Corporate Rokoko
and the End of the Civic Project
- The making of the public sphere and political clubs. -

A conversation between Professor Jürgen Fohrmann
Dr Erhard Schüttpelz and Stephan Dillemuth

PART 3_______________________

Corporate forms of organization.

D: Again the question: How did political consciousness once constitute itself? Which structures were created to then distribute power crystallized in one point to a type of self-organized governmental system?

I think we are now at a point in time where this idea of a civic democracy is no longer effective. The decision-making processes are again and increasingly converging on a central but this time virtual point. In my opinion, we’re approaching a global and new type of absolutism which I would like to coin ‘Corporate Rokoko’. There are of course still nation-states which the citizens once created as a structural shell, but they are now nothing more than administrative units of the new global power structure and they are increasingly disintegrating into business locations competing against each other. They are economic regions defining themselves solely via global competition. The absolute ruler, the central position of representation that was once occupied by the king, is now a virtual figure, namely global monetarism. Just like the various courts, the corporations and their followings now group around this central point.

In such a context, how can citizens or intellectuals still feel responsible for a common agenda?

S: Exactly. What we are talking about is this central point which is defined by the French word ‘sujet’, meaning subject and citizen. The subject, as it developed in the 18^th century and was incorporated by the state in the 19^th century, addressed the state – whether as poet, terrorist or political citizen. And now people start realizing that the state is no longer there as a direct addressee for all kinds of protests and demonstrations and so forth. As a result, a certain moment, a certain form of addressing, which one had grown accustomed to, has disappeared.

D: Therefore, one no longer feels responsible for bringing about possible changes, one is no longer ‘obliged to revolution’. Meanwhile, thinking about revolutionizing the Federal Republic of Germany is of course nonsense; one would have to begin with Western Europe, and this shell, too, is already long since covered by another shell.

F: But why is this the case? The problem seems to be that the public, which was hitherto addressable, has now, on a global basis, turned into an absolutely virtual entity.

The public of the 18^th century principally conceives itself as finite. Via a democratic model one can reach all subjects one wants to reach, and these subjects can amongst themselves come to a decision effecting action.

But when communication gets so extensive, like on the Internet, that one can no longer see with whom one is communicating, then one can no longer trust that this will result in an ability to act.

D: But on the other hand, one discovers that there are many small instances of a public organizing themselves subculturally. Their communication is highly differentiated, but difficult to understand from the outside.

F: I believe this type of globalization produces an absolute surplus of information, an entropy of information. And when corporations are the ones that predominantly define this field and only little can be filtered as information, then it becomes unclear how to access this information in the first place, because corporations usually do not function according to public principles.

D: Couldn’t one envision that some of these small public instances – which needn’t be local, meaning assembled at one place, but that communicate across the globe – , could constitute something like small, semi-autonomous units in a global state? Couldn’t small pockets of resistance or ‘soviets’ or ‘principalities’ constitute themselves in opposition to the regionally-incorporated ‘kingdoms’ of corporate locations? In other words: tribes, cooperatives or clans? Or am I already talking like a communitarian?

S: The problem will definitely consist in that none of these interest groups can make decisions for the others, and together they won’t be able to do so either. This is true for all cultural and ideological contexts. At the beginning of the 1960’s and in the early 70’s, such groups still had the incredible feeling that by practising a certain form of self-critique and self-determination, something could be created for those with whom one worked together. It remains true, however, that all power structures and all hierarchies are based on eternal repetitions that must be performed day by day and year by year for the conditions to be upheld. It is, therefore, all about finding the point where the repetition no longer works – and to find such a point or several such points can take pretty long. So it’s better to conceive an agenda that will function for decades, even if the agenda looks like nonsense during certain periods of time. And several people had this staying power, people who started off early enough, not in 1968 but in 1958.

Bohemian research institutions.

D: Let us rather return to the beginning of the 20^th century and talk about different escapist attempts or attempts at self-therapy, Monte Veritá [42] and the community of fruit eaters for example, or expressive dance...

F: ...green communes that already existed back then, or the garden cities...

