THE PROLONGED DEATH OF THE HIPPIE 1967–1969
12–14 SEPTEMBER 2019 CONFERENCE|MUSIC|POETRY
WITH ED SANDERS ANNE WALDMAN AND MANY OTHERS
1 The poem of America has reached the time of my youthful rebellion the years of Civil Rights marches & what they used to call the “mimeograph revolution” with its stenciled magazines & manifestoes & the recognition of rock & roll & folk-rock as an art form […]
Its consonants are the clicks of kisses in tipis & rapes in huts of fists in gloves & skins in rainbows of death more common than hamburger and life more plentiful than wheat of women more certain & men more willing to wake up thinking each day could be paradise & weeping or shrugging when it wasn’t
[…]
And then comes the question of evil. It was hard for a person like myself […] to realize my Nation veers in & out of evil
but evil is the only word for some of it
From: Edward Sanders, America: A History in Verse, Vol. 3: 1962–1970 (2004). THURSDAY, 12 SEPTEMBER
11:00 –12:30 Intro (p. 8) Welcome Address (Philipp Schweighauser) Introduction (Christian Hänggi) Timeline 1967–1969 (Peter Price)
14:00–15:45 Panel: Music (p. 9) Chair: Christian Hänggi
“A Short Time To Be There”: Life, Death, and The Grateful Dead (Andrew Shields)
The Hippie and the Freak. Reflections on a Pop-Cultural and Sub-Cultural Difference in Regard of Frank Zappa’s Art (Alexander Kappe)
Why Bob Dylan Did Not Sing in Woodstock And Why He Was No Hippie (But a Real Hipster) – The Re-Invention of Popular Music as a Medium of Poetry and Messianic Hope (Martin Schäfer)
16:00–17:30 Panel: Religion & Spirituality (p. 12) Chair: Balázs Rapcsák
From Sex to Superconsciousness, from A Cup of Tea to Wild Wild Country (Sangam MacDuff)
Zen? Or: the Art of Hippie Maintenance. The Transformation of the Countercultural Value of “Quality” in Contemporary Academia (Andreas Beer)
Unveiling the “Hidden Religions:” The Countercultural Spirituality of Diane di Prima and the Way towards Hippie Esotericism (Stefan Benz)
19:00–22:00 Keynote Lecture & Performances (p. 15) The Ups and Downs of Hippie, 1967–1969: Three Years in the Universe (Ed Sanders)
Anne Waldman sings songs and performs poetry
Andrew Shields reads poetry
Dead Dreams play Grateful Dead tunes FRIDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER
11:00–12:30 Panel: Altering Minds (p. 16) Chair: Pius Vögele
Teaching Stoned (Neil Forsyth)
De-conditioning, Brainwashing or Enlightenment? LSD and the Psychedelic Revolution Against the Backdrop of the Vietnam War (Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet)
The Doors of Conception: On The Importance of Unlearning and a Return to Innocence Through the Psychedelic Sublime in 1960s Happenings (Tyler Burba)
14:00–16:00 Panel: Film (p. 19) Chair: Ridvan Askin
From On the Road to Easy Rider: The “Energy Unconscious” and the Deadly Illusion of Freedom in Literature and Film (Ania Mauruschat)
Godard, Varda and the Hippies (Glen W. Norton)
Accepting the Hippie Inheritance. On Paul Thomas Anderson’s Film Inherent Vice (Nina Zimnik)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – Tarantino’s Revisionary History of Hippie Death (Scott Loren)
16:15–17:15 Panel: Czechoslovakia (p. 23) Chair: Lesley Loew
The Life and Death of the Czechoslovak Hippie: The Entanglement of the Beat Generation and the Czech Underground Movement (Nataša Pavković)
The Czechoslovakian Illegal Communes and Their Fight with the State (Josef Rauvolf)
4 19:00–22:00 Keynote Lecture & Performances (p. 25)
Sixties Kinetics (Anne Waldman)
Ed Sanders reads poetry and sings songs
Tyler Burba reads poetry and plays songs (with Simon Truog and Dario Meier)
SATURDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER
11:00–12:30 Panel: Resonances (p. 26) Chair: Peter Price
Synthesizing Man, Machine, and Environment: Electronic Psychedelia (Shintaro Miyazaki)
The Tuning of the World (Jamie Allen)
Sun Ra’s Quest for Immortality in the Context of the Hippie Counterculture (Pius Vögele)
14:00–15:30 Panel: Around the World (p. 29) Chair: Ania Mauruschat
Children of Anarchy: San Francisco Upheaval in the Summer of 1967 (Sofia Baliño)
The Transnational Life and Afterlife of the Hippie: On the Entangled History of a Counterculture in the United States and Mexico (Stefan Scheuzger)
The Era of the Hippie in Switzerland (Regina Wecker)
15:45–16:30 Onward! (p. 31) The Prolonged (Ecological) Rebirth of the Hippie: Assessing the Counterculture’s Heritage 50 Years On (Christian Arnsperger)
Concluding Remarks (Christian Hänggi)
5
2019 marks the 50th anniversary of a inception of the hippie era, death seemed historical period that arguably came to to be just around the corner, and not just a close with the Altamont Free Concert because the millions of military and civilian in 1969. The era of the hippie—or flower- losses of the War in Vietnam helped to give power or peace-and-love—has shaped our birth to a peace movement. The Doors’ current times like few if any periods of such 1967 debut album ends with the dark “The short duration. If these three years were End” and in the same year, the San Fran- eradicated from history, it is hard to imag- cisco Diggers pronounced the death of ine that women, people of color, or queer “Hippie, devoted son of Mass Media.” The people would have the same rights today, figure of the hippie can, in fact, be read as a de iure and de facto. In the cultural sphere, product of American mass media that was popular music, perhaps even avant-garde discovered in early 1967 and discarded by music, would be something entirely differ- the end of 1969. Over the course of the ent, and the same goes for film, dance, and three years under examination, the end of literature. In the realm of technology, those the era was pronounced and prophesied a three years saw the moon landing, the first number of times, the last straw being the ATM, and the early internet. Altamont Speedway concert. Yet the peace and love rhetoric and the From the vantage point of fifty years later, iconic images of Woodstock and San Fran- the simple narrative of the hippie needs to cisco, the riots of Paris and Prague, and the be reexamined and problematized. The beatific faces of young people on LSD and conference in the city where LSD was dis- marijuana concealed a much darker reality covered asks if and how a death wish or a that was lurking beneath the surface. The death drive was always already inscribed in years of 1967–1969 also saw numerous the hippie movement. Are death, failure, and race riots, the assassinations of Martin Lu- breakage an inherent vice of hippie culture ther King and Robert Kennedy, the murders (to use the title of Thomas Pynchon’s novel of the Manson Family, the commodification that deals with the end of the hippie era)? of the music industry, the rediscovery of The conference focuses on the years youth as a market, the first deaths of icon- 1967–1969 and is not interested in reit- ic rock icons, and a proliferation of heroin erating the laments about the sell-out of and cocaine. A host of influential musicians the peace-and-love generation. Instead, it came from families with military and intelli- attempts to shed light on underexamined gence backgrounds, toying with satanism dark aspects of hippie culture while paying and occultism in various forms under the tribute to and honoring its achievements for auspices of the military gaze. a better, more holistic world. From the beginning of the mass-mediated The Hippie is dead. Long live the Hippie! 7 INTRO phenomenon zeroed in on the Haight-Ash- Thursday, 11:00–12:30 bury neighborhood of San Francisco and a scene built largely from the widespread Welcome Address availability of LSD, eventually leading tens Philipp Schweighauser, Professor of North of thousands of additional young people American and General Literature and Head to move in by the summer, the so-called of the Department of Modern Languages Summer of Love. and Literatures, University of Basel. By that fall, the scene in San Francisco had collapsed under its own weight and a group Introductory Remarks of the longer-term countercultural residents A few words of introduction (see also pre- of the Haight announced the death of the vious page) by the organizer of the confer- hippie, staging a mock funeral as a theat- ence, Christian Hänggi. rical happening. But the hippie lived on in the popular/media narrative reaching its Christian Hänggi received an MSc in high point with the Woodstock festival in Communication Sciences from the Univer- the late summer of 1969. Between those sity of Lugano (2003), a PhD in Media and two summers, a mounting carnage of Communication from the European Gradu- death and destruction, both riots and po- ate School (2007) and a PhD in Anglophone litical assassinations at home and an un- Literary and Cultural Studies from the Uni- fathomably brutal colonial war in Southeast versity of Basel (2017). He has published Asia, took its toll on the American psyche. on subjects such as hospitality, advertising, By the time the Manson murders revealed conspiracies in American history, Thomas the darkness that had already been lurking Pynchon, South Park, and Karlheinz Stock- in the hippie scene since the Summer of hausen. His next book, Pynchon’s Sound Love, the mass media was finally ready to of Music (Diaphanes) is scheduled for pub- pronounce the hippie dead. lication in February 2020. From the vantage point of fifty years, the simple narrative of the hippie needs to be Timeline 1967–1969 reexamined and problematized. Sifting In early 1967, the American Mass Media through the timeline for unexpected tropes discovered the counterculture that had and resonances and with a focus on the been evolving over the previous decade music, film, literature, and art of 1967–1969, and summarized its style and values under Peter Price asks who was the hippie, where the emblem “hippie.” For the next several did he and she come from, and how, when, months, the media focus of the national and why did he and she die.
