Hegemonic listening and doing memory on right-wing violence: Negotiating German political culture in public spheres

  • The first section of this chapter illustrates that the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen in 1992 has not been categorized sufficiently as a substantial milestone of right-wing violence in postwar Germany. This pogrom led to historically significant limitations in the right to asylum, ultimately resulting in a change to the German constitution. We propose to look at Rostock-Lichtenhagen as an example to explain that practices of remembering right-wing violence, a process that we describe with the term ‘Doing Memory on right-wing violence’, is a central part of creating a society’s basic story. This basic story, in turn, contributes to how a society understands itself. In this chapter’s second section, we argue first that analyzing practices of memory of right-wing violence, be they acknowledging, forgetting or suppressing those practices, actually make it possible to even expose the persistence of the basic story as a central element of political culture. Second, we want to uncover howThe first section of this chapter illustrates that the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen in 1992 has not been categorized sufficiently as a substantial milestone of right-wing violence in postwar Germany. This pogrom led to historically significant limitations in the right to asylum, ultimately resulting in a change to the German constitution. We propose to look at Rostock-Lichtenhagen as an example to explain that practices of remembering right-wing violence, a process that we describe with the term ‘Doing Memory on right-wing violence’, is a central part of creating a society’s basic story. This basic story, in turn, contributes to how a society understands itself. In this chapter’s second section, we argue first that analyzing practices of memory of right-wing violence, be they acknowledging, forgetting or suppressing those practices, actually make it possible to even expose the persistence of the basic story as a central element of political culture. Second, we want to uncover how potential and publicly effective interventions of and changes to the basic story might look like. Here, we build on Habermas’ model of democracy, utilize Susan Bickford’s work on listening as an important element in her political philosophy and refer to Benjamin Barber, who articulates that a participatory democracy requires political listening. As a result, our chapter’s third section demonstrates how listening can be conceptualized from a supra-individual perspective and how questions that are critical of existing hegemonic structures can prioritize a focus on hegemonic (non)listening. Lastly, we will sketch out strategies to intervene in hegemonic (non)listening. These strategies connect theoretically with concepts of ‘counter publics’ and ‘opinion forming publics’ and reference, among others, the work of Seyla Benhabib and Iris Marion Young, thus enabling the creation and execution of resistance practices of Doing Memory on right-wing violence.show moreshow less

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Author:Tanja ThomasORCiD, Fabian VirchowORCiDGND
Qualitätssicherung:peer reviewed
open access:Hybrid - Subskriptionszeitschrift
Fachbereich/Einrichtung:Hochschule Düsseldorf / Fachbereich - Sozial- & Kulturwissenschaften
Document Type:Article
Year of Completion:2024
Language of Publication:English
Publisher:Sage
Parent Title (English):Philosophy & Social Criticism
Volume:50
Issue:1
Page Number:23
First Page:102
Last Page:124
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:due62-opus-46532
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537231203534
ISSN:0191-4537
Tag:FBSK_Webseite
GND Keyword:Rechtsradikalismus; Politische Gewaltanwendung; Rostock-Lichtenhagen; Kollektives Gedächtnis
Dewey Decimal Classification:3 Sozialwissenschaften / 30 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie / 300 Sozialwissenschaften
Licence (German):Creative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International
Release Date:2024/10/28
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