Moritz Ege | University of Zurich, Switzerland (original) (raw)

Articles by Moritz Ege

Reading matters. An Unfestschrift for Regina Bendix, 2023

The 2019 Netflix film Dolemite Is My Name follows the career of the failing comedian Rudy Ray Moo... more The 2019 Netflix film Dolemite Is My Name follows the career of the failing comedian Rudy Ray Moore, portrayed by Eddie Murphy, and his unlikely rise to success. Moore (1927-2008) became famous in the 1970s by taking on a stage persona named Dolemite, a pimp-and-bad-man figure who excels at vulgar verbal boasting in a heavily stylized African American speech variety. Moore performed as Dolemite on stage, on records, and in low-budget movies that were part of-and mockedthe "Blaxploitation" wave of the 1970s. Dolemite himself is not Moore's invention, but a figure from a narrative poem that circulated in African American areas in the US South and, later, North, like the famous Stagger Lee. In the film, Moore learned the Dolemite toast from a homeless man named Rico, who declares himself to be a "repository of Afro-American folklore" in the film. For collecting his material and enticing his informants to share from their "repository," Moore ventured to the tents of his rough-living informants, used a tape recorder, and paid his informants small amounts of money-not unlike academic field workers. "This is the same kind of material that Roger D. Abrahams has published in Deep Down in the Jungle and Positively Black," observed the reviewer of one of Moore's albums in the Journal of American Folklore (Evans 1973). A highlight of the 2019 film is Dolemite's nightclub-stage performance of the "Signifying Monkey," the famous narrative poem or "toast" ("a long narrative poem constructed with the highest wit and performed only by the best talkers," mostly in pun-oriented rhyming couplets; Abrahams 1970: 59). Early recordings of the

This essay continues our thinking through of the implications of scholarship on what we have call... more This essay continues our thinking through of the implications of scholarship on what we have called 'Afro-Americanophilia' in twentieth century Germany. We set out our reasons for using this term in the introduction to this special edition; however it is worth stressing again here that the term is intended to designate the African-Americancentredness of German interest in black culture, as opposed to the more generically 'African' that Negrophilia connotes, a term which is also often linked with a very specific phase in European culture, the 1920s. 1 Especially in the wake of technologies like the jukebox, radio, film and television, and after defeat and Allied occupation in WWII, there has been a distinct German engagement with African American culture(s). 2 Our term includes a deliberate juxtaposition (Black Power prefix; Greek suffix), which is intended to prompt attention to the tensions and ambiguities running through the 'love.' It is important to conceive of the complexity and implications of this love. In the 1 As in our previous joint essay, the culturally constructed yet crucial categories 'black' and 'white' will not be put in quotation marks or begin with a capital letter on the following pages (unless there is a context of identity politics and emphatic cultural pride among protagonists), but they should nonetheless be read as highly debated, unstable signifiers (with real-world references and effects in experiences, identities and politics), not as 'neutral', sociological denominations. 2 There are, of course, counterexamples, including the prominent novelist and ethnographer Hubert Fichte (1935-1986) whose works on African diasporic cultures and gay/queer sexuality spans the Black Atlantic, and the Africanist Janheinz Jahn (1918-1973) who, a few decades earlier, wrote on numerous African but sometimes also African American literatures, and collaborated with Léopold Sédar Senghor.

De Gruyter eBooks, Mar 1, 2016

... To what degree of violence will 'beef'between rappers such Kool Savas and Eko Fresh, ... more ... To what degree of violence will 'beef'between rappers such Kool Savas and Eko Fresh, or between Sido and Bushido, or between Fler and Bushido, lead? On the one hand, there certainly are 'literalist'interpre-Page 180. ... Many people actively dislike it; moreover, they despise it. ...