8 Peter Price is a composer, digital artist, the “dead” side over onto the “inscrutable” media theorist, and sonic philosopher. He Dylan, especially when Pareles notes the and his wife Megan Bridge run and curate double encore that ended the show: “The
10 140) than the collective. The critical utter- several volumes of literature as well as reg- ance of the individual, the mockery and ularly publishing his own literature. taunt of the circumstances, receives an ironic heroization, which also is not com- Why Bob Dylan Did not Sing in Wood- pletely to be trusted but which is more to stock and Why He Was no Hippie (But be trusted than the “collective action” of the a Real Hipster)—The Re-Invention of hippies. This context will be explored in the Popular Music as a Medium of Poetry lecture in particular. The following ques- and Messianic Hope tions will be discussed: What is the differ- Bob Dylan was not a hippie, and he did ence between hippie culture and freak cul- not perform at the Woodstock Festival— ture in Frank Zappa’s concept? How can but without him, there would have been this difference be made visible in his artistic no Woodstock and the whole Hippie phe- work? What significance do the difference nomenon might never have happened. He and conflict between hippies and freaks definitely was the Missing Link between have for the death of hippie culture after the Beat Movement of Ginsberg, Kerouac 1969? And finally, as a synchronous narra- et al., i. e. the true hipsters of the 1950s, tive with only a brief outline: what parallels and the so-called “Counter-Culture” of the can be drawn with the development of the (late) Sixties. In fact, 1965/1966 Bob Dylan student protests of the 1960s and left-wing WAS the ultimate hipster, lionized and ad- alternative self-understandings in Europe? mired by Ginsberg and the San Francisco poets. Why then did he “drop out” in 1967 Alexander Kappe studied Philosophy, and distance himself from the hippies, Comparative Literature and Creative Writ- consciously refusing a possible star role at ing at Freie Universität Berlin and Deutsch- Woodstock (where his long-time accom- es Literaturinstitut Leipzig. Since January panists The Band played) and choosing to 2019 he is working on his doctoral degree travel to England for an unlikely appearance with a scholarship of the Friedrich Schlegel at the Isle of Wight two weeks later? Every- Graduate School for Literary Studies at the body knows that Woodstock did not mark Freie Universität Berlin, and additionally a the beginning, but the end of hippiedom; scholarship of the Evangelisches Studien- Bob Dylan knew this from the start. In my werk Villigst. His work is supervised by Prof. lecture, I will try to show how and why. Dr. Anne Eusterschulte at Freie Universität Berlin. Additionally, he is the director of the Martin Schäfer was born in 1948 in Mel- Gesellschaft für Afrikanische Philosophie lingen (Aargau); higher education in Basel (Society for African Philosophy), editor of (philosophy and history). Doctoral thesis on
11 “Science Fiction als Ideologiekritik” (1975; jneesh’s heady mixture of free love, med- published 1977 by Metzler, Stuttgart, itation and enlightened hedonism attracted Amerikastudien, Bd. 48). Producer at Swiss hundreds of thousands of followers, or Radio from 1976 to 2013 (Schweizer Radio sannyasins, to communes in Mumbai, DRS/SRF). Lecturer on the history of popu- Pune, Oregon and around the world. But lar music in Basel from 2002 to 2018 (Me- by the early 1980s, the sannyasins were dienwissenschaft/Hochschule für Musik in a standoff with their neighbours in rural FHNW). Recent contributions: Johnny Oregon, which led to accusations of a bio- Cash – Leben, Werk, Wirkung (Suhrkamp terror attack and fears of a Jonestown-style 2008), “Bob Dylan in Switzerland: A classic massacre. Were the reactions of local resi- case of Love & Theft”, in Refractions of Bob dents merely a storm in a teacup or had the Dylan, edited by Eugen Banauch, Man- clouds been brewing since Bhagwan’s first chester University Press 2015). “Love” letters, A Cup of Tea? Combining literary analysis, cultural criticism and per- sonal reflection, I will consider the explosive RELIGION & SPIRITUALITY impact of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh on Panel | Thursday, 16:00–17:30 American popular culture, particularly in the Chair: Balázs Rapscák hit Netflix series Wild Wild Country (2018).
