Archiv Newsletter No. 13

November 2024

“The idea of a space without problems seems deeply suspect to me”
Helmut Draxler in conversation with Jonas von Lenthe

This conversation with Helmut Draxler, who was director of the Kunstverein München from 1992 to 1995, was conducted in reaction to the Archive Newsletter No. 11 (April 2023), which discussed the project faschismusersatz (ersatz fascism). The film and event program, which took place in 1993 at the Kunstverein München and other venues, came about as a response to the alarming increase in neo-Nazi activities in German cities and to the new sense of nationalism that was emerging in Germany in the years after the reunification. The program lasted four months and consisted of film screenings, readings and discussions at the Kunstverein, the Backstage Club and the Neues Theater München. The initiators of the project focused, among other things, on the continuities of fascism in German society. The following conversation takes faschismusersatz and its historical context as its starting point. What follows is a discussion about the contradictory relationship between art and politics, the concept of “repoliticization”, the nationalization of memory politics and contemporary forms of political activism.

Jonas von Lenthe You were director of the Kunstverein from 1992 to 1995, with Hedwig Saxenhuber as curator. From today’s perspective, it’s impressive how discursive, artistic, and activist approaches met and informed each other in your program. This specific constellation also provides the context for the film and event program faschismusersatz, which took place at the Kunstverein and other places in 1993. How would you describe this coming together of different approaches, particularly in regard to the term “re-politicization,” that is often used in this context?

Helmut Draxler I rather facilitated the event faschismusersatz by providing the space of the Kunstverein, without actively participating in its conception. That said, even though the event was not at the heart of our program, it still represents something important. This example allows us to reflect on a number of questions: What was the political significance of faschismusersatz at the time? How did it come about that such an event was held at a Kunstverein, an art association? And how can we look at it from today’s perspective, in which the political constellations have once again shifted so significantly?

You mentioned the term re-politicization, which was on everyone’s lips at the time after the 1980s had interrupted the wave of politicization of the previous decade. In the 80s, other forms of artistic and cultural representation were employed. In retrospect it can be observed that this was the last objection to both the politicization and the academization of the art world. There were very few discursive events, at least in Europe. It was a new impulse from the U.S. that changed that for us. The discourse was a kind of intersection between politics and art; think of the famous essay collections of the time, such as Hal Foster’s The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (1983) or Brian Wallis' Art after Modernism. Rethinking Representation (1984), which provided a decisive impulse for this development by proposing a left-wing reading of postmodernism. This forced us at the Kunstverein to not just make a program, but to also develop an understanding of how art can be positioned more generally in relation to discourse and politics as well as in a historical sense, especially in relation to the tradition of the avant-garde. And how can such a configuration be represented at all in the context of the actual work at the Kunstverein?

JvL: You recently organized a conference in Vienna with Antonia Birnbaum entitled Dialectics and Anti-Dialectics. In your lecture Der Entzug des Denkens (The Withdrawal of Thinking) [1], you identify a “crisis of thought” and link it to the opposing concepts of dialectics and anti-dialectics. You also mention that your generation has been shaped by an unprecedented triumph of anti-dialectics—especially in the name of post-structuralism and the subsequent movements between post-operaism and new materialism, gender, queer, and postcolonial studies. Could you describe the intellectual traditions of these two opposing camps? Where would you situate your program at the Kunstverein in this philosophical conflict between dialectics and anti-dialectics?

HD: We were all very strong supporters of anti-dialectics back then: of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in particular, with their Anti-Oedipus from 1972, but also of Jacques Derrida. These core texts of the French Theory, which were central to us, had been essentially anti-dialectical, i.e. Nietzschean, in their movement against Hegel since the 1960s. At the same time, and I don’t think we were aware of that, there was of course always a bit of flirting with dialectics, i.e. with Hegel. This is also why the Lacanian school, for example in Ljubljana around Slavoj Žižek, later became increasingly important. For me, Žižek reaffirmed the idea that anti-dialectics should not be followed in the sense that everything dissolves into micro-differences, as Deleuze was received, for example, in the Techno community in the 1990s, or taken up in Cultural Studies. The notion that there would no longer be any distinction between art and culture or between art and politics—that everything would be nothing more than “cultural practices” and that everything would dissolve into empirical differences which could be endlessly extended—became increasingly uncanny to me.

