That Sinking Feeling: On the Emotional Experience of Inferiority in Germany's Neoliberal Education System 9781805390534

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That Sinking Feeling

That Sinking Feeling On the Emotional Experience of Inferiority in Germany’s Neoliberal Education System

Stefan Wellgraf

Translated by Nicholas Grindell

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2023 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com English-language edition © 2023 Stefan Wellgraf German-language edition © 2018 Bielefeld: Transcript Originally published in German as Schule der Gefühle. Zur emotionalen Erfahrung von Minderwertigkeit in neoliberalen Zeiten All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wellgraf, Stefan, author. Title: That sinking feeling : on the emotional experience of inferiority in Germany’s neoliberal education system / Stefan Wellgraf. Other titles: Schule der Gefühle. English Description: First edition. | New York : Berghahn Books, 2023. | “Originally published in German as Schule der Gefühle. Zur emotionalen Erfahrung von Minderwertigkeit in neoliberalen Zeiten”--Title page verso. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023002684 (print) | LCCN 2023002685 (ebook) | ISBN 9781805390527 (hardback) | ISBN 9781805390534 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Educational equalization--Germany--Berlin. | High school students--Germany--Berlin--Psychology. | Immigrant students--Germany--Berlin--Psychology. | Emotions in adolescence--Germany--Berlin. Classification: LCC LC213.3.G33 B47913 2023 (print) | LCC LC213.3.G33 (ebook) | DDC 379.2/60943/155--dc23/eng/20230308 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023002684 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023002685 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-80539-052-7 hardback ISBN 978-1-80539-053-4 ebook https://doi.org/10.3167/9781805390527

Contents

List of Illustrations vii Introduction 1 Part I. Boredom and Beyond Chapter 1. School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom

19

Chapter 2. Distraction: Provocation as Critique

50

Part II. Forms of Self-Empowerment Chapter 3. Coolness: Selfie Poses Chapter 4. ‘Ghetto’ Pride: Discourses and Practices

85 114

Part III. Feelings of Inadequacy Chapter 5. Grading: On the Pedagogical Production of Feelings of Inferiority

147

Chapter 6. Ugly Feelings: Envy, Resentment and Embarrassment

179

Part IV. Anger and Aggressiveness Chapter 7. A nger: Political Feelings and Patronizing Education

209

Chapter 8. A ggressiveness: Boxer Style

244

vi • Contents

Part V. Fears and Hopes Chapter 9. Social Anxieties: Unemployment and Deportation

273

Chapter 10. Cruel Optimism: The End of the Future

302

Bibliography

333

Index

363

Illustrations

1.1. Schoolyard of the Gallilei-Schule. Photo by Stefan Wellgraf.

27

2.1. Harlem Shake I. Facebook video screen capture.

59

2.2. Harlem Shake II. Facebook video screen capture.

59

5.1. Teacher’s grading table. Photo by Stefan Wellgraf.

156

6.1. Students’ wall newspaper. Photo by Stefan Wellgraf.

186

8.1. Boxer style. Photo by student.

248

10.1. Dream image I. Student’s image. Source: Dream workshop, Galilei-Schule. 309 10.2. Dream image II. Student’s image. Source: Dream workshop, Galilei-Schule. 310 10.3. Dream image III. Student’s image. Source: Dream workshop, Galilei-Schule. 311 10.4. Dream image IV. Student’s image. Source: Dream workshop, Galilei-Schule. 313

Diagrams 7.1. The Training Room Model.

235

Introduction

In the summer of 2006, just one out of fifty-one students leaving the Galilei-Schule in Berlin’s Neukölln district found an apprenticeship. At the time of my research some years later, the figure was three. The problem has long been known to the public, statistics regularly document social inequalities in the education system, and politicians dutifully lament the resulting injustices. How these conditions impact on those concerned, however, remains largely hidden behind the numbers and statements. When addressing this issue, emotions are crucial. Emotional literacy has been a key focus of school education in Germany since the late eighteenth century,1 but which feelings are generated by school practices today? This book inquires both into the specific emotions and affects created by an exclusionary education system, and into the resulting emotional dispositions and processes of subjectivization under the conditions prevailing in today’s society. This ethnography of a school in Berlin thus puts the emotional experiences of students centre stage and proposes a political reading of feelings. During the 2012/13 school year, I carried out fieldwork at a school in the Berlin district of Neukölln that is considered especially problematic, referred to in this study as the ‘Galilei-Schule’ (not its real name). At the time, as part of a programme of structural reform, the school was in transition from a Hauptschule to a Sekundarschule. The Hauptschule, typically attended by lower-class and immigrant students, was located at the bottom of the tripartite German school system often blamed by international education surveys such as PISA for obstructing social mobility.2 In spite of the reforms, the already difficult conditions at the school had hardly improved, in some cases even becoming worse. I accompanied two tenthgrade classes, who were among the last to graduate from the Hauptschule in Berlin, using various ethnographic methods, mainly participant observation and narrative interviews, both during and outside lessons. For each

2  •  That Sinking Feeling

of the emotional states I studied, the question of the appropriate approach arose afresh, which is why I use different sources over the course of the book. In some chapters, I expand my materials beyond observations and interviews, for example concerning subject models circulating in teenage popular culture and their media expressions. Most of those I spoke to were young men – the classes under study were two thirds male, added to which I found it generally easier to connect with them. At certain points, however, I do explicitly discuss divergent emotional practices of female students. By highlighting received patterns of gendered emotion and gendered models of emotional behaviour, I reconstruct forms of doing gender. Since the great majority of the students were second-generation migrants, the themes of ethnicity and migration also play an important role here, including the ways these themes intersect with issues of gender and class. This book operates at the interface between two fields of research that have, to date, been largely separate: the study of processes of social exclusion on the one hand and, on the other, the analysis of affects and emotions. In Germany, processes of exclusion and growing precariousness in post-industrial societies have been examined in detail, largely since the labour market reforms of the early 2000s (the ‘Hartz’ reforms). As well as being accompanied by the spread of precarious employment in the low-wage sector, the new regulations also linked structurally produced unemployment with a moralizing suspicion of laziness. In this context, I stress that this is not just a matter of material deprivation or lack of access to secure jobs, but that it also involves a heightened sense of devaluation and worthlessness. And this affective-moral imbalance of the current social order is best examined via the kind of ‘affective turn’ that has been fostered in the social sciences and cultural studies for some years now. Emotional states in the lower strata of society are very different today than they were in Fordist times, when proletarian culture and the labour movement offered a meaningful and dignified frame of reference for the formation of a sub-bourgeois identity. For teenagers growing up in Berlin-Neukölln, these traditional resources for self-empowerment, together with the associated political programmes, have become largely irrelevant. This raises the question of how the emotions and affects of students with few opportunities in the labour market are now being structured. Focussing attention on the emotional aspects of growing up at the bottom end of Germany’s hierarchically organized education system also opens up a critical perspective on school in the context of social inequality. A ‘dense’ description of emotional experiences of inferiority allows a differentiated and situated social critique that is also stark and drastic. Explicitly situating the research in ‘neoliberal times’ opens up a historical perspective, addressing negative developments while seeking to avoid reductionism. The

Introduction • 3

usual view is inverted here: instead of blaming teenagers and their parents for the obvious crisis of education at the Galilei-Schule, I consider the main problem to be the current state of school as an institution. In the accounts presented, the students’ creative and cognitive potential is underlined, while this potential is shown to be developed in ways that often bypass school, or can even work against it. This does not mean that individual teachers are to blame; instead, we are collectively responsible, as a society, for the wrongs described here.

Ethnography of Exclusion Since the 1980s, discussions around exclusion, in the social sciences and in public discourse, driven forward in particular by contributions from France, have taken place in response to growing divisions within society, the return of mass unemployment, and fears of social decline in ever broader sections of the population.3 I make no strict distinction here between concepts like exclusion, marginalization or precarity, using these and other terms to explore the question of how social exclusion is produced, experienced and processed in everyday life. I would, however, like to point out some basic conceptual assumptions: exclusion does not mean being absolutely shut out of society; it is understood here instead as a specific form of intrasocietal inequality, an inequality of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, as seen for example in Germany’s multi-tiered school system.4 These conditions of exclusion are created within a global framework of power shaped by postcolonial structures, and the emotional experience of inequality is always relational, resulting from specific and different contexts of comparison.5 And rather than just locating precarity in a specific zone of the labour market, where it is particularly widespread, I also understand it as a characteristic of contemporary society, not strictly limited to specific milieus or spheres.6 In my previous book, published in Germany under the title Hauptschüler. Zur gesellschaftlichen Produktion von Verachtung (Hauptschule Students: On the Societal Production of Contempt), I refer to the theory of recognition formulated by Axel Honneth, stressing the fact that Hauptschule students are excluded not only in socioeconomic terms, but also symbolically. Using the example of a Hauptschule in Berlin’s Wedding district, I describe how students are not only systematically denied access to goods, resources and opportunities, but that they are also despised and humiliated. In his book Kampf um Anerkennung (Struggle for Recognition), Honneth distinguishes between emotional, legal and social recognition, linking them on a personal level with forms of self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem. Berlin’s Hauptschule students are often denied all

4  •  That Sinking Feeling

three kinds of recognition, an extremely problematic mix of social disdain and cultural devalorization with precarious family conditions and a lack of German citizenship. Honneth refers to this form of denied recognition as ‘disregard’ (Missachtung), stressing that key resources for successful identity development are withheld from those concerned.7 I choose to speak instead of ‘contempt’ (Verachtung) to place more emphasis on the emotional dimension of processes of exclusion, while also highlighting the fact that Hauptschule students are not only denied something, but that their dignity is actively infringed upon.8 By contempt, then, I mean a form of social discrediting of specific individuals or groups on the basis of negative value judgements and emotional defence mechanisms. In this ethnographic study of Hauptschule students in Berlin’s Neukölln district, I revisit some aspects of these arguments, elaborating on them and turning them in a slightly different direction. From a focus on the production of exclusion and contempt, the focus shifts to the question of how this is experienced and processed by the students. Exclusion is produced in school mainly via the everyday actions of teachers and routine bureaucratic decisions that often inadvertently obey mechanisms of social exclusion.9 Contempt is revealed in day-to-day humiliation, above all in the often-heard claims that Hauptschule students are stupid, lazy or otherwise inferior. At the Hauptschule schools I studied in Berlin, this mode of sociomoral devalorization had already become largely normalized, so that even well-meaning members of staff unconsciously followed the pattern. Social exclusion is rarely experienced in abstract terms with relation to structures of social inequality. Instead, it is mainly perceived indirectly and in strongly emotional ways: shame over bad grades, anger towards specific teachers, or fear of unemployment. These modes of experience are joined by playfully ironic, coolly distanced and defiantly aggressive responses to social devalorization that can also be understood as pop-cultural variants of dealing with exclusion. The following chapters examine a range of different modes of coping with this plight. The students try to adapt to hostile conditions, attributing their ‘failure’ largely to themselves, but also reacting with striking aggression towards society, their forms of youthful protest often being both creative and marginalizing at the same time. This book describes and analyses depressing conditions at a Berlin school. To use a category proposed by Sherry Ortner, it could be called a ‘dark’ ethnography.10 Ortner was referring to the tendency in ethnographic writing since the 1980s to focus increasingly on everyday hardships and their structural causes in the context of neoliberal transformations. But this sociopolitical thrust of social and cultural anthropology was accompanied by alternative currents that balanced it out and took it further. Ortner mentions an increased focus on questions of a good, meaningful

Introduction • 5

and forward-looking life, as well as a revival of ethnographic criticism in the double sense of ethnographers tending to study oppositional behaviours and also viewing their writing itself as a form of social critique. That Sinking Feeling brings these various tendencies together: the book describes the full extent of the miserable conditions at the Galilei-Schule, among others as a way of counteracting neoliberal strategies of ideological obfuscation, as when promising school reforms are used by the state to camouflage cuts to education budgets. Viewing emotions as morally coded practices always raises the question of the ‘right’ life or the ‘wrong’ one, of the conditions for a successful life, and of the ways ‘failure’ is experienced. Finally, the book focusses particular attention on forms of critique beyond grand political gestures, seeking to arrive at a form of critical writing that avoids some of the typical pitfalls of critical analyses of society (adopting a dogmatic tone, taking the moral high ground, ignoring everyday problems). Instead, it attempts a form of critical writing that relates reflexively to its subject, that highlights situated moments of resistance without romanticizing them, and that explores complexities while remaining understandable.11 With this ethnography of Hauptschule students in Neukölln, I am also writing against the unfortunate separation of social reportage and social analysis that crept in as poverty studies gradually mutated into academic research on exclusion and inequality. Classic studies of poverty in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were often trenchant forms of social critique based on participant observation and personal contact with those concerned. Rather than seeing poverty as something tied to specific individuals, exclusion research now understands it as the result of social conditions. But this valid insight came at the price of withdrawing to a desk at the university, where one can reflect on social conditions undisturbed. What was lost was an empathetic grasp of strongly emotional modes of experiencing social devalorization – something now addressed mainly by journalists and literary writers, photographers and filmmakers. Social scientists, on the other hand (at least at German universities), focus mainly on developing their analytical vocabulary. In such a constellation, ethnographic close-ups and personal involvement are quickly labelled ‘subjective’ and ‘romantic’ – and thus not scientific. My ethnographic writing aims to blend analysis of the reproduction of social exclusion with a focus on the emotional experience of social devalorization. This ethnography of emotional responses to attributions of inferiority combines historical reconstructions and theoretical reflections with an empirical approach in which I address emotions in various ways, via: atmospheres and sociospatial situatedness; narrative and discourse; engagement with objects and documents; film and popular culture; body and media practices; social interactions and school hierarchies; modes of assessment

6  •  That Sinking Feeling

and forms of repression; and via personal positionings and prospects for the future. My arguments are mostly based on descriptions of complex situations, discussed on the basis of extended field observation. Below the level of more abstract concepts like norm, identity or role, observing situations in this way gives access to the students’ emotional and affective practices, revealing both peculiarities and patterns. As well as being eminently illustrative, such descriptions of complex situations also take on a significance that goes beyond the specific individual case in question. As well as addressing fundamental questions of social order, this opens up a more everyday, pragmatic viewpoint that may help to avoid certain situations, or at least to make momentarily unavoidable situations easier to handle.

