of the attempted performance, the theater team argues from a double perspective: This is the conflict that has been sparked by Fassbinder’s play and that is intensified by those interests that wish to consign everything to oblivion and seclusion. The multiple requests not to stage the play are grounded in the hope that forgetting and waving aside means progressing, as well as in the worry the politics of reconciliation would be partially or altogether endangered.73

While the first counter-argument is directed against those who prefer to “forget” the past, the second picks up on Jewish worries with regard to the play and discards them. The defense of the play is incapable of distinguishing between both counter-arguments and the interests behind them, which leads to the establishment of a Jewish/non-Jewish antagonism and fails to give expression to the antagonism among the non-Jews. When the play’s dramaturg Dietrich Hilsdorf admits, “the play is, first of all, a play for a non-Jewish audience,”74 he consciously disregards the Jewish fears and anxieties and excludes Jews from the social consensus anew. Castoriadis says of the name a collectivity gives to itself: “[The signifier, MK] designates the collectivity in question, but it does not designate it as pure extension; it designates it at the same time as intension, as something, a quality or a property” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 148). The imaginary that lurks behind the name and connotes (instead of only denoting) the collectivity carries the identity of the collectivity in question, the particular

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way it constitutes its world and orders its symbolic setup. When the participants in the discourse speak of a Jewish and non-Jewish, or Jewish and German, “us” and “them” they do not refer to the religious dimension of the names, but to the history of racism and extinction that made of Germans killers and of Jews the victims of genocide. Hilsdorf not only refers to this division, but perpetuates it. He explicitly excludes Jews from the work on signification. The meaning he attempts to create through the performance of the play Garbage, the City and Death is a meaning for nonJews only. It is the paradox inherent in the discourse that society is asked to confront itself with regard to its structures of Othering, while simultaneously this excludes the social Other from the reflexive process and hence from the constitution of an inclusive society. At first glance it appears impossible to escape the aporia that the critical impetus of self-criticism addresses only the non-Jews/Germans, while it simultaneously again excludes Jews from the emerging collective significations. If we define this discourse as participating in society’s definition of “its ‘identity’, its articulation, the world, its relations to the world and to the objects it contains, its needs and its desires” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 147), it is a definition that reconsiders society’s needs purely through the eyes of non-Jews. The postmodern paradigm hence turns into a paradigm that– although it destabilizes existing significations, such as the silence over what concerns the Holocaust–establishes itself as a paradigm of a non-­ Jewish perspective. When Wolfgang Michal in Vorwärts and Theo Sommer in Die Zeit speak of Fassbinder’s search for healing75 and a “heilsame Zumutung”76–a curative imposition–respectively, they articulate a non-­ Jewish need. This fails to include and give expression to the Jewish experience and perspective. This is the reason for the Jewish critique of the play, which stands for a German experience, (consciously) excluding Jewish needs and interests. The Jewish critique of the play targets this inner German dialogue about “normalization” at the exclusion of their perspective, which feels like a repetition of the situation prior to the Holocaust (I will come back to this notion of repetition further on in this chapter). The paradigm of interpretation that critically assesses the silence that surrounds the Holocaust should be understood as a counter-project to Helmut Kohl’s “mental and moral change” (geistig moralischer Wende), which had recently materialized in the visit to Bitburg on the occasion of the 40th

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anniversary of the German unconditional surrender at the end of World War II. Kohl’s notion of “normalization” has to be counted as an attempt to solve the dilemma with which conservatives and the political Right were confronted after World War II. As a member of the Western alliance, it was impossible for them to refer positively to fascist history, yet as conservatives they strove to construct a specific national history of which they could be proud. This is why they attempted to restage the anti-communist coalition during the Cold War as more important than the anti-fascist union during World War II so as to diminish its importance in the national narrative. But simultaneously, this meant relativizing the Holocaust (Baldwin 1990, pp. 27–28). With regard to the Historikerstreit (the historians’ quarrel in 1986), Peter Baldwin writes about the notion of relativizing normalization: More importantly, the Historikerstreit was but one element in a broader political dispute over questions of national identity and the role of the Nazi past in the democratic present. An important aspect of the wider context of the Historikerstreit was Chancellor Kohl’s attempt to draw a line under the Hitler era, exemplified in the Bitburg affair and in the speech held during his 1984 visit to Israel in which he insisted that ‘the grace of late birth’ had absolved his generation of direct implication in the horrors of German history. (Baldwin 1990, p. 27)

The Bitburg affair was just a few months away and formed the central political context for the play’s supporters. Their call for a reworking of the past and for an open and painful dialogue is directed against the revisionist climate of the time and the attempt to re-conceptualize the term “normalization” as a critical challenge to the hidden anti-Semitic structures. It is crucial to note that during the peace movement as well as during the historians’ quarrel it was the countercultural milieu and their political representatives the Greens that searched for an alternative, non-aligned national identity, a “third way” (Baldwin 1990, pp.  27–28; Zepp 2012, pp. 142–144). This milieu provides the support base of Garbage, the City and Death. The principally critical approach to national history and national identity by the countercultural milieu re-enforces the previously made suggestion of a dispute between the Left and the “Establishment,” which disregards the newly emerging Jewish voice and proves incapable of dealing with the challenge posed by this third party.

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7.5.1.3 Configuring a Critical Identity An antagonism is the relation of two (or more) identities which mutually define the other identity’s limits, yet they share a terrain which Laclau and Mouffe call a field of discursivity (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, p. 27). It appears that in the constitution of a left-alternative and critical identity, the Jewish position lacks representation and is therefore excluded from engaging in an antagonism. This exclusion from an antagonistic relation has to be understood as the exclusion from the social. This claim may be exemplified by the following argument by Theo Sommer in Die Zeit: There are not only these counterarguments, there is an oppositional standpoint: that of the radical liberal. It is also grounded in the sentence: ‘Resist the beginnings!’ But it starts elsewhere: it starts with section 5 of the Grundgesetz [German constitution, MK], which guarantees the freedom of speech and the freedom of the arts. … Only the fundamental right of the freedom of speech makes possible the continuous intellectual struggle that is the vital principle of democracy. Whoever curtails it, rattles at the foundations of the liberal constitutional order. ‘Resist the beginnings’ – it would be more important here, because the threat is more real. And who could not recall? Before humans were characterized as degenerate, ‘degenerate art’ was outlawed; before the extermination camps’ ovens blazed, books and artworks burned. Frankfurt’s mayor Wallmann is right: whoever constrains the freedom of the mind also curtails political freedom – and hence the freedom and security of our Jewish fellow citizens.77

With reference to the horrors of the Nazi era, leftist non-Jews prioritize the restriction of the freedom of expression as threatening since they were persecuted due to their ideology and convictions. The persecution of Jews is here conceptualized as the logical consequence of fascist and illiberal politics. The universal presentation of this kind of sectional memory makes the Jewish memory of the Holocaust invisible. Similar to the disregard of particularly Jewish needs and desires, this argument relativizes the memory of Jews and excludes it from the narrative. The formulation of a subject position is clearly tied to the articulation of a political antagonism. Political antagonism is here to be thought of with Laclau and Mouffe as the struggle between subject positions for the re-description and re-narration of the world (Torfing 1999, pp. 67–71). Since antagonism is defined as a social relation, one subject position cannot be thought of without the antagonist, and is constituted only in

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relation and distinction to the social Other (Laclau and Mouffe (1985) 2001, esp. p. 125). Yet, the antagonistic relation referred to in this discourse is configured as an antagonism among non-Jews and excludes the Jewish narrative of history. Take, for instance, Peter von Becker’s review in theater heute: “And thus the list of prominent figures who signed the protest declarations against the performance of the play, is headed by the tall, taciturn banker, who was once co-responsible for the so-called ‘Aryanization program’ of a large German bank.”78 Von Becker creates a differential identity by excluding those from the identitary framework who feign concern, while hiding a history of participation in the Nazi system or in anti-Semitic ideology. Similarly, Iring Fetscher, professor of political sciences, observes: The dispute about Fassbinder’s posthumous play ‘Garbage, the City and Death’ made me ponder when I saw and heard, who  – among the non-­ Jewish Germans – protested against the staging. This was in intimate community of the same Christian Democrats, who had objected, on this year’s May 8, to calling it the ‘day of the liberation from German fascism’. Those who had defended the joint walk of the American President and the German Chancellor to Bitburg.79

And the Greens emphasize the Janus-faced reactions of those who welcomed (or did not protest against) the presentation of the Goethe Prize to the novelist and author Ernst Jünger in 1982, but who oppose the performance of Garbage, the City and Death on the grounds of anti-Semitism.80 In contrast, the Greens opposed the award presentation in 1982 and pointed out that Jünger had been an “ideological pioneer of fascism” (ideologischer Wegbereiter des Faschismus) and “an enemy to democracy” (erklärter Feind der Demokratie) as well as a “glorifier of war” (Kriegsverherrlicher).81 True concern for coming to terms with the past opposes hypocritical pretension, and this act of in/exclusion provides the dual core of the antagonistic relation. What is striking is the absence of the Jewish position from the differential relation, and this marks the inexistence of a Jewish identity within the confines of what may be defined as the social by Laclau (and Mouffe). Jewish interest lacks a presence in this space of representation, since as yet the Jewish community lacks a name which constitutes its identity in social space. “[T]he unity of the object,” Laclau claims, “is only the retroactive effect of naming it” (Laclau 2006, p. 109). This idea has been proposed

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similarly by Castoriadis, when he claims that the sign precedes the object (Castoriadis 1987, p. 359). Elsewhere I have spoken of the creation of subject positions which provide discursive points of possibility, and it is exactly these that the Jewish position lacks within the discourse of the play’s supporters. It is the discourse of the play’s opponents which generates Jew as a name in this controversy, through which Jewish identity inscribes itself into the discourse of the social, while it remains absent in the discourse of the play’s supporters. So when I speak of the “Jewish” position or discourse in this chapter this is not to be taken in an essentialist sense, but as the proposition of a subject position in Laclau and Mouffe’s sense, a subject’s condition of possibility (which is necessarily also the source of the restriction of possibilities) (Laclau and Mouffe (1985) 2001, p.  115). When Thomas Elsaesser says about the results of this debate that they brought into perspective the limits of representation (Elsaesser 1996, p. 192), this is only half the truth. The limits of representation first and foremost mean the absence of a constituted and recognized identity which only comes into being by possessing a name as the means of social representation. 7.5.2  The Opposition to Garbage, the City and Death Put slightly differently, Fassbinder’s Jew, before he is a person of Jewish faith or race, is first of all the figure of the Other, or more precisely, he occupies the place of the Other. … … For as argued, The Rich Jew is a figure of projection, intended to expose the mechanism of creating an other, one who does not remain passive but who defends himself by using the projected power – the paranoid power of a phantasm, at one and the same time mythical, economic, sexual – as ‘capital’ in the extended sense of the term: as his physical means of survival. … But what if individual Jews refuse to recognize themselves, or rather, refuse to accept ‘otherness’ as a category they either can or want to be identified with? This clearly happened in the case of [Garbage, the City and Death], since neither the purported ‘real-life’ model of The Rich Jew, nor the German … Jewish communities were prepared to accept ‘otherness’ as their defining feature. (Elsaesser 1996, pp. 190–191)

These retrospective remarks by the film theorist Thomas Elsaesser summarize the nucleus of the emerging resistance against the hegemonic representation of Jews and the collision of two heterogeneous spaces of representation. The Jewish opposition to Garbage, the City and Death articulates a dis-identification with hegemonic modes of representation

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and hence articulates a further antagonism, which is an antagonism between Jews and non-Jews. We can here observe the formulation of a new subject position in Laclau and Mouffe’s sense, a discursive node that invokes identification. If the social relation described by Fassbinder may be summarized with Elsaesser as the relation between social norm and social alterity, antagonism emerges in opposition to this relation. The paradox that resistance arises against representation of the social relation and not against the asymmetric social relation itself discloses the interdependence of representation and identity. In this sense we may think of the resistance to the play not as a rejection of Fassbinder’s social analysis, but as the rejection of the implications that derive from this analysis and the advocacy of a transformed social reality. 7.5.2.1 Against Normalization While in the non-Jewish discourse, the term “normalization” is referred to in a positive sense, within the Jewish discourse “normalization” has a decidedly negative connotation. It becomes the term in relation to which antagonism becomes visible. In Laclau and Mouffe’s sense, “normalization” has to be conceptualized as the element which the non-Jewish discourses attempt to transform into one of the moments through which these identities can be characterized. But this move is antagonized by the Jewish discourse. “Normalization” is the signification on the basis of which the struggle of identities takes place. In a public discussion taking place in Frankfurt, the historian Dan Diner, for instance, criticized the “normalization” taking place in society which becomes visible by social actors simultaneously “‘culturally paying court to the Jewish community’ and awarding the Goethe-prize to the Storm-of-Steel poet Ernst Jünger.”82 The education researcher and journalist Micha Brumlik seconds this assessment when he calls the director of the theater, Günther Rühle, “a Helmut Kohl of culture.”83 A normal relationship between Jews and Germans, Brumlik believes, is impossible.84 Since Bitburg, he claims, consciousness has slowly emerged among the Jewish institutions that German mainstream society is retreating from its commitment to Jewish concerns.85 What appeared as two antagonistic fields in the discourse of the play’s supporters merge into one in the Jewish discourse. The Jewish subject position develops in opposition to the widespread non-Jewish desire to “overcome the past.” The history of the Holocaust is meant to remain a disturbing presence in Jewish/non-Jewish relations because only the sting of guilt can prevent the non-Jewish hegemonic discourse from neglecting

