Cyrus Shahan a Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The
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PUNK POETICS AND WEST GERMAN LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTIES Cyrus Shahan A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. Chapel Hill 2008 Approved by: Dr. Richard Langston (Advisor) Dr. Lawrence Grossberg Dr. Jonathan Hess Dr. Alice Kuzniar Dr. Peter McIsaac ABSTRACT Cyrus Shahan Punk Poetics and West German Literature of the Eighties (Under the direction of Dr. Richard Langston) Punk Poetics and West German Literature of the Eighties investigates the literary career of punk after the demise of punk subcultures. Punk Poetics reads punk as a recycling of avant-garde aesthetics–détournement, collage and chaos–that politicized affect, authenticity, consumption and narration in the conservative morass of 1980s West Germany. Punk Poetics engages punk aesthetics using psychoanalysis, cultural studies, media theory and literary theory. The three case studies in Punk Poetics on Rainald Goetz, Thomas Meinecke and Joachim Lottmann are set up by first reading lived punk subcultures from the late seventies, particularly those around Düsseldorf. Integrated into these readings are intertextual links to music and visual arts of the period. By uncovering the anarchic textual politics of punk literature, Punk Poetics seeks to fill a gap in the literary understanding of the 1980s that is overshadowed by the traumatic decades of protest and terrorism of the 1960s and 1970s and the so-called return to normalcy since 1989. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project only reached completion because of the outstanding help of numerous friends, colleagues and advisors. My research for this project wass generously funded by a German Studies Research Grant from the German Academic Exchange Service, and I was able to continue my research in Berlin thanks to a Fulbright annual research grant. I thank all of my fellow graduate students who sat through myriad presentations on various chapters and were always ready to engage my ideas, no matter how far fetched. I am grateful for my committee members’ engagement. They were always willing to read through various drafts and were always a source of provocation without which my project would have lost its focus. My advisor Dr. Richard Langston has worked tirelessly with me on this project from my first inklings of linking punk and German literature. Alison, thank you for listening to me talk about this more than humanly possible and for making me go on walks when I thought that I did not have time to do so. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION : PUNK POETICS AND WEST GERMAN LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTIES ......... 1 Not just England’s Burning ...................................................................................... 1 Nailing Down Punk in England and Germany ......................................................... 12 German Punk: Montage and Chaos .......................................................................... 22 Punk Poetics: An Inventory ...................................................................................... 32 The Punk Corpse ....................................................................................................... 43 CHAPTER ONE : PSYCHO PUNK ............................................................................................ 50 Solingen–Berlin–Düsseldorf: S.Y.P.H. ..................................................................... 50 Paris–Munich–Klagenfurt: Rainald (Maria) Goetz .................................................. 57 The Asylum and Punk Scene: The Two Spaces in Irre ............................................ 62 Cell or Asylum: Fottner and Hippius versus Raspe ................................................. 70 Cells–Pubs–Studios: Raspe’s Motion; Other’s Stasis .............................................. 81 Asylum–Munich–Klagenfurt: Herr S. versus Raspe versus Goetz .......................... 90 CHAPTER TWO : POST -PUNK POACHING , SUBVERSIVE CONSUMERISM AND READING FOR ANTI -RACISM .......................................................... 97 Punk After 1979 ........................................................................................................ 97 FSK’s Poaching of Non-Indigenous Culture ............................................................ 105 Methodology from the Manifesto: Media-Poaching for Literature .......................... 116 Effects of Poaching: Subversive Consumerism and Anti-Racism ........................... 122 “Dallas,” History and the Limits of Poaching .......................................................... 135 iv Everyone Can Poach! ............................................................................................... 145 Politics of Poaching .................................................................................................. 151 CHAPTER THREE : THE AESTHETICS OF HATE AND THE END OF LITERATURE : JOACHIM LOTTMANN ’S MAI , JUI , JULI ............................................... 155 The Quest for New Post-Punk Spaces ...................................................................... 155 Lottmann’s Novel(s): An Inventory of Crises and Failures ..................................... 166 Literary Failure and Failure of the Popular .............................................................. 177 Fascist Spaces in the Public Sphere ......................................................................... 190 The Matrix for Hate .................................................................................................. 193 Departure .................................................................................................................. 197 CONCLUSION : WASTED YOUTH , PUNK WASTED ? .............................................................. 205 Punk Heritage ........................................................................................................... 205 Punk Memories ......................................................................................................... 209 After Punk ................................................................................................................ 215 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 217 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Punk Starts in Germany, from Verschwende deine Jugend ............................... 2 Figure 2. Punks chose both terrorism and fascism, from Zurück zum Beton .................... 8 Figure 3. Martin Kippenberger’s images, from Rawums .................................................. 37 Figure 4. Georg Dokoupil’s verse and re-designed museum sculpture, from Rawums ............................................ 38 Figure 5. Hamburger Abschaum , from Zurück zum Beton ................................................ 40 Figure 6. The Ostrich #3, from Zurück zum Beton ............................................................ 41 Figure 7. Album covers of S.Y.P.H.’s Viel Feind, Viel Ehr , from Zurück zum Beton ........................................................... 52 Figure 8. Rainald Goetz at Klagenfurt, from Die Lust am Erzählen: 25 Jahre Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis: 1983 .............................. 60 Figure 9. Images of Goetz cut into Irre itself, from Irre ................................................... 94 Figure 10. Blackface .......................................................................................................... 124 Figure 11. Blackness .......................................................................................................... 124 Figure 12. A lynching in “Pilot stirbt im Cockpit,” from Mit der Kirche ums Dorf , by Thomas Meinecke ............................................................... 132 Figure 13. Blackface or Drag?, from Mit der Kirche ums Dorf , by Thomas Meinecke ............................................................... 139 Figure 14. Drag: A Question of Reading, from Mit der Kirche ums Dorf , by Thomas Meinecke ............................................................... 146 Figure 15. Wasted Youth, from Zurück zum Beton ........................................................... 207 vi ITRODUCTIO PUK POETICS AD WEST GERMA LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTIES ot just London’s Burning Usually associated with the apex of German terrorism, the year 1977 witnessed another cultural watershed, namely punk, that went on to influence Germany in the 1980s in profound and significant ways. Reading German terrorism–the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Army Faction (RAF)–as the dominant cultural paradigm for youth from the late seventies into the eighties misses the significance of the moments of punk and its follower, New Wave. German terrorism was never interested in cultural representation–art, literature, music–it was solely, and violently, interested in politics. Punk was resolutely invested in the power of representation in politics and life. Punk Poetics explores the effects of punk’s investments in representation through its crises and failures. Punk came to Düsseldorf, West Germany–the epicenter of German punk–via the Sex Pistols and the Clash. But for early punks such as Jäcki Eldorado, “es ging darum, ein eigenes Ding zu finden […] nicht darum, irgendwelche englische Vorbilder nachzuahmen” [ it was about finding your own thing […] not about imitating some English model ] (fig. 1). 1 English punk emerged in and around London’s East End in the 1 Jürgen