Emotions and Affects: A Political Reading Studying the emotional states typically generated by schools gives a striking picture of the severe impact of being viewed and treated as inferior by society. This book renders visible the emotional dimension of exclusion and situates it within current processes of societal transformation. Like pieces of a puzzle, the following chapters offer different elements of the culture of devalorization and self-assertion among a young, urban underclass, exploring different aspects of the way they experience and deal with socially produced inferiority. Juxtaposing and linking various, sometimes conflicting, emotional states in this way paints a many-layered picture of the emotional space of the Galilei-Schule. One might refer to the result as an ‘affect map’ or ‘assemblage’.12 Such an approach, which is open to experimental methods, reconstructs and arranges emerging and incomplete emotional patterns that already possess a certain structural direction. This heterogeneity also counteracts the tendency to treat individuals from lower social classes as psychologically uniform, often characterized as lacking both control over their emotions and cultivated interiority – thus paradoxically labelling them as both excessively emotional and not emotional in the ‘proper’ manner.13 The book combines approaches from the sociology and anthropology of emotions, cultural studies and affect theory.14 The sociology of emotions looks at the emotional labour inscribed into hierarchical social settings, though I look at processes not only of adaptation and coping but also of subverting and resisting institutional demands.15 I look both at explicit/ targeted forms of pedagogical address in the classroom and at implicit/ embodied modes of feeling in the context of socialization in a teenage peer group – categories that may at times be in conflict.16 The anthropology of emotions locates the formation of feelings in specific social locations and historical settings, in this case a run-down school located in a poor

Introduction • 7

neighbourhood of Berlin with a mainly post-migrant student population that has been severely afflicted by the ongoing neoliberal remodelling of Germany’s education system. With a cultural studies perspective, I add an emphasis on cultural scripts and cultural frames that significantly shape processes of emotional and affective modelling, for example by looking at notions of the ‘ghetto’ and the figure of the boxer. A theory of affects inspired by Spinoza stresses their relationality; in this view, the individual manifests in relations of affecting and being affected.17 While these relations are shaped by specific affective arrangements (in our case the school’s infrastructure and the social hierarchies inscribed within it), affective disposition also plays a key role; this, too, is in part socially determined, for example by growing up in conditions marked by poverty.18 In this study, then, the formation of feeling is examined from different disciplinary angles and theoretical perspectives. That Sinking Feeling seeks, above all, to establish links between emotions/ affects and structural power relations within society. My critical reading of ‘school as a state apparatus’19 emphasizes the political in the everyday, applying an ethnographic sensibility to register current affective calibrations and the shifting emotional terrain of teenage subjectivization at the bottom end of the social hierarchy.20 This is challenging in particular because a still-influential philosophical tradition tends to view emotions as expressions of individual psychology or as naturally given, rather than as relational, societal phenomena or as cultural categories.21 Using a practice theory approach, the study focuses on doing emotion in verbal, physical, gestural and other forms. Rather than understanding these practices as intentional or individualistic, I relate them to past and present cultural patterns of expression.22 A broad definition of feeling allows me to examine not only emotions like anger, shame and fear, but also affectively charged everyday phenomena like boredom, coolness and aggressivity. Switching between these various terms (feeling, emotion, affect) helps me not to lose sight of the complexity and open-endedness of emotional behaviours. Also, rather than distinguishing categorically between emotions and affects – as advocated, for example, by Canadian social theorist Brian Massumi – I locate them conceptually and empirically on a common level, with gradations in terms of their formation and structure.23 At the beginning of the twentieth century, the philosopher John Dewey stressed that successful education, in the sense of a process of development towards maturity, is only achieved through profound experiences, while the kind of experiences gathered by young people in school are often of the wrong kind, primarily negative and inhibiting.24 While this remains true today, the concept of experience has its pitfalls, leading cultural and social anthropologists both to embrace it excessively and to vehemently reject it.

8  •  That Sinking Feeling

In the 1970s and 1980s, inspired by Dewey, ethnologists like Victor Turner built their ethnographic project around an emphatic concept of experience, by which they meant special, extraordinary moments that stood out from everyday routine.25 In the early 1990s, Joan Scott and others rightly turned against the romanticizing claim to authenticity of this concept of experience, causing it to vanish from ethnological book titles for a while.26 The discursive and deconstructive turns then brought forth their own limitations, while the material and sensual turns saw a revival of the concept of experience, although it is now mostly used in a cautious, historically reflected manner.27 In this sense, rather than marking especially ‘original’ or ‘inward’ sensations, experience refers here both to moments that stand out from school routine and to slowly accumulating everyday experiences that are socially constructed and sometimes reflected on. Such emotional experiences are explored from various viewpoints, both with regard to their fragmentary and disruptive character, and taking into account their role in making meaning and reproducing social structures.28 Examining the emotional space of the Hauptschule, I focus on phenomena shown by my field research to be of key importance with regard to processes of social exclusion. (I) Boredom and distraction: I understand boredom not only as a temporal phenomenon resulting from the perceived meaninglessness of lessons, but also as a consequence of neglected spaces. A depressive school atmosphere is not simply ‘there’, it is ‘made’ – and it results in typical reactions, as I show using the examples of ‘trash talk’ and ‘clowning’. (II)  Forms of self-empowerment are reconstructed using examples from youth and popular culture: coolness is not a character trait but a (not always successful) pose and an (often contested) attribute, studied here using the example of selfies posted on Facebook by students; by ‘ghetto pride’ I mean a highly ambivalent form of self-validation, especially common in hip-hop culture, in which sociospatial marginalization is reinterpreted as a source of pride. (III) Feelings of inadequacy like shame and embarrassment not only arise from low levels of status and recognition, but are also considered inferior or worthless in their own right, treated largely as ‘ugly feelings’.29 This value judgement impacts on the way such feelings are experienced; since they are often hidden or glossed over, their presence in school is felt in indirect, latent ways. (IV) Anger and aggressivity are related to the social conditions under which they emerge, and to the value judgements and views associated with them. Using the example of a school strike provoked by classism and racism, and the various components of the ‘boxer style’, I examine the sociality, morality and physicality of these antagonistic emotions. Finally, in section (V), I look beyond school to describe hopes and fears for the future that are especially pronounced among Berlin’s Hauptschule students on account of their precarious social position and

Introduction • 9

their predominantly migrant background. By meeting students again several years later, I also gained a longer-term view of biographical developments. The clusters of emotions discussed here cannot be understood in isolation; they are many-layered, mixed feelings that reflect specific ways of experiencing and processing social exclusion.30 Since the turn of the millennium, there has been increased scientific interest in emotions and affects across disciplines.31 In my description of the affective space of the Hauptschule, I take common assumptions concerning the social conditioning of feelings one step further by foregrounding the conditions under which these feelings emerge and their political potential in the context of social exclusion.32 Emotions and affects articulate social discord, but also utopian desires, allowing repression and resistance to be lived and experienced in practical terms. By emphasizing the politics of affects and emotions, rather than turning away from post-Marxist questions of class structures and exploitation, I refine and readjust these questions, knocking them off their pedestal of philosophical and political rhetoric and approaching them instead via everyday processes of subjectivization. This also implies a clear rejection of all those who think that focussing on feelings makes it possible to ignore the hierarchical order of our society. But neither does a political reading of affects and emotions mean one-sidedly reducing feelings to sociostructural conditions and meanings. Moreover, I reject simple positive-negative readings of emotional phenomena – positively connoted emotions like pride and coolness are also discussed in terms of their self-excluding effects and negatively connoted feelings like anger and envy with a view to their emancipatory and critical potential. The political dimension of affects and emotions is strongly related to their role as a central element of social order and subject formation.33

Structures of Feeling The detailed reconstruction of differing emotional experiences in the context of social marginalization is guided by the question of whether looking at these various affective states allows broader structures of feeling to be identified. As used by Raymond Williams, the term ‘structures of feeling’ concerns the cultural practice of an era, a sense of the lived historical moment that can only ever be reconstructed in approximate form.34 Structures of feeling, then, are scientifically constructed hypotheses that seek to link elements of a cultural constellation, past or present, with specific affective states typical of the period. In my study, the capitalist class system and processes of neo-liberalization offer a matrix through which to view the stratification of the school system and the devalorization of this

10  •  That Sinking Feeling

system’s ‘losers’. When such analytical categories are used thoughtlessly, however, the ambiguity of affects and emotions may be lost. Williams warns against viewing cultural activities as discrete products and translating them into fixed semantic forms. Instead of this, I proceed empirically, reconstructing individual clusters of affects and emotions step by step with regard to processes of social exclusion. This approach stresses the ambivalences and contradictions of emotional phenomena, their many layers and facets, their context – and situation-specificity, but without losing sight of the ‘big’ issues of power and inequality – in fact, it is the details that reveal the alarming affective impact of today’s processes of exclusion. Between the 1950s and the 1980s, Williams revised his formulation of this concept several times; rather than establishing a fixed theoretical structure, he used it to outline a specific analytical perspective. Having originally assumed a generational evolution of emotional structures over time, he later placed more emphasis on the divergences and tensions within the emotional culture of a specific period due to stratification.35 His approach belonged to what is sometimes called a ‘culturalist’ strain of Marxist thought, in which social practices were no longer extrapolated mechanistically from economic conditions. But Williams went beyond a mere rehabilitation of the cultural by focussing attention not only on literary and artistic practices, but also on everyday life and popular culture. Structures of feeling stand for the lived culture of an era, for the ways in which feelings shape the way social structures are experienced and perpetually reproduced in everyday life.36 In this way, formations within society can be identified before fixed concepts for them have been established. Whereas Williams saw such emergent forms primarily as related to progressive movements in the Marxist sense, authors who came after him, like Stuart Hall, used related concepts to identify the gradual rise since the 1970s of a more neoliberal form of capitalist society.37 The task of social and cultural analysis is to trace these forms, to portray them in detail, and to interpret their links to past or present sociopolitical formations. Williams’s work on structures of feeling has been much discussed and applied in various contexts. Criticism focussed, among other things, on his underlying definitions of culture and experience, while empirical links were made to working-class culture and to the British school system.38 Taking Williams and other writers from cultural studies as their points of departure, Jennifer Harding and Deirdre Pribram underlined the central role of emotions in social positioning in terms of subject categories such as class, ethnicity and gender.39 In their reflections on structures of feeling, Ben Highmore and Rainer Schützeichel chose alternative terms like ‘formations of feelings’ and ‘emotional milieus’, avoiding the problematic aspects of the notion of structure without losing sight of a certain regularity of

Introduction • 11

emotional states.40 With reference to Williams, Ann Stoler and Lauren Berlant set out to shed light on the affective underpinnings of colonial and neoliberal regimes, arriving at such innovative notions as ‘affective states’ and ‘cruel optimism’.41 As a concept, structures of feeling is at odds with some current developments in cultural and social theory, and this is especially obvious in the examples of affect and practice theory. Williams can be seen as a precursor of these branches of theory, while also serving as a warning against some of their shortcomings. His fondness for emerging cultural forms located at or beyond the limits of our semantic grasp, and his profound scepticism concerning over-hasty conceptual closure, stand for a critique of representation that is also fundamental to more recent theories of affect. In affect studies, Williams is seen as an important source of inspiration, but other authors, above all Gilles Deleuze, play a far more prominent role.42 While awareness of latent and ephemeral affective phenomena has continually grown in this and neighbouring fields of research in the social sciences since the turn of the millennium (for example, in the studies on atmospheres I quote in chapter 1), less attention has been paid to their structural conditioning. In this regard, standards of reflection have tended to regress: on the one hand, a neuroscience camp has returned to a view of feelings as biological automatisms while, on the other, some post-Deleuzian readings celebrate affects as ‘autonomous’, as spontaneous, pre-social, revolutionary cells.43 In the field of practice theory, too, Williams’s ‘cultural’ Marxism could be taken as an important point of reference, but the focus tends to be more on authors like Pierre Bourdieu. Compared with Williams’s vague formulations of the relation between practice and structure, the vocabulary of social theory has been considerably expanded since his times, systematically integrating new fields such as objects, bodies and senses.44 Emotions, too, have received more attention within practice theory, now viewed not as a character trait, but as a practice, discussed in terms of doing rather than having. A distinction can be made here between narrow and broad concepts of emotion, with corresponding heuristics: Monique Scheer favours the term ‘emotional practices’, among others, in order to distinguish specific emotional practices (mobilizing, naming, communicating and regulating emotions) from other forms of practice.45 Andreas Reckwitz advocates a broad definition of the affective in the sense of being motivated and directed, emphasizing the fundamentally affective tone of practices and of social order.46 Margaret Wetherell also speaks of affective practice but, more in the sense of ‘embodied meaning making’, she stresses the patterned, structured and habitual qualities of affects and emotions.47 In the course of this turn to practice theory, however, certain postulates were also lost, above all the vehemence of Williams’s Marxist social critique. Rather

12  •  That Sinking Feeling

than aiming for academic specifications, his studies were primarily forms of social critique and they were discussed beyond the academy as public interventions. Within the field of practice theory, as well, two programmatic positions can be identified, each with its strengths and weaknesses: a situationally oriented current, taking its lead from ethnomethodology and Goffman, in which tools of micro-sociological analysis are refined while neglecting links to social structures and hierarchies, and a structuralist current, oriented mainly towards Bourdieu, that leaves little space for the peculiarities and surprises of lived practice. My study centres on deeply ambivalent, even disconcerting emotional experiences of inferiority resulting from prevailing conditions within society. As well as tendencies towards the individualization and depoliticization of social inequality, I also observed forms of emotional revolt and situated critique that did not fit into established political categories. On the one hand, Hauptschule students integrated themselves into the social order with particular zeal by validating basic meritocratic assumptions. On the other, forms of disregard on the part of the school were often subverted, satirized and attacked. School as an institution appeared both influential and dysfunctional, producing devalorization and negative social selection, at odds with its own stated aims of integration and education.

