The Beats, Radicalism, And The Bipolar World, the European Beat Studies Network‘s
13th Annual Conference takes place today (through till Wednesday) at the University of Hildesheim, Germany
From the statement by the organizers ( Heike Mlakar, Florian Zappe, Tomasz Stompor, Alexander Greiffenstern):
“The radical ethos of the Beat movement, whether defined in aesthetic, political, or cultural terms, is deeply rooted in the specific historical situation in which it emerged: the binary-coded world of the Cold War. During this era, the ideological polarization of global politics combined with the domestic imperatives of social and political conformism led – on both sides of the Iron Curtain – to the phenomenon that Herbert Marcuse described as the “one-dimensional society” defined by “a pattern of ….thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe.” .. The tension between dominant materialist values and spiritual seeking was central to Beat thought and literature, revealing a profound resistance to the encroaching uniformity of the age.
Especially in Germany… the ideological polarization became manifest as a geopolitical division that sliced the country into two political entities with opposing systems. In reaction to government restrictions and repression by an official state ideology in the East and a hegemonic cultural conservatism in the West, countercultural movements still developed on the fringes of both societies. At the heart of this geopolitical flashpoint, the international dimensions of political and cultural conflict were observable in a crystallized form that took on various other facets around the globe.
While it may be a truism that the emergence of Beat culture in the mid-twentieth century was a reaction to the “one-dimensionality” of the era, it is vital to understand its significance for the radicalism of the phenomenon’s ethos. The Beats’ revitalization and expansion of the old Modernist battle cry “Make it New!” was an assault on the political and cultural foundations of Cold War-era “one-dimensionality” on a global scale. Originating in the United States, their radical approaches to art and life generated similar movements in many other countries, where artists and intellectuals felt stifled by the political climate.
Although the Cold War ended 35 years ago, today’s social divisions follow similarly polarized fault lines, where issues of free speech feel ever-present; discussions of sexuality, critiques of war, and advocacy of human rights seem under threat in ways that mirror past dangers. This invites us to revisit and discuss the unbroken topicality of the radical aesthetico-political approaches of Beat culture in the light of current events”
Specifically Ginsberg-based presentations:
Tomorrow (September 16) – Franca Bellarsi –“‘Moloch the incomprehensible prison!’: The Carceral Poetics of “Howl” and Its Bipolar World of Cognition”
Tanguy Harma “Beyond Beat Cultural Radicalism: Jack Kerouac vs Allen Ginsberg”
& Michael Kellner -“With Allen Ginsberg in East Berlin, 1983” – A conversation with Michael Kellner
A few selected highlights:
Ben Heal – “Eric Mottram and Cold-War Beat UK: A Critical Transatlantic Exchange”
Peter Oehler “Marcuse, Burroughs, and the Beat Generation”
David Calonne – “Diane di Prima and Kabbalah”
Richard Marklew – “Philip Lamantia, Diane Di Prima and the Temporalities of Anarchist Poetics”
Davis Schneiderman – “The Soft Machine Learns? William S. Burroughs, Counterculture, and the ‘Prophetic’ Vision of AI”
Arthur Nusbaum & Joe Provenzano – “John Sinclair: Mimeograph Revolutionary”
Chad Weidner – “Beyond Romanticism: The Environmental Arc of Beat Generation Literature”
Julius Greve – “’The World is Watching’: On Gary Snyder and Ecological Crisis”
Tadeusz Pióro – The Aesthetic and Political Aspects of the Reception of Beat Writing in Poland Before and After 1989”
Jaap van der Bent and René van der Voort –“Beat Spirit, Provo Politics: Countercultural Currents in the Dutch 1960s” (film show and discussion)
Peggy Pacini -“Performing the voice of the poet (Voznesensky in presentia/in absentia)”
Ian MacFadyen – “Two opposed Beat strategies of the Cold War: Jerome Rothenberg‘s ethnopoetics and Burroughs and Gysin‘s dark arts”
For the complete list of presentations and presenters – see here