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Jewish concerns. The Jewish subject position is thus clearly founded in the notion of identitary difference for the sake of self-assertion. Identity politics, paradoxically, serve the need to demand equality within a hegemonic environment. The difference is further enhanced with regard to a showcased carefreeness of the younger generation of which Fassbinder functions as representative: The people will call for this Fassbinder, who – we should not forget that in the dispute’s scrub  – was celebrated as an exceptional exemplar of that German insouciance, which was supposed to demonstrate that a new German self-understanding with a new sense of spirituality had been achieved.86

Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish religious scholar, who opted in favor of the play’s performance because he believed that the relationship between Germans and Jews is strong enough to endure it,87 supports this description of the prevalence of mindlessness and ease with which rules of decency and human dignity are swept aside under the umbrella of the Freedom of the arts: “Only the ‘taboo’ of anti-Semitism, Lapide sums up, had resisted shredding so far, and this exactly had aroused the appetite of the provocation-­experts. In Fassbinder’s play they had found an ideal instrument for also razing this very last ‘taboo.’”88 In contrast to the non-Jewish interest in leaving history behind, the Jewish subject position appears as the voice of history. Jewish identity is conceptualized as an uncomfortable presence which prohibits the establishment of a German comfort zone. The Jewish subject position is founded upon the insistence on the universal validity of Jewish experience during the Holocaust. This experience is posited as beyond question and beyond relativity, which is why it lays claim to an objective reality: “[H]uman emotions have to be components of the debate, because we are not only [concerned with, MK] history, but with the lived past – at least as long as humans, victims, and offenders, still live among us.”89 And the Hessian Cultural Minister Karl Schneider adds in a speech given on November 10, 1985 on the commemoration of the Pogrom Night of 1938 in the main synagogue in Frankfurt: “The dreadful history of the Holocaust’s influence is not completed yet. It persists. There is an objectivity of injury and of helplessness [in this debate, MK], which is a relevant reality – regardless of the perpetrator’s well-meaning” (speech

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has been reprinted in AJW).90 These remarks claim an immanence to Jewish identity which lies beyond representation and to which they appeal as a means to gain authority. They in fact oppose Fassbinder’s dictum of the discursive nature of subjectivity and counter it with an objective essence of identity, based on experience and emotion. It is these premises of ethnic identity that are based not upon birth and biology (as in the racial conception of ethnicity), but upon experience and genealogies of emotion that–paradoxically–make the “objectivity of emotion” a subjective counterpart to Fassbinder’s conception of the subject’s dependence on social discourses. Because–and the Jewish proposition of identity here addresses the empty space of the post-structural notion of subjectivity–even though the subject becomes a subject only in interaction with social discourses and experiences, this is accompanied by an affective structuration which makes the discourses become “real” for the subject. We can here observe the (non-theoretical) formulation of the two chiastic poles of a non-essentialist understanding of the relation of subject and social reality (Lüdemann 2004, p. 59) as proposed by Castoriadis. He defines the relation of social reality and the psyche of the individual as a reciprocal inscription of one onto the other in a kind of translation from the language of the social into the language of the psyche (Castoriadis 1987, pp.  273–339 chapter 6 “The Social-Historical Institution: Individuals and Things”). They are not reducible to each other, as the conflict between the Jewish opponents and the non-Jewish supporters of the play shows. While the language of the social is discourse and signification, the language of the psyche is affect and figuration. While the play’s supporters focus on the discourses’ command of the subject (the social dimension), the play’s opponents focus the subject’s injury by the discourse (the psychic dimension), which is why their arguments are at cross-purposes. Certainly, we can also witness the continuity of a völkisch-inflected understanding of identity, as when members of the Jewish community abuse Daniel Cohn-Bendit during the occupation of the stage as a traitor, because he–although from a Jewish background–welcomes the performance of the play.91 But the insistence on the irreducibility of Jews to the stereotype and on identity as based on shared affects and experiences shows the emergence of a notion of identity as derivative of socialization instead of descent and biology. It leads to what Gayatri Spivak has termed “strategic essentialism”:

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But it is not possible, within discourse, to escape essentializing somewhere. The moment of essentialism or essentialization is irreducible. In deconstructive critical practice, you have to be aware that you are going to essentialize anyway. So then strategically you can look at essentialisms, not as descriptions of the way things are, but as something that one must adopt to produce a critique of anything. (Spivak 1990, p. 51)

Despite the knowledge that every knowledge is particular, the subaltern position must postulate a universal–and hence essential–subject of knowledge because only from this position are statements possible that assume validity beyond the particular situation. The universalizing subject, Spivak posits, attempts to bring all fragmented narratives into a continuity, in order to be capable of controlling the narrative through continuity and consistency (Spivak 1990, pp.  51–52). For a critical articulation of the hegemonic position, on the other hand, this means questioning the particularity and contingent nature of social reality. Both movements pursue the same aim, but due to the different starting positions (which includes the blind spot of the play’s supporters in what concerns the inclusion of the Jewish position vis-à-vis the articulation of an identitary “us”), the strategies differ and lead to mutual misrecognition. 7.5.2.2 Whose Prerogative of Interpretation? The discourse leads directly to the question of the prerogative of interpretation. Who defines the terms of memory, remembrance, and representation of the Holocaust? The Jewish opponents of the play, represented by the weekly AJW, have a clear opinion about that: What has come to pass in Frankfurt, and what will most likely still come to pass, is the disillusioning documentation of the fact that people’s mileage on the path towards reconciliation varies and that the time that is needed to come closer to each other is measured differently (for everyone). What is happening in the traditional and liberal Frankfurt, which readily and extensively likes to appeal to its relation with Jews, is disillusioning, because  – via the secret path of artistic freedom  – they [non-Jewish Germans, MK] attempted to unilaterally define the distance to be traveled towards reconciliation, comprehension, and towards respecting the present; a path which could only be doomed to failure. Those, like the theater management and others, who agree with them, lay claim to determining the degree of maturity of the encounter with the Jews, misappropriate the European Jews’ history in this century and disregard, out of ignorance or

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malice, Jewish sensitivities. Only those who refuse to confront themselves, their fathers, and their grandfathers will conceive of these sensitivities as squeamishness.92

These remarks state the absence and disruption of a collective consensus and hence criticize the unilateral and hegemonic definition of the present and the past. They express the continuity (or renewal) of a situation in which the non-Jews define what the collective narrative has to look like. Simultaneously, they are a refusal of this situation and a demand for inclusion. Definition of the past, present, and future, these words say, cannot take place without Jewish participation. A unilateral definition of collective memory is a sham. And at the same time, these remarks have to be read as a refusal to be silenced. They are a demand for visibility. Participation in the national collective is possible only on the terms of a particular, but visible, identity instead of on the terms of assimilation, which equals invisibility. The demand to be heard and to be included in the consensus as Jews is the demand to be recognized as participants in the collective definition of the social. It disturbs the social order because it redefines the terms in which the collective past and present can be spoken about. It should be read as a demand for participation in the definition of a collective identity, a shared understanding of interests, needs, and desires. Contrary to Laclau and Mouffe’s notion of the social as a struggle of antagonisms, I want to reframe the process of Jewish identity formation with reference to Jacques Rancière’s conception of “disagreement.”93 With the introduction of disagreement I hope to be able to show the difference in the social process of the antagonism between the alternative Left and the “Establishment” on the one hand, and the inscription of a totally new social identity onto the collective space of national identity on the other. This does not mean that Laclau and Mouffe’s framework is obsolete. Rancière’s description of social struggles allows me to highlight the difference between the antagonism of the non-Jewish supporters and opponents of Garbage, the City and Death and the developing antagonism between Jews and non-Jews. With Rancière, I can better describe the “newness” and the transformative character of the latter antagonism. Disagreement creates a social space in which a group that was previously deprived of participation demands that its specific concerns be recognized as a shared and therefore public concern. The politics of disagreement create a public stage on which different interests can be

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played out, a stage which creates a non-consensual community around a particular topic that was previously deemed private by the ruling groups. It is a process which simultaneously imagines a common world and the objects that inhabit that world. The Habermasian conception of rational argument can only take place after the common stage has been installed.94 Politics, according to Rancière, begin when one group disagrees with its exclusion from the common ground. The politics of disagreement is a process in which what was defined as “noise” by society asserts itself as meaningful language that demands to be heard. We may think of a redefinition of the terms of speaking by redetermining the common ground. The space opened up by the controversy is a stage where the previously voiceless group inscribes its needs and desires as relevant not only for itself, but for all who participate in the commonality. This means the transformation from not-being-counted to being-counted: The problem is knowing whether the subjects who count in the interlocution ‘are’ or ‘are not’, whether they are speaking or just making a noise. … The quarrel has nothing to do with more or less transparent or opaque linguistic contents; it has to do with consideration of speaking beings as such. (Rancière 1999, p. 50)

This process is, according to Rancière, at the heart of the emergence of political subjectivities. As Rancière further notes: Modern politics holds to the multiplication of those operations of subjectification that invent worlds of community that are worlds of dissension; it holds to those demonstration devices that are, every time, at once arguments and world openers, the opening up of common (which does not mean consensual) worlds where the subject who argues is counted as an arguer. This subject is always a one-over. (Rancière 1999, p. 58)

The subject that appears from this newly emerging common world is also called a “surplus subject” by Rancière a few sentences further on. The surplus subject (the one-over) de-naturalizes subjectivity and acts as a virtuality. The Rancièrean surplus subject more or less coincides with Laclau and Mouffe’s subject positions, both being discursive positions that provide points of identification for the subject. Rancière’s surplus subject, however, exceeds this notion since it proposes a position that is not only oriented toward the subject, but also encroaches upon the social and functions

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as a social agent, because it is capable of representing that identity. It emphasizes that aspect that Ernesto Laclau frames as the name. These thoughts show, however, the proximity of Laclau (and Mouffe) and Rancière’s conceptualization of politics as the struggle of social identities. The Jewish call for the recognition of Jewish sensitivities creates a public stage around the very intimate issue of psychic injury. Speaking of “us” (Jews) and “them” (non-Jews) establishes a social relation that creates that stage of commonality. Jews and non-Jews encounter each other on the common ground as antagonists, while the disagreement simultaneously creates that stage. It is this creation of the common ground that distinguishes the Jewish position from the position inhabited by the left-­ alternative supporters of the play, since the latter make use of a previously established common ground of “Germans” and meet on a par with their antagonists. They do not have to assert their capacity to dispose of a meaningful language first. The Jewish insistence on the recognition of their sensitivity and their interpretive authority with regard to the process of reconciliation posits a particular “language” as representative of the subject position and specifically asserts heterogeneity as precondition for the community-to-be. The political community (which is a non-consensual community) can only be a community if it recognizes the heterogeneity of perspective, language, and experience. In the case of the Fassbinder controversy, the Jewish institutions in Germany, especially the Jewish community in Frankfurt, take the place of this surplus subject to the exclusion of positions such as those of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, for instance. Although Cohn-Bendit speaks with the authority of an “ethnic” Jew, he does not speak as a representative of Jews, nor is his position acknowledged as representing the Jewish position (I will come back to his in-between position in the following subsection). In contrast to Cohn-Bendit, the Jewish community in Frankfurt and the Central Council of Jews in Germany become mouthpieces of the Jewish process of political subjectification and representatives of the newly emerging political identity. The notion of the surplus subject may explain the (convincing) role of non-Jewish contributors to Jewish identity formation such as Krämer-­ Badoni (Zeit), Joachim Neander (Welt), and the Hessian Cultural Minister Karl Schneider, whose acts of solidarity confirm Jewish identity formation. Their contributions count as giving expression to the Jewish opinion without the authors identifying as such.

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Similar to Rancière’s workers, who transform the non-political social relation of worker and capitalist into a political identity, the “new” Jewish identity transforms the already established social relation of Jew/non-Jew into a defensive political identity that defies the asymmetry inherent in the social relation: ‘We have comprehended history’s mission’, the [Jewish, MK] youth league wrote in a leaflet [on the occasion of the protests against the premiere, MK]. ‘This is why we, the Jewish youth, have to point out the dangerous ­tendencies and caution against their consequences early enough. Our parents and grandparents did not succeed in doing so  – the terrible consequences are known.’95

And a contributor in AJW seconds this: Our Jewish presence [in Germany, MK] means, next to our avowal of the liberal constitution, also a commitment to guardianship, in order to uncover the first signs that may presage a repetition of the hatred, the slander, and the murder. Those who are surprised at that have deceived themselves about the martyrdom of the Jews in Germany in this century and have not spared a thought about how the younger Jewish generation quarrels with itself and its fathers. These youth have to grapple with the blame, not to have mounted a resistance against the brutal persecution and not to have recognized the dangers in time.96

The political Jewish identity distinguishes itself from the previous ethnic or religious identity by its rejection of the social relation underlying identity. The political dimension is particularly the aspiration to transform the existing social relations and hence cannot be reduced to the non-­ political Jewish identity(ies). It feeds on these identitary fragments and derives its authority from them, but it must be viewed in the light of newness, because it emerges as an interest group that aims to transform the relations of hegemon and subaltern into that of equals who struggle for the implementation of their vision of the world. The new political identity redefines itself not only with regard to the non-Jewish adversary, but also with regard to its own genealogy, which serves as a negative foil for the constitution of a positive and rebellious identity. The political dimension of identity, in fact, turns against the history of victimization and proclaims an end to the status of victim, while deriving identitary authority from the history of anti-Semitism.