S: ...but what is most important, and this applies all the way up to the AAO [43] or the psycho set-ups of the late ‘70s, is that it was performed as a type of research. There are the records of ‘Kommune I’ [44] intent on establishing ‘what is actually happening with us now?’. That was clearly a form of self-analysis, a very individual or strange kind of investigation perhaps, but these were principally research institutions. This has absolutely nothing to do with sensitivity groups only wanting to tune themselves to a certain groove. The whole beatnik thing of the ‘60s was characterized by a kind of research. And what belongs to research is that one does not yet know what the outcome is. The really paralyzing thing about whatever type of discourse is when one always already knows what it will lead to. Or when one knows what the outcome will be for a couple of weeks and then again for another few weeks, and so on. That is just as paralyzing. It’s then better to leave things to chance, and chance also plays a role in the 17^th century in motivating actions, in the Picaro.

F: Starting with the 18^th century, the subject is no longer dominated by rank, but the subject seeks its own intersections with other spheres itself. That would be the one side, and I additionally see a counter-movement in these interest groups attempting, at least on a symbolic level, to create an all-encompassing context in life via clothing, behavior etc. These two movements appear to run parallel without being thematized as a conflict. On the one hand, the impossibility to allow oneself to be subjected to the totality of the given circumstances, because there are still so many other important things, and on the other hand, the attempts pointing to the globality of life-world contexts via design and attire.

This of course is tightly connected to the change in communication relationships in our society. Communication in our field is indeed so differentiated that there are no longer any major books, because there is no longer a common context of communication making these books appear as major books. This, I must point out, is not meant as cultural pessimism!

S: The organizational forms of art and science, however, do seem to still function. But what about political events, how are they organized?

F: As a common political context after 1945 there was only the project of the student movement. Later, this movement raveled out to thousands of different political interests. They could partially be bundled again, but no longer within the framework of the idea of a common communication context.

The only major point of reference which played a role in all political discourses was the Shoah, the holocaust. As the negative image of a gigantic catastrophe it describes a limit for our post-war society, and that can clearly be used as a moral argument and amalgamate certain political discourses.

d-dffrttd utopias.

D: I would now like to return to the question of condensation points. What is evidently important is the fact that they exist at all and that certain social developments and problems condense there, that they can break open, be organized and given complete expression. The artists of the decadence first became aware of the encrusted situation at the end of the 19^th century and translated this into an aesthetic concept. Afterwards, there were several attempts at an experience of awakening and self-therapy. These experiments, research projects and seminars within a certain Bohemian class and taking place at self-created institutions were then, however, covered up and suppressed by the two world wars. National Socialism certainly drew a lot of that chaotic energy into its pathological order.

S: In the first half of the century, there were especially in Russia and Germany certainly utopian moments in the discussion of modernity in which various elements were able to converge. That then exploded again, and today such a situation no longer exists; in the second half of the century it can only be celebrated.

D: The Third Reich was also laid out as a big utopia.

F: There was a high degree of technical differentiation, but simultaneously this attempt at creating absolute social de-differentiation. The entire culture of clubs and associations was almost completely synchronized during the Third Reich and replaced by a strict organizational structure. This affective economy ought to be examined in regard to its homology, its structural similarity... What does it mean from an emotional point of view for me to become a member of a club? Why do I do this, and what did the fascist ideology attempt to replace it with? The Nazis didn’t invent very much in this regard, moreover,  they forced everything else around into line and eliminated all differences. Everything is choric, German classes have also become choric. Everyone must stand up to speak and all recite together. And this destroyed the political culture in Germany with a lasting effect and for a very long time.

S: As far as the avant-garde is concerned, after 1945 one must say that all the early organizational forms of the first half of the 20^th century could now no longer function. They could perhaps be parodied and thus prolonged, something that Situationism for example did, but to renew the likes of  the Bauhaus via ‘Ulm’ [45] or ‘Gruppe 47’ [46] – that didn’t work. There were still organizations, but the organizational forms were already shattered. What was viable were loose, Bohemian forms of organization; they could still assert themselves, but as part of a modernity broken within itself.

D: On the other hand, political concepts that were developed prior to the world war or in the 19^th century were then applied to the Third World and there again tested in revolutionary movements, by the Sandinistas, Zapatistas, Che Guevara, the PLO or the Civil Rights Movement in the USA. In Germany, I view the last attempt at change in the student movement and the RAF [47] .

F: Yes, I would regard the student movement and the RAF as the last movement that made the attempt to bring together politics in a way that created a unified communication context. That is certainly true. But with the RAF it no longer worked in this way. Reading their texts again, one does not discern an interest in communication but only in action. And because this was no longer questioned, the machine just ran loose, it all became very mechanical.

