I'm not sure how to describe this strange interview other than to say that the anti-gamer German SJW collective known as "Keinen Pixel den Faschisten" ("No Pixels For Fascists") recently interviewed a cultural scientist and European ethnologist, Dr. Marketa Spiritova, who essentially reinforces the idea that everything is political to these people by explaining how, in her world view, pop culture can be used to push unhealthy brands of nationalism, racism, and other forms of bigotry.

BY TEAM - JUNE 10, 2020 - BLOG/INTERVIEW

Nationalism as a Pop Culture Phenomenon

Marketa Spiritova (PD Dr.) is a cultural scientist and European ethnologist. Her research emphases include memory culture, nationalism, oral history, popular (youth) culture, and the regions of Eastern Europe. We interviewed her about the dangers of nationalism and her work at the pop culture research conference Pop the Nation!

You research nationalism in pop culture. Can you briefly explain to us what that means?

It's about popular culture offerings such as music, comics, video games, or graffiti that contain nationalistic statements, that is to say statements that superelevate one's own nation and ascribe negative characteristics to other nations. This often happens only implicitly by basing the national self-image on very tightly controlled affiliations: as a general rule, being descended from a homogeneous "people" which define themselves through a religion, a (white) skin color, a supposed ancestral territory and a "culture" (however one defines that).

Why did you start applying your ethnological research to pop culture media?

European ethnology is an empirical cultural science that has always focused on everyday life and thus on popular cultures, on youth cultures, on the mass media. On the other hand, European ethnology is inspired by British cultural studies, which define the area of the popular as political, that is to say: pop(ular) culture products are also areas in which battles for sovereignty of interpretation and power are fought. The notion that supposedly banal everyday life and everything that goes with it is a thoroughly political place, a place where power relations and power struggles can be identified, is one that I find very exciting and worth exploring. supposedly banal everyday life and everything that goes with it is a thoroughly political place, a place where power relations and power struggles can be identified

Do you have a "favorite" topic within the pop culture offerings you mention? A specific medium or product that particularly fascinates you with regards to your research?

On the one hand music products, that is to say lyrics, videos, performances. Here, I find the situation particularly exciting in Eastern Europe - and also worrisome, unfortunately, because nationalisms have a much greater presence in the mainstream there than in Germany, for example. On the other hand - and I find this almost even more exciting - I look at the reception of the musical offerings on social media, where music is talked about, discussed, argued about. Because the recipients ascribe meanings to pop cultural offerings, often completely independently of what the authors meant.

Do you perceive a trend towards nationalism in popular media in Germany? If yes: Do certain media stand out in particular?

Yes. We had this trend in the noughties. One might think of "We Are Who We Are" by Paul van Dyk and Peter Heppner. There're currently a great number of examples in music, Xavier Naidoo, Andreas Gabalier, Kollegah...

What can recipients pay attention to in order to recognize and reflect on nationalistic tendencies in media?

Often it begins with a supposedly unimportant "but one can say that", "that's freedom of art", "that's patriotic, not nationalistic". Recognizing nationalisms right away isn't always easy because, at first, they're only expressed in insinuations and ambiguities that leave a lot of room for interpretation. The recourse to historical myths should make one sit up and take notice, e.g. those who constituted the nations in themselves in the 19th century, Germanic myths, or stories about the German rubble women. Furthermore, the superelevation of one's own nation through national symbolism, a supposed "game" with National Socialist history, and the aesthetics or the use of populist metaphors such as "The boat is full".

(TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Maybe I'm looking way too much into this, but Marketa Spiritova's use of the unconventional turn of phrase "those who constituted the nations in themselves in the 19th century" ("jene, die im 19. Jahrhundert die Nationen konstituierten") is more than a little conspicuous because I've only found two particular individuals in history who've used (anything close to) that particular combination of words:

"Indem das Proletariat zunächst sich die politische Herrschaft erobern, sich zur nationalen Klasse erheben, sich selbst als Nation konstituieren muß, ist es selbst noch national, wenn auch keineswegs im Sinne der Bourgeoisie."

"Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word."

As if you haven't guessed by now, the aforementioned individuals are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in "The Communist Manifesto", which makes me kind of suspicious about where exactly Spiritova's politics lie.)

But it's mostly so-called "small words", as they were dubbed by the social anthropologist Michael Billig, that refer to nationalisms: whenever there's talk of "us", "our country", or a "we", one should take a close look and ask oneself who's actually meant by this "we". Then you discover that white, heteronormative, ethnically homogeneous homeworlds are being conjured up, historical facts twisted, and antisemitic, racist and sexist stereotypes served.

You co-organized the Pop the Nation! conference. Would you like to conclude with a brief introduction to it, perhaps recommend a particularly impressive lecture to listen to or book to read?

The conference dealt with the nation as a resource and argument in popular cultures from a European-ethnological perspective. Using music scenes, fashion labels, computer games, comics, memes and films, it revealed where and how national images of the self and of others are negotiated in pop culture, how nationalisms and racisms are produced there. And pop culture products especially do this very successfully, because they command high emotional qualities on the basis of their sensual-physical perceptibility, commercial conditionality, and often spectacular visuality. Here, I can recommend the works of Agnieszka Balcerzak and Jos Stübners on Poland's right-wing pop culture or Jelena Jazo's book on the fascist aesthetic in youth culture in Germany.

Original Article: http://keinenpixeldenfaschisten.de/2020/06/10/interview-marketa-spiritova/

Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20200819020129/https://keinenpixeldenfaschisten.de/2020/06/10/interview-marketa-spiritova/

Archive.today: http://archive.vn/90yEm