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7.5.3  In-Betweenness One in-between position deserves to be mentioned. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the French 1968 movement, member of the German Greens with Jewish roots, and chief editor of the left-alternative city magazine Pflasterstrand, defends a position that may be thought of not only as a bridge between opponents and supporters of the play, but as a kind of metaphor for the multiperspectivity of true democratic and hence non-­ essential societies: On the evening of the prevented premiere, only Daniel Cohn-Bendit spoke the language of the theater, with all the great actors’ humanity and need for admiration. The still youthfully active, spirited veteran of the 1968-revolt fashioned himself, in possession of his dialectic force of speech, the lawyer of both sides. From within the auditorium, he advocated understanding as a means to bridge the gap between the indignant and the ashamed, between those without a clue and the know-it-alls, between the audience and the stage. The red-green Dany [Daniel, MK]97 – the big words are not exaggerated – revealed himself as the true child of the wise Nathan. He had the feel for the rationality-spanning conflict between morality and aesthetics: when he simultaneously implored for understanding of the legitimate irrationality of Fassbinder the artist, and that of the protester, who did not spend his youth in German seminars, but in German concentration camps.98

And Benjamin Henrichs concludes in Zeit: “Just as Fassbinder is not Lessing, Cohn-Bendit is not Nathan. But he, the fool, had best recognized, that there is more than one ring in this fight, more than one law.”99 During the debate that accompanied the occupation of the stage, Cohn-­ Bendit is described as having said: I do not accept that anybody tells me: You are allowed to see this, you are not allowed to see that. I even accept your protest, I even accept that you scupper the premiere; this is what we did in the past and you are … (applause) I think you are in the honorable tradition of the 68-movement with its Go-ins and Sit-ins, and I therefore congratulate the Jewish community.100

In a conversation he had with Ignatz Bubis for Der Spiegel he explains his biographical background as Jewish by “ethnicity,” as it is not possible to stop being Jewish,101 although he lacks religious faith and thus does not identify as a Jew in a religious sense.102 As a political activist he

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acknowledges civil disobedience in the form of go-ins and sit-ins as legitimate forms of protest claiming political and social recognition where the democratic process fails. Yet, he refuses to be patronized by the protesters who claim to speak for all Jews. Cohn-Bendit rejects a political Jewish identification and thus refuses the identity politics that accompany the protests. During the Roundtable Discussion at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, on December 17, 1985, quoted at the outset of this chapter, Seyla Benhabib described Cohn-Bendit’s position as follows: For Fassbinder, the victims become as brutal as the victimizers, and the desired solidarity of the oppressed does not come to pass. I think that, like Foucault, Fassbinder’s perspective on society is that of the outsider, the alien, the other. And as in Foucault’s work, the victim is portrayed always from the perspective of the one who victimizes and has power. The victim remains the perpetual other. This perspective may be one of the main reasons why the play was offensive to so many Jews. Whereas a Daniel Cohn-­ Bendit can immediately identify with and exercise solidarity with the Jews – precisely because they are the outsiders in this case – the Jews who live in post-war Germany find the company into which Fassbinder has thrown them abhorrent. Once again, they see themselves identified as the other, and this otherness – which they have not defined for themselves nor chosen to identify themselves with – is threatening. In other words, a Cohn-­ Bendit can accept a political message and the political community into which Fassbinder has put him, because he sees the moment of redemption in that otherness, whereas the Jewish community in Germany, which in the post-war period gained or has tried to gain respectability, seeks to rid itself of this otherness. As a result, both sides of the debate are talking past each other. (Benhabib in Markovits et al. 1986, pp. 18–19)

While Cohn-Bendit sees salvation from capitalist and bourgeois hypocrisy in the position of the outsider, for the Jewish community it restages their status as Others in Nazi Germany. Their protest may thus be read as a rebellion against this position as social outsider, in which they have remained in West German post-war life despite their attempts to become invisible. They now realize that these attempts have been futile. Paradoxically, the protests make the Jews visible within the political setup as Jews, while, following Ranciére, only this visibility as a political identity enables a process of de-naturalizing–and therefore challenging–the relation of Self and Other.

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Cohn-Bendit perceives the situation from a radical democratic perspective. He acknowledges first the legitimacy of oppositional positions and conceives the formation of political subject positions as a fundamental process of democratic politics. Second, his rejection of the claim for representation proposed by the Jewish community de-essentializes the identity politics of the Jewish community. His position depicts the social field as traversed by politics, as a political arena peopled by struggle, antagonism, political subjects, and interests, while it lacks essential identities. If the play’s opponents and supporters move toward the poles identified by Laclau and Mouffe as “popular subject positions” (Laclau and Mouffe (1985) 2001, p. 131), Cohn-Bendit’s position bridges the widening gap. “Popular antagonisms” or popular subject positions emerge when “[a] maximum separation has been reached: no element in the system of equivalences enters into relations other than those of opposition to the elements of the other system. There are not one but two societies” (Laclau and Mouffe (1985) 2001, pp. 129–130). Meanwhile, democratic antagonisms that give rise to “democratic subject positions” do not encompass society in its totality, but are delimited to specific dimensions of the social space and refer to confined topics within society. If the pro and contra arguments work toward de-legitimization and mutual exclusion from the social space, the position occupied by Cohn-­ Bendit strives to generate a legitimacy for both sides and thus brings the antagonistic fields back into a (democratic) dialogue. For Chantal Mouffe, a democratic antagonism respects the legitimacy of the opposing field without neutralizing the conflict: “[A]ntagonism reveals the very limit of any rational consensus” (Mouffe 2007, p. 2). Cohn-Bendit embodies this antithesis to the notion of a harmonious and consensual society. In fact, his position symbolizes a new and different conception of the social as united by dissensus. His position derives its symbolic power from incorporating this apparent paradox and transforming the (discursive) concept into a figuration. 7.5.4  The Controversy as Metaphor: The Meta-Debate The impact of the Fassbinder controversy on West German social reality can be deduced from the degree of abstraction the contributions adopt. As the controversy proceeds we can observe the development of a meta-­ perspective. The controversy becomes a metaphor for social processes and

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figures the social as inwardly torn. The confrontation, especially as it figures in the occupation of the stage on the occasion of the play’s planned premiere, turns into the pivot of a reconfigured social space which includes Jewish Germans instead of Jews in Germany. The inscription of the Jewish surplus subject onto a common ground with Germans disrupts the harmony that is at the heart of West Germany’s self-image. The protests’ negotiations in the public sphere eventually take the shape of positing the vision of society as unified in conflict, a vision of the social as constituted not by harmony, but by dissent and multiperspectivity. 7.5.4.1 The Rift that Divides the Social There is at first an acknowledgment that despite the official parading of harmony and indivisibility, the controversy has brought to light the fragility of Jewish and non-Jewish relations. It fosters the recognition that German identity continues to represent non-Jewish interests. German identity, in post-World War II Germany, remains an ethnic identity which derives its necessary condition from the notion of descent to the exclusion of other ethnicities on (West) German territory. It leads to the insight that Jews in Germany remain the bodies of the uncounted. Harmony is uncovered as a fiction, as Peter Iden remarks, rather discouraged by this disclosure: “This is a terrible development, for the Jews just as for the non-Jews. The social consent crumbles under the smallest strain, which means: it proves to be a fiction. … The large distances, the very narrow and very, very fragile relations became tangible here.”103 And a colleague from NZZ seconds this recognition from the perspective of the uninvolved outsider: [Frankfurt’s theater provocation, MK] has prompted thought processes that may have helped here and there newly leverage the insight, that forty years after Auschwitz German-Jewish relations are far from the condition of a resilient ‘normality’ and that Germany cannot afford many a thing that would not attract attention in other, historically less burdened countries.104

The objectivity of an indivisible society is revealed as a sham. The notion of closure that underlies this image of the social is disrupted. The social consensus has been uncovered as a fictive agreement, which merely concealed the continued distinction of (non-Jewish) Germans and Jews as Self and Other. The speechlessness and the mutual lack of comprehension with respect to the play is staged as the lack of unanimity of the social. The direct

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confrontation of Jews and non-Jews acts as a metaphor for the corrupted social in its entirety: The more hysterically ‘the conversation with the Jewish fellow citizen’ is sought, as it says in miserable Goodwill-German, the harder Jews and Germans talk at cross purposes. Repeatedly, the director Günther Rühle has hosted large panel discussions in his institution. Each time the gap d ­ eepened: ‘We are not your property, Doctor’, the concentration camp survivor Joseph Schupack defiantly hurled at him. Each time the realization that there are things which Germans and Jews cannot talk about grew stronger. Elli Kaminer is dismayed at the German’s lack of sensitivity. And she sums up: ‘We speak about our emotions. You speak about your art.’105

While the social is here depicted as disintegrating, the destruction of the idea of the social as an entity closed upon itself already carries the seed of a new understanding of the social, which incorporates contrariety and irreducible antagonism. 7.5.4.2 The Transformation of Jewish Identity Especially the protests in connection with the planned premiere of Garbage, the City and Death turn into an event that is constitutive for the development of a political German Jewish subjectivity. They may be thought of as the “founding myth,” the constitutive event of the formation of an identity that conceives of Jews as an integral part of West German society and not as its silent outside.106 A commentator in Der Spiegel notes: Jewish fear and anxiety: These were the dominant themes of any event in the past months. The threat of self-imposed victimhood was pointed out. … All this has changed now. When the members of Frankfurt’s Jewish community thwarted the premiere of the Fassbinder play last Thursday, when a confident demonstration took place in front of the theater, when this hitherto politically so well-behaved minority offended against good manners – many will have had a feeling of self-liberation and pride. ‘If someone calls you a dirty Jew, keep walking silently’, someone shouted into a megaphone to the demonstrators. But many replied: ‘No. Fight back.’107

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This singular event points beyond itself and turns into a signifying mark in the emerging universe of Jewish identity. As a mark in time and space it serves as an element of self-affirmation. It gives visibility to what is otherwise to be considered virtual. An elderly Jew tells the journalist Joachim Neander from Die Welt during the protests in front of the theater: “You have to get me right. … We don’t have victorious feelings. Only relief, not only for the fact that an anti-Semitic play was not staged here, even more so as we all know now that we don’t have to be afraid any longer in this country, that we are not alone. Is this not a normalization?”108 The protests mark a moment of arrival, a notion that refers back to the introductory epigraph, in which Andrei Markovits describes his cousin, who–walking up and down the cold Frankfurt sidewalk with a placard around his neck–suddenly realized his own belonging to West German society. This feeling of arrival is further captured by Klaus Pokatzky in Zeit, when he quotes two young Jews during the protests in front of the theater during the stage occupation: The accusation is true, the Jewish student Daniela says, that the young Jews do not demonstrate against the NPD [Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Germany’s right-extremist party, MK]. But the evening in front of the theater made her think: ‘We have to start becoming Germans – German citizens. So far, we stayed out of what we think only concerns Germans. This does not work out any more.’ Many of the young Jews that demonstrate in the cold night do not understand their parents – do not understand why they, after all, returned to Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. And they do not understand why the parents and grandparents abstained from political statements in the Federal Republic, that they never took to the streets, that they apparently assimilated and did not want to attract attention under any circumstances. ‘We Jews are not used to demonstrating,’ Ariel says. And: ‘We are all in Israel with half a suitcase.’ The evening in front of the theater marks a caesura. ‘Our eyes have been opened.’ Also, with respect to the question of German delivery of arms to Saudi Arabia they would not remain silent any longer: ‘In this case, too, something will happen in the coming weeks. Definitely.’109

Michel Friedman and Hermann Alter from the Jewish community in Frankfurt second this changed consciousness among the Jewish community. They claim that the events around Garbage, the City and Death have led to a learning process which includes political action in the form of confined breach of the rules (begrenzte Regelverletzung) if mainstream

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society continues to hurt Jewish feelings.110 Klaus Pokatzky, quoting the architect of the new Jewish community hall during the topping out ceremony, even speaks of the “end of the post-war era.” While the architect refers to the result of his work, Pokatzky transfers the idea to the protests when he draws a direct line between the architect’s remarks and the controversy.111 The protests against the performance of Garbage, the City and Death turn into a symbol for Jewish empowerment. Jews in Germany redefine themselves as Jewish Germans. The protests transform the incompleteness of social group formation into an image of itself and hence figure a closure, determinacy, and materiality that the social indeed lacks. This process of symbolization underlines the Castoriadian dictum that collectivities derive their existence not from the real or the rational, but from the imaginary (Castoriadis 1987, pp. 146–156). The imaginary creates a substance, a determination, where there is “magma,” a flow of significations and figurations that, however they lend themselves to identification, are indeterminate and escape full identity. The imaginary creation of markers puts a (preliminary) stop to the magmatic flow and pretend identity. As a “myth of origin,” the protests provide the newly emerging subject position with a self-image that presents itself as a defensive entity. It is this imaginary that allows the subjects to virtually create identity. The protests turn into a self-description that diminishes the indeterminacy of the possibilities of human existence. Laclau’s name or the Rancièrean surplus subject is inherently tied to the imaginary dimension of social life. Subjectification is based on the imaginary filling of the virtual space with values, needs, and desires as well as figurations of the self. It is for this reason that the protests in front of the Schauspiel Frankfurt as well as the occupation of the stage play such an important role in the formation of a political Jewish identity. This “myth of origin” is not the result of the play’s aesthetics in a direct sense. The “myth of origin” originates in a social scene, which is then transformed discursively into a scene of the social. This scene of the social, then, becomes a metaphor for Jewish identity. While this metaphor is used in order to create visibility, it is not to be mistaken for the identity’s sole constitutive element. Jewish identity is, first and foremost, evoked by its opposition to an aesthetics that fails to give representation to its world experience as Jewish. Aesthetic language, or a particular paradigm of art/ interpretation, evokes the affect-laden response, which structures identities in social space. The scenes of the social, as described above, give social

