contemporary critical consciousness peter sloterdijk, oskar negt-alexander kluge

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German Studies ssociation

Contemporary Critical Consciousness: Peter Sloterdijk, Oskar Negt/Alexander Kluge, and

the "New Subjectivity"Author(s): Leslie A. Adelson

Source: German Studies Review , Vol. 10, No. 1 (Feb., 1987), pp. 57-68Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the German StudiesAssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1430443Accessed: 27-06-2016 16:02 UTC

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Contemporary Critical

Consciousness: Peter Sloterdijk,

Oskar Negt/Alexander Kluge,

and the "New Subjectivity"

Leslie A. Adelson

Ohio State University

One of the few things to emerge with any clarity from the

raging debates on modernism, postmodernism, deconstruction, and

poststructuralism is that the traditional notion of a subject, defined

according to the European experience of Enlightenment, is simply

no longer - if indeed it ever was - a tenable one. Or, as Andreas

Huyssen has noted, "the discourse of subjectivity has been cut loose

from its moorings in bourgeois individualism. "I Merely to label the

quest for or the assertion of subjective identity confining or even

oppressive is, however, to beg the question as to any conceivable

moorings for "the subject" at all. Is the term itself obsolete, or is it

perhaps ground that needs to be reclaimed from the sea of scholarly

tradition and innovation, ground for "the upright gait" (Bloch) ?

Huyssen sees in contemporary French theories of post-

structuralism "a theory of modernism at the stage of its exhaustion,

[. . .] a modernism all confident in its rejection of representation and

reality, in its denial of the subject, of history, and of the subject of

history." "Doesn't poststructuralism," he asks, "where it simply

denies the subject altogether, jettison the chance of challenging the

ideology of the subject (as male, white, and middle-class) by

developing alternative and different notions of subjectivity?"2 A

"postmodernism of resistance" - Huyssen's phrase3- certainly

1. Andreas Huyssen, "Mapping the Postmodern," in New German Critique 33

(Fall 1984), p. 44.

2. Huyssen, pp. 39 and 44. See also Hal Foster, "(Post) Modern Polemics," in

New German Critique 33 (Fall 1984), p. 78.

3. Huyssen, p. 52.




58 GERMANSTUDES REVEW

calls for some notion of human subjectivity anchored in social

circumstance. This concern is not merely a theoretical one but also

informs discussions of West Germany's Alternativbewegungen,

those diverse social movements that refuse easy political

homogenization or categorization. Seeing these movements as a

rejection of either a bourgeois or a socialist claim to universalist

culture, one West German sociologist comments: "Nicht die alte

Ich-Autonomie soll restauriert werden; es geht,

gesamtgesellschaftlich gedacht, um Subjektfahigkeit."4 So the

traditional Enlightenment subject squares off against the as yet

elusive subject - if indeed there is one - of contemporary social

movements. What then does it mean to discuss "subjects of

contemporary critical consciousness"? Subjektfahigkeit is of

course not Subjektivitit, but the difficulties in discussing one are, I

think, structurally related to difficulties in discussing the other.

Precisely these difficulties will provide the focus for this paper.

Two highly unconventional texts that lend themselves to a

questioning of what it means to be subjects of critical consciousness

in the 1980s are Peter Sloterdijk's Kritik der zynischen Vernunft

(1983) and Oskar Negt/Alexander Kluge's Geschichte und

Eigensinn (1981).5 Both works can be seen - see themselves in fact

-as an attempt to reinstate the human body to its rightful place in

critical theory; to do so entails for both a certain distancing from the

Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. Sloterdijk ascertains a

kinship with Adorno and Critical Theory to the extent that the

latter proceeded dialectically without the "victor's fantasies" that,

Sloterdijk alleges, mar other theories of modernity (pp. 682 and

687). He notes further, however, that Critical Theory claimed "a

provisional ego (Ich)" as the locus of criticism, albeit one defined

and born in pain (p. 19). Sloterdijk rejects this accession to

negativity as being incapable of effective social resistance. "Die

Antithese entfaltet sich nicht zum Gegenpol, sondern bleibt ein

blosses 'Potential', eine erstickte und schlafende Negation" (p. 693).

