Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm

In Carl Hegemann’s Frankfurt dissertation “Identität und Selbst-Zerstörung” (Identity and Self-Destruction – 1980), Frankfurt philosopher Christoph Menke notes, in the preface to the new edition of this text 40 years later, that it is the “most radical critique of society imaginable, namely that contemporary society is one ‘without subjects’”. In other words, not only is it a society of unequal distribution, miserable opportunities, crisis-ridden economies, repressive state apparatuses – yes, all that as well – but much more fundamentally a society which ruins the basic conditions of subjectivity. “Society tears the subject apart…” Hegemann’s most recent book “Dramaturgie des Daseins. Everyday live” (Dramaturgy of Existence. Everyday live) now provide the materials for this diagnosis, primarily collected and noted during his time as dramaturge at the Volksbühne Berlin.

Hegemann and Menke will talk about the connections between aesthetic practice and radical criticis.