Michael Kelly
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231152921
- eISBN:
- 9780231526784
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231152921.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter examines the so-called Richter Effect—attributed to Gerhard Richter—in relation to aesthetics. It begins by analyzing Richter's Baader-Meinhof painting series, entitled October 18, 1977 ...
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This chapter examines the so-called Richter Effect—attributed to Gerhard Richter—in relation to aesthetics. It begins by analyzing Richter's Baader-Meinhof painting series, entitled October 18, 1977 (1988), and his art book, War Cut (2004), and how both works provide compelling cases of contemporary moral-political, traumatic, historical art. In particular, it explores the pictorial and textual dimensions of Richter's resistance to the anti-aesthetic stance. It also argues that Richter's paintings reflect more than the mourning of their own medium by focusing on their effect on Astrid Proll, a former member of the Baader-Meinhof Group who claims that Richter's paintings allowed her for the first time to approach photographs of the Baader-Meinhof history and to come to terms with that history—the Richter Effect. Finally, it considers how the explanation of the Richter Effect can contribute to the regeneration of aesthetics.Less
This chapter examines the so-called Richter Effect—attributed to Gerhard Richter—in relation to aesthetics. It begins by analyzing Richter's Baader-Meinhof painting series, entitled October 18, 1977 (1988), and his art book, War Cut (2004), and how both works provide compelling cases of contemporary moral-political, traumatic, historical art. In particular, it explores the pictorial and textual dimensions of Richter's resistance to the anti-aesthetic stance. It also argues that Richter's paintings reflect more than the mourning of their own medium by focusing on their effect on Astrid Proll, a former member of the Baader-Meinhof Group who claims that Richter's paintings allowed her for the first time to approach photographs of the Baader-Meinhof history and to come to terms with that history—the Richter Effect. Finally, it considers how the explanation of the Richter Effect can contribute to the regeneration of aesthetics.
Paul Rabinow and Anthony Stavrianakis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226138336
- eISBN:
- 9780226138503
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226138503.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Theory and Practice
This chapter takes up the work of the German painter Gerhard Richter as well as the critical apparatus and reception that has gathered around his artistic production as exemplary of a situation that ...
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This chapter takes up the work of the German painter Gerhard Richter as well as the critical apparatus and reception that has gathered around his artistic production as exemplary of a situation that can be taken up as contemporary. The chapter argues that Richter himself in his work as well as his elliptic commentary on his paintings and in his replies to his interpreters adopts a distinctive contemporary practice. He does so by tacitly focusing his work and his life on the issue of what to do with modernist technology? He invents an original and fluid technē tou biou that meets the challenge in an ongoing series of ways. His insistence that the past can be made actual, although never in a stable and satisfactory manner instantiates Aby Warburg’s concepts of Nachleben and Pathosformel. By so doing he demonstrates one mode of contemporary practice thereby opening up a clearer path for other modes of invention with different materials and practices—including anthropologyLess
This chapter takes up the work of the German painter Gerhard Richter as well as the critical apparatus and reception that has gathered around his artistic production as exemplary of a situation that can be taken up as contemporary. The chapter argues that Richter himself in his work as well as his elliptic commentary on his paintings and in his replies to his interpreters adopts a distinctive contemporary practice. He does so by tacitly focusing his work and his life on the issue of what to do with modernist technology? He invents an original and fluid technē tou biou that meets the challenge in an ongoing series of ways. His insistence that the past can be made actual, although never in a stable and satisfactory manner instantiates Aby Warburg’s concepts of Nachleben and Pathosformel. By so doing he demonstrates one mode of contemporary practice thereby opening up a clearer path for other modes of invention with different materials and practices—including anthropology
Paul B. Jaskot
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816678242
- eISBN:
- 9781452948225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816678242.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter presents an expanded definition of the perpetrator in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and questions how it came to govern political reactions during the Nazi period in the postwar ...
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This chapter presents an expanded definition of the perpetrator in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and questions how it came to govern political reactions during the Nazi period in the postwar society. It also discusses the period of immigration for Gerhard Richter from East Germany to West Germany. Richter’s move marked a radical change in his artistic production. He took up the complex social response to bureaucratic and everyday perpetrators through his large black-and-white paintings, many of which grappled with the ambiguous status of these specific individuals in postwar society. The chapter also investigates the role the perpetrator as an ordinary function.Less
This chapter presents an expanded definition of the perpetrator in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and questions how it came to govern political reactions during the Nazi period in the postwar society. It also discusses the period of immigration for Gerhard Richter from East Germany to West Germany. Richter’s move marked a radical change in his artistic production. He took up the complex social response to bureaucratic and everyday perpetrators through his large black-and-white paintings, many of which grappled with the ambiguous status of these specific individuals in postwar society. The chapter also investigates the role the perpetrator as an ordinary function.