S: But it still stands there as a totally one-sided address to the state.

F: The state actually became the only communication partner for the RAF.

D: What the RAF couldn’t achieve: now the state is abolishing itself.

F: That’s why there are no political parties anymore. It is no longer clear how to deal with ideological and party fronts because there are no longer any. For this reason all political activity has become indistinguishable, and that’s why it’s so difficult to develop a political concept. In this situation the parties then sit down and try to invent concepts that can be used as arguments against another concept, e.g. one invented by the opposition. This is rhetoric and it is sold as designer rhetoric.

D: Politics basically imitates the rhetoric of the corporations. The design of the promises always has priority and must be new, because the products can’t satisfy one’s desire.

F: The ubiquity of design nowadays perhaps constitutes a universal coherence. But still one could ask why no intellectual group or class attempts to raise its voice against this rhetoric of design.

D: Because they’re busy bemoaning the loss of the welfare state. This is the way monarchists must have felt after the heads were already chopped off.

But I think the ornaments of power have changed, and we are already in a different structure with another aesthetics without actually wanting or being able to perceive it.

F: That might be true, but it’s not very comforting.

Ornaments of power.

D: During the baroque and rococo era, the form of a crooked shell, the rocaille represented the aesthetics of absolutism for more than 200 years. Which ornament has power given itself since then?

F: We could write a few essays on this. The aesthetics of power is always bound to the representability of power, i.e. an emblem, a body or a state is required that can be represented as having been given power. The body of the king is a physical carrier, a carrier of the message of power, it is a medium.

Up to the National Socialists, ornamentation of power is readable. The Nazis were the ones who tried to quite consciously introduce it, like in the Rieffenstahl [48] films. But after the war, it is already a parody and at the time even perceived as a parody, e.g. Ludwig Erhardt [49] and the ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ [50] . Heinrich Lübke [51] speaks for Germany, that was indeed the involuntary Wilhelm Busch [52] of this development.

S: Or Polke [53] , the Polke-in-himself which he later showed us.

F: And then there was certainly still the politics of big gestures which in fact already performed the inversion of power. A gesture of humility, like Willy Brandt’s [54] going down on his knees, does not exist any more today. There is no longer a representation of a political power connected to the state nor a representation of a big gesture... I have no idea how something like that should work.

D: Today, the corporations are not the signs of power, instead signs represent the power of the corporations. Which signs are preferred and what do they look like?

F: Any good advertising is of course funny. That at any rate is quite strange. Perhaps power has been shifted to the ubiquity of the joke. One could certainly ask what led to the fantastic career the joke suddenly made.

Doesn’t it have to do with the absolute availability of all objects, as the insignia of all power?

S: That is sort of an answer: the ornamentation of power represented today would first of all pass over to advertising...

D: Advertising is not only an expression but also the affirmation of the given conditions, and because advertising can not and does not want to change existing economic circumstances and power structures, it is in a true sense conservative. The more progressive it seems to be the more conservative it is. In addition, it expands to all areas of the public due to the increasing privatization. Advertising in magazines, on billboards or on TV is only the oldest form in which it shows itself.

F: This advertisement can itself no longer produce heroic gestures but only ironic ones. It is the simultaneity of joking and being serious, namely serious in regard to having to sell and joking in regard to presentation, which only has to be funny. So it really doesn’t matter what it is that must be presented. An uncanny availability of all objects that are to be presented in a humorous discourse. That is at least an attempt to answer the question.

S: Would that be a continuation of ornamentation?

F: Yes, but ex negativo.

D: Is that baroque? Everything is available and translated into an ornament, into certain ironic and stereotype manifestations. Communication at court is also characterized by this: esprit triumphing over the objects and topics talked about.

F: Yes, perhaps this is an inversion of the baroque. The idea in the baroque period would be that everything which exists, all items, can be translated into images. Everything is combinable, although baroque semantics was not organized in such a humorous way.

D: But allegorically. And the allegorical figures, just like the ironic ones in advertisement, illustrated and stabilized the existing conditions.

F: There is also usually no relation between product name and company. With modern corporations, the relationship between signifier and signified has totally drifted apart. The product is concatenated in a completely different way. The reason being that the concatenation structure within product advertising targets something totally different than designating a point of reference which could be associated with the corporation.