My own experience, however, and I was still a big Deleuze fan back then, was rather different. My experience was that these categories do not simply dissolve. We should rather try to deal with the historical differences and contradictions that arise from them. And that, of course, means dialectics! It means not simply projecting art and politics onto a common program of infinite differentiation but accepting them in their difference and discussing them in their conflictuality. This is why Kunstverein München had an artistic program and also a political program, in contrast to the many attempts elsewhere to blur the lines between the two attempts —think, here, of the so-called Berlin Zusammenhänge or the Shedhalle in Zurich—that sought to totally dissolve differences and no longer allow any differentiation.

That's why it was so important to maintain a difference not only between the artistic and political initiatives, but also within the official program, for example between very classical and incredibly beautiful exhibitions, such as Louise Lawler's 1995 A Spot on the Wall, and “total chaos” during Stephan Dillemuth's Sommerakademie. That was precisely the point: the public was to be confronted again and again with things they did not expect. The model behind this is essentially a dialectical one that does not rely on the dissolution of categories, but rather assumes that we can only work with these categories in a meaningful way, that is, in terms of negation and contradiction.

JvL: So for you it’s important to emphasize that faschismusersatz was a political event without the claim to operate as an artistic project?

HD: Yes, absolutely. The fact that faschismusersatz took place at Kunstverein München was mainly due to the fact that it was difficult at the time for these—let’s call them—post-autonomous scenes to find spaces in the city, because Munich is Munich. That’s what sparked our interest in the first place. At the same time, in the early 1990s, the idea emerged in the so-called Wohlfahrtsausschüsse (Committee of Public Safety)[2], especially in Hamburg, that alliances needed to be sought again between the pop, political, and music scenes. In this context, it was important for us to hold on to the fact that we could indeed hold a political or theoretical event on one evening, but it didn’t necessarily have to be part of the official artistic program. We didn’t impose a direct artistic code on these events but let them unfold on their own. It was only later that joint projects emerged from them.

JvL: What role did psychoanalysis play in the discursive currents in which you were engaged at the time?

HD: For me, psychoanalysis was a very decisive, fundamental experience. I had been active in psychoanalytic reading groups since the early 1980s, but at the same time there was this verdict by Deleuze and Guattari against psychoanalysis. To shake off this verdict—without, however, completely abandoning Deleuze and Guattari—was the prerequisite for my ever-increasing personal involvement in psychoanalytical forms of thought and practice. In the course of the 1990s, psychoanalysis became an important point of reference for me because it provides a model for dealing with contradictions and different opinions at the personal, social, institutional, and ultimately also political level. The practical aspect was what was really fascinating about it: how to not only think about polarities and contradictions, as in the philosophical tradition, but how to actually experience them in yourself and in small groups in the psychodynamic process.

To me, this seems to be the big question of our time: what inner, psychological and social space is left in which we can tolerate different opinions and resolve conflicts over our differences? On all sides, attempts to discredit any opposing position as absolutely as possible—what is commonly called canceling—prevail, so that its disturbing dimension, even for oneself, doesn’t have to be perceived and, accordingly, one doesn’t have to deal with one’s own contributions to the respective conflict. Psychoanalysts such as Trauth or Stavros Mentzos have described such dynamics as an interpersonal delegation process, in the sense that we constantly outsource our own parts of our bipolar motivational and need structures to others, so as not to have to deal with their fundamental conflictuality in and with ourselves. In this way, I can see myself as good, loving, and caring, while others are evil, selfish, or greedy. From the above-mentioned interpersonal delegation process we can learn that it is not just the others, the media, or some kind of conspiracy who are to blame for the current conflicts, but ultimately we all are. This explains the furor that immediately hits you when you try to address current conflicts without such a delegation of guilt. If you don’t want to use the terms “terrorist,” “genocide,” “pogrom,” or “apartheid,” you are immediately a traitor or, even worse, a compromiser; in any case a morally completely discredited person. However, such mobilization strategies mean that the symbolic space that makes politics possible in the first place is prevented and obstructed, so that only the confessional nature of politics remains.