For Sloterdijk, the critical agent capable of duping or foiling the

cyclops of our times should be properly called, not the "nobody" of

4. Urs Jaeggi, "Drinnen und draussen," in Jurgen Habermas, ed., Stichworte

zur 'Geistigen Situation der Zeit', 2. Band: Politik und Kultur, 3rd edition.

(Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), p. 468.

5. Peter Sloterdijk, Kritik der zynischen Vernunft (Frankfurt/Main:

Suhrkamp, 1983), and Oskar Negt/Alexander Kluge, Geschichte und Eigensinn:

Geschichtliche Organisation der Arbeitsverm6gen, Deutschland als

Produktionsoffentlichkeit, Gewalt des Zusammenhangs (Frankfurt/Main:

Zweitausendeins, 1981).




ese A Adeson59

Homeric tradition, but the "yesbody" (p. 156). This agent of critical

resistance that affirms life with his body is Sloterdijk's Kyniker, a

term that remains to be clarified. Negt and Kluge similarly

acknowledge the achievements of Critical Theory, notably

Horkheimer and Adorno's radical critique of the functionings of

consciousness, but the authors of Geschichte und Eigensinn regard

consciousness as, only one aspect of what they call "die gesamte

geschichtliche Arbeitskraft selber." For them critical resistance is

"die Kritik der Arbeitskraft an dem gesamten historischen Apparat

der Arbeitskraft" (p. 494). To understand what this means and how

it relates (or does not) to Sloterdijk's Kyniker, we must explore the

concepts and critiques of subjective identity that inform these two

texts.

Sloterdijk's notion of Kyniker is derived from his analysis of

the role of cynicism in the history of the Enlightenment. Cynicism

is "das aufgeklarte falsche Bewul3tsein"(p. 37), that fresh vitality

which has betrayed its original goal of resisting oppression,

unmasking deception, and attaining freedom. In what he

characterizes as the ongoing, unequal dialogue between those who

exercise institutionalized power and those who exercise none,

Sloterdijk ascertains throughout modern history (at least since

classical Greek antiquity) the two "constants" (p. 401) of cynicism

and its opposite, kynismos. The originally intended subject of the

Enlightenment becomes "the subject," now in quotation marks,

primarily concerned with self-preservation against everyone and

everything perceived as other in a reality which has become the

source of all possible deceptions. The "subject" that must barricade

itself to survive in the face of such threats becomes instead a

paranoid Selbsterhaltungs-Ich (pp. 650-651). According to

Sloterdijk, this leads to an approximation of the ego to a rigidified,

externalized thing: a weapon. "Zwischen dem Helden und seiner

Waffe verschwindet der Unterschied; die gigantomanischen

Selbsterhaltungs-Iche unserer Kultur haben das eigene Dasein als

Waffe aus sich herausgesetzt"(p. 650). At the height of modernity

we have, Sloterdijk contends, "die Identitat von Subjektivitat und

Bewaffnung"(p. 695). The atomic Bomb becomes in this analysis the

concrete, technical representation of what has become of the

subject in industrially developed countries (pp. 259, 597, 634, 650,

695).6 As the intended counterpoint to such a "self-preserving" ( )

6. For a more elaborate analysis of "the Bomb" in Sloterdijk's text, see my

article on "The Bomb and I: Peter Sloterdijk, Botho Strauss, and Christa Wolf,"

forthcoming in Monatshefte.





ego, Sloterdijk's Kyniker rejects by definition any "fixed form" of

ego identity (p. 133). Not representing but actually living

"Selbstverk6rperung im Widerstand"(p. 400), Sloterdijk's Kyniker

somehow mysteriously manages to elude those market forces or

other institutionalized forms of social organization that have

otherwise secured subjectivity as an armed state. In fact,

Sloterdijk's examples of Kyniker are all steeped in socio-historical

contexts, which become muted when he abstracts from them his

"constants"of cynic and Kyniker. The faith he articulates in such

unscathed, vital human forces furthermore implies the Kyniker's

capacity to erase, individualistically, the boundaries between

public and private spheres without, however, attaining to public

power himself. Let us recall for a moment that Sloterdijk's prime

example of the Kyniker (albeit certainly not his only one) is

Diogenes masturbating in the marketplace. The free space of

monadic resistance so conceived is, to be sure, problematic, not least

of all because of some of the circumstances of modern existence

which Sloterdijk himself rightly attacks. Modernity, he argues, is

characterized by the loss of a common denominator for the

experience of the self and that of the world (pp. 137, 934); subjective

reason is reduced to an abbreviated private reason (p. 946). "Auf

Subjektivitat haben wir uns im wesentlichen deswegen

spezialisiert, weil wir an den Sinn und das Wohlwollen eines

Ganzen, selbst wenn wir wollten, nicht glauben k6nnten"(p. 942).