Margaret Iversen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226370026
- eISBN:
- 9780226370330
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226370330.003.0006
- Subject:
- Art, Photography
This chapter is concerned with issues surrounding documentary photography of atrocities and art based on such images. It begins with a critical account of the controversy surrounding the 2001 ...
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This chapter is concerned with issues surrounding documentary photography of atrocities and art based on such images. It begins with a critical account of the controversy surrounding the 2001 exhibition in Paris of photographs of Nazi concentration and death camps. Some critics condemned the exhibition for compromising the “unimaginability of the horror of the death camps.” Didi-Huberman’s subsequent book, Images in Spite of All: Four Images from Auschwitz, is an eloquent plea for the exercise our imagination in an effort to represent the ‘unrepresentable’. The horrors of Holocaust and other historical atrocities are imaginable, he argues, if only in a fragmentary way. Critical debates surrounding the work of Gerhard Richter and Christian Boltanski are reassessed in this context.Less
This chapter is concerned with issues surrounding documentary photography of atrocities and art based on such images. It begins with a critical account of the controversy surrounding the 2001 exhibition in Paris of photographs of Nazi concentration and death camps. Some critics condemned the exhibition for compromising the “unimaginability of the horror of the death camps.” Didi-Huberman’s subsequent book, Images in Spite of All: Four Images from Auschwitz, is an eloquent plea for the exercise our imagination in an effort to represent the ‘unrepresentable’. The horrors of Holocaust and other historical atrocities are imaginable, he argues, if only in a fragmentary way. Critical debates surrounding the work of Gerhard Richter and Christian Boltanski are reassessed in this context.
Charity Scribner
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231168649
- eISBN:
- 9780231538299
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231168649.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter traces the development of the armed struggle in Germany after World War II, especially the “red decade” that spanned from the public protests of the late 1960s to the events of 1977. It ...
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This chapter traces the development of the armed struggle in Germany after World War II, especially the “red decade” that spanned from the public protests of the late 1960s to the events of 1977. It begins with an overview of the Red Army Faction's (RAF) origins and the factors that precipitated the German Autumn in order to relate the armed struggle to several historical transitions, including the nation's entry into a postwar democratic system, Germans' attempts to grapple with their history of violence, and the emergence of the new social movements. It then considers a literary and artistic response to the German Autumn, along with the evolution of German radicalism that was guided by a range of intersecting discourses, such as public policy, popular media, and intellectual life. It also compares the rehashing of the German encounter with militancy and terror with the operations of the 1978 film Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn) and Gerhard Richter's 1988 cycle of paintings titled 18. Oktober 1977 (October 18, 1977).Less
This chapter traces the development of the armed struggle in Germany after World War II, especially the “red decade” that spanned from the public protests of the late 1960s to the events of 1977. It begins with an overview of the Red Army Faction's (RAF) origins and the factors that precipitated the German Autumn in order to relate the armed struggle to several historical transitions, including the nation's entry into a postwar democratic system, Germans' attempts to grapple with their history of violence, and the emergence of the new social movements. It then considers a literary and artistic response to the German Autumn, along with the evolution of German radicalism that was guided by a range of intersecting discourses, such as public policy, popular media, and intellectual life. It also compares the rehashing of the German encounter with militancy and terror with the operations of the 1978 film Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn) and Gerhard Richter's 1988 cycle of paintings titled 18. Oktober 1977 (October 18, 1977).
Mary Jacobus
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226390666
- eISBN:
- 9780226390680
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226390680.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Our thoughts are shaped as much by what things make of us as by what we make of them. Lyric poetry is especially concerned with things and their relationship to thought, sense, and understanding. ...