Neoliberal Times The fact that Hauptschule students are considered inferior, their low rank within the educational hierarchy seen as an expression of moral and intellectual deficits, is in itself symptomatic of a social order in which the losers of exacerbated competition are blamed for their failures. My study examines the affective and emotional implications of this contemporary form of morally charged social hierarchization in detail, reconstructing processes of neo-liberalization ‘from below’.48 Neoliberalism is a controversial concept, used to both describe and pass judgement on very different phenomena. But precisely this possibility of dealing with a range of different political-economic developments – liberalization of labour markets, deregulation of financial markets, dismantling of social safety nets – within the framework of a single critical analysis also shows its analytic potential, given that the concept is being used with the appropriate care.49 The core elements of neoliberal programmes include the primacy of the economy, a fixation on private property, distrust of the state, and the model of homo economicus, but this core has constantly given rise to new variants of neoliberalism.50 For all this divergence, it is possible to discern the gradual rise of a neoliberal hegemony since the 1970s in

Introduction • 13

Western Europe. Authors like Stuart Hall and Wendy Brown have even described these transformations as a ‘revolution’, albeit qualified as ‘secret’ or ‘stealth’, underlining the way basic conceptions of society have shifted imperceptibly towards economic standards.51 In Germany, with some delay, the ‘Hartz’ reforms of the early 2000s implemented neoliberal social policy that had a direct impact on Hauptschule students and their families. Ethnographic studies of feelings are especially well suited to analysing processes of subjectivization in neoliberal times, helping to explain the ways social standards are interiorized and processed. This also allows a fundamental critique of the German school system, identifying blatant forms of exclusion and highlighting their negative impacts. The focus on emotions makes clear how closely social conditions are linked with personal conditions. But society should not be understood as a totalizing machine, and the individual should not be viewed as a simple reflection of sociostructural conditions. Instead, I foreground the contradictory, ambivalent and idiosyncratic dynamics of affectively charged subjectivization processes in the context of exclusion in school. Relating emotional phenomena to conditions of social inequality alters the way both society and feelings are viewed: the former no longer appears outer and organized, the latter no longer inner and natural. This book offers clear evidence of the profound impact of neoliberal developments. Various aspects of this transformation are highlighted, including market-oriented education policy and competitive visions of society. The students included negative stereotypes in their own self-descriptions and reproduced the contempt they themselves faced when dealing with weaker individuals at the school. In this way, they inadvertently underpinned the conditions of their inferiorization, propagating an individualist model of achievement and a conformist model of the ‘good life’, in some cases even downplaying the impact of social inequality. With reference to Paul Willis’s classic study Learning to Labour. How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs, in which working-class youth affirm cultural patterns that cause them to remain within their working-class status, the Galilei-Schule must now be referred to as a school of precariousness. Even the students’ preferred forms of self-affirmation and emotional rebellion often follow the guidelines of neoliberal subjectivity. They insert themselves into hegemonic structures by basing their strategies in the struggle for attention on machismo and feminine attractiveness, or by seeking to boost their self-esteem with consumer coolness and body optimization. At the same time, there are also signs of an erosion of the neoliberal regime. The students barely allow themselves to be controlled by the staff, behaving wilfully: they bully each other, but display solidarity when resisting a racist teacher; they subvert the school’s system of punishments,

14  •  That Sinking Feeling

but resist attempts to politicize them from the left. Rather than referring to any kind of programme, political matters were more likely to be articulated in everyday routines, via situated practices of critique, rebellion and refusal. As a result, the emotional experiences in question do not fit smoothly into the prescribed social order, often arising in conflict with it. Social devalorization by means of grades, for example, was taken to such extremes as to become emotionally intolerable. Leading mostly straight to unemployment, school appeared largely meaningless, provoking distanced responses from students and staff alike, and the ensuring precarity proved such a burden that it was experienced by Galilei alumni as an ongoing existential crisis. With the emotional messages conveyed in the following chapters, these young people let us know that in the long term, no society can be founded on social devalorization, and that a new social contract is needed.

Notes  1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

See Frevert/Wulf (eds), Die Bildung der Gefühle. OECD (ed.), PISA 2006. See Bude/Willisch (eds), Exklusion; Castel/Dörre (eds), Prekarität, Abstieg, Ausgrenzung. See Kronauer, Exklusion; Opitz, ‘Exklusion’. See Weiß, Soziologie globaler Ungleichheiten; Boatca, Global Inequalities Beyond Occidentalism. See Marchart, Die Prekarisierungsgesellschaft. See Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition; Honneth, ‘The Social Dynamics of Disrespect’. On the distinction between disrespect and contempt, see Liebsch, ‘Spielarten der Verachtung’. On the distinction between contempt and disgust, see Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust. See Gomolla/Radtke, Institutionelle Diskriminierung. See Ortner, ‘Dark Anthropology and its Others’. On the concept of critique, see Jaeggi/Wesche (eds), Was ist Kritik?; Allerkamp/Orozco/ Witt (eds), Gegen/Stand der Kritik. See Deleuze/Guattari, One Thousand Plateaus; Anderson/McFarlane, ‘Assemblage and Geography’. See Lutz, ‘The Anthropology of Emotions’, 421. See Greco/Stenner (eds), Emotions. A Social Science Reader; Harding/Pribram (eds), Emotions; Gregg/Seigworth (eds), The Affect Theory Reader. See Hochschild, The Managed Heart. See Röttger-Rössler, ‘Gefühlsbildung’. See Slaby/Mühlhoff, ‘Affect’; Saar, Die Immanenz der Macht. See Slaby/von Scheve, (eds), Affective Societies; Burkitt, Emotions and Social Relations. See Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’. See Bens et al., The Politics of Affective Societies. See Lutz, ‘Emotion, Thought, and Estrangement’; Frevert et al., Gefühlswissen. See Reckwitz, ‘Praktiken und ihre Affekte’; Scheer, ‘Emotionspraktiken’. See Massumi, Parables for the Virtual.

Introduction • 15

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

See Dewey, Experience and Education. See Turner/Bruner (eds), The Anthropology of Experience. See Scott, ‘The Evidence of Experience’. For current usages, see Chakkalakal, Die Welt in Bildern; Bareither, Gewalt im Computerspiel. See Throop, ‘Articulating Experience’; Stephenson/Papadopoulos, Analysing Everyday Experience. See Ngai, Ugly Feelings. See Milton/Svašek (eds), Mixed Emotions; Berlant, Cruel Optimism. See Seigworth/Gregg (eds), The Affect Theory Reader; Harding/Pribram (eds), Emotions; Wulff (ed.), The Emotions. See Abu-Lughod/Lutz (eds), Language and the Politics of Emotions; Flam, Soziologie der Emotionen. See Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotions; Schutz/Pekrun (eds), Emotion in Education. See Williams, ‘Structures of Feeling’. See Williams, ‘On Structure of Feeling’. See Williams, The Long Revolution, 69–75; Williams, Marxism and Literature, 128– 135. See Hall/Critcher/Jefferson/Clarke, Policing the Crisis; Hall, Cultural Studies 1983, 25–53. See Milner, ‘Cultural Materialism, Culturalism and Post-Culturalism’; Filmer, ‘Structures of Feeling and Socio-Cultural Formations’; Kirk, ‘Class, Community, and “Structures of Feeling” in Working-Class Writing from the 1980s’; Zembylos, ‘“Structures of Feeling” in Curriculum and Education’. See Harding/Pribram (eds), Emotions. See Highmore, ‘Formations of Feeling, Constellation of Things’; Schützeichel, ‘“Structures of Feelings” und Emotionsmilieus’. See Stoler, ‘Affective States’; Berlant, Cruel Optimism. See Seigworth/Gregg, ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’. See Massumi, Parables for the Virtual. See Schäfer (ed.), Praxistheorie. See Scheer, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of Practice?’; Scheer, ‘Emotionspraktiken’. See Reckwitz, ‘Praktiken und ihre Affekte’. See Wetherell, Affect and Emotion. See Gago, Neoliberalism from Below. See Biebricher, Neoliberalismus zur Einführung. See Harvey, Neoliberalism; Ther, Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent. See Hall, ‘The Neo-Liberal Revolution’; Brown, Undoing the Demos.

PART I

Boredom and Beyond

Chapter 1

School in Ruins Atmosphere of Boredom

‘He must have been bored.’ Explanations along these lines were often given by students for deviant behaviour on the part of their classmates, ranging from ‘fooling around’ to seemingly unmotivated destruction of school property. Occasionally they would add an emphatic ‘really bored’, relating the extent of the transgression to their negative perception of the way the school operated. Though widespread, boredom is a hard phenomenon to grasp – on the one hand an ‘experience without qualities’1 that defies description, on the other a ‘delicate monster’2 that devours and monotonizes almost everything. Comments and interjections in which boredom was articulated and evoked, in the sense of an emotional speech act, were ubiquitous at the Galilei-Schule, with ‘boring’ used to describe very different states and situations.3 This excessive usage points to a broad definition of boredom as the experience of a general lack of stimuli and incentive, an experience examined in this chapter using the examples of the neglect of school infrastructure and the hollowing out of the school day. By the time the Enlightenment turned it into a conceptual hallmark of modern subjectivity around 1800, boredom already had a rich and varied history.4 In its modern, Western form, it had a precursor in the courtly culture of the seventeenth century, from which it spread to the emerging bourgeois culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and from there into the proletarian milieus of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before establishing itself, at the threshold of the twenty-first century, as a kind of basic disposition of societal discontent in postmodernity.5 In spite of this trans-societal relevance, experiences and attributions of boredom vary

20  •  That Sinking Feeling

according to sociospatial positioning. Specific life phases, such as youth and old age, are considered especially prone to boredom, which is also particularly prevalent in specific institutional spaces such as schools and prisons.6 Different values are assigned to boredom: whereas in some creative milieus it bears positive connotations as a potential source of inspiration, Hauptschule students are more likely to complain of too much boredom.7 And whereas lower classes are usually only granted the experience of simple or situative boredom, members of the middle and upper classes often lay claim to an experience of deep or existential boredom as a form of distinction.8 Anyone wishing to describe boredom in ethnographic terms must therefore identify its dominant mode of experience and status in the field under study and then embed this in an understanding of power relations within society. Boredom is neither a ‘classical’ emotion like love, anger or jealousy, nor an affect in the sense of an experience even less clearly defined in linguistic and social terms. Instead, it is more of a negative mood or sense of discomfort. In the following, I use the concept of atmosphere that was developed in recent German phenomenology by philosophers like Hermann Schmitz and Gernot Böhme and that has since been discussed across various disciplines.9 Beginning in the 1960s, Schmitz focussed on fields of lived experience whose impact has often been overlooked, proposing a conceptual framework to describe the spatial and corporeal dimensions of feelings.10 He understands the body as a sensing organ, and feelings as both physical impacts and spatially ‘poured-forth atmospheres’.11 In recent years, Böhme has built on this understanding of atmospheres, using the concept initially to expand the notion of the aesthetic beyond the sphere of art to practices of everyday life, but also as the basic concept of a systematic theory of sensory experience. Böhme points out that atmospheres are perceived primarily via spaces and objects in spaces, prompting him to speak of ‘tuned spaces’.12 However, both Schmitz and Böhme tend to give the impression that feelings and atmospheres have an objective character, as if they existed independently of actors and social structures. In order to open up their phenomenological approach for an analysis of boredom in schools that takes power and inequality into account, one might add, in terms of a theory of praxis, that spatial feelings are generated only via culturally coded practices of appropriation that are also situated in time and space, meaning in turn that they are linked with patterns of interpretation and routines of action.13 The affective quality of school environments and situations emerges in the interplay of sociospatial constellations with culturally coded subjective modes of perception. Consequently, atmospheres are not naturally given but contextual phenomena, the study of which sheds light on the historical, cultural, material and social dimensions of the creation of affective spaces. To stress the role of such spaces in shaping

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  21

the affectivity of the social, one might borrow Ben Anderson’s notion of ‘affective atmospheres’.14 My empirical approach to the atmosphere of boredom in schools focusses on its spatial and temporal dimensions. This heuristic distinction leads me first to an analysis of sociospatial processes of transformation and modes of perception, and then on to a reconstruction of the way time is managed in school and to the question of the overarching temporal horizon of everyday school routine. I link my examination of the school space with discussions of urban infrastructures and post-colonial forms of ruination, and I link my account of the school’s time regime with sociophilosophical reflections on alienation. This recasting of an analysis of atmospheres as a critique of power relations within society calls for an understanding of space and time as socially constituted. Following Henri Lefebvre, I understand space neither as a neutral physical container, nor as a purely subjective notion. Instead, using the example of the Galilei-Schule, I trace processes of the production of space via, among others, facilitated or obstructed practices of appropriation.15 From this viewpoint, buildings appear not as static, permanently fixed architectures, but as structures in continual transformation whose state and meaning evolves – in our case becoming a space perceived as alienated.16 School architecture is thus a product of society and also a medium of the social. Similarly, I understand time as a social institution and as a central element in the organization of modern societies. Notions of time evolve throughout history, differing from culture to culture and varying from milieu to milieu even within a single society. With regard to boredom at the Galilei-Schule, I outline time-related practices on the part of teachers and students that are both generated by and constitutive of a specific time regime. In this account, spaces and times experienced as boring are viewed not as naturally given, but as articulations of societal tensions.