From Sex to Superconsciousness, from Sangam MacDuff was born in Bhagwan A Cup of Tea to Wild Wild Country Shree Rajneesh’s ashram in Pune, India. In the late 1960s, the Indian guru Bhagwan He lived in sannyasin communities until Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho) in- 1985, when Rajneesh was arrested on im- vented a new kind of hippie: the sannyasin. migration charges and the European com- Rajneesh, born Chandra Mohan Jain, was munes disbanded. Thereafter, he grew a national debating champion and Profes- up in the Findhorn Foundation, a spiritual sor of Philosophy at Jabalpur University be- community in north-east Scotland, before fore becoming a spiritual leader popularly attending the universities of Cambridge, known as the “Sex Guru.” Beginning with London, Edinburgh and Geneva, where discourses like From Sex to Supercon- he completed his PhD on James Joyce’s sciousness (1968) and his early letters to epiphanies. His academic research focus- friends (particularly those from 1967–1969), es on Joyce and modernism, with articles published as A Cup of Tea, I will explore the in the James Joyce Quarterly, Swiss Pro- rhetoric and philosophy that inspired Bhag- ceedings in English Language and Litera- wan’s vision of “Zorba the Buddha.” Ra- ture, European Joyce Studies, the James
12 Joyce Broadsheet, and Genetic Joyce tering (professional) performance (e. g. Studies. A book on Joyce’s Panepiphanal via “mindfulness”). If contrasted World is forthcoming from Florida Universi- with the popular motto of the ty Press and he is co-editing a critical edi- US counterculture, “turn on, tune in tion of Joyce’s epiphanies with Morris Beja and drop out,” Pirsig’s Zen shows and Angus McFadzean. Besides criticism, the “productive” transformation of he has also written short stories and a nov- some countercultural values—openness el about growing up in community. towards “Eastern” theosophies, individu- alism, free-mindedness and experimental Zen? Or: the Art of Hippie Maintenance. character of work ethics—into a vehicle on The Transformation of the Countercul- the road towards today’s mainstream ac- tural Value of ‘Quality’ in Contemporary ceptance. Academia Cross-pollinating Pirsig’s novel with exam- This presentation aims at complicating the ples from contemporary debates on “qual- conference’s motto: It prolongs the death ity” in the German higher education system, of the hippie into the early till mid-1970s be- my analysis discusses the early 1970s not cause it regards the era as one of transfor- as a time of prolonged death of US coun- mation of certain lifestyles and/or values. terculture(s), but as the pinnacle of its meta- The presentation centers on a critical anal- morphosis into something still prominent ysis of Robert Pirsig’s well-known and in- today, albeit in a warped form. fluential 1974 autobiography-cum-treatise- cum-novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Andreas Beer read American Studies, Ger- Maintenance, a book that promises an “in- man Literature and Political Science at the quiry into values.” The book delivers a histori- Universities of Rostock (Germany), Cork cal-philosophical discussion of what the nar- (Ireland) and Murcia (Spain). He earned his rator calls “quality,” a characteristic of human PhD in 2014 with a thesis on transnational actions—based on ontological presump- representations of US filibusters in Nicara- tions—that ostensibly borrows from the Chi- gua in the mid-nineteenth century (pub- nese/Japanese principles of Zen, translating lished by Palgrave Macmillan), has taught at them into US-American (i. e. “Western”) en- the University of Constance and FU Berlin vironments. This translation conceptualizes and currently holds a post as research fel- “quality” in life as a holistic enterprise which low at the Institute of Higher Education Re- has a clear direction: improvement in practi- search at the University Halle-Wittenberg cal matters. Pirsig’s Zen is an early example (all Germany). His research interests include of today’s efforts for the purposes of bet- transnational Cultural Studies, indigeneity,
13 coloniality and subalternity in the Americas for the vast and multi-faceted cosmology as well as theories of non-representation. her oeuvre creates. Her poetry spins an The latter loom large in his current research intricate web of diverse spiritual traditions project, which investigates contemporary from Native American culture to European cultures of dissent in the Americas. More on mysticism to Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, his (academic) persona, his publications and creating a metaphysical vision that pro- his current whereabouts can be found at ductively renegotiates the humanist dual- www.andreasbeer.info. isms of body and mind, self and world, hu- man and nonhuman. The cosmology she Unveiling the “Hidden Religions:” The developed took on a pronounced counter- Countercultural Spirituality of Diane cultural element by drawing in particular on di Prima and the Way towards Hippie what she called the “hidden religions,” spir- Esotericism itual traditions that have evolved counter to Left to themselves people / grow their hair./ the dominant global belief systems, such Left to themselves they / take off their shoes. / as Gnosticism, Vajrayana Buddhism, but Left to themselves they make love / sleep also Tarot, alchemy, and magic. Di Prima’s easily / share blankets, dope & children / work thus calls for and establishes a form they are not lazy or afraid / they plant seeds, of political protest which is substantiated by they smile, they / speak to one another. an eclectic spiritual vision, a concept that (Diane di Prima, “Revolutionary Letter #4”) inspired Hippie esotericism as a means of defiance against the so-called US military Diane di Prima, poet, playwright, teacher, industrial complex. Through a compara- feminist, and social activist has often been tive analysis of di Prima’s poems “Magick hailed as a literary and public figure who in Theory and Practice,” “Life Chant,” and connected the 1950s counterculture of the “Paracelsus,” this talk expounds how di Beat Generation with the Hippie culture of Prima fleshes out and employs the coun- the 1960s. While she, like most Beats, had tercultural politics of the “hidden religions,” a reserved stance on the naïve slogan of and how she thus supplies a methodolog- “Love and Peace,” she nevertheless pro- ical template for a political activism that moted the Hippie movement as their right- functions via spirituality. ful heir in poems such as “Revolutionary Letter #4” and through conjoint activism. Stefan Benz is an Academic Staff Member Only recently has she been (re)discovered and doctoral student at the chair of Amer- by scholars as one of the most genial writ- ican Literary and Cultural Studies (AIII). He ers associated with the Beats, in particular studied English, History, and Philosophy at
14 the University of Mannheim and Swansea THE UPS AND DOWNS OF HIPPIE, University, Wales. His dissertation investi- 1967–1969: THREE YEARS IN THE gates proto-posthumanist negotiations of UNIVERSE. A COMBINED READING, cognition and consciousness in the poet- RECITATION, SINGING, EXORCISM, ry of Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, and AND ANALYSIS OF KEY EVENTS Diane Di Prima. His research focuses on 1967–1969 theories of posthumanism, the Process Keynote Lecture | Thursday, 19:00 Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, Ed Sanders and Buddhist philosophy. Oth- er research interests include the study of contemporary US American song lyrics and the relationship between literature and music. From August to November 2018, he conduct- ed research into the reception of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy in Beat Literature at Wayne State University, Detroit, under the supervision of Ste- ven Shaviro. His most recent publication “Meat Thyself: New Materialist Ethics in the Poetry of Michael McClure” appeared in the Winter 2018 issue of ANTENNAE – Edward Sanders (*1939) is a poet, musi- The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. cian, activist, historian, writer and one of the central countercultural figures of the late 1960s. He acted as a bridge between the Beat generation and the 1960s coun- terculture and has been featured on the cover of Life Magazine. Ed Sanders is the author of thirty books. His most recent one, illustrated by Rick Veitch, is Broken Glory, the Final Years of Robert Kennedy. His manifesto, “In-