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Our thoughts are shaped as much by what things make of us as by what we make of them. Lyric poetry is especially concerned with things and their relationship to thought, sense, and understanding. This book explores the world of objects and phenomena in nature as expressed in Romantic poetry alongside the theme of sentience and sensory deprivation in literature and art. It discusses objects and attributes that test our perceptions and preoccupy both Romantic poetry and modern philosophy. John Clare, John Constable, Rainer Maria Rilke, W. G. Sebald, and Gerhard Richter make appearances around the central figure of William Wordsworth as the author explores trees, rocks, clouds, breath, sleep, deafness, and blindness in their work. While she thinks through these things, she is assisted by the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy. Helping us think more deeply about things that are at once visible and invisible, seen and unseen, felt and unfeeling, the book opens our eyes to what has been previously overlooked in lyric and Romantic poetry.Less
Our thoughts are shaped as much by what things make of us as by what we make of them. Lyric poetry is especially concerned with things and their relationship to thought, sense, and understanding. This book explores the world of objects and phenomena in nature as expressed in Romantic poetry alongside the theme of sentience and sensory deprivation in literature and art. It discusses objects and attributes that test our perceptions and preoccupy both Romantic poetry and modern philosophy. John Clare, John Constable, Rainer Maria Rilke, W. G. Sebald, and Gerhard Richter make appearances around the central figure of William Wordsworth as the author explores trees, rocks, clouds, breath, sleep, deafness, and blindness in their work. While she thinks through these things, she is assisted by the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy. Helping us think more deeply about things that are at once visible and invisible, seen and unseen, felt and unfeeling, the book opens our eyes to what has been previously overlooked in lyric and Romantic poetry.
Michael Kelly
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231152921
- eISBN:
- 9780231526784
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231152921.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This book examines the motivations for the critiques that have been applied to the idea of aesthetics and argues that theorists and artists now hunger for a new kind of aesthetics, one better ...
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This book examines the motivations for the critiques that have been applied to the idea of aesthetics and argues that theorists and artists now hunger for a new kind of aesthetics, one better calibrated to contemporary art and its moral and political demands. The book shows how, for decades, aesthetic critiques have often concerned art's treatment of beauty or the autonomy of art. Collectively, these critiques have generated an anti-aesthetic stance that is now prevalent in the contemporary art world. The book considers the aesthetics of Susan Sontag in greater detail. It details how in On Photography (1977), Sontag argues that a photograph of a person who is suffering only aestheticizes the suffering for the viewer's pleasure. It also highlights how Sontag insists in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) that such a photograph can have a sustainable moral-political effect precisely because of its aesthetics. The book considers this dramatic change to be symptomatic of a cultural shift in our understanding of aesthetics, ethics, and politics. It discusses these issues in connection with Gerhard Richter's and Doris Salcedo's art, which is chosen because it is often identified with the anti-aesthetic, even though it is clearly aesthetic. The book reveals the place of critique in contemporary art and confirms that it is integral to art. Finally, it advocates a critical aesthetics that confirms the limitless power of art.Less
This book examines the motivations for the critiques that have been applied to the idea of aesthetics and argues that theorists and artists now hunger for a new kind of aesthetics, one better calibrated to contemporary art and its moral and political demands. The book shows how, for decades, aesthetic critiques have often concerned art's treatment of beauty or the autonomy of art. Collectively, these critiques have generated an anti-aesthetic stance that is now prevalent in the contemporary art world. The book considers the aesthetics of Susan Sontag in greater detail. It details how in On Photography (1977), Sontag argues that a photograph of a person who is suffering only aestheticizes the suffering for the viewer's pleasure. It also highlights how Sontag insists in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) that such a photograph can have a sustainable moral-political effect precisely because of its aesthetics. The book considers this dramatic change to be symptomatic of a cultural shift in our understanding of aesthetics, ethics, and politics. It discusses these issues in connection with Gerhard Richter's and Doris Salcedo's art, which is chosen because it is often identified with the anti-aesthetic, even though it is clearly aesthetic. The book reveals the place of critique in contemporary art and confirms that it is integral to art. Finally, it advocates a critical aesthetics that confirms the limitless power of art.
Paul B. Jaskot
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816678242
- eISBN:
- 9781452948225
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816678242.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Who was responsible for the crimes of the Nazis? Party leaders and members? Rank-and-file soldiers and bureaucrats? Ordinary Germans? This question looms over German disputes about the past like few ...