Ruined Infrastructure: The Decline of a School Although mostly registered only in passing by students and teachers, architecture and other spatial infrastructures shape the atmosphere prevailing at any given school.17 In the case of the Galilei-Schule, the splendour of bygone days can still be detected in certain places, as in the impressive and seemingly oversized assembly hall that can seat the entire school. More striking, however, are the signs of decay, described below using the examples of the school building, the schoolyard and a classroom. School buildings carry the traces of their past into the present.18 Only by examining a school’s architecture does the historicity of atmospheres become clear, the way they take shape and then change over time.

22  •  That Sinking Feeling

History of the Galilei-Schule For the official opening of what is now the Galilei-Schule, on 19 May 1929, the flags of the Free State of Prussia and the Weimar Republic flew side by side on the roof.19 This was a political event of the greatest significance, as the first new secondary school to be built in Berlin in three decades was also billed as the ‘most modern, most beautiful school in Germany’.20 The historical context was turbulent – there were already signs of the coming global economic crisis, Berlin had experienced a hard winter with temperatures of –25°C, and on 1 May there had been thirty-three deaths when police clashed with supporters of the German Communist Party (KPD). The new school building was marked by the zeitgeist of the Weimar Republic, setting itself apart from both traditional Prussian designs and the radical models of the progressive movement. At the time, most of Berlin’s school buildings dated from the last third of the nineteenth century, the Gründerzeit period following German unification, when the predominant layout was based on that of barracks and monasteries.21 Although the new school buildings followed this basic principle of classrooms accessed from corridors, the influence of the ‘New Objectivity’ brought larger windows and broader staircases, making the interiors significantly brighter and more spacious. One prominent innovation was the amount of space devoted to manual, artistic and sporting activities: rooms for crafts and experiments, two photographic darkrooms equipped by the company Agfa, a radio for foreign language classes, a gym with showers and toilets resembling ‘those of an upmarket hotel’,22 an assembly hall for 600 people, and finally, as a special feature, an observatory in the attic. The layout also differed from that of the Dammwegschule, a pavilion-type school planned in Neukölln at the same time by progressive educationalist Fritz Karsen, which was never completed due to political misgivings and lack of funds. In classroom design, too, an intermediate position was chosen, with students sitting not on the usual benches but at tables for two, though still facing forwards. This classroom layout was maintained in post-First World War West Berlin and is still in use at the Galilei-Schule today. By the 1920s, Neukölln had developed into a suburban milieu with a strong proletarian and socialist identity. However, this ‘red’ borough did not yet have a Gymnasium. As a result, the new school building was occupied by a well-known school from Berlin’s Friedrichstadt district, the ‘ökonomisch-mathematische Realschule’ founded in 1747 by Julius Hecker. In eighteenth-century Prussia, this institution had been viewed as the most progressive school model. Having been renamed ‘Kaiser-WilhelmRealgymnasium’ in 1897, soon after the move to Neukölln the Socialist and Communist parties in Neukölln’s borough assembly campaigned for

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  23

it to be renamed ‘Friedrich-Engels-Gymnasium’. Ultimately, a pragmatic solution was arrived at with ‘Staatliches Gymnasium in Neukölln’. In the early years, the teachers and students were drawn from the conservative bourgeoisie. Many were proud of their new school, but on the streets of this working-class district, wearing the school’s distinctive cap could earn one a beating.23 The upheavals of the twentieth century continued to shape the school’s history. Nazi rule, under which the school was given back the name ‘KaiserWilhelm-Schule’, was largely welcomed by the staff, and almost all of the students were members of Nazi youth organizations. During the war, the school served as a field hospital, with classes relocated; many sat their school-leaving exams early before being drafted into the Reich Labour Service and the Wehrmacht. More than a third of the students did not survive the war. The building sustained no major damage and teaching resumed in 1946. After its refurbishment in the early 1950s, the school’s assembly hall, one of the few intact events locations in the district, became a cultural centre in post-war Neukölln. The Cold War hit the school especially hard on account of its proximity to the border between East and West Berlin. When the Wall was erected in 1961, around one hundred students found themselves unable get to school, prompting twenty-five of them to flee to West-Berlin.24 In the late 1950s, there had already been ‘East classes’, which grouped together children no longer attending school in East Berlin, primarily for political reasons. Over the following decades, the school increasingly came to be a sink for outcasts and migrants, accompanied by social tensions and architectural deterioration. After several name changes and attempts at reorganization, the last students to graduate with Abitur (secondary qualification required for entry to university) left the school in 1963 and the Gymnasium with its venerable tradition was dissolved. Soon after, a new school was founded, the school I refer to in this study as the ‘Galilei-Schule. From the 1970s, this Hauptschule was marked by conflicts between Turkish students and those of ethnically German origin, who fought against the recent arrivals with, among other actions, a school strike in 1980. In 1987, when Berlin’s school authority divided up migrant students by nationality, the Galilei-Schule was assigned ‘the rest of the world’. Today, its students still come from a wide range of backgrounds, including not only descendants of Turkish ‘guest workers’ but also many children from refugee families of Palestinian, Kurdish and former-Yugoslavian origin. Finally, when the Hauptschule was abolished as a format in Berlin in 2010, merging with the Realschule to create the new Sekundarschule, there was no Realschule in Neukölln for the Galilei-Schule to merge with. Parents also turned their back on the school and the resulting lack of new registrations meant that the school received

24  •  That Sinking Feeling

more students who had not obtained a place at the school of their choice. After this, the Galilei-Schule stood not only for ‘a high percentage of disengaged students’ but also for ‘weak performance and qualifications, high teacher turnover, and violence’.25 The tenth-graders I worked with there were the last class of the Hauptschule model in Berlin. At the time of my research in 2012/13, 88.4 percent of students had a ‘language of origin’ other than German, and 92 percent of students were exempt from contributing to the cost of materials. The students I met were thus predominantly from post-migrant backgrounds, and most of their families were receiving state subsidies. This overview of the architectural and institutional history of today’s Galilei-Schule reveals a clear downwards trend. One of the ‘most progressive’ schools, housed in one of the ‘most beautiful’ and ‘most modern’ school buildings in Germany became a school described by Berlin newspapers with pejorative labels like ‘problem school’, ‘flashpoint school’ and ‘hotbed of violence’. In 2015, the Berliner Morgenpost paper even voted it the city’s most unpopular school.26 This history of decline can also be described as a story of sociospatial change and appropriation, ranging from upmarket to almost unusable school toilets, and from the initial pride of middle-class Neukölln students to a student body ashamed of and bored by its school. Crucially, students were not just bored by specific teachers or subjects, something that happens at every school on occasion, but felt let down by their school as a whole. This alienation was expressed most obviously in high levels of absenteeism, and in widespread scepticism about anything proposed by the school, a phenomenon faced by all those who tried to make attractive improvements. This profound disengagement is a reaction in part to unkept promises. Before we can understand which educational promises the Galilei-Schule can no longer keep, we need a more precise definition of education. Education is an ambivalent concept with two seemingly opposing meanings. On the one hand, the ideal of education as an individual process, an experience during which inherent dispositions are developed, transforming the way people relate to themselves, to others and to the world.27 This understanding of education is often traced back to philosophical concepts of German Idealism around 1800, and to the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt. According to Georg Bollenbeck, it can be understood as a ‘specifically German interpretation’ of education.28 On the other hand, there is the American-style neoliberal model of education that is now also becoming widespread in Germany, in which education stands more for training, focussing mainly on economic usefulness. In fact, this oversimplified dichotomy conceals a many-layered historical process: at no time was educational practice in Germany based wholly on neo-humanist ideals, with utility already seen as a factor in

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  25

education in the German Enlightenment context, while in the nineteenth century the education system in the United States was strongly influenced by models from the German-speaking world, before itself becoming the hegemonic model in the second half of the twentieth century. The interweaving of these two dimensions of education is also reflected in the Galilei-Schule. The ‘Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium’ was what was known as a Realgymnasium, shaped on the one hand by an understanding of education derived from the Enlightenment, Pietism and philanthropy, but also with a greater focus (in contrast to the humanistisches Gymnasium) on economics and natural sciences with the aim of producing qualified workers for trade and industry.29 The Hauptschule that occupied the building from the 1960s, and the recently created Sekundarschule, too, are primarily practical and vocational in orientation. In recent years however, as a result of the stigmatizing process of decline from Hauptschule to ‘school for leftovers’, only a handful of students leaving the school each year acquired an apprenticeship or trainee position. This lack of prospects contributed to an erosion of the school’s perceived legitimacy, in turn creating huge problems of discipline that made it hard to maintain regular teaching. The Galilei-Schule failed to deliver on the promise of education in two ways, offering neither the atmosphere necessary for the development of human potential, nor any useful kind of vocational training. In this way, the school as an institution failed to meet its own historical educational standards, not fostering but actually obstructing self-realization and constructive engagement with the world. From an extended Marxist viewpoint, the students appear to have been cut off both from the process of education (learning) and from the product of that process (knowledge). Such Marxist critiques were already formulated in the 1970s,30 except that back then it was assumed that an alienated school career would lead to an alienated work career, whereas today attending the Galilei-Schule is far more likely to lead to unemployment. The consequence is an atmosphere of disappointed boredom, marked by disengagement on the part of students and scepticism towards the institution on the part of teachers. Ruination The state of the outdoor areas at the Galilei-Schule further illustrates the spatial dimension of this plight. At the end of the 1920s, there was an open field next to the schoolyard; the surrounding terraced houses were not built until the 1930s, as part of a Nazi housing programme. The schoolyard was decorated with an ‘Olympic Group’ by the sculptor Josef Thorak, who went on to become one of Hitler’s favourite artists. Elsewhere in Germany, the ongoing presence of Thorak’s works in public spaces causes controversy, but

26  •  That Sinking Feeling

the sculpture at the Galilei-Schule is ignored, overgrown with moss and surrounded by bushes. Since the schoolyard is barely looked after, nature reclaims the space. Trees and shrubs spread surreptitiously from the edges, shielding smoking students from the teachers’ gaze. The middle of the schoolyard is like a steppe; in summer, the large open space is covered with dandelions, in winter by slushy snow or slippery ice because no one is paid to clear and grit. At the edge of the schoolyard, a basketball hoop and a rusty football goal offer the only diversions. When I asked caretaker Holger Thomalla about the schoolyard, he expressed his frustration: ‘We’ve been wanting to do something here for years, but the message is always that there’s no money. In Zehlendorf it’s a different story. No one’s interested in a schoolyard here in Neukölln, and that’s exactly what it looks like.’ The caretaker sees the structure of Berlin’s social space as hierarchical and expresses this in terms of contrast, a mechanism developed by Pierre Bourdieu in his work on infrastructurally disadvantaged suburbs in Paris.31 In this view, the social space is defined by mutual exclusions, and the relational position in space indicates social rank within the power structures of society. The school’s headmaster Wolfgang Rüttgen also opted for a comparison with the wealthier Berlin district of Zehlendorf, attributing the rundown state of the schoolyard to underfunding and a lack of support from parents. Rüttgen: Funnily, visitors to the school always rave about our green schoolyard. Other schools have a concrete yard. But to be quite serious – we have very few offers for the students. In the course of recent administrative reforms, funds formerly allocated to schools here in Neukölln have been switched to other departments. The parks department, for example, has lost 70 percent of its budget. They stopped coming. Before, a team of workers would visit twice a year to cut back the bushes and run a roller over the schoolyard to harden it up. That hasn’t happened for four or five years now. The whole thing really only works if students get involved, but we don’t have the equipment. We only have five spades, two hoes, and a rake. … You mustn’t forget: we’re living in Neukölln here. Other districts also made cuts, but they are better able to compensate. Look at the number of parents’ associations at schools in Zehlendorf. I live there and my children went to primary school there. The headmaster would simply ask which parents were willing to fund such and such a project, and immediately there would be 7,000 euros. In some cases, such donations are tax-deductible. There is just more private support. Not so many factory owners live here in Neukölln. Most of our students come from families on welfare. The situation is totally different.

In addition to the imbalance between poor and rich districts, mention was also made of unfair distribution of resources within Neukölln itself.

Figure 1.1. Schoolyard of the Gallilei-Schule. Photo by Stefan Wellgraf.

