Destruction in the Performative [1 ed.] 9789401207416, 9789042034570

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Destruction in the Performative

Critical Studies Vol. 36

General Editor

Myriam Diocaretz Tilburg University Editorial Board

Anne E. Berger, Cornell University Rosalind C. Morris, Columbia University Marta Segarra, Universitat de Barcelona

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012

Destruction in the Performative

Edited and with an introduction by

Alice Lagaay and Michael Lorber

Cover Image by Miika Ahvenjärvi Cover Design by Inge Baeten The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-3457-0 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0741-6 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012 Printed in the Netherlands



Foreword & Acknowledgements

What do G.W. Hegel’s dialectics of recognition, Luk Perceval’s theatrical staging of Penthesilea, a French politician’s hunger strike and Richard Serra’s sculptures for urban space all have in common? They can be described as pertaining to various interconnected modes of destructive dynamics within a performative paradigm. Performativity is conceived here as a multi-faceted concept used to grasp and connect phenomena from different contexts on a spectrum ranging from language and social theory to drama and theatrical practice, from aesthetics and cultural science to economics and process theory. In all these realms, what characterises the performative perspective is a sharpened focus on the material and sensual, i.e. aisthetical character of events, and on the reality-constituting power of human actions and processes. Theoretical approaches informed by performative theories do not take for granted, in an essentialist sense, what lies before and around us as the world, but strive to draw attention to the particular manner in which that world is constituted in its very multi-dimensionality by human activities, processes, events and, above all perhaps, by perspectives. In recent years, the performative paradigm has had a profound influence on theory in the humanities and has led, broadly speaking, to a heightened understanding of the general interrelatedness of human realities. This emphasis has resulted, however, in something of a bias towards, on the one hand, positive phenomena and positively connotated metaphors to describe those phenomena, such as “action,” “productivity” and “presence,” “voice,” “embodied language,” “actualisation,” “event-ness” and “materiality.” On the other hand, the focus on the creation and interrelation of human realities has tended to overlook the often simultaneous destructivity involved in those processes. In response to this bias, there have been increasing moves in recent years to investigate the boundaries of the seemingly activist and generativist performative tendency. This is a drive to uncover, as it were, the “flipside” of performativity by addressing not just the positive phenomena of human action, production, language and presence, but also the negative counterparts of these, as in for example “inoperativity,” “restraint,” “absence” and “silence.” Moreover, first steps have been taken to investigate both the productive effectiveness of these various modes of action and phenomena, and the destructive dimension involved in all. This volume is the result of a three-year interdisciplinary research focus group (2008–2010) dedicated to “Destructive Dynamics and Performativity” within the Collaborative Research Centre “Performing Cultures” (Sonderforschungsbereich ‘Kulturen des Performativen’) at the Freie Universität Berlin.

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Foreword & Acknowledgements

The particularity of this volume is that it does not simply present a selection of papers that have been commissioned by the editors on a particular theme, but that it presents the results of a group of researchers who, from various disciplinary backgrounds, met together to discuss and collaborate on the theme of destructivity. The individual articles in this volume are thus shaped and informed by the many discussions we held. We are grateful to all the members of the focus group “Destructive Dynamics and Performativity” for the lively and inspiring debates held there: to Hartmut Böhme, Leena Crasemann, Robert Felfe, and Barbara Gronau; to Kristiane Hasselmann, Steffen K. Herrmann, Elke Koch, Hannes Kuch, Renate Lorenz and Robert Schmidt; to Jenny Schrödl, Sabine Schülting, Andrea Sieber and Kirsten Wagner; to Rebecca Wolf, Volker Woltersdorff, and Ulrike Zellmann. We also extend our thanks to the guest speakers who inspired and contributed to our discussions: Reinhold Görling, Vinzenz Hediger, Linda Hentschel, José E. Muñoz and Joseph Vogl, as well as to Nikita Dhawan and Katja Rothe for kindly accepting the invitation to contribute to this volume. Our heartfelt thanks go to Erika FischerLichte, chairwoman of the Collaborative Research Centre, for encouraging and supporting this research. We gratefully acknowledge the valuable work of the team of competent and dedicated translators, Anita Mage, Laura Radosh, Gratia Stryker-Härtel, and Kate Sturge, as well as Christian Struck’s part in preparing the manuscript. Finally, we are most grateful to Esther Roth and the editorial board at Rodopi for their helpful comments and the enthusiasm they have brought to this project. It has been a pleasure preparing this volume with them.

Alice Lagaay & Michael Lorber Berlin, July 2011



Table of Contents Alice Lagaay and Michael Lorber Introduction: Destruction in the Performative .......................................... 9

I. Language, Music, Noise Steffen K. Herrmann Recognition and Disrespect: Lordship and Bondage in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit ....................................................... 23 Nikita Dhawan Hegemonic Listening and Subversive Silences: Ethical-political Imperatives ................................................................... 47 Rebecca Wolf Two Saints and the Power of the Auditive .............................................. 61 Jenny Schrödl Acoustic Violence in Contemporary German Theatre ............................ 79

II. Embodiment, Identity, Ecstasy Barbara Gronau Asceticism Poses a Threat: The Enactment of Voluntary Hunger .......... 99 Renate Lorenz Salomania – Trans and Trans-temporal: A Queer Archaeology of Destructiveness ................................................................................. 111 Volker Woltersdorff Masochistic Self-shattering between Destructiveness and Productivity .................................................................................... 133

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Table of Contents III. Things, Spaces, Networks

Kristiane Hasselmann Triggering Latency Zones in Modern Society: Richard Serra’s Sculptures within the Urban Setting ............................ 153 Katja Rothe Creative Destructions: Gabriel Tarde’s Concept of a Passionate Economy ...................................................................... 179 Robert Schmidt Code Decay: Organizational Performance and Destructivity ................................................................................... 195

List of Contributors ................................................................................ 209

Introduction: Destruction in the Performative Alice Lagaay and Michael Lorber

Cultural transformation tends to be described in one of two ways: either with reference to what comes about, is created or emerges in the process of change, or with reference to what is destroyed or obscured in that process. Within a performative paradigm, that is, from a perspective that focuses on the manner in which social and cultural reality is constituted or brought about by human activity, theorists have tended to underline the productive aspects of transformation by emphasising the creative thrust of performative processes and events. In so doing, this perspective has tended to overlook the extent to which a certain destructive element may in fact be inherent to such performative processes. Within the realm of cultural studies, there have been recent calls for, and some preliminary steps taken towards contouring, a new “theory of destruction” to meet – and to some extent to counter – what have been broadly identified as the dominant discourses of innovation, creativity and emergence (e.g. Alan Liu, 2009). The present volume answers that call, albeit within a particular context of its own. It seeks to explore the manner in which destructivity such as the destabilisation and destruction of orders, subjects and bodies can be grasped by concepts of performativity. In other words, to what extent may a certain destructive dynamic be inscribed within the very notion of performativity? Performativity, as understood here, is rooted in a variety of theoretical perspectives combining linguistic, cultural-sociological as well as aesthetic concerns, all of which are of relevance for a multitude of different disciplines. Firstly, the concept refers back to John L. Austin’s speech act theory and his analysis of the manner in which language can be shown to be not just simply a medium of human expression, not just used, that is, to describe an event or a reality that is external to it, but that its very utterance can bring about a transformation of reality (cf. Austin 1962; Searle 1969). Secondly, the concept relates to Judith Butler’s notion of the performative constitution of (gender) subjectivity by means of ritualised linguistic iteration and culturally prescribed patterns of behaviour (e.g. Butler 1993). Furthermore, the concept incorporates a more general reference, drawn from a theatrical and anthropological context, to the embodied practices and socially encoded ritualised events

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that constitute the founding basis of social-cultural orders (e.g. Turner 1969; Schechner 1977; Fischer-Lichte 2008).1 This book seeks to elucidate the place of destructivity in all these different realms, whether their theoretical relevance be primarily linguistic, socio-cultural, historical, aesthetic, or a combination of all of them. However, it is not simply a question of recognising a certain (implicit or explicit) destructive element within performativity, but indeed of problematising the relationship between these two dimensions. Thus, whilst we hope to steer away from theoretical positions that posit performativity as a positive, creative force and destructivity as its negative counterpart, neither can it be a question of merely inverting this relation by seeking to underline the negative destructivity of the performative or indeed the positive, i.e. creative, productive, value of destructivity. Rather, the texts included in this volume attempt, in various ways, to shed light on the complexity of the interrelation between productivity and destructivity in the performative, and to bring to the foreground a variety of different forms and gradations of intensity (from subliminal to explicit) each level may take. Our leading hypothesis is that destructivity cannot simply be put down to the intentions of certain individuals, nor explained by a simple relation of cause and effect, but that it tends to involve a complex interrelation of several different levels of phenomena, that we call ‘dynamics.’ Destructive dynamics are not limited here to the violence carried out between people, but may also include the destruction of spaces and things, of systems and institutions. What comes about or is provoked by destructivity? To what extent do new systems of regulation introduced to counter destructivity give way to new restrictions that merely provoke more? And is destructivity always a subcategory of productivity or ought we also consider interruptions of production (i.e. examples of not-doing) as performatively destructive – or potentially so – in their own right? Moreover, what special role is played by descriptive analysis itself insofar as it is never neutral but always actively involved in the perilous practice of attributing destructivity to particular events or agents. Within the Collaborative Research Centre “Performing Cultures,” performativity was considered first and foremost as the human performance of particular actions and practices, which in one way or another contribute to creating reality. But just how they do so, how they constitute and shape human reality, depends largely upon the historical or social contexts in which they are used and the extent to which they influence one another. New levels of meaning or action can emerge from individual practices and their interplay. Throughout the course of its investigations, the Collaborative Research Centre thus developed different concepts of the performative in accordance with its researchers’ disciplines and objects of study. What is particular about these concepts of the 1 Marvin Carlson provides a general overview of the contexts in which “performativity” has been a pertinent concept (Carlson 1996). The interconnection between performativity and mediality is analysed in Krämer 2004.

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performative – and this is perhaps in fact also their strength – is that they cannot comfortably be consolidated into a unified “theory of the performative.” Rather, together they stake out an open field of the performative. In the final phase of the research centre, after many years of work on and with concepts of the performative, a focus group was established to concentrate on “Destructive Dynamics” with the intention of stretching the concept of performativity to its limits. We wanted to explore those areas in which concepts of the performative perhaps fail, and to find the reasons why performativity was unable to grasp the phenomena under investigation. The members of this research group represented a wide range of different disciplines in the humanities including philosophy, sociology, theatre studies, (comparative) literature, music, art and cultural studies. And since the researchers also focused on different centuries, in the group discussions we were constantly confronted with varying concepts of the performative according to the different disciplines and eras referred to. Insofar as concepts of the performative tend to focus on moments of activity and creation, performance theories usually investigate and underline the productive aspects of phenomena.2 This is true of speech act theory as well as of theories that understand performativity as a central element of aesthetic experience. Indeed, even Judith Butler’s concept of performativity, a third model, is not completely free of this bias – although she does explicitly include destructive elements in her examination of failure. According to Butler, societal norms and the individual failure to embody these norms reproduce one another in the performance of gender. Thus failure is seen as a precondition for the constitution of both individual identity and societal norms, and is, in the end, therefore, reintegrated into the productive sphere of the performative. This ability to recognise productive aspects of the destructive – and here Butler builds on Foucault’s analysis of power – is a central characteristic of her concept of performativity (e.g. Butler 1997, 5ff.). But if the perceived dichotomy between destruction and production collapses to such an extent, how can we hope to examine destructive dynamics from a performance theory perspective without falling into the trap of immediately privileging the productive – in the sense of generating new relationships? And why should we strive to avoid this? In the course of our work, we increasingly gained the impression that destruction can set free powers that cannot be convincingly grasped when subsumed under the production of new relationships. We gradually began to feel uneasy. The example of torture explains why. For obvious moral and ethical reasons we felt inclined not to want to recognise anything productive in the practice. Would there not be a danger of legitimising torture if it were to be 2

Efforts to relate performative theory to inactivity, passivity and different forms of restraint can be found in Gronau and Lagaay 2008, 2010.

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placed within the productive scope of performative concepts? This would surely be the case, for instance, if the focus were no longer solely on the direct effects of torture on a victim, but took into account the possible relevance of information extracted by means of torture. It thus became necessary to situate the destructive dynamics of such processes within concepts of the performative in order to learn more about the felicity conditions for and the limits of the performative itself. To begin with, we had assumed the term “destruction” would only serve as a placeholder for those various gradations of destructive dynamics yet to be determined. In a first phase therefore, we tried to create a phenomenology of the destructive on the basis of a conceptual historical analysis. Unsurprisingly, different concepts of or relating to destructivity can be found in multiple forms and with various functions throughout the history of philosophy and anthropology. These range from Aristotle’s notion of privation, to Nietzschean nihilism, from Heidegger’s “Destruktion” to Bataille’s thematisation of evil. But none of these theories relates explicitly to performative discourse and we increasingly began to doubt whether conceptual historical analyses were going to be able to answer the questions we had on the relationship between destructive dynamics and performativity. Rather, it gradually became evident to us that our focus on the internal logic of destruction should be shifted away from purely conceptual analysis and more towards the phenomena we were studying. We thus abandoned our original plan to apply, by deductive means, a general phenomenology of the destructive to individual case studies. Instead, the articles in this collection present exemplary analyses of destructive dynamics. This inductive process has resulted in three sections, which mirror the disciplines represented within our research group, and may in future be supplemented by research in further areas.

I. Language, Music, Noise This section brings together four case studies that deal explicitly with the destructive dynamics situated in the interaction of and communication between subjects or between subjects and their acoustic environment. One focus of our work was on the presentation of language as not only a mediative and benign instrument of communication, but as a wounding weapon. Ridicule, curse words, hate speech can be used to disturb and upset, to degrade someone in their social status, or to offend and insult them (Steffen K. Herrmann).3 Speech – and, of course, also its counterpart, silence (Nikita Dhawan) – can be harmful, either directly or in more subtle ways which sometimes make it difficult to pin down in terms of (legal) accountability. 3 On the power of language to injure see also Herrmann, Krämer and Kuch 2007 as well as Kuch and Herrmann 2010.

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Within social conflict situations, these events and actions, identities, and power structures can disturb and destroy as well as create. We were interested in questions such as: How can both speech and silence do harm, and what kind of harm can they do? What kind of realities and power structures are evoked thereby? This section examines interpersonal communication not only in a narrow, linguistic sense, but also looks at speech in general and at the role of destructive dynamics particularly in the auditory context of theatre and music. We were able, for example, to show how loud music, insistent noises, or aggressive screaming arias are used in postdramatic theatre to disturb or overwhelm the audience. It can even go so far as to make the audience feel attacked, threatened, insecure, or indeed injured. In the case of Luk Perceval’s production of Penthesilea, for instance, the Jazz musician Jean-Paul Bourelly’s guitar sounds were so deafeningly loud that some listeners were forced to hold their hands over their ears or even driven to leave (Jenny Schrödl). Music and sounds can, however, also wield power in a subtler manner by awakening people’s emotions and bodily reactions. Music – and silence as a musical effect – can persuade, overwhelm and be used to manipulate (Rebecca Wolf). Plato said that music had the power to penetrate the soul of man. And since music is not taken in by the intellect alone, it is often said to have a demonic, or at least domineering, effect. Sounds as symbols can sometimes exhibit a great ability to create order, and when used on crowds can call into doubt the sovereignty of individuals.

II. Embodiment, Identity, Ecstasy The second section examines the question of which “technologies of the self” and models of embodiment can be identified in destructive or self-destructive dynamics – even for aesthetic purposes as in, for instance, performances of voluntary hunger (Barbara Gronau). We found it important to show not only how identities circumscribed by violence – stigmatised, subaltern identities – can be created by what has been termed “a desubjectivating mode of subjectivation” (Renate Lorenz), but also how discursive or physical violence can hurt and destroy. The analysis of various masochistic practices or, in particular, various means of presenting masochistic practices was seminal to this work. One case study (Volker Woltersdorff) thus compares two very different representations of selfinflicted harm and the attempt to redirect masochistic enjoyment: Elfriede Jelinek’s novel The Piano Teacher and Steven Shainberg’s film Secretary. In Jelinek’s novel, self-injury is an expression of the failure of a process of female empowerment in a patriarchal economy. All attempts to escape are caught up again in the same destructive dynamic. The protagonist can be seen as an allegory of destructive dynamics; her tragedy is that she must contribute to her

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own destruction in order to lend any semblance of legitimacy to her existence and take pleasure from it. In Shainberg’s film on the other hand, masochistic pleasure is ambivalent and allows the main character to overcome self-harm through playful submission, ending with the productive rescue or empowerment of the self. In both cases, we found it particularly important to pay close attention to the way in which destructive dynamics are staged and stylised, suggesting the possibility of a shift in or rearticulation of existing power-drenched economies of pleasure.

III. Things, Spaces, Networks The third section examines the material side of destructive dynamics in historical and contemporary processes such as politically or aesthetically motivated vandalism (Kristiane Hasselmann), or the part played by constitutive disruption in economic processes (Katja Rothe). Here it is a question not only of investigating the social and temperamental latency zones of modern societies, but also of analysing the destructivity that can arise in socio-technical processes including procedures of organisational transformation and disintegration (Robert Schmidt). The classification into three sections reflects the expertise of the team members. At the same time, however, it also has a hermeneutical foundation, for the various levels of meaning overlap and interconnect time and again in the actual phenomena. In our group’s discussions and collective analyses we tried to delineate precisely these interferences. For example, we looked at the violent unrest that occurred in the banlieus of Paris in 2005. The unrest provided a perfect example of the role of harmful, marginalising speech: Nicolas Sarkozy – at the time French Interior Minister – escalated the conflict by calling the rioters ‘racailles.’ We also took the riots as an occasion to analyse the particular dynamic of processes of individual identification characterised by group identity and a sense of belonging. An emotional escalation could be observed that can often be seen to go hand in hand with the development of destructive dynamics. Moreover, this case study also led our attention to the role of architecture and the social order of space in the urban outskirts. Entities in urban space – such as burning cars – suddenly became symbolically charged objects and significant shifts of meaning were created within the city’s infrastructure. At their heart were newly constituted constellations and relationships of communication between public institutions such as schools, police, and the media. In the light of these observations, it is important to stress the “eventness” of destruction, which is not easily distinguishable from a certain “un-rationalisable” dimension. It is therefore necessary to trace the experiential character of the destructive in order to create a relation to the passive dimension

Introduction

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of the performative. A latent nihilism, the experience of the senselessness of destructivity, or destructivity as a contingent occurrence are thus directly related to some aspects of the performative. Our examination of destructive events and phenomena has led us to become aware of the way in which destructivity is often first created and made visible in the performance of social conflicts. After carrying out collective analyses, we returned to our original question of destructive dynamics in the performative. Initially, our focus had been limited to the destructive, that is, to the question of what happens when something is simply destroyed and there is no productive shift or when that shift is ignored. Yet contrary to our expectations, we soon recognised that we could not just ignore the productive side of the destructive in the analysis of concrete phenomena. To do so would be to omit something vital. The reason for this, as gradually became clear to us, can be found in a specific peculiarity of concepts of the performative. Indeed, following John Austin’s speech act theory, in diverse debates it became apparent that concepts of the performative were useful for questioning and overcoming dichotomic structures. This is also true for the dichotomy of production and destruction. Indeed, in a performative context, destructivity and productivity are by no means antithetical. On the contrary, the fact that new orders arise from overcoming, transforming, or even destroying the given seems to be a central characteristic of the performative. Terms such as “creative” or “productive” destruction get at the heart of this complex interaction between destruction and production. The interplay between the concepts is intricate because, seen in this way, destruction and production are two sides of the same coin and no longer appear separately. Indeed they can only really be thought of as an interlocking, conditional relationship. This common concept of “creative” or “productive destruction” was corroborated in our findings. However, it also called for some revision. For in productive destruction the creative or productive does not simply seamlessly and sequentially emerge from the destructive, as is often assumed. Rather, the destructive leaves its traces, it creates permanent breaks, wounds or gaps; it remains – one could say – effective. In contrast to other concepts of performativity, we thus aimed to follow the traces of destruction in the new, rather than to anticipate the new in the destruction as had previously been the case. Although initially we had only turned our attention to “pure” destruction, the destructive within the productive now returned as an urgent matter of interest, but from a completely new point of view. Our turn towards the destructive should not however only be understood as a shift in perspective on the level of observation. Rather, it also called for theoretical modifications of our very concepts of the performative. Usually,

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productive destruction is thought of in performative theories as chronological, as sequential in time, whereby the new emerges from the old. In turning our attention towards the destructive, however, this sequential model was shown to have reached its limits. For it does not account for the simultaneous existence of destructive and productive dynamics. Our model of simultaneity, on the other hand, opens up a new dimension, namely the question of perspectives that exist parallel to one another, from which processes can at the same time be experienced quite differently: both as destructive and productive. From these parallel perspectives, various observations can emerge and different models of temporality enter into conflict with one another. We wanted to focus on this conflict. We do not, however, mean to suggest that other concepts of the performative have not been able to describe them. Judith Butler for one, has made significant contributions to this area that have been crucial to our analyses. However, in contrast to Butler, we wanted to maintain the tension of the conflict by oscillating between different perspectives; we wanted to see where this took us and not simply resolve the conflict through an analysis of effective power relations. Whether something is seen as destructive is ultimately largely contingent upon the perspective of the respective observer and is thus in part socially produced. Furthermore, individual experience cannot simply be subsumed in the logic of the chronological passage of time. Rather, events from the past, the present, and those anticipated in the future can interfere with one another. In the oscillation of diachrony and synchrony, complex relations of temporality are generated that can also bring completely different forms of the destructive to the fore. In psychoanalysis, for example, suppressed memories can be recovered, the destructive power of which is not understood in a chronological concept of time, but only in the context of other temporal models. Of course the realisation that different perspectives can be observed and that conflicts may also arise from them is hardly surprising and new. However, in performative analysis there is a tendency towards silencing these conflicts in the context of newly constituted power relations. In the framework of this performative logic of production, the gaps created by destruction are remarkable in the main as forerunners of productive processes. There is little if any thought given to the gaps, obliteration, or destruction as a latently aimless process, or as a site at which nothing new develops. When time is conceived of as productive, it is as if there were no standstill, no not-happening. From this perspective, performativity appears as the productive signature of temporal progress. By introducing multiple perspectives we were thus able to break this unified logic of the productivity in the performative. For what might appear to be productive on a discursive meta-level with regard to the effects of phenomena can in fact be disastrous and devastating on a concrete level. This aspect of multi-perspectivity seems particularly clear in the case of death. Here too a productive dimension can be established, as in the religious

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belief that considers death as a threshold to a hereafter. But this “productivity,” as it were, of death – at least when we disregard such religious aspects – has little to do with the individual experience of mortality. According to Foucault, a certain “productivity” of death can be seen to have begun to be recognised in the early days of modern medicine, when, with the birth of the clinic, death was gradually no longer perceived as the opposite of life (Foucault 2003). Thus it was that around 1800, the physiologist, Marie François Xavier Bichat, conceptualised successive organ failure – the order and type of failure – as an analysis of life illuminated by death. As physiological functions gradually lose their vitality, he proposed, the process of degeneration at the same time reveals their function and organisation. In the performance of medical knowledge, death can therefore in a certain sense be transcended as a boundary, to the extent that it can be integrated as an analytical tool in the science of life. In a classical performative sense, medical knowledge can thus be seen as emerging from the successive destruction of human life. But whereas in academic discourse the productivity of death might be obvious, this acquired knowledge still cannot belie the destructivity of death as soon as one is confronted with the loss of a person; or indeed when one’s own mortality is brought to consciousness. When looking at destructive dynamics on the theoretical level, we were therefore interested in capturing the irresolvable parallelism of such divergent perspectives as in for example The Birth of the Clinic, in order to undermine the omnipotent perspective of productivity in the performative. This led to many interesting aspects within our discussions and research. From a performative point of view it is not really important to take a stand on specific content, since the true subject of research are but the practical effects, consequences, and interferences of this content. Naturally it is not possible to abstract from the content completely, but it is of no interest beyond its performative power. By bringing multi-perspectivity to our analysis, however, ambivalence crystallised towards performative analyses that made use of all destructive moments. The performative seems to owe its productive character to a large extent to the suspension of any qualifying or clearly defined terms. However questions of individual responsibility and ethical actions are brought to the fore as soon as destructivity is looked at from a variety of perspectives. The ethical indifference of concepts of the performative is revealed as scandalous when it becomes necessary to renounce analytical neutrality and instead take a stand. In the case of torture it is for instance out of the question to focus solely on productivity and to avoid the ethical responsibility to denounce the practice. Thus a critical examination of destructivity reveals both an ethical and a political dimension. The consequences of individual actions no longer manifest themselves simply as given facts; rather it becomes necessary to give critical attention to their function in creating reality. Seen this way, our goal was to

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transcend – as it were – the limits of indifferent performative analyses by confronting them with the contextual level of their objects of study, bringing to light questions regarding the possibility or even necessity of ethical or political action. Our research has shown that destructive dynamics, despite the undeniable dominance of the status quo, are also particularly suited to retaining a focus on the marginal and marginalised. Furthermore, this approach affected our own methodology. In a sense, we reached the limits of performativity as a conceptual category useful for describing the effects and consequences of phenomena. These limits were revealed as soon as the confrontation with different perspectives made the need for direct ethical and political intervention necessary. Our analysis gained a self-reflective dimension by delineating a zone beyond conceptual thinking, something gestured towards in these questions: What distinguishes scientific research that works with concepts of performativity and what is the internal logic of this research? Can a scientific description of the effects and consequences of phenomena – this is the essential question – not already itself be a form of political action or does it only inspire the same? Or is it perhaps even possible that an analysis of the consequences of phenomena which defines conflicts only to resolve them in a description of existent power structures, latently contributes to the stabilisation and recognition of prevailing power relations? In any case, our research revealed a paradigm that characterises performativity and power as equal in a Foucauldian sense. Both are genuinely productive. At this juncture, destructivity could be introduced as a disruptive corrective to the secret alliance of performativity and power. This may allow us to clarify to what extent and under what conditions an ethics of the performative might be possible. Or do perhaps new problems emerge from the introduction of multiperspectivity into performative concepts, through which all these questions have arisen? Is it, for example, possible that a confrontation with numerous perspectives may result in an incapacity to act? This is for us a central question with regard to what was previously established as a certain indifference within the performative. Indeed, scientific research is able to generate completely autonomous and productive methods for dealing with destructive dynamics, methods that in turn need to be reflected upon. Concepts of the performative – as we have attempted to show – are therefore faced with the question of scientific autonomy in any examination of destructive dynamics on both the contextual and the methodological level. Alongside a modified model of productive destruction – or perhaps, rather, parallel to the multi-perspective model of productive destruction – we also remained in the grip of the question of the individual, personal experience of destructivity, an experience in which any sense of the productive seems to vanish

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completely. Walter Benjamin’s essay on “The Destructive Character” was central to our exploration of the individual experience of the destructive: [W]hat will replace what has been destroyed? First of all, for a moment at least, empty space, the place where the thing stood or the victim lived. Someone is sure to be found who needs this space without its being filled. (Benjamin 1986, 301) In destruction, as Benjamin sees it, the space once occupied by that which was destroyed, is for a short time present and perceivable as a pure, unadulterated void. The void renders and makes possible a direct experience of the absent. Thus, in the act of destruction, a space initially defined by the presence of something, is now transformed into a space of potentiality in its double sense both as (im)possibility and power. Benjamin characterises this as a very fleeting moment. The empty space is soon reclaimed and occupied by potentialities evoked by the passage of time. In this sense, pure dynamis is revealed, and immediately occupied by energeia. Such is the productive power of the performative. Nevertheless, in Benjamin’s text, this space of potentiality cannot simply be used productively, but instead seems to remain frozen in its present state of being. A curious melancholy is revealed, divulging a certain merciless quality of the performative. In the face of destruction, confronted by loss and the shadows of victims, Benjamin reveals a sense of shame inherent in the productive – and in life – because the performance of life will unavoidably fill, again, somehow, the void that was created. In Benjamin, survival is thus transformed into a permanent experience of lack due to the paradoxical consciousness of inevitably taking the victim’s space without really being able to occupy it. In this way, without denying its existence and function, Benjamin puts any thought of the productive in its place: he confronts it with the experience of destruction. Or as a maxim that has left enduring marks in literary history puts it with no less melancholy: “The void we leave behind will replace us completely.”4 The figure of permanent void, of lasting loss, or the gap, seems best able to express destruction as experienced on the individual level, as explored, for instance, in Gaspar Noë’s recent film “Enter the Void” (2009). But this existential experience of the destructive – as Benjamin and Noë conceive it – is not located beyond the performative. Rather, in this case the productive power of the performative is collaborating. Instead of creating something new, the power of the performative is exhausted in the experience of the presence of persistent nothingness. In the light of this destructive character of being, we 4 As Rainald Götz recalls the noted words of Heidi Paris in “Suizidvorbereitungsgang”: “die Lücke die wir hinterlassen ersetzt uns vollkommen” (Götz 2009, 46).

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could perhaps also speak of a performance of nothing or, better still, of the performance of privation. In his Aristotle reading, Giorgio Agamben characterises potentiality precisely as a kind of privation that “is not simply nonBeing” but, on the contrary, “the existence of non-Being, the presence of an absence” (Agamben 1999, 179). This means that in the performance of privation, that which has been destroyed can paradoxically still show itself through its absence. Goethe’s Mephisto was still caught in the productive logic of the performative when he introduced himself as: “Part of that Force which would / Do ever evil and does ever good” (Goethe 2001, 36). Mephisto’s problem, as destructive power par excellence, was that he was able to destroy, but was continually confronted with the fact that something new always arose from the destruction, by the divine power of the continuity of time and space. Alexander Kluge, on the other hand, like Benjamin and Noë, withdraws personal experiences from the scope of the productive when he speaks of the gap, or blind spot left, in the end, by the devil: Die Lücke, die der Teufel lässt (Kluge 2003/2007). Perhaps these gaps or this void are to be understood as open wounds, as the presence of a phantom pain of the absent. And perhaps it is even the very pain inherent to the human condition that Nietzsche had in mind when he wrote: “[O]nly that which hurts incessantly is remembered” (Nietzsche 1996, 42).

References Agamben, Giorgio. “On Potentiality.” In: Potentialities. Collected Essays in Philosophy. Ed. and trans. by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, 177–239. Austin, John. L. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. Benjamin, Walter. “The Destructive Character.” In: Reflections. Essays, Aphorisms, Autorbiographical Writings. Ed. by Peter Demetz and trans. by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Schocken Books, 1986, 301–303. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990. — Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997. Carlson, Marvin. Performance. A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. The Transformative Power of Performance. A New Aesthetics. Trans. by Saskya Jain. London and New York: Routledge 2008.

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Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic. An Archaeology of Medical Perception. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2003. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust. Ed. by Cyrus Hamlin and trans. by Walter Arndt. 2nd ed. London and New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. Götz, Rainald. loslabern. Bericht (Herbst 2008). Frankfurt am Main. Suhrkamp, 2009. Gronau, Barbara and Alice Lagaay (eds.). Performanzen des Nichttuns. Vienna: Passagen, 2008. — Ökonomien der Zurückhaltung. Bielefeld: transcript, 2010. Herrmann, Steffen K., Sybille Krämer and Hannes Kuch (eds.). Verletzende Worte: Die Grammatik sprachlicher Missachtung, Bielefeld: transcript, 2007. Kluge, Alexander. Die Lücke, die der Teufel lässt. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003). — The Devil’s Blind Spot. Trans. by Martin Chalmers and Michael Hulse. New York: New Directions Publishing, 2007. Krämer, Sybille. Performativität und Medialität. München: Fink, 2004. Kuch, Hannes and Steffen K. Herrmann (eds.). Philosophien sprachlicher Gewalt: 21 Grundpositionen von Platon bis Butler. Weilerswist-Metternich: Velbrück, 2010. Liu, Alan. “Thinking Destruction: Creativity, Rational Choice, Emergence, and Destruction Theory.” In: Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities 1.1; online: http://occasion.stanford.edu/node/24 (October 15, 2009). Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. by Douglas Smith, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Schechner, Richard. Essays on Performance Theory 1970–76. New York: Drama Book Specialist, 1977. Schumpeter, Joseph Alois. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy [1942]. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. Searle, John. R. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1969.

Recognition and Disrespect: Lordship and Bondage in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit Steffen K. Herrmann With regard to the contemporary discussion of recognition and disrespect in social philosophy, this chapter argues that Hegel is not only a seminal ‘theorist of recognition,’ but also a sophisticated ‘theorist of disrespect.’ By means of the relationship of lord and bondsman as developed in the Phenomenology of Spirit it is shown that for Hegel the emergence of recognition not only involves freedom and autonomy but can also result in dependency and asymmetry. Building on this assumption, the paper pursues a threefold aim: first, to show, through a reconstruction of Hegel’s thoughts on the development of self-consciousness, that a successful form of subjectivation is only possible when a subject can actualize itself in so called ‘egalitarian’ and ‘differential’ acts of recognition. The second part aims at a re-reading of Hegel’s thinking of the lord/bondsman-relationship. In opposition to the classic ‘heroic reading’ of this relationship, I make the case for a ‘subaltern reading,’ arguing that Hegel presents in the figure of the bondsman a form of asymmetric recognition, in which the subject is bound to those conditions that hold it in disrespect. Finally, the third part aims at a reinterpretation of Hegel’s thought from the perspective of disresprect in order to show that the other side of Hegel’s theory of recognition forms a theory of symbolic vulnerability. Starting from this theory one can understand the paradoxical dynamic of disrespect that leads subjects to identify with the relations that subjugate them.

One of the most famous relationships of subordination in the history of philosophy is certainly the relationship of lord and bondsman as developed by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit. First and foremost due to Alexandre Kojève’s influential commentary from the 1930s, this relation was regarded for a long time as the core of Hegel’s theory of recognition. Mediated by Kojève’s interpretation, the figures of lord and bondsman became a characteristic motif of twentieth century French social philosophy. Whether in the writings of JeanPaul Sartre, as the relation of the gaze; in Jacques Lacan, as the imaginary transference relation; or in Frantz Fanon, as the relation between colonisers and the colonised – wherever intersubjective tensions were the object of theoretical reflection, the model of lord and bondsman was regarded as a key to deciphering the real nature of such conflicts: a struggle for recognition, in which it is not so much the physical but rather the social life of the participants that is at stake.1 More recently, an influential strand of the reception of Hegel has proposed that the Phenomenology, and with it, the lord/bondsman-relationship, already represents a first stage of decline in Hegel’s theory of recognition. In particu1 For a broad survey of the French reception of Hegel, see Roth 1988. The special influence of Kojève’s Hegel interpretation on French philosophy is treated in Descombes 1980; as well as by Butler 1987.

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lar, the younger representatives of critical theory, Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, have argued that in the Phenomenology, the crucial point of Hegel’s theory of recognition has already been abandoned. Honneth names three reasons for this: first, a strong intersubjective concept of human identity is subordinated here to a developmental logic of consciousness; second, the historically productive role of the struggle for recognition is not taken into account sufficiently; and third, there is no productive differentiation between different levels of recognition (cf. Honneth 1995, 62f.).2 In contrast to this recent approach to Hegel, I would like to argue in this essay for a ‘Return to the Phenomenology!’ by taking up the strand of the French reading of Hegel that sees a special social theoretical potential in exactly this work. In my opinion, two reasons speak for such a return. First, Hegel shows us here more clearly than anywhere else the extent to which the development of subjectivity is intimately connected with the achievement of recognition. I would thus like to argue that the Phenomenology represents not a theoretical flattening, but rather a theoretical deepening of Hegel’s thought insofar as it makes explicit that the subject’s dependency on recognition is an existential matter. Further, I see a return to the Phenomenology justified by the fact that Hegel here for the first time lets the struggle for recognition lead to the relation of lordship and bondage. This allows him to connect the development of recognition not merely to the development of freedom and equality, but rather to show that the dependency of recognition must also be understood as the condition of inequality and asymmetry. Insofar as Hegel explores the precarious nature of intersubjective relations of dependency through the lord/bondsman-relationship, he proves himself not only to be a subtle ‘theorist of recognition’ but also just as much a sophisticated ‘theorist of disrespect.’3 Starting from this diagnosis, my essay pursues a threefold aim. First, through a reconstruction of Hegel’s thinking of the development of self-consciousness, I would like to show that recognition by the other is of existential significance for a subject. With this it will become clear that a successful form of self-actualization is only possible if a subject knows itself as recognized both as an equal and as an individual. Only in the framework of so called ‘egalitarian’ and ‘differential’ acts of recognition, so I will argue, is a subject brought to life (I). The second part of my considerations aims to re-read Hegel’s thinking of the 2 Similar arguments were previously made by Jürgen Habermas, who speaks of how the “communicative reason” that emerges in Hegel’s early writings is already subordinated in the Phenomenology to the framework of his philosophy of the subject (Habermas 1990, 31 and 41). For the impact of this position in the French language literature, see Ricœur 2005, 173 and 186. Representative of the English language literature is Williams 1997, 27. 3 A re-reading in this vein has been recently undertaken by Patchen Markell: “Hegel’s account suggests that the pursuit of recognition itself may be implicated in the formation and maintenance of unjust relations of social power” (Markell 2003, 112). In reference to the ‘unhappy consciousness’ that develops out of the lord/bondsman-relationship, Judith Butler has also attempted to show with an alternative reading how Hegel connects recognition and disrespect in his thought (Butler 1997).

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lord/bondsman-relationship. In opposition to the classic ‘heroic reading,’ I would like to put forward a ‘subaltern reading’ that makes explicit the manner in which Hegel’s use of the figure of the bondsman reveals a form of asymmetrical recognition, in which the subject is bound to the conditions that at the same time hold it in disrespect (II). Following this, the third part of my reading aims at a reinterpretation of Hegel’s theory of subjectivity from the perspective of disrespect. Here I would like to make it clear that the other side of Hegel’s theory of recognition forms a theory of symbolic vulnerability. Starting from this theory, we can understand the paradoxical dynamic of disrespect that forces the bondsman to identify with the relations that hold him in subjugation (III).

I. From Theoretical to Ethical Self-Consciousness My reconstruction of the development of self-consciousness starts from the idea that Hegel’s often convoluted and obscure argumentation can be relatively clearly structured into four steps. In a first step, Hegel lays out the problem that he sees contemporary theories of self-consciousness confronted with. In three further steps, which go from practical, through social to ethical self-consciousness, he develops an alternative conception of the intersubjective character of self-consciousness. With few, but nevertheless strong brush strokes, I would like to give a sketch of each of these steps. Before we begin, we need to get grip on what the expression self-consciousness means for Hegel. Hegel does not give an explicit definition anywhere, but it is clear that, following the Cartesian-Kantian tradition, he defines a reflexive recourse of consciousness upon itself as “self-consciousness” – so firstly by this expression a kind of self-relation is designated. For Hegel, this self-relation is not an indifferent relation, but is, rather, based on a certain kind of self-interest, and is founded upon the question, “who am I?”. And insofar as self-consciousness attempts to answer this question, it develops a specific conception of who it is and what constitutes its existence – we can thus speak of it as developing a specific self-conception. The idea of self-consciousness, with which Hegel then operates, thus signifies a tripartite relation of self-relation, self-interest, and self-conception.4 With this explication of the idea of self-consciousness, we can now sketch the problem that Hegel sees self-consciousness as initially confronted with. 4 Robert Brandom makes a very similar tripartite determination of the concept of self-consciousness and emphasizes that what constitues the essence of a self-conscious being is dependent upon which attributes are fundamental for it. For Brandom self-consciousness is characterized above all through its capacity for “self-transformation.” He summed up this insight in the often quoted statement that “essentially self-conscious beings do not have natures, they have histories” (Brandom 2007, 128).

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Hegel begins his discussion of self-consciousness with a critique of Descartes’ and Kant’s rationalist positions. According to Hegel, the key characteristic of such positions is that the tripartite structure of self-consciousness is interpreted as a theoretical relation. That is, in this tradition the answer to the question “who am I?” is found through a reflection in thought. Following Hegel, this position can be summarized by the term ‘theoretical self-consciousness.’ The deficiency of this form of self-consciousness consists in the fact that its conception of self is a mere abstract and universal understanding; it has existence only in the thought of the subject and is purely ideal. As long as this remains the case, the subject cannot achieve any self-certainty. In other words, it suffers from a “lack of certainty.”5 As long as the subject’s self-conception exists only theoretically, self-consciousness cannot say with certainty who it is. For Hegel, the deficiency of theoretical self-consciousness can only be negated once self-consciousness gives itself the “form of being” (105).6 This means that the initially abstract and universal moment in theoretical self-consciousness undergoes a process of objectification and in this process must prove itself to be true. For Hegel, the subject’s conception of self can only become certain through practical actions in the world. This practical action is the very point from which Hegel begins the story of the subject’s experience, in order to show how the path of self-consciousness approaches step by step a condition that he calls ‘being in and for itself,’ which simply means that the selfconception of self-consciousness has been able to objectify itself successfully in the world. To put it more simply: what for Hegel should be achieved in the practical intercourse with the world is self-certainty. But to reach this point, theoretical self-consciousness has a long way to go. It has to take three steps to achieve “the truth of self-certainty,” as the chapter on self-consciousness is titled. (i) Practical self-consciousness: The first stage in the subject’s path of development is practical self-consciousness. The logic of this stage is determined by the interplay of two elements: first, what the subject believes itself to be, and second, the practical activity through which it seeks to confirm this belief. The first element, self-conception, which the subject develops in response to its inherent question, “who am I?,” represents a kind of radicalized transcendental idealism. The subject initially believes to be the only independently existing being. That is, it starts from the assumption that it has an absolute freedom, on the basis of which it creates the world out of itself.7 This self-conception 5 In the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences Hegel makes it clear that this lack has a positive counter-concept, when he speaks of self-consciousness as the “impulse to realise its implicit nature, by giving its abstract self-awareness content and objectivity” (Hegel 1971 [1830], § 425). In his study on Hegel, Charles Taylor characterized this impulse with the influential phrase “drive for integrity” (Taylor 1975, 150). 6 All page numbers in parentheses refer to the Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel 1977 [1807]). 7 Here I am taking up the expression “abstract Freedom,” which Hegel uses in the Encyclopaedia to signify self-conception (Hegel 1971 [1830], § 424). With this formula he characterizes a radicalized

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can best be summarized in the statement, “I am everything, the world is nothing.”8 The second important element is the practical activity through which the subject attempts to actualize its self-conception. Hegel determines this as ‘desire,’ which refers to the animal desire of recreation. It is through the consumption of objects that practical self-consciousness can exhibit independency, insofar as it annihilates all living things around itself that could also claim to have this status. Through the satiation of desire, therefore, not only is the subject’s hunger satisfied, but also its self-conception confirmed. And in the feeling of satiety this self-conception becomes objective for the first time. Hegel thus speaks of an “unalloyed feeling of self” (118) to make explicit that through the process of satisfying needs, practical self-consciousness comes for the first time to a form of self-certainty.9 For Hegel, the certainty achieved through desire does not last long; only as long as the feeling of satiety continues. Hence, already after a short time a new object must be consumed in order to reconstitute certainty. But insofar as this certainty can only be of a temporary duration, practical consciousness is caught in a restless process of self-assurance that can never come to an end. The transitory and inconstant nature of the feeling of satiety does not hold the subject captive to a circular process, but rather leads it to the insight that its self-conception was mistaken. Starting from the premise that it is the only independent being, in the restless consumption of things the subject must gain the insight that these things are also independent insofar as it can devour the individual specimen, but not the species as such. Thus the subject comes to see that it must accept that there are other independent entities besides itself. Because this insight, however, undermines the self-conception of the subject in its fundaments, it must travel what Hegel calls the “way of despair” (49). Stripped of its self-conception, the subject has to pose the question, “who am I?,” anew. (ii) Social self-consciousness: For Hegel, the moment the subject begins to develop a new self-conception, the transition to a second stage of development takes place. It is clear here that the new self-conception can no longer claim to possess absolute freedom, insofar as the subject has realized that it is just one independent being among others. Because the subject wishes to depart from its original self-conception as little as possible, it comes to an insight that can be paraphrased as follows: “If I have to recognise other independent objects alongside myself, then these objects have at least to comply to my freedom.” The Kantian idealism as expressed in Fichte’s dictum, “All reality is an act of the self,” or in Berkeley’s “esse est percipi.” On Hegel’s relation to Fichte and Kant cf. Redding 2009, 95. 8 Frederick Neuhouser reformulates in a similar way self-consciousness’s claim with the words, “I am everything (everything that counts), and my objects are nothing” (Neuhouser 2009, 44). 9 Hans-Georg Gadamer speaks of the immediate “vital certainty” that desire attains through the consumption of objects (Gadamer 1976, 60). For further important points on desire and its failure see Neuhouser 1986 and Honneth 2008.

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subject thus no longer claims to be the only independent being, but it does claim to be the highest ranking of all independent beings. Therefore the self-conception of possessing a superior freedom now takes the place of the claim to absolute freedom. Whilst for Hegel, the subject’s self-conception in the first stage represented a radicalized version of Kant’s transcendental idealism, the self-conception of this new stage represents a radicalized version of Hobbes’ theory of natural law, insofar as the subject of natural law, who Hobbes has in mind, presumes that it has a “right to every thing” (Hobbes 1996 [1651], 87).10 With this phrase, Hobbes signifies exactly what I call from Hegel’s perspective “superior freedom,” namely, the claim to be able to have free reign over one’s environment without external limitations on action. An important characteristic of the second stage of the subject’s development is that now other subjects come into play as well. To the extent that the subject realizes that other independent entities exist alongside it, it begins to differentiate between them and hence to distinguish between the object and the other.11 While in the first stage the subject orients itself for its self-assurance toward an undifferentiated outside, in the second stage it orients itself toward an other. This is because the subject has had to learn that the object only provides a temporary form of satisfaction. In contrast, the other seems to promise a more lasting form of satisfaction, because he is, as Hegel says, capable of self negation (Pinkard 1994, 52). This capacity of self-negation means at first nothing more than that the other human being is capable of its own subjugation, through which he or she, as opposed to the object, can provide a continuous form of acknowledgement. What characterizes the acknowledgement received from other human beings is also the fact that while the subject can only be acknowledged in its objectivity by the object because the object has no ‘notion,’ so to speak, of subjectivity, the other can grasp the subject in its essence. Because only another human being is capable of understanding what the essence of a subject is, only he or she can affirm the subject as a subject. This special form of acknowledgement, which only the other can provide, is what Hegel calls recognition. After the failure of desire, the subject, whose story of experience we are following, has thus finally won a new conception of the practical activity through which it can achieve self-certainty. It is the praxis of recognition and no longer the praxis of animal recreation that aids the subject in the second stage of its attempt to reach certainty of its self-conception. We can thus name this form of self-consciousness ‘social self10 Hegel’s recourse to Hobbes is discussed extensively in Siep 1974, Tamineaux 1985 and Peperzak 1995. 11 Judith Butler points out that the other is not a new element in the subject’s universe, but rather that an already existing phenomenon shows itself in a new perspective: “The appearance of the Other must be understood as emergence into explicit reality which has hitherto remained an implicit or nascent being. Before its actual appearance, the Other remains opaque, but not for that reason without reality. Coming into existence – or explicit appearance – is never, for Hegel, a creation ex nihilo, but is, rather, a moment in the development of a Concept” (Butler 1987, 47).

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consciousness.’ With this form of self-consciousness the subject comes to realize that it is dependent upon recognition by the other. Only if the other acknowledges the subject’s self-conception in actions and words it is brought into the world. The subject’s existence is therefore essentially a social existence, insofar as it can only be certain of its existence through its recognition by others. In this context Hegel speaks of how in the encounter with the other self-consciousness ends up ‘out of itself,’ which means that from now on it can only find itself in an exteriority: the subject comes to be only if it is outside with the other. This decentring, however, is experienced as a threat because the subject is herein confronted with the loss of the power of its selfdetermination. Self-consciousness’s ‘being out of itself’ should therefore not be read as a purely logical category, but must also be understood as the reflection of an emotional state as the German term ‘außer-sich-sein’ implies: the subject’s loss of its sovereignty makes it angry and aggressive.12 The other, on which the subject knows itself to be dependent, is at the same time the object of fear, anger, and aggression. This basic ambivalence forms the background for understanding the concrete encounter with another subject from the perspective of the experiencing subject. The practical demand for recognition leads the subject at first into a conflict with the other. As the other has the same self-conception, both subjects find themselves in a situation in which their respective self-conceptions are mutually exclusive. And insofar as neither participant wishes to voluntarily give up its self-conception, a conflict which culminates in a life and death struggle develops out of this contradiction. Hegel’s famous “struggle for recognition,” leads into the equally well-known relation of “lordship and bondage,” which I will later go into in detail, in which the bondsman gives up his self-conception to the benefit of the lord. Through this, a first form of sociality emerges, in which the participants are capable of living together in a community.13 Admittedly, for Hegel this is only of temporary durability insofar as this community is based on “a recognition that is one-sided and unequal” (116) which leaves both participants unsatisfied. On the one hand we have the bondsman, who suffers under the inferior self-conception forced upon him, and on the other hand the lord, who after a while comes to the realization that his superior self-conception is extremely unstable. This is because he actually despises the bondsman on account of his inferior self-conception and thus cannot value the recognition he receives from him. The lord thus faces the problem that the recognition he receives comes from someone who he holds for not worthy of recognition. Through this he finds himself in an “existential im12 Judith Butler has emphasized this point: “That self-consciousness can find its own essential principle embodied elsewhere appears as a frightening and even angering experience” (Butler 1987, 48). 13 Paul Redding speaks of a “primitive form of sociality” in which we already have Hegel’s ‘spirit’ in its concept before us (cf. Redding 2009, 106f.). A detailed reading of the lord/bondsmanrelationship is also given in Neuhouser 2009.

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passe” (Kojève 1980, 46). We have now reached the point at which both subjects we have met up to now have failed at their attempt to achieve certainty of their superior freedom. Thus both subjects have to question their identity once again. (iii) Ethical self-consciousness: To understand how the subject continues its process of experience after the failure of the lord/bondsman-relationship, one must venture a jump to the chapter on the ethical life in the Phenomenology. Here self-consciousness gains the insight that the freedom it seeks can only be a social freedom. This means that because of its experiences it cannot make a claim to freedom without acknowledging this claim on the part of others. Selfconsciousness is thus ready to restrict its unrestrained freedom, because it realizes that it can only achieve certainty when it is recognized by a free other, which presupposes that it also recognizes the freedom of the other. The claim to social freedom thus contains “less” than the claim to superior freedom, because here the subject’s scope of possible agency is reduced for the benefit of others. In another sense, however, it actually contains “more,” as the subject who claims social freedom – unlike in the case of superior freedom – can be reassured of this right in the face of others. Whilst this existed only in an abstract idea that was confirmed by no one, the social freedom of the subject can be seen in the other insofar as he or she recognizes this freedom. Self-consciousness thus realizes that actual freedom can only exist under conditions of mutual recognition. The subject’s new self-conception on this level can be formulated thus: ‘My freedom can only be the freedom of all.’ The failure of the social conception of self has hence led to a form of self-relation that, with Hegel, we can call ‘ethical self-consciousness.’ After explaining the character of the subject’s new self-conception, Hegel then shows us how the practices through which the subject gives this selfconception a social existence are structured. Hegel differentiates between two forms of acts of recognition at work in the ethical community. On the one hand there is the “human law” of the community and on the other hand the “divine law” of the family (267 and 278).14 For Hegel, in the human law, those forms of recognition emerge that acknowledge the individual in his or her universality. When subjects follow the same law they oblige themselves not only to fulfil the same duties, but also recognize the same rights for all. It can be said that ‘All are equal before the law’ in the sense that every subject is granted the 14

Of course, in this section Hegel discusses, using Sophocles’ Antigone as an example, a first and insufficient form of the ethical life in which these two laws are still in conflict with each other. Even if for Hegel the ancient form of the ethical is doomed to failure, it still contains in its core already both of those principles that in the further course (of the experience of consciousness) are reconciled. Frederick Neuhouser has pointed out that this reconciliation represents the crucial point of Hegel’s project: “The values of individuality and social membership are not to be thought of as competing or mutually exclusive ideals. In fact, each of these ideals, properly understood, can be realized only in conjunction with the other” (Neuhouser 2000, 15).

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status of a legal person. The form of recognition expressed in human law can thus be called ‘egalitarian recognition,’ which, ignoring individual idiosyncrasies, acknowledges the subjects in those respects that are common to all. We can name this form of recognition respect. In divine law, which Hegel sees at work in the family, the situation is just the opposite. For Hegel, the family is the site in which the particularities of a subject find recognition. In contrast to the public sphere of the political community, which is so extensive that the members remain for the most part strangers, the private space of the family is still small enough to allow the members to know each other in their particular attributes and capacities. In contrast to human law, the kind of recognition granted by the law of the family concerns not the individual in his or her universality but rather the individual in his or her particularity. As every individual is affirmed here in his or her singularity, the structure of recognition consists no longer primarily in the emphasis of equality between the participants, but in exposing the differences between them. Hence it is not equality but rather difference that is distinctive for divine law, which is why in this case we can also speak of a ‘differential recognition’ or a valuation of the individual for his or her individual particularities.15 On the basis of these two scales of recognition practices, ethical self-consciousness enters the sphere that Hegel calls “Spirit.” This basically means that self-consciousness can find true certainty on this level. The subject can reach that condition of ‘being in and for itself’ that Hegel proposed at the beginning as the goal of the process of self-development. We are now justified in saying, “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged” (111). Recognition, as we have seen, must be understood here in a double sense of an egalitarian and a differential recognition. Only through this double action does the subject find itself again in the state that Hegel described with the famous expression of the “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” (110). In the ethical community, the deficiency with which the story of the development of the subject began has been superseded. The self-conception of self-consciousness is no longer abstract and universal; rather, it has objectified itself in the world, so that the subject knows that it is conserved in the world in its particularity. In other words, self-consciousness has reached the condition of self-certainty.