JvL: What you are saying brings me back to the actual starting point of our conversation. Because wasn't faschismusersatz also about internalized fascism, that is, about the question of what kind of fascist potential lies within oneself?

HD: Yes, that’s right. To draw focus on the Alltagsfaschismus (quotidian fascism) was very important, on its continuities at the linguistic, mental, and habitual level. At the same time, it was also the starting point for Adrian Piper's exhibition: the aim was to emphasize that racism cannot be delegated; it does not take place “over there,” with the others in the former GDR, but in the here and now. Racism is omnipresent and challenges us all.

One could say that Piper’s artistic project, and the political project of faschismusersatz converged in pointing out that, although one can certainly not escape the delegation process described above completely, there are moments when one can pause and look at what it does to us at the level of a potential politicization. Against this backdrop, I cannot, for example, advocate an anti-racism that takes the form of a fantasy of absolute purity—because a space without differences and conflicts does not exist. In such fantasy, something of the racism that I point at in others is reproduced, in order to absolve myself of it at that very moment. This is precisely where the danger of one-sided, moralistic polemics lies. I have more trust in people who at least admit their own imperfections to a certain extent. We live in a social space that is fundamentally characterized by differences—that is what constitutes it as a social space—and from which we cannot completely break free. The idea of a space without problems seems deeply suspect to me, even where it is only implicitly evoked.

JvL: The approach of reflecting on internalized fascism and antisemitism also emerged in the Antideutsch current as an intervention within the German Antifa movement in the early 1990s. While this approach is certainly productive, in the course of the following years it came to a “problematic culmination into a new main contradiction” of the Antideutsch position, as you put it in our preparatory discussion. You criticized my Archive Newsletter No. 11 on the project faschismusersatz, saying that Dirk Moses’s analysis, which I refer to, among other things, does not really do justice to the historical context of faschismusersatz. In that case, it was not a matter of a nationalized memory politics, but rather of a left, self-organized format in opposition to the right-wing climate of the time—attacks on asylum shelters, calls for a Schlussstrich (debates about drawing a line under the past), and neo-Nazi marches—which demanded a confrontation with the Shoah and fascism. In your opinion, what processes led to this problematic trajectory among the Antideutsche?

HD: What historical dynamics are at play, in other words, what lies between today and then, is of course the most difficult question of all! Of course you can’t reduce any engagement with fascism to these current forms of the German state. Also, the argument that the Germans are doing this out of a deeply internalized guilt complex seems questionable to me. And I agree with you that the internal left-wing debate on left-wing antisemitism, which the Antideutsche challenged, was certainly important. But how is it that a radical left-wing movement that is actually so marginal, rooted in the sectarian K-Gruppen (Kommunistische Gruppen, “Communist Groups”) [3] of the 1970s and with no more than a few marginal magazines at its disposal, has apparently inscribed itself without further resistance into the official state policy with antisemitism commissioners and a corresponding Staatsräson? The magazine Jungle World, which for many years was an important organ for left-wing debates, today seems to not shy away from interviewing a former Israeli general who assesses the current conflict from a purely military perspective. That goes much further than I would be willing to consider legitimate for a left-wing perspective. What is so uncanny about this is precisely how such a generally important and interesting, discursive space of a certain political scene has become almost indistinguishable from the conservative newspapers FAZ and Die Welt. What this means is that there is no longer any debate, but only a clinging onto once-acquired positions of truth. In my opinion, however, this is based on incredible fear, a loss of trust in one’s own strength of argument.