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  27

28  •  That Sinking Feeling

Whereas the ‘Rütli Campus’, Berlin’s new model project, received millions of euros and media coverage, the district’s other schools were left behind. Moreover, cuts were made not only in the parks department, but also in the cleaning of schools, leading to a huge problem with rubbish and hygiene. The corridors were mopped less often, the toilets became unsanitary, and litter accumulated in the schoolyard. The school responded by obliging students to collect rubbish, but this was only a moderate success. The students were also unhappy with their schoolyard. During one interview, Theo criticized the unappealing space and the lack of facilities: ‘Our schoolyard is ugly. We just stand around bored. There’s only one bench. A school like this costs millions and then there’s just nothing here for us.’ Many students reacted to this situation by leaving the school grounds during breaks, which is against the rules. Because conditions didn’t fulfil the students’ expectations, affirmative appropriation of the space or identification with the school was hindered, instead fostering discontent and avoidance of the schoolyard. Teachers tried – mostly in vain – to prevent this wave of flight from the school. Until several years ago, students left the site for the simple reason that the school didn’t offer any meals or snacks. A school canteen was then created, but it was far too small and many students continued to prefer the food on offer at nearby bakeries and fast-food outlets. During long breaks between lessons, recurring games of hide and escape played out along the low fence surrounding the schoolyard; this ritual can also be observed at other schools, but it was especially pronounced here on account of the lack of activities and food options. The consequences of decades of institutional decline are now manifested in concrete form in the partial desolation of the school’s grounds. Gernot Böhme speaks of the aesthetic right to live in surroundings that one can help to shape and that promote a sense of wellbeing.32 In the ruined schoolyard at the Galilei-Schule with its lack of infrastructure, such basic aesthetic needs are barely fulfilled. In their comments on the matter, students adopted a resigned and distanced position with regard to the spatial conditions and the possibilities for making a difference. In my experience at the school, distanced boredom was the typical mode of sociospatial response. In the light of recent theoretical approaches in critical urban studies and postcolonial studies, the grounds at the Galilei-Schule can also be understood as a spatial infrastructure that has been systematically ruined. The word ‘infrastructure’ is usually associated with a material supply system, such as a street or rail network, or the electricity and water systems, but school infrastructures can also be conceived of as facilitating conditions.33 These infrastructures are closely linked with technical, administrative and financial issues, and as such they are always multiply networked.34 Infrastructures control processes of subjectivation, they position individuals

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  29

within social spaces and they shape routines and attitudes. This dimension of infrastructures as power is revealed by a relational perspective, for example by comparing the material resources of different types of schools.35 At the same time, as we have seen, the state of infrastructures is often used to form an opinion of broader societal contexts. The spatial infrastructure of the Galilei-Schule only partially fulfils minimal aesthetic and functional requirements; although the basic spaces for teaching were provided, the school lacked sufficient funds to offer anything extra during breaks. The decline was a creeping process, since defects in infrastructure usually only become apparent after failures and breakdowns or – as in Berlin – following the random discovery of problems at a single school.36 Early in 2014, the case of a primary school in the neighbouring Berlin district of FriedrichshainKreuzberg sparked heated debate in local media about a lack of hygiene at Berlin’s schools, leading, among other actions, to a parents’ initiative for clean school toilets.37 What usually remain hidden are the less visible forms of withholding adequate funds for care and maintenance. References to less frequent visits by cleaning staff or the total absence of gardeners highlight the everyday ways a once impressive school has been run down. Writing about (post-)colonial infrastructures, historian Ann Stoler has pointed out that the ruining of infrastructures is mostly due not to natural decay but to politically controlled process of spatial exclusion.38 This certainly applies in Berlin, where complaints about the disadvantages of being located in Neukölln suggest that the available resources for renewing or maintaining school infrastructures are not equally distributed. A postcolonial perspective, according to which the impact of racist practices of exclusion continues into the present, also draws attention to the fact that the neglect of the premises at the Galilei-Schule since the 1970s has gone hand in hand with the rising percentage of students from migrant backgrounds. From this viewpoint, Zehlendorf symbolizes not only prosperity but also a ‘German school’, whereas Neukölln stands not only for poverty but also for students of ‘non-German origin’. The Galilei-Schule may not be a ruin, but the existence of such subtle modes of ruination prompts a political reading of the kind of boredom generated by spatial factors in schools. Production of Space Unlike the schoolyard, the classrooms at the Galilei-Schule are not entirely lacking in the necessary basic conditions and equipment. Here, the failings of pedagogical interaction are due more to understaffing than to material lack, while processes of alienation and atmospheres of boredom tend to be reflected in specific ways of treating objects arranged in the space. To get an

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idea of what goes on in the classroom, here is a moment during a lesson that I was able to capture photographically. The photograph could be used to illustrate the repertoire of gestures listed by Peter Toohey as indicators of boredom: crossed arms, elbows on desks, heads resting on desks, staring into the distance – the scene epitomizes an atmosphere of classroom boredom.39 I originally wanted to take the picture when I noticed that three students at the back of the class had their heads resting on their arms, while a fourth had a vacant stare. But by the time I had my camera ready, the situation had changed: one student looked up tiredly, a second began rummaging in his bag, and a third decided to take a walk to the wastepaper bin for a bit of variety. What remained unchanged was the general disinterest in the lesson, whose spatial dimension I now discuss in more detail. The classroom layout is based on desks for two, facing the teacher, with separate chairs, an ordering principle that was considered progressive when the school opened at the end of the 1920s and which became established in Germany after the end of the Nazi period, replacing the row-based layout using benches.40 The patent for skid chairs and desks as used at the Galilei-Schule was registered in 1950.41 At the time, this design was considered better for the back, and better for the floor, and the ability to hook the chairs up on the desks made cleaning classrooms easier. Since 1973, the chairs have been made using tubular steel frames and plywood seats, making them cheaper and lighter. Although flexible backrests are now thought to be healthier, these rigid chairs are currently the most widespread in Germany; the company VS, for example, produces around 400,000 such skid chairs every year. But can conventional school furnishings point to an atmosphere of alienation? Perhaps, if one takes a closer look at their arrangement and usage. The students hang on their chairs and use the top of the desk to relax. It was also striking that the chairs at desks not being used were not taken down before or during lessons, as teachers sometimes request. Although this is only an incidental detail, it can be read as a sign of distancing towards what goes on in class, especially as the empty chairs are a reminder of those students who have not turned up. The constitution of specific school spaces in such relations between people and artefacts can be understood in terms of the sociology of space. Sociologist Martina Löw conceives of space as a relational arrangement of objects and people in places that comes into being via acts of positioning, linking and synthesis, and that is not predefined by the structure of a building.42 Löw’s sociology of space combines Lefebvre’s post-Marxist notion of the production of space (according to which space is manufactured under capitalist conditions of inequality) and Anthony Giddens’ praxis-based theory of the ‘duality of structure’ which – recast by Löw

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  31

as the ‘duality of space’43 – suggests that spaces come into being through action, while also structuring action. Löw herself uses her approach to space for a reading of countercultural school spaces in Paul Willis’s classic study Learning to Labour.44 Recently, her approach has been conceptually expanded by educational theorist Georg Breidenstein, using an ethnographic analysis to show how school spaces are created by a layering of visual, acoustic and haptic spaces.45 This differentiation helps us to better understand the production of space at the Galilei-Schule. Description of a video recording: Mr Steiß is standing at the front, near the window, explaining a maths exercise to two girls. In the middle of the room, several boys gather around Jamil’s desk for a chat. Two of them walk towards the teacher; standing right next to him, they paw the exercise book belonging to one of the girls; after a quick glance round they come back. Another boy starts doing push-ups in the space between the desks. In one ear he still has the headphones through which he has been listening to music during the lesson. After a set of ten carefully executed push-ups, he is joined by another student. They do another ten push-ups together. Now and then, encouraged by remarks from the boys watching, they check their posture. A boy jokingly sits with half his weight on the back of one of the boys. The gathering then comments on the scene in engaged banter. The teacher is still occupied with the girls at the front, where he has now been for two or three minutes. When they are through, he looks up and tells the students to go back to their desks. Most of them then walk back to their places at a leisurely pace, continuing their conversations in small groups.

This scene, from a tenth-grade maths lesson, presents a state of anomy where rules have no force, the school order is shattered, and aberrations become the norm. The school space produced in this situation is shaped by partial destructuring and temporary re-hierarchization. Although the scene takes place in the spatial surroundings of a ‘conventional’ classroom, the elements of the space are repurposed and the teacher loses control for periods of time to a group of male tenth-graders in visual, acoustic and haptic terms. The teacher’s visual space is restricted, his attention focussed on the girls sitting directly in front of him, losing sight of the rest of what is going on. Even if the teacher does manage to direct the students back to their desks at the end of the situation, the weakness of his control over the space is obvious from the way the boys simply ignored him, even in his immediate vicinity. The teacher barely attempts to re-establish his undermined authority. While two boys and the remaining girls continue to focus on their exercises, a group of five boys assert their control of the classroom for several minutes by moving around in it, forming a group, and misusing the space for sporting activities. This territorial appropriation is

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accompanied by a shift in acoustic dominance. Whereas previously they did no more than call out isolated remarks or listen to music, now their conversation dominates the space, while the teacher is barely audible. The students have also extended their haptic space, carrying objects around, provocatively touching the girls’ exercise books, and using the floor for exercises. The message of the scene described above is clear: the students do not feel addressed by the school or by the teacher. Later, when I played back this video and others showing similar situations to the students, an animated discussion with varying reactions ensued. First, there was spontaneous criticism of the teacher’s lack of authority: ‘He’s not a proper teacher, he should have made a fuss. That’s not a lesson, how’s anyone supposed to learn. The teacher’s crap.’ When I asked about the students’ behaviour, it was attributed to boredom, specifically with regard to maths, but also as a blanket explanation for all manner of deviant behaviour: ‘They do it because they’re bored. … And maths is almost no one’s favourite subject. Lots of people just don’t feel like it.’ Finally, they found fault with their own behaviour and articulated a general discontent with the school: ‘Honestly, I’m ashamed. This is kindergarten level. If anyone else saw it they’d laugh at us. Who does push-ups in a maths lesson? … I regret going to this school. I didn’t want to come here either, but my mother sent me.’ The decline of a once proud school no longer able to keep its educational promises was reflected in a schoolyard run down due to lack of funds and in classrooms where order was barely maintained. This resulted in depressed atmospheres and resigned moods, accompanied by feelings of boredom. Not every situation had such negative connotations; instead, the students cultivated various forms of short-term distraction and amusement that I look at in the next chapter. But when I asked teachers and students what they thought of their school as a whole, their responses were dominated by disappointment, and this underlying negativity shaped the school’s overall climate.

Empty Time: No Meaning, No Future In contrast to the usual understanding of boredom as a slowing down of time’s passage and a related lengthening of perceived duration, I have pointed out above that boredom may also be connected with the degradation of social space. Turning now to the question of how time and boredom are related, I begin with my observations of the way time is dealt with at the Galilei-Schule, then I link this with the problem of boredom, and finally I discuss this problem in connection with diagnoses of alienation. Firstly, however, some terminological distinctions must be made between the elusive notions of atmosphere, mood and feeling.46

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  33

Atmosphere, as we have seen, refers to the affective aesthetic qualities of spatial surroundings and situations. Mood describes the affective colouring of a period of time, beyond individual spatial arrangements, plus the corresponding perceptions, value judgements and modes of behaviour.47 Moods are hard to localize or delineate, since they are not limited to specific situations, instead shaping the way we perceive different situations. Feelings are mostly shorter-lived than moods and they tend to be more in the foreground; they may quickly disperse, but under certain conditions they may crystallize into a longer-lasting emotional state. Whereas existential boredom, as a more long-term state linked with questions of meaning, would usually be considered a mood, the shorter-lived situative boredom, being more strongly linked to external conditions, is better described as a feeling. Moods and feelings influence one another so that the line between the two becomes blurred in everyday school life: at certain moments, a basic mood of boredom may contribute to an unbearable feeling of boredom, while a recurrence of situations perceived as boring can lead to a permanent, generalized mood of boredom. At the Galilei-Schule, then, boredom is both a foreground and a background phenomenon. As a pressing feeling, it affects specific spatiotemporal situations from which students thus wish to escape. As a latent mood, it constitutes the frame of experience, a seemingly existential basic emotional state within which what takes place is perceives and evaluated. Atmospheres of boredom, on the other hand, occupy a different dimension, potentially including both situative, super-situative and institutional forms of boredom. Overall, atmospheres, moods and feelings tend to be aligned with one another, not least because the way such affective states are communicated within groups tends to be suggestive and contagious.48 However, it was also possible to observe disparate spatial elements, other moods, and emotional counter-reactions at the Galilei-Schule: at the end of the school year, a number of strange objects resembling space capsules suddenly appeared in the schoolyard; when much in love, student couples floated across the grey schoolyard as if on a pink cloud; and finally, the boredom was accompanied by an ongoing quest for compensatory relief and amusement. The existence of such phenomena raises the question of whether atmospheres are transmittable. Although atmospheres can be transmitted to individuals, this does not happen in a single, fixed manner; instead they function more like a force field within which variations and levels exist, exerting effects of both attraction and repulsion.49 Relational concepts currently being developed, such as ‘the affective’ and ‘affective arrangement’, expand our understanding of emotional life to include material elements and sensory interactions, shifting the main focus away from the subject.50 Such approaches leave space for dynamic and unpredictable processes, while also assuming a certain regularity and stability

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of affective arrangements. They also help to explain the range of different emotional responses to the Galilei-Schule displayed by students, as well as their strong tendency towards disengagement on the sociospatial level. Destructuring the Time Regime Because of the way time invisibly permeates our everyday life, one might be tempted to view it as something natural. The contingent nature of time is usually only rendered visible by conflicts, and the way time is dealt with is often the object of discord within society. In Germany, today’s prevailing orientation towards abstract time was established over the course of a process of modernization involving major resistance to task-based structuring of working life and the organization of teaching around specific curricula.51 The structure of school time thus results from processes of learning and internalization that do not always run smoothly. As well as being shaped by historical and cultural factors within specific societies, time regimes also vary within each individual society.52 At the Galilei-Schule the temporal order was frequently evoked precisely because the school found itself in a crisis of meaning and legitimacy. Field journal: Because there is slushy snow on the ground, I leave my bike at home and stagger to the bus stop, still only half awake. The bus is late. Many students rely on this bus route, so a large group of them arrive at school around fifteen minutes late. Not many are hurrying, and anyway, the main door is locked. The students look at me, but I don’t have a key either. It’s freezing cold and we’re standing right under the staffroom window. After around five minutes, in a show of humanity, the ethics teacher secretly opens the door for us. At this time, the doors to the classrooms are also usually locked, but some teachers let students in nonetheless, while the remaining latecomers drift around the building until the next lesson. Later, in an angry speech on punctuality at school, the headmaster refers to just such instances: ‘Employers don’t care whether the bus was late. And those who let latecomers into class are letting down both the other members of staff and the students. If you don’t learn to be punctual, you’re not ready for life.’