15 The two sides I have set out here have also been identified as the central components of the ethical life by Robert Pippin when he emphasises that freedom can only be reached through the interplay of universal and individual recognition: “That goal would be: to be able to show (i) that one could be a free subject only in being recognized as one; (ii) that what that would involve is being concretely recognized as, really taken as, one among many, and that (iii) the concrete or mediated nature of such recognition must mean in modern life being loved (or being able to be loved) as a person, a distinct, entitled individual […]” (Pippin 2008, 209).

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Now that we have followed the process of the development of self-consciousness through its various shapes, I would like to sum up three central points that Hegel has made explicit for us in this process: (i) The subject is driven by a lack of self-certainty, which can only be satisfied by recognition by others. It can only come to itself via the detour of alienation; it finds itself first and to begin with outside of itself. (ii) Hegel provides us at the same time with two normative criteria that he regards as necessary prerequisites for a successful selfactualization of self-consciousness. It must know itself to be an equal among equals in its belonging to a community. And at the same time it must know itself in its particularity, through which it differs from other members of the community. Only through the double action of respect and valuation, egalitarian and differential recognition, can a subject actualize itself. (iii) Finally, Hegel tries to show us that a subject can only achieve the actualization of its self-conception in accord with others. Only in relations of mutual and symmetrical recognition can the subject achieve that form of self-certainty, the finding of which is for Hegel the original driving force of self-consciousness. While Hegel formulates in his first two theses basic insights into the normative character of intersubjective relations, I would like to show that his third thesis needs to be reformulated to meet the challenges of a critical social philosophy. While Hegel wanted to show within a specific historical constellation that relations of recognition can only be actualized under conditions of mutual symmetrical equality and thus – at least in his youth – made the theory of recognition a critique of the existing state of affairs, today his theory remains an instrument of critique because it can help to show how relations of recognition contain a one-sided dependency through which asymmetric social relations are established and supported. In other words, recognition in its essence does not fundamentally tend toward mutual symmetry, but is rather radically asymmetric. Instead of being a motor of emancipatory progress, recognition can in fact also cause relations of inequality. In what follows I would like to show that this insight can already be found in Hegel’s text, if we undertake a reading of the struggle for recognition and the relation of lordship and bondage that differs from a conventional reading.

II. Lordship and Bondage: Recognition and Asymmetry The project of an alternative reading of Hegel’s theory of recognition takes up a French line of Hegel-interpretation that starts from Alexandre Kojève’s wellknown reading. Kojève’s lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, held between 1933 and 1939 at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, influenced a whole generation of French intellectuals.16 This is in part because he 16 Kojève’s students included, among others, Jacques Lacan, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice MerleauPonty, and Georges Bataille. Although the opposite is often asserted, Jean-Paul Sartre did not

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was able to communicate to his contemporaries a new fascination for the seemingly dry idiom of Hegel’s philosophy. Above all, there were two themes that made up the special attraction of Kojève’s reading. On the one hand, his interpretation of Hegel’s theory of self-consciousness takes as its starting point a ‘desire for recognition,’ which fundamentally distinguishes human existence from animal existence.17 In contrast to the latter, human desire is not directed toward an object, but toward another desire. The desire for recognition is thus essentially a desire to be desired by another. This point defines what has been called Kojève’s ‘anthropological reading’ of Hegel. On the other hand, Kojève places the lord/bondsman-relationship at the centre of his interpretation. Between these two protagonists he sees not merely an internal logic of the development of self-consciousness at work, but a universal dialectic, which constitutes the model for the further course of human history as a whole.18 This moment defines what is called Kojève’s ‘historico-teleological reading’ of Hegel. While many of Kojève’s well-known students appropriated the anthropological reading of Hegel and made the theme of recognition a central point of reference in their thought, at the same time for many others the theme of a continual historical process of progress became untenable, especially under the impact of National Socialism. As a consequence, the theme of lordship and bondage was separated from the historical teleological context and increasingly interpreted as a social ontological relation. Above all, the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Lacan stimulated this transformation. For both thinkers, the lord/bondsman-relationship represents not so much the motor of history, but rather the foundation of every intersubjective encounter. In other words, for both Sartre and Lacan our social relationships are always already structured according to the asymmetric model of lordship and bondage. Sartre makes this explicit when in Being and Nothingness he states: “But this slavery is not a historical result […] of a life in the abstract form of consciousness. I am a slave to the degree that my being is dependent at the centre of a freedom which is not mine and which is the very condition of my being” (Sartre 2002 [1943], 358). And Lacan concludes his well-known paper on the mirror stage with the comment that we are essentially bound to the other through an “imaginary servitude” (Lacan 2002 [1949], 9). In the tradition of such a social ontological interpretation of the lord/bondsman-relationship, I would like to develop in what follows a reading that differs from the conventional interpretation of this attend the lectures, but did know the scripts of Kojève’s lectures. For a list of the seminar participants see Roth 1988, 225. 17 Kojève states in reference to this, “In other words, all human, anthropogenetic Desire – the desire that generates Self-Consioucness, the human reality – is, finally, a function of the desire for ‘recognition’” (Kojève 1980 [1947], 7). 18 In the relevant passage Kojève states, “the ‘historical’ dialectic is the ‘dialectic’ of Master and Slave” (Kojève 1980, 9).

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relationship insofar as it brings to the foreground the motif of a one-sided asymmetrical dependency of recognition.19 Before I introduce this ‘subaltern reading,’ I would like to show why in my view the classic ‘heroic reading’ of this relationship seems to miss a crucial point of Hegel’s argument. (i) The heroic reading: This reading starts from the premise that the lord/ bondsman-relationship is constituted by a fear of death, as a result of which one of the participants voluntarily subjugates himself to the other. Before the struggle comes to its fatal end, it is interrupted because one of the subjects fears risking its life. Thus instead of putting his life on the line, he prefers to subjugate himself and become the bondsman of the other. The price he pays for saving his life is the renunciation of his self-conception of possessing a superior freedom. In this reading, the lord is the real hero of the story: as opposed to the fearful and weak-willed bondsman, he proves his steadfastness in the face of death. He is the one who for the sake of his self-conception risks his life and does not let himself be intimidated by his imminent death. It is this perseverance that in the history of philosophy has consistently elicited admiration for the lord. Following the motto, ‘All or Nothing!’, he would rather die a hero than lose what he is fighting for. Admittedly, the heroic reading does have in an attenuated form a quite plausible connection to everyday practical experience (Brandom 2007, 131). Insofar as in everyday life we often have particular respect for those who stand by their conception of self even in situations where they have to accept grave disadvantages for this – for example, when someone leaves a well-paid position for moral reasons. In contrast, we have little regard for someone who at the first sign of difficulty throws his or her self-conception overboard – for instance when someone is ready to suspend important moral convictions for the sake of gratification. But even if the heroic reading in such cases seems to find a certain confirmation in real life situations, it leaves the conditions that constitute the scope of possible action unconsidered, in order to concentrate exclusively on the actors as strong-willed authors of their actions. Above all, however, I think it does not do justice to Hegel’s project, because by focussing on the heroic lord it overemphasizes the potential for autonomous self-control and thus loses sight of the existential significance of recognition by others. There are three objections that I think can be brought against the heroic reading. Firstly, one needs to keep in mind that for Hegel, the lord, who appears here as the archetype of successful self-actualization, later becomes the figure who remains arrested in his development. This suggests that the actual 19 Patchen Markell also offers an alternative reading of the lord/bondsman-relationship. In contrast however to my project, which centers on the figure of the bondsman, Markell’s discussion starts from the figure of the lord, and attempts to show that the endeavor to gain recognition does not have to be essentially connected to the establishment of mutual equality, but rather can lead to the production of relations of social power (cf. Markell 2003, 90–122).

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developmental leap that is executed in the struggle should not be sought on the side of the lord, but on the side of the bondsman. Secondly, the heroic reading seems to me to abbreviate the struggle for recognition because it overlooks the fact that for Hegel in the Phenomenology this struggle is carried out until the point of death, while in earlier versions it is interrupted before this point. Here the life-and-death struggle remains for the participants not a mere dark presentiment; it becomes a bitter reality. And as a consequence, thirdly, what is further overlooked is that the subject, whose story of experience we follow, at first survives the struggle as a victor, before it decides to subjugate itself to the other as its bondsman. Only when one takes these three points into consideration, does it become sufficiently clear why in the Phenomenology Hegel has the life-and-death struggle lead to the famous relation of lordship and bondage. For indeed, instead of, as in earlier drafts, going directly over to the insight that recognition is only possible between equals, in the Phenomenology, Hegel explores the possibility of recognition being the cause of inequality and one-sided dependency. (ii) The subaltern reading: This reading starts from the premise that self-consciousness, the development of which we follow in the Phenomenology, is that which survives the life-and-death struggle by killing the other. This reading can claim to be a ‘close reading’ insofar as Hegel himself explicitly states that the experience of self-consciousness extends through the life-and-death struggle to the point at which it has “survived the struggle” (114).20 If one approaches the interpretation of the struggle from this perspective, the focus is displaced from the question of which of the participants has risked their life to the question of what the survival of the struggle means for the subject. And Hegel’s answer is unequivocal: victory in the struggle is for self-consciousness not so much a sign of its honour, as rather the cause for its failure. Similarly to the case of animal desire, the subject here must come to realize that to the extent that it destroys its counterpart, the certainty of its own self-conception, which actually is supposed to emerge from this, is called into question. The “trial by death,” as Hegel observes, “does away with the truth which was supposed to issue from it, and so, too, with the certainty of self generally” (114). In the case of the life-and-death struggle, the reason for this failure lies simply in the fact that without the other, who it has killed, the subject is no longer capable of achieving acknowledgement of its self-conception. This is because through the killing of the other, the subject has simultaneously destroyed the very condition of the possibility of self-certainty. The struggle thus ends unsatisfactorily 20 In this passage and in the entire paragraph that follows, which is dedicated to the failure of the struggle, Hegel neither uses the subjunctive nor the perspective of the philosophical observer, but rather describes the experiential perspective of self-consciousness. This is underscored by the opening sentence of the next paragraph: “In this experience, self-consciousness learns that life is as essential to it as pure self-consciousness” (115).

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for the surviving self-consciousness: the certainty of self, which should have been gained here, is not achieved. The subject, who has survived the life-and-death struggle as victor, now draws an important conclusion from its failure. Hegel formulates this with the words, “In this experience, self-consciousness learns that life is as essential to it as pure self-consciousness” (115). As in the other stages, the subject realizes that it can only achieve self-certainty if it develops a different form of selfconception. The new conception that it reaches now consists in the insight that it can only be certain of itself if both its own life and the life of the other are preserved. The surviving subject thus realizes that it must protect life if it wishes to actualize itself as self-consciousness. This insight represents the decisive turning point for the further course of the story: its consequence is that the subject at the next encounter with another human no longer seeks conflict but rather a different resolution. This resolution will consist, as Hegels teaches us, in the confirmation of the superior freedom of the other and the acknowledgement of him as his lord. The reason for this ‘self-chosen bondage’ is that the subject can expect from this subjugation a reliable self-conception in his life.21 That is because to the extent that the bondsman confirms the lord, he can assume that the lord will acknowledge him. The subject, whose process of experience we are following, thereby exchanges its initial self-conception of superior freedom (which it realises cannot be actualized) for a self-conception of inferior freedom, because it can at least reach certainty about this. The bondsman is thus ready to subjugate himself, because in exchange he receives at least as much recognition as he requires to reach a minimal form of selfcertainty. In the reading proposed here, the bondsman embodies the figure that shows us how existential the desire for self-certainty can be. He realizes that before being incapable of reaching any self-certainty at all, he will rather accept a form of disrespectful recognition to reach with its help at least some form of self-certainty. What Hegel is thus presenting with the figure of the bondsman, one could say, is an ‘ontological primacy’ of the desire for recognition over the desire to actualize a specific conception of self. As opposed to the heroic reading, which emphasizes the sovereignty of the lord, for the subaltern reading the heteronomy of the bondsman is crucial. It starts from the premise that instead of seeing the transition from the struggle for recognition to the relationship of lordship and bondage as motivated by a heroic form of independence, we should rather pay attention to the far-reaching mode of dependency that Hegel shows us in the figure of the bondsman. This dependency can, in certain 21

Paul Redding has pointed out that the bondsman declares himself ready to take on his subjugation precisely in exchange for a form of self-certainty: “But it is important that the bondsman’s role has been chosen, rather than simply accepted as ‘given.’ … The bondsman has, we might say, committed himself to his identity in exchange for his life and he holds himself to his commitment in his continual acknowledgement of the other as his lord by treating him as such” (Redding 2009, 106).

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circumstances, go so far as to make the subject accept relations of inequality. Insofar, namely, as the subject accepts its role in such asymmetric relations, it is assured of at least some form of recognition. A serious objection that can be raised against my reading of the lord/bondsmanrelationship is that such a relation of recognition is necessarily condemned to failure. Hegel himself points out in a central passage that the bondsman’s recognition is worthless for the lord, because the lord cannot regard him as an equal. Relations of recognition, it can be argued, contain an emancipatory potential because those privileged in these relations only gain satisfaction to the extent that a mutual symmetrical equality between the actors has been established.22 This objection seems to me to be justified insofar as it points out that relations of recognition matter the more they are actualized in mutual symmetric relations. At the same time however, it seems to me that this objection does not hold insofar as it is based on the assumption that unequal relations of recognition are necessarily unsatisfying for those privileged in these relations. One can argue against this assumption on three grounds: first, the distinction introduced earlier between egalitarian and differential recognition shows that an asymmetrical relation of worth can be based on a symmetrical relation of respect. Put more simply, even if the lord despises the bondsman in his concrete conditions of life, he can nevertheless enjoy the respect of the bondsman as long as he regards him as in his essence fundamentally equal to him. Second, this would mean that the lord could gain sufficient recognition through increasing his followers. In this model the lord would reach a satisfactory amount of recognition by multiplying the slight recognition of the bondsman by means of the number of his followers. And third, the recognition that the lord seeks can also come from a third party. Because he has a bondsman, the lord can be recognized by another lord. Kojève has in mind such a resolution of the dual problem of recognition through the involvement of a third party when he writes: “Actually, others recognize the master as master only because he has a slave” (Kojève 1980, 20).

22 Avishai Margalit describes the failure of the lord quite vividly with the following comparison: “The master’s attitude here is similar to that of a soccer team that wants to defeat the rival side decisively but also wants its victory to be recognized as an achievement. A crushing victory decreases the value of winning since it testifies that the other side was not a worthy opponent. Here lies the contradiction – one wants and does not nwant to trounce one’s rivals, at one and the same time. … Humiliation is intended both to prove absolute superiority and to win recognition, which is a conceptual impossibility” (Margalit 1996, 109f.).

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III. Symbolic Vulnerability and Disrespect In the previous section I argued that with the lord/bondsman-relationship Hegel shows us an asymmetrical relation of recognition. I suggested that the bondsman accepts the disrespect towards him because he realizes how existential the recognition by another is for him. After this re-reading of Hegel’s text, I would now like to bring to light the outcome contained in this reading. First, I will explain how the struggle for recognition should be read as an occurrence of disrespect. In a second step, I will explain wherein the specific form of symbolic vulnerability provoked by this struggle consists. On this basis, I would like to make clear in a final step which conditions motivate the bondsman to subjugate himself and identify with the bonds that tie him to this subjugation. (i) Let us begin by recalling what happens in the struggle for recognition. In the vocabulary that resulted from this encounter we can say that the struggle begins with the meeting of two ‘lords.’ In their self-conceptions these two lords see themselves as beings that possess an unrestricted freedom. Their self-conceptions are constituted along the axis of superiority and inferiority, upon which each assumes to hold a higher position than the other, insofar as each expects the other to subjugate himself to his claim to unrestricted freedom. In the self-conception of the actors there is already a latent tendency of disrespect towards the other. This is expressed in the moment that the two subjects communicate: since by mutually expressing the self-conception of their own superiority, they articulate not simply a neutral evaluation of the situation, but each rather expresses disrespect for the other. Again, in the vocabulary developed from the outcome of the struggle we could say that each of the two lords expresses that he holds the other for a mere bondsman. The expression, “you’re nothing but a bondsman!”, is understood by each participant as an instance of disrespect, because it is not compatible with its particular self-conception. If we reformulate what happens in the struggle for recognition in this way, then the struggle must be understood at least as an occurrence of mutual disrespect, in the sense that the participants fight with the means of symbolic violence before the struggle escalates to physical violence. While it seems obvious how physical violence may result in injury, it is not at all clear how symbolic violence may cause harm. While in everyday life one speaks of how an act of disrespect ‘hurts,’ and we are used to using the concept of injury to describe damage to the material existence of the body, what the concept in this symbolic context might mean has yet to be clarified. In this regard, I think Hegel’s theory of self-consciousness provides us with the corresponding vocabulary: his thoughts on the theory of recognition allow us to reformulate the vulnerability called forth through an act of disrespect in the context of a theory of the subject.

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(ii) What the subject’s symbolic vulnerability consists in becomes clear when one looks at the theory of recognition from its other side. For indeed, what Hegel presents from one side as the process of subjectivation is, when looked at from the other side, in fact nothing other than a process of de-subjectivation. Thus, an act of disrespect can be described as harming the process in which the subject gains self-certainty. A central step in this process, as we have seen with the transition from practical to social self-consciousness, is the social existence of the subject. But as this existence only lasts as long as it is continually reproduced through recognition by others, disrespect can be understood as a threatening to dissolve the subject’s social existence by means of a refusal to recognize. However, insofar as the self-relation of the subject is first actualized in social existence, how that social existence may be harmed must be understood in a second step as a process in which the self-relation of the subject is at stake. On this second level, harm would no longer represent dissolution but rather a disruption that makes it impossible to build a secure self-relation. Moreover, because the subject’s self-relation is harmed by disrespect, in a third step we have before us a form of violence towards the subject’s very self-conception. And on this third level, harm would thus mean that the subject comes to doubt whether that which it held to be its truth is really right. It is thereby set back into the state of lacking self-certainty which was to ignite its desire for self-certainty at the very beginning of the story of the experience of self-consciousness. In contrast to the previous state however, the subject meanwhile knows that it is not alone in the world and that it cannot realise itself as a solitary ‘I’. For the subject, this relapse into a state of lack is thus connected to the experience of a painful loss, as it falls out of the world in which it had already found a place. In the vocabulary that we have developed with the help of Hegel’s theory of recognition, we are now in a position to reformulate symbolic harm in three distinct ways: as dissolution of the social existence of the subject, as disruption of its self-relation, and as doubt about its own self-conception. The extent to which doubt about one’s own self-conception can become an existential danger can be measured by a Hegelian reading of René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes famously begins this project by raising a radical doubt, suspending all opinions that seem even slightly questionable. This process goes so far that Descartes even questions his own existence. Like Hegel’s Phenomenology, the Meditations are at first set out as a project to find self-certainty, but unlike the Phenomenology, the question is not “Who am I?” but instead the existential question, “Do I exist at all?”. Now we know that the point at which Descartes’ doubt turns into certainty is the seemingly irreducible cogito ergo sum. With this proposition Descartes thinks he has found the Archimedean point from which his own existence as well as that of the surrounding world can be proven. But we also know that at this point Descartes has only proven the existence of his res cogitans. This cer-

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tainty is not sufficient to also gain certainty of himself as res extensa. To do this, he introduces the idea of God in a second step. It is God that ensures the subject that it has a physical manifestation through which it finds itself in the world. The certainty of his own physical existence that Descartes seeks is thus in the end not secured by his own ‘I,’ but is dependent, rather, upon that singular and absolute other that he calls God. Now if at this point we make a jump from Descartes’ argument to Hegel’s, it becomes clear that Hegel lets the secular other take the place that Descartes attributed to the absolute other. By means of his recognition, the secular other secures the existence of the subject in the world. And when this recognition is lacking, the subject is thrown back to the sole truth of his cogito. It knows of its own existence, but it cannot be sure whether it also exists in the world. Thus, the lack of recognition is experienced by the subject as a threatening loss of its worldly self-certainty. So from Hegel’s perspective, the Cartesian subject can ultimately only overcome its doubt regarding its own existence, by knowing itself to be recognized by an other. Otherwise it finds itself in the precarious state that Descartes, at the beginning of his first meditation, describes as a waking dream. In this state the subject doubts whether it exists in the world surrounding it or whether it is in a state of invisibility, wandering around as a bodiless manifestation. It is precisely this state of invisibility that is often used in contemporary social philosophical discourse to describe exclusion from social processes of recognition. Many people experience the refusal of recognition as a threat to their visibility in the surrounding lifeworld.23 Returning to our first question as to what constitutes the specific quality of hurt or harm caused by disrespect, we are now in a position to propose the following answer: while physical violence aims to inflict bodily harm, symbolic violence aims to bring about the disappearance of subjectivity. When we understand the life-and-death struggle as an occurrence of disrespect, what is therefore at stake is not primarily the physical life of the protagonists, but rather the subject’s “being in the world.” What Hegel thus wishes to show us with the transition from the struggle to the relation of lord and bondsman is that the emergence of this relation results from the fear of losing this being in the world. The “absolute lord,” before whom the subservient consciousness trembles, represents in my reading not so much the fear of physical death as the fear of social death. Insofar as the bondsman has experienced this social death when through the killing of the other he was left without recognition, he was already confronted with the state that Hegel described fittingly with the words: “In that experience it undergoes an internal dissolution, has trembled in every fibre of its being, and everything 23 This point has been taken up most recently by Honneth 2001. Using the example of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel The Invisible Man, Honneth makes it clear that gestures of provocation sometimes aid those who are socially excluded to achieve at least some form of visibility. Even if such provocations are mostly answered with disrespecting sanctions, they are still important for those concerned, because through them a minimal degree of visibility can be achieved.

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solid and stable has been shaken to its foundations” (117, translation modified). The experience of the dissolution of one’s own existence that Hegel presents here is nothing else than the transition to an experience of social invisibility, which results from the loss of any and all forms of self-certainty. (iii) The threat of social death forms the starting point from which, in a final step, I would like to describe the social dynamic of disrespect in the lord/bondsman-relationship. Following this dynamic it can be made plausible why the bondsman binds himself step by step further to the disrespect of the lord up until the point of complete identification. This process has three stages, which we can call acceptance, admission, and acquisition. Let us first consider acceptance: the reason why a subject sometimes accepts disrespect is that before it risks dying a social death, it will rather accept that minimal form of recognition still present in an insult. Even potentially harmful words like “you’re nothing but a bondsman!” still contain a minimal degree of recognition, because even an utterance that asserts its addressee is no-one is still addressed to someone, who is told that he is no-one. This “paradox of humiliation” is based upon the fact that even those speech acts that claim to deny the humanity of the addressee are directed towards a human being and thus appellatively confirm the very thing they semantically deny.24 Even if disrespect does not allow one to maintain one’s own individual conception of self, it does at least allow a subject to hold on to the elementary form of self-conception that consists in the fact of being a human being. This form of confirmation entails that we should not understand recognition and disrespect as polar opposites, but rather conceive them as two sides of one and the same process. It is not the case that disrespect begins where recognition ends, but that recognition forms the condition of the possibility of disrespect. The reason why we sometimes accept harmful words is thus simply that these are acts of disrespectful recognition, and as such have the power to save us from social death in that they concede us at least some form of existence in the world. The second level of the dynamic in the lord/bondsman-relationship can be described as a process of admission. This starts from the premise that most cases of disrespect not only provide an elementary form of recognition, but that beyond they also contain an attribution. In our case this means that the insult “you are nothing but a bondsman!” not only disputes the self-conception of the addressee, but at the same time attributes the addressee a new form of self-conception for which it offers appreciation. To the degree that the insult denies the subject recognition of its already existing conception of self, it opens a new horizon in which the subject could achieve self-certainty. The decisive 24

Avishai Margalit formulates the ‘paradox of humiliation’ with reference to the lord/bondsmanrelationship as follows: “humilation typically presupposes the humanity of the humilated. Humiliating behaviour rejects the other as nonhuman, but the act of rejection presupposes that it is a person that is being rejected” (Margalit 1996, 109).

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element in this process is that the new self-conception offered is for the most part one that is considered socially inferior so that the subject concerned cannot find itself again in it. This is because an act of disrespect is always connected to a social displacement, in which a ‘higher’ conception of self is exchanged for an ‘inferior’ one. This knowledge can be traced in the everyday expressions we use to describe such scenarios. With dynamic concepts such as degradation, disparagement, or depreciation, we express precisely that the new self-conception on offer has less social value. And insofar as a subject is forced to take on this new self-conception, it must objectify itself in a social existence that it is actually not willing to take over.25 In this case, disrespect can be described as misrecognition of the former social existence of the subject. This entails that the subject is confined in an alien self-conception. The admission of an act of disrespect thus goes along with an alienation in the subject’s self-conception. And insofar as the subject is thereby forced to develop itself toward a self-conception in which it cannot find itself, we can also speak of a reification. If the harm caused by the act of disrespect can be described on the one hand as dissolution, disturbance, and doubt, we see here how these moments are transformed into misrecognition, alienation, and reification. The moment of acquisition forms the third and final stage in the dynamic of lord and bondsman. It consists in the gradual closure of the gap between the subject’s own self-conception and the self-conception forced upon it from outside. Insofar as the subject cannot rely on alternative contexts of recognition that support its self-conception, it begins to identify gradually ever more with the self-conception ascribed to it in the act of disrespect. This identification entails that the bondsman acquires step by step the concepts that are at the same time the means of his subjugation. His desire for self-certainty turns into the desire for his own submission. This nexus in the desire of the subject leads to a situation in which the more it strives towards recognition, the more firmly it is chained to its submission. The subject will thereby identify ever more with the act of disrespect “you are nothing but a bondsman!”. The submission, in this case, becomes part of the process of subjectivation, so that the inferiority is accepted and the lord’s contempt toward it internalized to the point of selfcontempt.26 It is not seldom that this form of acquisition results in paralysing self-hate, which not only leads the subordinated subject to continually characterise itself with pejorative expressions (“I am nothing but a lowly bondsman”) 25 Using a reconstruction of John Austin’s theory of speech acts, Judith Butler has explored the social conditions that could make such a takeover necessary (Butler 1997). 26 Charles Taylor describes this process as follows: “Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being” (Taylor 1992, 25). And as regards African Americans, he cites in agreement: “An analogous point has been made in relation to blacks: that white society has for generations projected a demeaning image of them, which some of them have been unable to resist adopting. Their own self-depreciation, on this view, becomes one of the most potent instruments of their own oppression” (ibid., 26).

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but also prevents it from defying the disrespect shown toward it. Through defiance it would revolt against the very framework of recognition that secures the certainty of its own existence. On the basis of this moment of acquisition we can thus understand the stability of the relationship of lord and bondsman to the effect that overcoming this relationship would require questioning exactly those conditions that bring the subject into being in the first place. Hegel’s presentation of the story of the development of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology, which in the classical reading is interpreted as a continual progressive process, thus appears in a different light. Here one sees clearly the extent to which the dependency on recognition can set in motion a social dynamic of disrespect that leaves the subject with – to conclude with a word from Adorno – a ‘damaged life.’ Translated by Anita Mage and Alice Lagaay

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tology. Trans. by Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 2002 [1943]. Siep, Ludwig. “Der Kampf um Anerkennung. Zu Hegels Auseinandersetzung mit Hobbes in den Jenaer Schriften.” In: Hegel-Studien 9 (1974), 155–207. Tamineaux, Jacques. “Hegel and Hobbes.” In: idem. Dialectic and Difference: Modern Thought and the Sense of Human Limits. Ed. by Robert Crease and James D. Tecker. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1985, 1-37. Taylor, Charles. Hegel. Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1975. — Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition.” Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Williams, Robert R. Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.

Hegemonic Listening and Subversive Silences: Ethical-political Imperatives Nikita Dhawan Hegemonic “norms of recognition” determine what can be read, heard and understood as legible. Intelligibility is deeply linked to survival, whereby the very possibility of life depends on being recognized as a legitimate subject. At the heart of critical ethico-political practices is the politics of representation, that is to say, speaking for and speaking about those who cannot speak for themselves. This paper seeks to address the challenge of representation and the problematic role of the (postcolonial) feminist who attempts to recover and represent the perspectives of those who are illegible and unintelligible within hegemonic frameworks and thereby rendered ethically, politically and rhetorically illegitimate.

“What cannot be said, above all must not be silenced.” Jacques Derrida

Theories of language are inevitably theories of subjectivity, whereby any analysis of speech and silence cannot escape investigating the role of the speaking subject. Within liberal political theory, language functions as a tool employed by a sovereign subject to mirror reality “out there.” Logocentrism forms the foundation of liberalism’s implicit language theory, which has been severely contested by, amongst others, critical race theorists and (postcolonial) feminists (Hanssen 2000, 160). The dualist metaphysical underpinning of Western thought is challenged by probing into the limits between speech, silence and violence, which questions the grounding of knowledge and truth in the idea of authentic, self-present awareness achieved by the speaking subject. Moreover, the juxtaposing of the potential clash between one person’s free speech and another’s potential harm or injury through epistemic and discursive violence challenges the foundational premises of liberal definitions of speech as politically empowering and emancipatory. Moving away from the understanding of free speech as a means to freedom, the effort here is to draw attention to the intricate relation between language/speech, power and violence. Here, the claim of speech being invested with rationalist, freedom-producing powers is confronted with the idea of an originary violence that inhabits language. Moreover, corresponding to the power of the spoken word is the privileged role taken on by hearing. Hegemonic “norms of recognition” determine what can be read, heard and understood as intelligible and legible. This in turn makes non-normative subjects and practices vulnerable to “normative violence” (Butler 1999, xx), which is defined as the violence of particular norms that regulates what is legible and intelligible within a specific framework.

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Normative intelligibility is deeply linked to survival, thereby making certain lives “impossible” and “unlivable” (ibid., viii), whereby the very possibility of a “lived life” depends on being recognized as a legitimate and legible subject. At the heart of the politics of speech and silence is the issue of representation, that is to say, who speaks for whom alongside what is being said. To this end, my paper seeks to address the challenges of representation and the problematic role of the (postcolonial) feminist who claims to recover and represent the perspectives of those who are not legible and intelligible within hegemonic frameworks and thereby rendered ethically and politically illegitimate. One of the most significant texts that addresses the question of speech, silence and representation is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988). Foucault’s claim that the masses are capable of speaking for themselves is the focus of critique in this foundational text of feminist postcolonial theory. Invoking Marx, Spivak argues that the postcolonial feminist cannot renounce the responsibility of political representation, namely, speaking in the name of those who cannot self-represent. I want to juxtapose this Spivakian argument with one of the most challenging academic disputes of our times, namely, the debate between Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida on the question of silence and representation. In his lecture Cogito and the History of Madness, Derrida (1978, 33ff.) proclaims that the best spokespersons for the silenced are those who betray them best, thereby rejecting Foucault’s proposed “Archaeology of Silence” as a politically dubious project. Examining these two insights, I propose to address the mutual dependence of social position and political voice, and the subsequent dilemmas of political representation. Against this background, this text raises some questions like: When is speech politically enabling, and when does it become repressive? Can silence be subversive? If so, when is silence a performance of power and/or violence? If discursive violence is inevitable, why not give preference to silence over discourse? Lastly, why should one not avoid speaking?

The Power of Speech According to well-established liberal conventions, speech as an instrument or medium of language functions as an organ of transparency, political power, and ultimately, the advancement of universal freedom (Hanssen 2000, 160). In most “advanced” democratic states, these ideals are codified. As a consequence, constitutions protect free speech, which embodies one of the cornerstones of liberal democracy. One of the best examples of this position is John Stuart Mill’s “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion” in his canonical text On Liberty, wherein he champions the benefits of Socratic dialogue or the dialectic of speech and counter-speech for deliberative democracy (Mill 2005 [1859]). Here, speech is not merely understood in representational, but also in

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performative terms, whereby speech is not simply the transparent medium for the communication of ideas; rather, speech functions as the privileged vehicle for realizing freedom. In the liberal-democratic tradition, speech is primarily seen as politically enabling. Subsequently, violence is located outside the precinct of language. This postulates a rationality immanent to speech, expressed in exchanging and debating arguments, a process at the heart of liberal democracy. Violence is either seen as external or threatening to speech or as an obstacle to the expression of free political speech. Most liberal conceptions of free speech stress the performative enactment of political power in and through speech (Hanssen 2000, 170). Herein, silence is seen as a destruction of presence, as a “disease” of speech. Corresponding to the power of the spoken word is the privileged role taken on by hearing. As introduced above, logocentrism forms the foundation of liberalism’s implicit language theory, which has been severely contested by, amongst others, critical race theorists and feminists, who have probed the limits between speech and violence (ibid., 161). They juxtapose the potential clash between one person’s free speech and another’s potential harm or injury through violent hate speech. Along similar lines the poststructuralist critique of discursive violence challenges the foundational premises in liberal definitions of political speech. Poststructuralist theory shifts focus from public and private speech to the question of “discourse,” thereby challenging the privileging of speech and displacing the speaking subject’s claims to sovereign control over speech-acts (ibid.). In questioning liberalism’s instrumental, referential and emancipatory understanding of speech, poststructuralism disturbs one of the foundational underpinnings of the humanist tradition laid down in Aristotle’s definition of humans as political (zōon politikon) and speaking beings (zōon logon ekhon). The linguistic turn, ushered in by structuralists and reinforced by poststructuralists, challenges the traditional relationship between humans and speech by inverting the ontological priority between subject and language. With a clear identification between power and voice, liberal political theory reads an absence of political voice as an absence of agency and conversely, political agency presumes free speech as an effective tool to counter violence. In contrast, poststructuralists focus on the inextricable link between violence and speech thereby challenging the essentially emancipatory understanding of speech. They unfold how violence occurs when others are subjugated through the power of one’s speech by highlighting operations of violence that are not always manifest or visible. Thus one person’s free speech is parasitical on another’s silence, so that the question of speech is at the heart of political struggle. In particular, attention is paid to a category of violence that operates through enunciatory and discursive practices. “Discursive violence” draws attention to violence located and realized within the precinct of language. This is not

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merely at the level of particular instances of “abuse” of power of speech, rather deconstructive poststructuralism assumes an a priori violence that inheres in language as such. Discursive violence raises tricky questions about how to talk of and about violence without reproducing it. Exemplarily, thinkers like Foucault and Derrida focus on the presence of violence in speech and language thereby challenging the promise of freedomproducing speech and providing a critique of logocentrism. They unfold the a priori violence inherent to language as such. It is important to note here that it is not just violence implicit in particular instances of speech, but rather an “originary violence” that determines the conditions of possibility governing all individual speech acts (ibid., 165). Violence can thus be seen as the prior-to, as that which conditions the possibility of language.

Postcolonial Feminist Theory and the Question of Violence Drawing on deconstructive poststructuralism and Marxism, postcolonial feminist theory seeks to simultaneously address the issue of material exploitation and epistemic violence. A further challenge to the assumptions on speech and emancipation has been offered by postcolonial theory. Colonialism, it has been argued, is not just about military conquest of geographical territories, but rather about subjectivation à la Foucault, namely the simultaneous subject-formation of both the colonial and colonized subjects. Postcolonial theory is not merely a reconstruction of the historical domination of the “Orient” by “the West” through economic and military force, but a critical analysis of the construction of “Europe” and its “Other” as an “effect” of colonial discourses. Thus, the process of “Othering” (the production of “the Orient”) is inextricably linked to the self-representation of “Europe.” As a result, imperialism is not only a territorial and economic but inevitably also a subject-constituting project. Colonialism and neocolonialism are not restricted to military conquest, genocide and exploitation, but they also extend to “epistemic violence,” that is, to violence produced discursively through imperial politics of knowledge production. A good example of this is Edward Said’s analysis of orientalist discourses in his canonical work Orientalism (1978). The collision of feminist and postcolonial perspectives exposes hegemonic Eurocentric discourses to a “double critique” from third world women who are subjugated by hetero-sexist as well as racist structures. The notion of “double colonisation,” namely, that women in colonial contexts were subjected to both imperial ideologies and native patriarchies, is a crucial insight of postcolonial feminist discourse (Gandhi 1998, 83). Postcolonial feminism unfolds how imperialism instrumentalized “the woman’s question” to legitimise “rescue narratives” of “saving the brown woman from the brown man” (à la Spivak). The “status of women” became a marker for the inferiority of the colonized

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nation. The key manoeuvre was to construct the “repressed” native female as an alibi to justify the imposition of the “modernizing,” “liberating” and “progressive” regime of empire, a process that also consolidated imperial Europe’s self-image as civilizationally superior. The native woman as a “victim” of her culture becomes an object to be saved by the colonizing powers. As a simultaneous critique against the white colonisers as well as the indigenous patriarchies, postcolonial feminism exposes anti-colonial nationalistic discourses for ignoring gender issues, whereby the “internal” hierarchies and injustices were immunised from critique in the struggle against the colonisers. The following example aims to illustrate this argument: British colonial rulers in India instrumentalized “the woman’s question” by declaring that Indians were unfit for self-rule on account of their “barbaric” attitudes toward women. On the other hand, efforts towards gender equality set off fears amongst the natives of the “Westernisation” of Indian women, which was seen as a loss of authenticity of native cultures and a triumph of the colonizer. Between imperial and nationalist masculinities, the “native woman” was caught between competing patriarchal ideologies. Equally significant is the critique of imperialist feminism offered by feminist postcolonial theory. Discourses about the “emancipated” woman automatically evoke the image of the white, Western, bourgeois woman and the “other” woman is automatically relegated to the role of the “repressed” subject. This goes hand in glove with the construction of the “Third World” or the “Orient” in which gender oppression is instrumentalized as symptomatic of an essential, non-Western barbarism. The “emancipated” Western feminist is the one who has “voice” in contrast to her “mute(d)” third world counterpart (Mohanty 1988, 64).

“Can the Subaltern Speak?” In her thought-provoking essay Can the Subaltern Speak?, Spivak (1988) addresses the issue of silenced subjects and hegemonic listeners. For her, the speech act is a transaction between the speaker and listener, whereby those who are not listened to are those who are “unable to speak.” It is not that they do not talk, but rather they are not heard and thereby silenced. Spivak explores the processes by which certain subjects were systematically silenced within colonial as well as anti-colonial discourses. The starting point for this canonical essay is the question about responsibility of representation as a powerful critique of Foucault’s position in his conversation with Deleuze (Foucault 1977, 205ff.). Foucault argues that the masses no longer need the intellectual to gain knowledge; they know and understand the oppressive circumstances and are capable of expressing themselves accordingly (ibid.). But systems of power exist, which block, prohibit and invalidate this discourse and knowl-

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edge, whereby intellectuals are themselves agents of this power system. According to Foucault, the intellectual’s task is no longer to place himself “somewhat ahead and to the side” in order to express the stifled truth of the collectivity; rather it is to struggle against forms of power that transform him/her into its object (ibid.). In constantly distancing himself from questions of representation, Foucault, according to Spivak, is guilty of abdicating responsibility with his post-representationalist vocabulary that hides an essentialist agenda. Spivak points out that such a construction of the subject unwittingly renders subjectivity, agency and identity coherent and resembles the liberal humanist model. For Spivak, representation is indispensable in the process of decolonisation. Following Marx, she distinguishes two meanings of the word “representation;” namely, Vertretung (speaking for) and Darstellung (speaking about). Representation is thereby a combination of “proxy” and “portrait” (Spivak 1990, 104), whereby Foucault and Deleuze only focus on the latter and ignore the former aspect. According to Spivak, the process of “speaking in the name of” always entails an element of interpretation, thereby making it crucial that one continually make transparent the process of representation, namely, not only who represents, but also who is being represented for what purpose and at which historical moment. As a participant in critical processes who seeks to articulate the voices of the marginalized, the postcolonial feminist functions as a conduit in the processes of decolonisation. But the postcolonial feminist, who speaks in the name of the “silenced Other,” is susceptible to being co-opted. Intellectuals who “stand in” as spokespersons for these “silenced margins” function as “information retrievers” for Western academia, whereby instead of questioning and subverting the sites of power from which the dominant discourse operates, the relation between “centre” and “margin” is once again consolidated through the representative intellectual. The “responsibility of representation” raises the question of who will be the “legitimate” voice of the “marginalized,” even as one needs to make transparent who is really speaking for whom. This comes with the challenge of how to ethically and imaginatively inhabit other people’s narrative – without appropriating it and without doing violence to it (Landry and MacLean 1996, 6). The postcolonial feminist Rey Chow remarks that when “speaking” itself is anchored in the structures and histories of domination, then any attempts to reinstate the “silenced voices” carries the risk of betraying and neutralizing the untranslatability of their experience (Chow 1993, 36ff.). Taking her cue from Spivak, the black feminist Abena Busia (1989/90, 84) focuses on the deliberate “unvoicing” of black women in colonial texts. Busia thereby shifts the focus away from the question whether the subaltern can speak towards the fact that when she speaks, her text is simply not understood, not heard. This implies that instead of focusing on the supposed voicelessness of the marginalized, it is more crucial to scandalize the inability of the “dominant”

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to listen or their “selective hearing” and “strategic deafness.” Spivak likewise remarks that for her, the question “Who should speak?” is less crucial than “Who will listen?” (1990, 60). She also clarifies that her question “Can the subaltern speak?” is rhetorical, for the notion of subaltern entails in itself “not being able to speak.” Hence, “if the subaltern can speak then, thank god, the subaltern is not a subaltern any more” (ibid., 158). At this stage, it is instructive to briefly explore the famous dispute between Foucault and Derrida, which has important consequences for the discussion of representation within Postcolonial Studies.

Foucault versus Derrida In his seminal work Madness and Civilization, Foucault endeavours to trace the trajectory of the silencing of madness1 effected by the discourse of Western reason. His “archaeology of madness” seeks to say madness itself, to open our ears to all those words deprived of language, forgotten words on whose erasure Western reason is founded. This is an attempt to give voice to the impossible speech of madness, to restore to it both its language and its right to speak. Foucault’s project constitutes a kind of Nietzschean “counter-memory” that seeks to recover what has been forgotten and restore what has been lost. It is an attempt to say in words what words cannot say anymore (Carroll 1989, 111). Derrida is suspicious of Foucault’s project, which, according to him, must inevitably fail. He poses two major questions that challenge the very validity of Foucault’s project. First, if history is a rational concept, how is it possible to write a history of madness? And second, if Foucault claims to speak for a madness that by definition must remain silent, does he not risk reinforcing the very mode of exclusion that he claims to avoid? (Derrida 1978, 33ff.) As we have seen, Foucault seeks to go beyond the Western form of reason and the violence it entails. His twin aim is to know madness in its “essence” by providing a historical account of the exclusion of the mad and the silencing of madness. In doing so, he seeks to avoid complicity with the violent forces of domination and repression, which silenced madness by virtue of determining its “truth.” Derrida contends that Foucault’s attempts to speak the silence of madness entails a tricky paradox, namely: to think that one can reach out and into madness by the use of the very instrument, namely, the language of reason that had previously silenced it. For Derrida, the paradox of how the language of reason is to communicate the silence of madness remains irresolvable (ibid., 41). Derrida seems to remind Foucault of his own insight – that the essence of madness is that it cannot be said. 1

Spivak (1999, 117) remarks that the mad are subaltern of a special kind.

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According to Foucault, the mad, by definition can neither speak to us nor speak for themselves. Our reason has silenced and pathologized madness, so that the option seems to be to search for another form of reason that does not exclude. Given the impossibility of an alternative language of reason, silence would be the only response that avoids the repetition of the “original violence” (Boyne 1990, 59). According to Derrida, the search for an alternative is fruitless in the case of reason, owing to which he rejects the pursuit of a higher form of reason than the one we know. He argues that to extricate oneself from a discursive order that has already achieved the banishment of unreason, there remains only one option: to become mad (ibid.). Indeed, he contends that the one who wishes to speak the silence of madness has already moved to the side of the enemy, to the side of reason. For Derrida, reason is not a historically determined structure that is contingent so that any attempt to work against reason will always be contained by reason. Reason in general, according to him, cannot be transgressed (ibid.). He thereby rejects the Foucauldian project of writing the “archaeology of silence” and accuses the archaeologist of the madness of acting in bad faith. In Derrida’s view, even as reason is charged with silencing madness, Foucault cannot disown his own participation in this silencing. Derrida’s thesis is provocative insofar as he suggests that it is impossible to avoid complicity in the exclusions of reason. As soon as one uses language one collaborates, as it were, in the process of silencing. There is no alternative. Reason-in-general cannot be surpassed. Derrida professes that Foucault knows the impossibility of his project. The language of exclusion, specifically, the language of reason cannot be used to combat exclusion. In the face of the inaccessibility of the Other, perhaps silence is the only answer. For to speak is to betray. Derrida demands that Foucault reflect upon the site from which his discourse emanates, whereby Foucault’s own endeavour is caught within the conceptual economy which it claims to denounce. Any attempt to speak madness in turn represses it, does violence against it. For Derrida, the relationship of mutual exclusion between language and madness, an exclusion Foucault’s own discourse cannot avoid reinforcing, is not historical, but economical (ibid., 216). This implies that this exclusion is essential to the economy of language as such, whereby the very possibility of language arises out of a break with madness. Foucault’s dilemma is not contingent, but fundamental, whereby rather than being a historical accident, the exclusion of madness is the general condition and the constitutive foundation of the very possibility of speech. The Foucault-Derrida debate has important consequences for our discussion on the questions of representation. If representation is necessary it is also impossible. The postcolonial feminist theorist is caught in this double-bind. Postcolonial feminist theory seeks to historically investigate the “epistemic silences” in our socio-political and cultural structures. The genealogy of these silences entails interrogating the trajectories of violence in dominant Western

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and non-Western paradigms of knowledge and constellations of power that marginalize, invalidate and annihilate “other” perspectives and “other” ways of being-in-the-world. The critique of hegemonic exclusionary epistemologies raises difficult questions regarding strategies of resistance, for this task is full of challenges as counter narratives risk reproducing violent power/knowledge dynamics. The tricky process of recovering the voices of those who have been silenced by imperialistic discourses is fraught with dangers of stabilizing power regimes anew. The Foucauldian task of an “insurrection of subjugated knowledges” carries with it the temptation of a simple inversion of existing hierarchies, which merely produce new forms of violence.

Representation and Violence: The Role of the Postcolonial Feminist “They cannot represent themselves; they must by represented.” Karl Marx On the one hand, representation serves as the operative term within the political processes in seeking to extend visibility and legitimacy to women, particularly subaltern women, as political subjects. On the other hand, it is imperative that attention be shifted to the critical issue of how relations of domination and exclusions are unwittingly sustained when representation becomes the focus of politics. Paradoxically, as Judith Butler (1990, 4) advises us, representation will be worthwhile for feminism only when the subjects as well as the processes of representation are persistently problematized. Postcolonial feminist goals risk failure by refusing to acknowledge the constitutive powers of their own representational claims. Thus, the biggest challenge that is presently faced in the discourse of representation, for both feminist as well as postcolonial theory, is the interrogation of categories that have hitherto functioned as norms and as tools of critique. As Foucault has shown, power produces the very subject that it subsequently represents. Accordingly, the juridical formation of language and politics that represent women as subjects of feminism is itself a discursive formation and the effect of a given version of representational politics. The political construction of the subject proceeds with certain legitimating and exclusionary aims, whereby these political operations are effectively concealed and naturalized. Thus discourses, in fact, “produce” what they claim merely to represent. This implies that it is not enough to inquire into how the “third world woman” may be adequately represented, but what is even more crucial is to analyse how the category “third world woman,” the subject of postcolonial feminist theory, is produced and restrained by the very structures of discourse through which emancipation is sought.

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Along similar lines Spivak criticises the South Asian Subaltern Studies historians insofar as their programme centres on the retrieval of an undivided subaltern consciousness. Wary of their attempts to represent and recover subaltern agency, she draws attention to the ways in which the factors gender and caste create a heterogeneous field of subject-positions. This critique problematizes the general notion of an undifferentiated subaltern subject as an effect of a monolithic colonizing power and questions the simple notion that a counterhistory merely involves making subalterns the subjects of their own histories (cf. Castro Varela and Dhawan, 2005). Rather, Spivak urges us to undertake the more difficult project of attending to those moments, such as the figure of woman in the case of Subaltern Studies, where the theorist remains complicit and perpetuates the structures and presuppositions of the very system he seeks to oppose. For example, as previously discussed in “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, she unfolds how Foucault unwittingly constructs an “expressive subject” who can speak for itself. This renders subjectivity, agency and identity coherent and transparent. Mindful of the intractable problems in which Foucault became embroiled when attempting to retrieve the lost, true speech of the silenced other in his earlier writings, she nonetheless argues that the postcolonial feminist cannot renounce the responsibility of representation. This makes the ethicopolitical responsibility of representation a more difficult task than mere recovery of “subalternized” perspectives. The conclusion of Spivak’s argument in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is that in spite of the dangers of reification, any representation of “marginalized” voices can only be heard through the necessary mediating role of the (female) intellectual. In my opinion, there is an intrinsic paradox in the relation between the representing postcolonial feminist and the represented “marginalized” who “cannot” perform the act of self-representation. The subject position of the postcolonial feminist is parasitic on the inability/prohibition of the subaltern’s self-representation. And although the entire attempt of the postcolonial feminist is to erase/dissolve “subaltern space” (Spivak 1990, 158), in doing so she incurs the risk of forfeiting her own legitimacy as the representing intellectual. It is exactly at the crossroads between the responsibility of representation and “permission to narrate,” in other words, at the place of the licence/honour of being the voice of the “silenced,” that the politics of her praxis lies. The postcolonial feminist’s efforts to give marginalized perspectives a voice in history is open to dangers of essentialism or further of the representatives themselves becoming “token victims” and thereby instruments of dominant structures that block processes of decolonisation. The postcolonial feminist is thereby caught in a double bind as she inhabits “intimately” the very structures that she seeks to critique. The solution is not a post-representationalist politics, but the persistent interrogation of one’s complicity in the re-colonization of “counter-spaces.” Counter-discourses themselves risk silencing those in whose name they claim to speak. It is instructive at this point to remember

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Derrida’s critique of Foucault’s proposed archaeology of silence. As Derrida warns: The misfortune of the mad, the interminable misfortune of their silence, is that their best spokesmen are those who betray them best; which is to say that when one attempts to convey their silence itself, one has already passed over to the side of the enemy [...]. (Derrida 1978, 35f.) In their brilliant essay, “Can the Subaltern Vote?”, Leerom Medovoi, Shankar Raman and Benjamin Robinson (1990, 134f.) explore how in erasing the question of neo-colonial subordination, the electoral process in the Global South can actually subalternize the masses at the very moment that it seems to let them speak. They analyse the framework within which an election is acknowledged as political speaking, as a transparent process of representation authentically expressing the will of the people. By virtue of their entry into the discourse of self-determination, of “free and fair” elections, the postcolonial nation legitimises itself to the entire globe by embracing the “democratic process.” The authors unfold how speech is the symbolic medium most notorious for the denial of its own difference. “The people” are represented as always knowing their interests and being able to articulate them. They are also seen as idealized homogenous electoral subjects whose political speech (both voice and vote) is simply an extension of their “authentic” everyday speaking (ibid.). The subaltern is silenced at the very moment when the claim that it is being heard is triumphantly announced (Dhawan 2007). This undermines the straightforward promise of a democratic postcoloniality through parliamentary elections. We, as postcolonial feminists, must take seriously our complicity in the continued reproduction of subalternity, even as we attempt to listen to the “small voice of history” (Guha 1996). A politics that is focused on “speaking in the name of” the invisible, powerless, speechless “other,” must address the consequences of our counter-discourses for those on the other side of silence. As Chow remarks: “We need to remember as intellectuals that the battles we fight are battles of words” (1993, 17). Our speech is parasitical on the subaltern’s silence, even as our silence is no guarantee that the subaltern will be heard.

Hegemonic Listening and Subversive Silences Spivak provides another interesting perspective on the question of speech, silence and power. At the International Women’s University in Hannover in 2000 she concluded her lecture with the much discussed proclamation: “We have to learn to work together in silence”2. Given that all speech is ensconced 2 There is a decisive difference between the silence of the subaltern and that of the postcolonial feminist.

