Narcissisms and wokisms in the art world

Why are more and more authors presenting their lives in book form without camouflage?

Well, we live in an age where every community is atomized and the individual is sung to the skies. We are now dealing with a collective narcissism in which the individual is placed above everything and idolized like a god. 

Are we losing the gods and worshipping stars and starlets instead?

Basically, that's not so new either. It certainly existed in the Sturm und Drang period, yes, the individual was also exaggerated then. But today we live in an age of visual media. The self-absorption with which people post photos of themselves and even their children defies description. To paraphrase Nietzsche: "God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him..." And humans are now filling this gap. You only have to walk through a pedestrian zone once and see how many people are looking at each other in the shop windows. 

Do you think authors who only write about themselves are in love with themselves? 

The real topic is the self, the individual, and this is considered so interesting that people think they have to write about it. You don't bother to do any research, you don't construct any characters, you don't think about the time you live in, you just fabulate about your own little, generally not particularly exciting life. 

Is that so new? Wasn't Dostoyevsky his own player? Didn't Hesse, Camus or Italo Svevo draw from their own lives, sometimes quite generously?

Of course. But Dostoyevsky set aesthetic standards. He created psychograms that were valid far beyond his time. This is a high art that can only be achieved through intensive, grueling work. It is no coincidence that it is world literature. What time do you think the protagonists outlive, from to whom Doris Knecht writeswhose new book we want to talk about?

Will you tell us?

I don't know either. But if there ever comes a time when Doris Knecht stands for a type of person, it will all be too late anyway.

Where do the individualization tendencies of our time come from?

I would see this as a consequence of postmodern philosophy, according to which society and community no longer represent a value. The French philosopher Michelle Foucault, following on from Nietzsche, has relativized everything and elevated or degraded it to a question of subjective perspective, depending on your point of view. Everything is up to the perspective of the observer, and everyone is allowed to have their own truth. There are no longer any objectifiable truths, only the truth in the mind of the individual.

Which is why the individual can then also decide what they want to be, whether man, woman, dog or chicken.

Exactly. There is then no more determinism. The laws of nature are declared null and void, so to speak. They are replaced by the desire and thus the truth of the individuals, who then choose who or what they want to be.

Isn't this a pretense of supposed freedoms, while at the same time freedoms that have been won and are even guaranteed by constitutional law are being questioned and withdrawn?

This runs through many areas of life. You see, Foucault postulated life as a network of power relations whose purpose is to oppress people. In his view, community is negative per se. But the positive aspects of community, that the individual is supported by the family, that the community - the state, if you like - can offer protection and security, are negated. And so it is fitting that the police and military should first be downgraded and then consequently abolished. Anyone who criticizes this and points out that the police could possibly be important for internal security and people's sense of security is a Nazi, isn't he?

The community, the family, traditions, everything that gives people the stability and security they need to be able to develop as individuals within society - that is the real dialectic behind it - is denounced as outmoded and sacrificed on the altar of the zeitgeist so that the individual can reinvent themselves every day. And if that's what it means, it can also see itself as a dog or a chicken. And if you find that somehow strange, then you are incorrect, not the person in the dog costume who barks and whines. 

You analyze the lives of young people. How great is the discrepancy between academics and working youth? 

They live in different universes, so to speak. You will hardly find non-academics at a Love Parade. You will also rarely or never find vegan restaurants in the countryside or in working-class housing estates. Schnitzels are still very popular there. Many young people who get up in the morning and go to work no longer vote because they don't think it will make any difference anyway. Academic young people from the city, on the other hand, do vote, and of course they vote left or green. They are so convinced of themselves that they think the system they live in is the right one and look down on the people from the countryside, who they think are backward.

The fact that city dwellers smile at the rural population is nothing new.

You can already read that in Karl Marx, not that the countryside is a place of idiocy.

For Marx, religion was also the opium of the people. Instead, big cities are now being invaded by ever new substitute religions. 

Sure, people have to believe in something. If your religion and your privileged origins as a white person have been denied long enough, then you just have to find something else to believe in. When in doubt, you just believe in whatever is currently circulating as morally superior.

Raffaela Raab, who displays a zeal for animal welfare that any missionary would probably have envied, said in a TV debate with Gerald Grosz that it was ridiculous to refer to religion in our time, and then she disqualified the term 'soul' as being out of date in 2023.

Ms. Raab is an extreme example of the apodictic insistence on one's own truths, however abstruse they may be, while at the same time denigrating other attitudes to life as outmoded - or, to stay with Karl Marx, as idiotic. Of course, you never know for sure whether these are their own truths or just assumed truths. Privileged academics can now spout any kind of nonsense without any consequences. They all agree on the issues of the day anyway. However, we know from studies that young people who have a different opinion to the official one on issues such as the war in Ukraine, migration and Covid, i.e. key issues, don't dare to say so.

And yet the freedom of opinion is referred to everywhere.

At this point, I like to refer to Idi Amin, who also allowed his people to say what they wanted. You just have to expect to be thrown to the crocodiles. It's not that drastic here, but of course there are consequences if you go against the mainstream. The only people who can say what they want are the elites who dutifully adhere to the official interpretation, and that includes many artists who have made themselves comfortable and don't want to give up their privileges.

Would you also count Doris Knecht among the privileged? My real question was why she spices up her new book with so many wokisms. 

I suspect that the publisher believes that in order to be successful today, it needs details that cater to the rainbow clichés. But the majority of people aren't stupid enough to buy it.

But the book is going well, very well in fact.

Have you finished reading it?

No.

And would you buy Doris Knecht's next book?

Rather not...

Take a look!

Is she out if she doesn't serve the zeitgeist or does she possibly stand by it, like Ms. Raab for total animal protection?

Doris Knecht came to Vienna as a young woman from the countryside. Perhaps she wants to destroy her rural origins because she sees the country as patriarchal and reactionary. Instead, the city is exalted as a sacred place, even though there are no ideals there. On the contrary: it is an urban Sodom and Gomorrah where anything is now possible. And she presumably wants to belong there in order to be recognized and get rid of the stink of her provincial origins. After all, she also writes for the Viennese Falter.

A colorful newspaper with a more left-wing orientation?

Left would be for the working class. The Falter is certainly not that. Today, the children of the upper classes, who don't have to work and carry their wokisms around like monstrances, vote left, and the working classes are increasingly voting right.

Do you see a culture war brewing?

It is already underway. The academics are waging a cultural war against the normal, working population, who are slowly running out of steam. 

Where does it lead?

Some resign, others vote for the FPÖ in Austria or the AfD in Germany. If these parties are banned, as is already being considered, then we will have Weimar conditions and people will take to the streets. Those who can afford it will emigrate. As always, the poor will bear the brunt.