But back to your question: for me, too, it’s a mystery why some lines of argument make these sinister, almost absurd careers, which seem to be at odds with all logics of dominance and marginalization. Yet, the question of how to relate to it today, remains relevant. As I said, the debate about left-wing antisemitism is certainly important, as is the debate about every form of fascism at all levels: its history, its internalization, its psychosocial dimensions. But if I declare antisemitism as the new main contradiction—if I create a pattern that is supposed to be used to interpret the whole world—, then of course this will trigger enormous disagreements, because others can also see the world in a different way, and in a perfectly legitimate way.

JvL: Do you see a connection between the escalatory polemics described and the triumph of anti-dialectics, as you have identified it in philosophy since the 1990s?

HD: I think there are certainly overlaps. The intensifying polemics are of course part of the left-wing legacy—yesterday’s comrades have always been today’s enemies, according to the pattern of “Wer hat uns verraten, Sozialdemokraten” (Who betrayed us, social democrats). It is precisely this legacy, the succession of unconditional claims to truth, which are often over-encoded with religious ideas of salvation, that must be questioned. It can’t just be about finding the one point where everything resolves itself, a kind of primal sin. My response to such claims to truth would be that the strength of left-wing thinking lies precisely in the fact that it isn’t self-evident, that it is loaded with many problems, but that it is also borne by a kind of belief that it’s worth addressing these problems. To keep on escalating one’s own position in the hope of eventually reaching true antagonism, where conflicts will be resolved and the world will become a good place—I think that, more than 200 years after the French Revolution, we can no longer approach the world in this way.

The reason for the miserable state of the left today is precisely because we don’t know why people vote for the right and why they feel so attracted to them. We don’t have a clear theory that explains this, and all that remains is to defend the old terrains in terms of social and cultural safeguarding. This corresponds to a logic that can no longer think through the effects of its own statements and actions. Moreover, it’s a question of form, of how my pointed argument is received, what effects it has when I tell the other person how reactionary and unreflective they are in terms of their capitalist, colonialist, sexist dimensions.

In that, in what the left excludes by rejecting it, lies the flip side of the escalating polemic. What do we do with those who don’t think like us? We have had the guillotine, the gulag, the Maoist re-education camps, etc. This is a history of violence that is very much situated within the left and one that cannot simply be carried on. There are good reasons for addressing the question of political form. Georg Lukács and others said as early as the 1930s that we need a Marxist or leftist aesthetic, because formal problems do not solve themselves. Such questions of form can be aesthetic questions, they can even have to do with taste—this demonized term. But they can also be of a political nature. For today’s activism, this seems to me to be a very crucial question.

JvL: What would a form of activism look like that functions without such a certainty of having a solution?

HD: Activism tends, by its very nature, to treat problems as if they were already solved; as if they no longer needed to be thought through, but only executed as actions. That’s why I think it’s important that activism is always accompanied by political reflection, which repeatedly weighs up objectives and methods, desired results and unwanted effects; and that it doesn’t see itself as the be-all and end-all. Political activism must remain part of a more complex understanding of the world. And art and philosophy are an essential part of that.


Helmut Draxler was director of the Kunstverein München from 1992 to 1995. As an art historian and cultural theorist, he regularly publishes on the theory and practice of contemporary art. From 2014 to 2023, he was professor of art theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. His most recent book, Die Wahrheit der Niederländischen Malerei. Eine Archäologie der Gegenwartskunst (The Truth of Dutch Painting. An Archaeology of Contemporary Art), was published in 2021 by Brill | Fink Verlag. His new book, Was tun? Was lassen? Politik als symbolische Form (What is to be done? What is to be left? Politics as a Symbolic Form) will be published by tentare this November.

Jonas von Lenthe is the archivist at the Kunstverein München since 2022.


Copy editing: Gloria Hasnay, Lea Vajda