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in power and violence, silence can also function as a strategy of resistance, of non-violence. Let us briefly explore this point with the help of Spivak’s reading of J.M. Coetzee’s novel Foe. She reads Foe to be a rewriting of Daniel Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe in order to challenge the authority of Crusoe’s colonial narrative. In Robinson Crusoe, Robinson carries out the civilising mission by teaching Friday, the native, to speak English. Similarly, in Foe, the novel’s female narrator, the Englishwoman Susan Barton, attempts to give a voice to Friday. However, the violence of colonial education, which was effaced in Robinson Crusoe, is brought to the fore, as Friday is revealed to have had his tongue removed by slave traders. Susan Barton tries to overcome his muteness by finding a means to give voice to Friday (Spivak 1991, 169). Initially, she experiments with pictures to help Friday describe his loss, but realises the futility of attempting to represent Friday’s traumatic experiences in pictures. She then tries to teach Friday to write. Spivak underlines the fact that one of the words that Susan Barton teaches Friday is “Africa.” For Spivak the word “Africa” is a catachresis or an improper word, because it was historically imposed on a continent by a European colonial power (ibid., 170). By teaching Friday the word “Africa,” Susan attempts to give Friday the language to assert national independence and to challenge the colonial narrative. During the course of the writing lesson, Friday proceeds to draw “walking eyes” on the writing slate handed to him by Susan, who concludes frustrated that the writing lesson is pointless. She asks: “How can Friday know what freedom means when he barely knows his own name?” (Quoted from ibid., 171) For Spivak, however, the failure of Barton’s writing lesson provides an instructive reading lesson for readers of postcolonial texts. Rather than a passive victim of colonial history, Spivak argues that Friday is an “agent of withholding in the text” who refuses to yield an authentic native voice (ibid., 172). There is no rhetorical space available to Friday in Susan Burton’s benevolent anti-colonial narrative. Friday’s refusal to speak could thus be seen as him pushing against the agenda of nationalism and identity, which Susan Barton employs in the attempt to emancipate Friday and to restore his voice. Spivak proposes that Friday’s agency lies in his refusal to be represented, in his silence. Silence here is a practice of confrontation, a “counter-discourse.” It can function as a variation in the eternal repetition of discourses by causing a rupture in language, a subversion that turns language against itself. It is not just that one is silenced and thereby rendered invisible; rather, one can strategically choose to be silent by boycotting discourses, by refusing to participate in them. Ironically, dominant discourses require counter-discourses to continually reinforce and strengthen their hegemony. Silence is not necessarily a passive act of submission or repression. It can be a challenge to the monologue of dominant discourses that ruptures the power play between speakers and listeners, and creates conducive conditions for the “invisible,” the “unsaid” to

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emerge. This approach shifts focus from the traditional logocentric strategies of resistance to possibilities of subversion through listening that transforms the power dynamics between active speaker/passive listener and is a crucial aspect of the postcolonial feminist politics of recovering marginalized perspectives. The task of the postcolonial feminist-as-critic would be to make transparent the structures of power that block, inhibit and invalidate these counter-narratives. By focusing on the exclusions that ground the privileges and authority of dominant discourses, critical practices expose and thereby contest the trajectories of violence. The task of the critic would be to make conducive conditions for “the other” to voice itself, to “hear the invisible.” What allows the unsayable to speak is the undoing of the spoken, whereby since the spoken is haunted by what remains silent, undoing the spoken gives voice to the inherent silence. This “voicing of the unsaid” is accompanied by a listening to the voice of the unheard. Here “the critic must attempt to fully realize, and take responsibility for, the unspoken, unrepresented pasts that haunt the historical present” (Bhabha 1994, 12), whilst remaining cognizant of the risk that every attempt “to say the unsaid” is fraught with dangers of imposing the logic of speech onto it. Thus the (im)possibility and necessity of “speaking silence” is inextricably linked to the ironical reproduction of endless spirals of silences. Derrida (1997, 52f.), following Nietzsche, emphasizes the necessity of keeping silent together (miteinander Schweigen), whereby this knowing-how-to-keep-silent has to be learnt (Schweigen müssen sie gelernt haben). One who can be silent, is in a position to listen, and one who listens, gives oneself over to the silences in discourses – the elusive as well as the ordered silences, the silences that are subject to our will and those that govern our language, our being.

References Bhabha, Homi. Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Boyne, Roy. Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of Reason. London: Routledge, 1990. Busia, Abena. “Silencing Sycorax: On African Colonial Discourse and the Unvoiced Female.” Cultural Critique 14 (1989/90), 81–104. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 10th Anniversary Edition. London: Routledge, 1999. Carroll, David. Paraesthetics. London: Routledge, 1989. Castro Varela, María do Mar and Nikita Dhawan. Postkoloniale Theorie: Eine kritische Einführung. Bielefeld: transcript, 2005. Chow, Rey. Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1993.

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Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press, 1978. — Politics of Friendship. London, New York: Verso, 1997. Dhawan, Nikita. Impossible Speech: The Politics of Silence and Violence. Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2007. Foucault, Michel. “Intellectuals and Power.” In: Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ed. by Donald Bouchard. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1977, 205–17. — Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. London and New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005 [1961]. Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1998. Guha, Ranajit. “The Small Voice of History.” Subaltern Studies 9 (1996), 1–8. Hanssen, Beatrice. Critique of Violence: Between Poststructuralism and Critical Theory. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Landry, Donna and Gerald MacLean (eds.). Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Medovoi, Leerom, Shankar Raman, and Benjamin Robinson. “Can the Subaltern Vote? Representation in the Nicaraguan Elections.” Socialist Review 20.3 (1990), 133–150. Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 [1859]. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Feminist Review 30 (1988), 61–88. Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In: Gary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.). Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana, Illinois: Illinois University Press, 1988, 271–313. — The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. — “Theory in the Margin: Coetzee’s Foe Reading Defoe’s Crusoe/Roxana.” In: Jonathan Arac and Barbara Johnson (eds.). The Consequences of Theory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, 154–80. — A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1999.

Two Saints and the Power of the Auditive Rebecca Wolf Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe each address in different ways the power of music and the manifold symbolic representation of sound. Music possesses the power to generate as well as to destroy order, producing a wide spectrum of effects ranging from gentle persuasion to manipulation. Through the use of acoustic extremes, silence and falling silent take on a special role that appears to reveal a concept of performativity as transformation. This article seeks to define the dynamic contained within the power of music, conceived as a form related to destruction, and inquires into the possibility of whether alongside the suspension of temporality, the potential for new phenomena is inherent in silence as an originary phenomenon.

During his stay in Marienbad in 1823, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described the powerful lure music and other sounds exercised upon him and how profoundly they moved him. In particular, the impression made on Goethe by the singer Anna Milder and the pianist Maria Szymanowska sparked off this elemental experience. On August 24, Goethe wrote to Carl Friedrich Zelter: But now for the strangest thing of all! The immense power that music had over me in those days! Milder’s voice, the rich sounds of Szymanowska, nay, even the public performances of the local Jägerkorps untwisted me, just as one lets a clenched fist gently flatten out. … Now, all of a sudden, the Heavenly One falls upon you, and through the intervention of great talents, exercises her full power over you, claims all her rights, and awakens all your dormant recollections. (Goethe’s Letters 1887, 221f.) Goethe experiences music as a pleasure, “which, like all the higher enjoyments of life, takes a man out of and above himself, and lifts him, at the same time, out of the world and above it” (ibid., 222). Norbert Miller’s discussion in his recent publication on Goethe’s encounters with the enormous power of music suggests that this power can be broken down into numerous, partly conflicting facets of its effect on the listener. These range from agitation and an arousal of strength to a loss of control and the production of a situation in which one is left powerless when confronted with sounds. This power may bring about the renunciation of order, and thus lead to chaos. Music is responsible for an omnipotence that can bring forth emotions and physical reactions. If not nurtured, the sense organ – for Goethe more the inner sense than the sense of hearing itself – can atrophy and then be passively assailed or attacked by music. Music leads hence also to an overpowering. It leads out of ordinary life, produces an exceptional situation, and represents a counter strategy against the habitual. Affecting the listener’s sensibility in the full sense of the word,

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“music’s impact hits a nerve deep in the receptive soul, which responds to it with rapture and distress” (Miller 2009, 13).1 Here the soul is like a blank slate waiting for input, and sensation inscribes itself in it. A form of dialogue results, since the mind thus touched responds with emotions: stimulation, delight, or pain represent the scope of this inscription. According to Goethe, all music unleashes these particular emotions: A voice solo is just as capable of having a powerful effect on him as the music of a Jägerkorps. Is it then the physiological stimulation of the sense of hearing, inner organs, and the soul, rather than an extraordinary composition or a particularly impressive voice that brings forth an effect of its own? This article focuses not on the two women musicians mentioned by Goethe, but rather upon two texts about sacred female figures: Heinrich von Kleist’s St. Cecilia or the Power of Music (A Legend) from 1811 and Friedrich Schiller’s Joan of Arc, which first appeared in 1801. Taking these two texts as examples, I will explore the connection between music and power, while Goethe’s texts will serve to provide a kind of basso continuo. In both Kleist and Schiller’s texts, the effect of music described by Johannes Tinctoris in around 1470 in his Complexus effectuum musices plays an important role. According to Tinctoris, music is apt to provoke ecstasy, repel ill will and drive out the devil. Furthermore, the two female figures share a close connection to Catholicism and each has the sword as an attribute: Joan fights with the sword, and for St. Cecilia the sword is a symbol of her martyrdom. While St. Cecilia is directly connected to music as the patron saint of church music, organists, organ makers, singers, musicians, and poets, the story surrounding Joan of Arc sets off a rich artistic production, which will be investigated here in terms of auditory phenomena in the example of Schiller’s play. Music and sound instruments suggest a symbolism that connects the areas of religious ritual with those of war. Schiller undeniably places great emphasis on the sources of sounds: the repertoire ranges from the noisy clash of arms to total silence. In Kleist’s legend it is a Mass composition that thwarts the protagonists. But before looking more closely at the aural events surrounding the two saints, it is necessary to clarify or at least make an attempt to differentiate the concepts concerning violence, power, and above all, destruction and performativity with reference to sound. Violence (Gewalt) should be understood here as a form related to destruction. While destruction has already been addressed in some academic fields, a more qualified term has not yet emerged. For example, in psychoanalysis, destruction and aggression are closely bound and in Freud they are specifically related to the death instinct. In the context of the original forces of eros and de1 Translator’s note: Here and throughout, translations from German sources are my own unless otherwise indicated.

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struction, a productive element is also operative. Thus, for example, the driving energy in the subject can condition the amalgamation of the two poles. Starting from this close coupling it is necessary to inquire into emergent perspectives, into the very nature of event-ness, and of destruction as the condition for new phenomena. Oppositions do not simply negate each other, but taken together tend rather to have the quality of pointing beyond themselves. This position is based on the connection between concepts of performativity and Derridean deconstruction, which in turn builds upon Martin Heidegger’s “destruction of metaphysics” and the process of uncovering what Western metaphysics has buried, enabling a return and a productive approach to the past. Starting from this connection, the aim is to make deconstruction useful as a method for investigating relevant conceptual dichotomies. In this case hierarchies are not simply dissolved, but rather the supposedly main element of a binary opposition strengthens the subordinate opposing element through this close connection. Destruction, as a component of this process, thus appears to contain a specific internal dynamic. In the field of evolutionary theory, the production of order is conceived of as a central impulse. For the generation of this order, living organisms first draw energy from and even partially destroy the environment, so that the following construction is preceded by destruction. Specifically, violence should be situated as a phenomenal complex between the destruction and establishment of order (cf. Heitmeyer and Hagan 2002). The fact that the German concept Gewalt does not differentiate between violentia and potestas, between personal and institutional violence, is of only limited help with reference to music. It is more useful to consider the “double meaning of the violence of music” (Riethmüller 1996, 102), the calming force on the one hand, and the overwhelming, even terrifying, effect of sounds on the other. The latter sphere, significant in this context yet inseparable from the first, overpowers us and holds us captive; we and our sense of hearing are powerless to resist it. Even if the concept of violence becomes somewhat clearer when regarded as distinct from neighbouring fields such as power, coercion, or domination, it remains a symbol and label that is discursively produced and thus subject to transformation. It is not the relationship between cause and effect which will be the focus of this investigation, but rather destruction in connection with performativity and productivity. The starting point is the dynamic of destructive situations. The attempt to think of productivity as based upon destruction, allows rituals and aesthetic processes to become once again the focus of attention. Building on this approach, this article seeks to interpret the violence or power of music as a destructive dynamic that regulates transformations between the destruction and the production of orders. Indeed, it is this power that first brings these transformations about. Against this background, what are the functions of music and auditory phenomena, and does silence have a special status? Does the latter mark an

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exceptional moment, perhaps a turning point? As a theoretical continuation of these questions, Max Picard’s The World of Silence from 1948 will be examined with reference to these last aspects.

Disorder, Magic, and the Demonic The effect of music may not always be rationally understandable and thus it tends to be associated with poetry, which holds the demonic within itself and addresses the unconscious, grounding the striking suitability of music for liturgical and religious purposes (cf. Miller 2009, 22). Heinrich von Kleist’s legend St. Cecilia, or the Power of Music has been categorized under titles such as “the musical sublime” (Gess 2006, 341), “the representation of violence” (Zenck 2007, 13–19), or the “the magical nature of sounds” (Riethmüller 1996, 104). In his short novel, set at the end of the sixteenth century, Kleist himself writes of the “power of the music” and the “dreadful power of the art of sound” (Kleist 1978, 228). The story is about four young men who meet in the city of Aachen and plan to provide on the occasion of the Feast of Corpus Christi at the convent of St. Cecilia “the spectacle of an iconoclastic riot” (ibid., 217). With a group of supporters, the four leaders are converted by the power of the music of a Mass. Before the Mass begins, the producers of the music are already fully affected by a heavenly power. The conductor “sat down at the organ, glowing with enthusiasm,” and “a miraculous, heavenly consolation entered the hearts” of the other nuns, “… indeed, the very anxiety they were in helped to raise their souls as if on wings through all the heavens of harmony” (ibid., 219f.). The splendour of the music leads the entire audience to fall into a kind of stupor. One possible interpretation is that St. Cecilia had possessed the nun while she was conducting. Music is represented here in various ways: as a mysterious art, supported by the tolling of the bells and the singing of the Mass, it transposes the souls of the listeners into an exceptional state and transforms thereby the planned attack of the convent into an act of absolute humility, even submissiveness. The four converted brothers thereafter fall silent, save for at midnight when they sing the Gloria in excelcis deo “in voices fit to shatter the windows of a house” (ibid., 221). The description of the musical mysterium recalls the Gothic drama that came into fashion around 1800. Ghosts and ghostly phenomena, gruesome and ghastly voices as well as the invisible provide for a specific atmosphere, such as in Kleist’s Gothic play The Schroffenstein Family from 1803. While the music in Kleist’s legend first hinders violence, it does, however, exercise a kind of violence in a different way. Here Martin Zenck speaks of the contrast between the “numinous-imaginary power (Gewalt) of music and the threatening violence of the iconoclasts” (Zenck 2007, 17). The sounds

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are heard, but are incomprehensible, and thus can be ascribed to an uncanny, great power. In Kleist’s time, hearing was thought to induce vibrations in the body of the hearer, who is then moved and incapable of resisting the external influence. Finally, the power of music reveals itself in Kleist’s story in musical notation. The score of the Mass is written in “magical signs” and the composition embodies “the whole dreadful power of the art of sound” (Kleist 1978, 228), which in the slightest of moments can exercise its power. The score is laden with sorcery and magic, since to decipher it is an esoteric and skilled practice (cf. Riethmüller 1996, 92). Years later, the young men’s mother goes in search of her sons and finds the cathedral, which is described as the scene where “God had struck down her sons blasting them as with invisible lightning” (ibid., 226). At the very sight of the score in the Abbess’s room, she is seized by a divine power, which moves her to convert to Catholicism. While perception functions of course through the senses, the result is the loss of the senses and a humility and submission brought forth through the miracle “both so terrible and so glorious” (ibid., 229). These cited passages suggest that a disturbing, bewildering power of music is at work here, a power that at first causes chaos and disorder. Here the invisibility of sound can fittingly be ascribed to the uncanny, to sorcery and to magic. The latter are also not completely comprehensible; they remain incalculable and arouse irritation, fear, and fascination. Right at the beginning of the relevant passage, Kleist describes music as a “mysterious art” (ibid., 218), which furthermore can be better performed by women, what with the many demands of precision, understanding, and emotion. Music is represented as a remarkable, intrusive, and obstinate totality. No separation of ratio and emotio occurs: in music as an art form all areas must converge. In the end, Kleist emphasizes thereby the exceptional position of music among the arts. Kleist writes of “four unfortunate deluded men” and thus the universal order is produced through derangement, disorder, perhaps even with the help of an attack on the senses of the potential perpetrators. As a result, they spend the rest of their lives in a lunatic asylum, because “their illness consisted in a kind of religious obsession, and their behaviour, to the best of the court’s knowledge, was said to be extremely gloomy and melancholy” (ibid., 221). Mysterious elements are also present in Schiller’s version of Joan of Arc. Right at the beginning, Joan’s father, Thibaut d’Arc, complains of her being a loner. At night she seeks solitude: ... and in those hours of darkness …/ she slips out, like some solitary owl,/ into the dusk and gloom of the haunted night,/ making her way up to the crossroads, where/ she holds some secret conversation with the winds” (Schiller 2005, Prologue, 2, 84–89).

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She visits a druid’s tree, near to which a spirit or evil is said to have dwelled since pre-Christian times. “The old ones in the village/ tell terrifying tales about the tree:/ how you can often catch the sound of voices,/ strange and uncanny, coming from its dark branches …” (ibid., 98–101). The demonic is thought to dwell in the noise of nature, particularly in the sound of the wind in the branches. Such unspecified noise seems to be equated with the uncanny and is thought to exert a disruptive influence. It resists order and regularity, because frequencies and tones are overlapped in the noise, inseparable from each other, resisting analysis and an exact ascription to a certain sense. In this noise it is impossible to calculate any intervals and the relations of the single vibrations to each other remains blurred. This inability to know becomes the vehicle of the secret. The rustling of the leaves is brought about by the wind, thus by moved air. The pneuma as a vitalizing element refers to the breath of the divine that blows life into the inanimate. According to Zedler’s Universallexikon, pneuma is spirit, wind, and breath at the same time. The related pneumatics or pneumatology as the doctrine of spirit is a part of metaphysics that treats of the nature of spirits. For Descartes, spirit is a self-conscious being, and in the eighteenth century, light and air were considered to be spiritual beings with a force of attraction (cf. Zedler vol. 28, 900f [s.v. “Pneumatica”] and Mahlmann 1989). In Schiller’s case this being expresses itself, however, in an inauspicious constellation, in indeterminable gloom, in a twilight that allows a quickly passing manifestation, thus revealing only contours. Thus a situation is produced here that remains caught in ambiguities on the visual and the aural level. While something is audible and visible, it is not sufficiently sharply contoured and can only be apprehended as a presentiment. Thus, ample space is left for the imagination to fill out the situation. The Kantian Christian Friedrich Michaelis directs his attention to the organisation and thus to the form of composition: Art shows itself, however, in the form, and this consists in limitation and unification. Mechanical composition does not by itself result in an art form. For this purpose organization is necessary; i.e., the tones must stand in a purposeful mutual relation to each other, fit each other perfectly and correspond to each other. The gradation, the accentuation, the temporal division, the rhythm, and the proportion in the connections and progressions of the intervals lend the sounds an organic form, and bring about tonal rhythms or musical thoughts, which must also be connected in a purposeful community, ensuring that the piece of music as a whole has a clear specific effect. (Michaelis 1806, 683) In Kleist’s legend of St. Cecilia, we find just such a structured composition, but the music remains nevertheless undetermined. Kleist does not name the piece of music performed at the Mass, which is only referred to as an “ex-

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tremely old Italian setting of the Mass by an unknown master” (Kleist 1978, 218).2 This may remind us of Schiller who also kept the words secret that the wind entices out of the druid’s tree. But while in these cases one would be inclined to speak of the uncanny, Goethe speaks more about the demonic and in a way that evokes the productive destructive character. In both the demonic and the destructive, we are dealing with neither the completely evil nor the definitively destructive. Thus Goethe, in conversation with Eckermann on March 2, 1831, responds to the question of whether Mephistopheles can be ascribed demonic qualities: ‘No,’ he replied, ‘Mephistopheles is too negative a being. The Demonical manifests itself in positive active power among artists: it is found often among musicians; more rarely among painters.’ (Conversations with Goethe 1852, 379) On March 8, he added with reference to music: The same [the Demonic] is true of music, in the highest degree. Understanding cannot reach its elevation, and influences flow from it which master all, and of which none is able to give himself an account. (Ibid., 381) In this passage Goethe differentiates between visual art and music, and makes an allusion to the separation between the ear and the eye as sense organs. The regarding and reading eye is ascribed to understanding, and is capable of discerning spatial relations, processing simultaneity and selecting what it wishes to see and when to remain closed. The ear, by contrast, is addressed from without. The process of hearing, which Goethe discusses in his fragmentary treatise on acoustics, the Tonlehre, can be applied to a physiological conception of totality. Music that infiltrates from without stimulates accordingly the subject to musical activity of its own. The emotions unleashed by music are the impetus for its renewed production. Music contains a certain active power, and to be overwhelmed by music provides the starting point for something new. A kind of circuit develops between hearing, making music, and finally listening to oneself again. With reference to the process in Kleist’s legend, we can say that the Mass initially produces an absolute arrestation in the would-be iconoclasts. They become rigid, as if dead, before the transition is initiated and they suddenly start to sing their evening rite. Music has wrenched them from their own order, and now is implemented for the new establishment and production of a new order while their previous life has succumbed to destruction. 2

On the reception of Palestrina at the end of the eighteenth century in connection with Kleist’s legend, see Gess 2006, 349f.

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Order, Structure, and Manipulation The distinct and unavoidable effect of music that Goethe describes points to a musical potential for overpowering or even manipulating the hearer. Plato had already categorized the effects of various kinds of sounds, labelling them as lamenting or soft in contrast to the two kinds of music of service to warriors – the Doric and Phrygian – which are violent and voluntary (cf. Seidel 1985, 5). Plato incorporates music into his conception of the ideal state and differentiates the effects of music in the interest of this higher purpose. The resulting long-held idea was that with the help of compositional means one could influence the soul and the movements of the mind in the hearers; struggle could be incited and then pacified again. Furthermore, music can be used to instil obedience, and is also valuable as a pedagogical tool, since, as Aristotle writes, “music has the power of producing a certain effect on the moral character of the soul” (Aristotle 1932, 1340b11). In what follows, I would like to elaborate how sound and music generate order and regulation in the examples of single acoustic command signals in Kleist and Schiller. In Kleist’s Cecilia legend, while great danger threatens the abbey and its nuns, … the Abbess resolutely insisted that this festival, ordained for the glory of the Most High God, must take place; … and as the bell was already tolling she ordered the nuns, who were standing round her trembling with fear, to select any oratorio they pleased, no matter what its quality, and begin the performance of it at once. (Kleist 1978, 219) The tolling of the bells brings the Abbess to defy the fear of the iconoclasts and fulfil her duty. This acoustic signal for the beginning of the Mass is unavoidable; with it, a fixed progression and ritual is automatically set in motion. And the four youths, who later in the text are purged of their intentions, react to the bell as well. The midnight hour, when they perform their purgatorial chorus, is framed by the tolling of the bells and filled with the singing of the four youths. At the exact time as the tolling of the bells they begin to sing the Gloria in excelsis Deo, and fall silent as the bells toll the first hour (cf. ibid., 223f.). In Schiller’s Joan of Arc, together with the clash of arms, the sounds of the bells accompany the virgin who has led the army to a first victory. At the stage directions “Bells are heard, and the clashing of weapons,” one of the French knights reports to the King: “You hear that noise? The people welcome her” (Schiller 2005, I, 9, 994f.). In two other passages, the bells announce the new political alliance, thus constituting symbols of a change that will affect the whole nation and a resounding insignia for the King, accompanying his procession along with the regal insignia borne with him.3 3

Cf. Schiller, 2005, III, 2, 1906–1908: Charles: “… and the city must be decorated for a festival,/

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Alongside the bells, trumpets also play a noteworthy role in Schiller’s Gothic drama. They are first used at the end of the prologue, when Joan bids farewell to her previous life and at the sound of these instruments is transposed to the war that follows. “I hear the war-cry, turn to face the foe:/ the charger rears, and all the trumpets blow!” (ibid., Prologue, 4, 431f.). Later, the war scene itself is directed by the acoustic signals of the cavalry, by drums and trumpets, and accompanied by the clash of weapons. Their designation in the stage directions, it would seem, is intended to arouse the idea of an orderly attack and course of battle in the reader (cf. ibid., II, 4, 1500ff.). As symbols, it seems that their simple listing is sufficient to unfold their special connotation. Alongside the call to battle, the trumpets announce the arrival of a commander and are not only heard on the battlefield but also in church, as in the coronation ceremony in the fourth act. The trumpet has, however, always been an instrument both associated with war and indissolubly connected to religious symbolism. It is a signal instrument, announcer and at the same time originates from the world of angels. Here the relevance of a structural similarity between the trumpet and the bells is evident: both originate, as it were, from the religious-ecclesiastical arsenal. Bells structure lived time, they can be death knells, and order the life within a community, as described in Schiller’s Song of the Bell. As acoustic indicators of catastrophes, they are, like trumpets, ancient instruments of long-distance communication. For regulation their sound penetrates into everyday life, structuring space and time. Further, they often serve to demarcate a realm of sovereignty, in that bells are heard throughout the whole area of a community, while for imperial coronations a whole country can be filled with their sound (cf. Berns 2008 and Corbin 1998). Bells can, as in Schiller’s Joan of Arc, create a festive and representative sound tapestry and give directed signals. Their capacity for communication is extensive and forges connections, as well as functioning according to a precisely defined signal system. Through both acoustic and visual symbols a complex whole can be reduced to a sign while expressing a wide range of associations and points of contact with neighbouring discourses. Symbols represent, address the masses in an easily comprehended idiom, and have an emotional effect. For example, symbols have the character of a call, the power of integration, and can forge identity, apparently through the immediate recognition of simple structures, through repetition and imprinting. (One may consider here the combination of the national anthem and flag at national events and in sport.) Of course there is a danger that the simplicity of symbols can erase the faculty for critical thinkand all the bells shall ring to announce the news/ that France and Burgundy are reconciled.” Ibid., IV, 2, 2624–2628: Sorel: “The King waits in his robes of state,/ the peers and grandess are all convened/ to bear the royal insignia, and the crowd/ pours in a wave towards the great cathedral,/ where dances sound, and all the bells ring out!”

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ing and suppress independent analysis. This recalls their suggestive power, which is sometimes even capable of masking reality (cf. in detail Hamm 2010). Along with Schiller and Kleist, Goethe also uses the implementation of bells as a structural element, as in the first part of his Faust. At the cue of the stage directions “bells and choir,” a chorus of angels sings at Easter, and Faust then says: What depth of resonance, what clarity of tone,/ can drag the goblet from my lips?/ Do you announce so soon, you muffled bells,/ the first solemnities of Eastertide?/ Do you sing now, you choirs, the hymn of consolation/ that by the darkened tomb, from angel’s lips,/ proclaimed the certainty of a new covenant? (Goethe 1994, I, 742–748) Before this, Faust had found the glass which in earlier times had been communally and socially used. Now, however he wishes to drink alone, the last drink before death, but this implies also ascending into the ether and the world as a whole. As he raises the goblet to his lips, he is interrupted by bells and singing, the sounds calling him back to life: … and yet these sounds, familiar since my youth,/ summon me now again to life./ There was a time when in the sabbath’s solemn quiet/ the kiss of heaven’s love would overcome me,/ when there were portents in the choiring chimes,/ and when a prayer was fervent pleasure;” (Ibid., 769–774) O sweet celestial songs, sound on —/ my tears well forth, and I am earth’s again. (Ibid., I, 783f.) The force draws in the whole body, and a noticeably direct influence of music is portrayed. It is an immediate steering of the body and the will. Further, action is not only suspended, but the bells and chorus bring hope. The dynamic is reversed and intensified. Here one can discern a structural similarity to Kleist’s text, since there too music hinders direct physical violence and the energy present is diverted into the Christian and religious realm. Kleist does not make an explicit ethical statement. Is the use of such powerful music justified if it has these consequences? The lives of the four youths are in the end fully transformed. They are described as content, yet this might also be due to the suppression of free will. The threatened, direct violence of the four men would have been directed toward an institution and a building. The musical miracle changes, however, all four lives for decades and causes the death of one person. Assuming that St. Cecilia has possessed the body of the conductor, Sister Antonia, in order to unfold the power of music, Sister Antonia’s death on the same evening should then be interpreted as a kind of

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sacrifice, especially since it is emphasized that her condition up to that point was not diagnosed as life-threatening (cf. Kleist 1978, 218). Against this background, what should one make of Martin Zenck’s concept of musical overpowering through a ‘nonviolent’ subject? According to Zenck, this overpowering can only be exercised by an instance that “is either of divine origin or an undominated aesthetic subject without any violence at all” (Zenck 2007, 16). Orpheus’s powers of conviction are also exercised through music and song, but with Orpheus it seems to be more of a case of persuasion, unlike in Kleist’s legend, in which a conversion also comes into the picture. Orpheus’s music, through which he seeks entry into the underworld, softens hearts, in a similar way to David’s therapeutic harp playing, with which he appeases King Saul. The effect in these two examples is only of a limited duration, as opposed to the Cecilian Mass. The latter has an absolute effect, the “opponents” fall silent, and communicate henceforth only through this music and subordinate their whole lives to it. In Kleist, do we have a case of justified self-defence on the part of the nuns, or is the usage of these magical musical means disproportionate? Could it make sense here to speak of an aesthetic concept of overpowering, in which unintentionality on the part of the executors seems to be an essential element? First, “reactive violence” would seem to present itself as a second instance of the violence that is always preceded by a prior act of violence. From a moral and ethical point of view, the question of justified counter-violence, since it is still fundamentally violence, must therefore be rejected. Their differentiation increasingly represents a problem, since their forms of manifestation are often identical. Networks of violence permeate social orders and are not always susceptible to a chronological ordering. Philosophical theories approach this state of affairs by differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate violence. Violence is closely connected to “the discursive orders of the law, morality, and justice” (Hirsch 2000, 55). Since the Enlightenment at the latest, reason has been assigned an increasingly strong role in the mastery of one’s own understanding and in the minimization of the occurrence of physical violence. Reason should simply bring about peace. The media, social, and political discourses on violence that ensued have not, however, contributed to a real reduction of direct violence. We should at least attempt in our reading of Kleist’s text to conceptualize the problems engendered by the justification of violence against the background of a social order as a pure and innocent self-defence. On the other hand, the intervention of the power of music perhaps also seems justified because the nuns first asked for help from the state, but did not receive the requested protection. Perhaps a particularly strong punishment could also be justified when an attack on the social order – as here with that of the nuns – is planned; from the point of view of the Church the effect on the

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would-be perpetrators would be only a conversion to the good, perhaps even salvation. In the case of Schiller’s Joan of Arc, the connection between order and the use of music can be regarded as one that structures acts of state, whether this is the ordering of a coronation ceremony or the course of a battle. In the case of the latter, this would be a legitimate call to arms and thus the question must be posed as to whether music inevitably becomes politically instrumentalized and what consequences this can have on its aesthetic dimensions.

Silences and Empty Space In Schiller’s Joan of Arc, the consequences of the play’s climax are not made explicit by an audible phenomenon, but rather by its opposite: muteness and silence. At the end of the third act, Joan violates both her order to kill and the ban on love: she spares Lionel, one of the English enemy leaders. During King Charles VII’s coronation festivities that follow, a public confrontation occurs between Joan and her father, who accuses her of lies, black magic, and witchcraft. She has sold herself to the evil spirits, he asserts, for fame. Instead of defending herself, she says nothing and remains repeatedly silent also in response to questions regarding her innocence. Is she now incapable of speech or is there a direct statement contained in Joan’s silence that possibly is made even more prominent by this silence? In the opening sentences of The World of Silence, Max Picard addresses silence as an extraordinary phenomenon: Silence is not simply what happens when we stop talking. It is more than the mere negative renunciation of language; it is more than simply a condition that we can produce at will. When language ceases, silence begins. But it does not begin because language ceases. The absence of language simply makes the presence of Silence more apparent. (Picard 1952, 15) Of course, Joan cannot give an answer because in doing so, she would betray her mission. While she does return the King to his throne, her affection for Lionel makes her appear guilty – at least that is what one thinks at first. La Hire, one of the royal officers, sums up the opposing poles clearly: “Joan, pull yourself together. Innocence/ has a language of its own …” (Schiller 2005, IV, 11, 3010f.), and her silence becomes clearly an admission of guilt. Schiller also uses acoustic extremes to give special emphasis to Joan’s silence, since the described dynamic oppositions could not be any greater. The coronation festivities, accompanied by multiple trumpet blasts, form the sound backdrop of this scene. The trumpets represent here the power and greatness

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of the King on the one hand, while at the same time structuring the course of the ceremony. They announce the coming of the King, precede the sign for silence for his address, and intervene in the cheering of the people (cf. ibid., IV, 9 and 10). This change between fortissimo and pausa intensifies the expectation of Joan’s answer to her father’s question, “do you belong/ among the ranks of the pure and innocent?” (ibid., IV, 11, 2958). Her silence seems unbearable not only for the other characters; the reader’s tension is increased as well, and this tension is due to more than just Joan’s unforthcoming response. Picard relates this experience to the body and describes its powerful aspect: Silence is not visible, yet its existence is clearly apparent. It extends to the farthest distances, yet is so close to us that we can feel it as concretely as we feel our own bodies. It is intangible, yet we can feel it as directly as we feel materials and fabrics. It cannot be defined in words, yet it is quite definite and unmistakable. In no other phenomenon are distance and nearness, range and immediacy, the all-embracing and the particular, so united as they are in silence. (Picard 1952, 18) Finally the silence is broken: Three thunderclaps replace Joan’s voice, but through her continuing rigidness they confirm for all present her confession of guilt. She does not react to the Archbishop’s final demand: “If it is for you the thunder speaks/ then take hold of the cross and give a sign” (Schiller 2005, IV, 11, 3028f.). The motivation might be different, but the fact that Joan cannot express herself publicly, underscored by the highly symbolic number “3,” calls to mind Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, which is marked by the cock’s crow (cf. Mark 14, 66–72). The acoustic natural sounds become structural signs and through their repetition they allow a hypertrophy to emerge. Furthermore, they are substitutes for the silence or refused confession of the protagonists. The silence seems to always compel a sound to take its place and ensure dissolution. For Picard, an immobility holds sway in silence: “There is no movement here to be regulated by the law: existence and activity are concentrated in silence” (Picard 1952, 19). Joan’s silence too definitely communicates her continuing immobility. All attention seems to be directed to the audible and time is suspended. Schiller masterfully emphasizes this crucial moment in the plot by such means. Later in the play, Joan explains that she could not contradict her father because to her he represented the voice of God. She did not want to resist her fate,4 4 Schiller, 2005, V, 4, 3147f: Joan: “I submitted in silence to the destiny/ that God, my master, has ordained for me.”

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and this too is reminiscent of Jesus’ readiness to self-sacrifice and of his commitment to his calling. This is already prefigured in the Old Testament: “Ill-treated and afflicted, he never opened his mouth, like a lamb led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep dumb before its shearers he never opened his mouth” (Isaiah 53, 7). This prefiguring is fulfilled also shortly before the crucifixion, when the high priest and Pontius Pilate give Jesus several chances, and plead with him to defend himself.5 Does Joan’s silence take on a divine quality through this similarity? Here too Picard makes a valuable observation on the close connection between silence and the divine: Silence gives to things inside it something of its own autonomous being. The autonomous being in things is strengthened in silence. That which is developable and exploitable in things vanishes when they are in silence. Through this power of autonomous being, silence points to a state where only being is valid: the state of the Divine. The mark of the Divine in things is preserved by their connection with the world of silence. (Picard 1952, 19f.) Joan falls silent in the moment when all expect an answer from her. According to Picard, a suspension of time and development lies in this unfulfilled expectation. In such a moment a great power, perhaps even the sublime, shows itself. Silence is not nothing, nothing negative, but rather a positive thing. It remains, however, unproductive, if held to the criterion of direct usefulness: Yet there is more help and healing in silence than in all the “useful things.” Purposeless, unexploitable silence suddenly appears at the side of the all-too-purposeful, and frightens us by its very purposelessness … It gives things something of its own holy uselessness, for that is what silence is: holy uselessness. (Ibid., 19) The sacred and the divine are revealed in silence. And for the four iconoclasts in Kleist’s legend as well, who, since their conversion, find themselves in a cloister-like situation, we can discern this context. They fall silent for the first time with the musical performance of the nuns. The concert of the Mass itself is already described as an extraordinary situation, so that the specific effect, while cause for wonder, does seem fitting. As already described, the church music of the nuns is doubly connected to heaven. This divine support is capable of pacifying the potential attackers, since “during the whole perfor5 Cf. Mark 14, 60f. and 15, 3–5: “And the chief priest brought many accusations against him. Pilate questioned him again. ‘Have you no reply at all? See how many accusations they are bringing against you!’ But, to Pilate’s surprise, Jesus made no further reply.”

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mance not a breath stirred from where the congregation stood and sat; … and even more at the Gloria in excelcis it was as if the entire assembly in the church had been struck dead” (Kleist 1978, 220). This lends even more weight to the singing of the Gloria at midnight by the four youths. Silence and words, in their intimate connection, give rise to the impression that the more seldom occurring element in this relation would gain in significance. Picard writes, “There is also more silence in one person than can be used in a single human life. That is why every human utterance is surrounded by a mystery” (Picard 1952, 21). And the words spoken, or in the case of Kleist, sung, against the background of an extended silence, become the centre of attention. The part of the Mass sung by the youths is the absolute centre of their day. It does not need to prevail over anything else, it is and remains their purpose, and is elevated perhaps even into a closeness to the divine. The mysteriousness that affixes this composition from the beginning is shown at the end of the legend again quite clearly in its sovereign power. It dominates everything, and becomes universal. Silence as an originary force gives the youths’ lives a new beginning. The general respect for the originary phenomena lends them a special power. Silence, as such a phenomenon, suspends time and leads thereby to eternity. In Kleist and Schiller silence as a particular acoustic phenomenon signifies a lacuna that provokes a longing for a new occupation of the empty space. In both texts a divine power or sovereign power shows itself, while for the reader an expectation of an audible element can perhaps even lead to a ringing in the ears. As the silence continues for a long time, the voice or the noise that finally pierces the silence gain a special significance and command attention. Picard’s conception of silence as the suspension of development and the relation of space and time can be connected to the gap or emptiness that falling silent represents. The gap of silence is also situated beyond the temporal, approaching infinity. As an originary force, silence can exert a force that erases the memory of a chronology and at the same time provokes a longing for spoken words and music to enact a dissolution and detachment. Finally, with reference to the theories of destruction, one should ask what process does silence complete, and which destruction does it indicate? In the case of Joan of Arc, silence follows the victorious war. As the battle’s din ceases and the trumpets fall silent, they leave behind an audible gap, while Joan’s silence marks an important turning point in her life. The empty space and the silence are clearly exposed and seem to be beyond temporality. In the representation of the power of the auditive in Kleist and Schiller, we have identified a dynamic that goes beyond Walter Benjamin’s “destructive character” (Benjamin 1999, 541f.), which does not long to fill the empty space after complete destruction. The empty space can as such subsist and silence can represent it. Outside of time, it is nevertheless reoccupied, over-droned, and

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referred to. In Schiller, destruction follows the command and signal of the trumpets. Performativity can here be understood as transformation and as the use of music; instruments become symbols that cause an act of war, or, as in Kleist, an absolutely clear and life-changing transformation. Translated by Anita Mage

References Aristotle. Politics. Trans. by Harris Rackham. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1932. Benjamin, Walter. “The Destructive Character.” In: Selected Writings. Ed. by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999, vol. 2.2: 1931–1934, 541f. Berns, Jörg Jochen. “Instrumental Sound and Ruling Spaces of Resonance in the Early Modern Period: On the Acoustic Setting of the Princely potestas Claims within a Ceremonial Frame.” In: Helmar Schramm, Ludger Schwarte, and Jan Lazardzig (eds.). Instruments in Art and Science. On the Architectonics of Cultural Boundaries in the 17th Century. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008, 479–505. Bible (The New Jerusalem Bible Standard Edition). Ed. by Henry Wainsbrough. New York: Doubleday, 1998. Conversations with Goethe from the Last Years of His Life. Translated from the German of Eckermann. Trans. by S. M. Fuller. Boston and Cambridge: James Munroe and Co., 1852. Corbin, Alain. Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th Century French Countryside. Trans. by Martin Thom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Gess, Nicola. Gewalt der Musik. Literatur und Musikkritik um 1800. Freiburg and Berlin: Rombach, 2006. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Collected Works, Faust I and II. Ed. and trans. by Stuart Atkins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Goethe’s Letters to Zelter, with Extracts from those of Zelter to Goethe. Ed. and trans. by Arthur Duke Coleridge. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1887. Hamm, Heinz. “Symbol.” In: Karlheinz Barck et al. (eds.). Ästhetische Grundbegriffe. Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden, Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2010, vol. 5, 805–839. Heitmeyer, Wilhelm and John Hagan (eds.). Internationales Handbuch der Gewaltforschung. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2002. Hirsch, Alfred. “Notwendige und vermeidliche Gewalt? Zur Rechtfertigung von Gewalt im philosophischen Denken der Moderne.“ In: Mihran Dabag, Antje

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Kapust, and Bernhard Waldenfels (eds.). Gewalt. Strukturen, Formen, Repräsentationen. München: Wilhelm Fink, 2000, 55–81. Kleist, Heinrich von. “St. Cecilia or the Power of Music.” In: idem. The Marquise of O and other Stories. Trans. by David Luke and Nigel Reeves. London: Penguin, 1978. Mahlmann, Theodor. “Pneumatologie, Pneumatik.” Joachim Ritter et al. (eds.). Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 1989, vol. 7, 996–999. Michaelis, Christian Friedrich. “Ein Versuch, das innere Wesen der Tonkunst zu entwickeln.” In: Allgemeine musikalische Zeitschrift 8.43 (1806), 683. Miller, Norbert. Die ungeheure Gewalt der Musik. Goethe und seine Komponisten. München: Carl Hanser, 2009. Picard, Max. The World of Silence. Trans. by Stanley Godman. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952. Riethmüller, Albrecht. Gedichte über Musik. Quellen ästhetischer Einsicht. Laaber: Laaber, 1996. Schiller, Friedrich. “Joan of Arc.” In: Schiller. Trans. by Robert D. MacDonald. London: Oberon Books, 2005, vol. 3: Joan of Arc and William Tell. Seidel, Wilhelm. “Die Macht der Musik und das Tonkunstwerk.” In: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 42 (1985), 1–17. Zedler, Johann Heinrich. Grosses vollständiges Universallexicon aller Wissenschafften und Künste 64 vols. Leipzig, Halle: Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1732–54. Zenck, Martin. “Darstellung von Gewalt und Darstellungsgewalt. Heinrich von Kleists ‘Legende’: ‘Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik.’” In: Martin Zenck, Tim Becker, and Raphael Woebs (eds.). Gewaltdarstellung und Darstellungsgewalt in den Künsten und Medien. Berlin: Reimer, 2007, 13–19.

Acoustic Violence in Contemporary German Theatre Jenny Schrödl In contemporary German theatre, acoustic phenomena (i.e. music, voices, sounds and noises) play a crucial role. Their aesthetic function is no longer restricted to representing dramatic actions; it consists above all in the sensual and emotional effect that such phenomena may exert upon the audience. Central to this are the violent – in the sense of distressing and threatening – effects of acoustic phenomena. This essay focuses on acoustic violence in contemporary German theatre with special attention to the dimension of violent effects on the auditor. It argues that violent impressions generated by acoustic means have a special capacity to highlight the audience’s own presence and experience within the theatrical space and to thematise co-presence. The essay addresses the following points: 1) violence (including acoustic violence) and injury against the actor; 2) acoustic violence against the auditor; 3) forms of acoustic violence that range from seducing to overpowering; and 4) the generation and thematisation of co-presence through acoustic violence.

The view that a special relationship exists between art and violence1 is neither surprising nor new. Karl Heinz Bohrer, for example, finds it hardly disputable “that art and literature have an inherent connection with aggression and violence” (Bohrer 2004, 188). Certainly, Bohrer bases his claim not on artistic content (representations or motifs of violence and cruelty) but on aesthetic style, the formal level of art. Drawing on Montaigne and Lucan, he points out that style itself contains an element of violence: “Lucan’s epigram says – and Montaigne follows him here – that good speech is speech which pierces and injures” (ibid., 190). From the notion that artistic works effect injury and violation in the viewer or listener, Bohrer goes on to explain the frequent occurrence of violent themes in art by the fact that “their formal expression suits the great artist’s innate affinity with a style that wounds” (ibid., 191). Three sets of inferences can be drawn from this idea, all important for my deliberations in the following. Firstly, Bohrer does not consider violence in art solely on the level of content, in the sense of representations of brutality and cruelty; by addressing the formal level, he also brings into play the effect of art, which may be attractive and distressing or wounding in equal measure. Secondly, he defines violence not solely in the sense of physical wounds or injuries: in a broader sense, violence is at work as soon as we feel disconcerted or even captivated by something. This is not meant merely metaphorically, but 1 My deliberations here focus on the concept of ‘violence’, not ‘destruction.’ Because destruction relates primarily to obliteration, I find it only conditionally applicable to aesthetic and artistic concerns. The concept of violence, in contrast, includes more than destruction or death. It moves within a spectrum of physical, psychological and symbolic injury, and in differing degrees of intensity. Thus, we can call something violence as soon as it makes us feel affected or distressed, not only when it inflicts physical or psychological damage on us.

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rather involves a perceptive subject being commandeered and altered in bodily and affective terms by objects of art. Finally, violence, to follow Bohrer, is something intrinsically bound up with art, something that cannot simply be kept discrete from the artistic process, morally condemned, and excluded. Neither, therefore, can violence be understood as something purely negative and ethically problematic. It has an inherent productivity, being capable of generating art and aesthetic experience as such. What is true of art and violence in general can also be applied to the particular case of theatre. Representations of violence and the evocation of distressing effects have been part of theatrical processes from classical antiquity to the present day, to varying degrees and with varying evaluations. A crucial role in that process has been played by acoustics, a term which embraces such diverse phenomena as music, voices, noises, and silence or not-speaking. Because these phenomena have the quality of spreading across space and the capacity to affect and involve people physically and emotionally, they seem particularly fitted not only to representing violence but also, or especially, to producing it and making it productive as a factor of effect. In the following, I will therefore examine acoustic violence in contemporary German theatre, focusing on the dimension of distressing, violent effects – the dimension of violence against the audience. In what has been called ‘postdramatic theatre,’2 a key role is played by the aesthetic experience of acoustic phenomena and, allied with this, an attention to the theme of co-presence in the production concerned. It is my contention that violent demands generated acoustically highlight the audience’s own presence within the theatrical space and address the experience of co-presence to a special degree. In other words, acoustic phenomena capable of agitating, threatening or injuring the auditors spark dynamics between stage and audience that are themselves the initiating and determining forces of the performance.

2 The term is Hans-Thies Lehmann’s, and refers to those theatrical movements and works since the 1970s that have abandoned the notion of the dramatic text’s primacy on the stage. In postdramatic theatre the text, or language, is regarded as just one of many elements – body, voice, space, time, and so on – and no longer as the dominant factor in the theatrical process. Postdramatic theatre also deconstructs other ideals of the dramatic theatre, although without completely rejecting dramatic theatre’s precepts. In place of ideas like illusion, representation, meaningfulness and empathy, postdramatic theatre privileges the dimensions of presence, event and sensual experience (Lehmann 2006, 16–28). Lehmann notes that in “this postdramatic theatre of events it is a matter of the execution of acts that are real in the here and now and find their fulfilment in the very moment they happen, without necessarily leaving any traces of a meaning or a cultural monument” (ibid., 104).

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Shrieking Excess: Injured and Exhausted Actors In contemporary theatre, the relationship between acoustics and violence takes a highly complex and multilayered form. We might initially think of the multifarious portrayals and representations of violence, power and destruction that use acoustic means: perhaps when frenetic music with trumpets and drums supports and accentuates a warlike plot, or when an individual’s scream testifies to the physical and mental torment he or she is experiencing or has experienced. Alongside the purely representational function – portraying or symbolising violence and power through acoustic phenomena – the postdramatic theatre of recent years and decades has increasingly foregrounded two other dimensions of acoustics and violence, which I would now like to explore in more detail. These are on the one hand acoustic violence against the actor, and on the other the violence inflicted on the audience by means of acoustic elements. In postdramatic theatre there are a variety of production styles that confront actors with particular physical and psychological challenges, pushing them to the limits of what they can endure. We could in this context speak of violence against the actors, to the extent that they exhaust their resources, subjecting themselves and their bodies to vulnerability, risk and danger. This is the sense in which Hans-Thies Lehmann describes the treatment of the actors in the theatre of Einar Schleef: There is no question that Schleef’s mise-en-scène involves an element of violence against the actors that some find ethically problematic. In Schleef’s theatre, the cruelty that inheres in the play is palpable. … In his work, war – the earliest theme and substance of the theatre, later taking the more harmless form of dialogue – has regained the stage. The antagonistic structure steps forward unclothed, the terror of violence and its pleasurable rhythms are conveyed to the spectator. (Lehmann 2002, 43) In terms of acoustic violence, an example that comes to mind is the use of arias of shouting and shrieking that often exhaust and endanger the actors, pushing their capacities, voices and skills to the edge and beyond. As well as Schleef, productions by René Pollesch, Luk Perceval, Dimiter Gotscheff, Robert Wilson or Frank Castorf could be cited here. In Castorf’s work, for example, the screaming and shouting of the actors is central. Not infrequently, shouting or screaming is so excessive and lengthy that the actors experience physical exhaustion, pain and collapse. An example of this type of situation is Castorf’s staging of Trainspotting (Berlin 1998). In one scene, Kathrin Angerer sat on a hospital bed, covered up to the neck with a white quilt. Her head turned to the audience, she began out of the blue to shout a rapid stream of obscenities across the auditorium: “arsehole,” “wanker,” “idiot.” Apparently not directly addressing anyone on the stage, she practically cursed and shouted her lungs

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out. A beetroot face, involuntary spitting, laboured breathing sounds, increasing hoarseness and spent energies accompanied the acoustic outburst, which seemed to pierce me to the marrow and yet drew me, like others in the audience, into its spell. In this scene the actor exhausted her voice completely and in doing so disrupted her own role as actor: her shrieking seemed to lay bare her own concrete, physical presence and thus her vulnerability, her assailability. Another production by Castorf, ten years later, similarly used arias of screaming and shouting as a way of enabling the audience to experience acts of violence against the actor. In Hunde – Reichtum ist die Kotze des Glücks [Dogs – Wealth is the Vomit of Happiness] (Berlin 2008) the very opening consisted in a round of yelling. The actor Jorres Risse stepped onto the stage in a blue wraparound skirt and stripped to the waist. He passed once along the walkway through the auditorium, returned to the back of the stage and abruptly began shouting the opening words forcefully and loudly. “Among gods and men,” he thundered through the space; startled, I immediately gave him my undivided attention. In the subsequent two to three minutes he raged on, railing against the disappearance of some animals or other and repeatedly asking the audience whether they had seen them. His use of his voice was marked by variations in volume: many points in the monologue were shouted earsplittingly, while in other passages he spoke more quietly and calmly, sometimes almost whispering, only to return rapidly, and with redoubled force, to his shouting. It was precisely these quietly spoken sequences that created the foil for the noisy shouting, reinforced by the force and intensity of his speech and the physical exhaustion and pain that found audible expression in his noisy breathing and hoarseness. This tendency for the style of articulation to exhaust and hurt the actors, and hence for a certain violence to be exerted against them, has at least two effects. On the one hand, it intensifies the performer’s presence in the here and now of the performance, going beyond the presentation of a particular role. When the actor’s physicality, and with it certain states of exhaustion and pain, becomes audible through his or her vocal expression, this emphasises not just the role he or she may be playing but always also the actor him- or herself, as a present and effective agent. The manner of the actors’ vocal expression here gives palpable and audible form to the effort of acting and the physical discipline and training that it involves. In Lehmann’s view, postdramatic theatre, by displaying the actors’ physical injury and pain, makes manifest the otherwise latent fact that a “theatre of bodies in pain causes a schism for the perception: here the represented pain, there the playful, joyful act of its representation that is itself attesting to pain” (Lehmann 2006, 166). On the other hand, the vocal and bodily expressions of the actor also make the voice present as independent, material substance. Postdramatic theatre’s fascination with the display of bodily processes, especially of the painful, injured or distorted sounding-body, has many different motivations, but one im-

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portant factor is the opportunity it offers to produce vocal or tonal materiality in such a way that the processes of meaning-making and understanding, as well as contexts of enactment, are broken, disrupted or even completely suspended (Kolesch 2005, 318f.). When, for example, in a particular articulation, “the tongue, the glottis, the teeth, the mucous membranes, the nose” of the speaker become audible (Barthes 1977, 183), this directs attention more strongly to the liveness of what is heard and the presence of the actor in the here and now of the production. It creates an experiential space between the actors and the spectators or auditors that can be perceived consciously. In Risse’s aria of shrieking, for example, the noisy yells and the alternations in pace disrupt a coherent perception of what is being said; the sounds come to the fore, even if the setting as a whole does not completely rule out comprehension of what is being said, and neither is it impossible to ascribe particular emotional states to the characters portrayed. At the same time, the actor’s shouting prevents the listener from focusing exclusively on what is being said: it allows the voice per se to become present and effective in a very specific way. The actor’s yelling seems to involve me immediately, I feel captivated, one might say addressed, even attacked; I concentrate on the sounds and noises being emitted, on the sound events that constantly rise and fall in volume, and on the force with which the actor expresses himself. Thus the shouting itself becomes the focus of attention, but so does the effort of its physical execution, revealed in the involuntary spitting and harsh respiratory sounds. To this extent, the physical, vocal execution and the associated violence against the actor communicate a crucial principle of postdramatic theatre regarding acoustic phenomena like the voice: voices, music, noises are no longer deployed solely as a means of representing and illustrating dramatic actions, but instead attain a status of their own. They are presented and made experienceable as autonomous components. Hence Lehmann’s observation, referring to the exemplary case of the voice: “The reality of the voice itself is thematized” (Lehmann 2006, 149). However, exposing the actor’s violable and violated physicality also points to a different aspect, a different notion of the body and a different kind of acting style from those asserted by the dramatic theatre since the eighteenth century. We might follow Jens Roselt’s analysis of this tendency towards painwarped articulation and body-oriented speaking as part of “work on the imperfect” (Roselt 2005, 377). The traditional acting ideal of the bourgeois theatre calls on actors to “learn techniques, train their bodies and deploy the devices at their disposal with calculated care. Skill, control and mastery thus become the insignia of the art of acting” (ibid., 376). In contrast to this, Roselt notes, the theatre of recent years has shown increasing interest in imperfection.3 He 3 Bettina Brandl-Risi, discussing contemporary theatre, has also emphasised work on imperfection. She describes it as a particular form of virtuosity which, instead of ruling out lack of control

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refers on the one hand to cases like Frank Castorf’s non-professional performers or Christoph Schlingensief’s work with people with disabilities; on the other, says Roselt, trained actors too are working on imperfection by trying to seek out “physical boundaries and resistances” as a way of demonstrating the “wilfulness and resistancy of the body” (Roselt 2005, 378f.). Whether by amateurs or by trained actors, speaking and vocality is being used to test and emphasise a kind of ‘imperfect speaking’ that erupts in errors, stuttering, distortions, jarring notes, stumbles, loss of control, overload, hoarseness, injury or exhaustion. This radically contradicts the theatrical ideal valid since the eighteenth century, one that has demanded mastery and control of the actor’s body and voice and, correspondingly, has sought to downplay or conceal the inherent resistancy and contingency of the actor’s own body and voice, its nature as event. The contemporary art of voice and speaking, instead, explicitly demonstrates the resistancy of the performer’s voice (and of the body as a whole), thus putting on display the fact that voices (and bodies) are not amenable to total mastery and control. It may indicate to us that imperfection or the failure of skill and expertise are not the exception but the rule.