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Who was responsible for the crimes of the Nazis? Party leaders and members? Rank-and-file soldiers and bureaucrats? Ordinary Germans? This question looms over German disputes about the past like few others. It also looms over the art and architecture of postwar Germany in ways that have been surprisingly neglected. This book fundamentally reevaluates pivotal developments in postwar German art and architecture against the backdrop of contentious contemporary debates over the Nazi past and the difficulty of determining who was or was not a Nazi perpetrator. Like their fellow Germans, postwar artists and architects grappled with the Nazi past and the problem of defining the Nazi perpetrator—a problem that was thoroughly entangled with contemporary conservative politics and the explosive issue of former Nazis living in postwar Germany. Beginning with the formative connection between Nazi politics and art during the 1930s, this book traces the dilemma of identifying the perpetrator across the entire postwar period. The book examines key works and episodes from West Germany and, after 1989, reunified Germany, showing how the changing perception of the perpetrator deeply impacted art and architecture, even in cases where artworks and buildings seem to have no obvious relation to the Nazi past. The book also reinterprets important periods in the careers of such major figures as Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, and Daniel Libeskind.Less
Who was responsible for the crimes of the Nazis? Party leaders and members? Rank-and-file soldiers and bureaucrats? Ordinary Germans? This question looms over German disputes about the past like few others. It also looms over the art and architecture of postwar Germany in ways that have been surprisingly neglected. This book fundamentally reevaluates pivotal developments in postwar German art and architecture against the backdrop of contentious contemporary debates over the Nazi past and the difficulty of determining who was or was not a Nazi perpetrator. Like their fellow Germans, postwar artists and architects grappled with the Nazi past and the problem of defining the Nazi perpetrator—a problem that was thoroughly entangled with contemporary conservative politics and the explosive issue of former Nazis living in postwar Germany. Beginning with the formative connection between Nazi politics and art during the 1930s, this book traces the dilemma of identifying the perpetrator across the entire postwar period. The book examines key works and episodes from West Germany and, after 1989, reunified Germany, showing how the changing perception of the perpetrator deeply impacted art and architecture, even in cases where artworks and buildings seem to have no obvious relation to the Nazi past. The book also reinterprets important periods in the careers of such major figures as Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, and Daniel Libeskind.
Michael Kelly
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231152921
- eISBN:
- 9780231526784
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231152921.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This book examines the critiques that have been applied to the idea of aesthetics and have often focused on art's treatment of beauty or the autonomy of art, giving rise to an anti-aesthetic stance ...
More
This book examines the critiques that have been applied to the idea of aesthetics and have often focused on art's treatment of beauty or the autonomy of art, giving rise to an anti-aesthetic stance that is now prevalent in the contemporary art world. The book considers the aesthetics of Susan Sontag, who argues in On Photography (1977) that a photograph of a person who is suffering only aestheticizes the suffering for the viewer's pleasure. It also considers Sontag's claim in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) that such a photograph can have a sustainable moral-political effect precisely because of its aesthetics. The book sees this change as a reflection of a cultural shift in our understanding of aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and explores these issues in connection with the art of Gerhard Richter and Doris Salcedo. In this introduction, the so-called Dewey Effect—a combination of moral and political demands involving apprehension, recognition, and satisfaction—is discussed.Less
This book examines the critiques that have been applied to the idea of aesthetics and have often focused on art's treatment of beauty or the autonomy of art, giving rise to an anti-aesthetic stance that is now prevalent in the contemporary art world. The book considers the aesthetics of Susan Sontag, who argues in On Photography (1977) that a photograph of a person who is suffering only aestheticizes the suffering for the viewer's pleasure. It also considers Sontag's claim in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) that such a photograph can have a sustainable moral-political effect precisely because of its aesthetics. The book sees this change as a reflection of a cultural shift in our understanding of aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and explores these issues in connection with the art of Gerhard Richter and Doris Salcedo. In this introduction, the so-called Dewey Effect—a combination of moral and political demands involving apprehension, recognition, and satisfaction—is discussed.
Paul Rabinow and Anthony Stavrianakis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226138336
- eISBN:
- 9780226138503
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226138503.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Theory and Practice
The book presents a highly original reflection on the status of an “anthropology of the contemporary”. Following on the same authors’ Demands of the Day, this new and convincing manuscript gives a ...