With this reprimand, the headmaster recalled the key function of school in orienting students towards society’s prevailing time structures, thus facilitating their transition to working life. The discipline this involves is usually instilled via time requirements that soon become second nature: students are expected to arrive punctually at eight in the morning, establishing a rhythm that will continue in the workplace. This social function can only be performed with the help of instruments that measure and order time. School clocks and the precursors of modern timetables first appeared in

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  35

German school regulations in the fifteenth century.53 Today, it is these instruments that make time relatable and permit the imposition of a time regime, in turn binding the school into the dominant order of time within society. In this way, schools have played a major role in establishing an abstract, linear understanding of time, first in Western Europe and later in other parts of the world. Time thus became an instrument of power, while schools and clocks became symbols of modernization. At the Galilei-Schule, time was out of kilter, and a destructuring of the time regime threatened the functioning of the institution. The locked doors and the headmaster’s outrage were responses to a problem whose causes went far beyond the school itself, but whose impact was felt throughout its everyday life. The school’s failure to offer students paths into working life put its time regime at risk.54 As the educational routine lost its long-term meaning, disciplinary measures imposed via time requirements forfeited part of their basic legitimacy. There were signs that time was breaking down, most obviously the high levels of absenteeism and lateness, with some students not turning up for whole days or even weeks, while others would arrive around midday and stay for a couple of hours to meet friends. There were many other signs of a breakdown of the time-based order. On entering the school building, students always went straight to the noticeboard listing staff absences and replacements, which was often hard to read because so many people gathered round it. Due to high rates of illness among staff, hardly a day went by without lessons being cancelled or taught by a substitute; in some cases, subjects were not taught for six months and many school days consisted of nothing but replacement lessons. Sometimes, classes were left unsupervised. The dividing line between lessons and breaks was also blurred. Students often ignored the bell, came into class late, or left it during the lesson. While students treated the bell as no more than a vague guide, staff would often helplessly mention it, calling for a return to order. This crumbling of clearly defined lesson times created a specific rhythm, a spatiotemporal pattern of interaction marked not by alternation between tension during class and relaxation in the break, but by long phases of passivity punctuated by eruptive moments, aggressive shouting, or sudden bouts of ‘fooling around’. Whereas Henri Lefebvre was still able to offer a Marxist reading of the replacement of cyclical rhythms by linear, technically defined rhythms during industrialization as a basic process of alienation, for the Galilei-Schule today one might arrive at the opposite conclusion: the cyclical, moment-based rhythm determined by the students themselves reflects an alienated state while the collapsing linear time regime of the school day continues to faintly recall modernity’s old promise of education as a door to the future.55 The locked doors in the morning were a desperate countermeasure intended to prop up the crumbling timetable, but

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the strategy was only partly followed and it had the unwelcome side-effect of students wandering around the school. And finally, the lessons themselves often lacked content in the sense that little regular teaching of subject matter took place. Field journal: When the bell rings after forty-five minutes – the ‘bell’ is actually more like an electronic beeping – a handful of late arrivals are allowed into the classroom for the rest of the ninety-minute double lesson in careers guidance. They walk to their desks without excusing themselves. Rather than working on their wall newspapers about work experience like the other students, they just do nothing. As they see it, there’s no point, especially as work on these wall newspapers runs over several weeks. The mood is subdued and sleepy, Monday morning. One boy yawns and rests his head on his arms, a girl spends several minutes inspecting her nail polish. After a while, one of the students calls out ‘I’m bored’. No one reacts. Another student gets up, takes down the clock hanging over the door, and begins to repair it. The teacher takes a look and says it would be good to get a new clock.

The broken clock can be read as a symbol for the way boredom makes time seem to stand still, and as a metaphor for the disconnect between the traditional function of school, the present situation, and any future career. The time model of the education system is oriented towards the future; the meaningfulness of learning derives from a horizon of possibilities. The lack of career opportunities for students from the Galilei-Schule has shattered this model. Schools are meant to play an important role in imposing time-related discipline, but staff at the Galilei-Schule lacked persuasive long-term incentives with which to wield such discipline. Since over 90 percent of students came from families with unemployed adults that depended on state welfare, the home life of many students had also not accustomed them to days structured around working hours. The result of the collapse of the school’s time structure was a creeping spread of boredom. Boredom and School The boredom complained of in the scene described above came out of a specific situation, with Monday morning, grey weather and tiredness contributing to the impression of time slowing down. I was battling fatigue on this day, too; students looked at my tired eyes and asked if I’d been taking drugs at the weekend, and teachers later offered me coffee. At the same time, however, the specific situation stands for the more general problem of a lack of meaning and prospects that is especially acute in a class like career guidance. This led to a basic mood of depression within the institution that was not limited to a tired Monday morning. Such moods are hard to

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grasp in empirical terms, manifesting most obviously in details or troubling moments, like the chairs left up on the table in the classroom, students not hurrying when late, or the broken clock.56 Feelings and moods of boredom are experienced individually, but they can also be observed in the school as a whole, beyond individual actors and their interpretations. ‘Boring’ was one of the terms most frequently used by students. Beyond its usual linguistic function as an adjective to describe states or conditions, it acted as a kind of shorthand or slogan for a generalized discontent within the school. In this case, then, the focus is on a category drawn from the field itself, whereas in other chapters I mainly use classifications taken from the literature. Calling out ‘I’m bored’ in the classroom was both a declaration and an accusation. It put into words an emotional reaction to a lesson experienced as boring, at the same time implicitly criticizing the fact that the lesson was not more interesting, more stimulating. According to Pierre Bourdieu, the sensation of boredom expresses a disconnect between expectations and actuality.57 Even if the students were articulating a subjective feeling, their emotional statements were also coloured by the normative expectation that school really should be more interesting. In this light, declarations of boredom in class can also be understood as a situated critique of conditions deemed to be unsatisfactory. In the context of processes of modernization, the sensation of boredom emerged alongside the imposition of an abstract understanding of time.58 The English word ‘boredom’ and the German ‘Langeweile’ came into use in the eighteenth century, distinguishing themselves from older, related terms like ‘acedia’, ‘melancholy’ and ‘ennui’. They became established around 1800, initially as a phenomenon among the male elite, spreading to other social strata in the course of the nineteenth century. During this process, the gender coding underwent a shift: by 1900, the epitome of boredom was not a male artist, but a housewife sitting at home on the sofa.59 The factors leading to the emergence of boredom include secularization, individualization and industrialization. As a result of the Enlightenment, the belief in a divinely preordained order was superseded by a striving for progress and happiness on Earth. The conditions for experiencing boredom were created by an increase in the perceived importance of the subject and individual ways of life, as well as the expectation that one’s own life should not be boring. With industrialization and the attendant rise of clocks, a mechanical understanding of time gradually imposed itself. The modern institution of the school plays a supporting role in these processes: it is an advocate of enlightenment and secularization; its educational model is strongly geared towards individual self-development; and in its disciplining role it is also responsible for transmitting an abstract sense of time.

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To date, via the example of unemployment, boredom has mostly been associated with under-privileged social groups. In the classic study Marienthal. The Sociography of an Unemployed Community (1933), the collapse of time already plays an important role, as the paralyzing impact of joblessness manifests in a reduction of the radius of activity and a temporal destructuring of the few remaining tasks.60 A noticeable reduction in the wearing of wristwatches was interpreted as both an indication and a consequence of this development.61 Among the mainly unemployed parents of students at the Galilei-Schule, there were fathers and mothers who attempted to instil a sense of punctuality into their children nonetheless, as well as families where the teenagers were the only ones to get up in the morning, arriving at school without having had breakfast. Whereas the unemployed of Marienthal appeared as a homogenous group, the ethnologist Johannes Moser notes that in addition to the abovementioned crisis of structuring time, contemporary unemployed also display flexible and creative ways of dealing with time that is no longer bound to working hours.62 This heterogeneity of time-related practices was also in evidence at the Galilei-Schule. Whereas some students dealt with boring situations by dozing the time away, others worked on their exercises, while others still engaged in alternative amusements. Field journal: Ali puts his feet up on the chair in front of him to help him relax. He draws abstract shapes on a sheet of paper. With his upper body resting on his desk, Khaled grasps an empty chair in the row in front of him, lifting it repeatedly to strengthen his arm and back muscles, like in a gym. He then does a few stretches to finish off his workout. Kai drums with his hands on the desk, probably in time with the music he’s listening to on his headphones. Theo sleeps through the whole lesson, without anyone noticing. Another boy seems amazed by all the things you can do with a piece of chewing gum. Two girls hide behind their bags and play with their smartphones, which is forbidden. The students have already handed in their work experience folder and worked for weeks on a work experience wall newspaper, and now they are supposed to copy down questions written up on the blackboard by the replacement teacher, their answers indicating whether they think the work experience was worth it. ‘What’s the point of this?’ asks one student, visibly annoyed. Rather than getting on with this work, students repeatedly feel inspired to verbal digression in the form of spontaneous interjections: ‘I’ve been trying to take a shit for two days but nothing comes out.’ Others respond: ‘I’ve been trying for five days.’ Another boy now tells the story of a man who was unable to go to the toilet for a month and then got ‘an injection in the arse’. The teacher is at a loss: ‘Work experience is the most important thing in tenth grade, because it’s the first step in your career. … Please at least maintain a pretence of working.’

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  39

During his ethnographic observations of school life, Georg Breidenstein discovered a tacit consensus according to which boredom and the corresponding forms of killing time are accepted by teachers as long as they take place in silence and as long as the meaningfulness of the lesson is not openly called into question.63 The replacement teacher seems to want to offer the students such a ceasefire agreement. But the implicit consensus on school boredom has been unilaterally cancelled by the students. They made a show of their boredom and put the teacher in a difficult situation with their remarks, digressions and provocative questions. Her lesson, not sufficiently discussed with her colleagues, was perceived as an unnecessary repetition. Rather than somehow masking their lack of career opportunities, dealing again with the work experience programme only made this lack more obvious. The boredom of school was no longer tacitly accepted by students once it ceased to be limited to individual subjects or teachers, with the school as a whole now unable to offer perspectives for the future. In such cases, it is no longer a case of temporary phases of boredom in a school otherwise deemed meaningful; instead, even if individual lessons may be interesting, school as a whole is considered boring. In recent years, several writers have dealt with the topic of boredom and school in various ways: Kathrin Lohrmann’s quantitative measurement of ‘boredom in lessons’,64 Sabine Schomäcker’s hermeneutic engagement with the question of whether boredom is an essential part of school,65 and the ‘mixed method’ study by Thomas Götz and Anne Frenzel on the ‘phenomenology of school boredom’.66 Applying such categorical and terminological distinctions to the Galilei-Schule, responses can be divided, according to Lohrmann, into affective forms of emptiness and lack of drive, cognitive forms of digression, physiological forms of fatigue, inertness and inexpressiveness, gestures of yawning and dozing, and motivational strategies of switching activities and seeking alternative stimuli. Using the distinction proposed by Sabine Schomäcker, boredom can be described as a mixture of ‘indifferent boredom’ characterized by inertia, a digressive ‘calibrating boredom’, a ‘goal-seeking boredom’ shaped by an urge for activity, and a ‘reactant boredom’ related to vexation, aggression and helplessness. Götz and Frenzel, on the other hand, stress the differences between latent-active forms taking place in the background and much more visible exposed-active forms of boredom, both of which can in turn serve both to kill time and – especially striking at the Galilei-Schule – to provoke the school regime. The stronger the quantitative emphasis of studies on school and boredom, the more likely they are to contain representative evidence of widespread boredom in classrooms. But, also, the less likely they are to account for the subjective experience of boredom and its existential dimension. As this form of boredom is less easily captured by analyses based on standardized

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questionnaires, it is simply declared irrelevant and completely ignored.67 The link between boredom and the meaningfulness of lessons is pursued mainly by Breidenstein, although he largely refrains from social critique.68 His work, too, contains helpful methodological reflections on the ethnography of boredom, among others by pointing out the problem that those observing boredom usually only get to see forms of killing time, and thus reactions to boredom. Nonetheless, the resulting tableaus of distraction do give an impression of what was actually going on during most lessons at the Galilei-Schule. In order to go beyond a pathological diagnosis, the following chapter looks at the situative dynamics and sociocultural contexts of various forms of killing time. Whereas quantitative sociological approaches to boredom often lack a feeling for atmospheres, moods and feelings, the far more numerous studies on boredom in the humanities, most of which refer to classical works of philosophy or literature, tend to lack milieu-specific views of the presence of boredom.69 But they do offer some insightful remarks on a recoding of boredom since the twentieth century. Looking at the tendency to psychologize and medicalize boredom, Elisabeth Goodstein asks whether the clinical treatment of boredom symptoms like hyperactivity can be used to overcome existential crises of meaning.70 In her view, we find it increasingly difficult to even find words for questions of meaning that were once answered by religion and later reflected on by philosophy; if at all, existential boredom is articulated in elite artistic circles, while the mass of the population, then as now, are mostly only granted profane forms of boredom. In his inspiring book Langeweile? Deutung eines weit verbreiteten Phänomens, sociologist Martin Doehlemann tries to blend sociological and arts-related viewpoints.71 He sees adolescence as a key phase for boredom, and school as its typical location, but his analysis remains too essayistic, finally applying neither sociological methods nor the approaches of the humanities with sufficient rigour.72 As a result, he misses key differences between types of school and groups of young people. By making comparisons within a single school, one can also see that teachers deal with the problem of boredom in very different ways, sometimes making it worse with their style of teaching. Field journal: Most of the maths lesson consists of a single monologue by the teacher. Explaining the calculation of interest using the example of debt, Mr Steiß spins one yarn after another. He begins with the story of a 46-year-old woman who needed to present her school report from 1982 when applying for a job at the post office. ‘She needed it thirty years later. So you see, reports are important. The same applies for pensions.’ In the course of telling his story, he mentions the importance of calculating powers (Potenzrechnung in German, which also suggests a link to sexual potency) and several students start laughing. The teacher is outraged: ‘That’s unfair towards me and towards the class!’