Massive Attacks: Violence against Auditors The connection between acoustics and violence in postdramatic theatre can, as I noted at the start of this paper, also relate to violence and injury inflicted on the audience by acoustic means. To be sure, listening to the vocally exhausted and injured actor in itself already conveys acoustic violence and power. The auditors in screaming situations of this kind certainly do not take a neutral stance towards what they hear; in the vocally articulated pain and suffering of the actor, they may anticipate a shared pain and shared suffering. The audience’s reactions in such situations are often expressed by a tangible holding of breath, a turning away and tensing of the body or face. In the terms proposed by Hermann Schmitz, one might speak here of the auditors taking over the tensing and constriction of the body in pain: Every bodily state is embedded in a dimension somewhere on the spectrum between restriction and expansiveness … Particularly pronounced is the constriction that happens upon fear and pain … The tightness in that case is not necessarily determined locally, as a cramped location within a system of spatial orientation. It is the crampedness of the body that is sensed in an elemental way, prior to all spatial orientation. (Schmitz 1966, 7) and lack of perfection as classical concepts of virtuosity do, makes that lack an integral part of the presentation (Brandl-Risi 2006).

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This is not to say that the speakers and auditors actually suffer pain; the point is rather that the auditors share in the audible pain through experiencing physical impulses that belong to pain. The auditors cannot know exactly what is happening in the other’s body, but nevertheless they can sense whether the other is suffering or not – by means of a bodily transmission and hence a physical knowledge. In theatrical situations, pain makes itself known and is transmitted through the sensual-material phenomenon of the voice. For Katharina Rost, articulations of pain by means of sound “need not be interpreted as expressions of a sensation occurring somewhere beyond them, but contain the pain on their own account, in their very materiality” (Rost 2009, 175). In this view, the auditor does not hear of or about pain, but hears pain, feels it in his or her own body – which makes it difficult simply to take note of the events in a distanced or neutral way. But acoustic phenomena are also able to inflict injuries on the audience far more directly, to create violently threatening atmospheres and nudge the thresholds of pain. An example is Einar Schleef’s theatre and his Verratenes Volk [Betrayed People] (Berlin 2000). In this performance, which lasted five and a half hours in total, several scenes featured choruses: male, female and mixed, singing and speaking, the actors usually dressed uniformly. I particularly remember very large-scale choral passages with sixty voices, including members of the State Opera’s concert chorus. During these passages the entire auditorium was dark, so that the women and men moving rhythmically and synchronically were barely visible, illuminated at most through hand-held spotlights or backlighting as a mass silhouette. In the course of the performance, the audience thus repeatedly found itself in a pitch-dark space that was defined primarily acoustically and lent immense atmospheric charge by the powerful sound body. For the most part I experienced the vocally generated atmosphere as unsettling or even disturbing, as threatening or aggressive. In Verratenes Volk, then, violence against the audience included an overpowering bodily and affective unsettling of the audience by the vocal phenomena, a sense of an exposure to these phenomena that is associated primarily with negative feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and fear. Several factors contributed to the generation and perception of this menacing atmosphere. Firstly, the darkness resulted in intensified attention to the vocal and acoustic. Sounds and tones sometimes seem different in the dark: they may come across as clearer, louder or closer. Secondly, the audience was confronted with a mass of people, something that itself can realise and generate particular feelings and connotations of violence, menace or anxiety. Furthermore, the grand choral passages were vocally characterised by constant breaks, jumps and switches. At times all the voices could be heard, then just the women’s or just the men’s. There were also constant shifts and alternations in the pace, pausing, emphasis, pitch and volume of speaking. The acoustic events thus seemed highly dynamic and erratic, the breaks and shifts coming on the audience as sudden and

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unexpected. They did not follow a logical line of development, a coherent arc or meaningful context, although neither were they spontaneous: they appeared rehearsed and artificial. This abrupt and erratic quality of the sound events effected a physical agitation among the auditors, who felt pulled to and fro between the different acoustic happenings and subjected to constant changes. The mode of speaking was a further factor in the production and evocation of a sense of threat. A particularly striking feature in this respect was the staccato or chanted rhythm arising from an unusual distribution of pauses. In several choral passages, pauses of various durations were placed after individual words or phrases, as in the following example from the production (my translation): The revolution [pause] marches [pause] What shows itself [pause] on this day [pause] in Berlin [pause] is [pause] the greatest [pause] proletarian [pause] mass [pause] that history has ever seen [pause] We do not believe [pause] that in [pause] Russia [pause] mass demonstrations [pause] on this scale [pause] have taken place. This choppy passage was also spoken at a high speech intensity and volume – the actors’ speaking was a constant roaring that filled the auditorium like heavy thunderclaps. Both the jagged intonation curve and the high speech intensity and volume in such scenes were able to create affective impressions of anger, aggression and threat, just as the chorus’s manner of speaking could provoke sensations like anxiety, uncertainty, dismay or aggression in the auditors.4 The uncertainty and menace that the audience senses through such vocal and acoustic means works on different levels. On an affective level, the choral voices and chanting masses in Verratenes Volk evoked feelings of being threatened, disconcerted or alarmed. At the same time, however, the auditors may also feel threatened on a rational level, in as much as the events are not accessible to a rational interpretation, to being categorised or comprehended. Phenomena like the fragmentation of vocal sound into different voices and parameters may entail a feeling of overload and perturbation because they repudiate any manageable ‘hearing’ and thus any logical structure or classification. In Schleef’s work, then, violence is articulated and negotiated in a range of different ways, involving not only the evocation of violence in the audience, but also the violence against the actors, as mentioned above, and the violence of language and speaking (Dreysse 1999, 97ff.). Acoustic violence in the representation and towards the actor and audience may usefully be located within an aesthetics of shock and terror. Terror as an aesthetic sensation has a long tradition in aesthetics and the theory of art – it 4 Drawing on the work of philologist Ivan Fonagy, Miriam Dreysse notes that a jagged or angular intonation curve not only represents but can also generate feelings like anger and aggression (Dreysse 1999, 109).

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can be traced back to classical antiquity. For Aristotle, terror as shuddering (phobos) combines with pity as lamenting (eleos) to transport the audience into a state of strong agitation that is finally purified in catharsis. In the early modern period, terror served to deter the audience and generate a salutary shock, while in the course of the eighteenth century the concept was moderated. Now reduced to a tolerable degree, terror is defined in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laocoon. An Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry in terms of taste and art, so that for example it is considered inappropriate for painting to represent scenes of terror or pain. The return of a traumatising terror can already be found in English Romanticism, when Edmund Burke picks up the concept as part of his notion of the sublime. Terror as an intense, possibly sudden and negative sensation and as a bodily and emotional effect was fully rediscovered by modernism in the form of shock. In the course of the twentieth century, for movements such as performance art, shock then became an important “aesthetic strategy for subverting expectations, lowering shame thresholds, violating taboos,” but in the process found itself caught in the maelstrom of “a continual need to outdo what had gone before, ultimately amounting to a devaluation of the scandalising dimension of terror or shock” (Brittnacher 2006, 340f.). For Schleef and others, terror or shock arising from high-volume or polyphonic vocalities can no longer really be regarded as scandalous, taboo-breaking or transgressive, even if the constant vocal exertion that the actors offer the audience and impose upon themselves does allow us to glimpse a remnant of such aspects. Instead, the voices here act as impulses, as penetrating stimuli that do not so much shock the audience mentally – in the sense of violating the thresholds of its shame, guilt or endurance – as shake it physically and psychically, overwhelming it in an intense, bodily and affective way. In this sense, vocal articulations function in a similar way to the “sensation” that Gilles Deleuze describes in connection with Francis Bacon’s painting (Deleuze 2003). Deleuze addresses sensation with reference to, among other things, the painted screams in Bacon’s pictures, and finds that it forms a contrast with “the sensational”: a contrast with the portrayal of brutality and cruelty in an aesthetics of sensation or terror. For Deleuze, Bacon’s pictures do not represent scenes of brutality but instead show such simple physical acts as sitting, lying or, precisely, screaming, and through their intense impressive force make these physicalities perceptible for the viewer in a bodily, sensual and affective way. Not least, the negative feelings and injuries evoked in the theatre may lead to hearers becoming palpably conscious of their own presence and thus recognising themselves as participants in what is happening. In the audience, the feelings and emotions generated by acoustic phenomena lead to a conscious perception of their own and others’ bodily presence – they are ‘present’ in two senses, being in the room and being in the moment. This can be explained with reference to Hermann Schmitz’s theory of the present. Proposing a notion of the present as an event that expresses itself in a feeling of being affected physi-

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cally and affectively, Schmitz attributes to affective states like anxiety, trepidation or pain the special role of “presenting the present” (Schmitz 1964, 206). In Schmitz’s view, bodily and affective sensations form the conditions of possibility for us to experience the present. As is shown by theatrical stagings, auditors’ affective experiences when confronted with acoustic phenomena may vary greatly, from unsettled, irritated, uneasy or fearful feelings to sensations of oppressiveness or revulsion. The feelings provoked in the performances are reflected in particular forms of physiological action or reaction: in palpitations or rapid heartbeat, a tense posture or exhaustion and overexcitement – that is, in tensions that are felt within the body. The form of sensation at work here may be described more precisely as a rhythm that takes shape in physical tensing and relaxing and thus intensifies the individual’s sense of his or her own body. It is, in Schmitz’s view, those dynamic relations of tension in the body between its contracting and relaxing that account for the intensity of feelings like apprehension, anxiety, terror or dread: “Bodily intensity proves to be … the constant struggle of the body’s tensing and swelling” (Schmitz 1966, 27). Working from this assumption, we may infer that, for audience members, the experience of acoustic phenomena in theatrical performances always provokes a sensing of their own, present body and confronts them with their own self. In his theory of the present, Schmitz distinguishes three components of the present – “I,” “here,” and “now” – which take on significance when we are in a state of being moved and which enable us to confirm our own bodily presence. In affective states, the person in question is cast radically upon their own resources. As Schmitz puts it in relation to fear: “That is the only reason why in states of fear we are dogged by presence/the present, because we ourselves are here and now” (Schmitz 1964, 197). This intense confrontation with oneself in the affective state can, then, be interpreted as the process of being moved invoking an experience of subjectivity that is connected with an experience of temporality (in the present moment) and of spatiality or locality (being specifically here). Of course, among acoustic phenomena it is not only the violent ones that prompt the individual auditor to feelings and sensations and their associated experience of the present. But the negative sensations and feelings that arise from apparently violent sounds possess a special potential to provoke very intense bodily and affective experience, and thus to enable the individual to experience his or her own present-ness in a particularly intense way.

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Acoustic Violence: From Seduction to Subjugation Many myths and legends – the best known probably being Homer’s story of the sirens – record the immense power of the acoustic to persuade listeners, seduce them, overpower them, cause them to lose control or hurt their bodies or psyche. Among the sources of the efficacy of acoustic phenomena are their sonic materiality and their spatial, atmospheric quality. Inherent to auditory phenomena is the capacity to spread and extend throughout a space, to overcome distance in a virtual “land grab” (Charles 1988, 18). Sounds and tones do not adhere to things and people; they are not fixed to one location like visual phenomena, but disengage from their place of origin and approach the auditor, who cannot completely evade them (Schrödl 2004, 144ff.). When hearing, we perceive with our whole body, and are especially exposed to sound due to its permeating, bodily and emotionally affecting character. As Wolfgang Welsch puts it: Hearing is characterised by infiltration, vulnerability, exposure. We have eyelids, but no ear-lids. When hearing, we are unprotected. Hearing is a sense of extreme passibility, and when stormed by acoustics we cannot escape. It follows from this that acoustically we are especially in need of protection. (Welsch 1993, 95) The expansiveness of the auditory goes hand in hand with an atmospheric quality that most clearly shows why and how our emotions are so susceptible to acoustic phenomena. The term ‘atmosphere’ describes in very general terms the bodily and affective impact of an environment, something that takes shape in the interaction between perceivers and perceived. Acoustic phenomena are generally credited with having a special proximity to the atmospheric, since they – not unlike smells – spread through a space, enveloping the perceivers, and have the capacity to engender or stimulate feelings and sensations in other people. Thus Gernot Böhme observes, in relation to music, that the atmospheric is a fundamental feature of music in general. He ascribes this to the spatiality of music, its form of expansion, and its capacity to affect the physical and emotional state of subjects (Böhme 1998, 71–84). Voices, too, can be regarded as genuinely atmospheric phenomena, which play a part in determining both the specific presence of a person in a space and the communication between persons. The affective impact that sounds, tones or noises are able to exert upon us arises, in Böhme’s view, from the fact “that they immediately modify our physically experienced presence in space. They can make that bodily presence cramped or expansive, elevating and redemptive or oppressed or intimidating” (Böhme 2009, 31). The forms of acoustic violence are just as many and varied as the acoustic phenomena capable of exercising violence. At least three types can be distin-

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guished. Acoustic phenomena may, firstly, inflict physical and psychological injury, and as such have a very insistent and direct effect. Excessive volume, constant exposure to sound, noise, yelling or, indeed, silence can cause physical and psychological harm, for example in the form of sudden hearing loss, stressrelated illness, pain, anxiety or depression. Secondly, acoustic phenomena may exert a far more subtle and indirect influence on the body and soul: we might think here of techniques of manipulation, conversion or seduction, for example by means of musical atmospheres. This more subtle and mediated form of violence is characterised by being more difficult to capture and localise (and more difficult to litigate against) – yet it possesses a special power, described by Böhme as follows: This power makes use neither of physical violence nor of verbal commands. Its attack is directed at the person’s state of feeling, it affects the state of mind, it manipulates the mood, it evokes emotions. It is a power that does not appear as such; it attacks at the level of the unconscious. Although it operates in the sphere of the sensual, it is more invisible and more elusive than all other violence. Politics makes use of it, as does business; traditionally it has always been deployed by religious communities. (Böhme 1995, 39) The last form of injury inflicted by acoustic phenomena is symbolic harm. Voice, not-speaking or particular forms of hearing can attack, undermine or constitute people’s status, identity, power relationships, and so on. The fact that this field of injury is so heterogeneous and operates on such different levels is indicated in the double meaning of the German word for violence, Gewalt. In its sense of violentia, Gewalt means a directly violent action that involves injury or even destruction. In its sense of potestas, Gewalt refers to the faculty or potential for power, such as a political authority to act, emphasising the productive efficacy of action as opposed to its destructive aspects. However, rather than classifying acoustic effects – including in postdramatic theatre – in either one or the other category of Gewalt, and thus presenting one form as more harmless or less primary than the other, it makes more sense to situate them within one spectrum, as Bernhard Waldenfels has suggested (Waldenfels 2000, 14f.). The range of injuries that can arise from acoustic phenomena goes from deliberate silence, to an intrusive or offensive tone, right up to shouting at people, persecuting them with noise or torturing them. In postdramatic theatre the forms of acoustic violence are located within this kind of spectrum, although the issue is not the infliction of massive physical and psychological damage but rather the forms of bodily-affective distress or consternation I have mentioned above. Subtly seducing the auditors and directly overpowering them are two extreme positions on that spectrum, which I will now examine in more detail.

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One manifestation of seduction carried out by acoustic means is the use of whispering, as in René Pollesch’s Soylent Green ist Menschenfleisch, sagt es allen weiter [Tell Everyone: Soylent Green is Human Flesh] (Berlin 2003). In this production, the actors mainly sat or lay in an interior room not visible to the audience, and were projected into the auditorium by video on several screens. For long stretches of the play, the actors spoke in whispers, their voices amplified by microphones throughout. Words, sentences and breathing noises swirled slowly through the space. A tapestry of sound was produced, enveloping the auditors and drawing them down into a kind of mysterious and almost intimate atmosphere. The sound artist and theorist Brandon LaBelle has described whispering as an expression of intimacy and closeness that overcomes the distance between human beings: “Whispering erases distance; it pulls you closer; it says ‘you and I are everything’” (LaBelle 2004, 104). For the auditors, whispering in this sense can become a tempting, attractive experience, conveying a seductive power and closeness that becomes physically tangible in the form of an atmosphere. The violence of seduction lies in the appropriation of the other’s body and emotions – the whispering and its space-filling presence occupies the bodies of the auditors and appeals to them to submit to it, to become immersed in the intimate atmosphere and thus to modify their own bodily-affective state, abandon their own stance. Certainly, seduction is one of the subtle forms of violence that do not inflict physical wounds but are often even experienced as pleasurable. As a result, the manipulative and dangerous dimension of seduction, giving up the self and entering the thrall of the other, is not immediately obvious; it only becomes perceptible as an effect. However, in Pollesch’s whispering scenes violence appeared through another channel as well: in language, in the words and sentences that the actors murmured to each other. This was because the actors’ lines conveyed precisely the opposite of intimacy. When the characters talked of “money,” “flesh,” or “porn,” or when they breathed to each other in tender tones phrases like “I hate the shit that you are,” then the cosy feeling of closeness became mingled with an obviously menacing or even violent mood. The dialogue and the vocal articulations evoked a tension and a kind of dual or ambivalent reception that undermined any simple, unreflected feeling of being immersed or cradled in the sphere of sound. While seduction is among the subtle techniques of acoustic violence, overwhelming by acoustic means is a far more direct and obvious way of discomfiting, threatening or distressing the other. An example of such acoustic overpowering of the audience is, alongside the productions by Castorf and Schleef I have already discussed, Luk Perceval’s staging of Penthesilea (Berlin 2008). Here, the audience experienced not only an affective indication of the threatening, frightening or unsettling through acoustics, but to a certain extent even a threat to its physical integrity, the transgression of a pain threshold. During the

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entire performance, the jazz musician Jean-Paul Bourelly played his electric guitar live, his music recurrently overlaying the actions and words of the actors. It became so loud and intense that in the course of the evening I – like a large part of the audience – frequently covered my ears and reacted with increasing annoyance and irritation; for some members of the audience there came a point when the music provoked anger and outrage, going so far that some left the auditorium, not quietly or furtively but with demonstrative indignation. The irritated, in some cases aggressive, reactions to Bourelly’s music derived first and foremost from the enormous volume. Volume is one of the indicators of noise that may be experienced as disturbing when it rises, and indeed may result in physical and psychological injuries and damage – from insomnia and cardiac problems, to pain and mental illness, to sudden temporary or permanent hearing loss. Sound intensity or sound level is measured in decibels, a normal conversation occurring in the region of 60 dB and 30 dB prevailing in libraries. At around 110 dB, the sound intensity of chainsaws, pneumatic drills or discotheques, the pain threshold is reached (Schulte von Drach 2008). Although I did not have the opportunity to measure the sound level in Perceval’s Penthesilea, I know that it reached a pain threshold for me and was thus located in the outermost regions of what can, or cannot, be demanded of the human ear. However, I would argue that the overpowering effect of the sound backdrop in Penthesilea arose not only from the heightened sound level, but equally from the apparent impossibility of categorising or interpreting the sounds: from their lack of function and their unapproachability. The guitar sounds seemed dissonant, off-key, unmelodic; they screeched and grated through the auditorium, following no recognisable rhythmic pattern, melodics or other structures. Bourelly’s music also seemed largely unconnected with the rest of events on the stage – it neither supported actions nor seemed to represent themes or motifs. In this sense, it was autonomous vis-à-vis the theatrical or dramatic course of events. Far from fulfilling some function conducive to the meaning of the performance, it seemed if anything to further disrupt that meaning. Empirical noise research has discovered that disturbing or noisy voices, sounds or acoustic environments are often those subjectively evaluated by hearers as lacking meaning or function. That is, if a noise or an entire sound environment proves unclassifiable, uninterpretable or non-functional for a specific auditor, then the acoustic events may be experienced as disturbing and threatening. My comments on seduction and overpowering have shown that in order to be effective as violence, acoustic violence need not involve high-volume, noisy sonic environments. Muted tones and persistent sounds, too, are capable of triggering menace and injury, as are silence and deliberate not-speaking. The case of seduction also shows that violence does not necessarily take the form of something inspiring terror, anxiety or pain, but may appear as pleasant and beguiling sounds. Violence begins at the moment when a person’s bodily-af-

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fective state is assaulted and modified, not only when it is injured physically or psychologically. Violence can thus be understood as an implicit dimension of aesthetic and acoustic experience in general. On similar lines, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht asserts that an element of violence is inherent in every aesthetic experience: Referring back to our discussion of the epiphanic character of aesthetic experience, and according to the observation that epiphany always implies the emergence of a substance …, we may indeed postulate that there can be no epiphany and, as a consequence, no genuinely aesthetic experience without a moment of violence – because there is no aesthetic experience without epiphany, that is, without the event of substance occupying space. (Gumbrecht 2004, 114)

Dynamics of the ‘Between’ The evocation and thematisation of co-presence are foremost in any consideration of the functions associated with the theatre’s acoustic powers and effects. When the audience experiences acoustic power and violence, this triggers particular dynamics between the stage and the audience that allow us to identify co-presence as the precondition of theatre itself. We know that bodily co-presence is the crucial feature of theatrical forms of art. It is the condition of possibility for theatrical performances: a performance can only occur through the encounter of actors and audience at the same time and place. In this context, Erika Fischer-Lichte refers to a “self-generating and ever-changing autopoietic feedback loop” between actors and audience that, she argues, both moulds and generates the performance (Fischer-Lichte 2008, 50). For Fischer-Lichte, this feedback loop is itself not a one-dimensional process initiated by the producers and, so to speak, transmitted to the receivers, but a reciprocal one that takes place between actors and audience: The actors act... the spectators perceive their actions and respond to them. … Both the other spectators as well as the actors perceive and, in turn, respond to these reactions. … In short, whatever the actors do elicits a response from the spectators, which impacts on the entire performance. (Ibid., 38) By the feedback loop, then, we mean a movement to and fro between actors and audience members, which constitutes and defines any one performance. According to Fischer-Lichte, audience reactions consist both in the individual spectator’s interior processes of perception, attention and experience and in “perceptible responses” that find expression in laughing, crying, groaning or

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coughing (ibid.). Equally, spectators or auditors may become an active member of the cast, for example if they are called on to take a part in the action, to say something or to carry out physical acts.5 Bodily co-presence, and the feedback loop that brings it about, has attracted different evaluations and judgements in different forms of theatre and in different eras. Although theatrical performance always springs from a reciprocality between actors and audience, this fact is not always equally conspicuous, relevant or welcomed. Fischer-Lichte notes, for example, that one of the objectives of the bourgeois theatre of the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth century was interrupting the feedback loop. Visible and audible – i.e. potentially distracting – audience reactions were to be channeled into ‘interior’ responses that would be sensed intuitively by others but remained without outward expression. (Fischer-Lichte 2008, 39) In the early twentieth century and with the performative turn since the 1960s, says Fischer-Lichte, co-presence and its feedback loop was accorded a central role, and was explicitly addressed as such through a range of staging strategies or experiments (ibid., 39f.). A similar point is made by Jan Deck with reference to the postdramatic theatre of the present day: “Instead of a representation of roles, designed for audience identification and portrayed by actors, the theatre situation itself becomes the topic: the bodily co-presence of actors and spectators” (Deck 2008, 9). In order for co-presence to take on the status of the production’s theme, it must first be evoked or produced by various means, strategies and processes. Against this background, the invocation of acoustic power and violence against the auditors may be regarded as a means by which co-presence, the human encounter of actors and audience in the here and now, can become a conscious component of the theatrical experience. The dynamics between stage and audience may be confirmatory ones, but spectators can also intensify and incite events on the stage. One form of beingtogether, a form that may arise in threatening situations in the theatre, is ambivalence. Here the auditors are torn in their reaction to what they hear and see. Their ambivalence might relate to different, perhaps contradictory emotions, for example feeling disconcerted or threatened by the vocal impressions while also sensing an awakening curiosity and interest. Or it might relate to divergent stances, value judgements or opinions, such as a wavering between the judgements of good or bad, agreeable or disagreeable. Ambivalence involves a conflict situation in which the auditor finds him- or herself and which is marked by a high intensity of experience. 5

On the different spectator roles in contemporary theatre, see also Deck 2008, 9–19.

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The voices in Schleef’s or Pollesch’s productions have the power to draw their listeners into conflict situations of this kind. The key point is that when listening to the choral or whispered voices, the auditors do not feel simply threatened and thus repulsed by what they hear: their emotions show an ambivalence between attraction and repulsion. Mixed feelings of this kind are described by Konrad Paul Liessmann as aesthetic sensations. In those feelings, the important aspect is precisely not the sharpest possible impressions and most unequivocal feelings but, on the contrary, the emergence of different and contradictory sensations, allowing us to find a special quality of experience, a special form of pleasure that has already assimilated unpleasure. (Liessmann 2009, 33) According to Liessmann, these mingled sensations are capable of building up a particular tension and retaining our attention rather than quickly satiating it. Both our impression of the acoustic phenomenon and its potential to affect us, which has us oscillate between merging with the other and retreating into the self, may be equivocal and thus conflict-laden. The conflicted situation – for both actors and audience – is what gives this form of encounter its highly charged connectivity. Furthermore, the encounter between speakers and listeners can give rise to a form of being-together that is characterised primarily by negative tensions and conflict potential. This may be expressed in auditors withdrawing from the vocal events, turning inwards, their attention drifting away. Or they may audibly and tangibly resist the audiality they hear and feel, consciously turning against it, in extreme cases even leaving the auditorium and thus the situation. We could describe this kind of encounter between actors and spectators as a ‘being-against;’ it does not involve affirmative moments on the part of the spectators or auditors, only negative or repudiatory ones. That may be reflected in negative sensations and feelings (unease or displeasure, anger or aggression) or in an unconcentrated, uninterested stance. It is important to stress that even in being-against, actors and spectators or auditors are nevertheless located in relationship to one another: the audience acts and reacts in response to events on the stage and vice versa, if in a negative and dismissive way. The reciprocal reference of stage and audience means that being-against is still a form of ‘being-together,’ as opposed to those reactions, actions or stances by auditors that are unconnected with the events or fail to establish communication with the vocal processes at work. Being-against finds expression in negative reactions to what is heard and seen on the stage that may also be marked by an obstructive, complicating dynamic. An example of this kind of bad-tempered or even hostile form of beingtogether in the theatre that arises from an acoustic situation is Perceval’s pro-

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duction of Penthesilea, already mentioned above. In the course of the performance, there were many moments when the audience palpably retreated and took up an attitude of reserve towards the acoustic events, while loud and dissonant sounds from the electric guitar permeated the space and the actors exhausted themselves with screaming, panting and whispering. Looking around halfway through the performance, I saw that many spectators had turned away from the stage, holding their ears closed and displaying their resentment through an explicit refusal to listen. There were also individual audience members who gave more obvious vent to their annoyance about what they were hearing, by whispering to their neighbours or demonstratively looking around for people who shared their chagrin and outrage – and yet others who left the auditorium indignantly. In the space of the audience there thus developed, for moments at a time, an independent mood that was dissonant with events on the stage and was marked by loss of attention, restlessness, irritation, annoyance and even disgust. The aggressive affects that came into play here can be characterised very generally by destructiveness on the one hand and an active, life-sustaining energy on the other (Demmerling and Landweer 2007, 290 ff.). Both aspects made themselves felt in the situations that Penthesilea provoked. The aggressive, exasperated mood in the audience exerted an inhibiting or even destructive effect on the relationship between stage and auditorium, in that actors and audience members almost broke into two separate parties, distancing themselves from one another and threatening the performance with collapse. At those moments which met with rejection and indignation from the audience, the actors’ performances lost intensity and force. On the other hand, the case of Penthesilea also shows that an irritated and aggressive mood in the auditorium fosters an activation and intensification of events, in that it mingles with the violence and aggression being portrayed and presented on the stage. The situation as a whole is thus reinforced and intensified. Being-against, therefore, is a dissonant form of being-together that consists primarily of negative feelings and impressions. If this form of being-together often takes the form of a curb and obstacle for the participants, it may equally contribute to a heightening of the situation’s intensity. Even if, in the cases I have discussed here, the feelings are purportedly negative ones and the reactions defensive, that does not necessarily imply a lessening or loss of the intensity of experience. On the contrary: negative feelings are precisely the ones most capable of releasing strong forces and dynamics. Translated by Kate Sturge

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References Barthes, Roland. “The Grain of the Voice.” In: idem. Image, Music, Text. Trans. by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill & Wang, 1977, 179–89. Bohrer, Karl-Heinz. Imaginationen des Bösen. Zur Begründung einer ästhetischen Kategorie. München: Carl Hanser, 2004. Böhme, Gernot. Atmosphäre. Essays zur neuen Ästhetik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995. — “Musik und Atmosphäre.” In: idem (ed.). Anmutungen. Über das Atmosphärische. Ostfildern vor Stuttgart: Edition Tertium, 1998, 71–84. — “Die Stimme im leiblichen Raum.” In: Doris Kolesch, Vito Pinto, and Jenny Schrödl (eds.). Stimm-Welten. Philosophische, medientheoretische und ästhetische Perspektiven. Bielefeld: transcript, 2009, 23–32. Brandl-Risi, Bettina. “The New Virtuosity. Outperforming and Imperfection on the German Stage.” Theater 1 (2006), 9–37. Brittnacher, Hans Richard. “Schrecken/Schock.” In: Achim Trebeß (ed.). Metzler Lexikon Ästhetik. Kunst, Medien, Design und Alltag. Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2006, 340–41. Charles, Daniel. “Raum, Zeit und die Zeitkünste. Ein Gespräch mit Émile Noel.” In: idem (ed.). Zeitspielräume. Berlin: Merve, 1988, 7–24. Deck, Jan. “Zur Einleitung: Rollen des Zuschauers im postdramatischen Theater.” In: idem and Angelika Sieburg (eds.). Paradoxien des Zuschauens. Die Rolle des Publikums im zeitgenössischen Theater. Bielefeld: transcript, 2008, 9–19. Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Trans. David W. Smith. London: Continuum, 2003. Dreysse, Miriam. Szene vor dem Palast. Die Theatralisierung des Chors im Theater Einar Schleefs. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999. Demmerling, Christoph and Hilge Landweer. Philosophie der Gefühle. Von Achtung bis Zorn. Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2007. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. Trans. by Saskya Iris Jain and Introduction by Marvin Carlson. New York: Routledge, 2008. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. The Production of Presence. What Meaning Cannot Convey. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. Kolesch, Doris. “Stimmlichkeit.” In: idem, Erika Fischer-Lichte, and Matthias Warstat (eds.). Metzler Lexikon Theatertheorie. Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2005, 317–320. LaBelle, Brandon. “pillow talk, or speaking from within clouds.” In: Doris Kolesch and Jenny Schrödl (eds.). Kunst-Stimmen. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2004, 102–11. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Trans. by Karen Jürs-Munby. London: Routledge, 2006.

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— “Theater des Konflikts. Einar [email protected].” In: Gabriele Gerecke, Harald Müller, and Hans-Ulrich Müller-Schwefe (eds.). Einar Schleef. Arbeitsbuch. Berlin: Verlag Theater der Zeit, 2002, 42–53. Liessmann, Konrad Paul. Ästhetische Empfindungen. Eine Einführung. Vienna: Facultas, 2009. Roselt, Jens. “An den Rändern der Darstellung – Ein Aspekt von Schauspielkunst heute.” In: idem (ed.). Seelen mit Methode. Schauspieltheorien vom Barock- bis zum postdramatischen Theater. Berlin: Alexander Verlag, 2005, 376–380. Rost, Katharina. “Lauschangriffe. Das Leiden anderer spüren.” In: Doris Kolesch, Vito Pinto, and Jenny Schrödl (eds.). Stimm-Welten. Philosophische, medientheoretische und ästhetische Perspektiven. Bielefeld: transcript, 2009, 171–87. Schmitz, Hermann. “Die vollständige Gegenwart.” In: idem. System der Philosophie. 5 vols. Bonn: Bouvier, 1964–1980, vol. I: Die Gegenwart [1964], 169–239. — “Der Begriff des Leibes.” In: idem. System der Philosophie. 5 vols. Bonn: Bouvier, 1964–1980, vol. II.2: Der Leib im Spiegel der Kunst [1966], 7–36. Schrödl, Jenny. “Stimm(t)räume. Zu Audioinstallationen von Laurie Anderson und Janet Cardiff.” In: Doris Kolesch and Jenny Schrödl (eds.). KunstStimmen. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2004, 143–160. Waldenfels, Bernhard. “Aporien der Gewalt.” In: idem, Mihran Dabag, and Antje Kapust (eds.). Gewalt. Strukturen, Formen, Repräsentationen. Paderborn: Fink, 2000, 9–24. Welsch, Wolfgang. “Auf dem Weg zu einer Kultur des Hörens?” In: Paragrana 2 (1993), 87–103.

Asceticism Poses a Threat: The Enactment of Voluntary Hunger Barbara Gronau Hunger striking is a practice of abstention that operates with an inherent risk of damage to one’s own self. The hunger strike must be enacted in a particular way in order for the renunciation of food to be seen as a tool of political resistance in the first place – and not, for example, as a personal diet; the way the body declines and breaks down, the inherent possibility of damage to one’s health, and the risk of death must all be positioned within a theatrical setting like the scenes of a play. Paradigms for this practice can be found not only in the religious ascetic exercises of earlier ages but also in the early modern-era performances of hunger artists. With recourse to one historical and one contemporary example, this paper demonstrates the kind of destructive dynamics at work within the voluntary renunciation of food and what principles and greater context govern the way that renunciation of food is staged.

Passivity as Fomentive Provocation As they scurried across the marble floors of Paris’ Palais Bourbon on 7 March 2006, members of the French National Assembly were greeted with a surprising scene: representative Jean Lassalle, member of the social liberal Union pour la Démocratie Française,1 sitting on a red sofa in the vestibule and announcing that he was now on hunger strike. The 50-year-old parliamentarian cited the intention of Japanese aluminum producer Toyal to relocate its factory from Lassalle’s hometown (a small town in the Pyrenées) to a city 60 kilometers away as the reason behind his attention-seeking tactic; the threat of job loss looming over the 150 residents of Vallée d’Aspe had driven Lassalle to resort to drastic measures in criticism of globalization, and he quit eating.2 Over the course of the following weeks, representatives from across the political spectrum were forced to watch Lassalle grow increasing pale and gaunt. Soon, he could only follow the daily parliamentary sessions from a lying position, whilst dabbing his parched lips with soda water. Lassalle had also decided to move into his office for the entire duration of the hunger strike in order to lend his demands an even greater sense of urgency. His colleagues thus became witness to the morning routine of the politician as he padded barefoot through the halls of the National Assembly in an attempt to grant his suffering body a bit of exercise and as he underwent subsequent examinations at the hands of the parliamentary doctor. 1

The UDF is a liberal political party in France with Christian Democratic roots. A comprehensive collection of materials, including photos, can be found on the website http://www. jean-lassalle.fr (as of March 27, 2007) Many thanks to Dominique Lassagne and Thierry Baubet for pointing out Jean Lassalle’s social-political action to me. 2

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Lassalle was denied any measure of solidarity, not only by his political opponents but also by the members of his own party. Bernard Accoyer, chairperson of the governing UMP party, even complained that “no policymaking” (Salzburger Nachrichten, April 14, 2006) can result from the use of such means, which amount to “an admission of powerlessness” (Der Spiegel, April 10, 2006) more than anything else. Despite this, Lassalle – who, according to a statement, had never before felt famished or even gone on a diet – held to his renunciation of food, week after week. With a book by Mahatma Gandhi tucked under his arm, Lassalle, the son of a goat herder, granted interviews to Le Monde, Liberation and French television, and his popularity rose continually. The longer “Jean” adhered to the restrictions of his endeavour, the more he was celebrated as a hero. After being brought to the hospital on April 14, 2006, after thirty-nine days of fasting and a loss of twenty-one kilograms of body weight, the parliamentarian – by this point a public icon – was able to end his strike; at the behest of Jacques Chirac, President of France at the time, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy personally intervened and negotiated a promise on the part of the Japanese corporation to retain the threatened jobs. In view of the mass layoffs that have become almost a daily occurrence today, the level of engagement on the part of the French leadership for one hundred fifty Pyrenean employees hardly seems plausible. The impact made in this singular case – as marginal as that impact may be when looking at the multitudinous global economic chains of cause-and-effect – can hardly be explained by the set of facts underlying it. The basic assertion of this paper is that the political outcome of Lassalle’s renunciation of food was brought about primarily by the emotions Lassalle was able to evoke in voters, ministers and the president through his strategic non-action. The longer Lassalle continued fasting and the greater his degree of passivity in connection with the fast became – passivity in the sense of his growing difficulty moving and even speaking – the more the witnesses to and addressees of his actions were spurred into action. This interdependent dialectic of non-action/non-negotiation triggering action/negotiation is a typical characteristic of passive resistance. At the same time, however, a specific way of staging Lassalle’s renunciation of food was also necessary so the practice could be seen as a tool of such resistance and not, for example, just as a personal diet. In this paper, I will be elucidating the forms of enactment that permitted Jean Lassalle to shape his hunger into a political tool. I will also explore the specific dialectic of suffering and fervor inherent to that enactment – a conjunction that serves as the defining moment of fomentive provocation.

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Lonely Experience According to literary scholar Maud Ellmann, it is “impossible to share another person’s feelings of hunger, just as it is impossible to feel another’s pain; both sensations clearly demonstrate the terribly ‘lonely’ nature of bodily experiences” (Ellmann 1994, 15ff.). If hunger is an experience that generally cannot be shared, how can it be explained that witnesses to the Lassallesian hunger strike reacted with a wide array of impassioned statements instead of sheer ignorance? The example before us reveals the kind of impact the choice to go hungry can have on people who are filled. The appellative character of going hungry makes the renunciation of food an almost unbearable provocation, and this appeal evoked three different kinds of reactions in the particular case at hand: annoyance, even anger, as a sign of rejection; sympathy as a sign of concern, and solidarity as a sign of supportive agreement. These reactions did not come about because of any emotional pleas; they did not mirror any emotional statements on the part of the hunger striker. Although Lassalle first indicated desperation as the reason for his hunger strike,3 this desperation still expressed itself in a soberly objective, almost unemotional bearing on the part of the politician, one that almost appeared to be based on the political ideal of “stoic apathy” dating back to antiquity.4 The emotionally laden statements of Lassalle’s political colleagues, on the contrary, are representative examples of reactions to a provocation. The basic pattern behind that provocation is paradoxical; hunger strikes injure others through their self-inflicted injury. Since the struggle is enacted without any bodily contact, its primary objective is to mobilize other people’s feelings. Indeed, one might even say it is about making the enemy a prisoner of their own emotions. In order to be able to trigger such a cause-and-effect chain reaction, Lassalle availed himself of an array of strategies, strategies that will serve as the subject of the following remarks.

Enacting Abstention Even when we speak of Lassalle’s strike as a form of passivity, such passivity has nothing to do with a kind of “docile inaction;” rather, it has to do with purposeful non-action. In a freely chosen, calculated act of self-denial, the politician abstains from eating and from leaving the premises of the French parliament. This can be described as forbearance, since Lassalle spurns an expected 3 “Niemand im Parlament und in der Regierung wollte für uns zuständig sein, ich wusste einfach nicht mehr weiter” (Lasalle quoted from Mönninger 2006, 11). 4 The most ancient concept of apathy holds up a lack of passion as the highest goal of the cynical approach to life. Over the course of various generations of philosophers, it became the stoic virtuous ideal of composed aplomb (cf. Engelmeier 1971).

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action, namely, the intake of food and the connected physical act of self-preservation (Birnbacher 1995, Berger 2004). The provokingly fomentive character of his action is grounded in its breach of “the rules.” The representative breaks with the verbal forms traditionally used in pursuit of political interests – methods geared toward negotiation and persuasion – and uses the mute gesture of self-denial in their stead. Despite the fact that so much remains unspoken, however, the gesture is appellatory in nature. With his permanent reference to the loss of mental and physical health, Lassalle competes for attention by highlighting an existential threat. Also, because the physical risk involved increases the longer he denies himself sustenance, this gesture gains momentum very quickly and reaches its temporal culmination with the corresponding increase in the willingness of the public to take action. Over time, Lassalle’s party colleagues, who initially reacted with rejection, impassive derision and anger, grow in admiration for him; and in the end, his actions result in a corresponding act of solidarity: an intervention at the highest political level. The latent character of every hunger strike – latent meaning effective only in the long term – also presents a marked problem to those who wish to use it as a gesture of resistance. In contrast to conspicuous physical injuries such as cuts, wounds and fractures, the physical effects of hunger are not immediately visible in adults but only manifest themselves slowly, having very little of the “spectacular” about them within the first few weeks (Halsted 2005). Jean Lassalle had to ensure three things in order to make sure his renunciation of food is even recognized and accepted as a strike: His hunger had to be publicly perceptible; it had to be understood as an experience of pain; and that pain had to have a substitutionary character to it – substitionary meaning able to be accepted as a “pain for [someone or something]” (Ellmann 1994, 35). “Voluntary hunger is, first and foremost, a performance,” noted Maud Ellmann, pointing out that “in the Irish hunger strike of 1981 [...], it was not the hunger [itself] but the public exhibition of that hunger that the prisoners used to humiliate their oppressors [...]. The success of the strike hinged on its representation – with ‘representation’ meaning how things were portrayed and what stood for what” (ibid., 35ff.). Lassalle, too, stages his hunger in a public way. His venue: the parliament, its inimitably public nature intrinsically making it a place of great symbolic value. With the parliament as his stage, he presents his emaciated body to the entire nation through the media. The ‘siege’ element serves as an important means within Lassalle’s presentation. He stakes out a plot within the parliamentary building, transforms his office into a living space, and uses the floors as an exercise ground and the halls of the parliament as a sickbed. His tenacious refusal to vacate the space serves as a sign of his unyielding sense of resolution. With it, the politician makes use of a juridical practice already known in the Middle Ages in which a debtor or someone who has been wronged en-

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camps on the doorstep of the creditor or defendant, conspicuously fasting until the other party is prepared to relent.5

A Call to Action and Proclamation of Judgment Hunger strikers have one central goal: to transform their bodies into a symbol that can be seen and understood by all. Strikers work to tell of the suppression that stems from the oppression they are fasting in order to abolish. “What distinguishes a hunger strike from all other kinds of voluntary fasting is the verbal statement that consummates the mute witness of the emaciated body. Hunger strikers, in order to be able to shape their bodies into hostages and make their own mortality a means of extortion, must declare the reason behind their forbearance,” writes Ellmann in her study on hunger artists. She points out that while fasting is associated with taciturn non-communication, a hunger strike is accompanied by “conversationality” (ibid., 36). In order to make sure their statement is able to be understood properly, hunger strikers use the dual strategy of issuing a call to action and proclaiming judgment. In the same vein, Jean Lassalle’s gestural reference to Mahatma Gandhi is a citation of the tradition of politically motivated fasting in which the male body is transformed into a tool for struggle and resistance. Lassalle’s reference to Gandhi is meant to ensure that the media appearance he is staging is not centered on an exhibitionist brand of fasting but instead wielded as a political tool to bring about freedom (Conrad and Conrad-Lütt 2006). Lassalle’s renunciation of food thus makes recourse to another struggle against a seemingly almighty opponent – one encountered by the Indian resistance as a British occupational power but perceived in 21st-century France as an international corporation. In his verbal statements, press releases and numerous interviews, Lassalle’s outline of its anonymously inhumane nature is like a caption for the picture that portrays the scene set around the bedridden martyr: Ce jour, mardi 7 mars 2006, j’engage à l’Assemblée Nationale, lieu et symbole de la représentation du peuple de France, une grève de la faim qui ne s’arrêtera que lorsque la délocalisation de l’usine Toyal, qui emploie 150 salariés dans la vallée d’Aspe (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) et qui est arrachée à son site par le groupe Total sans aucune justification, aura pris fin. Il m’est devenu insupportable que des hommes seuls, aussi puissants soient-ils, puissent décider du sort de dizaines de familles, de leur vie ou de leur mort, et du devenir de notre territoire déjà en lambeaux. Durant ce jeûne, je prendrai tout le temps nécessaire pour parler à tous ceux qui pourraient être intéressés par mon sentiment sur quelques faits précis, 5 In Ireland, this practice is spelled out in the civil code “Senchus Mor” as “troscud,” or “fasting for a deposit.” Cf. Ellmann 1994, 26.

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As is the case with all hunger strikes, Lassalle’s struggle follows the principle of self-sacrifice, laying his own life on the line for the sake of strategic goals. He thus assumes traits of martyrdom, which takes on its tragic dimensions in the contact between victim and victimizer (Weigel 2007, 26). The secret undergirding hunger strikes is the way they “overpower the oppressor with a theatrical representation of the loss of power” (Ellmann 1994, 42). When hunger strikers demonstrate their independence from sustenance, even from life itself, they compromise the power of the foe, confronting the enemy with an unexpected form of subject autonomy.

Personal Pain and the Pain of Others Paradoxically, however, the pain associated with this process can only take on a representative character when shared by others. For that reason, hunger strikes aim to create a communitas, perhaps best described as a community tied together through its fervent solidarity. In the case at hand, this community initially encompasses only the group of threatened workers before Jean Lassalle arrives on the scene to advocate for them. The ensuing goal is to enlarge this core group over the course of the staged action, supplementing its ranks with numerous sympathizers whose help makes it possible to confront their ‘allpowerful opponent’ at the national level. Tellingly, this group is not forged together by the concrete experience of shared pain; physical anguish remains restricted to the politician. Emotional participation in the group is much more of a mental nature. The path leading from anger and derision over Lassalle’s break with the rules to recognition of his ‘achievement’ is built upon the groundswell of sympathy that continually grows throughout the strike. As Dieter Thomä recently demonstrated, sympathy bonds together beings that are able to experience pain in a type of “coexistence” (Thomä 2006, 191). Regardless of whether the reader wishes to regard sympathy as containing a “fear centered on oneself” with Lessing (Lessing 1968, 381), an “inborn reluctance to see others of the same kind in pain” with Rousseau (Rousseau 1995, 218) or as one of the “three wellsprings of human negotiation” with Schopenhauer 6 “It has become unbearable to me that individual men, regardless how powerful they may be, have the power to make decisions that affect dozens of families, on their life and their death and on our territory [the Pyrenees], which is already divided into pieces. During the fast, I will take the time to speak with anyone interested in how I feel about particular facts, that reveal the way things are not working – how the basic construction of our society has been undermined for some time, making it more and more unjust, inhuman and terrible with each passing day.”

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(Schopenhauer 2005, 78), each of these vantage points in some way knits together the fates and fortunes facing different beings. Hunger strikes, as with religious martyrdom, aim to call forth an “emotional community of the compassionate” (Weigel 2007, 20). The immanent risk and readiness to accept death as a “selfless, tragic and heroic victim for the sake of the greater good” (ibid.), lends the pain a “metaphysical purport” (ibid., 14). The change of heart exhibited by Lassalle’s political colleagues testifies to a recognition and acceptance of this ideological framework.

Virtuosic Fasting Just as with hunger strikes, virtuosic fasting draws its appeal from the way it acts out a break with norms. Hence, the superlative and the exotically fantastical are well suited for use in staging passivity and voluntary pain. The European tradition of performative fasting can be traced all the way back to the 17th century (cf. Vandereycken, Deth, and Meermann 2003). This secular strand of ascetic fasting was undertaken outside the bounds of the set fasting times proscribed by the church and was oftentimes carried out by adolescent girls, such as Appolonia Schreier of Switzerland, with her ostentatious ten-year fast in 1611, and Martha Taylor of England, who began and completed a 13-month hunger treatment in 1667 without cloister or hermitage. Thanks to the printing press, news of these extraordinary achievements spread far and wide via flyers and became the subject of supra-regional attention on the part of both women and men. It was not uncommon for these “fasting wonders” and “wonder-girls” to reap commercial benefits as well, receiving summons to various royal courts and billed as attractions in travel guides (cf. Pulz 2007). In order to ascertain whether their ascetic fasts should be classified as proof of religious austerity, as miracles of God or as the “work of the devil,” clerics subjected those fasting to detailed scrutiny and the widest possible range of tests, and numerous cases were identified as fraudulent. Finally, in the 18th century, Pope Benedict XIV established a canonization process in which doctors would help in determining whether or not the respective case on hand represented a “real” and “exceptional” fasting achievement. It was the pathologization of female fasting and the 1873 clinical discovery of “anorexia nervosa” as presented by Ernest-Charles Lasègue and William Gull that engendered the disappearance from the public eye of the ascetics once labeled as “wonder-girls.” The public display of voluntary abstention from food, however, returned within the context of the art world and the field of virtuosity, with aspirants – by and large male – appearing in public shows of fasting. Popular public entertainment venues provided the setting for most such hunger artists, venues such as the Verona Arena and the Wiener Pratergarten as well as restaurants and coffeehouses in which the fasting person’s

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body was staged as an “exoticism.” Giovanni Succi of Italy, among the most famous fasting virtuosos of the late 19th century, went on European-wide tours and established the first record with his forty-four day fast. But there were women, too – such as Austrian actress Auguste Victoria Schenk, who made her appearance as a hunger artist in Vienna in 1905 – who submitted themselves to confinement in see-through cages for weeks on end in a public staging of their fast (cf. Payer 2002). At the beginning of the 20th century, the art of fasting was increasingly standardized, giving way to the implicit cultivation of a defined dramaturgical canon. Following a phase of preparation – in which they would choose the proper venue, create advertisement materials and build a “hunger cell” that could be seen from the outside – hunger artists would publicly perform their “last meal,” often appearing with their impresario to eat a substantial dinner accompanied by intensive commentary. Finally, after addressing a short speech to the audience, the fasting person was “walled in” – that is to say, locked in – availing themselves of the services of the fire department or security guard guild as a testament to the import of the occasion. After the weight of the hunger artist was measured, the long period of waiting would begin, interrupted only by changes of the guard, visits from the public or the arrival of “fan mail.” Once the day of “liberation” arrived, a crowd of curious spectators would form a dense circle around the cell – as happened during the “walling out” of Riccardo Sacco on June 13, 1905, as the Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt reports the next day: Long before the set time, a huge crowd of onlookers filled the hall of the local establishment of Pertl, and a solid ring formed around the small glass house in which Mr. Sacco awaited his liberation with a visibly cheerful sense of expectation. It was no easy job for the Hernals fire department personnel on duty [...] to keep the roped-off space cleared between the glass house encasing Mr. Sacco and the stage, where he was to break his fast with his first meal. (Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt, June 14, 1905, 6; quoted from Payer 2002, 83f.) In the end, surrounded by multitudes of photographers, the hunger artist exited the cell, underwent examination by the doctors standing ready and, after a toast to all the bystanders, publicly ate his “first meal.” The reactions of those present in the audience – arising to the occasion as fellow actors to accompany Mr. Sacco in his liberation scene – attested in a particularly clear way to the dynamic of immanence that permeated the entire event. In like manner, the high point of the public hunger art genre came about in 1926, as hunger artist Jolly left his cell in the Berlin restaurant “Krokodil” after forty-four days’ confinement; in the mass hysteria that followed, “the tumultuous crowd tore the very clothes from his body” (Payer 2002, 35). Extremely feeble, Jolly had

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to be transported immediately to the hospital – though he was able to pocket profits of 130,000 German Marks after his convalescence. All the participants in these events were bound together in a kind of cast with set roles. There was the suffering artist, reintegrated into society in a final resurrection scene; there was the impresario, who served as a sort of guardian protector of the artist; then there were the guardsmen, who functioned as the keepers of the game rules; the doctors, who measured and certified the degree of achievement; and finally, there were the members of the greater public, able to appear in the roles of the doubter, the fan or the provocateur. The template models for these enactments, however, go well beyond the context of art.

Summary In contemporary politics and art alike, voluntary hunger can be enacted as a kind of controlled “self-abandonment” and publicized via the media. The provokingly fomentive effect accompanying the public performance of such abstention has its roots in the break with the rules that is seen through by the fasting person and in the person’s willing exposure to the inherent physical risks. In the case of Jean Lassalle, this enactment serves as a gesture of resistance within the political context. While the aim of hunger strikes is to load physical suffering with a gesture of non-compliance, the goal of popular performative fasting is to create a spectacle. While both cases involve the goal of conveying a “hunger for” something, the two still differ: the politician goes hungry in the name of a suppressed group, while the artist goes hungry in the name of inspiration. Both kinds of performances are locked into a media-governed “economics of attention” (cf. Franck 1998) in order to make this “lonely” experience publicly felt. In effect, both hunger strikes and performative fasting evoke vehement collective emotions ranging from fury and rejection on the one side to adamancy and sympathy on the other. Between those two emotional poles is commiseration, which to some extent breaks down the unshareable nature of physical experience. The boundary-crossing nature of commiseration takes the persona, the fate and the fortunes of the suffering person and binds them together with the person who merely learns about that suffering. Far from being a hindrance, the representative character of this suffering is actually a requirement in order to evoke the level of responsiveness around which the whole revolves (Thomä 2006, 198ff.). Translated by Gratia Stryker-Härtel

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Weigel, Sigrid. “Schauplätze, Figuren, Umformungen: Zur Kontinuität und Unterscheidung von Märtyrerkulturen.” In: idem (ed.). Märtyrer-Portraits: Von Opfertod, Blutzeugen und heiligen Kriegern. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007, 11–40.