Although he cites this split between privately defined and

collectively oriented subjective experience as pivotal to the

dilemma of contemporary identity, he does not argue for a theory

or praxis that actively mediates between the two. Instead, he

implicitly posits the Kyniker as a monadic entity beyond the

dictates of oppressive social identities but also outside any collective

capable of organized resistance to social domination. He would have

us believe that the Kyniker is a non-subject with no fixed social

identity but at one with his own body. This body becomes both the

agent and the vehicle of resistance, as Sloterdijk perceives it.7

The body plays a very different role for Negt/Kluge in

Geschichte und Eigensinn, as does, consequently, the notion of

identity. Even a comparison of Sloterdijk and Negt/Kluge's

treatment of tongues will reveal that Sloterdijk, in contrast to

7. For a more detailed critique of Sloterdijk's Kritik see my review essay,

"Against the Enlightenment: A Theory with Teeth for the 1980s," in German

Quarterly 57 (Fall 1984), No. 4, pp. 625-631.




ese A Adeson61

Negt/Kluge, has no concept of experience as work or process. The

famous photograph of Einstein sticking out his tongue illustrates

Sloterdijk's section on "Zunge, herausgestreckt" (pp. 270-273), but

the picture bears no caption or identification. The reader is given no

textual clue as to who the person in the picture is or what the

circumstances were in which he (Einstein) assumed this pose. The

text itself emphasizes the capacity of the body, in this case of the

tongue, to say no, "wo es mit Worten allein nicht weitergeht" (p.

270). Citing Eulenspiegel as a modern Kyniker, Sloterdijk asserts

that the Kyniker plays the greater moralist by making it clear that

one must violate moral codes to salvage morals (p. 273). In this

context, if we may be so generous as to call it that, the tongue

functions as a symbol of resistance. For Negt/Kluge on the other

hand, the tongue is an organ of orientation, one that mediates

between interior and exterior space.

Ob etwas zu mir paBt, ob es roh oder gekocht ist, ob es mich

vergiftet, das pruift sie intim. Sie beteiligt sich an der Sprache,

alle ihre Gewohnheiten sind kollektiv. Es gibt Landschaften in

Deutschland, in denen hat sich der Freiheitsgedanke nicht

entwickelt, wohl aber die Esslust - die Intelligenz ist in die

Zunge abgewandert (p. 1005).

But Negt/Kluge do not accord the tongue, or any other organ for

that matter, the capacity to yield orientation. Orientation, they

argue, depends on the production of a public sphere that links what

is public with what is intimate (p. 1005). For Negt/Kluge the body is

an ever open door to experience of the self and the world; indeed,

their analysis does not allow for the distinction between the two

since they exist, not as entities unto themselves, but as mutually

constitutive components of social reality as process.

Uns interessiert die Natur der Zellen, die Haut, die Korper, das

Hirn, die fuinf Sinne, die daruf aufgebauten gesellschaftlichen

Organe: Lieben, Wissen, Trauern, Erinnern, Familiensinn,

Hunger nach Sinn, die gesellschaftlichen Augen, die

kollektiven Aufmerksamkeiten. Einiges davon gibt es

wirklich; anderes davon existiert als nicht ausgeubtes

Vermogen, als Protest oder Utopie (p. 45).

The body is seen concretely as that through which all human

experience is filtered, processed, and pursued; it is at once personal

and social. Never privy to a fixed, permanent identity, it can

sometimes be the battleground for conflicting social antagonisms in

the same person (p. 782). This understanding of multiple,





conflicting subjectivities within the same body is something for

which Sloterdijk does not fully allow. It is, however, central to

Negt/Kluge's theses on what it means to be a subject. At the same

time, it should be noted that they studiously eschew such simplistic

terminology. They speak of Arbeitskrdfte (in the broadest sense),

not "subjects."

How is it then that Negt/Kluge cite the very real need for

identity, identity as tYberlebenskategorie (pp. 502-503)? Like

Sloterdijk and other theorists of the 1980s, Negt/Kluge reject the

classical Enlightenment configuration of identity.