15 vestigative Poetry” has inspired several ALTERING MINDS book-length biographies in verse, includ- Panel | Friday, 11:00–12:30 ing Chekhov, a Biography in Verse, and Chair: Pius Vögele The Poetry & Life of Allen Ginsberg. Other books of his include Tales of Beatnik Glory Teaching Stoned (4 volumes published in a single edition), Imagine being very stoned at a party in the 1968, a History in Verse; and The Family, Haight-Ashbury in 1968. Word somehow a history of the Charles Manson murder circulates that a police raid is imminent (re- group. His 1987 collection Thirsting for minder: everything we were high on was Peace in a Raging Century won an Amer- illegal in the summer of love). You make ican Book Award. In late 2011, Da Capo it down the stairs and out into the street, Press published his memoir of the 1960s, walk along till you come into Golden Gate Fug You. Park, and there, as if it has just landed from He has received a Guggenheim fellowship Mars, is the Conservatory of Flowers, all lit in poetry, a National Endowment for the up. Eventually you make it along 19th Av- Arts fellowship in verse, an American Book enue to San Francisco State, where you Award for his collected poems, a 2012 teach a class. PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Prize, and This anecdote is an example of what was other awards for his writing. going on there in those days. Another: Sanders was the founder of the satiric folk/ Picked up a hitch-hiker one day who told rock group, The Fugs, which has released me he was part of a group that followed 18 albums during its nearly fifty-year history. the dictates of Helter Skelter. I did not un- Sanders also released eight solo albums. derstand, but gave him a couch for the He lives in Woodstock, New York, with night. Later it turned out he belonged to his wife, the essayist and painter Miriam the Manson gang, before it broke itself up. Sanders, and both are active in environ- I don’t know what happened to him, but I mental and other social issues. think he was headed home to his mum. I didn’t recognize him on any of the pictures Ed Sanders is introduced by Christian of the gang. Hänggi. Neil Forsyth, Professor Emeritus at the After the keynote lecture, there will University of Lausanne, is the author of The be poetry and music performances by Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth Anne Waldman, Andrew Shields and Dead (1989/93), The Satanic Epic, 2002 (both Dreams. Princeton), a biography of Milton (Oxford:
16 Lion, 2008) and essays on topics as that LSD provided the impetus for many of various as Gilgamesh, Homer, Marlowe, the key political and spiritual values of the Shakespeare, Milton’s Bible, Andrew Mar- period, especially in its earlier phase (up vell, Frankenstein, Emily Dickinson, Dick- to and including 1967), including the anti- ens, Rushdie, Alice’s Wonderland, D. H. war movement, the nascent environmental Lawrence, Angela Carter in Japan, Gas- movement, and the quest for authenticity ton Bachelard, and the relation of art to and inclusiveness in human relationships. science. His article on filming the Shake- Each of these goals is closely linked to the spearean supernatural was updated for an specific effects produced by this molecule edition of Macbeth in 2011, while an essay on the human nervous system, a topic on Milton’s Satan was published in the which was the subject of intense inter- Cambridge Companion to Paradise Lost in est by the United States government and 2014. His work on Shakespeare and the military as well as by hippies and spiritual supernatural has been extended and is seekers. I will therefore also discuss the soon to be published by Ohio UP. complex and surprising relationship of LSD to the Vietnam War, another key influence De-conditioning, Brainwashing or En- on the tone and development of 1960s lightenment? LSD and the Psychedelic counterculture. Finally, I will look at the two Revolution Against the Backdrop of the figures most closely associated with the Vietnam War promotion of psychedelics, Ken Kesey and This talk will focus on one of the most Timothy Leary, critically contrasting their important and unique ingredients of the radically different philosophies (one playful 1960s counterculture, namely, the psy- and demystifying, the other serious and choactive compound known as LSD or sanctifying), especially in relation to how “acid.” From the Human Be-In to the San LSD ended up illegal and demonized by Francisco Sound, the colorful posters as- the mainstream press (with the help of state sociated with the period, the fascination agencies like the CIA and FBI). with Eastern religion and the memorable slogan “Turn On, Tune In Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet is Profes- and Drop Out,” LSD sor of American Studies at the University shaped the arts, of Lausanne and co-director of the New music, spirituality American Studies Master’s specialization and politics of the program. Her publications include Writing era. This presen- American Women (2008, with Thomas tation will argue Austenfeld), The Poetics and Politics of the
17 American Gothic: Gender and Slavery in synthesis where the pleasure of a deeper the Nineteenth Century American Gothic meaning is revealed. In case the overstim- (Ashgate, 2010), Emotion, Affect, Senti- ulation and synesthesia didn’t do the trick, ment: The Language and Aesthetics of psychedelic drugs were used to give the Feeling (2014, with Andreas Langlotz), War sense of touching the deeper meaning. Gothic in Literature and Culture (Routledge, Indeed, many studies have shown the 2015), co-edited with Steffen Hantke, and meaning-enhacing effects of hallucinogens Neoliberal Gothic (Manchester UP, 2017), on test subjects. While proponents of LSD co-edited with Linnie Blake, as well as such as Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley numerous articles on intentional commu- focused on the individual mystical poten- nities, counterculture, feminism, queer the- tial of the experience, Ken Kesey created ory, race, film studies and popular culture. communal happenings that focused on the external by use of multimedia to simulate The Doors of Conception: On The and inspire transcendent experience. Ke- Importance of Unlearning and a Return sey’s aesthetic was also more geared to to Innocence Through the Psychedelic a violent disruption of the ego akin to an Sublime in 1960s Happenings experience of the sublime and one can Among the most iconic moving images hear this approach to transformation in associated with the hippie movement is the somewhat violent and jarring nature of the liquid light show, the visual component much of psychedelic music. This emphasis of a multimedia onslaught on the senses. on unlearning through sensory experience Underlying the sensory bombardment that developed and continued after the 1960s. was a mainstay of happenings is an idea It became an important aspect in Stan Bra- important not only to hippie counterculture khage’s visual music which strove to teach but that also harkens back to Romanti- its audience to see synesthetically and to cism: one must unlearn and transcend the unlearn the habit of seeing conceptually. conceptual trappings of reason in order to have the truth revealed. For the Romantics, Tyler Burba is a musician, poet, and schol- encounters with nature provided sublime ar whose work focuses on existential is- experience. For many hippies, it was hap- sues and the role of art in transcendence. penings: light shows, in conjunction with He is the co-author of On Becoming Mu- psychedelic music and hallucinogens, that sic: Between Boredom and Ecstasy (with artificially created an excess of sensory in- Peter Price) and author of “The Transna- tuitions to overwhelm the imagination, ide- tional Guqin Revival in Flushing, New York.” ally leading to a Kantian sublime and rational Two albums entitled Existential Hymns and
18 “Now Everybody—”: Visit Interprets Songs in the interstate highway system after the by Thomas Pynchon are due out this fall Second World War, they depend on fossil from his band Visit. He lives in New York fuel. In Imre Szeman’s words, they indulge City where he teaches inner-city students in the “fiction of an energy surplus.” Dean music history and composition. Moriarty and Sal Paradise are not both- ered by environmental concerns, to say the least, or as Yaeger puts it: “[…] On the FILM Road is fascinated with clean raw materials Panel | Friday, 14:00–16:00 and their transformation into dirty culture.” Chair: Ridvan Askin What motivates Kerouac’s protagonists to drive excessively through the US—and From On the Road to Easy Rider: The what may have inspired the hippie move- “Energy Unconscious” and the Deadly ment the most—is their longing for free- Illusion of Freedom in Literature and Film dom. A decade later in Peter Fonda and “[H]ow often do Dean Moriarty and Sal Dennis Hopper’s iconic road movie Easy Paradise stop for gas?” This question by Rider (1969), this alleged trip to freedom the American literary turns into a trip to death. scholar Patricia Yaeger A few years before the addresses a crucial as- first oil crisis in 1973,Easy pect of Jack Kerouac’s Rider, what Michael Ziser famous novel On the calls the “grim tale of gas- Road (1957), one of the oline-powered liberty” foundational texts of and its “[f]etishistic treat- the hippie movement. ment of the combustion The aspect that Yaeger engine,” still celebrates observed is what she the myths of the road calls “The Energy Un- and the unlimited mobility conscious” (in reference of postwar American so- to Fredric Jameson): for ciety. However, beneath her, the protagonists of the surface of its social Kerouac’s novel are “gasaholics,” obses- critique lurks the abyss of the disenchant- sively crisscrossing the continent in all ing of that “fiction of an energy surplus.” available vehicles. Just like all of their fellow This presentation will compare the novel On American citizens since the proliferation of the Road and the movie Easy Rider with re- the car and the huge national investment spect to their narrative treatment of gasoline,
