If there is a genre for a found blog, this post belongs in that.
In 2001, in college, while still studying art, I did a paper on Lustmord Kunst. This genre of art fell into the "Degenerate Art" that Hitler loathed. See the fictional account of this in the movie "Max" . My father had saved my paper. When he died it was still in his files. Yesterday, I dug it out.
Germany's art in this time period has historically been explained as a result of economic frustration with anger projected onto bodies of women. In 2001 I agreed with that line of thinking. Watching the rise of the Alt-Right, and nazis in America Right Now makes me revisit that line of reasoning.
That was the argument that explained how America got its current president: he appealed to the economically disenfranchised. Those that felt like this glorious land had let them down.
Looking at stats, the economically disenfranchised didn't make up his base. And it wasn't all male.
Take your pick: the epidemic of violence and murder against transwomen, death threats for women that dare to engage in tech culture, a man that has said grab them by the pussy/bleeding out of her you know what/ lock her up lock her up. We've heard all the things.
I suggest there is a different argument to make about Lustmord Kunst. I don't see it as a unique genre critiquing a unique moment in time and economic structure, in a particular boden. Perhaps it gives us a window into transboden misogyny.
As we continue doing the work of re-turning to history, and various archives try to figure out what exactly American nazis are capable of doing, I am curious about what Burkeain equipment for living the artistic archive that confronted and clashed with ideologies of Blut und Boden.
Or maybe something at the tip of our tongues, like rhetorics of violence against women in video games, for example, is a rabbit-hole back to the lustmord kunst archive that is worth exploring. Other wormholes in the arts: the NEH, Shia LeBouf, Fifty Shades of Grey, "How I Met Your Mother," and the comments on discussions re: Joss Whedon & feminism.
Yes, art as resistance. Yes, doing the work to stop what we can. Yes, this American land is painted with billions of buckets of blood from genocide. Appeals to logic (logos) haven't done shit. Neither have appeals to ethos.
Pathos, is that where we are at? Is that all that's left?? If so, bring on the art, and turn us back to the archive not only of nazi tactics, but the arts of resistance, failure and projections .of masculinity onto bodies and boden. Pay attention to the things that we allegedly said never again about.
And ITMFA.
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