Salomania – Trans and Trans-temporal: A Queer Archaeology of Destructiveness Renate Lorenz The figure of Salome and the image of her dance have had a particular appeal. They have been taken up by a long list of cultural producers such as Oscar Wilde, Alla Nazimova, Loie Fuller, Aida Walker, or – in a modified version – by the choreographer Yvonne Rainer. Even amid violent social circumstances such as colonial history, homophobia, and Taylorism, the figure of Salome appears to have made it possible to live and fantasize about sexuality and gender outside gender binarism and heteronormativity. This text traces the denormalizing use of the Salome story as a ‘desubjectivating mode of subjectivation.’ First, appropriations of Salome are approached as ‘drag,’ or more specifically as ‘trans-temporal drag,’ which engages with queer chronopolitics seeking to intervene in the self-constitution of western modernity as heterosexual, civilized, and advanced. This does not so much produce any identity or fixed meaning, but rather dissolves or ‘destroys’ the connections to fixed identity, to normalization and evidence. Second, I introduce the film installation ‘Salomania,’ my own artistic reenactment of the Salome story, by which a reflexive gaze is cast on the method of ‘queer archeology’ that would make it possible to ‘dig up’ these simultaneously destructive and altered practices today for future use.

Scene 1 (1:35 min.): A person, adult, but still young, with long black hair pulled into a ponytail, enters the room through a door. The camera follows him to where he is standing in front of a microphone, directly facing the camera. He is wearing a white t-shirt with a large face printed on it in black. He begins speaking: My name is Oscar Wilde, the whole country knows me. I choose my friends for their beauty and my enemies for their intelligence. On my grave in Paris it is written, famous for his play Salome and other literary work. I don’t hide my male lovers. When the situation in town is getting tense, I go to the colonies, spend the winter in Morocco, where I can do as I please. I am Alla Nazimova. I am shooting the film Salome. I am forty-five, and, as you notice by my accent, I am a Russian immigrant. I am the richest actress in Hollywood. I love women, I don’t hide it. I am directing this film, I produced it, and I act the main role. I am Salome, I just turned 14, I am the Jewish princess of Galilee, today North of Israel.

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Fig. 1: Still from film/installation Salomania by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz (2009); performers: Yvonne Rainer and Wu Ingrid Tsang. I will dance for my father in law, Yvonne, in exchange I can get all I want. I want blood. The speaker leaves the room through the same door. The camera follows her onto a street at sundown with houses, billboards, cars, palm trees, and the blue silhouettes of mountains in the background.1 The figure of Salome and the image of her dance had a particular appeal at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, and they circulated widely. They were taken up by a long list of well-known cultural producers such as Oscar Wilde, Alla Nazimova, Loie Fuller, or Aida Walker. In England, women met privately to dance Salome’s dance, a movement that was called ‘Salomania,’ as if it were a kind of infection. Shortly after the appearance of the Strauss opera Salome, there was even an article in the New York Times that urged President Roosevelt to prohibit the fad from spilling over into the USA (NYT, August 16, 1908). The various texts and performances are based on the Biblical story of Salome, often in the version by Oscar Wilde, in more or less detail. King Herod desires his youthful stepdaughter Salome. She in turn wants to kiss the preacher John (the Baptist), who rejects her. She opts for a trick, seemingly submitting to Herod’s wishes and performing a seductive dance for him, only then to demand, abruptly and relentlessly, John’s head. Now she can kiss the severed head. 1

Text from Salomania by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz (film/installation 2009).

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I would like to look into the figure of Salome, since I suspect that, even amid violent social circumstances such as colonial history, homophobia, and Taylorism, this figure made it possible to live and fantasize about sexuality and gender outside gender binarism and heteronormativity, and without resorting to new fixed identity formations. If, as I believe, the social meaning, benefits, and use of this figure ‘remained moving,’ if they were not fixed to historiography, how can we then research them and how can the notion of ‘moving’ be continued in writing? How can we theorize queer visual politics in a queer way, proposing or practicing the possibilities of living otherwise, organizing sexuality, hierarchies, and economies differently now and in the future? I would like to propose a perspective that would allow us to trace the denormalizing use of the Salome story and the dance of the seven veils at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. In doing so, I would first like to understand this usage as a ‘desubjectivating mode of subjectivation,’ as (trans-temporal) ‘drag,’ which does not so much produce any identity or any fixed meaning, but rather dissolves or ‘destroys’ the connections to fixed identity, to normalization and evidence. Second, I would like to cast a reflexive gaze on the queer archeology that would make it possible to ‘dig up’ these simultaneously destructive and altered practices today for future use.

The Circulation of the Salome Image Scene 5 (6:15 min.): In front of a white wall, decorated with a black-and-white Art Deco fan, we see the two performers, Wu Ingrid Tsang and Yvonne Rainer, as themselves. Yvonne has discarded her tuxedo jacket, her bow tie is dangling loosely from her white shirt collar. Wu has changed clothes and is now wearing black, loosely hanging pants with a tank top, similar in form to an evening dress. Aside from their different ages, we notice that the body presentation of the two performers is equivocal, gender and sexuality cannot be attributed to any category. The typical gender markers such as first names, clothing, etc. are indeed used, but are clearly not significant in any sense of gendering. Neither does this body presentation, however, become the topic of the film in the sense of ‘making equivocal’ (Engel 2002), and the impossibility of categorization does not necessarily even come up. Yvonne says that she saw Alla Nazimova’s Salome dance in the late sixties and that her dance was a reference to it. Wu asks her whether the erotics and the camp character of the elements in Nazimova’s dance of the seven veils do not contradict Yvonne’s manifesto-like perspective on dance as formulated in the seventies (“no to seduction, no to camp”). Yvonne begins to teach Wu parts of Valda’s solo. The scene has a documentary quality.

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The figure of Salome circulated: Alla Nazimova, an immigrant from Russia, at first played on Broadway, often in plays about the liberation of women (especially Ibsen). Later she was under contract at Metro Goldwyn Meyer and became the highest-paid actress in early Hollywood. Her numerous affairs with female Hollywood stars such as Mercedes de Acosta or Dorothy Arzner were an open secret (Lambert 1997, 11). Obviously in an attempt to counter the exoticism and conventional heterosexuality of the roles offered to her, she herself produced and directed ‘Salomé’ in 1923, a play that refers to an important collection of texts from the Near East that is at once the basis for both Christianity and Judaism, namely, the Bible. The costumes were based on the scandalous drawings that the young artist Aubrey Beardsley had designed for the first English edition of Oscar Wilde’s play ‘Salome’: the painted nipples and ornamental, flesh-colored trousers of the Syrian, the threatening and simultaneously appealing SM look of the executioner, the eerie asceticism and gauntness of John the Baptist, and a horde of the most diverse drag queens in Herod’s court (White 2000, 65). The film, which is today considered the first ‘art film’ in the USA, was at the time of its release such a huge commercial failure, and received such bad reviews, that it abruptly ended Nazimova’s foray into independent filmmaking, seriously damaging her career as an actress as well. The choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer saw Nazimova’s film, probably in the late sixties. Using elements from this performance, she fashioned a piece for the dancer Valda Settlefield. The veil, which plays such a large role in Nazimova’s dance, was replaced in Rainer’s piece by a small red ball, which stands in for the head of John the Baptist, which Salome’s dance is trying to get cut off. The seductive dance and the aggressive demand for the head, two different elements in Nazimova’s film, are here consolidated into a single scene. “Valda’s Solo” was part of Yvonne Rainer’s film Lives of Performers (1973). And it was performed again by other dancers, in 2000 for example by Mikhail Baryshnikov, who danced it in a gender-ambiguous costume that was a dress in the front and trousers from behind. Oscar Wilde’s play, ‘Salomé,’ written in French in 1891, was premiered on February 11, 1896 in Paris by and with the actress Sarah Bernhardt. Wilde made Salome into the central character of the Biblical story, providing her with her own gaze and desires. The title role was written specifically for Bernhardt – for an actress who often appeared in pants roles. Wilde himself was in prison at the time of the premiere. The father of his long-term lover Alfred Douglas had left him a card on which he referred to him as ‘Sodomite.’ When he attempted to defend himself against defamation in the courts, suing the initiator, the trial quickly reversed and became an indictment of Wilde. During the trial, not only were his writings characterized as ‘sodomitic’ and ‘perverse,’ but the prosecution went into detail about his relationships with (young) men, who often belonged to another (subordinate) class, a factor which contributed in no small

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part to his conviction (Coates 2001). Oscar Wilde was released in 1897, but his health had been so compromised by two years of hard labor that he died three years later in Paris at the age of only 47. What we have left from this period is not only the play Salome, but also a photograph, which is printed, for example, in Richard Ellmann’s biography of Wilde. It shows Oscar Wilde in drag as Salomé. This photo, however, can be found in the internet today with a second caption. According to this, the person depicted is not Oscar Wilde at all, but the singer Alice Guszalewicz at a Cologne performance of the Richard Strauss opera Salome, taken some ten years after Oscar Wilde’s death. This photo apparently landed in a French photo agency with the wrong attribution, where it fell into the hands of Oscar Wilde’s biographer (Theiss 2000). In the following decades it was to become productive despite, or precisely because of this mistake. It is printed, for instance, in Marjorie Garber’s book Vested Interests: Cross Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, as an early example of cross-dressing. Along with the new legends, the false photo gave rise to research and cultural production that traced the figure of Salome as a ‘transvestite’ one. I want to argue that the dancer is neither male nor female, but rather, transvestic, – transvestism as a space of possibility structuring and confounding culture. That is the taboo against which Occidental eyes are veiled. (Garber 1997, 342) The writer Gustave Flaubert referred to an affair with the dancer Kuchuk Hanem in his notes and diaries from a journey to Egypt in 1849 and 1850. Later, in his story “Herodias,” he wrote a description of Salome’s dance, presumably inspired by this Egyptian dancer. The fact that Flaubert transformed Kuchuk’s material flesh into an occasion to produce poetic images represents, for Edward Said, a paradigmatic example of the mechanisms of Orientalism: the masculinized, penetrating West adapts itself to the feminine, ‘peculiarly Oriental’ sensibility for its own purposes (Said 1978; Boone 1995). Joseph Boone comments on this critique fifteen years later (Boone 1995, 92), noting that Said had overlooked the fact that the exotic dance that Flaubert had seen was not that of a female dancer, but of a famous male-to-female transperson. The appeal of such an encounter is not that it constructs and solidifies the Western idea of dual genders, but precisely that it puts into crisis assumptions that are specific to Western culture about male sexual desire, masculinity, and heterosexuality (ibid., 90ff.). Aida Overton Walker was a director, choreographer, and actress, and contributed greatly to the perfecting of Williams and Walker, her husband’s vaudeville comedy duo. In 1908 she presented a version of Salome, integrating it into Bandanna Land, a play from the group’s repertory. It was untypical for a black Broadway show to incorporate modern dance into its repertory. But Walker

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successfully introduced the character of Salome, thus positioning herself within the establishment of the white dancers of modern dance – even if her central role has often gone unmentioned in historical overviews. In addition, she brought traditional black songs and dances into an entertainment format that was dominated by the pejorative minstrel shows (cf. Kusser 2009). Aida Walker and her husband were well known for their performance of the Cakewalk, a dance that had been developed by enslaved Africans, who mixed European dance styles, such as the minuet, with their own dance steps, performing them for the slave owners (and at the same time subversively mocking them). In this way, Aida Walker negotiated her belonging to the Harlem community with her belonging to the development of (white) modern dance. When George Walker fell ill in 1908, Aida Walker put on her husband’s male costume and played both her own role as well as his. But in the following years, even after those particular pieces were no longer being performed, Aida Walker liked to appear in men’s suits with a top hat, surrounded by a group of showgirls (Elam and Krasner 2000, 187). The dancer Loie Fuller emigrated from the USA to Europe. For twenty years she lived with her Jewish-French partner Gabrielle Block (who always wore men’s clothes), without any damage to her career. She was known for her sculptural costumes and her innovative light design, for which she obtained a patent. By moving huge amounts of fabric with special mechanisms and providing each movement with its own color of light, she achieved cinematic effects, producing conjunctions between the human (female) body, machine, sculpture, and animal. The Lumière brothers captured her “Danse Serpentine” in a film from 1896, emphasizing the cinematic character of her connections between movement and light. At the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris, Loie Fuller was the only participant to have her own theater. While all around, buildings and housing from the colonies were being reconstructed, and women from north Africa were being paid to exhibit their everyday life at the fair and to perform traditional dances, Loie Fuller was dancing excerpts from Salome. Her technological innovations fit perfectly into the image of the World’s Fair, which was not only trying to familiarize people with the ‘foreignness’ of the colonies, but was also seeking to justify colonial domination by representing railroads, telegraphs, and – especially importantly – electricity. If we look for an allusion in Loie Fuller’s performance to the brutality of murder, this was simply indicated by blood red light. She also briefly toured with the dancer Maud Allan, helping her to stage her own Salome dance (Garelick 2007, 93). Maud Allan’s “The Vision of Salome” was first performed in England in 1906. In the years following this, drag queens in England often named themselves either Maud Allan or Salomé. Maud Allan’s dance was considered particularly scandalous because, alongside her own (female) moving body, there was an immobile male head – the severed head of John the Baptist – on the stage as an object. As a Canadian dancer, she was seen as a foreigner in

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Germany and England, where she primarily appeared. In 1918, when it seemed that Germany was going to win the First World War, Maud Allan, who was playing the title role in Wilde’s Salomé at the time, was involved in a court case that ruined her career – much like in Wilde’s case. Noel Pemberton Billing, a conservative member of the British Parliament, claimed in his newspaper, The Vigilante, that there was a black list circulating in Germany on which the names of 47,000 high-ranking ‘perverts’ were registered. The list also included, according to Billing, several British men who shared Wilde’s sexual preferences and who therefore could easily become the victims of blackmail by German agents. The men would be convictable as sodomites if it were to be known that they had seen Maud Allan’s Salome and the ‘perverse’ dance of the seven veils. The court case of Maud Allan was the first time that, alongside all the other perversions of Salome that were thematized – incest, desire, murder, and necrophilia – Allan was also incriminated ‘as a lesbian.’ Paradoxically this is one of the few sexual practices that is not mentioned in Wilde’s play (Bentley 2005, 47ff.). What queer politics are at work, and how should these be theorized, if I want to associate my own artistic work today with these histories of the figure of Salome? To what degree can these be referred to as ‘chronopolitics,’ that is, as a politics that seeks to intervene in the self-constitution of western modernity as civilized and advanced through the mode of time and the engagement with history (Freeman, 2000 and 2005; Halberstam 2005). The work (a collaboration with Pauline Boudry, 2009) bears the title ‘Salomania,’ and is an installation consisting of a film (HD, 16 min.) and a documentation of the Salome presentations described here. The film deals with Nazimova’s silent film and its reworking by Yvonne Rainer. It shows six successive scenes that are mostly unconnected, and uses various film genres – documentary, dance film, fiction – and different styles of performance. It connects the different times of the historical film by Nazimova, whose dance is projected in a scene, with a restaging of this dance, and also with a contemporary performance. The film was shot in a dance studio in Los Angeles – the city becomes visible in two scenes, framed by an open door – as well as at the Botanical Garden Arboretum in Los Angeles, in which such films as Tarzan, parts of Jurassic Park, or B-movies that take place in the jungle of a distant and ‘exotic’ place were shot alongside a small palm encircled lake. I understand the artistic work to be part of my research, in that it allows me to trace the embodiments and visualizations of the Salome figure with the appropriate means, such as dance, costume, movement, props, or linguistic brevity. At the same time, it lays claim to being a further method in the history of denormalization, in that it allows contemporary politics and gender-queer embodiments to be seen in the light of the historical use of the figure. Both performers in ‘Salomania,’ the transactivist and artist Wu Ingrid Tsang and the feminist filmmaker and choreographer Yvonne Rainer, are also enmeshed in their own cultural productions in queer-feminist and anti-

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racist politics and brought these to the film. Their individual work, and their mutual knowledge of each other’s work, not only forms the backdrop to their conversation about Nazimova’s Salome and Yvonne Rainer’s adaptation of the dance, it also becomes visible in the way they deal with each other, in their obvious mutual admiration, and in the embodiments presented in the film.

Salome Drag Scene 3 (4 mins.): The background wall is filled with a projection of the dance of the seven veils from Alla Nazimova’s film Salomé. The scene shows Alla Nazimova in the Salome costume, a short, tight white dress, barefoot, a platinum wig with chin-length, very thick hair, strikingly dark eye makeup. She dances, at first with two short veils, guided along her arms and held in place at the belt, and which she crumples and throws away over the course of the dance. Later a large veil is spread out over her by dancers in enormous angular Art Deco costumes, which cover them completely, up to their heads. Nazimova’s dance seems improvised, with elements of expressive dance, when she – shown in close-up – stares into the camera with her eyes and mouth wildly open. In front of the historical film image, the performer, artist, and transactivist Wu Ingrid Tsang performs the same dance in sync with the film, his white dress and veil become a screen for the film and, in reverse, his body is doubled as a shadow on the film image. In Nazimova’s film the dance is constantly being interrupted by countershots showing individual members of the court or the leering Herod in extreme close-up. In the film Salomania we see these oversized heads in a wide shot. They clearly are looking down at the dance of the contemporary performer. Close-ups of the performer in front of the Nazimova performance create transitions between elements of the historical film and the reconstructed performance of Salome in the new film. In the countershot we see the second performer, Yvonne Rainer, in the position of Herod, watching Salome’s dance and at the same time the historical film, imitating – in extreme close-up – the movements of Nazimova-Herod. Yvonne Rainer is sitting next to a mirror so that a new image is created in the countershot, bringing two different times into contact: the historical film, the reconstruction of the dance, as well as Yvonne Rainer’s gaze become asynchronic-simultaneous elements. The historical film becomes a third element in the relationship between the two performers. Not only do the characters gaze out of the film, being seen by the performers. The performers also share a common interest in the film and its reworking, it obviously determines how they see each other, how each of them shows her/himself to the other.

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In view of the many different performances of Salome, it does not seem entirely adequate to explain the interest in the figure of Salome, as well as the effects of the denormalizing and desubjectivating use of the Salome story at the beginning of the twentieth century solely through the Biblical description, its reworking by Oscar Wilde, and the meanings associated with it in various texts, for instance of a woman taking on the role of a man, economic independence, and sexual autonomy.2 Although everything indicates that it was often lesbian or transsexual dancers who danced Salome’s dance, and that Oscar Wilde had Sarah Bernhardt, who often played pants roles, in mind for the main role, at the same time it is saying both too much and too little to see Salomé as an icon of lesbian sexuality or of transsexuality. This would claim that the figure of Salome was somehow more suited to this than other figures, and would underestimate the complexity of the histories of its use and the multiplicity of the various points of relation. For my purposes, the initial question is which theorizations and conceptions of the political could give importance to the historical use of the story in cultural productions and their denormalizing strategies, and, more significantly, could make them available to us today. Since the figure of Salome in the cultural productions presented here is obviously suitable to intervene or ‘invest’ in gender sexual practices, we should address, I think, these performances less as ‘acting’ or ‘dance’ than as ‘drag.’ This also allows for a view to the commonalities between the performances, even if they occurred in such different genres as dance, show, opera, film, and theater. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler proposed drag as the exemplary figure of the political, since this practice, by imitating gender identity, implicitly exposes the imitation structure of gender identity as such (Butler 1990, 175) and therefore can intervene in the social structure through a denaturalization of the dual-gender system and heteronormativity. In this early work, Butler refers to such a performance as ‘gender parody,’ whereby it is not gender that is parodied, but the term of the original as such (ibid., 175f.). Nonetheless, drag would not be a kind of acting that differs from everyday practice due to its aesthetic operations, but it would show everyday actions, costumes, embodiments, and narrations in a way so that all everyday practices of subjectivation can be understood as aesthetic operations and mimetic repetitions. Basically, as we can summarize, drag makes it clear that all practices of subjectivation are ‘drag.’ In this sense, then, Alla Nazimova’s film portrayal of Salome can also be described as drag, even if there is no gender shift at its core. As Salome 2 For an excellent text that takes up this approach and at the sime time traces the limitations of film representations of gender and sexuality along with the formation of ‘race’ and ethnicity, see Studlar 1997: “In dance, those qualities of the New Woman often at odds with cultural norms of traditional femininity became attached to sensual ritualized movement and to the spectacle of orientalized identities associated with ambiguous feminine power: Women’s newly realized social and sexual freedoms were crystallized in dance in the figure of Salome” (106). On the biographies of the various Salome performers and their liberatory aspects, cf. also Bentley 2005.

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she wears a short skirt, a striking blond wig and a veil, by which she veils and unveils herself. And she dances for her stepfather Herod (and his court), who for his part – parodying his masculinity even more clearly – leeringly drools over this performance. Such a body or performance practice is – according to Butler – made possible and intelligible through gender and sexual norms, while it simultaneously produces these norms, possibly or even certainly producing them with a difference. It may thus not only reflect the norm, but, as Butler explains in Gender Trouble, destabilizes it through incomplete or parodic performance. Drag, then, is successful and causes laughter when the normal or the original is shown to be a copy, as an ideal that no one can embody. This critique, however, has its limits, which have been described at length,3 for it is not able to entertain the possibility of a multiplication of norms or of a social and embodied life of sexuality and gender different from the norm. In her later re-readings of this famous passage from Gender Trouble, Butler shifts her focus on drag as a subversion of the performative repetition of norms, instead observing that drag makes it clear first, that ontological assumptions convey our ideas of gender to us, and second, that these are open to re-articulation (Butler 2004, 213f.). She opens the question of how drag or transgender itself enters into and changes the political field, emphasizing the possibility of reworking the norm or of even abandoning it, questioning current notions of reality and instituting new modes of reality (ibid., 217), much more so than in earlier texts. Describing Salome as drag could therefore also mean highlighting the renunciation of and the discontinuities within the performative process and their unpredictable – not only productive, but also destructive – effects on all social relations, which produce the drag performance itself, its relation to the performer, and its relation to other representations of Salome. Salome in Nazimova’s film initially appears as a character – emulating the norm of femininity and subordinating herself to masculine desire – in order to become a different character slightly later, one who takes advantage of this mechanism of femininity and instead follows one of her own desires. While she initially appears meek and obedient, she soon seems absurdly aggressive, frivolous, and ruthless. So the Salome figure does not only become part of a collective subjectivity ‘as Salome,’ it breaks down within itself. Even if it later becomes possible to position her initial appearance as a dancer as a deceptive maneuver, at the same time another perspective is suggested that claims that such different appearances place at our disposal a familiar idea of subjects as ‘unified’ and recognizable through time. In contrast, the model of performativity becomes visible as one that presumes and produces a continuity and linearity, and therefore cannot sufficiently conceive of the simultaneities and breaks such as those described (Freeman 2000, 728f.). 3 Cf. for instance Butler’s own revision in Bodies that Matter, 1993, 230ff. and in Undoing Gender, 2004, 213f.

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I have elsewhere suggested a model of subjectivation that allows us to theorize that individuals occupy different subject positions at one and the same time, or follow different and partially contradictory interpellations, describing these as ‘laborious crossings’ (Lorenz 2009). This mode of subjectivation is characterized by the fact that it links promises of liberation contradictorily with violence and threats, demanding a particular skill, namely the ability to occupy different places at the same time. It seems to me important to maintain not only that different effects of power or possibilities cross in late modern modes of subjectivation, so that, for instance, one is exposed to particular de-privilegings as a ‘lesbian woman’ or a ‘black woman,’ which cannot be conceived of as ancillary (cf. Crenshaw 1989), but that it is completely conceivable that one is interpellated or acts simultaneously ‘as man’ and ‘as woman,’ simultaneously ‘as heterosexual’ and ‘as homosexual,’ simultaneously ‘as black’ and ‘as white.’4 What I am concerned with is a model for a queer-feminist critique that would not represent gender and sexuality as identity of as a fixed quality of the individual, but that would open such a view to criticism without losing sight of privileges and hierarchies in the process. How much ‘labor’ is involved in a crossing, in the way this is facilitated, demanded, exacerbated, or even prohibited by ourselves or by others, I would argue, is different for different individuals.5 Drag as a model can make visible the mode of subjectivation involved in laborious crossings. It does not conceal the effort involved in the crossings, 4 I also see the subjectivating ‘laborious crossings’ as an intervention in the current debates about ‘intersectionality’ (cf. Dietze et al. 2007; Winkler and Degele 2009). I have discussed various examples of laborious crossings in other texts (Lorenz and Kuster 2008; Lorenz 2009). A programmer who works in Sofia, Bulgaria, says in an interview that she can only get recognition at her workplace, thus insuring that her job continues, by negotiating being addressed ‘as man’ and ‘as woman.’ For a good team work, she can only get indispensable information if she concedes to her colleages efforts to produce a heterosexual, hierarchized relation to her. On the other hand, she can only then gain acceptance ‘as a colleague’ if she is seen as equal. This contradiction is not permanently resolvable on an individual level, and the negotiations are a constant effort for her, to be achieved individually at the workplace. The programmer confirms her colleagues in her address of femininity, she speaks softly and seems helpless. Then, however, she distances herself again from this performance of subordinated femininity. She appears strong, she speaks firmly and loudly. This does, in fact, disturb the heterosexual relation, but, as one might say, it is absolutely necessary, for otherwise a hierarchy would get established between her and her male colleagues in which she could not expect any recognition of her accomplishments ‘as a programmer’ from them. 5 In order to define this effort more precisely, I introduced the term ‘sexual labor’ (together with Brigitta Kuster and Pauline Boudry). The term is meant to name relations between work and sexuality, between work and personal relationships, thereby contributing to thinking queer-theoretical concepts of a performative, repeated production of gender and sexuality together with post-Marxist or sociological concepts of work and precarity. We formulated that sexual labor is “doubly productive,” it produces an embodied, gendered, sexual subjectivity and produces products at the same time (Lorenz, Kuster and Boudry, 1999). Since this formulation, however, does not sufficiently make an ‘arbitrary act’ of the subjects and technologies of the self addressable, I have turned in my later work not only to products of sexual labor, but to the performative process of their production. Therefore, I have shifted the focus of my attention away from the production of gendered and sexual products/subjects toward the constant ‘effort’ that sexual labor entails (Lorenz 2009).

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which can be seen not only in the negotiation of contradictory demands, but also in prison, forced labor, and the end of a career (for Nazimova and Maud Allan). But at the same time it emphasizes the independence and artificiality of the various elements of drag and the relations that are thus opened up. Salome drag does different things: It turns bodies into dancers, it connects them with a certain dance style, with objects, for instance those of Art Deco,6 with elements of colonial politics, it extends the bodies through costumes (dancing barefoot, a dress with an androgynous look, a wig). Alla Nazimova, 45 years old at the time, on the one hand appears in Salome drag as the actress Nazimova, while obviously letting certain aspects of herself become part of the drag in a particular way: perhaps – to mention a few references that spring to my mind – references to a time before 1903, in which, ‘as a Jew,’ she experienced anti-Semitism in Russia, to a time after 1904, in which she emigrated, not disclosing her Jewish ancestry, but worked in the USA ‘as a foreign actress with an accent,’ perhaps references to the heteronormative and Orientalist narratives of early Hollywood film and the confrontation of this narrative with her own life, in which the relations of work and love with women took on an important role. (The dance of the seven veils makes use of the modern dance style of Isadora Duncan, who not only publicly spoke out against marriage, but was also publicly criticized for her ostensibly Bolshevik dances, and who, it is said, had her bisexual coming out on her US tour of 1922–1923, when she caused a scandal by exposing her naked breast, swinging a red scarf, and crying, “This is red! So am I!”) And at the same time, Nazimova in Salome drag is Salome, the fourteen-year-old Jewish princess whose words and actions stem from a then thirty-year-old text, written by Oscar Wilde. In the trial of Oscar Wilde these words became part of a conviction that was based on the perversion of his writings, which were understood as the sign of his sodomitical biography. At the same time, what is called forth in Nazimova’s drag is the context of a large number of Salome performances, mostly by performers who – like Nazimova – were renowned for their same-sex relationships or their gendertransgressing practices (Nazimova herself was called ‘Peter’ by her friends). All the performances have John’s death as their theme and the severed head is often a central prop; many of the performances that, for instance in Nazimova’s film, also end with the death of Salome, who obviously must accept loss of life as the price for her passion.7 Salome drag thus produces a simultaneity of various sexual and gender concepts or a ‘laborious crossing between time.’ I 6 Art Deco was the reigning design in the USA during the twenties and thirties, and it plays a large role in Alla Nazimova’s Salome. The idea of a transtemporality, of a merging of different times, is visualized in Art Deco by joining modern materials and images of technological advance with materials and images of antiquity and the ‘Oriental’ (such as ostrich feathers or palm trees). On the role of Art Deco as a sign of liberated femininity in the Hollywood film, cf. Fischer 2001. 7 This violent death can also be read as re-establishing heteronormative order, since Salome is punished for her destablization with death.

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would like to describe this simultaneity of potentially contradictory and temporally disparate elements, in analogy to Foucault’s model of a heterotopia, as ‘heterochrony’ (cf. Foucault 1986, 26). A heterochrony opens up the possibility of imagining a multiplicity of temporal concepts that are livable, and which demand a heteronormative and late capitalist organization of time. Here, I am tying into current debates about queer temporality, expanding them by linking my reflections with the desubjectivating effects of drag. Judith Jack Halberstam has explored the degree to which our notions of the normal and respectability are constructed based on a logic of reproductive temporality (Halberstam 2005, 4f.). The dangerous and turbulent phase of youth is usually followed by the desired period of being an adult, which is characterized by getting up early, caring for children, making a living, and therefore not going out too much in the evenings. In contrast, lifestyles that are instable, that are not or cannot be geared toward a long life, are pathologized. This reproductive temporality sustains the demands of capitalist production and is at the same time linked to a concept of inheritance and the national state. “The time of inheritance refers to an overview of generational time within which values, wealth, goods, and morals are passed through family ties from one generation to the next. It also connects the family to the future of both familial and national stability. In this category we can include the kinds of hypothetical temporality – the time of ‘what if’ – that demands protection in the way of insurance policies, health care, and wills” (ibid., 5). Elizabeth Freeman also points out that life concepts are accompanied by hegemonic assumptions of what makes life meaningful – birth, marriage, and death are considered central, one could perhaps add milestones in a professional career. A queer politics today, and this is Freeman’s central point, must seek to produce alternatives to a time-concept of development as chronopolitics, thereby countering both racist and (post-)colonial concepts which some groups characterize as progressive, others as regressive, as well as the temporal cycles of state and market (Freeman 2005, 57). Elizabeth Freeman provides us with the term ‘temporal drag’ in order to emphasize the chronopolitics of drag, which is able to jump time, to be anachronistic – and, as we might add in reference to Halberstam, to go against a reproduction model of time – in opposition to any exclusive understanding of drag as a subversion of gender norms (Freeman 2000, 729). Temporal Drag is a constitutive part of queer subjectivity and links queer performativity with disavowed political history. It thus produces subjectivities that cannot be explained through concepts of reproduction and family. My point, that discontinuity and simultaneity in dealing with time leads to the formation of a disunified self, rather than a subject or an identity, is perhaps better served by speaking not of ‘temporal’ but of ‘trans-temporal drag.’ Drag is thus more and different from a subcultural practice, indeed it is a (transtemporal) mode of subjectivation. These Salome subjectivities are delineated discontinuously though lies, deception, temporal jumps, artificial elements of

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embodiment, contradictory actions, and alternative economies (the trick that allows Salome to exchange a dance for a murder). While Elisabeth Freeman would like to shift the focus on the concept of drag that transgresses gender to another concept of drag that transgresses time (ibid.), I would like to highlight how interdependent these are. The transtemporal use of artificial elements is reminiscent of Beatriz Preciado’s theorization of the dildo as a practice that simultaneously constitutes the subject while it desubjectivates, one in which the body is always already prosthetic, always already a connection between bodies and objects, allowing for both temporal and sexual discontinuities: “Everything is a dildo. Even the penis” (Preciado 2000, 66), “The dildo disturbs the distinction between the sensing subject and the inanimate object” (ibid., 71), and “The dildo is the virus that corrupts the truth of sex” (ibid., 68). A blond wig, a small red ball, or a severed head with hair, a word from Oscar Wilde, an applied swollen nipple: Salome, her story, the play, cannot be understood as an unified figure, who is used by various performers, but as a set of elements that facilitate the links to the homophobic and violent conviction of Oscar Wilde and his writings as ‘sodomitical,’ as much as to the history of modern dance or the tradition of ‘female impersonators.’ Nazimova-Salome does not allow for a clear distinction between original and copy any more than it does for a relation between identity and difference, between subject and object. Dance and performance by drag queens, dancers, and actors as Salome would not take on another role or another gender according to this model. They do not represent anything. They do not “replace,” they do not “extend” the actors’ bodies, but in the process of encountering one another, they produce something new. This model of drag thus does not remain in any logic of identity, in a way that the Salome performer would become half performer and half character. Instead, we should understand Salome drag as a ‘becoming’-Salome, an action in which the Salome figure is taken into social use, in order to produce connections to a set of actions, movements, costumes, and contexts (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 256). This simultaneously facilitates a depersonalized and denaturalized view of sexuality and gender as something that – as Elspeth Probyn formulates in relation to Grosz – has nothing to do with “what a body is,” but with “what a body can do” (Probyn 1996, 41). Becoming-Salome produces a multiplicity of unique connections – every usage (Salome-Wilde, Salome-Fuller, Salome-Tsang-Rainer) is a singular one, which cannot be sufficiently described by the text of the history of its action. This also means that not every Salome drag is a “queer practice,” but must be viewed differentially, in terms of whether social norms, hierarchies, or violence are also fixed, produced, or reinforced. Loie Fuller, of whom it was said that she lived with her girlfriend, can trace a lesbian desire with the Salome dance without fixing this as identity. At the same time, the Salome image, as she uses it, is inserted into a colonial setting and reproduces it, since she is the only performer to get her own theater at the 1900 World’s Fair in

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Paris. The Salome dance here could obviously become aligned with the political directives of the colonial country of France, where the World’s Fair was used to familiarize people with the customs and aesthetics of the colonized lands, fantasized as ‘exotic.’ Furthermore, Fuller’s patented expertise in the field of electricity and light, impressively introduced into her dance, could easily be taken as visualizing the construction of the west as ‘progressive’ at the World’s Fair. What, on the one hand, is a denormalizing practice in relation to gender and sexuality, can at the same time contribute to sustaining racist assumptions and colonial claims to ownership. For Aida Walker, on the other hand, the Orientalism of the Salome story amazingly becomes the means to produce her belonging to the field of modern dance, disturbing the narration of an exclusively ‘white’ history of modern dance.

Contagion Scene 2 (1:40 mins.): The scene begins with a film clapper, which is quickly removed. Two people, one sitting, one standing, have their backs to the viewer. We can nonetheless see their faces, visible in a large mirror that fills the frame of the image. In the background, also doubled by the mirror, are an Art Deco floor lamp and a large fan in the form of a palm tree, the leaves of which have been replaced by black and white ostrich feathers. Performer Wu Ingrid Tsang is standing. He wears his hair concealed under a net, which is used as a base for wigs. The second, older person, with short, dark hair, the choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, is sitting. She is wearing a white shirt and a tuxedo jacket. She takes off her glasses, Wu begins to put makeup on Yvonne’s face with gentle movements of the finger. Yvonne completes the costume with a bow tie and a ring, then turns to face the camera: “My dear audience. I’d like you to be a bit wary of the dance you’re about to see. It may lead you into homosexuality, transsexuality, transgender, perversity, and lesbianism.” The figure of ‘contagion,’ which is present in the discussion of ‘Salomania’ as threat, indicates that the repetition and re-performance of the story will in fact be viewed as performative, in the sense of social effects. Nonetheless, the view of Salome drag as a trans-temporal mode of subjectivation differs from the model of performative repetition, which both reproduces norms at the same time that it destabilizes them by means of imperfections, mistakes, and parodic elements. If the model of ‘contagion’8 is applied, for instance, to Butler’s idea 8 On the model of contagion as an instrument to analyze aesthetic practice, cf. the volume “Ansteckung” (“Contagion”) by Fischer-Lichte, Schaub and Suthor 2005.

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of a ‘performativity of gender,’ it even turns this upside down. It shifts it away, because of its jumps in time, from the temporality of performativity, which Elizabeth Freeman criticized as “progressive” and “future-oriented”: “To reduce all embodied performances to the status of copies without originals is to ignore the interesting threat that the genuine past-ness of the past sometimes makes to the political present” (Freeman 2000, 728). And instead of reproducing the norms of gender, imitation in the context of contagion serves to multiply the ‘flight’ from the norm, which is simultaneously feared and desired. Rather than exclusively analyzing how (post-)colonial and heteronormative conventions are newly produced in the performative repetitions by means of the Salome story, they draw particular attention to the breaks with evidence and conventions, and to what lines of flight might lead away from them. Accordingly, in the film installation ‘Salomania,’ the performer Yvonne Rainer warns the audience: “My dear audience. I’d like you to be a bit wary of the dance you’re about to see. It may lead you into homosexuality, transsexuality, transgender, perversity, and lesbianism.” ‘Contagion’ is thus also of interest for these reflections because it is simultaneously extremely productive (without being intentional or having a clear origin) as well as destructive, since it breaks with conventions. (Bodily) movement, here Salome’s dance, is a medium that links one body with many others. The idea that danger lies in the imitation of a movement was introduced into aesthetics at the end of the nineteenth century. For instance, the French philosopher Paul Souriau, in his 1889 book Aesthetics of Movement, states that this danger arises through the phenomenon of mimetic – involuntary and unconscious – repetition of movement by the viewers (cf. Gordon 2009, 6). Whether the performative-destructive act of contagion succeeds, and what socially altering effects are linked to the use of the Salome story, must necessarily remain open, since its historical use is only partly reconstructable and its further use cannot be ruled out. Deleuze/Guattari link the model of contagion to the idea of a rhizomatic (or queer) relationality: We oppose epidemic to filiation, contagion to heredity, peopling by contagion to sexual reproduction, sexual production. Bands, human or animal, proliferate by contagion, epidemics, battlefields and catastrophes. Like hybrids, which are in themselves sterile, born of a sexual union that will not reproduce itself, but which begins over again ever time, gaining that much more ground. ... Propagation by epidemic, by contagion, has nothing to do with filiation by heredity, even if the two themes intermingle and require each other. The vampire does not filiate, it infects. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 265f.) The circulation of the Salome figure can thus be described as queer kinship, as common practices and mutual relationships, which abandon any reproductive temporality or any easy notion of inheritance. This relationality could ex-

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tend out to those who do not appear in Salome drag, but who enjoy taking part in this drag staging by understanding Salome as a figure of denormalization. In this context it may be more important that the author Oscar Wilde was imprisoned as a ‘sodomite’ or that Maud Allan danced her Salome dances almost naked, that she also ended up in court charged as a homosexual and that many drag queens named themselves after her, than that the stuff of Salome was given preference over other stories. The character – Salome, for example – is not therefore a ‘queer character.’ Instead, Salome drag is contagious and initiates practices that can be described as queer (or maybe not as well); in Probyn’s words: “they must be read as initiating altered and alternative relations within a matrix of class, race, and ethnicity as well as sexuality” (Probyn 1996, 59). Here it is not a question of any utopia in the sense of an observation that causes power relations and social conditions to fall prey to its romanticizing view, but about seeing where these conditions destroy their own building blocks of normality, surprisingly, randomly, or deliberately, thus allowing for something else to arise.

Un/becoming Scene 5 (1:20 mins.): The film material changes. Instead of high-resolution images in 16:9 format, we see the pixilated, colorful images of a super-8 recording in 4:3 format. Very loud music, punk, a French song from the eighties. A peacock walks across the street and looks into the camera. One of the performers, Wu Ingrid Tsang, is lying on the grass wearing a red dress, a white turban, and a large pair of sunglasses. Peacocks are walking around him, pecking and looking. Wu Ingrid Tsang is standing at a lake, the bank is edged with very high palm trees, extreme play of light and shadows. Wu Ingrid Tsang, now no longer in the red dress, but in the t-shirt from the first scene, walks across a parking lot in the city. Surrounding it are buildings, huge billboards, cars, and palm trees. Wu Ingrid Tsang says that this is the place where the actress Alla Nazimova lived, she had a large villa with a swimming pool in the shape of the Black Sea. More shots of this place, filmed with an experimental camera, a bank, McDonalds. The possible visualization of ourselves and others ‘as others’ is the moment in which Judith Butler, in her more recent texts, also turns to the term of ‘becoming’ in a way that significantly shifts her early ideas of performativity.9 The 9 On the debate about whether Butler shares the meaning of the term ‘becoming’ with Deleuze/ Guattari, cf. Hickey-Moody and Rasmussen 2009, 42ff.

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“mode of becoming,” the “becoming otherwise” is for her the possibility of leaving behind compulsions of embodiment, norms, or of instituting a different future of norms. Following Butler we could say that Salome drag “points elsewhere, and when it is embodied, it brings the elsewhere home” (Butler 2004, 29). Drag as an embodiment of others or of other places in Butler’s thought would therefore be one possibility to connect and communicate with the constitutive outside of reality, which can lead to calling a new mode of reality into life (ibid.). As such, Salome drag – a recombination and production of elements that allows for a becoming-Salome – is a prerequisite of an ‘imagining otherwise.’ Extramarital sex, lust and passion, obscene dances, same-sex kisses, or kisses between ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’ were not to be shown according to the Hays Production Code – a so-called “self-censorship” of all Hollywood filmmakers for the production of normalizing images of gender, sexual pleasure, and whiteness10 – thus disappearing from the social archive of images (as well as from social practices). An ‘imagining otherwise’ would therefore be a contravention, which alongside or despite the social order visualizes and practices a different way of living, communicating, and embodying. While Salome drag produces connections, at the same time it is active in dissolving other connections, possibly visualized through a series of very conspicuous elements: the violence, murder, the severed head, and the blood. Salome drag thus does not produce the connections, but dissolves, or as I would prefer, ‘destroys’ connections to the dual-gender system, to the gendered division of roles, to heterosexuality, to white being-American, to being-western: unbecoming. Drag is thus also a mode of (de-)subjectivation, which facilitates speaking and negotiating from a position of difference, of ‘not.’ It encourages being-other, makes space for it. For a queer project, this idea of subjectivity, one that remains in the process of differentiating, makes it possible to conceive the minoritarian in such a way that it does not proceed dichotomously: there is no over and under, majority and minority, but instead more or less distance. And this model – spatial and at the same time temporal – creates the possibility for political change, since speaking from a position of difference allows for further and other differentiations. Salome drag would then not be any kind of devalued or even desired identity, but a trans-temporal speaking and acting that maintains the largest possible distance to an identity, or a practice of difference that is not defined by its deviation from a norm.

10 Will Hays came to Hollywood around the time Nazimova’s Salome was being made and proposed the ideas that were first publicized as the Hays Production Code during the thirties. The Code became obligatory for the next decades and remained in force until 1967.

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Chronopolitics Scene 6 (1:45 mins.): Wu and Yvonne in a dance studio. The right wall is covered with mirrors and opens to the street at the back. Yvonne leans against the wall in the back corner watching Wu. Wu, in black trousers and a tank top like in the previous scene, dances part of Yvonne Rainer’s dance, ‘Valda’s Solo,’ with a small red ball. On the street, which is visible through the open sliding door, cars are driving by, pedestrians are walking by on the sidewalk, some of whom cast a quick glance into the studio. The method that I have been using to trace the trans-temporal crossings of the Salome image from today’s perspective by means of artistic work, I would like to call a ‘queer archaeology.’ The ‘excavations’ that this term refers to seek out a potential in destructive elements that have not yet been fixed to any writing of history.11 The term ‘queer archaeology’ refers to a text by Matthias Haase (2006), but it is only briefly sketched out there. In order to take this method further, I would like to start from a remark by Gilles Deleuze (Deleuze 1990). He states that it gradually became clearer to him how important it is to differentiate between ‘becoming’ on the one hand, and history on the other. Becoming is not part of the historical situation, not part of the object of history, but what the historical situation releases, what produces something new, what has become revolutionary, so to speak. What history grasps in an event is the way it’s actualized in particular circumstances; the event’s becoming is beyond the scope of history. History isn’t experimental, it’s just the set of more or less negative preconditions that make it possible to experiment with something beyond history. Without history the experimentation would remain indeterminate, lacking any initial conditions, but experimentation isn’t historical. (Ibid.) Deleuze criticizes the disparaging way in which the ‘revolution,’ for instance that of ’68, is discussed. “They’re constantly confusing two different things, the way revolutions turn out historically and people’s revolutionary becoming. These relate to two different sets of people” (ibid.).12 11 Refering to Deleuze/Guattari, Verena Andermatt Conley writes: “One has to go back through a deeper and broader history of homosexuality to give it back all the otherness it contains and of which it had been stripped. This cannot be found in an unconscious elaborated by a repressive, official psychoanalysis but only through the progression of a sexual becoming that is always to come” (Andermatt Conley 2009, 28). 12 Walter Benjamin cites Fustel de Coulanges, who, addressing the historian who wishes to relive an era, advises him to blot out everything he knows about the later course of history (Benjamin 2003, 391).

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Following from this, a queer archaeology could consist of detecting the destructive or denormalizing strategies of becoming in the past and re-inscribing these historical strategies into the field of politics and sexual pleasure. And this is precisely where the methodological difficulty lies for research, for as Matthias Haase argues, queer forms of expression turn up in aesthetic discourse as “a disappearance.” “They become legible precisely to the degree that they no longer appear as an articulation of sexual deviance” (Haase 2006, 174). Instead they are transformed, for instance, into a history of modern dance or the history of Orientalism in film. Deleuze refers to the philosophical work of Charles Péguy to explain how it might still be possible to be concerned with ‘becoming.’ In a major philosophical work, Clio, Péguy explained that there are two ways of considering events, one being to follow the course of the event, gathering how it comes about historically, how it’s prepared and then decomposes in history, while the other way is to go back into the event, to take one’s place in it as in a becoming, to grow both young and old in it at once, going through all its components or singularities. (Deleuze 1990) The artistic method in the film Salomania could be viewed as one by which it is possible “to go back to the event, to take one’s place in it as in a becoming.” Transtemporal drag would be the method that facilitates an encounter between contemporary bodies and the historical body with all its connections, and which can cope with the ‘otherness’ of the historical images, making them available for future becomings. Translated by Daniel Hendrickson

References Andermatt Conley, Verena. “Thirty-six Thousand Forms of Love: The Queering of Deleuze and Guattari.” In: Chrysanthi Nigianni, Merl Storr, and Ian Buchanan (eds.). Deleuze and Queer Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009, 24–36. Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.” In: Selected Writings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003, vol. 4: 1938–1940, 389–400. Bentley, Toni. Sisters of Salome. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Boone, Joseph. “Vacation Cruises; or, the Homoerotics of Orientalism.“ PMLA 110 (January 1995), 89–107. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble, Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge, 1990.

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Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York and London: Routledge, 1993. Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. Coates, Tim (ed.). The Trials of Oscar Wilde 1895: Transcript Excerpts from the Trials at the Old Bailey, London, During April and May 1895. London: Fourth Estate, 2001. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine.” The University of Chicago Legal Forum 139 (1989), 139–167. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London and New York: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Deleuze, Gilles. Control and Becoming: Gilles Deleuze in Conversation with Antonio Negri (1990); online: http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpdeleuze 3.htm (November 15, 2009). Dietze, Gabriele, Antje Hornscheidt, Daniela Hrzán, Kerstin Palm, and Katharina Walgenbach. Gender als interdependente Kategorie. Opladen, Farmington Hills: Budrich, 2007. Elam, Harry Justin and David Krasner (eds.). African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Engel, Antke. Wider die Eindeutigkeit, Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2002. Fischer, Lucy. “Greta Garbo and Silent Cinema: The Actress as Art Deco Icon.” Camera Obscura 48.16/3 (2001), 82–111. Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Mirjam Schaub, and Nicola Suthor (eds.). Ansteckung. Zur Körperlichkeit eines ästhetischen Prinzips. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2005. Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias.” Diacritics 16.1 (Spring 1986), 22–27. Freeman, Elizabeth. “Packing History, Count(er)ing Generations.” New Literary History: A Journal of Theory & Interpretation 31 (2000), 727–744. Freeman, Elizabeth. “Time Binds, or, Erotohistoriography.” Social Text 8485.23/3-4 (Fall/Winter 2005), 57–68. Garber, Majorie. Vested Interests: Crossdressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York and London: Routledge, 1991. Garelick, Rhonda K. Electric Salome: Loie Fuller’s Performance of Modernism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Gordon, Rae Beth. Dances with Darwin, 1875-1910. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Haase. Matthias. “Histories that are Written in the Night.” In: Diedrich Diederichsen, Christine Frisinghelli, Christoph Gurk, idem, Juliane Rebentisch, Martin Saar, and Ruth Sonderegger (eds.). Golden Years, Materialien und Positionen zu Queerer Subkultur und Avantgarde zwischen 1959 und 1974. Graz: Camera Austria, 2006, 173–183.

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Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time & Place, Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York and London: New York University Press, 2005. Hickey-Moody, Anna and Mary Lou Rasmussen. “The Sexed Subject in-between Deleuze and Butler.” In: Chrysanthi Nigianni, Merl Storr, and Ian Buchanan (eds.). Deleuze and Queer Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009, 37–53. Kusser, Astrid. “Cakewalking. Fluchtlinien des Schwarzen Atlantik um 1900.” In: Ilka Becker, Michael Cuntz, and Astrid Kusser (eds.). Unmenge. Wie verteilt sich Handlungsmacht? München: Wilhelm Fink, 2008, 251–281. Lambert, Gavin. Nazimova, A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1997. Lorenz, Renate. Aufwändige Durchquerungen. Subjektivität als sexuelle Arbeit. Bielefeld: transcript, 2009. Lorenz, Renate, Brigitta Kuster, and Pauline Boudry. Reproduktionskonten fälschen! Heterosexualität, Arbeit und Zuhause. Berlin: b_books, 1999. Preciado, Beatriz. Manifeste contra-sexuel. Paris: Balland, 2000. Probyn, Elspeth. Outside Belongings. New York and London: Routledge, 1996. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Studlar, Gaylyn. “Out-Salomeing Salome: Dance, the New Woman, and Fan Magazine Orientalism.” Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar (eds.). In Visions of the East, Orientalism in Film. London and New York: Tauris Publishers, 1997, 99–129. Theis, Wolfgang. Oscar Wilde im Film (2000); online: http://www.besucheoscar-wilde.de/filme/film_forum.htm (March 27, 2010). White, Patricia. “Nazimova’s Veils, Salome at the Intersection of Film Histories.” In: Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra (eds.). A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000, 60–87. Winkler, Gabriele and Nina Degele. Intersektionalität. Zur Analyse sozialer Ungleichheiten. Bielefeld: transcript, 2009.

Masochistic Self-shattering between Destructiveness and Productivity Volker Woltersdorff Masochistic self-shattering challenges an economy of the self that aims at efficiency and productivity. In line with Sigmund Freund, some theoretical approaches assume a ‘death drive’ to explain the pleasure in self-destruction. Moreover, they highlight the difference between a destructive and a productive way of self-shattering. But how can a clear-cut line be drawn between the two? Very often, self-harming behaviour is described as destructive, whereas BDSM practice is portrayed as a positive transcendance of masochism’s destructive impulses. This article discusses two fictional works, Elfriede Jelinek’s novel The Piano Teacher (1983) and Steven Shainberg’s film Secretary (2001). Both works address the issue of self-destruction and present shared sadomasochistic practice as an attempt to find a way out of a destructive dynamic of aggression directed towards the body and the self. However, whereas The Piano Teacher qualifies masochism as a failed attempt to recuperate female agency in a patriarchal world, Secretary portrays masochistic self-shattering within an erotic relationship as a possibility of successfully overcoming self-destruction and integrating into society, yet with a queer twist. The author discusses whether the dialectic of recognition can recuperate its critical negativity whilst foregoing the risk of self-destruction. He concludes by suggesting a diverse economy of an assemblance of shattered selves, which undoes the hegemonic pattern of the homo oeconomicus.

