Counterpublics in Search of Infrastructures: Lessons from German Anti-Antisemitism

Abstract

Abstract Loyalty to Israel has been described as a fundamental aim of the German state (a Staatsräson), and a stifling ideological consensus tars virtually any criticism of Zionism with the brush of “antisemitism.” Some on the Left, belonging to the so-called Anti-German (antideutsche) movement, consider support for “the Jewish state” to be a way of atoning for German sins—an ideology it ironically shares with some of the most outspoken of German nationalists. The result? Accusations and cancellations are visited on academics and artists; under McCarthyite conditions, the public sphere withers. “Counterpublics in Search of Infrastructures” analyzes some of the new kinds of counterpublicness that have emerged in response, particularly on social-media apps. The article considers historical theorizations of the counterpublic in order to address contemporary conditions and challenges. Discussing artistic and academic groups on social media as well as projects in exhibition spaces, it culminates in an inquiry into the notion of abstraction, both in accounts of the public sphere as consisting of abstract legal persons—as embodied by the male white bourgeois—and as certain theorizations of antisemitism as a phobic rejection of capitalist exchange value. Now that the dominant discourse once again pits property-owning and rights-bearing white subjects against racialized and dehumanized others, we need to ask: How can abstraction be performed otherwise? What are the kinds of relations that can enable a qualitatively different forms of publicness?