19 the fuel for their dreams of freedom. The primary work is Lions Love (…and Lies), inherent death drive of their “Energy Uncon- shot in California, June 1968. Using count- scious” may only become visible from the er-cinematic forms inspired by cinema-ver- vantage point of fifty to sixty years later. ité-style shooting and Brechtian reflexivity, each film struggles to become not only a Ania Mauruschat is an independent radio witness but a catalyst of the counterculture scholar and radio artist who has published movement. on literature, film, sound/noise, avant-gar- Paradoxically, in striving to be revolutionary de, media art and digital culture. She themselves, these “outsider” filmmakers was trained as an editor at the Deutsche offer reflexive glimpses into Hippie culture’s Journalistenschule (DJS) and received an approaching demise. Although Godard is interdisciplinary diploma in journalism and known in this period for rejecting his own sta- literature from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Uni- tus as famous auteur, Pennebaker captures versität, both in Munich (Germany). Cur- his various attempts at authorial control over rently she is writing her doctoral thesis at countercultural chaos. Take for example the the University of Basel on the epistemology famous rooftop performance by Jefferson of radio art with a special focus on noise, Airplane; Godard’s frantic attempts at direc- the avant-garde and digitization. Since tion from the building across turn it into a 2018, she has been an elected member comedy of errors. Varda’s work goes further of the doctoral program Epistemologies of in its embrace of madness and even death. Aesthetic Practices (ETH/UZH/ZHdK) at As Hollywood-fringe stars (including Warhol the Collegium Helveticum in Zurich. starlet Viva, the composers of the musical Hair, and filmmaker Shirley Clarke) act out Godard, Varda and the Hippies Hippie fantasies bathed in the sunshine of This paper examines attempts by Jean- the Hollywood Hills, Bobby Kennedy’s as- Luc Godard and Agnès Varda, two signifi- sassination intervenes as a real-life death cant members of the French New Wave, to knell, and by the end of the film Varda herself document and deconstruct the late-1960s’ will perform a suicide attempt which may or counterculture movement in America. God- may not be connected to reality. ard’s primary vision of Hippie culture occurs Seen in tandem, these portraits reveal both in his abandoned project 1 AM (1 American a utopian Hippie dream and a world in cri- Movie), shot during the fall of 1968 in New sis which belittles or ignores it. They are York and California, later reconstructed by time capsules of the hope, confusion, and famed documentarian D. A. Pennebaker ultimate downfall of late-1960s countercul- into the film 1 PM (1 Parallel Movie). Varda’s ture in America.
20 Glen W. Norton teaches in the Depart- can we salvage from the era? This paper ment of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid offers a Lacanian reading of how and what Laurier University, Ontario, Canada. His we “inherit” from the hippies and it does primary research focuses on phenome- so through an analysis of the filmInherent nological approaches toward the study of Vice. cinema, with a special interest in ties be- Think of the scary figurines from ancient tween the expression of lived temporality Egypt or Afghan death cults sitting on and existential ethics. His most recent pub- Freud’s desk: Freud knew our ancestors, lications include an analysis of temporality family, culture, or predecessors like the hip- in the road movies of Benoît Jacquot, as pies hold sway over us in the unconscious. well as a discussion of modernist character Therefore, what we inherit is not “con- embodiment in the early work of Jean-Luc structed” by society or manageable on the Godard. He is the digital curator of Cine- level of the ego but inheritance, as Freud ma=Godard=Cinema, an online, open- observed in “The Ego and the Id,” runs access website dedicated to the scholarly through the id. The id is the reservoir of jou- study of Godard’s work. His forthcoming issance, of forms of disgusting enjoyment book, Lived Moments: From Neorealism to that disturb the subject. I will thus argue the New Wave, charts evolving modernist that it is precisely through an “acceptance” conceptions of the intertwining of cinema of these disturbing leftovers that we can in- and lived experience within and between herit political potentialities from the hippies. these movements. Lacan is clear on this theoretical dimension of inheritance in “Encore,” adding that the Accepting the Hippie Inheritance. jouissance we inherit has a communist di- On Paul Thomas Anderson’s Film Inher- mension, it belongs to all. ent Vice (2014) On the level of form as well as on the level Contemporary interest in the “prolonged of diegesis, the film Inherent Vice fights any death of the hippie” includes “the darkness offer of identification and political epipha- that had been lurking in the hippie scene”— ny. Doc, the protagonist, leads the view- as if hippie culture was marked by a certain er through an endless accumulation of at version of the Freudian death drive, reso- times shocking or incomprehensible left- nant with Pynchon’s poignant concept of overs of hippie culture and their jouissance. “Inherent Vice”: Historically, aspects like To support the diegesis formally, Anderson Aryan suprematism, sexual exploitation, employs two cinematic techniques. He or capitalist greed continue to mark the uses the long take (sequences without flower power of 1967–1969. What, then, cuts) the way Hitchcock did in Rope, his
21 1948 film on fascism in which the lack of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood— cuts signifies the negation of difference that Tarantino’s Revisionary History of marks fascism. Instead of transcendence, Hippie Death a way out, hope, etc., Inherent Vice offers Marking the ten-year anniversary of hippie disgusting, discombobulated narrative se- death, Joan Didion famously reflected on quences like the 6-minute sex scene be- the Manson cult murders as an irascible tween Doc and Shasta that calls on the scene of cultural rupture: “Many people I viewer to negate, negotiate, or somehow know in Los Angeles believe that the Six- integrate jouissance. ties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, In another re-definition of a cinematic tech- ended at the exact moment when word nique that made him famous, Anderson of the murders on Cielo Drive travelled overuses the close-up, irritating the viewer like brushfire through the community, and with a recurrent display of Joaquin Phoe- in a sense this is true. The tension broke nix’s face. We are bored to the point of be- that day. The paranoia was fulfilled”(The ing annoyed by the close-ups, namely, the White Album). Director Quentin Tarantino’s focus on Doc’s face and its opacity under- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (OUTH) mine the identification with a character and (2019) inscribes itself into the very same its context that a close-up normally pro- chronotope described by Didion in order vides (c. f. Pasolini’s “Gesichtspanorama”). to rewrite this peripatetic scene of hip- pie death. Following Inglorious Basterds Nina Zimnik is a full-time professor at the (2009) and Django Unchained (2012), University of Applied Sciences, Lucerne, OUTH is the third installment in Taranti- School of Engineering and Architecture, In- no’s revisionary cinema. While each film stitute of Humanities and Natural Sciences. returns to a historical scene of trauma Areas of research include psychoanalysis, whose impact has left an indelible mark on gender, film, communication studies, writ- the (American) cultural imaginary, the revi- ing, “Swissness,” film. In 1997, she received sionary films are also comparable in their her PhD in Comparative Literature from the deployment of the cine-aesthetic story-tell- State University of New York at Buffalo ing techniques that have made Tarantino’s (USA). signature style distinctive. His encyclo- pedic indexing of pop-culture referenc- es draws on an eclectic mix of nostalgic audio-affect and iconic-memory intertexts, which are aesthetically arranged through a register of self-reflexive (post-postmodern)