“The Destructive Instinct” and Masochistic Excess No-one is expected to seek self-destruction. Because of this common assumption, Sigmund Freud held self-preservation to be a basic instinct. Yet the devastation wrought by World War I and its traumatic impacts later led Freud to change his mind. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and later in Civilization and its Discontents (1930), he assumed the existence of a “death drive” that paradoxically tends to self-annihilation through self-conservation. Apart from other phenomena like “the ubiquity of non-erotic aggressivity and destructiveness” (Freud 1995, vol. 21, 120), Freud regarded sadism and masochism as paradigmatic manifestations of “the destructive instinct” (Freud 1995, vol. 21, 119). In particular, Freud depicts masochism as a destructive dynamic that tends towards self-destruction (ibid., 170). However, the death drive is not entirely manifested in masochism, for the death drive is then already subject to eros. As Karmen MacKendrick observes: Here the death drive (in its pure unextrojected form, as the organism’s drive toward its own destruction) has become fused or infused with the erotic – necessary for any expression of the death impulses, since by itself this drive is, as Freud points out (and we have already seen) silent. (MacKendrick 1999, 54; italics in original)

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Yet, by enjoying self-destruction, masochism produces a pleasure that exceeds the death drive. As Freud remarks, “But since, on the other hand, it [masochism] has the significance of an erotic component, even the subject’s destruction of himself [sic] cannot take place without libidinal satisfaction” (Freud 1995, vol. 19, 170).1 Therefore, masochism troubles the very distinction of the two drives; it melts eros into thanatos. In the following, I would like to challenge the idea of masochism as mere self-destruction and instead develop the idea of masochism as a ‘queering’ of both the death drive and the pleasure principle. I will argue that masochism resides at the very point of ambivalence between productivity and destructivity. As far as this ambivalence relates to selfhood, the queering of productivity and destructivity is, in my view, best described by Leo Bersani’s notion of “self-shattering” which he adopts from the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche.2 “Following Jean Laplanche, who speaks of the sexual as an effect of ébranlement, I call jouissance ‘self-shattering’ in that it disrupts the ego’s coherence and dissolves its boundaries” (Bersani 1995, 101). The queer potential of this masochistic self-shattering becomes clear when Bersani defines it as “an aptitude for the defeat of power by pleasure, the human subject’s potential for a jouissance in which the subject is momentarily undone” (ibid., 100).3 Indeed, many masochistic fantasies consist in becoming someone else or unbecoming someone (cf. Silverman’s discussion of Theodor Reik’s Moloch fantasy in Silverman 1992, 208f.). Since Freud identifies the death drive with entropy, within his theory, the economy of the death drive is to release tension.4 Release from tension is also the way psychologist Roy Baumeister interprets masochistic (or self-divestiture) practice, which he calls an “escape from self” (Baumeister 1988). He affirms that self-shattering helps the subject flee the disciplinary constraints that are placed upon the modern individual, as they have been characterised by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in The Dialectics of Enlightenment and historicised by Norbert Elias in The Civilizing Process. Baumeister echoes these insights when he points to the pleasure of fleeing the self and the pain that is constantly done to human individuals in order for the autonomous subject to exist. “It seems quite plausible that the new emphasis on individuality increased the burden of selfhood, and that not 1 “Aber da er andererseits die Bedeutung einer erotischen Komponente hat, kann auch die Selbstzerstörung der Person nicht ohne libidinöse Befriedigung erfolgen” (Freud 1999, vol. XIII, 383). 2 It is “ébranlement” in the French original of Laplanche’s text. 3 This is why John Noyes contests the connection between masochism and the death drive and prefers to speak of “nomadic disappearance”: “This is the disappearance of the self that the masochist strives for, and that has so often been misunderstood in terms of the death drive. In its postmodernist mode, masochism is not about death; it is about nomadic disappearances” (Noyes 1997, 219). 4 The law of increasing entropy is a concept of energy in the natural sciences that assumes the tendency of all systems to eventually reach their lowest level of energy. Organic systems therefore tend toward inertia.

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everybody would be fully comfortable with the new demands for autonomy, uniqueness and self-promotion,” he notes. “As a result people may have been drawn to a form of sexual play based on powerful (if temporary) way to escape the self” (Baumeister 1988, 51).

The Queer Economy of the Masochistic Self Within Western culture there are many canonical forms of self-degradation such as martyrdom, self-sacrifice, heroism and self-abandonment. An act of heroism in war that leads to disability and disfigurement is generally seen as a socially acceptable outcome of risk-taking behaviour. Meanwhile, permanent damage in the name of sexual gratification conventionally triggers moral outrage. Where does this provocative potential come from? Does it lie in the deliberate pursuit of self-degradation? Society may not be willing to accept self-shattering when it results in mere self-destruction. Society, it seems, is only comfortable when self-shattering is accompanied by salvation, self-empowerment or an increase in relationality. This subordination of self-shattering to a more general cause is what Freud diagnosed as “moral masochism”: a self-denial that is wilfully embraced because of some higher good and that somehow transcends or even obfuscates the libidinal potential that is at its root. As Freud writes, “[T]hrough moral masochism morality becomes sexualized once more” (Freud 1995, vol. 19, 164).5 Bersani has called this compulsion to sublimation “the culture of redemption” (Bersani 1990) which he views critically. When individuals put themselves at risk or even undo their selves in the pursuit of mere pleasure however, their behaviour is heavily contested by social norms. My argument is that masochistic practices of voluntary self-shattering scandalise because they upset the rationality of an economy of self-care whose primary goal is to minimise pain and maximise pleasure. Thus, masochistic practices challenge our understanding of the self and, in particular, of the (libidinal) economy of the self. As MacKendrick puts it: “In the face of pain and restraint the body as desire, in desire, still desiring defies subjection to the economic order … which our culture sees as both natural and morally correct” (MacKendrick 1999, 115). In his short essay “The Economic Problem of Masochism” from 1924, Freud already points to the economic problem that arises when he considers masochism: “The existence of a masochistic trend in the instinctual life of human beings may justly be described as mysterious from the economic point of view” (Freud 1995, vol. 19, 155; italics in original).6 Here it is clear that, 5

“[D]urch den moralischen Masochismus wird die Moral wieder sexualisiert[.]” (Freud 1999, vol. XIII, 382) 6 “Man hat ein Recht dazu, die Existenz der masochistischen Strebungen im menschlichen Triebleben als ökonomisch rätselhaft zu beschreiben” (Freud, vol. XIII, 371).

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to Freud, masochism disputes the logics of the homo oeconomicus that he believes is an anthropological given. Which concepts of economy are tacitly assumed when we consider masochism as a challenge to economy? I would like to argue that masochism can only be considered as problematic to economy when one assumes a capitalistic economy of efficiency and productivity. “The economic” is then understood as tightly connected to productivity and usefulness, and as something that relies on disciplined subjects who use time, space and body accordingly. In her study of male masochism, Kaja Silverman remarks: “His [the masochist’s] sexuality, moreover, must be seen to be entirely under the sway of the death drive, devoid of any possible productivity or use value” (Silverman 1992, 210). In contrast, “nonproductivity” seems to challenge our commitment to an economy of production and therefore cannot be thought of as other than – at least potentially – destructive, hence deriving from the death drive. When uselessness and nonproductivity are as much associated with the death drive as with a Lacanian understanding of jouissance, which considers sexual pleasure as potentially shattering and destructive, it is not far-fetched to identify queer jouissance with the death drive, as Lee Edelman does in his book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Edelman 2004). Within a biopolitical framework of productivity as heteronormative reproduction, “nonproductivity,” he argues, is associated with queer sexualities. He calls this regime “reproductive futurism” (or elsewhere “the Futurch”), and interprets nonproductivity as “queer momentum.” Edelman’s argument has become as prominent inasmuch as it has inaugurated the so-called “anti-social” strand in queer theoretical thinking. In a roundtable discussion in 2006, the author characterised his book’s basic assumptions and highlighted the ambivalence of queer nonproductivity, stating: No Future … approaches negativity as society’s constitutive antagonism, which sustains itself only on the promise of resolution in futurity’s time to come, much as capitalism is able to sustain itself only by finding and exploiting new markets. As the figure of nonproductivity, then, and of the system’s ironic incoherence, the queer both threatens and consolidates the universal empire of the Futurch. But what threatens it most is queer negativity’s refusal of positive identity through a drivelike resistance to the violence, the originary violation, effected, as Adorno writes, by ‘the all-subjugating identity principle’ (320). (Edelman 2006, 822) However, I am not convinced that, as Edelman affirms, the death drive should be regarded as queer momentum and a negation of capitalism. Rather, I would contest the conflation of queerness and the death drive on the one hand, and of capitalism and productivity on the other. Instead, I argue with Joseph Schumpeter that capitalism relies as much on a drive for production as on a drive for

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destruction (Schumpeter 1942). And this applies not only to workforce but also to commodity, due to the fact that capitalism paradoxically requires growth and scarcity. Both Karl Marx and later the Frankfurt school stressed capitalism’s negativity. In order to conquer new markets, they argued, capital must destroy the old ones; by maximising productivity, capital tends to destroy workforce. Thus, the compulsion toward productivity remains haunted by destructiveness, although this destructiveness necessarily needs to be negated (or repressed) by capitalistic economy. This drive becomes particularly evident in the destruction of workforce, workplaces, the environment, commodities and, last but not least, in times of crises of capital itself. Masochistic self-shattering may therefore point at the negated, yet constitutive, “Other” of capitalist economy.7 It was as early as 1942 when Schumpeter highlighted that, contrary to the common belief in the rationality and dispassion of entrepreneurship, the non-rational and passion-driven character of the entrepreneur was essential to the functioning of capitalist economy. Within neoliberal capitalism, these affects are no longer denied or repressed but rather instrumentalised for capital’s interests. As a result, sexuality, even “queer” sexuality, can be co-opted in order to better use and exploit subjects, bodies and affects (Engel 2007). This relationship nevertheless remains ambivalent; queer sexuality can both consolidate and threaten capitalistic economies of the self. With regard to this ambivalence, it has been critically argued that masochistic self-shattering only serves the goal of eventually restoring the masochist’s self and therefore that it remains fully within the economic framework of self-enhancement. Masochistic self-shattering would then only be a queer tactic to co-opt modern individualism. It would do so either by ending an impossible identity; preserving an identity through reducing internal pressure; creating an alternative, hybrid or new identity; or by protecting the omnipotent authority of a great Other from destruction. In conversation, Bersani raised the same question: “Is [masochistic self-shattering] merely a recuperative move that ends up denying failure, or is it consistent with maintaining it?” (Bersani et al. 2010, 172) However, I want to instead suggest that masochistic self-shattering – or self-divestiture, as Bersani calls it elsewhere – has the potential to develop an economy of the self that does not at the same time require and deny its inherent destructiveness. This economy is one that fractures (but does not destroy) the idea of the single, isolated self and forces the self to recognise its intrinsic relationship to multiple other selves. But what is the difference between practices of undoing or unbecoming oneself and self-destruction? Bersani suggests a distinction between “dissemination” and “annihilation” of the self: “Perhaps self-divestiture itself has to be rethought in terms of a certain form of self7 Such an understanding is due to Jacques Lacan’s reading of the death drive as inherent to the symbolic order rather than as a force of nature.

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expansiveness, of something like ego-dissemination rather than ego-annihilation” (Bersani and Phillips 2008, 56). How does such an ego-dissemination work? Obviously, there is a paradox between the masochist’s egoism of pursuing his or her own pleasure, albeit under conditions of dislike, and, alternately, the masochist’s undoing of the ego in acts of self-divestiture. Bersani suggests that one might resolve this paradox by assuming an “impersonal narcissism” (Bersani and Phillips 2008, 56; italics in original). This narcissism, in other words, is a care of the self regardless of what is understood as the subject’s persona or – to put it differently – a care of the self and of its Others. This economy of the self disrupts the logics of the egotistical homo oeconomicus without simply negating it through the figure of altruistic charity. And in so doing, it opens up the perspective of a “diverse” economy where nonproductivity and self-shattering can be enjoyed.8

Whose Self is Shattered? How does this potential manifest itself when masochistic self-shattering is considered as a practice embedded in social contexts rather than as an issue of a single, isolated self? Only then can self-shattering entail a queering of the selves involved. In her book Between the Body and the Flesh, Lynda Hart criticizes Bersani for the way he centres an isolated gay male perspective in his notion of “self-shattering.” She incisively asks, “But whose ‘self’ is shattered? Who is experiencing the metaphysical crisis?” (Hart 1998, 99) Indeed, one must be aware of the social and political conditions of power that frame masochistic self-shattering. For instance, it makes a considerable difference whether the self that one shatters is a powerful social identity – e.g. Baumeister refers to the case study of a masochistic senator (Baumeister 1989, 41) – or whether this self-shattering departs from a more precarious subject position. Can a precarious self be shattered by masochistic practice or is it rather always already shattered? Can it turn out to shatter the selves of others? Heteronormative views of masochism give a very simple answer to these questions by constructing a gendered binarism between selves who are stable, male and shattered by masochistic practice and selves who are unstable, female and cannot be essentially shattered any more than they already are. Early theories on masochism (since Richard von Krafft-Ebing, who coined the term) suggested that masochism is somehow “natural” to women and therefore less transgressive when practised by them.9 For instance, in his influential 1949 study Masochism in Modern Man, Reik states: 8

Here, I take up Gibson-Graham’s notion of “diverse economies” which they develop in A Postcapitalist Politics (Gibson-Graham 2006), although I remain skeptical about the idealism of their project to “deconstruct capitalism.” 9 In psychoanalytic theory, male masochism is almost automatically brought together with the ques-

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The woman’s masochistic phantasy very seldom reaches the pitch of savage lust, of ecstasy, as does that of the man. … One does not feel anything of the cyclonelike character that is so often associated with masculine masochism, that blind unrestricted lust of self-destruction. (Reik 1949, 190) As Silverman has commented, Reik appears to reserve the practice of selfshattering to men: Reik suggests here that even the clinically masochistic woman does not really exceed her subjective limits; she merely stretches them a bit. The male masochist, on the other hand, leaves his social identity completely behind – actually abandons his ‘self’ – and passes over into the ‘enemy terrain’ of femininity. (Silverman 1992, 190)10 Instead of focussing on single, binary-gendered selves, in the following I would like to consider masochistic self-shattering as a shared practice of various selves and scrutinise how far all the selves involved undergo the same experience of self-shattering. By shifting the focus from the singular self to assemblages of selves, I am attempting to pose the question of destructiveness differently. There is a self-shattering that eventually stabilises one’s own or the Other’s self while there is yet another form of self-shattering that leaves all selves shattered and restabilised at the same time. I would like to call the latter constellation ‘queer.’ This means that a queer masochism puts the question of the destructiveness and productivity of self-shattering in a much more radical way. At the same time, it poses the question of the economy of the masochistic self differently, as it asks who profits from the present libidinal economy. Jessica Benjamin points to this relational dimension of masochism as she relates the dynamics of masochistic self-shattering to the dialectics of recognition. She views masochism as an abandoning of the self that aims, in turn, at strengthening the self of the Other in a relationship of mutual recognition: Submission becomes the ‘pure’ form of recognition, even as violation becomes the ‘pure’ form of assertion. The assertion of one individual (the master) is transformed into domination; the other’s (the slave’s) recognition becomes submission. Thus the basic tension of forces within the individual becomes a dynamic between individuals” (Benjamin 1988, 62; italics in original). tion of self-castration. This idea suggests that self-shattering must be conceived of as an essential loss. Such thinking relies on a phallocentric perspective that implies an economic model of scarcity. Critics have objected that within an economy of abundance, subjectivity is constructed otherwise. 10 This problematic gendering of self-shattering is echoed in Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concept of “devenir-femme”/ “becoming-woman” (1985) as a way to become minoritarian.

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This formulation only leaves the submissive’s self shattered; self-shattering is the price to be paid in order to achieve recognition. However, the relationship Benjamin has in mind is a specifically heteronormatively-gendered constellation. Recognition can only be bestowed from a symbolically male and patriarchal position. Whereas “male” masochism here seems narcissistically selfcentred, “female” masochism privileges recognition over autonomy. But does this, then, mean that a patriarchal self can never be fully shattered and can only reproduce by destroying other, already-shattered selves? I would like to discuss these questions with reference to two art works that invite comparison: Elfriede Jelinek’s novel The Piano Teacher and Steven Shainberg’s film Secretary.11 Both works address the issue of female selfdestruction and raise the issue of self-injury as a libidinally-laden means towards self-destruction. In both these works, as it often is, self-injury is associated with masochism. However, it is important to note that masochism as a shared erotic practice differs significantly from self-injury.12 Both examples present a sadomasochistic relationship as an attempt to find a way out of the destructive dynamic of aggressions directed toward the body and the self. They test if consensual sadomasochism can be an alternative way to live out one’s masochistic desires, which in the end can turn out to be productive and thus overcome the desire for self-destruction. Yet, the two works ultimately differ in their positioning of masochism. Whereas The Piano Teacher qualifies masochism as a failed attempt to recuperate female agency in a patriarchal world, Secretary portrays playful erotic submission as a way to successfully overcome self-destruction and become more integrated in society. This discrepancy may be rooted in a different judgement of BDSM practice. I do not believe that self-injury is identical to masochism, nor do I want to equate BDSM practice and self-injury. However, I would like to scrutinise the links that are drawn between both phenomena in these two works. And this is precisely because BDSM practice and self-injury are frequently portrayed as the destructive and the productive side of the masochistic medal. For example, Bersani, reflecting masochism’s ambivalence between destructivity and productivity, distinguishes between suicidal and non-suicidal self-dissolution (Bersani et al. 2010). Similarly, self-descriptions of masochists often thematise the reversion from productivity to destructivity and vice versa. Practitioners frequently refer to the ambivalence of certain bodily practices and stress the 11 Both The Piano Teacher and Secretary were made into much publicised films in 2001. Director Michael Haneke’s Austro-French version of The Piano Teacher, however, is much closer to the original novel than Shainberg’s filmic adaptation of Secretary. For my argument, I rely on Shainberg’s film because in Gaitskill’s short story, the phenomenon of self-injury does not occur. Moreover, although the protagonist feels excited by her boss’s treatment of her, their relationship is neither playful nor consensual. 12 This is why many practitioners use the acronym BDSM so as to distance themselves from phenomena that are often lumped together under the notion of “sadomasochism.”

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importance of contexts (cf. Barker et al. 2008). According to them, the distinction between productive and destructive self-shattering lies basically in the practices’ relationality and control. It might be interesting to note here that critics and partisans of the BDSM community are united in their rejection of the self-destructive outcomes of masochistic behaviour. They only clearly differ with regard to where and how they perceive destructiveness. The two fictional examples in question could be associated with either one of these standpoints. Whereas Jelinek’s novel echoes a 1980s feminist discourse of masochism as failed aggression against patriarchy turned against the female self, Secretary owes its view of masochism to a pro-SM discourse that sees masochism as a way to playfully deactivate a socially-induced complex of inferiority. Secretary is therefore ultimately invested in an economy of efficiency and productivity, although it acknowledges the irrational parts of this economy. In contrast, The Piano Teacher does not subscribe to such an economic framing and is committed to the “anti-social” economy of the death drive.

The Piano Teacher’s Masochism as Reproduction of Society’s Destructivity Elfriede Jelinek’s novel The Piano Teacher, first published in German in 1983, tells the story of an Austrian woman, Erika Kohut, who is bound by a love-hate relationship to her dominant mother who has drilled her, from very young age, into becoming a classical pianist. Her discipline notwithstanding, Erika lacks genuine talent and eventually must content her mother with a second-choice career as a piano teacher. In her few private moments, Erika eroticises the selfinjurious cutting she has taken up, which she performs on various parts of her body using her dead father’s razor blades: “When SHE’s home alone, she cuts herself, slicing off her nose to spite other people’s faces. She always waits and waits for the moment when she can cut herself unobserved” (Jelinek 1988, 86).13 Echoing Baumeister’s formula of the “escape from self,” the narrator describes Erika’s masochistic pleasure in pain as a result of unbearable conditions that make self-erasure a desirable goal: “Pain itself is merely a consequence of the desire for pleasure, the desire to destroy, to annihilate; in its supreme form, pain is a variety of pleasure. Erika would gladly cross the border to her own murder” (Jelinek 1988, 107).14

13

“Wenn kein Mensch zu Hause ist, schneidet sie sich absichtlich ins eigene Fleisch. Sie wartet schon immer lange auf den Augenblick, da sie sich unbeobachtete zerschneiden kann” (Jelinek 1983, 109f.). 14 “Der Schmerz ist selbst nur die Folge des Willens zur Lust, zum Zerstören, zum Zugrunderichten, und, in seiner höchsten Form, eine Art von Lust. Erika würde die Grenze zu ihrer eigenen Ermordung gerne überschreiten” (Jelinek 1983, 135).

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Hence, the symbiotic relationship between daughter and mother generates masochistic self-shattering as the constitutive other of a heteronomous economy of efficiency, competition and productivity.15 This applies indiscriminately to music education, housekeeping and budgeting. Erika’s masochistic self-harming figures as a way of regaining agency in the wake of her sadistic mother’s virtual totality of control. Erika transgresses her mother’s imperative to scrimp and save when she spends money on dresses and porn – but she does not enjoy her consumptions. Likewise, she transgresses her mother’s prohibition to arouse herself by cutting herself in her private parts, even though she does so without pleasure. (The narrator repeatedly notes that, when cutting, “she does not feel anything.”) In the end, Erika’s masochistic revolt remains entirely determined by her mother’s value system and allows her no real escape. Instead, Erika achieves only temporary relief that cynically results in tightening the bonds of love and hatred between mother and daughter even more: Does the former beast and present-day circus animal love its tamer? Perhaps, but this is not obligatory. Each urgently needs the other. With the help of tricks and feats, each can hog the limelight amid the oompahoompah of the band and puff himself up like a bullfrog. Each requires the other as a fixed point in the blinding chaos. (Jelinek 1988, 108)16 At the same time, it also increases the pair’s submission to the patriarchal order, which neither mother nor daughter can elude. Things slightly change, however, when one of Erika’s most gifted and handsome pupils, Walter Klemmer, falls in love with his cool and reserved mistress and sets out to seduce her. Erika tries to reproduce the hierarchical relationship she has with her mother in her relationship with Klemmer, paradoxically repeating and reversing the roles at the same time. She tries to avoid losing power over her pupil with an attempt to keep total control over the setting of her masochistic fantasies of submission and self-destruction. “Erika 15 Erika’s mother translates the “trade in women” directly as a trade of money: “Mother can imagine that someone might want money even if he cleverly disguises his intention by pretending to want the daughter. He can have anything he likes, but not money. Such is the decision of the family’s minister of finances, who is going to change the computer code for the bankbook tomorrow” (Jelinek 1988, 211). “Die Mutter kann sich nur vorstellen, daß jemand Geld möchte, selbst wenn er es klug damit tarnt, daß er die Tochter will. Alles kann er haben, aber Geld nicht, beschließt diese Finanzministerin der Familie, die gleich morgen das Losungswort für das Sparbuch verändern wird” (Jelinek 1983, 264). Erika symbiotically replicates this view: “Money’s an object for my mother, but it’s nothing for me” (Jelinek 1988, 229). “Für meine Mutter spiele ich die Rolle des Geldes, mit dem sie knausert” (Jelinek 1983, 287). 16 “Liebt das ehemalige Tier der Wildnis und jetzige Tier der Manege seinen Dompteur? Es kann möglich sein, doch es ist nicht obligat. Der eine bedarf des anderen dringend. Der eine braucht den anderen, um sich mithilfe von dessen Kunststücken im Scheinwerferlicht und zum Schinderassa der Musik aufzublasen wie ein Ochsenfrosch, das andere braucht den einen, um einen Fixpunkt im allgemeinen Chaos, das einen blendet, zu besitzen” (Jelinek 1983, 137).

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would like to show weakness, but determine the form of her submission herself. She has written everything down. She wants to be simply sucked up by the man until she is no longer present” (Jelinek 1988, 206).17 Erika’s masochism thus seems to follow the Benjaminian model of selfabandonment that seeks recognition by the patriarchal Other (Benjamin 1988, 62). The inherent paradox then lies in an unresolved contradiction between a wish for self-dissolution and a wish for control. “The more power he attains over her, the more he will become Erika’s pliant creature. … He has to be convinced: This woman has put herself entirely in my hands. And yet he will become Erika’s property. That’s the way she pictures it” (Jelinek 1988, 207).18 As her pupil and lover recognises the empowerment that her conditions of self-divestiture include, he declines to enter her desired relationship because he does not want to dispense with his superior patriarchal position: “Did he get it right: By becoming her master, he can never become her master?” (Jelinek 1988, 216)19 These fantasies unsettle a destructive dynamic, as they tend to get literalised. Erika teases her lover in his desire for conquest and domination. However, bound up in his patriarchal masculinity, he feels incapable of fulfilling Erika’s masochistic wishes. This becomes clear in scenes such as when Klemmer’s attempt at power play falls short of Erika’s expectations: “While hitting her lightly, Klemmer tells the woman that this is exactly what she wanted. Erika tearfully protests that this isn’t what she wanted, she wanted something different” (Jelinek 1988, 270).20 Klemmer puts forth a false exchange economy that does not live up to Erika’s wishes while it keeps him profiting and leaves his self intact and unshattered.21 As the narrator notes, “He does not leave without remuneration. He has received his due. And the woman certainly got what was coming to her” (Jelinek 1988, 274).22 Here, once again, Erika is made the object of an economic system that she cannot participate in as a subject. In contrast to Schumpeter’s formula of “creative destruction,” Erika’s libidinal economy could therefore be identified as one of “destructive creativity.” 17

“Erika möchte Schwäche zeigen, doch die Form ihrer Unterlegenheit selbst bestimmen. Sie hat alles aufgeschrieben. Sie will sich von dem Mann förmlich aufsaugen lassen, bis sie nicht mehr vorhanden ist” (Jelinek 1983, 257). 18 “Je mehr Gewalt er über sie erhalten wird, umso mehr wird er aber zu ihrem, Erikas willigem Geschöpf. […] Er muß überzeugt sein: diese Frau hat sich mir ganz in die Hand gegeben, und dabei geht er in Erikas Besitz über. So stellt sie sich das vor” (Jelinek 1983, 259). 19 “Hat er recht verstanden, daß er dadurch, daß er ihr Herr wird, ihrer niemals Herr werden kann?” (Jelinek 1983, 270). 20 “Klemmer erläutert der Frau unter Leichtschlägen, daß sie es so und nicht anders gewollt habe. Erika bringt weinend dagegen vor, daß sie es so nicht gewollt habe, sondern anders” (Jelinek 1983, 339). 21 “He weighs possible carrying costs and interest payments, but only briefly” (Jelinek 1988, 274). “Nur kurz erwägt er etwaige Folgekosten, Zinssätze” (Jelinek 1983, 344). 22 “Er geht nicht ohne Lohn. Seinen Lohn hat er eingetrieben. Und auch die Frau hat die gebührende Belohnung erhalten” (Jelinek 1983, 344).

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She figures as some kind of allegory of the death drive, which, in Freudian terms, manifests in the compulsion to repeat. She is captured in repetition (indeed repetitions are her daily professional duty) and in the rigidity of her ego boundaries, which finally unleash self-destruction.23 “The core of this love is annihilation,” the narrator tells us (Jelinek 1988, 272).24 However, Erika destroys her body and her wishes rather than her self. In the last passage of the novel, she once more turns all her aggression towards her lover-cum-rapist against herself when she cuts herself deeply, albeit not fatally. This ending could provide evidence for Bersani’s affirmation that “S/M profoundly – and in spite of itself – argues for the continuity between political structures of oppression and the body’s erotic economy” (Bersani 1995, 90). Indeed, in The Piano Teacher, relationships of domination repeat over and over again. Another economy is not on the horizon.

Secretary’s Masochism as a Healing of Destructiveness The plot of Secretary (USA 2001), directed by Steven Shainberg and based on a novel by Mary Gaitskill (1989), starts off very similarly but ends in a much different scenario. The protagonist, Lee Holloway, lives in a claustrophobic and rigidly hierarchical family environment where she is confronted with the pressure of patriarchal gender norms. In this context, Lee has been practising self-harm and self-mutilation, which the film portrays as destructive. However through embarking on a BDSM relationship in her workplace, Lee eventually transforms her self-hatred into masochistic pleasure. At the beginning of the film, the protagonist is exiting from a therapeutic institution where she has spent some time and seems to have learned that selfharm is not a valid strategy to solve problems or to compensate for her feelings of inferiority and failure. She therefore looks for a more “productive” way to handle her desire for pain and self-shattering. While The Piano Teacher’s dominant narrative tone is cynical, Secretary’s is ironic and playful. Unlike Jelinek’s novel, Lee’s boss and later lover, Edward Grey, recognises and understands her masochistic inclination: Edward: “Why do you cut yourself, Lee?” Lee: “I don’t know.” Edward: “Is it that sometimes the pain inside has to come to the surface and when you see evidence of the pain inside you are finding now you are really here? Then, when you watch the wound heal, it’s comforting, isn’t it?” Lee: “That’s a way to put it.” 23 In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud indeed qualified self-destruction as ultimate consequence of the ego function. 24 “Diese Liebe ist im Kern Vernichtung” (Jelinek 1983, 342).

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Edward is not only able to make sense of Lee’s masochism – he also desires it. In a sadomasochistic reenactment of Lee’s therapeutic self-help counselling, he bossily orders her to stop cutting herself and thus stops the destructive dynamics of her masochism; he makes her eroticise his control over her instead of her control over pain, thus transforming the tension within her into a dynamic between them, to use Benjamin’s terms. As their relationship develops, he progresses to inflicting pain on her. Step by step, Lee begins to prefer getting hurt by Edward to hurting herself. At the same time, Edward incites her to detach from her over-protective mother. In short, he seems to incorporate exactly the fantasy of the dominant man the piano teacher Erika longed for. Once more, as in The Piano Teacher, one might think that it is the masochistic dynamics that make the protagonist switch from one hierarchical power relation to the next, thus reproducing the same self-destructive pattern over and over again. However, this time, the self-shattering results in a gradual selfproduction, as Lee begins to self-identify with the persona her boss prescribes for her. She destroys the sewing kit that she had used to cut herself. Moreover, she starts to “misbehave” on purpose in Edward’s presence and thus teases his desire for dominance and punishment. This strategic misbehaviour marks a point of transition where she passes from submitting to her role to taking hold of her role and, at the same time, emancipating herself from it. She affirms that she does not want to be treated as a “regular secretary.” Edward, in turn, notices that he loses control and become unsettled as a result. While Lee experiences a coming out as a submissive masochist, Edward is frightened by his desire, which puts his self-control into danger. “We cannot do this 24 hours, 7 days a week,” he states, alarmed. However, he, too, is caught in an endless repetition. What he repeats over and over is the negation of the Other. Like he did with his former secretaries, he fires Lee when things become too emotionally dangerous and threaten to shatter his own self. Here, self-shattering and self-constitution appear as two communicating vessels that relate to each other dialectically. However, very much like in Hegel’s dialectics of the lord and the bondsman (Hegel 1977, 111–118), the film offers a happy ending that transcends power struggles and results in mutual recognition: Lee: “But I want to know you.” Paradoxically, it is by becoming totally immobilised that Lee finally stops repetition. Towards the end of the film, Edward orders her not to move until he comes back, to which she passionately complies over the course of several days. Strikingly, the narrative ends rather conventionally and heteronormatively with the two having vanilla sex and marrying.25 As a voice-over narrator, 25

This is probably the reason why Gaitskill has publicly qualified the filmic adaptation as “the Pretty Woman version” of her short story; quoted online in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_ Gaitskill#cite_ref-0 (June 17, 2010).

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Lee comments: “All our activities melted into an everyday sort of life until we looked like any other couple you’d see.” The conventional images of the pair’s life together are only disturbed by the view of Lee’s scars, which she nonetheless declares to be beautiful. It might be problematic that suffering is presented as a general condition. In a love letter to Edward, Lee affirms: “In one way or another, I’ve always suffered.” Here, it seems as if masochistic self-divestiture enables a person to face suffering without fear and to play with it. Sadomasochism ends up as just a slightly different lubricant to comply with heteronormativity – as something that could spice up the boredom of heterosexual marital life. Although Lee and Edward get absorbed by normalcy, masochistic self-shattering as such cannot be assimilated to everyday life. Routine and self-shattering are mutually exclusive. Accordingly, Baumeister predicts for any attempt of stabilising a masochistic identity: “If masochism centers around escape from one’s normal identity, then attempts to establish a full-time identity as a masochist may ultimately be self-defeating” (Baumeister 1988, 55). In contrast, The Piano Teacher upholds masochism’s shattering potential and portrays Erika’s masochism as a radical negation of the self and society. This negation eventually results, however, in her submitting to the existing order as well, although the wounds that it causes are laid open. In the end, Erika’s wound is bleeding while Lee’s wounds are scarred. In both cases, pain paradoxically expresses negation and submission at the same time. Yet, Lee creates one further expression of her masochist desire. In a letter that she writes on her boss’s stationary, she encloses an earthworm and sends it to him. Edward is both excited and disoriented by this gesture. Their sadomasochistic affair is intensified and becomes self-shattering for both of them. In the film’s last scene, Lee repeats her unsettling gesture when she slides a cockroach into the sheets of her marital bed. I would like to read these two signifiers as the currency of another libidinal economy of the self. The worm and the insect represent no value in and of themselves – but they do enable a circulation of desire. In The Piano Teacher, in contrast, Erika herself is petrified into a signifying critter, as she is reduced to a dead – or at least zombielike – status, where she is the object of heteronomous patriarchal economy. The first reading of Secretary affirms Benjamin’s model of masochism as a false solution of the paradox of autonomy and recognition and finally resolves it in a presumably equitable marital life. However, the second reading, where Lee’s insertion of insects into her relationship means that both she and Edward’s selves end up shattered, introduces a particular pleasure that is lost when the Hegelian dialectic is transcended into mutual recognition – and thus preserves the trace of the death drive without, in turn, becoming self-destructive. For my argument, this second reading is more important. MacKendrick suggests a similar alternative formulation of masochism that critically differs from Benjamin: “Masochism is not, as Benjamin argues, an inability to deal

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with paradox; it is an overwhelming pleasure in the paradox of a desire that wills beyond itself” (MacKendrick 1999, 117f.). If The Piano Teacher associates masochism with negativity, Lee’s and Edward’s self-shattering could, in contrast, be regarded as a queering of masochism, transporting it into an open, yet precarious future – full of fluid gender roles and shattered assemblages.26

Beyond Recognition – Undoing the homo oeconomicus Is there any chance that masochism’s critical investment into the hegemonic economy of the self results in a true transformation or is it, from the start, bound up too much to what it passionately desires to transform? Is masochistic negation always concomitant with masochistic submission? Silverman’s answer to these questions interprets masochism as an attempt to renegotiate the psychic structures that bind subjectivity to the symbolic order: “We can not [sic], then, start from zero with subjectivity; we can only hope to negotiate a different psychic relation to the Laws of Language and Kinship Structure than that dictated by the dominant fiction. Male masochism represents one way of doing so” (Silverman 1992, 213). Benjamin feels a lot uneasier with masochism; she looks at its being embodied by women and provides another answer. According to her, masochism must be overcome if we want to dissociate negation from submission. Judith Butler, however, argues that some masochistic desire to submit is inherent in any attempt to critique and cannot be easily overcome. In The Psychic Life of Power, she elaborates on the paradoxical concomitance of negation and submission in more philosophical terms that allow for a generalisation of the impact of self-shattering. The possibility of a critical view of the law is thus limited by what might be understood as a prior desire for the law, a passionate complicity with the law, without which no subject can exist. For the ‘I’ to launch its critique, it must first understand that the ‘I’ itself is dependent upon its complicitous desire for the law to make possible its own existence. (Butler 1997, 108) Butler’s ethical project is to develop a notion of the subject that does not necessarily rely on mastery and self-mastery. “Let’s face it,” she argues elsewhere. “We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact” (Butler 2004, 19).

26

I am grateful to Renate Lorenz for this hint.

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I want to argue that queer practices of masochistic self-shattering can inform this project particularly well, as they invest precisely in an undoing of self-mastery. But they can furthermore help to shift the focus from the subject to relationality. Benjamin and Butler address relationality with regard to recognition. Whereas Benjamin claims to overcome destruction by negation, Butler objects that the risk of destruction can never be fully undone. “Recognition is, however, also the name given to the process that constantly risks destruction and which, I would submit, could not be recognition without a defining or constitutive risk of destruction” (Butler 2004, 133). The mutual undoing of one another in the process of recognition therefore oscillates between productivity and destructiveness and clearly differs from mere self-destruction. As Butler writes, recognition is: “a struggle that repeats itself, a laboring with destructiveness that must continually be restaged, a relationship where forms of breakdown are expected and inevitable” (Butler 2004, 147). The kind of relationship that Butler might aim at is, in my view, best described as a queer assemblage of shattered selves. Bersani interprets sexuality as precisely such a masochistic work of shattered selves where breakdowns of the self are experienced and treasured collectively (cf. e.g. Bersani 1986, 38ff.). Both in Butler and in Bersani, it is precisely through the collectively-shared dimension of sexuality that subjects experience and survive their being undone. Bersani detects a masochistic pleasure at the heart of the instability of the subject: “[I]t means that a masochistic self-shattering was constitutive in our orgasms but rather in the terrifying but also exhilarating instability of human subjectivity” (Bersani et al. 2010, 174). Yet, as I would like to critically interject, Butler and Bersani still remain focussed on the individual self as their point of departure for the deconstruction of this very individual self; in so doing, they do not adequately consider relationality and shared practice. If the risk of destruction can never be fully excluded, can negativity similarly never be entirely dissociated from the death drive without losing itself? This would mean that Erika and Lee are two sides of the same coin and represent two different possibilities of how this dialectic can end. The risk of destruction in the struggle for recognition is all the more imminent when the subject who seeks recognition queers the norms that allow for recognition. Lee can only survive under the disguise of the norm, whereas Erika executes normative judgement on herself. Secretary barely conserves any sense of negation; instead, the film’s narrative reconciles masochism with the economy of productivity and efficiency. In contrast, The Piano Teacher refuses this reconciliation, and upholds the negation of this very economy. Hence, while The Piano Teacher closely ties negation to destruction, Secretary’s protagonist clearly survives destruction, though only through (apparent) affirmation. Negation is delegated to the insect in the sheets. What role can negation play within an economic model of ongoing productivity? Can one conceive of negation as nonproductivity, which halts or

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suspends productivity without becoming destructive in turn? McKendrick suggests one further solution by highlighting the importance of the body. She tries to solve the tension between productivity and destructiveness by assigning each to different domains: While masochistic self-shattering destroys the self, it produces a body that exceeds that very self (MacKendrick 1999, 105–109). Moreover, it produces a queer relationality that exceeds the self. Masochism, in BDSM, would then remain highly productive as it merely destroys – or at least shatters – the realm of the symbolic, thereby provoking new articulations of the symbolic.27 Eventually, a new assemblage of selves can emerge from that symbolic destruction, as it does in my second reading of Secretary where the insect of the final moment is part of this assemblage. Let me summarise by saying that masochistic self-shattering temporarily dissolves an economy of productivity and efficiency and reduces it to a “ground zero” of the economic. At the same time, it shows that “another” economy is always inherent in the economy of productivity. This performative undoing of productivity, which Freud still held to be an “economic problem,” can count as a critique and alternative to the homo oeconomicus and the by now entirely economised “entrepreneurial self.”28 The two examples have shown that this economy of the self both relies on and reproduces a heteronormative gender economy that can nonetheless be shattered when masochistic self-shattering is performed by a queer assemblage.

References Barker, Meg, Camelia Gupta, and Alessandra Iantaffi. “The Power of Play: The Potentials and Pitfalls in Healing Narratives of BDSM.” In: Darren Langdridge and Meg Barker (eds.). Safe, Sane and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasochism. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 197–216. Baumeister, Roy F. “Masochism as Escape from Self.” In: Journal of Sex Research 25.1 (1988), 28–59. — Masochism and the Self. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1989. Benjamin, Jessica. The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. Bersani, Leo. The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. — The Culture of Redemption. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1990. 27 This may be one reason why many practitioners and theorists speak of masochistic self-shattering as “a rebirth” (Deleuze 1999, 61ff.). 28 For an analysis and critique of the so-called “entrepreneurial self” see Bührmann 2006.

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— Homos. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1995. — and Adam Phillips. Intimacies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. — Tim Dean, Hal Foster, and Kaja Silverman. “A Conversation with Leo Bersani.” In: Leo Bersani (ed.). Is the Rectum a Grave? And Other Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010, 171–86. Bührmann, Andrea D. “The Emerging of the Enterprising Self and Its Contemporary Hegemonic Status: Some Fundamental Observations for an Analysis of the (Trans-)Formational Process of Modern Forms of Subjectivation.” In: Forum: Qualitative Social Research 6.1 (2005), Art. 16. Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. — Undoing Gender. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. Deleuze, Gilles. “Coldness and Cruelty.” In: Masochism: “Coldness and Cruelty” (Gilles Deleuze) and “Venus in Furs” (Leopold von Sacher-Masoch). Trans. by Jean McNeil and Aude Willm. New York: Zone Books, 1999, 7–140. — and Félix Guattari. “Becoming-Woman.” In: Subjects/Objects 3 (Spring 1985), 24–32. Edelman, Lee. No Future. Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004 (published in the Series Q, ed. by Michele Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick). — “Antagonism, Negativity and the Subject of Queer Theory.” In: PMLA 121.3 (2006), 821–23. Engel, Antke. “No Sex, No Crime, No Shame. Privatized Care and the Seduction into Responsibility.” In: Nora. Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies 15.3 (2007), 114–32. Freud, Sigmund. Gesammelte Werke. Werke aus den Jahren 1904–1905. 18 vols. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1999, vol. V. Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 24 vols. Ed. by James Strachey, Anna Freud, Alix Strachey, Alan Tyson, and Angela Richards. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1995. Gaitskill, Mary. “Secretary.” In: idem. Bad Behavior. London: Sceptre, 1989, 145–62. Gibson-Graham, J.K. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Hart, Lynda. Between the Body and the Flesh: Performing Sadomasochism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998 (published in the series Between Men – Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies, ed. by Terry Castle and Larry Gross). Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. by A.V. Miller and Forword by J.N. Findlay. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.

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Jelinek, Elfriede. Die Klavierspielerin. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1983 (published in the series Das Neue Buch, 112). — The Piano Teacher. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988. MacKendrick, Karmen. Counterpleasures. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999 (published in the SUNY Series in Postmodern Culture). Noyes, John K. The Mastery of Submission: Inventions of Masochism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997 (published in the series Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry). Reik, Theodor. Masochism in Modern Man. New York: Farrar, Straus & Co., 1949. Schumpeter, Joseph Alois. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1942. Silverman, Kaja. Male Subjectivity at the Margins. New York and London: Routledge, 1992.

Triggering Latency Zones in Modern Society: Richard Serra’s Sculptures within the Urban Setting Kristiane Hasselmann Richard Serra’s “claim to an absoluteness of direct and immediate aesthetic presence and to absolute experience of this presence” (Buchloh 1989, 115) gives way to the creation of strong formal objects that overwhelm observers and guide them toward a new experience of spatiality. In the past, the aesthetic radicalism and solidness of Serra’s work – which primarily takes on its powerfully effective generative creativity from these characteristics – has also aroused resentment in broad segments of the population, even erupting into violence against sculpture and artist. Strikingly, however, the arguments brought forward against Serra’s sculptures very rarely address the artwork itself. Rather, controversies surrounding his sculptures reveal latent sensitivities, hostilities and conflicts of interest. This paper explores how Serra’s massive but anti-monumental sculptures unearth the social and temperamental latency zones of modern society through an examination of three case scenarios: Terminal in Bochum, Germany (1979), Tilted Arc in New York City, USA (1981), and Intersection in Basel, Switzerland (1992).

Towards the end of the twentieth century, a number of permanent installations of Serra’s urban sculptures were met with hostile reactions and enveloped in public controversy. Serra’s massive sculptures both stimulate and challenge routine perceptions. In his site-specific works, Serra intervenes in conventional topologies and sociopolitical realities by de-coordinating accustomed visual axes and scopes. Yet his artistic point of departure is not the destruction or elimination of an object or a given structure, in keeping with the fantasies of violence of the European avant-garde (Ehrlicher 2001), but instead the insertion of a resistive object, which vigorously superimposes or slices into familiar and hegemonic spaces and structures. In experimenting with new formal relations, Serra aims neither for a decorative affirmation of the given, already existing spatial regime nor for the implementation of a completely new order. On the contrary, he has always been interested in singularizing and critically analyzing existing orders. In troubling the accustomed lines of vision and fields of movement, Serra aims to initiate reflection and inspire new aesthetic experiences within the forceful compositional lines of his massive sculptures. His intention is to disturb and restructure the routines of spatial behavior in order to extend and alter people’s experience and provoke thought. Marking the coming end of the industrial age, Serra projects and arranges industrially manufactured steel slabs using heavy machinery and mechanical steel presses. His farewell to an era nearing its final days assumes the form of an homage; he explores steel’s “tectonic potential, its weight, its compression, its mass, its stasis” in a unique way – at least unique within the art world (McShine 2007, 28). In following up on previous works involving rubber and

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lead, in putting together a list of various kinds of actions and carrying them out on the material to see how matter reacts and finds its own forms, Serra has taken on the new challenge of projecting and arranging massive steel sculptures. Over the years, he has developed und cultivated his own sculptural vocabulary and formal order, modulating basic geometric forms and shapes into demanding and versatile site-specific objects. He thus meets the soaring loss of importance of advanced art by confiding in the aesthetic and provocative potential of pure material and form.

Terminal, Bochum/Germany (1979) After its initial temporary exhibition in the context of the Documenta in Kassel, Terminal (1977) became the first permanent installation of an ambient sculpture by Serra within the urban setting. Serra’s sculpture was brought to its allocated place on a busy traffic island close to the forecourt of Bochum railway station in 1979. This notable work consists of four trapezoidal steel slabs leaning together. Measuring 41 feet high, 12 feet wide and 2.5 inches thick each, the balance of the slabs is maintained by granting them an equal amount of gravitational weight as they lean against each other. In contrast to Serra’s well-known House of Cards (1969/1992), the elongated, equilibrated slabs of Terminal are not arranged symmetrically. Brinks of contact vary, and hence, different visual angles produce differing perspectives on the object, conveying divergent impressions and effectuating various different experiences for observers as they stroll around the object (fig. 1-3). The formal simplicity of combined forms producing a multiplicity of visual appearances and aesthetic experiences is one of the major themes of Serra’s sculptural work, asserts Karin van den Berg in her informed analysis of Terminal at Bochum (van den Berg 1995, 40). Despite the simplicity of its basic forms, it is definitively impossible to quickly glean an overall picture of the work. Due to this multi-perspectivity and the enormous height of the work, an immediate experience of the object as a whole is rendered inaccessible. The sculpture conveys a notion of disjunction and of a “destroyed whole” as it exceeds our visual field (ibid., 30). Its overall construction only becomes conceptual for the onlooker by conjoining these different perspectives. The “incoherency of eidetic experience” may thus convey the impression that “the work is targeted at the destruction of the notion of identity and causality” as such (ibid., 40). As observers walk around the sculpture, they gain an impression of forces operating between the steel slabs that seem to have tumbled toward one another and have now finally come to rest in such a way that they counterbalance one another. Particularly from some angles, the center of gravity looks slightly shifted to one side, causing visual irritation and conferring an air of instability.

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Fig. 1–3: Richard Serra Terminal (1979), Bochum – from three different perspectives.

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The seemingly labile upright balance of the steel slabs purports a notion of untouchability, suggesting that any kind of interference might disturb the delicate equilibrium and that any violation of this imaginary interdiction would avenge itself in a most threatening manner. At the same time, we are well aware that we are liable to optical illusions and begin to question our own perception. What most impresses observers about the sculpture, which does not refer to anything beyond itself, is its massive material presence and the strong bodily and sensory experience it produces. Virtually no previous knowledge is necessary in order to undergo this aesthetic experience. The chance is there for everyone crossing or circling the traffic island to unintentionally discover the multiplicity of perspectives and spatial references that open up. Despite its democratic character, the artwork is primarily perceived as an impertinence and a public nuisance. The industrially manufactured material stands in very close relation to the working routines of many people in the Ruhr area. But the sculpture fulfills neither a decorative nor a representative function. People thus begun questioning the expenditure of 300,000 German Marks for this bald sculpture, with an untreated rusty surface that marks its own aging process, a sculpture that does not embellish the public space in any conventional way. It finally became a bone of contention during the North RhineWestphalian electorate campaign between the leading political parties, on the one hand the Social Democratic Party of Germany, who initiated the purchase, and on the other, the Christian Democratic Union, who held the other party liable for unjustifiably and recklessly wasting money that they claimed would have better been spent on social or educational deeds. Serra’s sculpture does not try to blanket or outshine its pedestrian surroundings; rather, it reflects and accentuates local and structural conditions as they are. He [Serra] does not set his work in opposition to the sphere of the surrounding urban space, but instead turns the experience of the urban space itself into a matter of examination. […] While that does not describe the essence of the work, it is still a substantial reason for its intense opposition. It seems that hardly a soul remains unaffected by the potential explosiveness harbored in the conjunction of artwork and placement. Is this ripping open a wound? Is the Terminal actually bringing to public consciousness a breakdown in the way our urban intercommunication is created and shaped? Why does it allow for no ignorance, why can nothing be overlooked? Since the very beginning, the discussions surrounding it have clearly proven that the presence of this sculpture is presenting society with a question. Moreover, it appears that with Terminal, we have reached a boundary as to what is possible within our society. (van den Berg 1995, 14)

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Fig. 4: Richard Serra Terminal (1979) with circling traffic. The passerby who perceives the monument as an isolated work of created art, distinguishing between it and other objects, processing and experiencing it directly as a discrete occurrence or an object with specific aesthetic qualities, is observing and acting in a plane of relatively sparse information. Such observers perceive the sculpture as a looming, massive entity in relation to their own physicality. Terminal, however, requires an active relationship; most of Serra’s works have to be discovered by foot and viewed from different angles. With its enormous elevation, it prevails over those taking it in and challenges accustomed proportions colligated in comparison to body height. The rotation suggested in the sculpture takes up its movement from the circling traffic (fig. 4). Serra directs the attention the object draws to itself back to the surroundings from which the work derives its formal shapes and structures. Serra’s work, in conceiving of itself as a site-specific work in relation to its direct surroundings and highlighting the features characteristic to that particular space, challenges observers to note these correlations with inclusion of themselves as persons. This involves shaking up the putatively firm and established worldview, which is taken as an affront to traditionally un-circumventable structures deemed worthy of protection, structures that society intuitively defends without being able to recognize or verbalize them as latency zones. Instead, the raw materiality and monumentality of the rusting steel become the

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argumentative hook in this defensive behavior, and they are mentioned again and again in reference to their enormous costs in an attempt to throw the entire essence of the art object itself into question. Its apparent non-compliance with the principles of beautification and symbolization is met with an utter lack of understanding and awakens aggression in view of the high amount of money spent on it. These aggressions are then discharged in the rant and rail against the object, which was “hammered, plastered and graffitied” before being “reproduced on propaganda posters” to be “used as a political football in the election campaign.”1

Tilted Arc, New York City/USA (1981) Serra’s sculpture Tilted Arc was commissioned in 1981 by the United States General Services Administration for the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building, Federal Plaza 26, Manhattan, New York, and demolished in 1989 due to its allegedly “destructive character,” eight years after its installation. It remains the most prominent example of demolition as it was subjected like no other piece of art to allegedly democratic claims that finally paved the way for its destruction in an act of “vandalism from above,” in the words of Benjamin Buchloh in his comment on the affair (Buchloh 1989). The demolition campaign against the sculpture, accompanied by political agitation, features a complex model of destructive dynamics. My aim is by no means to reproduce and make judgments about the complete order of events surrounding the debate and all its related nuances, but instead to detect the points in the controversy surrounding Tilted Arc at which social and temperamental latency zones of modern western society come into play. In 1979, Serra was nominated by a committee of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) as the artist designated to create a sculpture to be installed on Federal Plaza. He was granted the approval to realize his artistic designs shortly thereafter from the General Service Administration (GSE), the government agency officially in charge of awarding the commission. Tilted Arc was planned as a sculpture, to be manufactured from waterproof COR-TEN-steel. The enormous steel curve measured 12 feet high, 120 feet long and 2.5 inches thick and stretched across Federal Plaza, carving it in half. Weighing in at 73 tons, the sculpture – as its title already suggested – tilted slightly towards the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, while its solid foundation in the ground remained invisible. Hence, the arc not only cut through lines of sight and accustomed planes of vision but also engendered a magnetically forceful compositional exertion due to its extraordinary physicality (fig. 6). The public square, located in the heart of Manhattan, is surrounded by federal government offices and courts and thus marked by strong sociopolitical codi1

Richard Serra in conversation with Kynaston McShine (McShine 2007, 35f.).

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Fig. 5: Richard Serra Tilted Arc (1981–1989), Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building, Federal Plaza 26, Manhattan, New York fications and routines. What Serra staged was an inescapable interruption in this public space, one that challenged conventional modes of vision and movement. “After the piece is created,” Serra clarified unambiguously in advance, “the space will be understood primarily as a function of the sculpture.”2 He announced that the space would not be complemented with a sculpture but that he would be producing an environment that won its tensions from an impaired relationship between work and space, a disturbance of the general balance. 2

Richard Serra in an interview with Douglas Crimp, July 1980 (Crimp 1994, 127).

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Fig. 6: Richard Serra Tilted Arc (1981–1989), Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building, Federal Plaza 26, Manhattan, New York The sculpture was commissioned as a permanent installation through a democratic process in the framework of the governmental Art-in-Architecture program “to become an integral part of the total architectural design” of the space.3 Both the architects of the plaza and the building at Federal Plaza 26 as well as the New York representatives of the GSA were involved in the decision in favor of the artwork and its basic aesthetic concept. A detailed study was 3 General Services Administration Factsheet Concerning the Art-in-Architecture Program for Federal Buildings, quoted from Weyergraf-Serra and Buskirk 1991, 23.