A new sovereignty?

D: During the course of this conversation, we repeatedly had to operate with contradictions and pairs of opposites: secrecy vs. ‘intended public’, differentiation vs. de-differentiation etc.... The entire fragility of the civic project seems to result from its latent schizophrenia and the double binds as a consequence of the problematic demarcation between the self and the other.

Individual identity is constructed differently in systems and religions that revolve around a central point or god. There, contradictions occur on a higher level and the subjects humbly submit to the system.

A new ideology or ‘form of government’ therefore demands a new concept of subject.

F: Yes, that is also Luhmann’s thesis: As soon as systems become more complex, the subjects are also expected to become more complex. It’s as simple as that.

S: Does he mean individual subjects as well?

F: People ought to improve. And this can be achieved on the one hand by increasing aggregation, which is a quantitative argument, and on the other by having a bigger choice, a qualitative argument. This would establish a high degree of participation in totally different system references and global contexts.

It is his big hope that this improvement will occur. And that is exactly the success story of modern subjectivity: namely to leave one’s class and choose for oneself which parts of reality one wants to include in one’s life. Free choice is often not possible, but at least a tentative choice can be made and one’s own life built up in a modular way, like using a construction kit.

D: But that is still along the lines of the development of a civic concept of subject. However, at the point at which we started the conversation, a bigger break occurred. Is it at all conceivable that a new ideology or religion could do away with this additive, multiple-choice concept of subject?

F: The entire subject concept seems to be a communication problem. I can keep on differentiating, but then again I require sufficiently de-differentiated circumstances that allow for communication to commence in the first place. Increasing differentiation does not allow for a more general mode of communication, only for a very specialized type of communication without feedback loops. Suddenly, I no longer have even two fields in common with another subject.

And this is exactly what leads to de-differentiation, the gateway for promises: to say that based on one ground, life can be reformed, be it Christianity or Europe, mysticism or sects, it doesn’t matter – it’s all the same stuff.

I see a wavelike movement between differentiation and de-differentiation, back and forth.

D: Even if one realizes that sovereignty is not possible because one is always part of some system or another, the concern in my opinion is still always the attempt to establish and maintain sovereignty. A new self-conscious way of dealing with political and economic constraints and ideologies, against global Corporate Rokoko . Everything else would be helplessness, actually obsequiousness in belief.

S: Because alone one does not have the ability to assert oneself sufficiently, one’s own network must not be given up. One must try to expand it without making it break apart, which is in itself a paradoxical endeavor.

This is an inherent problem, as the network ought to expand, and up to a certain point this does succeed, but exactly this then leads to the old network disintegrating.

Everything that was successful to a certain extent after 1945 was based on temporary alliances. There was no officially organized group that asserted itself to any significant degree. That’s a problem we must clearly see for the future as well. One cannot rely on the fact that a group organized as a label will remain especially stable as a subject. The same problem existed with the Early Romantics in Germany around 1800, that everything is only a temporary alliance.

D: Condensation points would therefore constitute an especially intense communication situation which is, however, only temporary because it disintegrates, must disintegrate. Still, the question is how that then continues. Does it influence the surrounding de-differentiated conditions of communication, does it serve as an example or guideline? Did it ultimately have an impact?

F: Sovereignty is really only an ideology. It consists in the hope that the group can decide on its stability itself, or that associations can be freely chosen and one can act freely within these  networks. But that doesn’t work.

D: But a type of behavior is conceivable that doesn’t give a damn about the aims of the respective system. Sovereignty of the people 200 years ago meant: removing the head from the central body.

S: One can chop it off like a head of cabbage.

F: It can be put that way, but those are the antiquated remains of a pre-modern society. The utopia of monetarism is that the sovereign subjects show their sovereignty by saying, ‘I enjoy being a subject which thinks in monetary terms’.

And that’s exactly what this designer rhetoric and aesthetics is selling us: ‘I love to smoke’.

That is the formula for modern subjectivity.

S: So if one thinks there should be a type of asceticism ... those models already existed.

D: Asceticism is only a mirror-image of ‘I love to smoke’. A new sovereignty within Corporate Rokoko would have to be different.

F: ‘I love and hate to smoke’, these are my final words, let’s leave it there!

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FOOTNOTES: