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Paper short abstract

In building on the concept of bricolage, in this paper I examine how the political right draws on art to build its own ontologies and utopias.

Paper long abstract

Since 2020, I have been following the public readings and workshops that take place at the Library of Conservatism in Berlin (BdK). Building on the private book collection of publicist Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing, the BdK opened in 2021 and has become a think tank and networking place for conservative and right-wing intellectuals.

In seeking to understand how the right draws on literature, and more broadly art, to publicize, relay, foster, and cement its convictions, I draw on ideas of bricolage, moral panic, and culture wars. With the new translation of Levi-Strauss’ Wild Thought, bricolage has become one conceptual tool through which to approach the various means through which ‘the right’ is made. By no means a political monolith, the right needs intellectual instruments and art to build its own utopias, ontologies, and even momentums. In centering in particular on two talks, one by Marc Jongen, party philosopher of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), and philosopher and literary analyst Kai Hammermeister, I examine how the right figures the relationship between politics and art.

What kinds of art and texts are being used, and how are they being used to cement political ideologies and foster connections? How do they idealize a mythical past, and how do they build on these myths for purposes of propaganda? Rather than posing bricolage as a mode of pure thought, I also pose it as a mode of labor that assists in forming a particular kinds of aesthetics, politics, and history.