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The book presents a highly original reflection on the status of an “anthropology of the contemporary”. Following on the same authors’ Demands of the Day, this new and convincing manuscript gives a coherent elaboration of the central arguments, movements and shifts from research rooted in the experience of the present to a contemporary one understood as an ethos. The book contains two highly original case studies which illustrate the relevance and richness of this approach. In Part 1, the authors undertake an erudite discussion of philosophical grounds and concepts necessary for an anthropology of the contemporary by way of an ongoing engagement with arguments established by Max Weber, John Dewey and Michel Foucault (e.g. his notion of ‘foyers d’expérience’), as well as with other authors (e.g. Kant, Blumenberg, Warburg, Geertz). Central to this engagement is the guiding idea of anthropological inquiry as ‘practice of form-giving’ linked to an ongoing attention to questions of ethics. The book considers inquiry--and its aftermath—where a near future is at stake, one, however, which is not (or only in part) determined by the past and the present. Part II consists of two case studies: one on the Rushdie Affair, the second one on ‘Gerhard Richter’s Pathos’. Based on different kinds of texts (interviews, letters, printed articles, anthropological research, etc.), they demonstrate the basic ideas of an exploration of the contemporary and its key challenge (for anthropology and contemporaries): how to conceptualize and give form to breakdowns of truth and conduct.Less
The book presents a highly original reflection on the status of an “anthropology of the contemporary”. Following on the same authors’ Demands of the Day, this new and convincing manuscript gives a coherent elaboration of the central arguments, movements and shifts from research rooted in the experience of the present to a contemporary one understood as an ethos. The book contains two highly original case studies which illustrate the relevance and richness of this approach. In Part 1, the authors undertake an erudite discussion of philosophical grounds and concepts necessary for an anthropology of the contemporary by way of an ongoing engagement with arguments established by Max Weber, John Dewey and Michel Foucault (e.g. his notion of ‘foyers d’expérience’), as well as with other authors (e.g. Kant, Blumenberg, Warburg, Geertz). Central to this engagement is the guiding idea of anthropological inquiry as ‘practice of form-giving’ linked to an ongoing attention to questions of ethics. The book considers inquiry--and its aftermath—where a near future is at stake, one, however, which is not (or only in part) determined by the past and the present. Part II consists of two case studies: one on the Rushdie Affair, the second one on ‘Gerhard Richter’s Pathos’. Based on different kinds of texts (interviews, letters, printed articles, anthropological research, etc.), they demonstrate the basic ideas of an exploration of the contemporary and its key challenge (for anthropology and contemporaries): how to conceptualize and give form to breakdowns of truth and conduct.
Charity Scribner
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231168649
- eISBN:
- 9780231538299
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231168649.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book uses critical theory to answer key gender-related questions about the Red Army Faction (RAF), a group that was masterminded by women and which terrorized West Germany from the 1970s to the ...
More
This book uses critical theory to answer key gender-related questions about the Red Army Faction (RAF), a group that was masterminded by women and which terrorized West Germany from the 1970s to the 1990s. The questions include: Why were women so prominent in the RAF? And what does the continuing cultural response to the German armed struggle tell us about the representation of violence, power, and gender today? The book analyzes works by pivotal writers and artists, including Gerhard Richter and Elfriede Jelinek, that point beyond militancy and terrorism. This literature and art discloses the failures of the Far Left and registers the radical potential that RAF women actually forfeited. The book maps out a cultural history of militancy and introduces “postmilitancy” as a new critical term. It demonstrates how the most compelling examples of postmilitant culture don't just repudiate militancy but also investigate its horizons of possibility, particularly on the front of sexual politics. The book uses previously untranslated essays by Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas, as well as novels by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Judith Kuckart, Johann Kresnik's Tanztheaterstück Ulrike Meinhof and the blockbuster exhibition Regarding Terror at the Berlin Kunst-Werke. It also focuses on German cinema and provides interpretations of films by Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff and Fatih Akın. This analysis discloses dynamic junctures among several fields of inquiry: national and sexual identity, the disciplining of the militant body and the relationship between mass media and the arts.Less
This book uses critical theory to answer key gender-related questions about the Red Army Faction (RAF), a group that was masterminded by women and which terrorized West Germany from the 1970s to the 1990s. The questions include: Why were women so prominent in the RAF? And what does the continuing cultural response to the German armed struggle tell us about the representation of violence, power, and gender today? The book analyzes works by pivotal writers and artists, including Gerhard Richter and Elfriede Jelinek, that point beyond militancy and terrorism. This literature and art discloses the failures of the Far Left and registers the radical potential that RAF women actually forfeited. The book maps out a cultural history of militancy and introduces “postmilitancy” as a new critical term. It demonstrates how the most compelling examples of postmilitant culture don't just repudiate militancy but also investigate its horizons of possibility, particularly on the front of sexual politics. The book uses previously untranslated essays by Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas, as well as novels by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Judith Kuckart, Johann Kresnik's Tanztheaterstück Ulrike Meinhof and the blockbuster exhibition Regarding Terror at the Berlin Kunst-Werke. It also focuses on German cinema and provides interpretations of films by Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff and Fatih Akın. This analysis discloses dynamic junctures among several fields of inquiry: national and sexual identity, the disciplining of the militant body and the relationship between mass media and the arts.