Einer kann sich identisch verhalten; dies ist aber die Summe

seiner Schwankungen, Nicht-Identitaten, und eines Restes an

Notwehr hiergegen, in dem sich beharrliches, identisches

Festhalten an einem Rest oder einem Vorbehalt zeigt. Dies

ware im klassischen Sinne Nicht-Identitat, namlich nach der

Vorstellung, in der innerhalb der gebildeten und besitzenden

Oberschicht im 18. und frtihen 19. Jahrhundert sich das

Konzept der Personlichkeit herausgebildet hat, die zwischen

Aussenwelt und ihrem inneren Souveran integrierte. Das hat

es auch in der Oberschicht und im Zeitraum der Klassik nur

unter enormen Kosten (d.h. Ausgrenzungen) gegeben. [ ...]

Radikale Versuche zur Identitat kosten das Leben oder Teile

der Kommunikation (Holderlin, Kleist). Fur die proletarische

Klasse sprechen wir nirgends von solcher Identitat.

Soweit wir von Identitat handeln, sprechen wir von einer

Eigenschaftskette, die sich im Zustand radikaler Bedtirfnisse

befindet, also der Substanz nach: von Nicht-Identitat (p. 376)8.

This being the case, Negt/Kluge ask, not so rhetorically: "Wer hat

aber die Vorstellung vom Paradies, den falschen Glauben, oder

sein Gegenteil, wenn Staat, BewuB3tsein, Identitats-Geftihle nicht

die subjektiven Trager sein konnen?" Their own reply: "Es sind

lebendige, d.h. subjektive Splitter die Traiger (p. 395). This is

indeed a radical challenge to traditional notions of subjective

agency. As Negt/Kluge see it, identity becomes a "Kategorie des

Mangels" (p. 376). It cannot be attained, affirmatively, by merely

filling in the gaps in existing structures. Aneignung oder

Wiederaneignung ist nicht der Gegenpol zu Enteignung. Bei Marx

8. See Negt/Kluge, Offentlichkeit und Erfahrung: Zur Organisationsanalyse

von burgerlicher und proletarischer Offentlichkeit (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp,

1972), for their expanded understanding of the term "proletarian."




ese A Adeson63

heiBt der Gegenpol zu Selbstentfremdung und Enteignung

Verwirklichung" (p. 42). The fact is that Negt/Kluge do not allow,

categorically, for individual resistance or even individual

subjectivity." The common assumption that subjectivity consists of

all things private (wishes, hopes, feelings, etc.) merely reproduces,

they argue, structures of domination. Das Anhangsel des

Anhangsels, naimlich das, was kompensatorisch Menschen

brauchen, um es in diesem zudiktierten Verhaltnis auszuhalten,

wird subjektiv genannt" (p. 784). Yet even the societal maintenance

of this misconception requires a great deal of subjective

engagement (p. 784). The need for identity cannot be met

individualistically or on purely subjective ground. "Es bleibt dann

ungegenstandlich, wenn nicht die kollektiven Bedingungen fir

Identitit hinzuproduziert sind. Das ist die gesellschaftliche Seite

der Identitat" (pp. 503, 519).

A related critique of the equation of subjectivity with things

private as well as the consequent call to treat subjectivity as a

collective, social process can be found in Herbert Marcuse's

favorable analysis of the politics of Rudolf Bahro, once an industrial

manager in the GDR imprisoned for writing The Alternative in

eastern Europe and now a Green activist in the West.9 Marcuse

praises Bahro's shift from "the objectivity of political economy to

subjectivity, to consciousness as a potential material force for

radical change" (p. 26). The subject of the revolution becomes in

this case not the ego, but instinctual structures working "in unison

with an emancipatory consciousness" (p. 45). This must be, by

definition, a collective undertaking. Given that the individual is a

"species being" (p. 45), Marcuse insists, the ego cannot be authentic,

and any political theory that stops at the ego merely succumbs to

commodity fetishism (p. 46). "The cult of immediacy is reactionary"

(p. 43). Marcuse designates solidarity as "the force of the life

instincts (p. 45). It is this notion of collective-individual

subjectivity, he claims, that allows for the "realm of freedom

within the realm of necessity" (p. 47).