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undertaken in advance in order to determine the sculpture’s effects on pedestrian traffic, its issues in terms of rainwater drainage and the possible resultant security risks and needs in terms of additional lighting for the plaza. Serra conceded to the wish of the GSA for a slight shift in the positioning of the sculpture on the plaza. The sculpture was already met with public opposition during its installation phase, and the General Services Administration, according to a statement it issued, received approximately 450 pieces of mail and a petition signed by 1,300 people calling for the removal of Tilted Arc. Edward D. Re, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of International Trade, registered his protest as an especially emphatic and forceful opponent in August of 1981. Referring to an article from the New York Times he describes the sculpture as an “awkward, bullying piece that may conceivably be the ugliest outdoor work of art in the city,” one that “dislocates the decorative function of the plaza,” also adding, “The 120-foot wall effectively destroys not only the beauty and spaciousness, but also the utility of the plaza […].”4 In his letter of complaint, Re urgently requested information as to what formal steps would be needed in order to hinder permanent installation of the sculpture. Initially, a mollifying answer from the GSA had a pacifying effect, and no further complaints were received by the agency after the work’s completion5 – until, at the end of 1984, Judge Edward D. Re commenced with a survey among the employees of the surrounding agencies, once again initiating a campaign against the artwork with a subsequent letter to the GSA. In addition to his deep “aesthetic distaste” for the sculpture, he now argued that it attracted pollution and had even caused a serious infestation of parasites. A plague of rats, he declared, had spread through the whole surrounding area due to the dirtied nature of the plaza and had necessitated the regular use of pest exterminators in the adjacent offices and courts. And the blind corners of the plaza, he stated, had become a real security problem.6 The protests of Judge Re fell on fertile soil, sent as they were after the change of government; after taking up his position as new regional administrator of the GSA appointed by the Reagan administration, William Desmond, in utter disregard of the fact that the original commission had come from his very own agency, began calling vehemently for relocation of the artwork. Desmond proclaimed his wish to make a final decision regarding the retention or relocation of the artwork dependent on a public hearing. Serra himself had already strictly objected to the relocation of his work in advance, mentioning its sitespecific nature and stating that “to remove the work means to destroy the work.” 4 Letter from Edward D. Re to Gerald P. Carmen, Administrator at the General Services Administration in Washington D.C. (August 18, 1981), quoted from ibid., 26. 5 Cf. Serra’s introduction to the collection of documents in ibid., 5. 6 Cf. letter from Edward D. Re to Ray Kline, Acting Administrator GSA, Washington D.C., in ibid., 27f.

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In all, 180 people spoke at the public hearing staged by the GSA; 58 persons opted for relocation or removal of the work while 122 spoke in favor of retaining Tilted Arc in its original position at Federal Plaza. Proponents of the sculpture accentuated its significance in terms of art history and complained that the sculpture had not yet been given enough time to allow its appeal to blossom and be fully understood. Jacob Javits, US senator and namesake of the federal building, defended “free artistic expression as a vital element of [American] culture,” something that bares the “deepest values of our society.” Even if taken from the perspective of its denunciators, it comprised “the kind of integrity which makes art in our society the symbol of what freedom means in the world.” Javits argued, “It is only three-and-a-half years since this sculpture was installed, and it has hardly had an opportunity to make its point” (Weyergraf-Serra and Buskirk 1991, 97f.). William Rubin, Director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, insisted that “such a grave decision […] should not even be contemplated until the work and its public can pass through a period of time required for the artistic language of the work to become familiar” (ibid., 102). And Donald Thalacker, Director of the Art-in-Architecture Program, claimed, “Four years is definitely not sufficient time to evaluate either the long-term public reaction to or the artistic significance of Tilted Arc” (ibid., 154). The arguments used by proponents of its removal, in contrast, hardly engaged with the artwork. Instead, they just criticized it as an inconvenience, painted outlandish comparisons and expressed paranoid fears of dirtiness, the plague of rats caused by the artwork, the vandalism caused by urinating and defecating vagabonds, the drug trade flourishing in the shadows of the sculpture and, last but not least, terrorists – who might, after all, use the object as a protecting wall and as an aid in hurling projectiles. “What I see here is something that looks like a tank trap to prevent an armed attack from Chinatown in case of a Soviet invasion,” declaimed Phil La Basi in the public hearing. “[I]n my mind it wouldn’t even do that well, because one good Russian tank could probably take it out” (Neill and Ridley 2002, 433). And Vickie O’Dougherty, physical security specialist for the Federal Protection and Safety Division of GSA, topped it all off by pointing out that Tilted Arc could easily be used for terrorist attacks in producing a “blast wall effect […] used by bomb experts to vent explosions.” O’Dougherty rates the sculpture as a severe security hazard: Now in past experience, we have had several explosions on federal property by terrorists, activists. […] Many times, they used this type of device – a wall or something similar to vent the explosion against the building. Most of the time, the wall was closer to the building. It would, of course, take a larger bomb than which has been previously used to destroy enough for their purposes; but it is possible, and lately we are expecting the worst

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in the federal sector … [audience laughter]. […] We are considering right now many, many antiterrorist types of devices to install in the building, but we already have some that exist which are proterrorist … [audience laughter]. […] if there were to be an explosion on our side of the Arc – we can probably expect to have a great deal of property damage in the form of glass shattering. If it’s during daytime, this could mean loss of life; […]. (Weyergraf-Serra and Buskirk 1991, 117f.) But it was not only their own inner security that was allegedly endangered; immigrants seeking out the nearby Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization in order to become citizens of the United States of America, too, would be “reminded of the Iron Curtain they just escaped” (ibid., 126) upon seeing Serra’s sculpture. Shirley Paris, a citizen working near the Federal Plaza, referred to the sculpture as the “Berlin Wall of Foley Square.” People visiting the Immigration and Naturalization Service, according to her argument, … are anxious to become citizens of our great nation, to leave behind their original and often oppressive homelands. Yet when they enter the building from which they hope to emerge with hope and promise for a freer and better future for themselves and their families, they cannot help but be painfully reminded by Tilted Arc of the iron curtains from which they escape. Seeing the ominous rusty steel barriers which imprisoned them, minds as well as bodies, they seek the spiritual light, air and space of America. They should then be impressed with the American spirit as they seek its protection. They should not be compelled to circumvent a rusty reminder of totalitarianism. (Ibid.) The accusations and projections brought forward in the framework of the public hearing not only positioned the sculpture in relation to cardinal political and social grievances within the country but also read into it as a political symbol of dictatorship and want of freedom. The confrontation with Serra’s unwieldy sculptural wall brought to the fore the fears and yearnings lying latent in the mental states of particular people in the population. The comments of those behind removal of the installation make it clear that the object revealed these hidden fears and thus seems to have greatly infringed upon society’s desire for safety and security. In the end, even multiple instances of legal confrontation on Serra’s part in the fight to preserve his artwork could not keep the GSA from making use of their rights of ownership. On March 15, 1989, Tilted Arc was dismantled and removed from Federal Plaza. In the New York Times, journalist Hilton Kramer reports on the removal of Tilted Arc, his sense of self-satisfaction clear as he describes what he sees as a liberating effect on the population due to the reconstruction of the plaza:

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He alleges that Serra’s intention had been to “destruct and otherwise render uninhabitable the public site the sculpture was designed to occupy” (ibid.). The conflict surrounding the sculpture is publicly depicted as a struggle, in which workers and employees fight against an arrogant artistic elite, seek to break down its defenses and put themselves back in “their” place within the original, idyllic order of things (Buskirk 1996, 105; GSA Art-in-Architecture 2009, 22). Just as untenable as the supposed unanimity of the greater public within that portrayal is the fantasy of an erstwhile open and democratic space. As Gregg M. Horowitz posits in his analysis of the Titled Arc controversy, the descriptions of the previous appearance of the plaza often weave together flights of fancy as to what the plaza could have been along with the facts (Horowitz 2007). Before the installation of Tilted Arc, Federal Plaza had spent seventeen long years as an empty, windy plaza set in the shadows of its neighboring skyscrapers, offering no space to sit save the cusp of a fountain that had fallen into disuse. According to Horowitz, the insistent fantasies about the plaza’s beauty might best be grasped in light of the failure to beautify Federal Plaza since its construction in 1968: The open space was intended to provide the imaginary alternative to the utter routinization of work life […] However, rather than address the painful reality of the spatial brutalization effected by slotting people into blind office blocks, Re and others displaced what must have been a long-standing grievance, projecting it onto a sculpture that highlighted the vitality of the space it occupied. (Ibid., 451) The evidence shows that Tilted Arc did not interfere with paths of transit; “rather, it appeared to do so, but in the domain of the fantasies picturing its easy use, that was exactly the problem. Serra did not cause the deadness and unusability of Federal Plaza, but he did make it manifest” (ibid., 453). Tilted Arc produced hostility by destroying a collective phantasm. Critics such as Anna C. Chave place Serra’s sculptures in the context of a rhetoric of power simply due to their massiveness and classify the disturbance they cause as a “domineering, sometimes brutal rhetoric,” attributing to Serra a thoughtless, “consuming personal ambition, a will to power” (Chave 1991, 117 and 136). Further she writes:

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The paradigmatic relation between work and spectator in Serra’s art is that between bully and victim, as his work tends to treat the viewer’s welfare with contempt. This work not only looks dangerous, it is dangerous ... and sometimes, especially in the process of installation and deinstallation, they fall and injure or even (on one occasion) kill. (Ibid., 135f.) Serra had earlier been accused of flippantly accepting the death of employees, and as the two tragic accidents in question, which had taken place in the context of work on the installations, were a particularly favorite topic of journalists during interviews, he was constantly forced to state his position with regard to them.7 In Serra’s rash dalliance with the endangerment of others, says Chave, it becomes clear that his work “doesn’t simply exemplify aggression or domination, but acts it out” (ibid., 136). Serra himself distanced himself adamantly from these accusations; he was not interested in “the sculpture toppling or in the sculpture being threatening or in the nature of menace,” nor was he interested “in confrontation or obstructions per se.” His long years of close cooperation with experts and specialists in the field of structural engineering were particularly important to him in conjunction with the safety and security of his work and exhibitions. He sets things right in a debate on his artwork, saying, “I am interested in the particular relationships that I conceive of to be sculptural in a given context and in pointing to whatever manifestations of those sculptural attributes are.”8 Weight and distribution of weight play a central role in ensuring sculptural efficiency for Serra. For him, things are about generating a “weighty” experience, in the truest sense of the word, an experience providing something substantial to counter the weight of existing structures and enclosures – a thought he explores further on the metaphorical level: We face the fear of unbearable weight: the weight of repression, the weight of constriction, the weight of government, the weight of tolerance, the weight of resolution, the weight of responsibility, the weight of destruction, the weight of suicide, the weight of history which dissolves weight and erodes meaning to a calculated construction of palpable lightness. The residue of history: the printed page, the flicker of the image, always fragmentary, always saying something less than the weight of experience. (Serra 1994, 185) Serra, in leaving the protected space of the studio, the museum and the gallery, takes on the challenges of the realm of experience and life. Serra leaves the white cube, the museum space, in order to meet the contingencies of “real” space. His sculptures, according to Benjamin Buchloh, “define themselves as 7 8

As well as in an interview with Thomas Beller (1989), in Serra 1990, 238. Richard Serra in an interview with Robert C. Morgan (1989), in Serra 1994, 187–91.

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manifest counterweights opposing the invisible power of conformity, both in day-to-day, unconscious behaviors and in architecture. Hence Serra, already in the planning stages of Tilted Arc, expressly stated that with this sculpture, he “wanted to disturb the decorative function of the plaza, even alter it, and actively enmesh the people in the contextual experience of the sculpture” (Buchloh 1989, 115). Chave feels the sculpture takes on a form of violence; graffiti and urine – both of which the sculpture was most generously adorned with – as well as the petitions to remove the sculpture were absolutely appropriate rejoinders in which “the public” took its stance against this assault (Chave, 1991, 136f.). Serra, seeing in the removal of his work a basic threat to his personal rights to freedom of expression and a threat to free speech and the protection of creative works of art in general, effected in the United States of America through a form of censure, was accused of himself provoking the vandalism with his sculpture. Benjamin Buchloh, in contrast, interprets the vandalism as having been triggered through those very governmental “forceful acts of conformity” with which the administrative employees and bureaucrats of the neighboring office space, in particular, were confronted daily and which they internalized to a particularly large degree. These forceful acts of conformity led to the formation of a basic fundament for the “vandalizing rage” that unloaded itself “in confrontation against a phenomenon of aesthetic deviation that playfully dispossessed and intelligently opposed this force” (Buchloh 1989, 113f.). Danny Katz, an employee who worked in the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building, accused Serra in the hearing of intentionally neglecting human aspects in what he did: I really blame government less because it has long ago outgrown its human dimension. But from the artists, I expected a lot more. […] I didn’t expect to hear the arrogant position that art justifies interference with […] a small refuge and place of revival for people who ride to work in steel containers, work in sealed rooms, and breathe recirculated air all day. […] I can accept anything in art, but I can’t accept physical assault and complete destruction of pathetic human activity. (Neil and Ridley 2002, 434f.) Knowing the background of this felt helplessness, it is possible to interpret the protest on the part of the administrative employees and bureaucrats as a compensatory reaction allowing them a short-term sense of having vented their anger, a reaction that did not actually lead to an improvement of their own conditions in terms of working and life (Senie 2002, 151). In analyzing a “forcefulness that grew from the bottom up,” media and cultural researcher Lutz Ellrich postulated an interesting explanatory thesis based on the analysis of Clifford Geertz. The aggressive remarks and actions

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that came from the general population could, he believes, be analyzed as a form of culturally encoded forcefulness growing up from “below” into an “eruption of great domestic violence.”9 This forcefulness is, as Ellrich formulated in closing to Geertz, “part of the symbolic economy of a culture in which connections are produced between collective affectations and characteristic patterns of the way negotiations of interaction develop.” The form they take and the effect they have underlie deep-seated cultural codifications that “determine which actions are allowed and which ones are disallowed in a masked and yet extremely pregnant way. All societies […] possess certain patterns of violent forcefulness as strategies of dealing with conflict, patterns that are virtually acceptable and approved within the collective consciousness. […] Hence, deciphering how those patterns of violent forcefulness are minted is prerequisite to being able to unleash or curtail them in a concerted way” (Ellrich 1999, 204f.). Efforts now underway to decipher cultural codifications present us with an extremely promising approach, particularly in the field of performance and performativity research. The defining patterns of forceful violence that “present themselves to societies within certain conflicts as an available resource for solving problems,” according to Ellrich, are a part of that which Geertz, in The Interpretation of Culture, calls “the unformalized realms of […] collective conscience.” They underlie various subtle mechanisms of scrutinization and bundling that ensure public order while diverting attention from themselves and avoiding exposure to the light of day. In addition to these cultural patterns of identification, however, governmental monopolies over the practice of force also ensure they are limited “in a paradoxical process of overwhelming that force” (ibid., 206). It is necessary to take on this kind of nuanced perspective in examining the case of Serra’s Tilted Arc because, paradoxically, the campaign supporting its demolition was advanced to a particularly great degree by the governmental agencies that originally functioned as the party that commissioned the sculpture. In this respect, the “vandalism from above” (Buchloh 1989) represented in the destruction of the sculpture also calls for deeper examination and must, as a cultural symptom, be submitted to a time- and mentality-based analysis. Only with this context in mind can a satisfying answer be found for the question as to what the conflict meant in terms of the way art within the urban space is functionally allocated and awarded value. The collection of documents compiled by Clara Weyergraf-Serra and Martha Buskirk shows that the organized protest can be traced back to one individual, the Chief Judge Edward D. Re, who found an ally in the GSA Regional Director appointed by President Ronald Reagan, William Desmond. It seems that for Desmond, the results of the official public hearing had been set in advance, even before the meeting had begun, since he had already of9 Geertz’s object of reference are the violent excesses in Indonesia (cf. Ellrich 1999, 201; Geertz 1973, 323).

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fered the sculpture for sale to various museums, galleries and park administrations. In order to control all the elements in play, Desmond put together the commission for the hearing and personally presided over it. With the help of carefully directed, cheap propaganda as well as by unleashing latent fears in the population, a majority was formed and the transfer of the artwork prepared using apparently democratic means. Though he did not actually succeed in creating a majority opinion in favor of the “transfer” or destruction of the artwork, Desmond was able to create the impression of a public uproar through strategically distributed press releases and interviews in which the opinion of office employees and neighbors of the plaza was given greater weight than statements from the supra-regional art scene in support of the sculpture. Under the pretenses of doing what was necessary to avoid danger, appealing to a need for civil decency and certitude, the protagonists of the “uproar” created a protest community that, in its symbolic solidaritization, was designed to prepare the way by representing the collective act of force to avenge Serra’s alleged break with taboos and to reconstitute and assure traditional interrelationships and structures. The archaic “mechanism of the propitiary victim” (Girard 1999 [1972], 459) was meant to enter into force, restoring cultural unity in opposition to the threat of its demise. Thus it is that the victim – seemingly appointed unanimously – suffers a collective carriage of power with which the collective eliminates differences. The suggestion of one participant in the protest, Harry Watson, seems to invite this reading; indeed, he advises listeners not only “to take down this piece of rusty garbage and nonsense and sell it to a scrap metal farm for maybe fifty dollars” but also “to bring up buses, take them over to Bellevue Hospital, and bring them into mental ward.”10 He not only urges reabsorption and subjugation of the object under the principle of usability but also pathologizes the artist and his advocates, demanding that they be shut out of society on account of medical insanity. The implication thereby is that only through consistent expurgation of the perceived “malady” could a community free of the burden of contradiction be established. In order to legitimate the destruction of Serra’s sculpture, targeted barriers of fear are erected by governmental offices and the press, translating a relatively abstract argument of threat to public order into an imaginable “real” threat, providing a vivid description of it accompanied by a certain sense of collective enjoyment. The fear of rats and dirtiness expresses a restrictive Puritanism reminiscent of the kind of fears of “impurity” common among the traditional taboos of the pre-modern era and calling for prevention of miasmatic dangers of defilement and infectious agents. At the time, Serra generalized his case and compiled it as proof of the ideological character of Republican cultural politics in the Reagan era. In his essay, “Art and Censorship” (1989), he expressly rebutted the accusations 10 Statement by Harry Watson on public hearing, quoted from Weyergraf-Serra and Buskirk 1991, 120.

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Hilton Kramer composed for his New York Times article, “Is Art Above the Laws of Decency?”11 The journalist believed he had to defend “the public standards of decency and civility” against artists like Serra and Robert Mapplethorpe. Serra also referenced Patrick Buchanan, who announced “a cultural revolution in the 90’s” that same year. Buchanan wrote: Culture – music, literature, art – is the visible expression of what is within a nation’s soul, its deepest values, its cherished beliefs. America’s soul simply cannot be so far gone in corruption as the trash and junk filling so many museums and defacing so many buildings would suggest. As with our rivers and lakes, we need to clean up our culture; for it is a well from which we all must drink. Just as poisoned land will yield up poisonous fruit, so polluted culture, left to fester and stink, can destroy a nation’s soul […]. (Serra 1994, 218) It must be remembered within this context that the “standards of decency and civility” described here as axiomatic were generated over the course of history and were always themselves subject to constant change. Despite this, the attempt is made in these arguments to administer politically derived standards as taboos anchored deep within the American soul and to paint their breach as something that could poison the soul of the entire nation. For Serra, this is the offshoot of “a larger radical conservative agenda” (ibid.) that had found its expression in combining political change with reactionary aesthetics ever since the beginning of the Reagan administration.12 Following a phase of political weakness and apparent loss of value, the new government under Ronald Reagan, which entered office in 1981, sought to undertake measures “to survive a perilous century” while simultaneously remaining true to the nation’s deeply rooted discourse of freedom through recollection of basic values of civilization and traditional moral agencies such as the middle-class family and the Christian religion.13 As global confrontations created an atmosphere of acute crisis, the conservative acts of “great spiritual awakening and renewal of traditional values that have been the bedrock of America’s goodness and greatness” took aim, confronting a “phenomenology of the evil,” the “doctrine of 11

Richard Serra. “Art and Censorship.” Text read at the Des Moines Art Center, October 25, 1989. Reprinted with minor alterations from Critical Enquiry 17 (1991) in Serra 1994, 215–27. 12 In her book Selling Culture. Bloomingdale’s, Diana Vreeland, and the New Aristocracy of Taste in Reagan’s America, Deborah Silverman (1986) characterizes the new aristocratic strain as it appeared in high culture and consumerism during the Reagan era. Its point of departure are her observations of a strong “emphasis on aristocratic and imperial traditions and luxury craftsmanship, the particularly feminine role in the decorative arts, and the role of woman as a decorative object; and the organic, interiorizing opulence of these design models and their link to aristocratic insulation,” a hymn to glamour, consumption, and wealth, which she situates in relation to the particular political program and outlook of the Reagan administration. 13 Cf. Ronald Reagan’s “Remarks to the National Association of Evangelicals” (March 8, 1983), known as The ‘Evil Empire’ Speech.

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sin” and perceived security risks with strong military defense, police and moral rigor (Reagan 1983). The envisioned threats in this “decade of stereotypes and moral panic” were manifold: the constant threat of Communism, terrorist attacks both foreign and domestic, drug cartels, serial crime, child abuse, abortion, pornography, and, last but not least, gangs involved in Satanic rituals. “Anti-tobacco activism set a powerful precedent for official regulation, as the United States entered one of its recurring eras of concern about physical and dietary purity.”14 Concepts of cleanness and soberness have their origins in the Carter years – as Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies plausibly outlines – but they were strongly enforced during the Reagan Administration in answer to deep and wide-spread anxieties in the US population. Genital diseases like the herpes virus and the epidemic of AIDS only contributed to the cause of sexual restraint, fuelled the suspiciousness of gay subcultures, fostered attempts “to reverse liberal gains in matters of sexuality and gender” and helped legitimize new law-and-order politics (Jenkins 2006, 186). This ideological purism finds its expression in a political black-andwhite dualistic mentality “framing political conflicts in comprehensible moral, and often religious, terms of good and evil” (ibid., 209f.) just as it does in an affinity for cosmetics and beauty culture (the cosmetics cult). To spurn “attempts to water down traditional values and even abrogate the original terms of American democracy,” the Reagan Administration announced that it would interpret established law more strictly and use the employment or withdrawal of federal funding as a central control mechanism (Reagan 1983). In this political atmosphere, Serra’s resistive work conjures up the stereotype of an enemy, which the New York judges and GSA-bureaucrats were able to use in campaigning against his “rusty threat.” Under the impression that allegedly endangered, civilized values need defending, and that without that defense, the general peace and general security are in danger, pent-up societal tensions were unloaded with the focus on Serra’s sculpture. His sculpture jeopardized implicit collective boundaries and unveiled immanent symbols within society. It uncovered the social and temperamental “latency zones within modern society” (Schröder 2008, 4) and hidden imperatives of forbearance that rest on a tacit consent that defies any explanation. Serra’s urban sculptures activate barriers of fear that are defended and whose violation may raise aggression. Knowledge about these collective unconscious processes and values can only be deduced indexically by analyzing reactions caused by incisive socio-cultural or aesthetic events. They are thus able to unveil and question cultural zones of avoidance and subliminal societal taboos. The course that the conflict over Tilted Arc took makes it clear that zones of latency shaped by the histories of cultures and mentalities provide the societal breeding ground for educating a potent power of tabooization. 14 Philip Jenkins on setting up a new morality during the Reagan era and its epidemics of abuse, Jenkins 2007 [1997], 186–88; cf. also Jenkins 2006, 203.

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Serra’s artwork, which behaves in a way that defies the hegemonic order, was equivocated with a political and ideological conceptualization of the enemy. This equivocation is one of the preparation and legitimation strategies of a society that sees itself as bound to democratic principles and requires a significant majority in order to enact rulings. Whether something is considered destructive is always a question of perspective. Thus the “vandalism from above” does not see itself as destruction but instead conceives of itself as an oppositional or reactive appropriation clothed in the euphemistic concept of “restoration” or “reuse,” as a constructive change and/or as an intended reconstitution of an older and better state. The new design of Federal Plaza by Martha Schwarz provides an example of one such reactive appropriation. Hills decorated with green vegetation and contoured, polished park benches serve the collective fantasy of the public space with its calm, user-friendly pool and thus aesthetically position themselves in furthest possible opposition to Tilted Arc. One invisible consequence of the creative precedent provided by the work – in addition to changes made in the procedure governing the choice of artists and artworks for the Art-inArchitecture program – was the implicit self-censorship of artists and agencies wanting nothing more than to avoid a second Tilted Arc. Looking back with greater temporal distance, Serra attributes the opposition to his public, permanently installed, site-specific work to a general lack of aesthetic sensibility on the part of the general public in the U.S.: One thing American education does not do is teach how to cultivate aesthetic sensibility. In that sense, public art is dismissed with reason: How are people going to understand what to do with a piece of public art when they have never seen anything like it and haven’t been educated as to what it could mean, what its pleasure potential might be, how it might be useful in empowering them to think a thought they hadn’t thought before? I don’t think public sculpture is going to change the world, but I do think it might be a catalyst for thought. To see is to think and to think is to see. If you can change someone’s way of seeing, you might change their way of thinking. That will be impossible if works don’t exist in public spaces. (McShine 2007, 36) By this token, the aggression against Tilted Arc was an expression of a general incomprehension as to the modern concept of an art work, a lack of knowledge that leads to the “barbaric regression” of vandalism (Gamboni 1997, 10). With his specific sculptural language, Serra tried to inspire ambiguous contingencies so as to open and change thoughts and attitudes without influencing anything in regards to content. Only public and democratically accessible art can gain the aforementioned heft and efficacy Serra seeks in order to rival the presently existing distribution of weightiness and power. The open-ended

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opportunity imbued within Serra’s artwork rests in how he plays the various limitations to freedom of movement and routine perceptions against one another; the failure of Tilted Arc reveals the risk bound up with that, the risk of becoming oneself a victim of the violent forcefulness lurking behind the curtains of this supposed taboo.

Intersection, Basel (1992) Just a few years after the Tilted Arc affair, Serra was invited to submit an outside work to take part in transform – BildObjektSkulptur im 20. Jahrhundert, an exhibition in the Basel Kunstmuseum and Kunsthalle Basel. After the inner courtyard of the art museum was ruled out as a possibility for the project due to technical reasons, Serra chose the plaza in front of the theater as suitable for a site-specific work. On June 5, 1992, his sculpture, entitled Intersection, was installed on the theater plaza, initially as a temporary sculpture (fig. 7). Intersection consists of four 12 feet and 1.5 inches high, 2.125 inches thick and approximately 42 feet long conical plates made of waterproof steel leaning towards each other. The sculptures are still found today on a plateau in front of the Theater Basel, which was built in the seventies, leading up to a broad stone staircase. The internal space of the sculpture can be entered on all sides. Serra describes the relationship between the sculpture and its surrounding environment in the following words: The Theater Plaza seemed to evaporate at its boundaries. Other than being a crossing between two stairways and an entrance way to the theatre, the space lacked orientation and seemed fragmented. The Theater Plaza functioned more as a filter or funnel than a plaza. I was primarily interested in making a form that would create a tension with the function of the space so that the existing use of the space would be maintained but the linearity of the pedestrian movement would be disrupted. Even though the center of Intersection is on axis with the main entrance of the theater and the staircase leading to the street, the space is no longer perceived as linear or directional. The orientation to the plaza has become circular. […] The boundaries of the space become activated by the movement of the arcs. The piece opens up the possibility of both a centripetal and a centrifugal reading, depending on how one chooses to walk the plaza. The plaza now has a rotating core with shifting directions. […] There is also a definite play between the curvilinearity of the theater itself and the curves of the sculpture: Curve echoes curve.15

15 Richard Serra interviewed by Martin Schwander (February 1995): “I am not interested in answering to the dictates of what already exists” (Schwander 1996, 86f.).

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Fig. 7: Richard Serra Intersection (1992), Theaterplatz Basel The sculpture enjoyed intense interest, both from exhibition visitors as well as from passersby, so much so that even as the exhibition was running, the desire to keep the sculpture as a permanent installation of the city was expressed from various quarters. Since there was no public funding available for that purpose, a committee was formed, consisting of architects, academics and art lovers active in economics and society at large – all of whom wished to ensure through a donation campaign that Serra’s sculpture could be retained. Raising the finances for the planned gift to the city from a small, financially strong circle of donors proved more difficult than expected. Instead, an open dispute began raging about the sense and nonsense of, specifically, financing such a costly sculpture in times of low public funding and, more generally, of the function of art within the urban setting. While the accusations of opponents to the sculpture resembled those in the Tilted Arc controversy – centering once again on the threatening weightiness and dominance of the massive sculpture as well as potential accompanying dangers of contamination, obstruction of lines of sight and statistical capacity overload – a highly emotional dispute burned among art experts as to the aesthetic effect and art-historical significance of Serra’s sculpture. The former director of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfahlen in Düsseldorf, Werner Schmalenbach, also a citizen of Basel, maintained that the permanent placement of the artwork on the plateau of the theater plaza was an aesthetic insolence, issuing a warning about the exces-

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sive demand it supposedly placed on citizens.16 His bizarre declaration that modern art belongs in the museum and should not demand public space in such great measure, paired with his call to remove the sculpture from the plaza, is among the more subtle forms of destructivity, in which the weight of artistic expertise is used to try to proscribe what is presentable as art and what is not. The regional press, which strives mightily to capture the various perspectives and sentiments of the population, began publishing letters from readers alleging that an elitist circle of sponsors was forcing what it understood as art on the greater public of Basel. Many, calling for more objectivity within the dispute, also began opposing the dominance of self-proclaimed experts using the context of the debate to carry out their own personal trench warfare.17 Sensitive to public opinion, the Serra committee immediately altered its strategy, resolving, firstly, to reduce the minimum possible donation from 10,000 to 100 Swiss francs and, secondly, to schedule an informational evening at which Serra and representatives of the committees and experts in the field would introduce the sculpture to the interested public and provide those visiting with a greater understanding as to its significance and its underlying artistic mechanisms. The evening was met with great public interest and evaluated in the press as an “impressive demonstration of the citizenry’s sense of artistic purposefulness” that had already enabled significant artworks in public areas of the city (just a limited listing might include the Tinguely fountain on the theater plaza, Brofosky’s Hammering Man and Enzo Checki’s work in Brügelinger Park).18 The dispute surrounding Serra’s sculpture took an extraordinary turn at the end of 1993, as the Baseler Fastnachts Committee made it known that Intersection would be adorning the Shrove Tuesday placards for 1994, and that the motto accompanying it would be “Que Serra.” Carnival, firmly ensconced as a tradition within Swiss culture, presents a break with conventions in that it is as tolerated by all just as much as it encompasses all strata of society, and it took on an exceedingly productive venting function within the overheated debate on Serra’s work. Various design elements of the festival mirrored the Serra debate. Verses sung in the vernacular, full of rhyming quips in the regional schnitzelverse tradition, commented on the wrangling between leading art experts, lent ear to the voice of the common people and took on the criticism of opponents. By transferring the heated altercations into the jocular forms of Carnival, Intersection was metamorphosized into an emblem of cultural dialogue within the city and thus into a firmly established narrative within the 16 Werner Schmalenbach. “Das baselstädtische Serra-Desaster.” Basler Zeitung, July 8, 1993, 33; quoted from Schwander 1996, 141–43. 17 See, for example, the submissions of Doris Dietschy (August 13, 1993) and Marcel Liatowitsch (September 6, 1993) to the Basler Zeitung (Schwander 1996, 152f.). 18 Hans-Joachim Müller. “Der Kunstsinn macht wieder mobil.” Basler Zeitung, January 20, 1994, 41; quoted from Schwander 1996, 156.

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history of Basel as a city. The committee played into this integration of the sculpture into Basel’s Shrove Tuesday, throwing the deadlocked dispute into a new, self-deprecating light. Afterwards, a respective number of citizens actively supported the urban sculpture and allocated the money for its permanent installation through publicly collected means and, in doing so, precipitated a rare occurrence: “…a ‘real’ public was given voice over an administrated public,” as Serra himself proudly assesses (Schwander 1996, 95).19 In contrast to the Tilted Arc debate in New York, in which public opinion allowed itself to be manipulated until it appeared that the public actually had led to the destruction of an artwork, a dramatic, open discussion was carried out in Basel, one marked by a deep sense of general interest in Serra’s formal sculptural language, a sense of interest to be reckoned with. Last but not least, though, Carnival, in its embrace of a broad swath of the general public, helped place the support for the project on firm footing and to pacify trench wars so that, in the end, Intersection can be interpreted as an example of a productive twist within destructive dynamics. Translated by Gratia Stryker-Härtel

References Buchloh, Benjamin H. D. “Vandalismus von oben. Richard Serras Tilted Arc in New York.” In: Walter Grasskamp (ed.). Unerwünschte Monumente. Moderne Kunst im Stadtraum. München: Schreiber, 1989, 103–119. Buskirk, Martha. “‘Tilted Arc’ in and out of Context.” Martin Schwander (ed.). Intersection Basel / Richard Serra. Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 1996, 98–115. Chave, Anne C. “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power.” Holliday T. Day (ed.). Power: Its Myths and Mores in American Art, 1961–1991. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1991, 116–139. Crimp, Douglas. “Richard Serra‘s Urban Sculpture.” In: Richard Serra. Writings and Interviews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, 125–39. Ehrlicher, Hanno. Die Kunst der Zerstörung. Gewaltphantasien und Manifestationspraktiken der europäischen Avantgarden. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001. Ellrich, Lutz. Verschriebene Fremdheit. Die Ethnographie kultureller Brüche bei Clifford Geertz und Stephen Greenblatt. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 1999. 19

Cf. note 15.

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Gamboni, Dario. The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution. London: Reaktion Books, 1997. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Girard, René. Das Heilige und die Gewalt. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1999 [1972]. GSA Art-in -Architecture. Selected Artworks 1997-2008; online: http://www.gsa. gov/graphics/ pbs/7_introductory_essay.pdf (August 05, 2011). Horowitz, Gregg M. “Public Art / Public Space. The Spectacle of the Tilted Arc Controversy.” In: Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley (eds.). Arguing about Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2007, 446–56. Jenkins, Philip. A History of the United States. 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 [1997]. Jenkins, Philip. Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. McShine, Kynaston. “A Conversation about Work with Richard Serra” [September 21 and 28, 2006] In: idem and Lynne Cooke (eds.). Richard Serra. Sculpture: Forty Years [Exhibition Catalogue]. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007, 15–41. Reagan, Ronald. Remarks to the National Association of Evangelicals (March 8, 1983); online: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreaganevil empire.htm. Schröder, Hartmut. “Phänomenologie und Interkulturelle Aspekte des Tabus. Ein Essay.” In: Kakanien revisited 26.4 (March 2008); online: http://www. kakanien.ac.at/beitr/verb_worte/HSchroeder1.pdf Schwander, Martin (ed). Intersection Basel / Richard Serra. Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 1996. Senie, Harriet F. The Tilted Arc Controversy. A Dangerous Precedent? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Serra, Richard. Schriften Interviews 1970–1989. Ed. by Harald Szeemann with the collaboration of Clara Weyergraf-Serra and Theres Abbt. Bern: Benteli, 1990. Serra, Richard. Writings Interviews. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Silverman, Deborah. Selling Culture. Bloomingdale’s, Diana Vreeland, and the New Aristocracy of Taste in Reagan’s America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. van den Berg, Karen. Terminal Richard Serra. Der leibhafte Raum. Ostfildern: Edition Tertium, 1995. Weyergraf-Serra, Clara and Martha Buskirk (eds.). The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.

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List of Figures Fig 1–4: van den Berg, Karen. Terminal Richard Serra. Der leibhafte Raum. Ostfildern: Edition Tertium, 1995, 34, 35, 37, 41. Fig 5–7: McShine, Kynaston and Lynne Cooke (eds.). Richard Serra. Sculpture: Forty Years [Exhibition Catalogue]. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007, 186, 187, 266.

Creative Destructions: Gabriel Tarde’s Concept of a Passionate Economy Katja Rothe This paper traces the connection between destruction and performativity in the light of Gabriel Tarde’s concept of economics. At the start of the twentieth century, Tarde formulated a theory of economic process as an innovation process that is driven by constitutive disruptions. Tarde conceived destruction as a moment of separation that nevertheless creates connections, associations and translations between actors. Born from disruption, these temporary, fragile alliances between actors are fomented by their irrational, subjective desire for the new. Tarde anticipates what Schumpeter some years later described as “creative destruction,” but explains the innovative power of destruction “psychologically,” relating it to the passion of the actors who follow a philosophy of possession.

Writing at the turn of the twentieth century, Gabriel Tarde described “economy” as a process of innovation that is driven by disruptions. Although the concepts are not fully coterminous, he was anticipating what Joseph Schumpeter would elaborate under the label of “creative destruction” between 1911 (The Theory of Economic Development) and 1942 (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy).1 This chapter will show that at the beginning of the twentieth century, across a broad disciplinary and interdisciplinary front in both arts and sciences, a manner of experimental thinking developed that saw disruption or destruction as a constitutive component of systems and organisms, which themselves were now regarded as dynamic and open towards their environment. This way of thinking is based on knowledge practices that I would like to call ‘performative’: it is assumed that only in concrete (that is, experimental) practice – in action – does the object of study come into being, and that this object does not point to something ‘behind’ it, to some ‘essence’ or ‘book of life,’ but constitutes itself solely within the research process and in relation to its environment, and must continually be re-produced with the help of various materials, artefacts and signs. Emphasis is placed on the dynamic character of the processes of producing knowledge, which are powered by disruptions and irritations to the status quo. After this historical contextualisation, I will focus on Gabriel Tarde’s concept of the economy in order to describe more specifically the destructive dynamic of economic processes that inheres in “creative destruction.” I hope to show that since the early twentieth century, ideas of innovation that may from today’s perspective be called ‘performative’ have considered a ‘destructive dynamic’ to be constitutive of the vitality of economic processes – which thus become processes of knowledge generation. Tarde, especially, developed a 1 On Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction, see Schumpeter 1976; Reisman 2004; Freye 2009; Gaffard 2009.

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concept of innovation that combines psychology, sociology and economics in a manner currently attracting new interest, for example in the course of discussions on the loss of consumer and investor ‘confidence’ as a fundamental economic factor. Tarde’s theory of innovation stands at the beginning of debates about the meaning and significance of creative destruction in economic processes, but it also differs fundamentally from subsequent explanatory models in its ‘psychological’ orientation on the passions of actors. The reason for this discontinuity must be sought in the dearth of attention to Gabriel Tarde’s work from the 1920s on, both in his own discipline of sociology (due to the dominance of Émile Durkheim) and in economics (economics having separated off from sociology in the early twentieth century).2 It was only his rediscovery by Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour that enabled a recognition of the importance of Tardean thinking for sociology and economics.3 The singularity of Tarde’s concept of creative destruction lies in his understanding of the economy as a process of innovation that is based on destruction. Here, destruction is not simply an impulse, a resistance or opposition by the new; it takes on multidimensional functions. Destruction’s moment is not one of separation and annihilation but, on the contrary, a) one of combining elements that, in their varying repetition, are scattered by destruction and re-integrated in the new, b) an initiator of the translational processes precipitated by the new, and c) an opportunity for associations of actors to take shape. Tarde’s notion of creative destruction should thus be thought of as simultaneously both dispersion and (temporary) bonding. For Tarde, actors’ desire for the new is the driving force of creative destruction. He thus initiates a tradition of thinking about economic and societal processes in which the performance of destruction and of production maintain a complex relationship – one that Tarde explains by means of the passion and desire of actors pursuing a philosophy of possession (Thrift 2010, 250). Tarde describes the actors’ faith, their fear, their trust, their desire not as a consequence and effect of economic processes but, in its capacity as ‘psychology,’ as the founder of the economy. This raises, however, a question which will form the boundary of the present essay’s reach: whether Tarde’s conception of the economic portrays a form of knowledge that capitalises on the wishes of actors and their passion for the new, one we should regard today as the “truth regime” of the knowledge and information society – based on the commitment of the entrepreneurial individual (Bröckling 2007), on a fascination with the self (Boltanski and Chiapello 2 Schumpeter, for example, called for an ‘exact’ depiction that makes use of mathematical functions (Schumpeter 2010, 49). Only from the 1980s did economic sociology emerge as a subdiscipline of sociology, though not of economics. 3 See, for example, Lazzarato 2002, Borch and Stäheli 2009, and the essays collected in Candea 2010, there in particular Nigel Thrift’s contribution (ibid., 248–70).

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2005) – that emerged during the early twentieth century in the context of avantgarde and experimental sciences (Sennett 2006; Illouz 2008; Vogl 2008; Thrift 2010, 262 ff.).

The Productivity of Destruction In the war-battered Europe of the twentieth century’s first three decades, the productive dynamic of destructive processes was discovered across a wide range of disciplines as the object of a ‘performative epistemology’: of knowledge practices that do not ‘find’ knowledge but ‘make’ it in the course of its experimental investigation,4 subject it to continual revisions, develop it precisely in friction with the things that oppose it, impede it, perhaps do not wish to be known. The new medium of radio, for example, was introduced to Europe through disastrous situations (Rothe 2009); the accident became a category of aesthetics (Robert Musil and Franz Kafka come to mind);5 destruction became a central category of thought, from Walter Benjamin and the aura to Ernst Jünger and the training of the soldierly self. In psychoanalysis (Freud’s death drive) and international law (Carl Schmitt’s concept of enmity), as well, the productivity of destruction became an important theme. Thinking about destructivity went hand in hand with thinking about performativity, as can be seen particularly clearly in more recent biological, psychological and physiological concepts of homeostasis.6 In the early twentieth century, such concepts premised a regulation of self-regulation directed by the environment (Kurt Goldstein, Jakob von Uexküll, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Lewin), regulation no longer being understood as a static process of readjustment that reacts to disruption in order to recreate a preceding balance (an assumed ideal state of equilibrium, for example in the work of Claude Bernard, Walter Cannon or Fritz Perls). Instead, such disruptions were now seen as integral components of a form of self-regulation oriented on innovation (Rothe and Innerhofer 2010; Metzger 4 This involves an expanded concept of the experiment, one that comes from scientific practice but goes beyond traditional definitions. The changed understanding of the nature of the experiment should be located in the context of a redefinition unfolding in the course of the 1920s and early 1930s: the experiment was increasingly seen as a creative act that itself produced innovative objects of research. In 1928, Hugo Dingler, a German mathematician and philosopher associated with operationalist-pragmatist epistemology, depicted the activity of experimenting as an ordered and productive action; in 1934 the French theorist of science Gaston Bachelard used the term “phenomenotechnique” to address the constructive nature of the experiment; and in 1935 the Polish microbiologist Ludwik Fleck outlined the social and conceptual preconditions of experimentation (cf. Dingler 1928; Bachelard 1984 [1934]; Fleck 1979 [1935]). For these scientists, the experiment is marked by vagueness. It revolves around the non-repeatable and non-determined, undermines concepts, proliferates possibilities of thinking and is open for changes in meaning. On this, see Rheinberger, Hagner 1993; Rheinberger 2010; Griesecke 2008; Griesecke et al. 2008. 5 Further examples can be found in Encke 2006 and Kassung 2007. 6 More generally on this point: Martin et al, 2008.

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1986). Disruptions were no longer regarded as a destabilisation of the organism, or of a closed system that needed to be balanced out, but rather as the motor of an innovative development that indicated the flexibility and dynamism of an open, constantly modified system (Stemberger 1998, 304). Disruptions could not be excluded; and if, on the one hand, they destabilised an order, on the other they opened up the possibility of variation, thus of change. Like the early notions of homeostasis, concerned with equilibrium, the more recent models concerned with self-regulation through disruption have been closely bound up with socialist, democratic or liberal concepts of society (Tanner 1998). Regarded as the principle not only of the organism but also of society, homeostasis claimed a central place in the disciplines of sociology, law and economics (Canguilhem 1988). At the beginning of the twentieth century, economists such as Gabriel Tarde and Joseph Alois Schumpeter began to reassess the concepts of classical economics propounded by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Jean-Baptiste Say and others. The revision was directed primarily at the notion of a homeostatic process of equilibrium in closed economic cycles – the idea that the market reacts to disruptions, for example a drop in prices, with readjustments in order to reinstate the “natural price” (Adam Smith). In the following, I will present Gabriel Tarde’s relatively little-known concept of the psychological economy as part of an epistemology of the performative in which the destructive is a constitutive element of dynamic knowledge production, a process where the initial destruction is not simply the assertion of one impulse against others, as in Schumpeter’s model, but the beginning of a collective process of innovation. These ideas were set out in “La psychologie en économie politique” of 1881 and La Psychologie économique of 1902.7 For Tarde, innovation does not arise from the self-interest of the individual, but from the cooperation of many actors. Furthermore, Tarde emphasises ‘psychological’ forces, the role of passions and convictions – that is, the irrational, ‘un-economic’ aspects of the joint action of participants in the innovation process. In Tarde’s view, destruction is not a mere occupation of unknown territory, but the beginning of a collective “translation” (Latour 1986) in the course of which the innovation comes about.

Tarde’s Passionate Economy I speak of these profound troubles of the economic and moral regime of a people in which a religious conversion, a political transformation, the simultaneous appearance of several great innovations suddenly introduces new convictions and new needs that imply a partial negation or suppression of the principles and mores accepted hitherto. This abrupt transformation of faith and public opinion, always violent and preceded by inter7

In the following I will make use of the study by Latour and Lépinay 2009.

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nal struggles if not street battles, results in the creation of a host of new products that actually destroy the value of the old ones.8 (Tarde 1897, 200) Writing before 1900, Gabriel Tarde here already formulates a theory of an economic process founded on destruction. But he does not explain the power of “creative destruction” solely by the self-interest of the creative entrepreneur (Lazzarato 2000). Although, like Schumpeter later, he too attributes a high status to the inventor as “genius,” this is not because of the individual inventor’s singularity. Rather, the inventor is the “medium that makes new opportunities capable of being observed in the first place” (Borch and Stäheli 2009, 17). The inventor everywhere discovers contradictions and thus new possibilities, not least within the familiar. He or she hybridises things that are already established by breaking apart their “habitual connections” and recombining the “debris” to create something new – something that was, however, already present as a potential in the traditional version (Tarde 1904 [1893], 126).9 For Tarde, then, innovation is characterised by creative destruction, but is crucially dependent on the inventions of others. Tarde does not describe creative destruction as a linear process where the “old” is annihilated and geniuses create the “new.” Often, the new arises precisely through the recombination of already successful, “old” inventions (Tarde 1903, 44f.). Parts of what has been shattered by the innovation are, therefore, still present in the innovation. Destruction and innovation interlock, existing as simultaneously past and new. The innovation creates associations between what was oppositional in the past: The essence of an invention is to have forces make reciprocal use of each other which previously seemed to be alien or opposed to each other; the invention is an association of forces that replaces an opposition or sterile juxtaposition of forces. (Tarde 1897, 222) In Tarde’s logic of the innovation, thus, the chronological sequence of destruction and innovation is revoked in a model of simultaneous association, and the new is constituted by proliferating what has been destroyed in a reassembly of the heterogeneous debris. It is, in turn, this heterogeneous composition that characterises the innovatory process as a co-production by past and present actors. The process rests quite fundamentally on cooperation, not on opposition – and not on an opposition between destructive and productive dynamics. 8 Translator’s note: Here and throughout, translations from French and German sources are my own unless otherwise indicated. 9 The full passage runs: “Dans le génie, en effet, le besoin de critique destructive existe aussi bien que le besoin de création inventive; mais le premier est au service du second, son esprit critique ne brise les liaisons habituelles d’idées que pour enrichir de leurs débris son imagination qui les emploie. Ce qu’il y a de particulier, et d’essentiel, c’est qu’il aperçoit le premier nettement ce caractère inhérent à certaines notions, ou à certaines actions, de se contredire ou de s’entraver, et la possibilité inhérente à certaines autres actions ou notions d’être associées de telle manière qu’elles se confirment ou qu’elles collaborent” (Tarde 1904 [1893], 126).

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However, the innovation’s cooperative, “social” quality does not arise simply from its association with what has been destroyed (Tarde 1903, 145). The invention only becomes an innovation when it is realised socially. Subjective habits, opinions and tastes in the here and now must amalgamate with the invention; it must become repeatable and communicable in order for a value to be established. The economic process of innovation is borne along by both the diversity of desires and their similarity: Economic progress supposes two things: on the one hand, a growing number of different desires, for, without a difference in desires, no exchange is possible, and, with the appearance of each new, different desire, the life of exchange is kindled. On the other hand, a growing number of similar exemplars of each desire taken separately, for, without this similitude, no industry is possible, and, the more this similitude expands or prolongs itself, the more production is widened or reinforced. (Tarde 2007 [1902], 639; original emphasis) That is to say, difference stimulates exchange, while at the same time the similarity of desires is necessary for the innovation to assert itself economically. Tarde regards this similarity as being constituted through communicative media: Conversation is eminently interesting to the economist. There is no economic relationship between men that is not first accompanied by an exchange of words, whether verbal, written, printed, telegraphed, or telephoned. […] Most often, thanks again to conversations, which had spread the idea of new product to buy or to produce from one interlocutor to another, and, along with this idea, had spread trust in the qualities of the product or in its forthcoming output, and, finally, the desire to consume it or to manufacture it. […] There is no manager more powerful than consumption, nor, as a result, any factor more powerful – albeit indirect – in production than the chatter of individuals in their idle hours. (Tarde quoted from Latour and Lépinay 2009, 48f.) In generating “similitude,” communication, advertising, the press, school, fashion, cities and their social density – all factors not normally regarded by economists as primary sources of added value – contribute to the social quality of production and consumption, because they repeat the innovation. “Chatter” is thus an essential factor of production, a notion that attains astonishingly modern relevance in view of the current power of rating agencies to drive entire states into bankruptcy. However, it is not the case that the same thing is merely repeated. The “chatter” that generates similitude also brings about variation. “Repetition exists, then, for the sake of variation;” (Tarde 1903, 7) similarity and distinction intertwine.

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Thus, for Tarde, the interplay of invention and cooperation does not simply set off a momentum based on creative destruction that will replace the old with the new. Rather than this linear logic, argues Tarde, the productive cycle is constituted by an internal dynamic, a rhythm. Through invention, differences from what has previously existed appear, recur (in Tarde’s terms, “repetition”) and are thereby disseminated, in the process producing conflicts (“opposition”). The production of further differences makes it possible to escape this opposition, through “adaptation.”10 In each repetition, variations occur that may themselves be innovations, and the cycle begins again (Latour and Lépinay 2009, 34, 39). That process, discussed by Gilles Deleuze in Difference and Repetition with direct reference to Tarde (Deleuze 1994), is constantly in flux and cannot be brought to a standstill by a single formula: innovations, differentiation and repetition constantly generate new connections that keep the economic process running. The events of repetition can therefore never be purged of heterogeneity. For Tarde, the force of creative destruction is not a force that could potentially prevail as a “same,” assuming some “originality” only marginally weakened by its encounter with resistance. Tarde does not, then, accord a high status in the productive economic process to binary oppositions like the ones that shape, for example, Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction. Schumpeter sets the creative entrepreneur and his original idea in opposition to the market’s actors, who preserve the status quo of competition and against whom the entrepreneur asserts his innovation. Tarde’s concept of innovation, by contrast, is not an oppositional one. He regards the dichotomy of binary oppositions not as the prototype of creative destruction, but merely as a derived and simplified form of difference (Balke 2009, 143). Tarde is interested in the process of innovation and invention as a creative collaboration marked not solely by opposition but also, and more importantly, by adaptation and repetition (Tarde 2009 [1899]). Opposition is, for Tarde, a simple act of negation that does not in itself give rise to something new, but only changes the starting conditions (Balke 2009, 144). The force of creative destruction, in contrast, is a force of innovative dispersion that arises in the processes of translation between heterogeneous cooperations. In Tarde’s model, each actor, each repetition (and thus also what has been destroyed) makes an active contribution to the process of innovation. Innovation takes shape only in the course of cooperation (Latour 1986). Whether a particular destruction becomes a creative, innovative force in the economic process is decided by the “chatter” of the actors, their convictions, activities and desires. 10

Tarde speaks of the “tendency of a given invention or social adaptation to become larger and more complex by adapting itself to some other invention or adaptation, and thus create a new adaptation, which, through other encounters and logical combinations of the same sort, leads to a higher synthesis, and so on” (Tarde 2009 [1899], 171).

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The economic process is not, then, propelled by abstract economic or social laws, but by the subjective interests of actors forming networks. It is driven by the wishes, desires, passions and judgements of the actors. It remains true that value, of which money is but the sign, is nothing, absolutely nothing, if not a combination of entirely subjective things, of beliefs and desires, if ideas and volitions, and that the peaks and troughs of values in the stock market, unlike oscillations of a barometer, could not even remotely be explained without considering their psychological causes: fits of hope or discouragement in the public, propagation of a good or a bad sensational story in the minds of speculators. (Tarde 2007 [1902], 630) Tarde here sketches a dual movement in the production of value. On the one hand it is dependent on individual, psychological factors; on the other, this subjectivity does not remain individual but transmits itself to other actors by means of “imitation” (Tarde 1903). This diffusion is based on trust and the exchange of opinion, on persuasion and conviction – in other words, on a rhetoric whose reach and intensity is determined by communicative media (Latour and Lépinay 2009, 12, 17f.). In this point Tarde contradicts Durkheim, arguing that the social and the economic do not exist as separate fields, but are both merely principles of connection and reciprocal impact, webs of desires and beliefs. For Tarde, thus, there is neither macrostructure nor microstructure, but only cooperations which arise in the performative transformation process of creative destruction and which, through innovations, drive on the economic process. The economic process is a translation process of fluid differentiations, which cannot be planned or controlled and is not determined by a “higher” structure. Economics is bound to a logic of events, and constitutes itself in the practice of many, heterogeneous actors, in the implementation of their interests and passions. In other words, creative destruction, the motor of economic processes, is not conceived of as an individual achievement, an originary impulse, but as a social occurrence that is, so to speak, infused with destruction – with the “debris” of the destroyed in inventions, with disruptions in the repetition leading to variations, but also (and fundamentally) as a vital force of the social itself that draws its dynamism and flexibility from disruptions. In order to understand this, it is necessary to look briefly at Tarde’s research programme of “monadology” (1893), which prompts Latour to call Tarde a “forefather” of ActorNetwork Theory (Latour 2002, 117).

