“Hyperpolitics”: Anton Jäger: Post? Anti? Hyper, hyper!

Condensing one’s own present into a concept has always been a popular intellectual exercise. It’s easy to get offended by meaningful catchphrases, to absorb them as a first-year student, or to reject them out of principle. The Belgian historian Anton Jäger, born in 1994, a regular contributor to the “Jacobin” magazine, tries in an essay to understand our time as that of “hyperpolitics”. The little word comes from Peter Sloterdijk, but he is more concerned with philosophical fantasies. Jäger, so much in advance, has created a book that is worth reading and offers an interesting ride through the history of ideas with its speed and well-chosen examples; A little more economic history and empiricism wouldn’t have hurt the text either.

He doesn’t really know how to move on for a better, freer, fairer future – except: organize yourselves (maybe)! Because, with Friedrich Engels, it should be remembered that the conservatives and the capitalists in their elite institutions and corporations have always been this way.

A party photo by Wolfgang Tillmans from 1989 is the starting point for Jäger’s thoughts. The decade that was to follow the snapshot of intimate carelessness is described, and not just by Jäger, as post-political. People wanted to “simply dance away history,” the Cold War was officially over, ideologies had supposedly failed, the question of the system no longer arose: go into the private sphere, have fun! The neoliberal dissolution of society was already in full swing, but there was still television instead of Facebook, Gameboys instead of smartphones. This view certainly comes to mind for young Western Europeans, because the “shock therapy” that people in the former Soviet Union experienced, the Treuhand’s raids in East Germany, are more like primitive accumulation.

Well, before post-politics, mass politics prevailed from the late 19th century until around 1990: people (more or less) stuck together in large associations, the life of the individual was institutionalized, people knew their world, were in the workers’ movement, a people’s party, the church , “politics was embedded in a broad and deeply organized landscape.” But in the second half, unions in the USA and UK, for example, were attacked through “union busting”; Parties are distancing themselves from the population, says Jäger, and need PR agencies to know what their voters think – and then perhaps increasingly use them to tentatively tell them what they should think, one could add.

After post-politics came anti-politics: anti-globalization and the specter of populism characterized the later noughties and 2010s. It’s politicized by people who (supposedly) don’t want to be politicians; it’s (supposedly) about values ​​instead of offices. People are outraged, indignant, but no longer have any ideology at hand. Neoliberalism remains dominant, but is no longer considered okay. Trump is just as anti-political as Syriza once was. It’s a mess. And in Jäger’s essay, the “politics” mentioned are not so strictly separated. He knows about the high degree of abstraction, the danger of schematism, of not doing justice to the local.

Nevertheless, it is insightful to follow these broad strokes, because Jäger creates connections, criticizes sharply and writes clearly. In doing so, he draws on other thinkers as diverse as the sign and apocalyptic philosopher Jean Baudrillard, the cynical novelist Michel Houellebecq and the American sociologist Robert D. Putnam, who in his book “Bowling Alone” uses a popular leisure activity to talk about the disappearance of social capital in the world USA thought.

Today, in times of hyper-politics, according to Jäger, everything is simply described as political: dietary preferences, choice of clothing. The forms of communication on social networks contribute to the fact that every written message, no matter how small, general and forgotten, can be understood as a political statement. The wishes of the discourse contributors, unpaid or paid, are not listened to.

A great critical consciousness has come over the world, but it cannot change it. Even the criticism of the conditions that makes it onto the streets, such as Fridays for Future, Black Lives Matter or Deutsche Wohnen & Co. expropriate, disappears in a flash without having achieved any lasting effect… Gentrification continues, police violence against Black; In the face of international wars, climate goals are again of secondary importance because “Hyperpolitics is, first and foremost, an eminently market-compliant variant of politics, both in terms of its form and its content. Markets offer exit options and are, by their nature, designed for the short term.” Jäger states that “uncontrollable convulsions occur” in the political public sphere, but no “long-lasting infrastructures emerge.” Hyperpolitics offers only a brief “re-enchantment of public life.”

We know from Rio Reiser: “On their own, they’ll fool you.” Talk to strangers (in a friendly way) at bowling, help the old and weak in the neighborhood, join a sports club and vent your frustration verbally at work Run when everyone acts again as if they don’t spend half the day together in the same place for years. You have to look for the “Archimedean places,” says Jäger, where “common concerns are obvious.” Let’s see.

Anton Jäger: Hyperpolitics. A.d. English v. Janser, Geiselberger, Zimmermann. Suhrkamp, ​​136 pages, br., 16 €.