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  41

This only amuses the laughing students more. Everyone is waiting for the end of the monologue. But instead, he now turns to the conflict in Palestine: ‘The Islamists aren’t rational’ and ‘the war of the future will be fought with robots’ are just some of his views on the matter. Theo calls out: ‘What a waste of time. What a load of rubbish.’ Having mentioned the report about a Hamas demonstration he saw on TV, Mr Steiß chats about his journey by ship along the coast of the Gaza Strip. He also has plenty to say about the range of the rockets on both sides of the conflict and about Yasser Arafat, who he alleges siphoned off donations for his own private use and thus betrayed his people. The Palestinian students in the class keep a stony silence. Later, Khaled tells me: ‘I’m not interested in what he has to say about Palestine. He always wants to prove that we’re worthless.’ Finally, the teacher decides to actually devote the last ten minutes of the lesson to maths. He asks the class to open their books: ‘Page 154. One. Five. Four.’ A loud voice replies: ‘Hey, we’re not that stupid.’

This final remark can be understood as an ambivalent response by the students to the widespread perception of Hauptschule students as stupid. The problem with this maths lesson – a subject many students find boring – was that the difficulties with maths experienced by many in the class could not be dealt with by this kind of teaching. The weaker students just switched off, and the stronger ones felt under-challenged. Khaled and Theo, both of whom had a special liking and talent for maths, reacted in different ways. Whereas Khaled, who already had a criminal record for violent acts, tried to express his contempt for the teacher by quietly ignoring him, the usually well-behaved Theo tended towards aggressive verbal gestures in maths lessons. Another time he spoke of his wish to obtain a Realschulabschluss, a goal he saw being obstructed by the teacher’s monologues. At the end of the year, both boys received poor grades, something I return to in more detail in chapter 5 about the Hauptschule grading. In this scenario, then, boredom arose because the teacher failed to engage his students while also treating them as stupid.73 Boredom at School as Alienation The disengagement from school described above can be interpreted as a form of alienation. In historical terms, the concept of ‘alienation’ points to a similar horizon of experience as modern boredom, while coming to different conclusions. From the nineteenth century, the concept of alienation was also used to express diagnoses of discontent with modernity, but such analyses are more closely associated with Marxist theory and are aimed at societal change. Marx developed his concept of alienation as a critique of what he saw as the disruption wrought by industrialization and modernization on the worker’s relationship to the work process and the products of

42  •  That Sinking Feeling

that work.74 My remarks below are oriented towards the definition proposed by philosopher Rahel Jaeggi who recasts alienation in social terms as a disturbed relationship to oneself and the world, extending the concept beyond economic conditions to include subjective relations and emotional states.75 Although I do not view all forms of boredom as alienation, the ruination of the spatial infrastructures at the Galilei-Schule, combined with lessons felt to have no future and no meaning, gave rise to alienated conditions, which can in turn best be described via the widespread feelings of boredom at the school. The relationship between boredom and alienation can be discussed with reference both to classic commentators on modernism like Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin and to contemporary writers. The existential question of the meaning of being is at the centre of Martin Heidegger’s philosophical oeuvre.76 He deals with boredom mainly in his posthumously published lectures on The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, delivered at Freiburg University in the winter semester of 1929/30.77 In his view, boredom is characterized primarily by a tension between ‘holding in limbo’ and ‘leaving empty’. Like today’s writers, Heidegger, too, saw boredom – which he divided into three forms – as a sign of the times. ‘Becoming bored by something’, the first and simplest form of boredom, can be caused by a book, a place or a theatre play; the example he gives is that of waiting at a deserted railway station. This situative boredom reminds me of the schoolyard at the Galilei-Schule, where specific spatial arrangements contributed to the feeling of boredom. The second form of boredom, ‘becoming bored with something and the passing of time’, is illustrated using the example of a boring dinner party. This form of boredom is less defined and less situation-specific, resembling existential boredom in being a mood that usually arises from within, typically accompanied by a repertoire of distracting secondary activities. The situation in the maths and career guidance lessons described above resembled boring dinner parties insofar as they struck the students as meaningless, precisely because of the activities being proposed to keep them occupied. Although the invitation to lessons cannot usually be refused, many students nonetheless chose not to accept it. In Heidegger’s view, this third form of boredom, ‘deep boredom’, is also the highest form of tedium. What he means by this is an existentialist void in which deep insights into existence open up. Such boredom is propagated as a path to philosophical enlightenment, from which any form of killing time would only distract. This third form of boredom reveals the strengths and weaknesses of Heidegger’s approach. The element of reflection inherent in boredom, that prompted students at the Galilei-Schule to ask questions like ‘What am I doing here?’ or ‘What’s the point of all this?’, depends on a certain mood in which the world appears in a specific light. Which is also why boredom has an aesthetic dimension. But

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  43

for a philosopher like Heidegger, the mood of deep boredom can only be imagined in terms of an intellectual contemplation of life’s hidden meaning, and not as an arena for critical reflection on everyday life embedded in everyday practices or articulated in classroom interjections. By contrast, Walter Benjamin looked for illumination in the profane. His thoughts on boredom are to be found mainly in Convolute D of The Arcades Project – the famous unfinished collection of notes and musings that he worked on between 1927 and his death in 1940.78 The fragmentary character of these sketches and reflections on boredom encourages a range of interpretations, with an especially striking link being made to dreams and the motif of eternal return.79 In Benjamin’s view, the past doesn’t simply disappear, it sinks into dreams, allowing it to hold the present in its spell. In this light, boredom can be imagined as a slumber that is pleasant but without accent, while waking up would be a liberation from the nightmare of history.80 In The Arcades Project, the eternal return of the same is the meaningless repetition of disparate experiences and empty moments, deemed typical of modernity, that no longer cohere into an authentic experience, thus ultimately leading to boredom. In Benjamin’s work, eternal return is also related to the philosophy of history. Since he did not believe in a Marxian linear model of progress, viewing history instead as an accumulation of disasters, eternal return appeared to him as the ongoing existence of historical tragedies in the culture of the present.81 Following this line of thought, the history of schools in Germany also appears as a never-ending nightmare. Although this may seem like a wayward remark, such a reading becomes more convincing in the light of Ludwig von Friedeburg’s history of failed educational reforms in Germany.82 From early modern times to the present day, rather than fulfilling its official mission statement, he sees Germany’s schools primarily serving the reproduction of power relations and class structures. Many educational reforms, and especially those of the 1970s, aimed for greater inclusion, but ultimately they never brought substantive change to class structures. In Friedeburg’s view, rather than leading to constant improvement, ongoing reforms of the school system appear instead as an eternal return of the same in a succession of different guises. Moreover, the dynamic of change seems to be accelerating, and Berlin’s schools can hardly keep up with the perpetual reforms. At the Galilei-Schule, for example, in the 2012/13 school year while the process of converting from Hauptschule to Sekundarschule was ongoing, plans were announced for a ‘school turnaround’ involving a further transformation. The boredom resulting from a lack of meaning and prospects can only be overcome if schools free themselves from the spell of segregation and wake up from the nightmare of exclusion.

44  •  That Sinking Feeling

Contemporary writing on boredom and alienation is to be found above all in the extended field of the Frankfurt School, as in the work of philosopher Rahel Jaeggi and sociologist Hartmut Rosa, both of whom examine current forms of alienation from the material and social world with regard to the distortion of worldviews and self-images by societal structures and social institutions. In her study on the concept of alienation, Jaeggi defines it as a ‘relation of relationlessness’.83 Rather than an absence of relatedness, she sees alienation as a defective connection, in our case the lack of a positive identification with the school. Disregard for the timetable, lessons felt to be devoid of meaning, and the accompanying rise of boredom are exemplary processes of alienation from an institution by which students are disappointed precisely because they do care. Jaeggi links the notion of alienation to the problem of autonomy by positing freedom and self-determination as the key elements of non-alienation – an approach that tends to overlook the more playful and pragmatic, everyday reactions to the problem of boredom.84 Rosa, too, sees the concept of alienation as a key category in social critique.85 His remarks on the concept of resonance, especially, can be applied to the topic of school and boredom.86 The deserted schoolyard and the lack of real substance in lessons no longer allow students at the Galilei-Schule to experience positive resonance; the school strikes them as bare and dull. Rosa interprets conditions of resonance in schools in theoretical terms as the cause and consequence of social inequalities: while privileged students tend to experience school as a space of positive resonance, for the ‘losers’ of the education system school becomes a zone of alienation marked by indifference and repulsion.87 However, Rosa’s critique of class structures is undermined in places by his romanticizing emphasis on resonance, his political orientation towards an idealized Humboldtian vision of education, and the examples he cites of positive experiences in dealing with students at elite schools. Both in their normative premise and in their examples, Rosa and Jaeggi tend towards a generalized, educated middle-class reading of the problem of alienation, thus somewhat depoliticizing a critique originally developed by Marx as a tool for the analysis of class structures. Today, boredom serves as a kind of umbrella term for various forms of paralysis and under-stimulation, but precisely the concept’s postmodern success now threatens to turn it into a ‘dead metaphor’.88 As well as being evaluations of the situation in question, past and present diagnoses of boredom and alienation in modern life are always also critiques. For boredom is not just a neutral diagnosis of time passing slowly; instead, it always also implies a discontent with time experienced as empty. Siegfried Kracauer describes deep boredom as a ‘radical boredom’ since it gives pause for critical reflection on the conditions of one’s own life.89 And for Henri

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  45

Lefebvre, boredom contains traces of unfulfilled wishes and unrealized possibilities, prompting him to credit it with utopian potential.90 As we have seen, the frequent complaints of boredom at the Galilei-Schule reflect not only personal discontent but also a critique of the school. Moments of situative boredom offer space and time for self-reflection that can lead to existential questions concerning the meaningfulness of turning up for class at all. In most cases, however, boredom in school and the associated distraction tactics are viewed not as critical reflection but as individual refusal to learn and as disturbances. Today, boredom is often associated with impulsive behaviour and treated with drugs for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).91 The privatization, pathologization and medicalization of boredom have caused its social causes and societal dimension to be overlooked, thus depriving boredom of its critical potential.

Conclusion: Boredom as a Problem Atmospheres of boredom in school may be diffuse and ephemeral, but they are also powerful phenomena whose study poses empirical challenges and conceptual difficulties. The properties of boredom include the way it renders spaces faded and grey, periods of time dull and empty, making them seem to lack positive qualities.92 Moreover, the notion of atmosphere, which undermines strict divisions between subjective and objective, is marked by semantic openness and ambiguity. The proposed analysis of atmospheres of boredom in connection with processes of ruination and alienation combines an examination of the spatiotemporal dimensions of social exclusion with an ethnographic sense of affective perception and emotional experience. An approach that bridges academic divides by combining different research methods proves necessary in order to create a ‘thick description’93 that highlights different aspects of atmospheres: historical descriptions and sociological reflections, subjectand object-oriented viewpoints, theoretical and literary angles, phenomenological and political perspectives.94 Affective atmospheres of boredom in school illustrate the exclusionary impact of structures of social space-time in which the ruination of social spaces is accompanied by a collapse of the order of time.95 Confronted with a breakdown of their prospects for the future, students at a Hauptschule in Neukölln were thrown back on an eternal present, at the same time as experiencing sociopolitical segregation via their banishment to islands of educational exclusion.96 In this light, the promise associated with school as an institution can be seen to crumble like the plaster on the walls of the Galilei-Schule, while the students’ chances in the job market look as bleak and depressing as their ruined schoolyard.

46  •  That Sinking Feeling

In these processes of exclusion, situative and existential forms of boredom are interconnected and should therefore not be analysed separately – the equivocal quality of boredom can only be understood by keeping both in mind. While quantitative-sociological approaches are unable to grasp ‘deep’ boredom, perspectives drawn from the humanities tend to lack access to its ‘profane’ forms. My approach, drawing on ethnography and cultural studies, focussed on specific situations of everyday school boredom, finding spatial and temporal textures in seemingly banal moments, as well as recurring patterns of problems and reactions. By interpreting atmospheres of boredom as the result of gradual ruination and as an everyday example of alienation, I proposed a political reading that sees the decay of spatial infrastructures and the crumbling time regime at the Galilei-Schule in terms of social theory. The prevailing boredom at the Galilei-Schule is not just a problem for the students and teachers; it is the consequence of processes of social exclusion, and thus a problem for our society as a whole.