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Monadology For Tarde, the social or society does not constitute a higher or more complex order. Rather, a society of whatever provenance (including, for example, a stellar or animal society) consists in an assemblage of intertwined monads that form a force field in the sense of a topological space: dynamic, temporary, contingent and formed, net-like, by effects, attractions and repulsions. The social order made up of networked monads is always threatened by destruction. Destruction is the past and future of the social, for no monad can be part of the social order completely or for the long term: Let us insist on this paramount truth: we move towards it by noting that in each of these great, regular mechanisms – the social, the vital, the stellar, the molecular – all the internal revolts which ultimately break them are provoked by an analogous condition: their components, soldiers of those various regiments, temporary incarnations of their laws, only ever belong with one side of their being to the world that they constitute, while with other sides they escape it. This world would not exist without them; but they would continue to exist without it. The attributes each element owes to its incorporation in its regiment do not make up its entire nature; it has other inclinations and instincts that come from different enrolments; and yet others, consequently (and we will see the necessity of this consequence), that come from its depths, from itself, from the very fundamental substance upon which it is able to draw in its fight against the power of the collective, wider but shallower, of which it is a part but which is only an artificial being, composed of the sides and facades of beings. (Tarde 1999 [1893], 38f.) Monads, then, form only unstable aggregates that are not held together by a harmony already in existence, as, for example, in Leibniz’s thinking (“Principes de la Nature et de la Grâce fondés en Raison,” 1714), but make up an ephemeral field of interests through their “sides and facades.” Sooner or later they establish new differences, destroying the existing association. The monads cannot be connected by means of “identity,” only by means of possession. Tarde begins from the postulate “I have” as the fundamental fact (Tarde 1999 [1893], 43); for every monad, “je désire, je crois, donc j’ai” applies, not “cogito ergo sum” (ibid.). In place of a metaphysics of being, Tarde thus installs a philosophy of having: Up to now, all of philosophy has been founded on the verb to be, the definition of which seemed the philosopher’s stone to be discovered. It is fair to claim that many fruitless debates, much intellectual deadlock, might have been avoided if it had been founded instead on the verb to

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The new, diverse and different, temporarily forming an aggregate through repetition without finality or leadership, follows no plan, no structure, no dialectic or metaphysics (Latour and Lépinay 2009, 42). It leads itself and follows itself in the rhythm of profits and losses, acquiring and investing, in a philosophy of having that rests not on entities but on properties (propriétés) and desires (Tarde 1999 [1893], 43f.). One might also say that monads are not governed, but govern themselves by means of their interest in having.11 It is in the context of his monadology that we should understand Tarde’s psychological economy. Here, too, he describes performativity – the temporary networking of passionate actors which arises only in its own implementation, attaining meaning through repetition. Through this act the participants establish the “social” or the “economic,” as a fragile construct not built for permanence or based on a panoptic knowledge. This performativity of temporary, fluid alliances is held together by a logic of having: alliances are formed according to what arouses desire, what it is that a number of actors want to possess. Tarde rejects the notion of an association based on identity, on “being;” for him, bonds arise solely through the collective interest in possession, through “wanting.” It is only their interest in innovations that, for a time, connects the monads and creates relationships. This same idea – that a material third party is necessary in order for social agreements to be reached – would be articulated by Walter Benjamin in the 1920s (Benjamin 1999, 289; cf. also Blumenrath et al. 2009, 7–19). From this perspective, creative destruction cannot be understood only as a translation; that is, in the simultaneity of destruction and invention, the dynamic of difference and repetition, the force of diffusion with which Tarde explains the origins of innovations and imitation. It is important also to consider the social bonding force of creative destruction, since the constantly new – which even in Tarde’s view presupposes destruction, even if the debris of what has been destroyed remains effectual in the innovation – arouses the desire and passions of the actors, thus enabling temporally specific, fragile associations that, in turn, keep the economic process running. Through this social force of a passionate wanting-to-have of innovations, creative destruction becomes the precondition of all relationships, including economic ones. Tarde speaks of a “swarm of individual innovators” (Tarde 2009 [1899], 52)12 constantly demanding the new. There is a kind of compulsion to innovation, to destruction, 11 12

On the relationship of being and having in Leibnizian monadology, see also Deleuze 1992. The French phrase is “un fourmillement d’individualités novatrices” (Tarde 1899, 23).

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to dynamism; an impossibility of finality, of conservation. The continual generation of the new cannot function without destruction, although, importantly, Tarde understands creative destruction not as an originary impulse that manages to assert itself, but as a point of connection between various currents, at which cooperation enables innovations to be generated by actors and translated heterogeneously. For Tarde, creative destruction governs a process of invention – of knowledge generation – that aims for the new but does not therefore annihilate the old, instead dispersing it only to reassemble it in a different form. Seen this way, economics becomes an experiment in which the outcome is open and all sorts of actors, things, matters and media participate.

Psychopower Following Tarde and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, one might thus regard the economy as an experimental system – that is, a system “of manipulation [of objects of knowledge] designed to give unknown answers to questions which themselves we are not yet able clearly to ask” (Rheinberger 1995, 110). Experimental systems reveal the processes of knowledge production to be makeshift bricolage, the unexpected results of which give rise to new theories. They do not assume an antecedent knowledge, but target the elusive contingency of innovation. Disruptions keep the experimental system in motion; here, disruption is the regulator of a logic of innovation based on knowledge production. The objective of an economy understood as ‘experimental,’ like the one depicted by Tarde, is not equilibrium, status quo or freedom from disruption. Quite the contrary: interruption and interferences open up new options and possibilities, thus new connections and innovations. An ‘experimental’ economy along Tarde’s lines can, in this way, be described as a performative process of knowledge generation that is propelled by disruptions, is based on cooperation, and builds on the individual desires of actors and their inclination to imitate. Nigel Thrift describes Tarde’s concept of economics as a “political economy of propensity” (Thrift 2010, 266) and applies it to present-day circumstances. He uses Tardean innovation theory to outline – rather uncritically – what Esposito calls the “biologization” (Esposito 2008) of capitalism, which undertakes experiments to research the association of neurones and cultural and genetic codes with an eye to developing “neuromarketing” (Thrift 2010, 263). The object of this “buyology” (Lindstrom 2008, 6) is the motivations, feelings, wishes – that is, the passions – of consumers. It explores such issues as how the presence of particular brands in television formats stimulates purchasing behaviour on a semiconscious (neural) level, for example by simulating ‘mimetic rays,’ or “imitative rays” in Tarde’s terms (Thrift 2010, 263), and how these brands relate to hormone swashes. A “neuroeconomics” of this kind, inspired by Tarde, aims to control the propensities of consumers (ibid.), continually

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turning the entrepreneur’s wish into the wish of the consumer. Here Tarde’s monadology becomes a kind of ‘consumerology’ that could be located in the context of the psychotechnological industrial system of “psychopower” (Stiegler 2010) and as a continuation of Foucault’s “biopower:” an operationalisation of the modern human subject in the systemic production of power-effects on the body, life and soul (Foucault 2005). If Deleuze saw the destructive dynamics of Tarde’s innovation theory, based on difference and repetition, as the foundation for a theory of subversions, it is now difficult to avoid the suspicion that Tarde delineated the very economy that is proving to be so flexible and durable not only despite, but because of, all its crises, and that accords a central role to the motivation of actors and their self-economisation (cf. Boltansky and Chiapello 2005; Bröckling 2007; Reckwitz 2006). Translated by Kate Sturge

References Bachelard, Gaston. The New Scientific Spirit [1934]. Trans. by Arthur Goldhammer. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. Balke, Friedrich. “Eine frühe Soziologie der Differenz: Gabriel Tarde.” In: Christian Borch and Urs Stäheli (eds.). Soziologie der Nachahmung und des Begehrens. Materialien zu Gabriel Tarde. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009, 135–63. Benjamin, Walter. “Critique of Violence.” Selected Writings. Trans. by Edmund Jephcott. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, vol. 1, 277–300. Blumenrath, Hendrik et al. (eds.). Techniken der Übereinkunft. Zur Medialität des Politischen. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2009. Blumenrath, Hendrik et al. (eds.). “Techniken der Übereinkunft. Einleitung.” In: idem (eds.). Techniken der Übereinkunft. Zur Medialität des Politischen. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2009, 7–19. Boltanski, Luc and Eve Chiapello. The New Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. by Gregory Elliott. London: Verso, 2005. Borch, Christian and Urs Stäheli (eds.). Soziologie der Nachahmung und des Begehrens. Materialien zu Gabriel Tarde. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009. Borch, Christian and Urs Stäheli. “Einleitung – Tardes Soziologie der Nachahmung und des Begehrens.” In: Christian Borch and Urs Stäheli (eds.). Soziologie der Nachahmung und des Begehrens. Materialien zu Gabriel Tarde. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009, 7–38. Bröckling, Ulrich. Das unternehmerische Selbst. Soziologie einer Subjektivierungsform. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007.

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Candea, Matei (ed.). The Social after Gabriel Tarde. Debates and Assessments. London: Routledge, 2010. Canguilhem, Georges. “The Development of the Concept of Biological Regulation in the 19th and 20th Centuries.” In: idem. Ideology and Rationality in the History of the Life Sciences. Trans. by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1988, 81–102. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Trans. by Paul Patton, London: Athlone, 1994. — The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque. Trans. by Tom Conley. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992. Dingler, Hugo. Das Experiment. Sein Wesen und seine Geschichte. München: E. Reinhardt, 1928. Encke, Julia. Augenblicke der Gefahr. Der Krieg und die Sinne. 1914–1934. München: Fink, 2006. Esposito, Roberto. Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Fleck, Ludwik. The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact [1935]. Ed. by Thaddeus J. Trenn and Robert K. Merton, trans. by Fred Bradley and Thaddeus J. Trenn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1979. Foucault, Michel. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981–1982. Trans. by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Freye, Saskia. “Zwischen Kreativität und Rationalisierung – Klassische Theorien des Kapitalismus;” paper presented at the conference “Kapitalismustheorien” in Vienna, April 24 and 25, 2009; online: http://www.oegpw.at/ tagung09/papers/AG3a_freye.pdf (August 07, 2010). Gaffard, Jean-Luc. “Innovation, Competition, and Growth: Schumpeterian Ideas Within a Hicksian Framework.” In: Uwe Cantner (ed.). Schumpeterian Perspectives on Innovation, Competition and Growth. Berlin: Springer 2009, 7–24. Griesecke, Birgit (ed.). Werkstätten des Möglichen 1930–1936. L. Fleck, E. Husserl, R. Musil, L. Wittgenstein. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008. — et al. (eds.). Kulturgeschichte des Menschenversuchs im 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008. Illouz, Eva. Saving the Modern Soul. Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Kassung, Christian (ed.). Die Unordnung der Dinge: Eine Wissens- und Mediengeschichte des Unfalls. Bielefeld: transcript, 2007. Latour, Bruno. “The Powers of Association.” In: John Law (ed.). Power, Action and Belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge? London: Routledge 1986, 264–80. — “Gabriel Tarde and the End of the Social.” In: Patrick Joyce (ed.). The

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Social in Question. New Bearings in History and the Social Sciences. London: Routledge, 2002, 117–32. — and Vincent Antonin Lépinay. The Science of Passionate Interests: An Introduction to Gabriel Tarde’s Economic Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2009. Lazzarato, Maurizio. Puissances de l’invention. La psychologie économique de Gabriel Tarde contre l’économie politique. Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2002. — “Warum wir nie Sozialisten gewesen sind und was uns am Marxismus nicht zufriedenstellt.” In: episteme. online-Magazin für eine Theorie der Praxis 5 (2000), online: http://www.episteme.de/htmls/Lazzarato-Sozialis mus-Marxismus.html (October 5, 2010). Lindstrom, Martin. Buyology: How Everything We Believe about Why We Buy Is Wrong. London: Random House, 2008. Martin, Jörg, Jörg Hardy, and Stephan Cartier (eds.). Welt im Fluss. Fallstudien zum Modell der Homöostase. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008. Metzger, Wolfgang. Gestalt-Psychologie: Ausgewählte Werke. Ed. by Michael Stadler and Heinrich Crabus. Frankfurt am Main: Kramer 1986. Reckwitz, Andreas. Das hybride Subjekt. Eine Theorie der Subjektkulturen von der bürgerlichen Moderne zur Postmoderne. Weilerswist: Velbrück 2006. Reisman, David. Schumpeter’s Market: Enterprise and Evolution. Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA: Elgar, 2004. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “From Experimental Systems to Cultures of Experimentation.” In: Gereon Wolters and James G. Lennox (eds.). Concepts, Theories, and Rationality in the Biological Sciences. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995, 107–22. — An Epistemology of the Concrete: Twentieth-Century Histories of Life. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. — and Michael Hagner (eds.). Die Experimentalisierung des Lebens. Experimentalsysteme in den biologischen Wissenschaften 1850–1950. Berlin: Akademie, 1993. Rothe, Katja. Hören auf die Katastrophe. Experimente im frühen europäischen Radio. Berlin: Kadmos 2009. — and Roland Innerhofer. “Regulierung des Verhaltens zwischen den Weltkriegen. Robert Musil und Kurt Lewin.” In: Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 33.4 (2010), S. 365–381. Schumpeter, Joseph A. “The Process of Creative Destruction” [1942]. In: idem. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: Allen & Unwin, 1976, 82–85. — The Nature and Essence of Economic Theory [1908]. Trans. by Bruce A. McDaniel. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2010. Sennett, Richard. The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Stemberger, Gerhard. “Zur Kritik einiger theoretischer Annahmen und Konstrukte der Gestalt-Therapie.” In: Gestalt Theory: An International Multidisciplinary Journal 20.4 (1998), 283–309. Stiegler, Bernhard. Taking Care of Youth and the Generations. Trans. by Stephen Barker. San Francisco: Stanford University Press, 2010. Tanner, Jakob. “‘Weisheit des Körpers’ und soziale Homöostase. Physiologie und das Konzept der Selbstregulation.” In: idem and Philipp Sarasin (eds.). Physiologie und industrielle Gesellschaft. Studien zur Verwissenschaftlichung des Körpers im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998, 129–69. Tarde, Gabriel. La Logique social [1893]. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1904. Reprinted online: http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/tarde_gabriel/la_logique_sociale/ logique_sociale_part_1.pdf (October 5, 2010). — Monadologie et sociologie [1893]. Paris: Empêcheurs de penser en ronde, 1999. Reprinted online: http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/tarde_gabriel/ monadologie/Monadologie_et_socio.pdf (October 5, 2010). — L’Opposition universelle. Essai d’une théorie des contraires. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1897. Reprinted online: http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/tarde_ga briel/opposition_universelle/Opposition_universelle.pdf (October 5, 2010). — Les Lois sociales: esquisse d’une sociologie. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1899. Reprinted online: http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/tarde_gabriel/les_lois_ sociales/les_lois_sociales.doc (October 5, 2010). — Social Laws. An Outline of Sociology [1899]. Trans. by Howard C. Warren. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009. Reprinted online: http://socserv.mc master.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/tarde/laws.pdf. — “Economic psychology” [1902]. Trans. by Alberto Toscano. In: Economy and Society 36.4 (2007), 614–43. — The Laws of Imitation. Trans. by Elsie Clews Parsons. New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1903. Thrift, Nigel. “Pass It On: Towards a Political Economy of Propensity.” In: Matei Candea (ed.): The Social after Gabriel Tarde. Debates and Assessments. London: Routledge, 2010, S. 248–270. Vogl, Joseph. Kalkül und Leidenschaft. Poetik des ökonomischen Menschen. 3rd ed. München: diaphanes, 2008.

Code Decay: Organizational Performance and Destructivity Robert Schmidt In software development, “code decay” refers to the increasing difficulty and intricacy of code modification. Software developers and programmers often report that code that has been modified over a longer period of time becomes “buggy” and finally “decays,” so that each new change requires ever more work, a disproportionate amount of time, and the error margin becomes higher. This can finally lead to a stage when the program can no longer be modified. The phenomenon of code decay exemplifies a destructive, organizational, socio-technical dynamic: The decay of code can be seen as a process of performative transformation. This article delineates and analyses the evolution of code decay through ethnographic workplace observations. The destructive processes which emerge are then discussed in relation to destructivity in socio-technical systems and given further contour in comparison with another empirical case study – an oil tanker spill on the Mississippi River. Both empirical case studies of destructivity are finally situated within debates on performativity and practice taking place in social and cultural studies.

I The first empirical case study takes place in a small software development firm.1 The company specializes in programs for hospital administrations – socalled hospital information systems (HIS). A HIS is meant to optimize hospital processes. It plans hospital bed management, automates operation theater management, orders laboratory work, administrates data, keeps track of completed procedures and bills health insurance companies. Our story begins when one of the two company directors finds the code for an open source hospital information system on the web, a HIS developed for an American hospital. A plan is made to modify the software and offer it to hospitals with which the company already has business contacts. After a successful presentation, contracts are signed with two clinics. The HIS software is to be adapted for and installed at these clinics. Further research however reveals that another company is already working on the modification of this program for a German hospital. As a next step, some modifications are bought from this company.2 1 The following case study stems from fieldwork conducted some time ago, during which I spent six week-long phases in the field over the course of a year as a participant observer at the company’s worksite. For a more exhaustive description see Schmidt 2008. 2 With this step, the company enters a grey area of licensing law right from the start. For example, there is the question of whether the company that developed the open source program and the firm looked at here are not obliged to release the source code since they themselves are using open source code. At the project’s start an agreement is made with the client hospitals: they are to receive the HIS source code when the project is completed so that they may make future modifications and add-ons themselves. However this prospect of transparency becomes less and less tangible as the

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One of the software developers employed by the company is awarded the HIS project. He has only been working at the firm for a couple of weeks. The HIS project is his first independent assignment – a difficult task since the modifications purchased were written in the programming language PHP, which he does not know. After he familiarizes himself with the language, the developer soon notices that the program fished from the internet and worked on by another company has a “grossly neglected source code. The problem is, we’ve practically sold our client this software without it actually being finished.”3 Whereas at the project’s start, management had assumed that the HIS was a well-documented and upgradable program that they had purchased very inexpensively and with which they could turn a profit by expending only minimal effort, the programmer develops another impression. As he works, the HIS codebase reveals itself to be an unruly tangle of old, badly documented code, pieces of code that are executable, but impenetrable and various new additions and modifications. His exhortations that the company has gotten into a very difficult project, with a much higher labor input than originally calculated, initially goes unheeded. Neither the client nor management are at first interested in the quality of the code. The former expects regular presentation of new functionalities that meet its demands, upon which – not unimportantly – interim partial payments of the project sum are contingent. Management however gradually comes under pressure because of the poor condition of the code. Repeatedly, functionalities cannot be delivered by the stipulated date. Using a strategy that the programmer refers to as “quick and dirty programming,” “faked” features are often presented to the client. They are programmed quickly at the cost of systematic planning. After the meeting with the client they are then either modified, integrated into the codebase or deleted – and every once in a while this last step is also forgotten. In this manner, the proliferation of the code, and with it the program’s faultiness, continues to increase.4 In this situation the programmer entrusted with the HIS project is finally able to convince management that it would be better to program the HIS software anew. “I said then, there’s no helping it, it’s the same amount of work whether we keep trying to understand and change the existing program or instead proproject progresses. As described below, conflicts between the company and one client arise in which questions of intellectual property rights and the intelligibility of the code play a central role. 3 The quotes in quotation marks are not verbatim transcriptions. They are memos of discussions and utterances taken from my field notes. All citations have been translated from German by Laura Radosh unless otherwise noted. 4 Kent Beck elucidates what the programmer calls “quick and dirty” programming in his treatise on software development methods Extreme Programming Explained by describing the difference between the internal and external quality of a program: “External quality is quality as measured by the customer. Internal quality is quality as measured by the programmers. Temporarily sacrificing internal quality to reduce time to market in hopes that external quality won’t suffer too much is a tempting short-term play. And you can often get away with making a mess for a matter of weeks or months. Eventually, though, internal quality problems will catch up with you [...]” (Beck 1999, 18).

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gram it again from scratch. Especially if the idea behind it is to maybe sell it again a couple of times.” With this proposal the programmer exhibits a conventional stance, typical of engineering culture. The quality of the code should be ensured by planned, systematic procedure and its uncontrolled growth should be prevented. He furthermore links an economic argument to his proposal: If the program is planned and developed anew from scratch, it is sure to be consistent and error-free. It could then be adapted to meet additional clients’ needs more easily. The labor invested at the start can be made use of multiple times. The decision to tackle programming from scratch is very labor intensive. This leads to a failure to meet contractual delivery dates. At the time of the second fieldwork phase in March, the project – that had begun in August of the previous year and was supposed to have been completed by December – is still not finished and has reached a critical stage. One of the managers reports that the clients had in fact in the meantime agreed to the proposal to reprogram the HIS to meet their specific needs. During an earlier phase of close and very productive cooperation however, one of the clinics had decided that in the future it wanted to market the HIS software in development together with the software company. When the company was not open to this proposal, an open conflict erupted. The conflict revolved around questions of code property rights and around the knowledge that went into program development. The code fabricated to date remains in the main an inscrutable tangle. It is still made up of the source code of the administrative software developed for American hospitals, modifications that were purchased, newly-programmed features and a new program design that in the meantime has been connected with the other pieces of code. In the latter, know-how from the clinic that commissioned the firm plays an ever greater role. The clinic, by reflecting on its own workflows and processes, which it is forced to do because of its cooperation with the software firm, is gaining expertise on typical hospital administration processes. The clinic representatives feel that they deserve the main rights to the software in development because it documents their specific knowledge about the economical organization of hospitals, as one of the CEOs reports when he returns frustrated after a meeting with the client. The software firm “merely coded” the program, one of the clinic directors had remarked disparagingly. They shouldn't overestimate their know-how, the programmer retorted. Often enough during meetings at the clinic he had witnessed heated discussions in which it became clear that hospital management didn't understand the workflows in their own organization. “The last time we sat there for four hours and had to listen to them fight among themselves. They didn’t talk to us at all anymore. Without us they still wouldn't know how their shop actually runs.” The conflict comes to a head. The clinic threatens to stop working with the software company and to hire a programmer themselves for the further development and implementation of the HIS. The software firm doesn’t get

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very upset about this. “They’ve got something coming if they think another programmer could just pick up and continue where we left off” one of the programmers working on the project says. “They might have the source code, but they have it without any comments.5 No uninformed programmer would know what to do with it.” If fact, in the end, the clinic gives in. A follow-up contract is signed on further cooperation for the development of the HIS. In the conflicts between the software firm and its client that arise in the course of the project, the functions to be fulfilled by the HIS software are often a point of contention. While the clinic’s demands stem from its organizational understanding, the software firm proposes procedures that stem from the logic of the program and its interest in selling the software in development to other clients. The company argues that the clinic’s processes should not simply be modeled by the HIS, but rather optimized, that is changed and reorganized. At the crossroads of these positions, the programmer must decide anew each day whether to use the existing code, create the features the client wants to see the “quick and dirty” way, continue to systematize the codebase or to write new code. He is in no way only fulfilling previously agreed upon requirements. In programming practice, for every design or test of a functionality, such – necessarily vague – requirements are instead constantly defined anew, and always differently – practical interpretations of the client’s wishes and the company’s interests.6 In the course of the project, the code became a hotly contested object of knowledge, continually destabilized and restabilized by various practices and strategies.7 5

The HIS code is a hybrid of different (phonetic and operative) written forms. Changes or new functionalities are – more or less regularly – documented, meaning accompanied by written commentary. Code is therefore made either comprehensible or incomprehensible through the practice of programming. The use of a certain programming language should therefore not only ensure that the source code written by the programmer can be transformed by a compiler into a machine-readable assembly language or bytecode. The programming language should also guarantee that code written in this language is intelligible to all members of the community of practitioners familiar with the language. In this way, programming means not (only) giving instructions to a computer but also explaining to others which operations the computer should perform when the code is executed (cf. Button and Sharrock 1995, 233). In the case of HIS source code examined here, the great extent to which intelligibility depends upon supplemental, written documentation and comments becomes clear. By dispensing with documentation and comments and by writing esoteric code or using hacked programs that run without a hitch, but at the same time conceal what they are doing, it is possible to make code unintelligible despite the principal legibility of the programming language used. 6 In a similar vein see Kristoffersen: “Programming might be seen as exactly a social activity which produces, rather than is subject to the production of requirements, features and design trade-offs. Moreover, and more radically, these ‘design artifacts’ are skillfully and carefully under-determined and perhaps even made exactly unspecifiable enough, to work for programmers. (…) Programming cannot or should not be seen as a ‘result’ of design, which ideally and productively could be mapped from ‘a’ design. Design work (…) is a constitutive element of programming itself” (Kristoffersen 2006, 10). 7 Code has some characteristics in common with objects of knowledge as subjects of research. Like an object of knowledge, it is “always in the process of being materially defined” (Knorr Cetina

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At the same time, during the course of the project the relationship between the code and the programmer becomes more and more difficult. It is increasingly dominated by a contradiction: On the one hand, the code becomes ever more closely related to the developer in charge of the project. Everyone involved in the end assumes that the intelligibility of the code is inseparable from his individual cognitive abilities – that the knowledge about the code therefore exists only in this one programmer’s head. The socio-cultural convention of programming as an isolated, individualized mental effort contributes decisively to this personalization of knowledge (cf. Schmidt 2008, 285ff.). On the other hand, the code also takes on a life of its own as the project progresses. It becomes a rampant, active entity that, for example, unexpectedly reacts to the addition of one functionality by disabling another. Repeatedly, after minor changes are made, pieces of code which had long been forgotten, but were implicitly connected suddenly make themselves known. In the course of the project a relationship emerges between the code and the programmer, mediated by the socio-cultural form of practices and the intersection of the various strategies of the participants, in which both the transparency and the intelligibility of the code as well as contextual knowledge about the code become precarious. This outline of the history of the project is a record of a socio-technical process of deterioration. In computer science, the term code decay is common for this process. Already unstable in an early phase, but not at a point in time that can be isolated in retrospect, the dynamic of code decay accelerates during the course of the project. It finally leads to a stage at which the code can no longer be modified. Each change leads to unintended, unintelligible, mysterious and flawed reactions; each time one bug is fixed, new bugs are created and proliferate somewhere else. This decay finally undermines the HIS project to the extent that it is abandoned. In this case study, the code is at first a technical construct that is generated in the course of the project and that finally increasingly deteriorates. As the project progresses, the code functions as a decisive agent and as a participant8 of the failing software project whose actions are increasingly incalculable. Because the digital bits out of which code is made are not subject to the elements, a program has the potential to function forever in the way in which it 1997, 17). According to Knorr Cetina, objects of knowledge “continually acquire new properties and change the ones they have. But this also means that objects of knowledge can never be fully attained, that they are, if you wish, never quite themselves” (ibid.). In our context however the code is not situated in academia, but in an economic, commercial setting. It is not the object of epistemological research interests, but of conflicting private economy interests of the contractual parties clinic and software firm. 8 This understanding of code as a participant of the software process follows the methodological approach of Actor Network Theory (Latour 2005). Actor Network Theory rejects a differentiation between humans who act and artifacts declared unable to act in order to be able to observe and describe the interaction of all participants or rather, all actants (Akrich and Latour 1992, 259).

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was developed. Software cannot actually get old or go bad – under the condition that no changes are made to its hardware or its software environment. However it is just such changes in software’s constitutive technical-organizational environment that are – as the outline of the case study above shows – the order of the day in the life of software. Hardware is constantly being further developed and operating systems are continually being renewed and improved. More importantly, demands on program functionalities and performance change continually and often quite suddenly in organizational contexts. Therefore software programs, if they are to continue to function, must be modified continuously. During this process, the phenomena of deterioration and wear and tear described by the term code decay begins. In this way – in accordance with its socio-technical nature – software seems to be subject to temporality, historicity, an aging process: The more often a program has already been overhauled, the more complicated, expensive and subject to faults repair becomes. Software developers and programmers unanimously confirm that this is the case (Eick et al. 2001). The case study above suggests that this is a dynamic and emergent process of deterioration that cannot be understood solely at the level of the code, but only when the organizational level of the software project is also taken into consideration. The organization provides the decisive context that connects – in a problematic way – the different, always partial, pieces of knowledge that went into the code and is embodied by the programmers; it brings together participants’ incompatible practical strategies and thus both prompts the process of decay described above and keeps it going. The organization of the software process, its infrastructure (cf. Star 1999) and its varying agents (the code versions, client, programmers, project manager and the practical strategies and forms of knowledge, etc. embodied by each) create a crisis of the contextual and organizational knowledge related to program development by the manner in which they interact and in which they initiate destructive dynamics.

II To better understand this organizational performance, let us first throw a spotlight on the connection of knowledge and organization from the perspective of organizational sociology. On this subject, Charles Perrow’s (1999, orig. 1984) classical analyses are particularly edifying. Perrow looks at organizations as socio-technical systems and is particularly interested in the destructive dynamics that can develop within organizational processes. Extrapolating from Perrow’s work, the following moves towards a concept of emergent and processual organizational performativity – a concept that can also lead to a deeper understanding of the case of code decay described above.

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Perrow’s studies – typical of the 1980s discourse on risk societies – analyze the everyday dangers of large-scale technologies such as petrochemical plants, air traffic control or nuclear power plants. These high-risk technologies and the – according to Perrow unavoidable – catastrophes and destructive dynamics associated with them are examined from the perspective of organizational sociology. Perrow thus took leave of a standpoint centered solely around actors, intention and personal interaction.9 Rather than social actors and their actions and failures (human error), Perrow brought the organizational processes of socio-technical systems to the fore. He was interested in the processual interaction of the various components of these systems (building components, technical procedures, human operators, but also symbols, communication patterns and legitimacy (cf. 1999, 64); he was interested in their organizational performance. Perrow concentrated on how humans, with their interpretations of situations and practical anticipations of a system’s conditions, interact with technical processes. For example, in the interaction of measuring and controlling instruments, it can be seen that not only technicians and repair people continually make decisions, but also all other “system components”10 and that events within a system often interact in complex, hidden and unpredictable ways. Socio-technical systems are characterized by the interconnection of different kinds of knowledge – in the form of procedural requirements, explicit knowledge personified by human beings and automated knowledge delegated to artifacts. As Perrow made clear using a plethora of examples, destructive dynamics are sparked predominantly by a complex coupling and interaction of these differential forms of knowledge. This is illustrated particularly well by an accident on the Mississippi River aboard the oil tanker Dauntless Colocotronis (ibid., 73ff.) – an example that is examined in the following in light of the question posed here about organizational performance and destructivity. When on 22 July 1977 the Dauntless Colocotronis scrapes the top of an unnoticed wreck lying on the river bed, which had been mapped incorrectly, a small wound is made in the bottom of the tanker. Oil leaks. The leak is exactly at the point where the tank meets the pump room. Some of the oil leaks into the pump room, becomes warmer and more viscous and finally leaks into the engine room. The heat in the engine

9 “Perhaps the most original aspect of the analysis is that it focuses on the properties of the systems themselves, rather than on the errors that owners, designers and operators make in running them. Conventional explanations for accidents use notions such as operator error; faulty design or equipment; lack of attention to safety features; lack of operating experience; inadequately trained personnel; failure to use the most advanced technology; systems that are too big, underfinanced or poorly run. [...] What is needed is an explanation based on system characteristics” (Perrow 1999, 63). 10 Luhmann (cf. 1988) accordingly understands organizations – as I shall explain in more detail below – as recursive, closed systems within which decisions are made that refer to decisions made within the organization. Decisions are here understood as events. Socio-technical systems have consequently technologically automated certain decision making processes as chains of events.

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room causes it to evaporate, creating an explosive gas. In engine rooms, running motors always create sparks. The gas explodes. Fire breaks out. This disastrous interaction of oil and running motors – unanticipated when the tanker was constructed – this unexpected coupling of events, is not recognized as such by the ship's operators. At the same time the spatial proximity of the oil tank and the pump room shows that the system’s designers failed to anticipate and completely rule out this possibility. In this sense, the wall between the two rooms has multiple meanings; two system components are not only separated, but also closely joined by this wall. The warmed and viscous oil makes possible an interaction between the two that was not built into the system. Without knowing about the chain of events that had preceded the fire – because the crew could not know that the fire was caused by oil from the tank that had evaporated and become gaseous – the cause of the fire in the engine room is conjectured. The fire is fought with water hoses. This exacerbates the destructive dynamic that had already begun; the heated oil is distributed better and made more flammable. Although the chain of events cannot be reconstructed until after the fact and is not obvious while it is going on, the operators must react by making decisions during the event. After protective devices and extinguishing equipment are brought on board, a fire door is opened to begin extinguishing the fire. At that moment there is a series of explosions. They are caused by empty gas tanks in which residual gases have heated up. The gas tanks had been placed there by crew members who at this point in time have long since left the ship to get to safety. In choosing this site for the tanks they had been following safety regulations. The regulations did not say where to leave gas tanks, but stated only that they may not be directly adjacent to the engine room and its sparks. As the reconstruction of the accident showed, it was purely by chance that the gas tanks exploded in the exact moment the fire door was opened. There was no causal relationship between the explosions and the opening. However the remaining systems operators, who are in the process of attempting to put out the fire, interpret the explosions wrongly. They assume that the heated oil from the engine room is the cause and has created explosive gases. Therefore they cease trying to extinguish with water – that would only better distribute the oil they believe to be in the room and make it more flammable. They close the fire door and abandon the room to the flames. In this sequence of events – a disastrous acceleration of destructive dynamics – there is an interaction of security regulations, empty gas tanks, a fire that has already broken out on board as well as crew members and their practical knowledge of heated oil and extinguishing fires. Following Perrow, we can define these unpredictable interrelations as a complex interaction. The organizational features of complexity and coupling play a decisive role in Perrow’s analysis. While closely coupled components represent the ideal orga-

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nizational design for linear systems (for example a large bakery that often changes the input of raw materials and products in order to bake different sorts of bread in succession) and allow the quick modification of processes, close coupling of complex systems carries a high risk potential. It can lead to the unpredictable interaction of system components: “I will refer to these kinds of interactions as complex interactions, suggesting that there are branching paths, feedback loops, jumps from one linear sequence to another because of proximity and certain other features [...]. The connections are not only adjacent, serial ones, but can multiply as other parts or units or subsystems are reached” (Perrow 1999, 75). The complex interactions aboard the Dauntless Colocotronis set off by exploding gas tanks could therefore only happen because the elements identified above were closely linked to one another as units of the socio-technical organization of an oil tanker. The escalation of destruction dynamics that then took place were processed by the organization. Niklas Luhmann’s theory of organization can also help us understand the Dauntless Colocotronis accident as a case of organizational performativity. Luhmann proposes that one see an organization as a closed recursive system that is comprised of decisions; its autopoiesis is manifest in that it “reproduces decisions out of decisions” (Luhmann 1988, 166). Decisions are thus seen as events that define the limits of reciprocal contingencies for one another and disappear as soon as they are generated. The elementary units of an organization cannot therefore stand on their own. Organizations can only exist within a continuous performance of self-creation in the form of consecutive events of decision-making. From this perspective, destructive dynamics such as the Dauntless Colocotronis accident can be reconstructed as contingent autopoietic chains of decisions. This means that accidentally simultaneous events such as the opening of the fire door and the explosion of the gas tanks are also treated as organizational decisions in an organizational context that “vanish as soon as they are created and thus cannot be changed, but only give occasion to the creation of new decisions, of which the same is true” (Luhmann 1988, 169). The destructive organizational performativity that begins can thus be understood as an emergent phenomenon: It is produced in the process of organizing (Weick 1979) as contingent organizational self-creation or – as in the empirical cases outlined above – self-destruction.11 From a performativity theory perspective, such emergent processes are particularly interesting. The destructive course of events described in Perrow’s analyses as chains of events, amplifications and resonances are interdependent and at the same time contingent developments within the organization that 11

Weick sees organizations as formations that continually, processually create themselves. “The idea of process implies impermanence. The image of organizations that we prefer is one which argues that organizations keep falling apart and that they require chronic rebuilding. Processes continually need to be reaccomplished” (Weick 1979, 44).

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can neither be traced back to external disturbances, a lack of rationality in individual organizational units nor to inappropriate behavior by individual members of the organization. Destructive dynamics such as the gradual deterioration of the HIS software or the snowballing of events in the Dauntless Colocotronis accident are rather unpredictable emergent developments created by an ever new interaction of decisions and occurrences. This interaction points to the fact that both organizations are constituted and reproduced in time. They are subject to the logic of organizational practices, that is predominantly routine processes and activities that are repeated in a continually similar manner and are at the same time characterized by shifting temporality (différance – Derrida 1982). This implies a fundamental instability due to the ever present possibility of deviation and otherness.12 The interplay of decisions and events is however not, as in Luhmann’s theory, solely an interplay of communication, planning and recursive actions. In both cases – the HIS software and the Dauntless Colocotronic – it is clear that in particular technical, automated processes, certain physical effects and reactions of material organizational components as well as the interaction of technical constructions, apparatuses and infrastructures with the tacit, routine bodily performance of the participants are of key importance. These practical occurrences are performative in the sense that as they progress, a transformation takes place: By being performed, functional socio-technical organizational procedures change into processes of decay and destruction. Neither in the case of code decay nor in the case of the Dauntless Colocotronic is the destructivity described merely a moment of production – as in for example the concept of creative destruction popularized by Schumpeter (2005). Instead, both empirical cases culminate in a final stage of destruction without it being clear how it might be possible for productive organizational practices to ensue. In the events described, the performative therefore appears to be an undermining, destructive and negative power and not a creative, positive power.

12 Ortmann speaks in this context of the “constant self-deconstruction of organizational structures” (Ortmann 2008, 212) – a process that in turn initiates the self-generation of the need for consulting. Whether one could thus take countermeasures against destructive processes such as those described here remains an open question according to Ortmann. He believes it important, when analyzing the efficacy of intervening by consulting, to avoid the false dichotomy of the “determinability” vs. the “uncontrollability” of organizations. From a practice theory perspective, the play of organizations can perhaps be influenced by evaluation, consulting and change management; however their emergent effects are “indeterminable” (ibid.).

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III The cases outlined above therefore also reveal a broader understanding of performativity gained only by expanding the limited speech act theory model of performativity (cf. Schmidt and Woltersdorff 2007) and by including step by step implicit forms of knowledge, tacit, bodily performances and symbolicmaterial, tangible-technical and physical processes. The performativity of the social is thus integrated in and conceptualized as an element of social practices (Schmidt 2010). It is understood as one aspect of the interaction of the participants, agents and infrastructures of these practices. The speech act theory of performativity concentrated at first only on a particular type of utterances that not only state the facts or conditions of the social world, but in and through the act of speech create them (Austin 1962). Thus the “social magic” (Bourdieu 1991, 42) of linguistic utterances, investitures and classifications is brought to the fore. Their efficacy does not however arise from language itself.13 The magical force of language can only unfold if there are, on the one hand, social institutions with certain social conditions and symbolic power and, on the other hand, preexisting dispositions of people who recognize the performative linguistic utterances and investitures. Bourdieu uses this argument to show the social context and basis of linguistic performativity. This opens the door for a social science perspective on performativity (cf. also Alexander et al. 2006) that defines the unit of analysis for understanding performative processes not as speech acts or as texts but as cultural, meaningful, material-symbolic social practices. In this broader, sociology of practice definition, the subject – who in speech act theory is given a prominent position as the initiator of performative linguistic utterances – is pushed out of the spotlight of analytic interest in favor of social (linguistic) situations, without however simply being eliminated. From the perspective of situated social practices, not only the subject is awarded agency. Alongside speech acts and the skillful corporeal activity of participants, the (inter)action of artifacts – such as the actions of service robots or the operations of software interacting with other participants and agents – receives increased attention. This praxeological decentralization of the subject in favor of a focus on the concrete manifestations of distributed agency (cf. Rammert 2008) can, for example in the HIS software case described above, help us to develop an empirical sensibility for the activities, forms of knowledge, practical cognitions and agencies situated in the software process – distributed in particular among different programmers and pieces of code. Seen in this way, the phenomenon of code decay is not the result of accumulated individual programming mis13 “In fact the illocutionary force of expressions cannot be found in the very words, such as ‘performatives,’ in which that force is indicated or, better, represented, in both senses of this term” (Bourdieu 1991, 107).

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takes, but rather can be understood as an effect of organizational performativity. Due to distributed agency, it develops as an emergent result of the interaction between different participants and agents within the organization. This broadening of the concept of performativity to include a sociology of practice perspective also has repercussions for the common usage of social science concepts. In the present context, it implies redefining the term “organization.” By focusing on the process of the production of social facts, on the iterative act of performance, on temporal repetition, on the use of signs and artifacts, on corporeal routines and on citations with no prior original, the concept of performativity shifts the conceptual focus of the analysis. Rejecting the common assumption of organizational sociology – that organizational structures, functions and problems exist that are separate from practice – the focus is now shifted towards practices of execution and performance: towards “doing” in all of its temporality and processuality. This replaces an elaborated theory of organization applied to empirical case studies with an analytical and empirical reconstruction of the practices of organizing. From such an empirical-analytical perspective, it is now easy to understand how in the HIS software case study the performance of the practices of organizing slowly leads to decay and disintegration. This connection can be understood best by looking at the agency of the code. The code, by playing a part in the practices of organizing, is at the same time agent and catalyst of the destructive dynamics. Because it acts not only as a passive, but also as a (re)active operative entity, the continuing modification of the software continually creates situations in which pieces of the code perform erstwhile tasks and organizational conditions in a modified context. In this way, the code performs the organization by destroying it; it destroys the organization by performing it. Translated by Laura Radosh

References Akrich, Madeline and Bruno Latour. “A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Humans and Non-Human Assemblies.” In: Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (eds.). Shaping Technology, Building Society. Cambridge: MIT Press, 259–264. Alexander, Jeffrey C., Bernhard Giesen, and Jason L. Mast (eds.). Social Performance. Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Austin, John L. How to do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon, 1962.

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Beck, Kent. Extreme Programming. Das Manifest. München, Boston, and San Francisco: Addison Wesley, 2003. — Extreme Programming Explained. Embrace Change, Amsterdam: Addison-Wesley Longman, 1999. Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Trans. by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Button, Graham and Wes Sharrock. “The Mundane Work of Writing and Reading Computer Programs.” In: Paul Ten Have and George Psathas (eds.). Situated Order. Studies in the Social Organization of Talk and Embodied Activities. Boston: University Press of America, 1995, 231–258. Derrida, Jacques. “Différance.” Margins of Philosophy. Trans. by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, 1–28. Eick, S., T. Graves, A. Karr, J.S. Marron, and A. Mockus. “Does Code Decay? Assessing the Evidence from Change Management Data.” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 27 (2001), 3–12. Knorr Cetina, Karin. “Sociality with Objects. Social Relations in Postsocial Knowledge Societies.” In: Theory, Culture and Society, 14.4 (1997), 1–30. — “Sozialität mit Objekten. Soziale Beziehungen in posttraditionalen Wissensgesellschaften.” In: Werner Rammert (ed.). Technik und Sozialtheorie. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 1998, 83–120. Kristoffersen, Steinar. “Designing a Program. Programming the Design.” Team Ethno Online 2 (2006), 13–24; online: http://www.teamethno-online.org. uk/Issue2/Kri stoffersen.pdf (August 05, 2011). Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Luhmann, Niklas. “Organisation.” In: Willi Küpper and Günther Ortmann (eds.). Mikropolitik. Rationalität, Macht und Spiele in Organisationen. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1988, 165–185. Moebius, Stephan. “Handlung und Praxis. Konturen einer potsstrukturalistischen Praxistheorie.” In: idem and Andreas Reckwitz (eds.). Poststrukturalistische Sozialwissenschaften. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008, 58–74. Ortmann, Günther. Organisation und Welterschließung. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2008 Perrow, Charles. Normal Accidents. Living with High Risk Technologies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Rammert, Werner. “Where the Action Is: Distributed Agency Between Humans, Machines, and Programs.” In: Uwe Seifert, Jin Hyun Kim, and Anthony Moore (eds.). Paradoxes of Interactivity. Perspectives for Media Theory, Human-Computer Interaction, and Artistic Investigations. Bielefeld: transcript, 62–91. Schmidt, Robert. Soziologie der Praktiken. Konzeptionelle Studien und empirische Analysen. Habilitationsschrift. Technische Universität Darmstadt, 2010.

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— “Praktiken des Programmierens. Zur Morphologie von Wissensarbeit in der Software-Entwicklung.” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 4 (2008), 282–300. — and Volker Woltersdorff. “Drohen und Verheißen. Zur Performativität von Macht und Subjekt.” In: Eva Heisler, Elke Koch, and Thomas Scheffer (eds.). Drohung und Verheißung. Mikroprozesse in Verhältnissen von Macht und Subjekt. Freiburg: Rombach, 2007, 9–25. Schumpeter, Joseph. Kapitalismus, Sozialismus und Demokratie. Stuttgart: UTB, 2005. Star, Susan Leigh. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 3 (1999), 377–391. Wieck K. Social Psychology of Organizing. 2nd edition. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison Welsley Publishing Co., 1979 (first edition 1969).

List of Contributors

Nikita Dhawan is Junior Professor for Political Science with a research focus on Gender and Postcolonial Studies at Goethe-University Frankfurt. In Spring 2008 she was Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, New York. From October 2006 to May 2007 she was Maria-Goeppert-Mayer Guest Professor at the Institute of Political Science, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. She received her doctorate in philosophy in 2006 from Ruhr-University Bochum and holds a double M.A. in German Studies and Philosophy, from Mumbai University. Her research specializations are feminist postcolonial theory and political philosophy. Her book Impossible Speech: On the Politics of Silence and Violence came out in 2007 at academia Richarz. Barbara Gronau, Dr. phil., is a lecturer at the Theatre Studies Department of Freie Universität Berlin. In 2006 she completed her PhD with a study on the interferences of theatre und installation art, which received the “Joseph Beuys Research Award” in 2011 (Theaterinstallationen. Performative Räume bei Beuys, Boltanski und Kabakov, Fink 2010). Her current research focuses on contemporary art and aesthetics with a special emphasis on the question of omission as an aesthetic strategy. (Performanzen des Nichttuns, Passagen 2008; Ökonomien der Zurückhaltung. Kulturelles Handeln zwischen Askese und Restriktion, transcript 2010; both co-edited with Alice Lagaay). Since her interest is also in theatre practice, she regularly works as a dramatic advisor for theatre productions and she has also curated a number of international theatre festivals. Kristiane Hasselmann, Dr. phil., is a lecturer and research fellow at the Theatre Studies Department of Freie Universität Berlin. She studied Theatre, English Philology and Psychology in Leipzig, Toronto and at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. She earned her doctorate with a historiographic study analyzing the freemasonic claim to self-invention as a case study of an ethics of habitus rooted in the Aristotelian tradition and renewed in the eighteenth century. From 2008 to 2010 she was managing director of the Collaborative Research Centre “Performing Cultures.” Her current research project, entitled “Hidden Dimensions – Explorations of Latent and Actual Taboo-like Norms,” considers transformations of the historical dialectic between taboo and the breaching of taboo in contemporary performative culture. Her recent publications include: “Freemasonry and Performance,“ in: Henrik Bogdan and Jan A.M. Snoek (eds.). Brill Handbook on Contemporary Freemasonry (forthcoming).

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Steffen K. Herrmann, M.A. (philosophy), is currently completing a PhD project on “Symbolic Vulnerability. Recognition and Misrecognition in Hegel and Levinas” at Freie Universität Berlin. He studied philosophy, sociology and literature in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. His main research interests lie in the field of social, moral and political philosophy. He is co-editor of two anthologies on language and violence: Verletzende Worte. Die Grammatik sprachlicher Missachtung (transcript 2007); Philosophien sprachlicher Gewalt. 21 Grundpositionen von Platon bis Butler (Velbrück 2010). For further reading see his essay “Social Exclusion,” in: Paulus Kaufmann, Hannes Kuch, Christian Neuhäuser, and Elaine Webster (eds.). Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization: Human Dignity Violated (Springer 2010, 133–150). Alice Lagaay, Dr. phil., is a research associate at the philosophy department of Freie Universität Berlin where from 2002 to 2010 she was employed at the Collaborative Research Centre “Performing Cultures.” Since completing her doctoral thesis in 2007 with “Towards a Philosophy of Voice. Reflections on the Sound – and Silence – of Human Language,” her work has focused on the performativity of silence, secrets and not-doing as well as on the relationship between theatre and philosophy. Publications include: Metaphysics of Performance (Logos 2001); Medientheorien. Eine philosophische Einführung (co-ed. with David Lauer, Campus 2004); Nicht(s) Sagen (co-ed. with Emmanuel Alloa, transcript 2008), Performanzen des Nichttuns (co-ed. with Barbara Gronau, Passagen 2008); Ökonomien der Zurückhaltung (co-ed. with Barbara Gronau, transcript 2010); “Passivity at Work. A Conversation on an Element in the Philosophy of Giorgio Agamben” (with Juliane Schiffers), in: Law and Critique 20.3 (2009), 325–337. Alice Lagaay is currently working on an anthology with Laura Cull entitled Performance and Philosophy. Michael Lorber, M.A., is working on a doctoral dissertation entitled “Between Redemption and Productivity. Johann Joachim Becher and the Performativity of Alchemical Knowledge in the Early Modern Period.” He studied Drama at the Tiroler Landestheater as well as Theater Studies, Philosophy and Sociology at Freie Universität Berlin where from 2005 to 2010 he was a researcher within the project “Theatrum Scientiarum” of the Collaborative Research Centre “Performing Cultures.” Main research interests: theatricality in arts and natural philosophy from the Early Modern period to Enlightenment. His recent publications include: “Alchemie, Elias artista und die Machbarkeit von Wissen in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in: Markus Hundt and Steffen Ohlendorf (eds.). Diskursivierung von Wissen in der Frühen Neuzeit (Akademie Verlag, forthcoming); Spuren der Avantgarde: Theatrum alchemicum. Frühe Neuzeit und Moderne im Kulturvergleich (=Theatrum Scientiarum, vol. 6) (co-ed. with Helmar Schramm and Jan Lazardzig; Walter de Gruyter, forthcoming).

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Renate Lorenz is an artist and cultural scientist, currently working on a queer approach to contemporary art, embodiment and temporality. Her recent German publication is Aufwändige Durchquerungen. Subjektivität als sexuelle Arbeit (Laborious Crossings. Subjectivity as Sexual Labour. transcript 2010); an upcoming English publication Queer Art (transcript 2012). Her art work (together with Pauline Boudry) has been shown internationally, most recently at the 54th Venice Biennial. In their staged films and film installations, practices and materials from the past are often re-embodied, usually photographs or films, referring to and excavating forgotten moments of queerness in history. Their recent film installation is called No Future/No Past, their recent artist book Temporal Drag (Hatje Cantz 2011). Renate Lorenz is currently Professor for Art and Research at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Katja Rothe studied Psychology, History, German Literature and Cultural Studies at Humboldt Universität Berlin. She is Junior Professor for Performing Arts at Berlin’s University of the Arts. Her fields of research are the History of Performing Arts, the History of Science (psychology, pedagogy, ergonomics), History of Media (Radio, TV), and Gender Studies. She is currently working on a research project on the relation between performing arts and behaviour research in the 20th century entitled “Soul-Staging.” Her book Katastrophen hören. Experimente im frühen europäischen Radio was published in 2010 by Kadmos. Robert Schmidt is Visiting Professor for Sociology at the Technical University in Darmstadt. After studying sociology and theatre in Erlangen, New York and Berlin, he completed his doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin and his habilitation at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 2010. From 2000 to 2010 he was a research fellow at the Collaborative Research Centre “Performing Cultures” at Freie Universität Berlin. His research focuses on Theories of Practice, the Ethnography of Work and Organisation, and the Sociology of Education. His most recent publication is the book Soziologie der Praktiken. Konzeptionelle Studien und empirische Analysen (Suhrkamp, forthcoming). Jenny Schrödl is a postdoctoral research associate at the Theatre Studies Department at Freie Universität Berlin. She is currently conducting research on gender performance and new technologies. In July 2010 she received her PhD at the FU Berlin (Collaborative Research Centre “Performing Cultures”) with a study on the aesthetics of voice in post-dramatic theatre. She has numerous publications on voice and listening. Publications include: Kunst-Stimmen (coed. with Doris Kolesch; Theater der Zeit 2004); Stimm-Welten. Philosophische, medientheoretische und ästhetische Perspektiven (co-ed. with Doris Kolesch

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and Vito Pinto, transcript 2009); Vokale Intensitäten. Zur Ästhetik der Stimme im postdramatischen Theater (transcript 2011). Rebecca Wolf, Dr. phil., is Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsche Museum in Munich, where she is currently working on her research project “Sounding Objects. On the Materiality of Musical Instruments (1800-1920).” From 2008 to 2010, she was Research Assistant in musicology at Freie Universität Berlin with the project “Military Music as Sounded Insignia of the State” (Collaborative Research Centre “Performing Cultures”). From 2004 to 2007, she was a PhD candidate at the graduate school “Körper-Inszenierungen” at Freie Universität Berlin, and in 2008 she finished her dissertation in musicology at the University of Vienna with a study on musical automatons. In Vienna, she was a visiting lecturer in musicology for the 2010–11 academic year. Her recent publications include: Resonanz. Potentiale einer akustischen Figur (co-ed. with Karsten Lichau, Viktoria Tkaczyk, Fink 2009); “Terror und Therapie. Musikalische Form und die Poetik der Trauerarbeit nach 9/11” (with Kyung-Ho Cha), in: Limbus 4 (2011), 259–276; Friedrich Kaufmanns Trompeterautomat. Ein musikalisches Experiment um 1810 (Steiner 2011). Volker Woltersdorff (aka Lore Logorrhöe) received a PhD in Comparative Literature at Freie Universität Berlin with a thesis on gay coming out narrative and practice: Coming out: Die Inszenierung schwuler Identitäten zwischen Auflehnung und Anpassung (Campus 2005). From 1999 to 2010 he was a research assistant at the Institute of Comparative Literature of FU Berlin and a member of the Collaborative Research Centre “Performing Cultures.” He is currently a fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI) Berlin. His research fields are Queer Theory, Gender and Cultural Studies with a focus on the entanglement of heteronormativity and neo-liberalism. His most recent English publication is: “Paradoxes of Precarious Sexualities. Sexual subcultures under neo-liberalism,” in: Cultural Studies 25.2 (March 2011), 164–182.