22 ironic pastiche. Another important shared AROUND THE WORLD: attribute in Tarantino’s revisionary cine- CZECHOSLOVAKIA ma is the Brechtian fusion of aesthetic, Panel | Friday, 16:15–17:15 generic, ideological and, consequently, Chair: Lesley Loew political oppositions: comedy and the hor- rific, historical record and narrative fiction, The Life and Death of the Czechoslovak pop-culture and counter-culture, and a Hippie: The Entanglement of the Beat poetics-politics of social inclusion with and Generation and the Czech Underground through an aesthetics of violence. Mark- Movement ing the fiftieth anniversary of hippie death, This thesis sets out to offer a central-east- what sets OUTH apart from Tarantino’s re- ern European perspective on the Hip- visionary cinema is the manner in which pie by exploring the entanglement of the the culturally, medially, and ideologically Czech underground movement with both specific gesture of the film performs the the Beat Generation and the later Hip- very chronotope it inscribes itself into. pie movement. While the thesis will also consider the simultaneous developments Scott Loren teaches new media studies at in the countercultures of both the US the University of St. Gallen. He received a and Czechoslovakia as far back as the PhD in English Literature with a focus on 1940s and 1950s, the main focus will be American Studies from the University of on Czech underground literature of the Zurich in 2005 and is currently writing a 1960s and the 1970s. I will examine Beat post-doctoral thesis on representations of literature—and the American countercul- technosocial transition. His research inter- tural spirit that came with it—which found ests include gender, genre, media hybrid- its way to Czechoslovakia thanks to the ity, posthumanism, psychoanalysis and Czechoslovak politics of the liberalization visual culture. He is coeditor of the volume period of the 1960s, as a source of inspi- Screening Economies: Money Matters and ration for the production of Czech under- the Ethics of Representation (Cuonz, Loren, ground literature and journals, specifically Metelmann; transcript, 2018). the samizdat journal Vokno. The figure of Ivan Martin Jirous, known as “Magor,” will function as a centerpiece connecting the different relevant art forms: from music to literature to visual arts. In attempting to es- tablish a Czechoslovak model of the Hip- pie, the central question will be to what de-
23 gree Beat literature can be credited as an was a rich cultural life. They printed illegal instigator of the Czech underground and samizdats, made independent—uncen- in how far the Czech underground refers sored—culture, writing, poetry, music. Each back to its own Czech literary history and weekend there were hundreds of visitors tradition. coming from the whole country to be there and to listen to the rock music they could Nataša Pavković studies Literary Studies not listen to elsewhere as these bands were at the University of Basel with a focus on officially banned. Of course, the secret po- English and Slavic literatures. She is cur- lice and the Communists hated this cultural rently part of the Russian-Swiss transla- subversion and did all they could to crush tion project “Vzaimodeystviya – Wechsel- it. The secret police set these houses on wirkungen.” Her research interests include fire, the state confiscated them. There were literary and cultural translation as well as constant police searches and arrests. 20th century Czech literature. Despite this the people kept finding new country houses as the old ones were liqui- The Czechoslovakian Illegal Communes dated. This went on till the late 1970s and and Their Fight with the State they are an important witness to the fight Although we have been living behind the with the totalitarian power. David fighting Iron Curtain there were inofficial flows of Goliath. Fight doomed to defeat but import- information about the hippies, their life- ant to be fought. style, ideas and music. All of this strongly resonated among young people. Girls and Josef Rauvolf (*1953) is a Czech journalist, boys were wearing long hair, dressed like writer and translator (his translations include their contemporaries in San Francisco, and numerous works by W. S. Burroughs, Allen wanted to live the same life they did. Some- Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and others). He is thing that under strict rules of our regime the leading Czech expert on the Beat Gener- was not so easy and everybody had to ation, widely publishing and lecturing on the count on police harassment and prosecu- subject. In addition to that, he is the author of tion by the state power. a number of documentaries for Czech pub- As in California, West Germany or Denmark, lic service TV and radio broadcasts about the independent hippie communes started the Beat Generation and the counterculture to grow. Young people tried to buy deserted in general. Currently, he works on a book country houses, farms, renovate them and about Allen Ginsberg’s 1965 Prague visit. live there by their own standards. And not He was a co-author of an award-winning only that, in all of these communes there 60-minutes 27-part documentary series for
24 Czech TV Alternative Culture (1977) about over 50 books of poetry including TRICK- beats, hippies, punk, squats, independent STER FEMINISM (Penguin 2018), a series cinema etc. One part was dedicated to the of meditations on emergency and sanc- Czech country communes. tuary. Fast Speaking Woman (City Lights) continues to stay in print. Her book-length poems from Penguin include Marriage: A SIXTIES KINETICS Sentence, Structure of The World Com- Keynote Lecture | Friday, 19:00 pared to The World, Manatee/Humanity Anne Waldman and Gossamurmur, an allegory about the As a native New Yorker and denizen of the Lower East Side and an infrastructure poet- ics/activist worker and one of the founders of The Poetry Project at St Mark’s Church In-The-Bowery in 1966, Anne Waldman will present a keynote on the “scene.” The pre- sentation will include poetry, commentary, memoir, history, manifesto, discussion en- theogens, and slides of fellow poets.
Anne Waldman is a poet, professor, ac- tivist, and co-founder of two of the most important poetry/cultural institutions in the USA: The Poetry Project at St Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery and The Jack Ker- ouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa University in Boulder, Colora- do, a program she co-directed with Allen Ginsberg for a number of years. They were both arrested in the 1970s with Daniel Ells- berg protesting at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Plant. She continues to curate the cele- brated Summer Writing Program in Boulder and also works on projects in NYC. She has been called “a counter-cultural giant” by Publishers Weekly. She is the author of
25 rescue of poetry’s archive. Her 1000-page RESONANCES feminist epic The Iovis Trilogy: Colors In Panel | Saturday, 11:00–12:30 The Mechanism of Concealment from Chair: Peter Price Coffee House Press won the USA Pen Award for Poetry. She was also a recipient Synthesizing Man, Machine, and of a Guggenheim, the Shelley Award, and Environment: Electronic Psychedelia a lifetime achievement award from the Be- While the counterculture of the 1960s and fore Columbus Foundation. She appears 1970s is often ridiculed as faraway and in the recent Rolling Thunder Review – A dreamy, recent discussions showed their Bob Dylan Story directed by Martin Scors- relation to the development of the person- ese (2019). She wrote the libretto for “Ar- al computer and our current networked taud In the Black Lodge” for composer culture. In his talk, Shintaro Miyazaki dis- David T. Little which will premiere at Opera cusses not only the cultural context of psy- Philadelphia in 2020. Bard, Kinetic, a new chedelia but moreover excavates its deep book of commentary, memoir and poetics linkages with audio circuitry and electronic poetics will be published by Coffee House media. Tape manipulation, echo-effects, Press on 2020. She has performed with analog audio synthesizers and film camer- Meredith Monk, Douglas Dunn, Thurston as were the favorite media gadgets of this Moore and collaborated with artists Pat generation trying to synthesize man, ma- Steir and Richard Tuttle. She performs chine and environment with their multi-sen- with her family band Fast Speaking Music sorial experiments. (Devin Brahja Waldman and Ambrose Bye) in many parts of the world. She recently Shintaro Miyazaki is a researcher and lec- worked with a team of young artist & poets turer at the University of Applied Sciences & translators at the CECAM music school and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, within in Tlahuitotepec, Mexico. the Academy of Art and Design, Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures Anne Waldman is introduced by Agnieszka in Basel. He studied Media Studies, Musi- Soltysik Monnet. cology, and Philosophy at the University of Basel and completed his PhD on the me- After the keynote lecture, there will dia archaeology of computation and algo- be poetry and music performances by Ed rhythmics at Humboldt-University of Berlin Sanders and Tyler Burba. in 2012 (under Wolfgang Ernst).
