“Look behind the words”
Manos Tsangaris and Anh-Linh Ngo in conversation with Akademie member Monika Rinck

When I hear your questions, I immediately feel the negative emotions that answering them stirs in me. The questions themselves engender a certain frustration, as if they were designed to push for consensus. But as Tamara Nopper has said, “Knowing who to get mad at is part of the work.” If, following Silvan S. Tomkins’s succinct definition, anger is the readiness to make something worse, what am I to do with it when my aim is actually to improve exchange? It is crucial to recognise the danger posed when verbal contestation weakens and gives way to violent forms of negotiation. But we need to be precise. In what contexts are such “frames” set? What form of domination is meant when we hear that someone, or some group, “controls” or “forbids” language? Once we have specified this, we can shift the very frame in which we are able to speak.

To begin with, I would suggest responding to culture-war constructs not, in the first instance, poetically but linguistically (and psychoanalytically). In his book How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley shows how concepts are actively being recoded. One of his examples is the term welfare, which has a strong racial coding in the US today; others designate groups in ways that render their concerns unworthy of discussion from the outset. Or they may use an ideal against itself – restricting freedom in the name of freedom.

The key question is not “What does this mean?” but “How does it mean?” The implied meaning (“not-at-issue content” is the term Stanley uses) comes to the fore, occupying the entire semantic field, and benefits from the fact that implied meanings are much harder to refute directly. “The fact that not-at-issue-content cannot be canceled makes it so effective.” One can still point them out – though it takes time. But if, on the other hand, destabilising tendencies are deliberately fostered, and if the brutalisation of society and the exclusion of groups of people are clearly advanced, that is not enough. Then organisation helps more than poetry.

As for poetry, context matters. Forge unexpected connections. Refuse to react to words spat out as obstacles. Or exaggerate them. Think hyperbole and reduction at the same time. Multilingualism. Introduce other words into the discourse. Avoid arrogance and bitterness. Stay flexible. Irritate. Be really super irritating, even long-winded: keep asking again and again. Translate. Clarify the power relations. Avoid closed world views. Resist immunisation. Tolerate contradiction. Consider expansions of reality. Be aesthetically critical of slick machine-language. Read everything like a poem, with the same meticulousness. And more.

Of course, everyone is free to address other matters. But I would not draw the front line between the fields marked by these buzzwords and poetry, positioned as their supposed counterpart. After all, in the climate debate, for instance, there are genuinely interesting efforts being made to rethink and reshape language. (See, for example, Anja Utler, kommen sehen; Evelyn Reilly, Apocalypso; Joyelle McSweeney, The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults; or Anastacia-Renée, Side Notes from the Archivist: Poems.) The same could be said of the other fields. We have barely begun to analyse and reinvent our modes of speaking. Take a closer look: How is discourse conducted in these fields, and which people are only now finally being heard?

Here the poetic function of language can also be a political function. Instead of only pointing out how certain buzzwords act as discourse-ending triggers, the aim should be to highlight the richness and potential of the discursive spaces contained within them. There are always good debates and clarifying exchanges to be found in these fields, where something can be learned.

Where that is not the case, it helps to resort to the meta-level and analyse how these blockages work. Migration often means we are not talking about climate change. Gender often means we are not talking about labour distribution, equal opportunity or the state of the school system. AI is a way of not talking about illiteracy or tax law. Once I see that speech is often used to avoid speaking, I stop asking about the content and instead ask about the motivation.

Meanwhile, inequality in Germany continues to grow. In 2021, the wealthiest 10 per cent owned nearly 60 per cent of total assets, while the poorer half owned just over 3 per cent. In terms of inequality, Germany is now roughly on a par with India. So-called culture wars seem to serve as a distraction. It hardly matters whether they are deliberately stoked, fuelled by chatbots, launched by think tanks, amplified by newspapers, backed by lobbyists or self-organised. We do not need conspiracy theories to recognise and interpret interests.

But what does fighting back mean here? Against what? Again: Be precise! Poetic language stands on the side of singularity. I do not believe the culture war will subside if one falls silent. Just as I do not believe that violence against women would diminish if women stopped protesting against sexism.

I would begin by questioning the collective term “culture war”. What exactly, what connections and conflicts, are being gathered under this heading? Which cultures are meant, and in what sense? This is also interesting because culture here also intersects with what a hundred years ago was called folk culture – still a factor in struggles over cultural hegemony.

What concept of culture am I applying? How about my counterpart? Is it singular or plural? And when do I assent to the word war in this compound? Unlike conflict or dispute, war suggests a readiness for physical confrontation. In this sense, the very concept of culture war already weakens language – or challenges it? After all, it is about something worth fighting for. I must ask myself where, in using the term culture war, I set the limits of language – and whether the invitation to debate is already premised on a reduced understanding of language and, implicitly, on a singular, hegemonial, superior notion of culture.

Again and again we must ask: What exactly is at stake? What new proxy debate are we dealing with this time – or is it not one at all? What are the desires behind it? What kind of world would we inhabit if my opponent were right? Are we in the arena of literal meaning or that of metaphor? And then there are the perennial rules: Have accurate numbers and the sources for them ready. Avoid unproductive connections. Don’t allow yourself to be set up. Recognise where contradiction is useful, and where exhaustion is the goal – then walk away. Always keep in mind: Who benefits when people can no longer speak to one another? Or when they are no longer able to act together across differences?

I would first ask whether culture wars really do serve to fix identities. Isn’t it rather about enforcing social roles – usually through the devaluation and reduction of qualities, through a process of labelling? In short, conditioning. That is not necessarily identical with identity. What poetry can do is another question to be answered case by case. Speaking more generally, I would say that poetic language (for me) often marks an escape from the confining mechanisms of identity logic. But it can also be the language in which those who have long been marginalised and silenced find expression.

This is precisely the logic of abuse. See what you made me do! This is a logic we find in many contexts. It races ahead into a brutalised future of imaginary threat, which does not yet exist, collects from there the justification for attack, and then rushes back at me from that future. This includes all those demands not to provoke the aggressor. We are familiar with this dynamic from dysfunctional families with violent, alcoholic fathers, just as we are from the Russian war of aggression or the dismantling of US universities under the Trump regime.

It could begin by making attentive listening possible. Offering a generous space, supported by a programme whose realisation does not draw too heavily on the resources needed for spontaneous interventions. Given the budget cuts, less may, for once, really be more. Stay capable of acting. Better gastronomy. Change the tempo. Don’t be rushed. Mix things differently. Shift gears. Use the façade and the prominent position in the city. Open doors. Open spaces to other groups as well. Strengthen in language what cannot be automated. Know your weaknesses. Listen and let yourself be unsettled. Stay calm. Look behind the words. Deal with the affect. Defend spaces where it is possible to appreciate and understand another form of language use. Forge surprising connections. Keep thinking.

A line by István Kemény: Szomorú kincsem, ép eszem. My sad treasure, my sound mind. 

Monika Rinck is a writer and member of the Literature Section at the Akademie der Künste since 2012.