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visibility–a materiality–to these identities, and are therefore to be thought of as coming after the structuring of the social has taken place by aesthetics. 7.5.4.3 Re-Imagining the Social “It must first be acknowledged and be made to be acknowledged that a situation presents a compelling case of universality. … [T]he forms of social interlocution that have any impact are at once arguments in a situation and metaphors of this situation” (Rancière 1999, p. 56). It is in the sense of metaphor that Benjamin Henrichs from Die Zeit describes the Jewish/non-Jewish encounter during the occupation of the stage. If the protests, taken by themselves, symbolize the “myth of origin” of Jewish politicization as German Jews, the occupation of the stage turns into a metaphor for a new collectivity, which is entangled in (instead of disrupted by) antagonism and difference. The occupation of the stage thus becomes a staging of a new social relationship: antagonists, although they occupy different positions in social space, both belong to the same space and belong together as different parts of the whole: The Jewish protesters had resorted to the theater, in order to physically protest against the theater, so as to prevent it. At the same time, they had (and this confuses the whole situation) put themselves in the hands of the theater. Trusting that the theater would allow them their ‘staging’ instead of the one produced by the theater itself; counting on the theater not to ask them to leave. Frequently, throughout the two-and-a-half-hour drama there was this odd feeling in the auditorium: that there were not only hopelessly hostile groups opposing each other, but also allies. A lot of hatred – and yet, sometimes, within reach an understanding, even if it was not reconciliation. Physically tangible, observable in the other’s faces.112

Society is in fact imagined as being constituted by the rift that traverses it. The social is re-imagined as antagonistic and the scene of the stage occupation crystallizes this understanding of the social in the figuration of physical presence of antagonists in the space of the theater. The lack of homogeneity and unanimity is reconfigured into a new understanding of the social, which includes difference and multiperspectivity. Argument and metaphor merge; in fact, the poetic dimension of the argument prevails and makes the new collectivity tangible. Poetics (metaphors, symbols) makes the particular universal. In as much as Henrichs

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makes a metaphor of the stage occupation, he universalizes its meaning beyond the concrete situation and is hence capable of envisioning the social in its entirety. The stage occupation-as-metaphor captures the contingency of the social on a stage and reconfigures its interplay. Although the processes of Jewish subjectification and the reconfiguration of the notion of society are interrelated processes, the respective metaphors bear no intrinsic relation to each other. They should be conceived of as independent processes of signification aiming at different goals. While the metaphorization of the protests serves as a “myth of origin” and the creation of identity, the metaphor of the stage occupation–although it drafts a different vision of the social–is rather a conceptual metaphor, an imaginary signification of a second order, which re-shapes the way we perceive the world without stating a constitutive break with the previous collective imaginary. 7.5.5  Résumé The Fassbinder controversy of 1985 falls under the umbrella of the proliferation of political identities. What gives this controversy its strength is not only the fact that the Jewish community vehemently opposes the play, but the development of a paradigm of interpretation which gives the play’s supporters convincing arguments in favor of the play. Although the search for a positive and non-anti-Semitic stance toward the play is hindered by obstacles and traps, the discourse develops the contours of what I have termed a postmodern paradigm of art/interpretation. The discourse that creates the postmodern paradigm refers back to the search for a critical left identity, which is not in need, however, of the fully conscious subject of the will, but a subject that is driven by affects, needs, and desires that escape the grasp of consciousness. The aesthetic paradigm proposed by Fassbinder coincides with the apocalyptic mood of the 1970s, where the roots of the new social movements of the 1980s can be found. The experience of critical attitude and inability to act finds representation in Garbage, the City and Death. The play gives expression to this relation of subject and society at the level of form and conversely shapes identity’s relation between “reality” and representation. “Reality” disappears behind the discourses; representation in the shape of discourses constitutes “reality,” while the world turns insubstantial. We can witness the establishment of a continuity between the paradigm of meaning (what we see in the

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world) and its representation (how this world is given expression) and this consensus is expressive of social identity. In fact, this controversy shows like no other in my case studies the struggle of identities with respect to the question of the relation between representation and meaning. The antagonism between Jews and (critical) non-Jews is the clash of bodies that reorganize around a particular relation of meaning and aesthetic representation. The construction of an identity that excludes the Jewish perspective shows that aesthetic paradigms, once inserted in social discourses, extend far into the sphere of the social in as much as they structure social alignment. The artworks’ meaning in social space is, in fact, inherently bound to the structuring of social space in the shape of identities. This is even more true since aesthetic paradigms emerge already as responses to established paradigms of art/interpretation, which stand for specific paradigms of representation/meaning. They are always already comments on and in relation to social relationships. The social response to aesthetic paradigms shows that society is–or groups within society are–able to recognize itself in the proposed representation of the relation of fiction and social reality. Especially the difference that can be found between the controversies of 1976 and 1985 respectively shows that it needed almost a decade between Fassbinder’s proposition of the aesthetic paradigm and the development of a substantial base of people who confirmed and recognized themselves in this paradigm of world/representation. The purpose of fiction is to experiment with the formal dimension–the matrix–for meaning to be expressed. Paradigms of art/interpretation are not only guidelines to unraveling the meaning of a work of art; in the way that they determine the recipients’ relation with the artwork, they configure the subject’s relation to social reality. In the case of the Fassbinder controversy this means that the postmodern paradigm conceives of the artwork as a quotation of social reality, which conceptualizes social reality as a discourse, to which the subject is subjected. The realist paradigm of the “prohibition of the image,” on the other hand, conceives of the figure of the Rich Jew as a “real” person, which leads to the figure’s rejection, since the figure’s social determinacy is a counter-argument to the aims of Jewish empowerment. As a consequence of the public atmosphere of revisionist “normalization” (Bitburg, Kohl’s “grace of late birth,” etc.), the Jewish community reinterprets the postmodern paradigm as the cultural manifestation of the “normalizing” attempts of German—Jewish relations, which newly excludes the Jewish perspective from the social consensus. This feeling of

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exclusion is not deceptive, even in the case of a “critical” interpretation of normalization, as the analysis of the postmodern paradigm has shown. “Normalization” of German—Jewish relations is a slogan which marks different attempts of non-Jewish Germans to come to terms with the past, while both notions of “normalization” disregard the Jewish position as potential participant in a collective reimagination of society. The dismissal of the postmodern paradigm of interpretation is also a dismissal of the notion of collectivity that perpetuates an ethnic understanding of nationality and hence maintains the asymmetric relation of German/Jew. The paradigm of the “prohibition of the image” fuses with an opposition to the notion of “normalization.” What ensues is a process of political subjectification which–essentially–is not unique to cultural controversies, but in the nature of politics, as Rancière (1999, pp.  58–60) and Laclau and Mouffe ((1985) 2001, pp. 131–134) affirm. The protests that antagonize the play’s performance in themselves give rise to metaphors and symbols, signs that give shape to the aesthetic structuring of the social. Similarly, Henrichs’ description of the mutual presence of antagonistic bodies in the space of the theater transforms the idea of society into a scene of the social. Metaphors of social scenes turn the structuring of the social into significations, while the politics of aesthetics resides in its capacity to evoke–to bring out or even to create–the affective structuring of the social.

7.6   Fiction and Social Creation The initial conflict, in this chapter, is a conflict between different modes of reading the figure of the Rich Jew. It is the conflict that arises between two different modes of the world—image relation. On the one hand, the figure of the Rich Jew is conceived of as a reproduction of anti-Semitic social reality and, on the other hand, as the deconstruction of anti-Semitic stereotypes. The former interpretation presupposes an intrinsically motivated body. It understands the fictional elements as based on ontological bodies, objects, and concepts, and therefore the figure of the Rich Jew can naturally only be a particular individual charged with stereotypical characteristics, and thus a reproduction of the stereotype. The latter interpretation understands the Rich Jew as an element within a text-internal structure, where the different elements refer to each other, and it thus draws attention to the insertion of the Rich Jew in a web of social relations that determine the figure from the outside. The Rich Jew is therefore to be seen as

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the embodiment of a type, who is constituted by how others see him. He is a discursive object instead of a subject. In this sense, the Rich Jew is a quotation of the stereotype which makes it an object of reflection. Reflection, Castoriadis believes, enables the subject to step out from her everyday life-world and thus momentarily gain an eccentric viewpoint on herself (Castoriadis 1997, pp.  264–272), as Marcela Tovar-Restrepo asserts in her description of the Castoriadian concept of autonomy: In reflectiveness we have something different: the possibility that the activity proper to the ‘subject’ becomes an ‘object,’ the self being explicitly posited as a non-objective object or as an object that is an object simply by its being posited as such and not by nature. Reflection implies the possibility of questioning oneself as representational activity. It presupposes and materializes the rupture of functionality. Reflection is an attempt to break the closure in which individuals are necessarily immersed as a result of their personal and social history, and the history of the social-historical institution that has humanized the individuals. This attempt is always accompanied by the positing of new thinkable forms and figures created by the radical imagination. (Tovar-Restrepo 2012, pp. 60–61)

From the postmodern perspective, Fassbinder’s Rich Jew turns the activity of stereotyping into an object of reflection. In this sense, Fassbinder’s Rich Jew is a critical contribution to the debate on anti-Semitism and initializes an assessment of the discursive dimension of social reality. The dissensus of how to read the text is a dissensus of the “distribution of the sensible,” the structuring of perceptual space (Rancière 2010, pp. 141–142), which is also a structuring of social space, as I have shown in this chapter. While both discourses, that of the postmodern paradigm and that of the “prohibition of the image,” claim the same content (struggle against anti-Semitism), it is the language in which this struggle is expressed that differentiates both discourses. To both, it is the language in which the struggle is expressed that matters. It is here that the participants in the controversy locate the power of the fictional figure’s meaning. How the struggle against anti-Semitism is expressed determines its meaning. The controversy is therefore not about content, but about the nature of representation and the relation between representation and world experience. The controversy is not concerned with questions of the world’s Being, but with its representation.

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The antagonistic tension created by the controversy empties the figure of the Rich Jew of determinable signification and makes visible the world’s subjection to the power of representation. While the Jewish position insists on the discriminating effect of representation, the play’s supporters emphasize the insubstantiality of the figure of the Rich Jew. These positions on representation are not complementary and neither can they be described as a relation of A and not-A, as pure opposition. They are adverse or antagonistic in Laclau and Mouffe’s sense in that they focus on different aspects of representation and therefore each position posits the (logical) limits of the other position. In negotiating the How of (fictional) representation, the controversy becomes a discourse about the cultural foundation of West German society. Cultural foundation is here referred to in its most fundamental sense as aesthetic-sensual perception and subsequently the conceptualization of social reality. The controversy is a struggle about perceiving the world as containing Being in an ontological sense or as constituted by discourse. This might sound wrong at first, with respect to the Jewish position which demands ending the use of Jews as a category. But in the struggle for individuality the belief in an ontology is inscribed, a Being of the individual, who is not subject to social discourses, but who is just for itself. It propounds the utopia of the individual’s relative independence from the social.

Notes 1. In the same anthology, Anson Rabinbach claims that the revision of German history that has come to be associated with Helmut Kohl actually started with his predecessor Helmut Schmidt (SPD), who in April 1981, coming from a visit to Israel, said that “German foreign policy can and will no longer be overshadowed by Auschwitz” (Schmidt quoted by Rabinbach 1990, p. 59). Der Spiegel reported about the said event in an article about German—Israeli relations (“Deutsche und Juden. Kniefall wiederholen?” 1981. Spiegel (20): p. 28, May 11). 2. Krug, Gerhard. 1985. “Das bittere Erbe des Rainer Werner F.” Stern (44): 64–70, October 24. 3. Ibid. 4. For a detailed description of Fassbinder’s engagement at TAT see Bodek (1991, pp. 233–150) and for a survey of the events surrounding the play from 1974 to 1998 see Töteberg (2002, pp. 87–103). 5. Schmitz, Helmut. 1976. “Müllkutscher Fassbinder. Das Frankfurt-Stück des ehemalligen TAT-Direktors jetzt erschienen.” FR, March 12.