26 The Tuning of the World logical design project of Murray Schafer’s Sound is an important part of the eco-aes- World Soundscape Project, to works like thetics and environmental pastoralism Alvin Lucier’s “I Am Sitting in A Room,” of hippiedom. Arising as a temporal and sonic metaphors and practices of this era cultural nexus of late-twentieth-century enclose potentials for integration with, and art, writing and activism, mu- responsibility for, nonhuman sic and “sonological surrounds. Projec- competence” tions of calm (Schafer) as quietude, acoustic harmo- land- ni-
scap- o u s ing, stage incorpo- broader rela- ration, bal- tions, value sys- ance and one- tems, class and race ness, charged with boundaries of hippie ethos that difficult cultural, racial and class are as potent as they are problematic. From presumptions, were a poison-cure for the the early popular science writing of Rachel hippie, and may still be prolonging our own Carlson in Silent Spring to the ecomusico- ecological ruination today.
27 Jamie Allen investigates what technolo- possibility as “the possible [that] has been gies teach us about who we are as individ- tried and failed.” His philosophical spiritu- uals, cultures and societies. He has been ality was at odds with the main tenets of an electronics engineer, a polymer chem- the Western, Christian worldview. Mainly, ist and an exhibition designer. He likes to he denied the very concept of death. In- make things with his head and hands—ex- fluenced by biblical exegesis, etymology, periments into the material systems of me- theosophical mysticism and the mythology dia, electricity, and information as artworks, of Kemet, the ancient black Egypt, he de- events, and writing. He attempts to recom- veloped his system of MythScience, which pose the institutions he works with in ways served the construction of an alien, angelic that assert the importance of generosity, identity. His reluctance to mention the date friendship, passion and love in knowledge of his birthday, his origin from planet Saturn practices like art and research. Jamie is and references to ancient Egyptian myths, Canada Research Chair in Infrastructure, while at the same time embracing new Media & Communications and Senior Re- technology such as the synthesizer, make searcher at the Critical Media Lab Basel, him one of the pioneering and most charac- Institute of Experimental Design and Media teristic proponents of the later-coined term Cultures, FHNW. Afrofuturism. While putting emphasis on being, his off-worlding and chronopolitical Sun Ra’s Quest for Immortality in the outer space becomings aim at immortality Context of the Hippie Counterculture and transcending earthly life. Focusing on “As one encounters radiant outer-space the years 1967–1969, this paper will broadly landscapes, bolts of cosmic energy, swaths investigate Sun Ra in the context of the hip- of psychedelic colors, and the imagery of pie counterculture and his reception therein. the occult, there is the striking feeling, underlying it all, that the Summer of Love Pius Vögele studies Anglophone Literary somehow occurred a decade earlier on and Cultural Studies and History at the Uni- Chicago’s South Side.” (Daniel Kreiss, 2012). versity of Basel. He wrote his master thesis on Afrofuturism and South African Hip Hop. Sun Ra became known as one of the most He is assistant at the Center of African productive avant-garde jazz musicians with Studies in Basel and at the University of over a hundred albums recorded together Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern with his Intergalactic Arkestra. From early Switzerland in Brugg-Windisch. on, he also wrote poetry and was an avid reader. Ra fully embraced the notion of im-
28 AROUND THE WORLD The paper analyzes whether a compro- Panel | Saturday, 14:00–15:30 mised sense of place propelled the ap- Chair: Ania Mauruschat parent “death drive” of the hippie move- ment that Didion describes witnessing in Children of Anarchy: San Francisco the summer of 1967, linking the choice of Upheaval in the Summer of 1967 Haight-Ashbury as a gathering place for the Joan Didion’s “Slouching Towards Bethle- children of the hippie movement to Didion’s hem,” written in 1967, famously document- extended analysis of California in her other ed “the social hemorrhaging” on display in works as a site of inherent contradictions, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San confused origin myth, and conflicted sense Francisco, with children, barely adoles- of place. The paper draws on examples cents, at the forefront. This paper argues and theories from the fields of human ge- that Didion’s choice of title, opening lines, ography, semiotics, theology, and narratol- and overall narrative approach are a delib- ogy to make this case. erate effort to foreground San Francisco not just as a site of “social hemorrhaging,” Sofia Baliño is a PhD candidate in the En- but as something far more comprehensive: glish Literature Department at the Universi- as the epicenter of societal destruction té de Genève and is writing her dissertation and rebirth in America, amid a scene of on Joan Didion and narratives of disorder “mere anarchy” being unleashed. From the under the supervision of Prof. Simon Swift. “Eden” that she compares California to in a She has a Master of Arts in English Litera- separate essay, the state has devolved into ture from the Université de Genève, as well something far more ambiguous in the late as a Master of Public Policy from Duke Uni- 1960s, returning back to the ever-present versity. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Didion question: how to figure a true Cal- English literature and economics from the ifornian sense of place when that same College of William and Mary in Virginia and place is ravaged by disorder. As Didion’s is a graduate of the Columbia Publishing “Slouching” unfolds, it parallels and engag- Course at the Columbia University School es with the apocalyptic predictions and of Journalism. In addition to her academic visions in William Butler Yeats’ poem “The background and research, she is a writer Second Coming,” which she includes as and editor with a decade of experience an epigraph to the collection that includes working on international economic affairs, “Slouching” and from which her essay specializing in trade and investment policy draws its name. and politics, as well as sustainable devel- opment.
29 The Transnational Life and Afterlife of States. The paper sums up the insights the Hippie: On the Entangled History of and interpretations which these studies a Counterculture in the United States have presented up to date and discusses and Mexico critically the ways Mexico continues to be The recently established field of historical conceived in the history of the hippies, also research on the “global sixties” promises a under the analytical approach of the “global fundamental broadening of scholarly per- sixties.” spectives on the decade considered to be of crucial importance for worldwide de- Stephan Scheuzger has been a Research velopments between the end of the Sec- Professor of the Swiss National Science ond World War and the end of the Cold Foundation and an Associate Professor of War. Particularly, the field’s agenda aims History ad interim at the University of Bern. at strengthening transnational analytical He is Privatdozent at the Swiss Federal In- approaches which include experiences in stitute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and will the then so-called “Third World” in much take up the position of Senior Researcher more prominent ways than has been done at the Liechtenstein Institute. He has been hitherto. The coincidence of apparently a guest scholar at institutions such as the or evidently similar phenomena of politi- Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Méxi- cal protest and counterculture around the co, the Universität Konstanz, or Harvard world makes such a re-perspectivation an University and a fellow of the Freiburg In- important endeavour of historical schol- stitute for Advanced Studies in Germany. arship. Mexico is one of the few “Third Before having shifted his research interest World” countries of which European and to the field of global history, he had worked US historiography on “1968” has always on and in Mexico for several years. His re- taken account. This has mainly been due search covers, among others, the areas to the massacre of Tlatelolco, with which of the history of dealing with past injustice the Mexican government successfully re- and the politics of memory; the history of pressed the student movement on the eve punishment and social control; the history of the Olympic Games. For about two de- of political repression and human rights; cades, historical scholarship has analyzed the history of Marxism and communism; political and countercultural developments the history of social movements and coun- in Mexico before and after 1968 increas- tercultures; the history of migration and its ingly in their interrelatedness, shedding also control. new light on transnational aspects of this past, particularly with regard to the United
30 The Era of the Hippie in Switzerland ONWARD! “The year 1968 is regarded as the central Saturday, 15:45–16:30 turning point of modern society. The year before, 1967, probably changed the world The Prolonged (Ecological) Rebirth more than anything that followed.” This is of the Hippie: Assessing the Counter- what an article in the Neue Zürcher Zei- culture’s Heritage 50 Years On tung (NZZ) stated in 2017. This may be a This paper takes as its starting point the commonplace for specialists of hippie cul- recognition that since the Summer of Love ture, but for Swiss historians it is not. Thirty and its brief but intense wake, we have or forty years earlier, the NZZ judged the practically lost 50 years—perhaps not Swiss hippie culture differently. But was entirely in terms of civil rights and sexual there any? Was there more in Switzerland freedom, but certainly as to what regards than the dismantling of the Zurich Hallen- environmental degradation and the com- stadion at the Stones concert in 1967, the bined geopolitics of war and resource ex- refusal of asylum and the expulsion of Tim- tractivism. The problems facing our planet othy Leary in 1972, and the fact that LSD have hardly changed, and the outcry as was invented in Switzerland? In my contri- well as practical actions spearheaded by bution I want to ask these questions and the hippies have not lost much of their talk about what Swiss society looked like in actuality. The swift and pitiless backlash 1967, when hippies challenged bourgeois that combined with media overexposure to societies. usher in the “Death of Hippie” left the true heritage of the 1960s counterculture prac- Regina Wecker is Professor Emerita of tically untapped—and therefore bruised Women’s and Gender History at the Uni- but mostly intact. The paper’s substantive versity of Basel. She is known for her claim is that, as a result, today’s move- work in feminist history and gender theory, ments for social and environmental justice women’s work, citizenship and eugenics. as well as ecological sustainability have Her work focuses primarily on Switzerland. at their disposal—and are actually (some- Her most recent book is on eugenics in times unconsciously) reviving—a treasure Switzerland and recent articles center on trove of countercultural values inherited the vote and the development of women’s from the mid-1960s. Whether it is in Neo- citizenship. Currently, she is President of paganism or in the rapidly expanding per- the Founding Board of the new research maculture and ecovillage movements, the project on Basel history. hippie is undergoing a process of rebirth which might well last longer than the first
31 birth spurt of 1967–69, and which offers fascinating per- spectives on what consciousness change and political change meant in the 1960s, and what they still mean today. In short, the hippie heritage may never have been more relevant than it is in the years 2017–2019, and this paper will attempt to explain why.