In this essay, which builds on the methodological considerations and the definitions we sketched ... more In this essay, which builds on the methodological considerations and the definitions we sketched in the introduction to the special edition on what we are calling twentiethcentury German Afro-Americanophilia, we delve into the history of Afro-Americanophilia in Germany and of its precursors. Afro-Americanophilia denotes the affirmative, enthusiastic, even loving approaches to African American culture, politics, and people. These, in turn, are heterogeneous acts that encompass imaginations, practices and social relationships. Such acts have been theorized with concepts such as mimesis, identification, desire, translation, misunderstanding, appropriation, expropriation, fetishism, hybridisation, or becoming-minor. Our aim here, however, is not to theorize Afro-Americanophilia, but to establish a preliminary, mostly descriptive periodization and to draw out some of the particularly significant moments, ruptures, and continuities within it. In the process, we also identify some of the salient ways scholars have interpreted Afro-Americanophilia during those periods. The timeframe we cover in this first review essay stretches from the nineteenth century until the mid-1960s, from which point the second essay continues. Focusing on a variety of appropriative practices, communicative media, actors and forms of agency, power differentials, and sociocultural contexts, we discuss positive images of and affirmative Ege and Hurley Periodizing and Historicizing 1

transcript Verlag eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

Routledge eBooks, Jun 26, 2023

This book provides an outline for a multidisciplinary research agenda into urban ethics and offer... more This book provides an outline for a multidisciplinary research agenda into urban ethics and offers insights into the various ways urban ethics can be configured. It explores practices and discourses through which individuals, collectives and institutions determine which developments and projects may be favourable for dwellers and visitors traversing cities. Urban Ethics as Research Agenda widens the lens to include other actors apart from powerful individuals or institutions, paying special attention to activists or civil society organizations that express concerns about collective life. The chapters provide fresh perspectives addressing the various scales that converge in the urban. The uniqueness of each city is, thus, enriched with global patterns of the urban. Local sociocultural characteristics coexist with global flows of ideas, goods and people. The focus on urban ethics sheds light on emerging spaces of human development and the ways in which ethical narratives are used to mobilize and contest them in terms of the good life. This timely book analyses urban ethical negotiations from social and cultural studies, particularly drawing on anthropology, geography and history. This volume will be of interest to scholars, researchers and practitioners interested in ethics and urban studies. Raúl Acosta is a social anthropologist specialized in urban and environmental governance. He has conducted fieldwork in Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Venezuela and Peru. He is the author of Civil Becomings (2020) as well as numerous articles and chapters. He carried out research in Mexico City as part of the Urban Ethics Research Group.

Ralf von Appen, Sarah Chaker, Michael Huber, Sean Prieske (Hg.), "Parallelgesellschaften" in populärer Musik? Abgrenzungen, Annäherungen, Perspektiven (=GFPM Beiträge zur Popularmusikforschung 48 und ~Vibes - The IASPM D-A-CH Series 3), Bielefeld: transcript, S. 33-58., , 2024

Using the examples of three recent songs (and the discourses surrounding them) from Germany and t... more Using the examples of three recent songs (and the discourses surrounding them) from Germany and the UK – DJ Robin & Schürze’s „Layla“, Frank White and Bass Sultan Hengzt’s „Cancel Culture Nightmare“ and FKA Twigs’s „Don’t Judge Me“ – this chapter investigates how pop musicians comment upon and contribute to discussions of today’s cultural and sociopolitical „cleavages“ with implicit or explicit statements about the role that morality should play in popular entertainment and politics. It argues that contemporary pop culture is characterized by a tension between the habitual anti-moralism of informal life and a critical politicization of the seemingly private and mundane. Situating these matters within a neo-Gramscian „war of position,“ this chapter shows that the often-described opposition between anti-moralists and moralizers is too simplistic. Rather, we find different types of pop-cultural anti-moralism implying different ethical and political positions with radically different consequences: The traditionalist (often hedonistic, sometimes sociological and self-described „realist“) variant opposes critique and interventions based on „universalistic“ morality, ethics or politics, whereas the anti-traditionalist (antiracist, feminist) version detects and scandalizes sedimented moral normativity. Both forms of anti-moralism share traits and have specific ambiguities, as this analysis shows, but they contribute to different hegemonic projects and draw different „frontier“ lines (Laclau). On a conceptual level, this chapter shows that the notion of the popular (in its different German translations as popular and populär) is indispensable because it contains the tensions that come to the fore in conflictual cultural negotiations like these.

Mädchen*fantasien. Zur Politik und Poetik des Mädchenhaften, 2024

The Cultural Politics of Anti-Elitism , 2023

The introductory chapter lays out a framework for conceptualising the recent wave of anti-elite r... more The introductory chapter lays out a framework for conceptualising the recent wave of anti-elite rhetoric and sentiments in different arenas. It suggests analytical distinctions between a variety of forms of anti-elite articulations – which allows a better understanding of how they interacted and resonated – and also between egalitarian and non-egalitarian forms of anti-elitism. It situates the recent interest in these matters not only in responses to the populist wave of the mid-2010s but also in more general dynamics of societies structured in dominance, discussing the ways in which cultural politics in different fields have been shaped by anti-elitism at different conjunctures, including the spread of extreme conspiracy theories about hidden elites – and it poses the question how different forms of anti-elitism may have contributed to multiple and interconnected crises. Furthermore, particular attention is paid to anti-elitism as an argument in explanations of the populist wave, as well as the role and the epistemological status of diagnostic narratives of different types and the notion of conjunctural analysis and its purchase. Overall, the chapter discusses anti-elitism not only as an ambiguous pattern in cultural politics but also as an object of normative reflection from which academics – who are targeted by anti-elitism, but may hold egalitarian views themselves – should not refrain. In closing, the chapter asks what happened to anti-elite articulations and what their role might be after that specific historical “moment”.

Pop the Nation! Die Nation als Ressource und Argument in Kulturen populärer Unterhaltung und Vergnügung, 2023

City, Culture and Society, 2020

(G.M. Winder). 1 It shifted the discussion from the built environment towards the intersections o... more (G.M. Winder). 1 It shifted the discussion from the built environment towards the intersections of architecture, planning and urban development, particularly in cities of the global South, focusing on questions of the environment, society and technology under the rubric of ethics, rather than politics (Biennale di Venezia, 2000). Writing about architectural circles in Turkey, Uğur Tanyeli (2011) notes: "few things have been talked about as much in recent years" as ethics. Tanyeli shows that the denotation of ethics-talk often remains unclear: In debates among architecture professionals, the term can refer to professional standards, to environmental concerns, to noncommercial orientations, or to aesthetic conventions. Nevertheless, the majority of buildings being built show little attention to ethical deliberation. 2 Case studies and further reflections on urban ethics along the lines discussed in this article can be found in Ege & Moser, (forthcoming). For an approach that takes ethics as a resource for "normative demands to bear upon the social world of order, rules, and public policy", along the lines of an ethics of care and cosmopolitan responsibility, see the geographer Popke (2006, 2007, 2009).

New Formations, 2019

Inspired by Hall et al.'s Policing the Crisis (1978), the authors provide a conjunctural analysis... more Inspired by Hall et al.'s Policing the Crisis (1978), the authors provide a conjunctural analysis of present-day Germany. It is based on a periodisation of Merkelism-the dominant political mode of managing the economic, political and cultural crisis tendencies in the country from the mid-2000s onwards. This reveals that the Merkelist approach to crisis management has become exhausted. The manifestation point of this process is the 2015 'Summer of Migration'. The Merkel government decided not to prevent hundred thousands of refugees who had been walking across the Balkans for months from entering the country. Hereupon, it was identified, at the level of political discourse, with a liberal stance on the border regime. As a result, the pragmatic and depoliticising interventions typical of Merkelism lost traction; a political and cultural polarisation emerged. Importantly, this happened in the context of a socioeconomic consolidation of large parts of the 'new' middle class-and a protracted decline of the working class, which was covered up by narratives of Germany as a success story. Accordingly, the conjuncture in the country is characterised by the weakening of class ties of political and cultural representation and the proliferation of nationalist interpellations. Once again, 'race is the modality in which class is lived' (Hall), which is visible in the widespread assumption that there are clearly defined, homogeneous and incompatible 'cultures' clashing with one another. In this sense, race has become a politically salient category whose discursive predominance contributes to further marginalising a language of class.

Moritz Ege/Johannes Moser (eds.): Urban Ethics. Conflicts Over the Good and Proper Life in Cities. London/New York: Routledge, 2021

Taylor & Francis eBooks, 2020

What constitutes a good life in the city, ethics under urban conditions or ethics of urban life? ... more What constitutes a good life in the city, ethics under urban conditions or ethics of urban life? How do and how should people translate normative imperatives and reflections of "the good" into their everyday conduct of life in urban contexts and would that make for a "good" and possibly also emphatically "urban" life? Who gets to live this "good" urban life, who has the resources to engage in such reflections and whose ideas of the "good," of morality and propriety, prevail in these urban ethics? Questions like these are implicitly and explicitly being asked, debated, negotiated and fought over all around the world. This book and this introduction explore the overarching argument that, across their differences, such questions should also be seen and studied as questions of "urban ethics," as practical negotiations and public debates over the "good" and "proper" or "right" way of living in cities and in urban ways, and that through them, conflicting values and interests are being expressed, addressed, worked through, sometimes neutralized, sometimes transposed and sometimes brought to an escalation. Urban ethics surface in concrete events and movements and in projects that are recognizably "ethical," but they also have a much wider purchase. Focusing on them can help us understand a wide variety of urban situations better in contemporary societies, and also historically. It is necessary to stress from the start that this is a book of interdisciplinary social and cultural research, not of philosophy. It also is a book devoted primarily to analysis and critical reflection, not toward finding a better and more ethical practice, at least not always and straightforwardly so. Contributions to this volume explore different aspects of the ethical dimension of urban life, of urbanism and urbanity, and the specific ways of articulating and resolving conflicts that it tends to entail. Many of them also ask how this relates to questions of politics and the political. Rather than seeking answers to urban-ethical questions in a normative register, that is, rather than trying to figure out what the "good" and proper life in cities "really" is and should be, the book's contributors-without, of course, denying the importance of ethico-political reflection and action-study ethics as a sociocultural phenomenon that involves discourses, practices and materiality. As sociologist and anthropologist Didier Fassin summarizes a recent Introduction: urban ethics 5 and Throop 2014), but the former meanings are, in our view, predominantat least within initiatives for getting people to live better lives and, thus, build better cities, which is one important starting point for research on urban ethics. Ethical events and the promise of open cities Munich, in Germany, the city where the research group is based from whose work some of the chapters in this volume stem, is a good place to start looking more closely at public representations of urban ethics-not because it is a particularly "good" city, whatever that would mean, but because it has come to stand for "ethical" action by urban dwellers in a particular way. In the late summer of 2015, this somewhat saturated, economically successful Bavarian city, with its socially liberal tendencies and conservative backbone, became a near-global symbol for welcoming migrants and refugees, a place where many urban dwellers were doing simply the right thing in the face of human suffering and the callousness of European politics-or, from the skeptics' viewpoint, Munich became an example of a symbolic excess, an overreach of ethics, out of touch with (supposed) "popular" morality and realism in immigration matters. 1 At Munich Central train station, in late summer 2015, thousands of volunteers welcomingly cheered the new arrivals in the trains that had come from Hungary and Austria, many of whom were war refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq who had crossed the Mediterranean Sea. Volunteers handed out food, clothing, SIM cards and so on, acts which were immediately televised and broadcast, as well as shared on social media. In doing so, these refugees and their supporters became part of an assemblage of actors that temporarily defeated the European Union's border regime, or so it seemed, in what can be seen as a genuinely political act (Hess et al. 2017). In these actions, people signaled that refugees and migrants were indeed welcome, at least in cities like Munich. Some of the activists-if that is the right word, not everyone would subscribe to it-involved had been active in antiracist, anti-border campaigns for many years. Some had been migrants and refugees themselves. Most, however, were neither, and they emphasized that they were motivated primarily, even "compelled," to do what is right and good. 2 In such statements, there was also something oddly and conspicuously "ethical" about the Munich events. It was not just that these actions were morally good, but that they were exemplary of acting in an ethical way. In that sense, these events were also taking place below, above, beyond and, in a way, against the realm of politics. This has not been lost on high-profile observers either: Sociologist and urban theorist Richard Sennett, in a chapter of reflections on the figures of "Alien, Brother, Neighbor" in his recent Building and Dwelling. Ethics for the City, inspired by philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Okakura Kakuzo, takes Munich in 2015 as an exemplary case for moments of ethical openness in cities where "the Other appeared as a brother" (Sennett 2018, 122). The fact that these events could be taken

Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften

Typen, Stereotypen und kulturelle Figuren Vor einigen Jahren haben die Kultursoziologen Stephan M... more Typen, Stereotypen und kulturelle Figuren Vor einigen Jahren haben die Kultursoziologen Stephan Moebius und Markus Schroer im Suhrkamp Verlag eine Essaysammlung über Sozialfiguren der Gegenwart publiziert. Dem Band liegt -so die Herausgeber in ihrer kurzen Einleitung -die These zugrunde, "dass jede Gesellschaft sich unter anderem über die Konstituierung von Subjektpositionen, Typisierungen und Personenbegriffen strukturiert". 1 Der Blick der AutorInnen richtet sich "auf die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten der Fremdund Selbstbeschreibung, sowie auf Identifizierungsschemata […], mit denen man sich heute als Subjekt modellieren und ausdrücken kann; (Ideal-)Typen, die in ihrer Gesamtheit das Soziale ordnen". 2 Das Buch enthält Artikel über so unterschiedliche Sozialfiguren wie die "Diva", den "Hacker", den "Spekulanten", den "Dandy", den "Single", den "Migranten" oder den "Voyeur" und andere mehr. Betrachtet man neuere Publikationen an der Schnittstelle von Sozial-und Kulturwissenschaften, so lässt sich auch über diesen Band hinaus von einer kleinen Konjunktur von Texten über Typen und Figuren sprechen, denn auch in den Cultural Studies im englischsprachigen Raum, in der Sozial-und Kulturanthropologie und in der empirischen Kulturwissenschaft bzw. der Volkskunde / Europäischen Ethnologie sind zuletzt Arbeiten erschienen, die Sozialfiguren bzw. kulturelle Figuren zum Ausgangspunkt von historischen oder gegenwartsorientierten Kulturanalysen nehmen. Sie beziehen sich auf unterschiedliche theoretische Ansätze und gehen methodisch ganz verschieden vor. Sie schließen an verschiedene prominente Vorläufer aus Wissenschaft und Essayistik an, aber auch an verbreitete massenmediale Darstellungsweisen, die solche Figuren aufgreifen, erläutern und definieren: Man denke nur an die Zeitungsartikel, Blog-Texte, Fernseh-Beiträge und Bücher der letzten Jahre, die die Frage, wer oder was ein "Wutbürger" oder auch ein "Hipster" ist bzw. war, beantworten wollten. 3

The Cultural Politics of Anti-Elitism, 2023

As the story of the hipster has ceased to be a matter of hip knowledge, the politics of hipster d... more As the story of the hipster has ceased to be a matter of hip knowledge, the politics of hipster derision and hipster hate may well be more relevant for cultural analysis than its object, the hipster him- or herself, who remains an elusive entity, loosely defined by taste, attitude, knowledge or sociological attributes – with shifting contours in different places and at different times. The critique of hipster culture is indicative of the ways in which (popular and sub-) cultural capital was and is being accumulated, recognised, (de)valued and converted. Ridiculing or confronting hipsters tends to have strong anti-elitist overtones: The common thread is that hipsters are believed to “think they’re better than others”, they are wannabe cultural elites and in that sense anti-democratic, anti-common sense, anti-common people. But, crucially, in that logic, their pretensions are easy to demystify for those they look down upon. Using examples from field research and other observations gathered in the US, the UK and Germany in the last 20 years, the chapter argues that the hipster figure’s objectification (its becoming-an-object of discourse and reflection within popular culture) has given rise to specific types of anti-hipster discourse in different circumstances which allows the problematisation of a variety of concerns, corresponding to broader conjunctural shifts, that coalesce in the hipster figure: distinction, privilege, consumerism, conventionalism, depoliticisation, gentrification, but also cosmopolitianism, transnational lifestyles and antitraditionalism. While hipster derision for quite some time was broadly a question of subcultural and/or intellectual, inner-left critique, its political articulations and cultural resonances are much less clear in the present moment.