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6. Fest, Joachim. 1976. “Reicher Jude von links. Zu Fassbinders Stück ‘Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod.’” FAZ, March 19. 7. Roe. 1984. “Eklat in Frankfurt. Fassbinder-Aufführung endgültig abgesagt.” SZ, July 12. 8. “Müll-Abfuhr.” 1984. Der Spiegel (28): 138–140, July 9. 9. “Skandalstück.” 1984. Stern (29), July 12. 10. Rühle, Günther. 1985. “Dieses Stück muß endlich aufgeführt werden. Die Leitung von Schauspiel Frankfurt zu Fassbinders ‘Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod.’” FR, October 30. In his chapter on Garbage, the City and Death, Robert Weninger highlights the diverse ironic twists and turns related to the controversy, of which Rühle’s is the most prominent, yet not the only one (Weninger 2004, pp. 102–117, esp. pp. 114–117). 11. The Verlag der Autoren is the most important publisher of theater plays in Germany. 12. Broder, Henryk M. 1986. “Antisemitismus – ja bitte! Ein Vorschlag für mehr Ehrlichkeit und weniger Heuchelei.” SZ, January 18. 13. An injunction initiated by Günther Rühle forced the publisher to black out the quotation in the distributed copies (Brill, Klaus. 1986. “Jonglieren mit schwarzen Balken. Der Rechtsstreit zwischen dem Intendanten Günther Rühle und dem Schriftsteller Henryk Broder um dessen Buch ‘Der ewige Antisemit.’” SZ, December 13–14). 14. An article from Hans Schueler in Die Zeit from December 5, 1986 traces the arguments of both Broder and Rühle, in the lawsuit Rühle brought to litigation against Broder. This article is very enlightening with respect to an understanding of the dispute (Schueler, Hans. 1986. “Schonzone und Schonzeit. Was hat der Frankfurter Intendant Günther Rühle wirklich gesagt?” Zeit (50): p.  5, December 5. http://www.zeit.de/1986/50/ schonzone-und-schonzeit/komplettansicht). 15. Jacobs, Boike. 1985. “Die Katze ist aus dem Sack. Die Diskussion um Rainer Werner Fassbinder Stück spitzt sich zu.” AJW (40): 7, October 4; Broder, “Antisemitismus – ja bitte!”. 16. kp. 1986. “Fassbinder für alle.” FR, January 2; Jacobs, Boike. 1986. “Die Opfer zu Tätern gemacht. Fassbinder und die Vergangenheitsbewältigung in der deutschen Presse.” AJW, January 24. 17. Fest, “Reicher Jude von links.” 18. Schütte, Wolfram. 1976. “Hinweis: und Einspruch gegen: Kurpfuscherei. Wie Joachim Fest ‘der Linken’ ein häßliches Gesicht verpassen will.” FR, March 26. 19. In the reprint of the biography in 2006/2007, the editor Bönisch comments on the impact of and controversies the biography provoked. The full text of the biography can be found here: Fest ((1973) 2006/2007).

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20. Unseld, Siegfried. 1976. “In dieser Form nie mehr.” Zeit (16), April 9. The contribution I have referred to is by Siegfried Unseld, who was the publisher of the play’s text and the head of the publishing house Suhrkamp. 21. Schütte, “Hinweis….” 22. Zwerenz, Gerhard. 1976. “Linker Antisemitismus ist unmöglich.” Zeit (16), April 9. 23. Ibid. It has to be granted that Zwerenz changes his opinion during the third Fassbinder controversy in 1985 and adopts the belief that the play cannot be performed without Jewish consent (Zwerenz, Gerhard. 1985. “Dürfen nur nichtjüdische Deutsche Spekulanten sein? Fassbinders Erbe: 27 Punkte einer Konfliktgeschichte. Gerhard Zwerenz, ‘der Urheber’, rechnet ab.” Vorwärts (47): 22–23, November 16). He further agrees that focusing on the ethnic background of the real estate developer Rich Jew in Garbage, the City and Death is absolutely irrelevant to the question under consideration and draws too much attention to this fact. He developed the belief that the play strengthened anti-Semitic tendencies (Zwerenz, Gerhard. 1986. “Fassbinder, Fellner, Freiherr von Mirbach: Politik mit Vorurteilen. Jetzt kommt der ‘reiche Jude’ von rechts. Zur Geschichte eines Un-Worts.” Vorwärts (8), February 22). Eventually, Zwerenz filed a lawsuit against the “Verlag der Autoren,” who owned the play’s copyright, claiming that Fassbinder plagiarized his work. Had he been successful, he could have withdrawn his consent for further performances of the play. He failed in court (“Zwerenz gibt auf.” 1988. Welt, February 29), but it demonstrates his change in attitude and learning process from his initial sweeping generalization that “left anti-Semitism is impossible.” 24. See Chap. 5 about Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy in this work. 25. At this point, this is to be taken as an assumption, which will only be resolved by the Fassbinder controversy in 1985. 26. Fest, Joachim. 1976. “Linke Schwierigkeiten mit ‘links.’” FAZ, April 10. 27. He became well-known for his anthology of essays Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne: Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwältigten (published in English as: At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities), in which he describes the loss of homeland through exile (“Wieviel Heimat braucht der Mensch?” En: How Much Home Does a Person Need? in Améry 1966, pp. 71–100) and the incapacity to retrieve a sense of being at home in the world after having experienced torture (“Die Tortur,” En: Torture in Améry 1966, pp. 41–70). 28. Améry, Jean. 1976. “Shylock, der Kitsch und die Gefahr.” Zeit (16), April 9.

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29. Améry, Jean. 1969. “Der ehrbare Antisemitismus. Die Barrikade vereint mit dem Spießer- Stammtisch gegen den Staat der Juden.” Zeit (30): p.  16, July 25. http://www.zeit.de/1969/30/der-ehrbare-antisemitismus/komplettansicht. 30. The contiguity with the dystopian paradigm of art/interpretation of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in Chap. 3 is obvious here. 31. Fassbinder, Rainer Werner. 1976. “‘Meine Sorge: ein neuer Faschismus.’ Rainer Werner Fassbinder antwortet auf die Vorwürfe.” FR, March 31. 32. Fassbinder, Rainer Werner. 1976. “Philosemiten sind Antisemiten.” Zeit (16), April 9. 33. Schmidt-Mühlisch, Lothar. 1976. “Ungeschichtlich ins Ungeschick. Wie Rainer Werner Fassbinder in den Verdacht des Antisemitismus kam.” Welt, March 27. 34. In this sense we can certainly speak of a commonality of the hyperreal paradigm of the previous chapter and the postmodern paradigm of the present chapter. However, the absence of a discursive continuity between the rebel youth films and Garbage, the City and Death subjects the relation between both paradigms to contingency. The discursive dissociation of the play’s aesthetics from realism is the discursive link to be traced. Although both paradigms might be the result of a particular condition of social reality, the embedding of the artworks in particular social discourses is of relevance for the artwork’s meaning as it derives from the emerging paradigms of art/interpretation. 35. Henrichs, Benjamin. 1976. “Fassbinder, ein linker Faschist? Ein Dichter und ein Denker blamieren sich.” Zeit (14), March 26. 36. Stöhr, Martin. 1976. “Ein primitives Abziehbild. Weitere Anmerkungen zu Fassbinders ‘Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod.’” AJW (15): 3, April 9. 37. It is most likely that Stöhr here refers to Manfred Roeder, a known neo-­ Nazi who was sentenced to prison for hate speech in 1976 (Speit, Andreas. 2014. “Manfred Roeder ist tot.” taz, August 1. http://www.taz. de/!5036341/). 38. Stöhr, “Ein primitives Abziehbild.” 39. Ibid. 40. Améry, “Shylock.” 41. Fassbinder, “Philosemiten….” 42. Stöhr, “Ein primitives Abziehbild.” 43. The Steglitzer Kreisel is an office bloc in Berlin-Steglitz, which made the headlines at the beginning of the construction works in the early 1970s. 44. Karasek, Hellmuth. 1976. “Shylock in Frankfurt. SPIEGEL-Redakteur Hellmuth Karasek über Rainer Werner Fassbinder.” Der Spiegel (15): 209–212, April 5. 45. DW. 1976. “Noch einmal Fassbinder und die Juden.” Welt, April 8.

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46. Galinski, Heinz. 1976. “Der Sache einen schlechten Dienst erwiesen. Bemerkungen zu einer Stellungnahme.” AJW (17), April 23. 47. From here onward I write Self/Other in capital letters if I refer to social identities locked in an asymmetrical power hierarchy, while self/other refers to individuals. 48. Schmidt-Mühlisch, “Ungeschichtlich ins Ungeschick.” 49. Wiegand, Wilfried. 1976. “Gefährliche Klischees. Zur Diskussion um Fassbinder.” FAZ, April 2. 50. Améry, “Shylock.” 51. Fest, “Reicher Jude von links.” 52. Wiegand, “Gefährliche Klischees.” 53. Uttitz, Friedrich. 1976. “Einige Fragen an Rainer Werner Faßbinder. Zu seinem Theaterstück ‘Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod.’” AJW (13): 7, March 26. 54. Lamm, Hans. 1976. “Die skurrilen Formen der Zensur. Wie darf sich die Gesellschaft gegen Entgleisungen von Künstlern zur Wehr setzen?” Vorwärts (16), April 15. 55. Iden, Peter. 1984. “Die notwendige Zumutung. An Fassbinders ‘Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod’ kommt Frankfurt nicht vorbei.” FR, July 3. 56. Ibid. 57. For a further description of the controversial reactions that the character of Ernst Jünger brings to the discourse, see the subchapter “Configuring a critical identity” later on. 58. Tolmein, Oliver. 1984. “‘Die Stadt frißt ihre Kinder, wo sie sie findet.’” taz, July 7. 59. Michaelis, Rolf. 1984. “Deutscher Müll. Zensur aus Angst und Unlauterkeit. Wieder verbietet Frankfurt Uraufführung eines Stückes von Rainer W. Fassbinder.” Zeit (29): 29, July 13. 60. Raab, Michael. 1984. “Sado-masochistische Spiele… Juden auf deutschen Bühnen: Gedankenlosigkeit als ‘Provokation.’” Vorwärts (32): 23, August 2. 61. For a detailed exposition of the argument see Spivak’s seminal essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988). 62. Uttitz, Friedrich. 1984. “Eine Frage des Verantwortungsgefühls.” AJW (32): 3, August 10. 63. Jacobs, Boike. 1984. “Fassbinders Ewiger Jude. Zu dem Frankfurter Theaterskandal um ‘Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod.’” AJW (28), July 13. 64. Ibid. 65. The use of the term “representation” in this context is, I agree, confusing, since it stands for two different moments of the analysis. This confusion arises from the pervasive dominance of the paradigm of representation

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in social reality. Representation is generally regarded as the relation of sign and reference. However, when I speak of the relation between representation and meaning, representation takes a more abstract meaning, as the signifying dimension of social reality, while signification does not necessarily have to be accompanied by reference, as, for instance, the conceptualization of representation as quotation shows. Representation is as much subject to paradigmatic shifts as meaning is. 66. The parliamentary group the Greens in the City Council of Frankfurt is the only parliamentary group that was openly supportive of the performance of the play (“Auf der Kippe.” 1985. Spiegel (37): 217–218, September 9). The left-alternative city magazine Pflasterstrand, which was edited by the prominent Green politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit, similarly supported the play (see, e.g., the issue of November 16, 1985, Vol. 223). Cohn-Bendit himself, as we will see, acted in a very nuanced, bridge-building manner. 67. Fuß, Holger. 1985. “Sind Juden niemals böse? Der lange Streit um Fassbinders Müll-Stück. Am 31. Oktober soll die Premiere sein.” Vorwärts (40): 22–23, September 28. 68. Zwerenz, “Dürfen…?”; Zwerenz, “Fassbinder….” 69. Zwerenz, “Dürfen…?” 70. Schauspiel Frankfurt. 1985. “Vorrede an die Zuschauer [aus dem Programmheft zu dem Fassbinder-Stück; Abdruck].” FR, October 30. 71. Becker, Peter von. 1985. “Fast verspielt. Das Thater als unmoralische Anstalt?  – Beobachtungen und fragen zum Frankfurter FassbinderStreit.” theater heute (12): 3–9, December 1. 72. Rühle, “Dieses Stück….” 73. Schauspiel Frankfurt, “Vorrede….” 74. “Warum tun Sie das? Menschen und ihre Motive (1): Dietrich Hilsdorf inszeniert Fassbinder.” FR, October 31. 75. Michal, Wolfgang. 1985. “Kein Lehrstück, sondern Schnulze. Der Streit um Fassbinders Theaterstück geht weiter.” Vorwärts (45): 4, November 2. 76. Sommer, Theo. 1985. “Die Kunst ist frei und muß es bleiben. Das Fassbinder-Stück ist eine heilsame Zumutung.” Zeit (46), November 8. 77. Ibid. 78. Becker, “Fast verspielt.” 79. Fetscher, Iring. 1985. “Ein bequemer Protest. Fassbinders ‘Müll’: Am wehrlosen Objekt wurde nachgeholt, was man bisher versäumte.” Vorwärts (47), November 16. 80. Krug, “Das bittere Erbe…”; Petermann, Werner, and Friederike Tinnappel. 1985. “Die Bühne wurde besetzt. Montag neuer Versuch.” FR, November 2; Brill, Klaus. 1985. “Premiere außerhalb des Spielplans. Wegen der geplanten Uraufführung kommt es zu einer öffentlichen

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Demonstration deutscher Juden, die in ihrer Art ohne Beispiel ist.” SZ, November 2./3; Karasek, Hellmuth. 1985. “Wo alle recht und unrecht haben. Spiegel-­ Redakteur Hellmuth Karasek über eine FassbinderUraufführung, die nicht stattfand.” Spiegel (45): 298–299, November 4. 81. The claims of the Green Party brought forward in the City Council of Frankfurt in 1982 have been quoted in a feature aired in the nation-wide radio station Deutschlandradio Kultur on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the award presentation to Ernst Jünger on August 28, 2007. For the transcript of the contribution see Berndt, Christian. 2007. “Umstrittene Ehrung. Vor 25 Jahren erhielt Ernst Jünger den Goethepreis der Stadt Frankfurt am Main. Deutschlandradio Kultur.” August 28. Accessed March 19, 2014. http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/ umstrittene-ehrung.932.de.html?dram:article_id=129814. 82. Mohr, Reinhard. 1985. “Intendant Rühle  – ein ‘Kohl der Kultur.’ Diskussionen um das Fassbinder-Stück setzen den Frankfurtern weiter zu/Dan Diner: Wallmann muß zurücktreten.” taz, November 12. 83. ft. 1985. “Fassbinder-Stück: Schon Metapher geworden? Im Programmkino ‘Harmonie’ diskutierten Juden und Nichtjuden über ihr Verhältnis nach Auschwitz.” FR, November 12. 84. Ibid. 85. “‘Wehrt euch!”’ 1985. Spiegel (45): 299, November 4. 86. “Demonstration der Mißachtung.” 1985. AJW, November 8. 87. D/R/S. 1985. “Keine Angst vor Fassbinder-Stück.” FR, October 28; FAZ 1985. “Fassbinders ‘Müll…’ Proteste, Einwände, Demonstrationen.” FAZ, October 29; “Gegen Fassbinder-Stück.” 1985. SZ, October 29. 88. Zehm, Günter. 1985. “Kein Grund für Rühle, den Pikierten zu spielen. Es ging in Frankfurt weder um Sozialtherapie noch um Kunstfreiheit.” Welt, November 13. 89. Friedman, Michel. 1985. “Durch die Aufführung wird die Versöhnung verhindert. Der Kulturdezernent der Jüdischen Gemeinde in Frankfurt am Main nimmt Stellung.” FR, October 30. 90. Schneider, Karl. 1985. “‘Ich stehe an der Seite der Juden.’ Deutliche Worte des hessischen Kultusministers Karl Schneider in der Fassbinder-­ Diskussion [Auszug aus Rede].” AJW (49): 3, November 29. 91. Petermann & Tinnappel, “Die Bühne wurde besetzt”; Köpke, Horst. 1985. “An diesem Abend gab es fast nur Verlierer. Wie in Frankfurt die Uraufführung des Fassbinder-Stücks von jüdischen Demonstranten verhindert wurde.” FR, November 2; “Das Stück, das Gezeter und die geplatzte Premiere. Trotz Verhinderung des Fassbinder-Stückes hält Intendant Rühle an Aufführung fest/Bühne wurde besetzt. Heftige Debatten in Israel: Fassbinder wird als ‘Neofaschist’ beschimpft.” 1985. taz, November 2.

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92. “Demonstration der Mißachtung.” 93. The subsequent paragraphs refer to Rancière (1999, pp. 43–60). 94. The reference to the Habermasian model of communication derives from Rancière’s interpretation of it, since it is against this particular interpretation of this model that Rancière erects his own theoretical considerations (Rancière 1999, pp. 47–60). 95. Brill, “Premiere….” 96. “Demonstration der Mißachtung”; see also Uttitz, Friedrich. 1985. “Es ist Mangel an Anstand. Die Fassbinder-Diskussion macht sich selbständig.” AJW, November 15. 97. “Red-green” most likely refers to Cohn-Bendit’s red hair, as well as to the color associated with socialism, while the color green is clearly associated with the party the Greens of which Cohn-Bendit is and was a member. 98. Becker, “Fast verspielt.” 99. Henrichs, Benjamin. 1985. “Haß im Kopf, Liebe im Bauch. Wie Fassbinders Stück nicht uraufgeführt und dann doch aufgeführt wurde.” Zeit (46): 3, November 8. 100. Köpke, “An diesem Abend….” 101. In Kritik des Zionismus (En: A Critique of Zionism) Micha Brumlik points toward this ethnic aspect of the Jewish religion (Brumlik 2007, pp. 10–11). 102. “‘Wir haben eine Leiche im Keller.’ Ignatz Bubis und Daniel Cohn-­ Bendit über Juden in Frankfurt und den Fassbinder-Streit.” 1985. Spiegel (46): 24–32, November 11. 103. Iden, Peter. 1985. “Das muß jetzt sichtbar werden für all. Rainer Werner Fassbinders Stück ‘Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod’ uraufgeführt.” FR, November 5. 104. R.M. 1985. “Der Verzicht auf die Fassbinder-Aufführung in Frankfurt. Eine erlösende Entscheidung.” NZZ, November 14. 105. “Wehrt euch!” 106. The positing of the idea of a German Jewish identity should not lead to the conclusion that it did establish itself definitively or that the establishment remained uncontested. It is beyond the scope of this work to make claims about the development of the idea in the course of history. We have to refrain from falling into the trap of essentialism and proclaim the immutable existence of an identity after it has come into being. An identity can disappear or transform as fast as it came into being. Obviously, the claim of the development of a German Jewish identity is confined by the limits set by this case study; it is confined to post-World War II (West) Germany. 107. “Wehrt euch!”

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108. Neander, Joachim. 1985. “‘Ohne Angst gehen wir Juden friedlich auf die Straße.’” Welt, November 2. 109. Pokatzky, Klaus. 1985. “Draußen vor der Tür. Gespräche am Rander der Demonstration.” Zeit (46): 3–4, November 8. 110. taz/ap. 1985. “Müll-Stück: Drama geht weiter.” taz, November 13; also kb. 1985. “Nach Absetzung des Fassbinder-Stückes: Erleichterung bei der Jüdischen Gemeinde. ‘Mit der Entscheidung des Intendanten wird weiterer Schaden für Juden und Nichtjuden abgewendet.’” SZ, November 13 and 60 SZ and “Erleichterung ohn Triumph. Positive Reaktionen auf Absetzung des Fassbinder-Stückes.” 1985. FR, November 14. 111. Pokatzky, Klaus. 1985. “Opfer unter Tätern.” Zeit (47), November 15. 112. Henrichs, “Haß im Kopf….”

References Adorno, Theodor W. 1983. Cultural Criticism and Society. (1951) In Prisms. Trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber, 17–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Améry, Jean. 1966. Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwältigten. München: Szczesny. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 1998. Key Concepts in Post-­ Colonial Studies. London/New York: Routledge. Baldwin, Peter. 1990. The Historikerstreit in Context. In Reworking the Past. Hitler, the Holocaust and the Historian’s Debate, ed. Peter Baldwin, 3–37. Boston: Beacon. Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1991. Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bodek, Janusz. 1991. Die Fassbinder-Kontroversen: Entstehung und Wirkung eines literarischen Textes. Zu Kontinuität und Wandel einiger Erscheinungsformen des Alltagsantisemtismus in Deutschland nach 1945, seinen künstlerischen Weihen und seiner öffentlichen Inszenierung. Frankfurt (M.): Peter Lang. Bönisch, Georg. 2006/2007. Nachwort. Die deutsche Katastrophe. In Hitler. Eine Biographie, ed. Joachim Fest, 1272–1275. Hamburg: Spiegel. Bösch, Frank. 2007. ‘Spiegel’-Affäre. In Skandale in Deutschland nach 1945, Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung im Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, Dezember 2007 bis März 2008, im Zeitgeschichtlichen Forum Leipzig der Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Mai bis Oktober 2008, ed. Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 59–67. Bielefeld/Leipzig: Kerber. Broder, Henryk M. 1986. Der Ewige Antisemit. Über Sinn und Funktion eines beständigen Gefühls. Frankfurt (M.): Fischer. Brumlik, Micha. 2007. Kritik des Zionismus. Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.

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Brumlik, Micha, and Brigitta Elisa Simbürger. 2007. Autobiografische Reflexionen  – Antisemitismus, Antizionismus und der Nahostkonflikt in der deutschen Linken. Ein Interview mit Micha Brumlik. In Exklusive Solidarität. Linker Antisemitismus in Deutschland. Vom Idealismus zur Antiglobalisierungsbewegung, ed. Matthias Brosch, Michael Elm, Norman Geißler, Brigitta Elisa Simbürger, and Oliver von Wrochem, 191–208. Berlin: Metropol. Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1987. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press. ———. 1997. Logic, Imagination, Reflection. In World in Fragments. Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination, ed. David Ames Curtis, 246–272. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Chronologie der Ereignisse. Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod. 1998. In Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod. Nur eine Scheibe Brot, ed. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 101–118. Frankfurt (M.): Verlag der Autoren. Elsaesser, Thomas. 1996. Fassbinder’s Germany. History Identity Subject. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Fest, Joachim. (1973) 2006/2007. Hitler. Eine Biographie. Hamburg: Spiegel. Filmverlag der Autoren. 1976. Schatten der Engel. Ein Film von Daniel Schmid nach dem Theaterstück ‘Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod’ von Rainer Werner Fassbinder [Dokumentation]. Frankfurt (M.): Zweitausendeins. Freud, Sigmund. 1946. Erinnern, wiederholen und durcharbeiten. (1914) In Werke aus den Jahren 1913–1917, Gesammelte Werke 10, ed. Anna Freud, 126–136. London: Imago Publishing. Friedrich, Regine. 1976. Mündel will Vormund sein! Oder: die TAT-Story. In Neue Szene Frankfurt am Main 1970–76. Ein Kultur-Lesebuch, ed. Katharina Bleibohm, and Wolfgang Sprang, 22–27. Frankfurt (M.): Waldemar Sprang. Gandhi, Leela. 1998. Postcolonial Theory. A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hargens, Wanja. 2010. Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod. Rainer Werner Fassbinder une ein Stück deutscher Zeitgeschichte, ZeitgeschichteN 5. Berlin: Metropol. Heuberger, Rachel, and Helga Krohn. 1988. Hinaus aus dem Ghetto… Juden in Frankfurt am Main 1800–1950, Begleitbuch zur ständigen Ausstellung des Jüdischen Museums der Stadt Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt (M.): Fischer. Homer, Sean. 2005. Jacques Lacan. Routledge Critical Thinkers. London/New York: Routledge. Jentsch, Tobias. 2005. Da/zwischen. Eine Typologie radikaler Fremdheit, Probleme der Dichtung. Studien zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte 37. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. Jørgensen, Marianne, and Louise J.  Phillips. 2002. Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage.

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CHAPTER 8

Conclusions

Let me come back, in the last part of this book, to Jacques Rancière’s distinction between the “aesthetics of politics” and the “politics of aesthetics.” Politics, Rancière claims, is the configuration of a specific sphere of experience; the interweaving of ways of Being, Doing, and Saying. The aesthetics of politics refers to the configuration of possibilities of social identity formation on the basis of a shared realm of experience. In the vein of Cornelius Castoriadis, we could also describe this dimension as the work with social imaginary significations which configure social relations. In contrast, the politics of aesthetics precedes subjectification, since it creates new structures of individuality–new kinds of “thisness” (haecceities). It formulates and shapes sensible realms of experience, which may be activated so as to become social identities. It creates a new horizon of shared experiences through which new objects and new discourses become possible (Rancière 2010, pp. 141–142). Throughout the previous chapters, I have been concerned with the interplay of the politics of aesthetics and the aesthetics of politics–how art configures social reality. The starting point of my considerations was Wolfgang Iser’s acknowledgment that the reception of art is a central component of its social effectiveness. Reception is that moment when art interacts with the social order. When analyzing the social impact of art, it is crucial to place reception at the center of attention. An artwork will only be completed, temporarily, in the process of reception, only to become incomplete again in the process of each new reading. © The Author(s) 2020 M. Knapp, Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40086-6_8

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These reflections made me search for a space in which it is possible to speak of a social reception, a reception which exceeds the realm of the private and engages society in a discourse about itself. The West German public sphere can be thought of as such a space, crucially allowing for the interrelationship of culture, politics, and society. As we have seen, in all five exemplary cases a fictional work of art was responsible for far-reaching public debates about society’s self-conception, about its values, norms, and truths. The institution of fictional art is subject to the principle of aesthetics. It exists only on the basis of the interruption of the referential function of language. It is through this interruption that the fictional artwork becomes capable of transforming social reality into patterns, forms, and structures. These can be accessed and read by what Castoriadis calls the nature of the psyche, which he describes as in constant “representative/affective/intentional flux” (Castoriadis 1987, p. 274). Artworks become socially effective because they can activate and re-structure the patterns of the visible, and through this the transformation of meaning takes place. The discourse on Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy is well-suited to illustrate this process of the transformation of meaning, starting from the aesthetic. The play re-describes the patterns of distance and proximity between subject and society. The subject is drawn into proximity to the happenings on stage by the documentary aesthetics, calling on it to re-visit its relation with society. The happenings on stage are transformed in the process of reception in order to become a relational equivalent for the social, through which the play draws the subject into its developments– those on stage and those in the sphere of the social. It is the transformed relation of distance and proximity between beholder and the performance generated by documentary aesthetics that translates into the realm of “the real.” The public discourse transforms this re-structured pattern of perception into a transformed meaning of the political. Society becomes political: there is no outside of politics any longer, only the avoidance of responsibility, which does not relieve the subject of personal guilt. The Deputy is socially effective because its sensually accessible patterns of particularity and proximity inscribed in documentary aesthetics make it possible to redefine political non-engagement during the Holocaust as an act instead of a non-act. The experience of dismay as a result of documentary aesthetics appears as a precondition for the redefinition of social meaning. Aesthetics restructures the patterns of visibility and is hence instrumental in re-casting the social imaginary signification of society’s origin as

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deriving from the lessons learned by the Holocaust. Such mythical origins of the nation as heroism and self-sacrifice–classical motives of nationalism (Smith 1991)–are substituted by the deliberate re-constitution of a nation based on national guilt. The artwork, based on the aesthetic principle, creates the new relation between subject and society and hence provides the context from which signification can appear. The context, however, is not of the signifying order, but of the representational. When Rancière says that Politics is a matter of subjects or, rather, modes of subjectification. By subjectification I mean the production through a series of actions of a body and a capacity for enunciation not previously identifiable within a given field of experience, whose identification is thus part of the reconfiguration of the field of experience (Rancière 1999, p. 35),

this in fact refers to the representational order. Reconfiguring the representational order equals the reconfiguration of the field of experience referred to by Rancière. It is not the individual field of experience but a social field of experience which lends itself to subjectification. Subjectification implies the linking of the individual with the discourses and structures of the social within the frames of possibility provided by the social. The aesthetic dimension is provided by the social, by opening a new space of experience to be inhabited by a plurality of subjects who recognize each other within this space and come to share a part of each other’s world. The dimension of aesthetics is crucial in this respect because it is of the kind that is accessible by the individual psyche and its representational/affective/intentional flux (Castoriadis). Subjectification, we may suggest, is tied to the existence of a representational order that is expressive of the field of experience under consideration. This specific expressiveness which makes an experience recognizable as belonging to this particular space of experience is its aesthetics: the concrete form, structure, or pattern given to an experience. The conflict between interpretive frames (patterns of interpretation) of art in public cultural controversies is also a conflict about the interpretation of the social. The aesthetic order of representation and the specific social order it represents depend on each other, Rancière claims. In as much as cultural controversies are a struggle for the “true” representation of circumstances, they are simultaneously a struggle over the shape in which the social order can come into being and hence in which shape it can “come true.”

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The hegemonic struggle between two orders of the social dominated the debate about the representation of sexuality between the churches and civil society in the early 1960s when Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence was screened in European cinemas. The struggle between the icon and the metaphor is also a struggle between a religious and a secular social order. What is questioned here is the nature of “truth” as such. Does truth derive from a superior authority? Does truth derive its meaning from the transcendental order, namely God, and by extension is it defined by God’s representative on earth, the church? Or is truth, as the metaphoric paradigm suggests, indeterminate? Does it oscillate between different significations? Is it relational? Is truth not subject to social interactions and hence a product of human nature? The question of truth directly refers to the question of the power of interpretation. The religious order is based on the doctrine of the church. It is indisputable and uncircumventable. There is an analogy between the icon, which has one single meaning, and the doctrine. The metaphor, on the other hand, is defined by interpretation and lacks the authority of a single meaning. It depicts the absence of determination and is read in the social discourse about the film as representing the secular order of humankind, subjecting the world to the workings of human beings. Participatory democracy translates the human principle of indeterminacy into a political system in which–as described by Claude Lefort–the seat of power is empty and only temporarily occupied. Historical development has witnessed the expansion and temporary victory of this political attitude, most notably in the 1960s and far into the 1980s, when ideological struggles were fierce and the power of social movements evidence of the steady questioning of authority. The heated debate about Bergman’s film and the depiction of sexuality in cultural products shows the significance of the representational order in the struggle for social dominance. The social order’s capacity to embed its structure into the subjects’ representational/affective/intentional structure is of utmost importance for its success. It is in this sense that the social order depends on the representational order and its specific aesthetics through which the world is cast in a mold. Remembering Castoriadis’ description of the relation between the subject and society as a relation of mutual inscription, aesthetics as the underlying framework of any representational order creates the linkage between the nature of the social (signification) and the nature of the psyche (representation). Aesthetics transforms signification into form, structure, and patterns, as can be seen when–in the case of the debate over Bergman’s

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The Silence–the iconic reading of the image prescribes fixity (authority) in contrast to the metaphoric reading, which focuses on the oscillating nature of signification. Fixity and oscillation are perceptible patterns which develop into organizing structures of the representational flux, on the one hand, and into organizing social structures, on the other hand, as when social orders such as democracy or the church institution display the same patterns grounded in either fixity or oscillation. Art, it may be suggested, creates common spaces of experience which cover the world with an affective and form-giving texture. The world hence receives a contextually and historically specific mood, which specifies relevance, and contains its own truths as well as its own criteria of beauty, all of which set the stage for the meaningful framework to emerge. The development of youth as a discrete identity in consequence of the formation of the rebel youth films well illustrates the interrelation of the creation of aesthetic structures by fictional works of art and the articulation of spaces of experience. The eroticism and carnal expressiveness displayed in the films unsettles the existing order of representation and creates a space in which youth experiences its own body and movement beyond the confines established by the post-war social order. The discursive order of the period of self-control is contrasted with the depiction of sensuality, which creates a field in which the body receives new attention. It is a space in which the body’s desires find expression, in which the body is not merely a tool for serving society but a body from which desires originate. It is this process that we might, with Rancière, describe as the “politics of aesthetics,” whereby collective reception ensures the emergence of a horizon of shared experiences. It is the collective dimension of reception that turns these spaces of experience into a social phenomenon. Controversies and the public creation of meaning from artworks, meanwhile, politicize these sensual spaces of experience and enable identification or dismissal of the articulated space. It is this Rancièrean “aesthetics of politics” through which social space is redistributed and restructured. When the public discourse about the rebel youth films ascribes youth a liminal position at the threshold of society, this re-structures the notion of the social, its reach and its borders. At the same time, youth is given a concrete place within the social. As a metaphor for American culture and modernity, youth is additionally given meaning as both the place and stage through which society has to go in its metamorphosis into a modern society. The development of the discourse of youth described in this book shows that the “aesthetics of politics” is by no means a static articulation, and is instead subject to processual movement.

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The Orwell case similarly shows the power of aesthetic structures in the political process. The dystopian space of experience developed in the narratives of the peace movement of the 1980s makes the world tangible as simultaneously doomed and modifiable. Although this sounds contradictory and inconsistent at the level of meaning, it is not so in the framework of experience, where global dystopia can be counteracted by local political practice. The dystopian paradigm of interpretation, as it has been described in this book, incorporates both dimensions of doom and political agency, which is why it lends itself to mobilizing the population for the topic of the surveillance state. The transfer of the dystopian texture of the world from the limited discourse of the peace movement to the discourse of surveillance displays the difference between signification and the pattern of perception underlying the movement from one discourse to the other. The pattern of perception covers the world with a mood, a lens, through which the world appears in a specific shape. In combining doom and transformation, the dystopian aesthetics is capable of molding entire worlds. These realities, meanwhile, are always only partial realities, the realities of a group of people sharing the same patterns of perception. They become realities when actors begin to transform these patterns into social practices and institutions. These realities form the foundations of social identities. Yet social identity, this work suggests, comprises an aesthetic dimension through which the subject can connect with social reality. Identity is the manifestation of a specific reality–a specific structure of meaning. Aesthetics creates the link between the subject and the social order. It is through specific aesthetic representations that the structures of the world become visible and tangible to the subjects. Aesthetics turns individuals into social subjects, who share an understanding of the good, the truth, and the beautiful. Let me once again point out that aesthetics throughout this work refers not to the definition of beauty in artworks, but to bringing an object into sensual perception and subjecting it to form-giving, as Kastner and Sonderegger (2014, p. 8) aptly note. Nowhere is this fundamental aesthetic nature of identity more visible than in my last case study about the three Fassbinder controversies. Although it is the most complex of the five case studies, its structure best exposes the aesthetic dimension of identity. The adversaries in the controversies–most notably in the last and largest Fassbinder controversy in 1985/1986–share the same political concern, namely the struggle against anti-Semitism in West German society. This fact draws attention to aesthetics as a central element of identity.

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For the Jewish community the play reproduces anti-Semitic stereotypes. This interpretation results from an understanding of fictional representations as referring to and describing ontological entities, which naturally makes the figure of the Rich Jew a stereotypical laughing stock and is hence read as a vilification of Jews. Jewish political identity (in contrast to religious, cultural, or ethnic identity) is here strongly rooted in the paradigm of interpretation which had its starting point in the “Adorno dictum.” The Adorno dictum proposed the end of representation after the Holocaust, because representation would always turn into a perpetrator’s tool for oppression. This dictum translates, in the context of the Fassbinder controversy, into what I have termed the paradigm of the “prohibition of the image.” This paradigm should not be conflated with the Jewish religious ban on images. It is a paradigm that derives its framework (space of experience/pattern of perception) from the aftermath of World War II and the experience of German cultural production during the Hitler years. The order of representation is one of taboo, based on the ontological aesthetics prevalent throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. This aesthetic pattern is countered by the paradigm proposed by the play’s supporters, which highlights the figure as constituted not by an intrinsic ontology, but by the social world which leaves its mark on the individual without considering her individuality. The postmodern paradigm of interpretation marks the difference in perception: while the former paradigm focuses on the subject as an autonomous entity, the latter paradigm emphasizes society’s power in imprinting its categories on the subject. The play’s supporters derive their perceptive framework from the left-alternative critical reassessment of anti-Semitism on the one hand, and post-structural theoretical developments on the other. The fact that the Jewish community and the left-alternative milieu turn into adversaries in this controversy, despite their shared convictions, shows that the structures of meaning underlying social identities depend not so much on the question of what is said, but on how it is said. The political mobilization of the adversaries exposes the importance of the order of representation for social identities and identification. Aesthetics structures spaces of shared experience. It gives birth to sensible worlds. The affective structures of aesthetic expression make the contents of the world visible, tangible, and experienceable. This is a way of bringing the world into being. This is how fictional works of art create social worlds. Fictional contents do not take direct effect: Orwell’s description of Big Brother does not bring Big Brother into being. Fiction’s effect

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is not dependent on the word’s referential function. Language in fiction is not performative in the sense used by John L. Austin, as when the marriage registrar says “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” an act which establishes the marriage (Austin 2003). Fiction creates social worlds by bringing forth patterns, forms, and structures through which the subject is enabled to see, feel, and experience the world, not by “doing” things in the strict sense of the word. Patterns, forms, and structures reconfigure the subject’s relationship with the world at the most diverse levels: between politics and society, distance and proximity, the subject’s body and other individuals, transcendence and ambivalence. These examples from my case studies, however, are not by any means exhaustive. On the contrary, fiction’s reconfigurations of the world are limitless and subject to the infinity of the human imagination. The case studies analyzed in this book cover a broad range of possible meanings that a fictional work of art can have for the emergence of the social. Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence actualizes the previously existing identity of secular civil society against the hegemonic struggle of religious authority. This example shows the indivisible linkage of the representative and social order. A specific aesthetics is not obsolete once a social order has established itself: it continues representing and actualizing this order over the passage of time. It is the means through which the social order constantly asserts itself as this particular social order. Similarly, the scandalizing of data surveillance by resorting to a re-interpretation of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four draws on a previously existing social identity. The paradigm of interpretation applied to the novel derives its aesthetics from the dystopian framework of the peace movement. It applies the paradigm to Orwell’s novel in order to expand the structures of meaning. The meaningful structures are thereby diversified, in order to cover new objects and new fields. The other three case studies all bring new social identities into existence. Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy generates a discourse through which a politicized identity ultimately emerges and which eventually leads to the reconfiguration of society’s foundations. This identity lays claim to dominance in the socio-political realm throughout several decades in West Germany. The rebel youth films, in turn, gave rise to a transitory identity– on two levels. First, youth was again a stage of life, redefined as an extended period between childhood and adulthood. The introduction of a youth culture into the generational scheme of the Federal Republic of Germany is a lasting legacy of this film genre. Second, for the 1950s, this identity

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gives metaphoric expression to the metamorphosis experienced by West German society on its path to becoming a modern and Westernized society. The transition from a liminal identity in the shape of the rebel youth to social integration in the shape of teenage culture marks the developments West Germany underwent within a very short period of time. This case study vividly depicts culture’s capacity for objectifying the social in order to imagine a sense of cohesion. The Fassbinder controversy, finally, brings into existence a political Jewish identity in West Germany. Strikingly, however, this takes place as a rejection of a newly emerging aesthetic paradigm, which at first glance threatens the precarious peace of Jews in Germany. The adherence to the “prohibition of the image,” the paradigm that resulted from the experience of culture in the Hitler years, appeared to be a safer one for Jewish existence in West Germany. Simultaneously, the play also transformed left-alternative identity in West Germany in the sense that it enabled the development of a nuanced and differentiated perspective on structural anti-Semitism. The fact that the adversaries established their identities on the basis of the aesthetic dimension, instead of on the basis of signification, exposes the strong relationship that exists between aesthetics and the formation of identity. It is indeed striking that the adversaries actually agreed that what is at issue is anti-Semitism in West German society. What they disagreed upon was the different appraisals of how the struggle against anti-Semitism was to be given expression. The case studies reveal the almost concealed working of the aesthetic as a structuring dimension of the social. The aesthetic-sensual expression, which can be experienced in art in its purest form, connects social reality with the recipient. Aesthetics shapes the world, through which objects, institutions, and social practices become visible and apperceptive. Social reality is configured by diverse aesthetic languages which accompany and give rise to entire social worlds to be inhabited by subjects in the shape of identities. Art does not have a monopoly on the emergence of aesthetic expressiveness, but in modern societies the arts take a privileged role in working on the aesthetic dimension of language because they are founded on the aesthetic principle. It is crucial to understand this interplay between the politics of aesthetics and the aesthetics of politics mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. The aesthetics of politics cannot be thought of without the politics of aesthetics. The politics of aesthetics creates a world for the individuals living in a society. This world is the precondition for the process of subjectification. Subjectification turns individuals into subjects with specific social routines and scopes of action and establishes the

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possibility for community. Subjectification is performed as a political act on the basis of a shared world. The empirical material underlying the case studies analyzed in this book derives from a public sphere which no longer exists in the same way. As mentioned at the beginning of this work, the influence of the Feuilleton as a hegemonic platform for cultural debate in West Germany has deteriorated due to the newspaper crises and the rise of the internet as a global public medium. This also means that the poietic publics addressed by a public sphere have changed. We can no longer speak of a purely national public sphere, within which cultural processes take place. The triumphal march of the internet combined with globalization has resulted in the globalization but also fragmentation of publics. New publics emerge and old publics lose their impact on the constitution of the social. This work is not concerned with the question of the transformation of the public sphere, which is why it has not dealt with present-day developments in the media. The new structures of cultural communication have not yet been comprehensively analyzed by media studies, work still left for future research to do. It is indeed of crucial interest for an understanding of the present to detect the dynamics of cultural and counter-cultural publics in order to be able to understand the developments of sociality in the present age. Let me emphasize, however, that this does not fundamentally affect the results of this work. It has been concerned with the role played by fiction for the constitution of the social. The West German Feuilleton merely served as an exemplary case which records the interaction of fiction and the social. Essentially, the social work undertaken by the reception of fictional works of art is not confined to culturally hegemonic spaces as was the case in the former Feuilleton. The place where reception occurs has changed, but–I claim–not the work accomplished by reception. Fictional arts’ impact might have become more scattered in public space, and simultaneously more globalized, but they continue to create worlds of sensual perception. They continue to create perceptible patterns of the visible, the sayable, and the tangible and hence continue to shape subjectivities and socio-political identities, through which new social structures come into being.