Christian Arnsperger is professor of sustainability and economic anthropology at the Institute for Geography and Sustainability of the Faculty of Geoscience and En- vironmental Studies at the University of Lausanne. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Lou- vain (Belgium) and has been teaching and research- ing for many years at the interface between economic analysis, human sciences, and existential philosophy. A specialist of post-consumerist/post-growth economic alternatives and of the link between ecological transition and the change of mentalities and lifestyles, he is also a scientific adviser to the Alternative Bank Switzerland and, in that capacity, he develops “action research” field projects and collaborations in the area of sustainable fi- nance. He has published on bioregionalism, indigenous lifeways of sustainability, the existential and cultural di- mensions of a sustainable future, and the legacy of the hippies.
32 SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Prof. Dr. Philipp Schweighauser (University of Basel), Prof. Dr. Dr. Agnieszka Soltysik Mon- net (University of Lausanne), Dr. Ridvan Askin (University of Basel), Dr. Jamie Allen (Univer- sity of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland), Dr. Shintaro Miyazaki (dito), Dr. Peter Price (Temple University, Philadelphia), and Dr. Dr. Christian Hänggi (University of Basel).
FUNDING This conference was made possible thanks to most generous support from the following institutions:
& Max Geldner Stiftung
(Sandoz/Novartis was unable to sponsor the conference for lack of funds.)
THANK YOU! Following MA and PhD students graciously volunteered to help in various capacities with the conference: Ania Mauruschat, Mirjam Müller, Pius Vögele, Balázs Rapcsák, Lesley Loew, and Nataša Pavković.
Alex Van Lierde’s experience and ready support in all practical matters and Philipp Sch- weighauser’s in institutional matters were invaluable and indispensable for this conference.
IMAGE SOURCES/CREDITS Not all copyright information was found. p. 6: The Diggers’ funeral notice for the hippie. | p. 9: From somewhere on the Internet. A Grateful Dead illustrator perhaps? | p. 14: From Ed- ward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang, anniversary edition, illustrator: Robert Crumb | p. 15: Ed Sanders, photograph: Miriam Sanders | p. 17: From Alice’s Adventures in Won- derland, illustrator: John Tenniel | p. 19: From somewhere on the Internet | p. 25: Anne Waldman, photograph: Greg Fuchs | p. 27: From somewhere on Wikipedia.
Poster and booklet design: Christian Hänggi VENUE LUNCH/DINNER Grosser Hörsaal The conference speakers and assistants English Department, University of Basel will be offered a simple lunch and dinner Nadelberg 6, 4051 Basel on Thursday at the venue and dinner on Friday at Restaurant Pinar. For other meals, [email protected] nearby options include, but are not at all https://hippie-conference.unibas.ch limited to: • Restaurant Pinar (Turkish) DIRECTIONS Herbergsgasse 1 (8) From Basel railway station (Basel SBB) • Za Zaa (Lebanese) • Take tram #8 (direction Kleinhüningen) Petersgraben 15 (9) or #11, get off at Marktplatz. Walk up • Indian Tandoori Palace Sattelgasse (60 m), then up the steps Petersgraben 21 (10) of Imbergässlein until it hits Nadelberg. • Restaurant zur Harmonie (Swiss), Turn right. The Department of English Petersgraben 71 (11) (“Schönes Haus”) is on the left hand • Restaurant Antalya (Turkish), side after 20 m. Leonhardsgraben 8 (12) • Alternative: Take bus #30 to Universi- • Ängel oder Aff (soups, cakes etc.), tät. Walk through Spalen-Durchgang, Andreasplatz 15 (13) continue right (down Spalenberg). Af- • Holzofenbäckerei Bio Andreas ter 30 m, turn left into Nadelberg. (bakery, quiches, salads etc.), From railway station Basel Badischer Bahn- Andreasplatz 14 (13) hof (Basel Bad) 4 • Take tram #6 (direction Allschwil). Get LEGEND off at Marktplatz. Follow tram direc- 1. Conference venue: English Seminar tions above. 2. Bus stop Universität • Alternative: Take bus #30 to Universi- 3. Tram stop Marktplatz tät. Follow bus directions above. 4. Hotel Zum Spalenbrunnen From Basel Airport 5. Hotel Rochat • Take bus #50 to Basel Bahnhof SBB. 6. Coop supermarket Follow tram or bus directions above. 7. Denner supermarket 8–13. See restaurants above Look up train, tram, and bus connections at www.sbb.ch. WIFI User name: hippie-2019 Password: SanFrancisco68 r 15 10 Institut 6 32 7 13A 11 se 10 n 14 s für Pathologie 13 e 12 Basler Universitätsspital Blutspendezentrum ab r Blumenrain Digital Basel 17 SRK beider Kantonalbank Humanities Wohnhaus 9 Basel 36 2 Fiorentina Lab im Hinterhof Petersga Petersg 8 11B 7 Hebelstrasse 8 38 11 4 15 Lagerstätte 15A 9 Herbergsgasse 32 Rhein ZA ZAA Mittlere Brücke - Libanesisches 6 30 Schiffl Schönbeinstrasse 11B 3 Restaurant Bevölkerungsdienste 1 2 17 4 Mittlere 28 und Migration 2 26 1 ä Brücke 2 nd 24 11B 19 1 HighDim 7 e 8 18 UB Medizin Käppelijoch Pinar elgasse
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