While Negt/Kluge do not seem inclined to credit emancipatory

consciousness per se with so much potential for radical social

change, they do seem to share the conviction that there is a "realm

of freedom" - even beyond mere resistance - within social givens.

9. Herbert Marcuse, "Protosocialism and Late Capitalism: Toward a

Theoretical Synthesis Based on Bahro's Analysis, in Ulf Wolter, ed., Rudolf Bahro:

Critical Responses, (White Plains, New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1980), pp. 25-48.





One should say more properly, moments of freedom, not from

social constraints but in social process. After all, if the carriers of

ideas of paradise or consciousness are not subjects but "subjektive

Splitter," it stands to reason that there are no whole lives - such as

Sloterdijk's Kyniker might embody - but moments in constantly

shifting subject-object relationships that attest to self-regulation in

the face of domination. An analysis of the "social side of identity"

(Negt/Kluge, p. 503) must take these shifting relationships into

account.

This is where the difficulties in discussing Subjektfdhigkeit and

Subjektivitat merge. Both Kritik der zynischen Vernunft and

Geschichte und Eigensinn are informed by a critique of those social

and theoretical processes which systematically silence or exclude

facets of reality. The exclusion of or distinction between subjects

and subjectivity on the one hand and society and social processes on

the other is only one such Ausgrenzung. "Das was vorgibt Realitat

zu sein, unter diesem Namen auftritt, ist fiktiv. Es ist unter

Trennung von wesentlichen Anteilen der Geschichte erbaut. Es ist

aber Geschichte darin versteckt" (Negt/Kluge, p. 32; see also p. 505).

History is, however, not only the silenced partner in what passes as

contemporary reality; it is also the silenced partner in what passes

for subjectivity. Another way of asking the question as to the

subjects of contemporary critical consciousness is to ask what

constitutes Gegenwartsbewdltigung. I would suggest that coming

to terms with the present can only mean coming to terms with the

past in the present. For how else are we to grasp the present and the

role of contemporary critical consciousness if not as that

bequeathed to us by and through history? The subject - be it

Negt/Kluge's "subjektive Splitter" or even Sloterdijk's Kyniker

is the locus where past and present meet.

Walter Benjamin speaks of "unterdrtickte Vergangenheit"

which historical materialism can, so to speak, liberate.10

Vergangenes historisch artikulieren heiB3t nicht, es erkennen

'wie es denn eigentlich gewesen ist.' Es heiB3t, sich einer

Erinnerung bemachtigen, wie sie im Augenblick einer Gefahr

aufblitzt. Dem historischen Materialismus geht es darum, ein

Bild der Vergangenheit festzuhalten, wie es sich im

Augenblick der Gefahr dem historischen Subjekt unversehens

einstellt (p. 253).

10. Walter Benjamin, 'Ober den Begriff der Geschichte, Illuminationen:

Ausgewahlte Schriften, 2nd edition. (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), p. 260.




Lese A Adeson65

The present is, Benjamin stresses, an "experience" with the past

(pp. 259-260). To what extent do Sloterdijk and Negt/Kluge allow for

such an experience qua experience? Like the authors of Geschichte

und Eigensinn, Sloterdijk is mindful of that which tradition

excludes or severs from our reception of history. Das

Geschichtliche zerfallt in das Erledigte und das, was nur

vergangen, aber nicht voruber ist - das Unerledigte, Imperfekte,

das Erbubel, den historischen hangover (p. 539). One of the

motivations to write his Kritik was to counter the modern doubts

about living in a meaningful history (p. 10). But experience?

Citing as positive examples the contemporary emancipation

movements for women and for homosexuals, Sloterdijk maintains

that the history of that which has been left ar written out of history

can only be written by those who have been so excluded (pp. 538-

539). While there is certainly much to be said for that, Sloterdijk's

analysis includes no concrete sense of what that process of

reinstatement would entail in terms of social experience. How

history is appropriated remains unclear. Memory is accorded

similarly nebulous status in Sloterdijk's study. Die innerste

Erinnerung fuihrt nicht auf eine Geschichte, sondern auf eine

Kraft. Sie bertihren, heiBt ekstatische Flut erfahren. Diese

Erinnerung mtundet nicht in eine Vergangenheit, sondern in ein

uberschwengliches Jetzt" (p. 526). Indeed, memory does not seem

to be constitutive or even particularly significant for Sloterdijk's

now-oriented Kyniker. Winston Smith's tormentor in George

Orwell's 1984 tells him he is "non-existent" because the state has

rendered him "outside history.""1 Sloterdjik does not so much posit

the Kyniker outside history as he posits history outside the

Kyniker.