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References Austin, John.L. 2003. How To Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1987. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press. Kastner, Jens, and Ruth Sonderegger. 2014. Emanzipation von ihren Extremen her denken. Ein einleitendes Plädoyer für Bourdieu und/mit Rancière. In Pierre Bourdieu und Jacques Rancière. Emanzipatorische Praxis denken, ed. Jens Kastner, and Ruth Sonderegger, 7–30. Wien/Berlin: Turia + Kant. Rancière, Jacques. 1999. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Minneapolis/ London: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2010. The Paradoxes of Political Art. In Dissensus. On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Steve Corcoran, 134–151. London/New York: Continuum. Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National Identity. London: Penguin Books.

Index1

A Aesthetics of politics, 16, 44, 46, 315, 319, 323 See also Politics of aesthetics Affect, 50–51, 62n18, 283 affective-imaginary texture, 44, 319 affective-intentional identification, 205 affective order, 44, 283, 295, 296, 299 Allegory, see Paradigm of interpretation, allegoric Alterity, 36, 37, 60n5, 60n6, 127, 128, 181, 182, 255, 256, 281 Anlehnung, 31 Antagonism, 285, 291, 296 democratic, 46, 291 general concept, 278, 279, 281 popular, 291 B Baudrillard, Jean, 15, 206, 208, 209, 217, 222, 227n55, 227n56, 247 Bauman, Zygmunt, 181, 182, 253

C Castoriadis, Cornelius, 1, 4, 5, 18, 30–37, 39, 44, 50, 59n1, 59n3, 59–60n5, 60n6, 60n7, 61n9, 61n10, 61n13, 113, 118, 124, 129, 133, 134n14, 155, 156, 160–162, 164, 168n35, 169n40, 184, 185, 188, 190, 191, 193, 197, 204, 252, 256, 257, 272, 275, 276, 280, 283, 295, 300, 315–318 Chain of equivalence, 17, 116, 117, 131, 132 Common ground, 62n19, 156, 285–287, 292 stage, 41, 156, 286 Consensus, 10, 39, 43, 48, 95, 123, 126, 131, 132, 163, 177, 207, 218, 226n47, 235, 260, 275, 285, 291, 292, 298 Constitution of the social, 2–4, 9, 11, 30, 44, 62n14, 324

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

Constitutive nature of language, 248, 298, 300 Contingency of the social, 297 Controversy, see Cultural, controversy Creatio ex nihilo, 33, 35 Cultural change, 189, 193, 203, 205, 214, 215, 219, 220, 235 controversy, 2–6, 10, 11, 13–17, 21–23, 30, 38, 46, 51, 54, 56, 59, 72–75, 95, 96, 103n57, 112, 123, 142–146, 151, 152, 156, 157, 163, 179, 233–241, 244, 246, 253, 258, 260–263, 265–268, 270–301, 302n10, 303n23, 303n25, 316–318, 320, 321, 323, 324 journalism, 3, 56–58, 75 openness, 202, 204 self-conception, 94 D Democracy, 13, 17, 33, 39–41, 45, 47, 48, 52, 62n14, 71, 74, 94, 95, 97n2, 100n34, 101n51, 108, 115, 123, 158, 177, 192, 259, 260, 278, 279, 318, 319 Democratization of politics, 156 Disagreement, 41, 285–287 Discourse of the other, 35, 249, 273, 274 Dissensus, 45, 95, 207, 269, 291, 300 See also Disagreement Distribution of the sensible, see Partition of the sensible Doubling, 117, 128, 132, 135n28, 205, 261 Durcharbeiten, 263

E Eidos/eide, 33, 37, 41, 61n14, 118, 140, 162, 164, 188, 192, 193, 205, 207, 220, 265 Ensemblist-identitary logic, 34, 60n7, 155, 191, 224n27, 256, 257 Essential identities, 291 F Fiction, 1–20, 22, 23, 30, 34, 38, 44–46, 76, 79, 80, 88, 112, 113, 115, 117–119, 121, 122, 125, 126, 128, 130, 132, 146, 148, 150, 160, 162, 175, 179, 186, 205, 210, 212, 213, 217, 221, 222, 229n77, 321, 322, 324 Fictional work of art, 3–5, 7, 8, 11, 57–59, 61n14, 70, 76, 79, 83, 87, 111, 117, 119, 125, 150, 153, 158, 162, 185, 207, 246, 248, 260, 298, 316, 322 Form-language, 76, 79–81, 83, 86, 96, 219 Freedom of the arts, 73, 74, 141, 142, 263, 278, 282 of expression, 278 Freud, Sigmund, 31, 36, 39, 118, 263 G Gauchet, Marcel, 41, 61n10, 94 H Haecceities, 14, 16, 44, 46, 95, 219, 235, 241, 315 Hegemonic practice, 116, 117, 125 Hyperreal, 16, 206, 208, 212, 213, 221, 227n55, 227n56, 247, 304n34

 INDEX 

I Iconicity, 75, 88–96 Identification, 7, 15, 17, 18, 39, 40, 42, 43, 59n4, 116, 117, 124, 149, 173, 190, 197, 199, 202, 212, 218, 247, 252, 255, 269, 273, 281, 286, 290, 295, 317, 319, 321 affective-intentional, 205 Identity, 22, 30, 42–46, 197, 202, 212, 235, 268–270, 273, 276, 278–281, 283, 285, 286, 295, 297, 317, 323 political, 15, 20, 42, 44, 116, 117, 123, 125, 131, 244, 261, 262, 270, 271, 286–288, 290, 295, 297, 321, 324 social, 4, 5, 7, 15–18, 21, 30, 38, 39, 43, 46, 48–50, 59n4, 101n51, 116, 117, 121, 125, 129, 132, 159, 190, 197, 217, 219, 220, 235, 241, 247, 268–271, 275, 285, 287, 293, 298, 305n47, 315, 320–322, 324 Identity politics, 234, 282, 290, 291 Imaginary, the, 4, 9, 11, 24n5, 30–38, 49, 50, 52, 62n14, 97n2, 116, 118, 140, 155, 162–164, 168n35, 181, 184, 186, 189, 190, 193, 194, 199, 200, 204, 205, 219, 220, 223n19, 269, 275, 295, 297, 315, 316 political, 140, 156, 158, 160, 162–164, 168n34 Imagination, 1, 5, 7, 11, 24n5, 31, 33, 34, 60n7, 113, 129, 179, 191, 213, 300, 322 Institution of fiction, 1, 7, 30, 76, 222 Iser, Wolfgang, 2–4, 7–9, 58, 117, 128, 132, 135n28, 205, 315

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L Lacan, Jacques, 35–37, 61n9, 249 Language of the psyche, 283 of the social, 283 Leaning on, see Anlehnung Lefort, Claude, 41, 61n13, 94, 318 Levinas, Emmanuel, 182, 255 Luckmann, Thomas, 113 M Magma, 37, 193, 295 Magmatic, 162 being of the social, 124, 156, 193, 207, 295 logic, 34, 35, 60n7, 191 Mediatized reality, 209, 222 Metaphoricity, 83–88, 93 Modern literature, 77–80, 150 Monadic core, 36, 37, 60–61n9, 113, 118, 185, 256 Mouffe, Chantal, 4, 6, 16, 17, 21, 30, 38–41, 43, 46, 48, 50, 59n4, 61–62n14, 116, 117, 121, 125, 129, 135n20, 197, 274, 278–281, 285–287, 291, 299, 301 N Name, 32, 42, 43, 59n4, 197, 234, 267, 275, 276, 279, 280, 287, 295 O Order of representation, 13, 71, 83–97, 126, 150, 163, 190, 317, 319, 321

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INDEX

Order of the visible and sayable, 43, 89, 156, 207, 213, 222, 269, 270, 316, 324 Othering, 250, 253, 255, 256, 276 Otherness, 23, 128, 129, 132, 180, 203, 241, 249, 250, 253, 255, 267, 276, 279, 280, 290, 292 Overcoming the past, 140, 154, 158, 168n29, 169n45, 257, 265, 281 P Paradigm of interpretation, 20–22, 58, 88 allegoric, 108, 110, 119–123, 125, 128 anti-realist, 245 dystopian, 110, 117–120, 123, 125–133, 304n30, 320, 322 of humanistic classicism, 149 iconic, 13, 70, 75, 83, 88, 89, 95, 96 of involvement, 149 metaphoric, 13, 70, 71, 75, 79, 82, 83, 86, 88, 91, 95, 96, 117, 118, 318 performative, 179, 205–207, 209, 211, 213, 215–219, 221, 222, 247 postmodern, 15, 234, 235, 241, 242, 246–262, 265, 266, 270, 272, 274, 276, 297–300, 304n34, 321 prohibition of the image, 15, 250, 256, 258–261, 264–266, 270, 274, 298–300, 321, 323 realist, 179, 186, 189, 190, 193, 197, 209–211, 213, 242, 243, 250, 260, 261, 273, 298 religious, 83, 88, 89, 96 (see Paradigm of interpretation, iconic) secular, 83, 94–96, 148

Paradigm of meaning, 6, 71, 89, 103n56, 131, 207–209, 213–215, 218, 221, 222, 243, 244, 256, 265, 270, 297 Partition of the sensible, 6, 14, 15, 41, 44, 45, 62n16, 222, 269, 300 Politics of aesthetics, 12, 16, 22, 29, 30, 44–46, 144, 299, 315, 319, 323 See also Aesthetics of politics Politics of art, 269 Prohibition of the image, see Paradigm of interpretation Psyche, 4, 6, 8, 18, 24n5, 33, 35–38, 59n3, 60n5, 60n9, 61n10, 113, 118, 185, 186, 244, 249, 252, 256, 283, 316, 317 madness of the, 113, 118, 256, 272 Psychic monad (see Radical imaginary; Monadic core) reality (see Psyche) Public sphere, 47–52, 55, 56, 62n18, 77, 259, 260, 316, 324 imaginary dimension of, 49 literary, 55–57, 82 poietic/poetic function of, 47–51, 62n20, 324 political, 82 as social performance, 47 Public stage, 47, 48, 62n19 See also Common ground R Radical imaginary, 36–38, 50, 60–61n9, 61n10, 113, 118 Rancière, Jacques, 4–6, 12, 14, 16, 21, 23, 30, 38, 41–46, 62n15, 62n16, 62n17, 62n19, 76, 77, 80, 82, 89, 126, 132, 146, 150, 156, 204, 207, 213, 216, 222, 235, 269, 285–288, 290, 296,

 INDEX 

299, 300, 308n93, 308n94, 315, 317, 319 Realist aesthetics, see Paradigm of interpretation, realist Reality principle, 1, 2, 118, 126, 131, 132, 153 Representational/affective/intentional flux, 37, 61n9, 316–319 Representational order, 317, 318 Ricoeur, Paul, 84, 87, 100n37, 119 S Self-alteration, 33, 140, 156, 161, 162, 164 Sensory perception, see Sensual perception Sensual perception, 2, 12, 301, 320, 324 Simulacrum, 208, 209, 214, 217, 222, 227n55, 227n56 Social-historical, the, 32–34, 40, 60n6, 118, 160, 162, 164, 169n40, 188, 257, 265 Social institution, 1, 3, 4, 30, 31, 34, 35, 40, 118, 119, 126, 132, 133, 155, 162, 180, 185, 188, 239, 256

331

Society‘s Other, see Otherness; Othering Spivak, Gayatri, 267, 268, 283, 284 Strategic essentialism, 283, 284 Subjectification, 42–46, 273, 287, 295, 297, 299, 315, 317, 323, 324 See also Identity Subject position, 39, 43, 59n4, 197, 204, 235, 273, 274, 278, 280–282, 286, 287, 291, 293, 295 T Thisness, see Haecceities U Unconscious, the, 35–37, 160, 249, 256 Uncounted, the, 41, 42, 292 W Working-through, see Durcharbeiten Work of art, see Fictional work of art