Reading matters: An Unfestschrift for Regina Bendix , 2023

Reading matters. An Unfestschrift for Regina Bendix, 2023

De Gruyter eBooks, Mar 1, 2016

transcript Verlag eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

Routledge eBooks, Jun 26, 2023

Mädchen*fantasien. Zur Politik und Poetik des Mädchenhaften, 2024

The Cultural Politics of Anti-Elitism , 2023

Pop the Nation! Die Nation als Ressource und Argument in Kulturen populärer Unterhaltung und Vergnügung, 2023

City, Culture and Society, 2020

New Formations, 2019

Moritz Ege/Johannes Moser (eds.): Urban Ethics. Conflicts Over the Good and Proper Life in Cities. London/New York: Routledge, 2021

Taylor & Francis eBooks, 2020

Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften

The Cultural Politics of Anti-Elitism, 2023

Reading matters: An Unfestschrift for Regina Bendix , 2023

Routledge eBooks, Feb 24, 2023

This bilingual volume (English/German) gives insight into the experiences of the Black Diaspora i... more This bilingual volume (English/German) gives insight into the experiences of the Black Diaspora in Germany and the connections of the international Black Diaspora with Germany. Topics range from the 18th century to the present and from social history to literature, art and popular culture. The book includes chapters on political initiatives, theoretical issues, historical overviews and individual case studies. It offers reflections on the relationships between Black German Studies and Critical Whiteness Studies to hegemonic traditions of knowledge production, between racism and nationhood, and between colonial history and later developments. Further topics include the intersectionality of ‘race’, class and gender; and the position of Black people in cultural production, between commodification, performativity and subversion. Chapters include academic analyses from History and Cultural Studies, as well as contributions by and about activists, artists and historical witnesses,...

The Cultural Politics of Anti-Elitism , 2023

This book examines the highly ambivalent implications and effects of anti-elitism. It draws on th... more This book examines the highly ambivalent implications and effects of anti-elitism. It draws on this theme as a cross-cutting entry point to provide transdisciplinary analysis of current conjunctures and their contradictions, drawing on examples from popular culture and media, politics, fashion, labour and spatial arrangements.

Using the toolboxes of media and discourse analysis, hegemony theory, ethnography, critical social psychology and cultural studies more broadly, the book surveys and theorizes the forms, the implications and the ambiguities and limits of anti-elitist formations in different parts of the world. Anti-elitist sentiments colour the contemporary political conjuncture as much as they shape pop cultural and media trends. Populists, right-wing authoritarian ones and others, direct their anger at cultural, political and, sometimes, economic elites while supporting other elites and creating new ones. At the same time, "elitist" knowledge and expertise, decision-making power and taste regimes are being questioned in societal transformations that are discussed much more positively under headlines such as participation or democratization.

The book brings together a group of international, interdisciplinary case studies in order to better understand the ways in which the battle cry "against the elites" shapes current conjunctures and possible future politics, focusing on themes such as nationalist political discourse in India, Austria, the UK and Hungary, labour struggles and anti-oligarchy rhetoric in Russia, tax-avoiding elites and fiscal imaginaries, working-class agency, Melania Trump as a celebrity narrative in Slovenia, aesthetic codes of the Alt-Right, football hooliganism in Germany, "hipster hate" in German political discourse or the politics of expertise and anti-elite iconography in high fashion internationally. The book is intended for undergraduates, postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers.

Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften, 2022

Das Süße in seinen affektiven Besetzungen, ästhetischen Ausprägungen und politischen Einsätzen is... more Das Süße in seinen affektiven Besetzungen, ästhetischen Ausprägungen und politischen Einsätzen ist Gegenstand des Themenheftes. Als historisches, soziales und (pop-)kulturelles Phänomen wird das Süße als Praxis erforscht und als ein Verweiszusammenhang erkundet, der Bestimmungen von Konsum und Geschlecht stetig variiert.