Unlike Sloterdijk, Negt/Kluge ground their discussion of

exclusionary maneuvers in an analysis of material processes of

social relations. They note that Geschichte und Eigensinn begins

where their earlier work on Offentlichkeit und Erfahrung ended:

"d.h. mit der materialistisch gewendeten Organisationsfrage" (p.

32). For them history is a set of relationships that must be treated as

concrete if it is to be appropriated. Die Erfahrungen, die in

Bewegung setzen, mtissen nicht nur durch den Kopf hindurch,

sondern durch Korper, die Nerven, die Sinne, die Gefuhle; sie

mtissen am Geschichtsverhaltnis als einem faJ3lichen Gegenstand

arbeiten k6nnen (p. 777; my emphasis, LAA). Here again,

11. George Orwell, 1984: A Novel (New York: Signet Classic, 1949), p. 222.





experience is regarded as work: a collectively, historically

determined process undertaken by real individuals. Just as

subjectivity is historically determined, Negt/Kluge contend, so is

history subjectively determined. The individual reception ("im

individuellen Lebenslauf ) of the historical determination of

subjectivity they call "die Bedingung dafuir, daB Subjektivitat als

geschichtlich bestimmte, als subjektiv-objektives Verhaltnis

wiederangeeignet werden kann" (p.783). Without the individual

participation of those subjektive Splitter, history remains

objectified, beyond experience (p. 783). The organization of

contemporary West German society does not, however, encourage

the unabashed and unimpeded active appropriation of history.

Die Nahesinne arbeiten, an den Fernsinnen ist nicht gearbeitet

worden. Sie bilden vor allem keine Gesellschaft. Das ist

politisches Problem der Gegenwart und Verzerrung des

Grundverhaltnisses zur Geschichte. Es existiert kein

menschliches Verhaltnis zur Geschichte, wenn daran nicht

gearbeitet wird; ein sachliches Verhaltnis ist tiberhaupt

keines. Das Problem liegt daran, daB nicht einmal die

Sensibilitat unterstellt werden kann, daB dies als ein Problem

empfunden wird. Es sich als Problem vorzustellen setzt bereits

Arbeitskraft der Phantasie voraus (p. 597).

Interestingly enough, one of the human capacities which they cite

as crucial to the process of appropriating history (as a set of

relations) is the ability to forget, something which computers

cannot do (p. 60). The ability to forget is necessary, they maintain,

for the production of "lebendige Arbeit." "Wiurden wir aber alles

vergessen, so gabe es keine Erfahrung tiber Raum und Zeit" (p. 60).

The paths beaten through the debris of a bombed-out city provide

one graphic example of such lebendige Arbeit : Es sind

Selbstregulierungen des Verhaltnisses von Aktualitat und

Geschichte" (p. 67).

While Kritik der zynischen Vernunft and Geschichte und

Eigensinn both reject traditional notions of personal identity and

subjective agency, their authors are nonetheless motivated by a

concern for human emancipation from structures of domination.

The main difference between the two works is that Sloterdij k posits

resistance or freedom in the embodiment of an attitude: a gesture.

For Negt/Kluge these things can never be embodied per se, since

they always take the form of socio-historical, that is to say,

subjective-objective processes. Such distinctions in their




Lese A Adeson67

theoretical work are also echoed in Sloterdijk and Kluge's writing

of historical fiction. In an article entitled Geschichten und

Geschichte: Reflexionen zum westdeutschen Roman seit 1965,

Rainer Nagele calls for a subversion of "the traditional humanist

and metaphysical concept of history,"'12 arguing against literary

analysis structured around oppositional pairs such as

realism/formalism, exteriority/interiority, politics/subjectivity

and the like (p. 236). He cites the work of Alexander Kluge and

Herbert Achternbusch as "Antigeschichten," a radically different

breed of story that explodes the false dichotomies of such

oppositional pairs (p. 247). We are reminded of Negt/Kluge's call for

"Dialektik nicht paarweise, sondern durch tYbersprung" (GuE, p.

44). Sloterdijk's recent publication, Der Zauberbaum, with the

lengthy subtitle Die Entstehung der Psychoanalyse im Jahr 1785:

Epischer Versuch zur Philosophie der Psychologie,13 is no

Antigeschichte in Nagele's sense. This tale of how a young Austrian

medical student discovers and integrates sensuality and spirituality

into his otherwise rational life in a politically charged atmosphere

(the eve of the French Revolution) poses a counter-story/history

but not an anti-story/history. Sloterdijk weaves a different tale

from the traditional Bildungsroman, but he does so by adding more

threads to the warp, filling in those gaps otherwise excluded from

our experience of history. Kluge's texts address those gaps without

filling them in.14

I would like to conclude with some more general comments as

to how we might read the "newly subjective" literary texts of the

1970s and 1980s. I shall do so by taking reference to Judith Ryan's

recent study on The Uncompleted Past: Postwar German Novels

and the Third Reich.15 The book deals with a number of German

12. Rainer Nagele, Geschichten und Geschichte: Reflexionen zum

westdeutschen Roman seit 1965, in Manfred Durzak, ed., Deutsche

Gegenwartsliteratur: Ausgangspositionen und aktuelle Entwicklungen (Stuttgart:

Reclam, 1981), p. 235.

13. (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1985).

14. See for example his Lernprozesse mit todlichem Ausgang

(Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1973) and Neue Geschichten: 'Unheimlichkeit der

Zeit,' Hefte 1-8 (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1977). We are reminded here of Sigrid

Weigel's warnings against contemporary feminist aesthetics too eager to fill in the

gaps, where women's experience has been excluded, with positive images to counter

the absence of image altogether. See her "Overcoming Absence: Contemporary

German Women's Literature," in New German Critique 32 (Spring-Summer 1984),

p. 11.

15. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983).





texts from the late 1940s into the 1970s, Ryan's main thrust being to

write against the fatalism that infuses allegorical treatments of

German fascism. Her primary concern is the question of individual

responsibility in and for the Third Reich. What literary forms, she

asks, are best suited to asking how history could have been

different? What she means here is how the outcome of history could

have been different. There is an implied tendency in Ryan's

otherwise very useful book to assume that literary models she

deems appropriate for coming to terms with the Nazi past would

also be appropriate for dealing with the contemporary dilemma of

subjective agency. I would argue instead with Negt/Kluge that our

attention should be properly focused, not on history as outcome but

as process specific to a given set of social relations. How do literary

texts of the 1970s and 1980s mediate between the historical

determination of subjectivity" and the "subjective determination

of history"? Ryan borrows as her leitmotif the figure of Heracles,

missing from the Pergamon frieze with which Peter Weiss begins

his Asthetik des Widerstands.16 She appropriates this figure for her

own purposes, as a symbol of that missing agent of individual

responsibility for which she combs the texts. Such an

appropriation, however, rides roughshod over the specific,

contextual function of the Heracles cipher in Weiss' own text.

There it serves as a concrete object of historical appropriation

whereby the young boys studying the frieze collectively struggle

toward their own proletarian Subyektfihigkeit in a very particular

historical present. To abstract the motif of Heracles from this

literary and historical context is to render it "outside history" - yet

another Ausgrenzung - or as Negt/Kluge would have it, abstract,

objectified, inaccessible to the work of the living. Rather than

debating the individual's role in history, I would suggest that we

would do better in studying contemporary literary texts to examine

history's role in the individual. To be subjects of contemporary

critical consciousness means, I contend, to engage in the work of

appropriating historical experience in now-time. To what extent,

we must ask, do contemporary literary texts of the New

Subjectivity enact those social-individual processes

problematized by Negt/Kluge in Geschichte und Eigensinn? The

question is less one of "who" and "where" than it is one of "how." As

Rainer Nagele suggests, text is always context.17

16. 2nd edition. (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1983).

17. Rainer Nagele, Heinrich B611: Die groBe Ordnung und die kleine

Anarchie," in Hans Wagener, ed., Gegenwartsliteratur und Drittes Reich: Deutsche

Autoren in der Auseinandersetzung mit der Vergangenheit, (Stuttgart: Reclam,

1977), p. 183.

contemporary critical consciousness peter sloterdijk, oskar negt-alexander kluge

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