Petra Rethmann

Imagining Political Possibility in an Age of Late Liberalism and Cynical Reason

Inspired by innovative social projects and new political movements, anthropologists have turned to the study of political possibility. In looking at how people imagine and struggle for temporalities and conditions that will afford them the opportunity to exist in ways different from those they are experiencing now, cultural analysts draw on ethnography and critical political philosophy to chart new analytical trajectories and themes. By foregrounding a language of potentiality and becoming, scholars also envision new ways for looking at democracy and justice. In drawing on three contemporary ethnographies, this review traces how anthropologists examine possibilities in diverse cultural and political contexts, including some of its tenets and conjectures.

After the Thrill: Global Capitalism and the Search for South African Autonomy

In South Africa, autonomy is frequently called a ‘dream deferred’. This article examines how and why autonomy is considered deferred, and what kinds of post-apartheid economic and political developments have led to this judgment. It traces South Africas recent political trajectory from the unbanning of the liberation organizations and the release of Nelson Mandela, negotiations between the National Party and African National Congress (ANC), Mandelas presidency, and South Africas push for reconciliation but also neoliberalization, as well as the internecine struggles in the ANC. It especially engages the question of autonomy from the perspective of the ANCs critics and part of South Africas independent left. This article builds on discussions and interviews with South African self-identified progressive intellectuals, interviews that took place between November 2006 and February 2008. Although they do not speak with a homogeneous voice, all of these intellectuals are situated in critical relation to the current policies of the ANC. En Sudáfrica, frecuentemente se le llama a la autonomía, un “sueño diferido.” Este artículo examina cómo y por qué la autonomía se considera diferida, y qué tipos de desarrollos económicos y políticos de la época posterior al apartheid la ha llevado a este criterio. El mismo rastrea la trayectoria política reciente de Sudáfrica desde la eliminación de la prohibición de organizaciones de liberación y la liberación de Nelson Mandela, las negociaciones entre el Partido Nacional y el Congreso Africano Nacional (ANC), la presidencia de Mandela, y el empuje de Sudáfrica por la reconciliación, pero también por la neo-liberación, como las luchas internas destructivas en el ANC, (por sus siglas en inglés). Especialmente implica el asunto de autonomía desde la perspectiva de la crítica del ANC y parte de la izquierda independiente de Suráfrica. Este artículo se crea sobre las discusiones y las entrevistas con los sudafricanos autoidentificados como intelectuales progresivos que tuvieron lugar entre noviembre de 2006 y febrero de 2008. A pesar de que no hablan en una voz homogénea, todos estos intelectuales se sitúan en una relación crítica a las políticas actuales de la ANC.

West German Radical History Seen From the 1980s: Projekt Artur and the Refusal of Political Confiscation1

Recent years have seen an intense growth in memories of West German leftwing, radical political culture. There now exists an extensive body of interpretive labour seeking to make sense of how that culture developed from the mid-60s until approximately the mid-80s, a vast expansion of the notable few attempts of previous decades (Aust; Botzat, Kiderlen, and Wolff) to analyze its forms and themes. Yet while this intensified interest may mark a particular kind of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” much of it takes place on the analytical planes of trauma, performance, and representation (Theweleit; Trnka). This article focusses on one approach to radical left-wing politics and culture that, even as early as the 80s, perceived the promise rather than the threat of that movement. It does so by undertaking an analysis of Projekt Artur (Danquart et al.), the 1987 political documentary produced by the left-media collective Medienwerkstatt Freiburg and demonstrating three major aspects of that film’s significance: first as a cinematic document of both the political imaginaries and the practices of West Germany’s radical left, providing a glimpse of the historical legitimation, political commitments, and emotional attachments that left radicals associated with “the struggle” of that twenty-year span; second as a history “from below” that grows out of the heterogeneity of “the movement” and that serves, rather than the academic goal of explaining, the political goal of continuing the debate within that movement; and third as a project comparable, in its production and form, to experiments in collective authorship that proliferated in the 60s and 70s and sought not only to refute the myth of the lonely, gifted theorist and writer and the film director as “auteur,” but also to relegate these figures to the solitary confinement of elitist culture and knowledge production. In Germany (and beyond), to raise the question of radical, left-wing culture is to confront the ways in which this radicality is represented and remembered. In many of the recent histories and documents, there exists a tendency to reduce the movement to a few trademarked representatives or iconic leaders. These are the radicals with a capital “R,” immutable in their heroism and frequently