Notes  1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

See Goodstein, Experience without Qualities. See Dale Pezze/Salzani, ‘The Delicate Monster’. See Cavell, ‘Performative and Passionate Utterance’. See Toohey, Boredom. See Breuninger/Schiemann (eds), Langeweile. See Doehlemann, Langeweile?, 132ff. See Han, The Burnout Society. On the self-image of the elite, see Cioran, ‘Sundays of Life’. On the distinction between situative and existential boredom, see Svendson, A Philosophy of Boredom. See Böhme, Atmosphäre; Böhme, Aisthetik; Andermann/Eberlein (eds), Gefühle als Atmosphären; Bondi/Davidson/Smith (eds), Emotional Geographies; Lehnert, Raum und Gefühl. See Schmitz, Der Leib, der Raum und die Gefühle. Ibid., 23. Böhme, Atmosphäre, 45; Böhme, Aisthetik, 49; see also Böhme, Architektur und Atmosphäre. See Reckwitz, ‘Affective Spaces’; Schroer/Schmitt (eds), Exploring Atmospheres Ethnographically. See Anderson, ‘Affective Atmospheres’. See Lefebvre, The Production of Space. See Gieryn, ‘What Buildings do’; Delitz, Architektursoziologie, 79ff. On space and emotion, see Reckwitz, ‘Affective Spaces’; Lehnert (ed.), Raum und Gefühl; Bondi/Davidson/Smith (eds), Emotional Geographies. On school architecture, see Göhlich, Die pädagogische Umgebung; Böhme (ed.), Schularchitektur im interdisziplinären Diskurs; Jelich/Kemnitz (eds), Die pädagogische Gestaltung des Raums.

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  47

18. See Navaro-Yashin, The Make-Believe Space; Larkin, ‘The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure’. 19. On the school building, see Homann, Von der Heckerschen Realschule zur KeplerOberschule. 20. Ibid., 137. 21. See Schneider, ‘Die Suche nach dem idealen Schulbau im 20. Jahrhundert’; Göhlich, Die pädagogische Umgebung; Göhlich, ‘Schulraum und Schulentwicklung’. 22. Homann, Von der Heckerschen Realschule zur Kepler-Oberschule, 138 23. Ibid. 24. See the documentary film Die Klasse – Berlin 61 by Michael Klette and Ben von Grafenstein. 25. Gößwald (ed.), Neukölln macht Schule, 137. 26. Ibid. 27. See Wellgraf/Reimers, ‘Bildungssemantiken und Bildungspraktiken’. 28. See Bollenbeck, Bildung und Kultur; Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichten, 105ff. 29. See Homann, Von der Heckerschen Realschule zur Kepler-Oberschule. 30. See Gintis, ‘Towards a Political Economy of Education’. 31. See Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World, 123–129. 32. See Böhme, Atmosphäre, 40ff 33. See Star, ‘The Ethnography of Infrastructure’; Angelo/Hentschel, ‘Interactions with Infrastructure as Windows into Social Worlds’. 34. See Larkin, ‘The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure’. 35. On the underfunding of Hauptschule and Sekundarschule, see Schmidt, ‘Warum Mittelmaß?’; Allmendinger/Leibfried, ‘Education and the Welfare State’, 73: ‘The missing competences of these students in the secondary education system in Germany may well be explained by an investment bias discriminating against primary and lower secondary education.’ 36. See Graham, ‘When Infrastructure Fails’. 37. See Claus-Dieter Steyer, ‘Völlig von der Rolle. Grundschule droht Schließung wegen Hygienemängeln’; Susanne Vieth-Entus, ‘Nicht Ganz Sauber. Unhygienische Zustände an Schulen’, both in Berliner Tagesspiegel, 14 January 2014. 38. See Stoler, ‘Imperial Debris’; Stoler, ‘“The Rot Remains”’; Martin, ‘Towards a Political Understanding of New Ruins’; Street, ‘Affective Infrastructure’, Navaro-Yashin, The Make-Believe Space. For a postcolonial view of Berlin, see Hentschel, ‘Postcolonializing Berlin and the Fabrication of the Urban’; Lanz, ‘Über (Un-)Möglichkeiten, hiesige Stadtforschung zu postkolonialisieren’. 39. See Toohey, Boredom, 35ff. 40. See Müller, ‘Die Entwicklung des Schulmöbels als Industrieprodukt’. 41. Ibid. 42. See Löw, Raumsoziologie. 43. Ibid., 166ff. 44. See Willis, Learning to Labour; Löw, Raumsoziologie, 231ff. 45. See Breidenstein, Teilnahme am Unterricht, 39ff. For further views from educational theory on school and space, see for example Rieger-Ladich/Berdelmann, ‘Klassenzimmer und ihre “materielle” Dimension’; Rieger-Ladich/ Graubau, ‘Schule als Disziplinierungs- und Machtraum’. 46. Based on Fuchs, ‘Zur Phänomenologie der Stimmungen’. 47. See Wellbery, ‘Stimmung’; Gumbrecht, Stimmungen lesen; Gisbertz (ed.), Stimmung; Reents/Meyer-Sickendiek (eds), Stimmung und Methode.

48  •  That Sinking Feeling

48. See Wellbery, ‘Stimmung’. 49. See Stewart, Atmospheric Attunements; Brennan, The Transmission of Affect. 50. See Seyfert, ‘Beyond Personal Feelings and Collective Emotions’; Slaby/Mühlhoff/ Wünschner, ‘Affective Arrangements’. 51. See Urry, ‘Time’. 52. See Schell, ‘Zeit in volkskundlicher Perspektive’. 53. See Dohrn-van Rossum, Die Geschichte der Stunde; Macho/Kassung (ed.), Kulturtechniken der Synchronisation; Luhmann, ‘World-Time and System History’; Luhmann, ‘Gleichzeitigkeit und Synchronisation’. 54. See Drews, Zeit in Schule und Unterricht, 24f. 55. See Lefebvre, Rythmanalysis; Grang, ‘Rhythms of the City’; Vogelpohl, Urbanes Alltagsleben. 56. See Gumbrecht, Stimmungen lesen, 29. 57. See Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations. 58. See Goodstein, Experience without Qualities; Dale Pezze/Salzani, ‘The Delicate Monster’; Meyer Spacks, Boredom. 59. On boredom and gender, see Pease, Modernism, Feminism and the Culture of Boredom; Kessel, Langeweile. 60. See Jahoda/Lazarsfeld/Zeisel, Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal. 61. Ibid., 84. 62. See Moser, ‘“Time is What You Make Out of It”’. 63. See Breidenstein, Teilnahme am Unterricht, 85. 64. Lohrmann, Langeweile im Unterricht. 65. Schomäcker, Schule braucht Langeweile? 66. Götz/Frenzel, ‘Phänomenologie schulischer Langeweile’. 67. See Lohrmann, Langeweile im Unterricht, 32. 68. See Breidenstein, Teilnahme am Unterricht, 65ff. 69. See Goodstein, Experience without Qualities; Dale Pezze/Salzani, ‘The Delicate Monster’; Meyer Spacks, Boredom; Toohey, Boredom. 70. See Goodstein, Experience without Qualities, 23f. 71. See Doehlemann, Langeweile? 72. Ibid., 138ff. 73. On links between under-challenging and boredom, see Prammer, Boreout. 74. See Marx, ‘Estranged Labour’. 75. See Jaeggi, Alienation. 76. See Heidegger, Being and Time. 77. See Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, 78ff.; Wüschner, Die Entdeckung der Langeweile. 78. See Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 101ff. 79. For an overview on boredom in Benjamin’s oeuvre, see Salzani, ‘The Atrophy of Experience’. 80. See Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 105ff. 81. See Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’. 82. See Friedeburg, Bildungsreform in Deutschland. 83. See Jaeggi, Alienation, 1. 84. See Jaeggi, ‘Freiheit als Nicht-Entfremdung’. 85. See Rosa, ‘Kritik der Zeitverhältnisse’. 86. See Rosa, Resonanz; Beljan, Schule als Resonanzraum und Entfremdungszone. 87. See Rosa, Resonanz, 402–420.

School in Ruins: Atmosphere of Boredom  •  49

88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

See Goodstein, Experience without Qualities, 420. See Kracauer, The Mass Ornament, 331ff. See Gardiner, ‘Henri Lefebvre and the ‘Sociology of Boredom’’. See Pease, Modernism, Feminism and the Culture of Boredom; Kessel, Langeweile; Boden, ‘The Devil Inside’. See Svendson, A Philosophy of Boredom. See Geertz, ‘Thick Description’. See Navaro-Yashin, ‘Affective Spaces, Melancholic Objects’. See Weidenhaus, Soziale Raumzeit. Ibid., 205ff.

Chapter 2

Distraction Provocation as Critique

Those experiencing boredom seek out forms of distraction, and among Berlin’s Hauptschule students this quest is as widespread as boredom itself. In pedagogical discourse since the nineteenth century, the border between boredom and distraction is marked by value judgements, but in practice the dividing line often proves fluid and fragile.1 This chapter inquires into the social conditions and cultural forms of distraction, looking into their affective and aesthetic dimensions, as well as their subversive and critical potential. The quest for distraction – understood here as an umbrella term for various forms of seeking something interesting, diverting, amusing or enjoyable – became established alongside the spread of modern forms of boredom from the nineteenth century.2 The ‘rise of mass culture’3 brought forth a counter-model to the strict disciplinary regime of school, based on the distinction between working hours and leisure time that was gradually taking hold. At the Galilei-Schule, this distinction was undermined: thanks to high boredom levels, the school became an arena for pop-cultural entertainment. I trace this disaffection with the institutional demands of education, this emotional and bodily rejection of normative behavioural scripts, reading the resulting forms of dissent as possible forms of situated critique.4 Popular forms of distraction exist in a zone of tensions between social and media upheavals, folk traditions and global interaction, bourgeois status angst and pedagogical notions of order. In hegemonic discourse, what teenagers do with their smartphones is associated with superficiality, obscenity and violence, as well as a loss of cognitive attentiveness.5 Compared with concepts of aesthetic experience geared towards bourgeois notions of art, their videos and memes are considered inferior, allegedly

Distraction: Provocation as Critique  •  51

lacking the necessary intellectual depth, concentrated focus and sensory refinement. French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, for example, laments an ‘attention deficit disorder’ in society and the ‘destruction of the juvenile psychic apparatus’ by new media, leading to an infantilization of society and a loss of critical faculties.6 A similarly alarming tone is adopted by German philosopher Christoph Türcke when he diagnoses an attention deficit culture that is having an especially disastrous impact in schools.7 And American writer Maggie Jackson sees cultural achievements and critical thought under threat from a media-related diffusion and fragmentation of attention.8 As these voices from different national contexts make clear, cultural pessimism with regard to new media is based on educated middle-class ideals of depth and introspection, concentration and contemplation. ‘Overexcited’ behaviour on the part of students, on the other hand, is often erroneously pathologized on the basis of self-confirming diagnostic loops. Alongside hyperactivity and impulsiveness, inattention is one of the three main symptoms for diagnosing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).9 Similar interpretations dominate with regard to young people’s use of language and the ‘trash talk’ dealt with below. In most cases, such approaches address neither social constellations and pedagogical framing, nor the messages implicit in students’ disruptions. Thanks to the dominance of negative discourse with regard to schools, the traditions, contents and thrust of diversionary tactics are now largely overlooked. Following Jonathan Crary’s insights, who has studied the genealogy of regimes of attention since the nineteenth century, I examine moments when attention is suspended in school and explore their situative dynamics and broader logics.10 In my remarks, I treat distraction not as a lack or deficiency of attention, but as ‘distributed attention’ – as a focussing of attention on different objects perceived as interesting, entertaining or otherwise stimulating.11 Autonomous forms of entertainment in a school environment experienced as boring thus appear not as an expression of a lack of self-control, but as attempts at self-affirmation and thus as strong evidence of agency. In my reconstructions of the students’ disruptive manoeuvres, I am interested not in the reestablishment of regular teaching, but in the conditions, forms and dynamics of the temporary collapse of order and in the question of whether and how critique is being articulated by the students at such moments. Due to a lack of legitimate options, the main mode of criticism for Hauptschule students in Berlin is provocation, often in the form of ‘clowning’ and ‘trash talk’. Hauptschule students in the city’s Neukölln district are notorious for their resistance and rebelliousness towards authority, and for their rough manners and loud exchanges of views. Humorous remarks, aggressive altercations and theatrical gestures all play a key role in lessons.

52  •  That Sinking Feeling

What goes on in class often seems to be determined less by orderly learning than by a constant stream of more or less playful provocations. Although this routinely drives teachers to despair, rather than joining in the chorus of lamentation over disastrous classroom conditions I reconstruct the ‘social meaning’ of humorous and rough-mannered distractions under precarious school conditions.12 In this way, even after the ‘end of working class culture’,13 social contradictions are still addressed in wilful, creative (and often conflicting) ways in a post-proletarian milieu, although the resulting insights are not linked back to any collective demands or political positions.14 I use the derogative terms ‘clowning’ and ‘trash talk’ deliberately – although in quotation marks – in order to highlight the widespread devaluation of these cultural techniques by associating them with ‘low’ social status and supposed intellectual inferiority, but also as a way of marking the sub-bourgeois and popular traditions of these modes of disruption. Using the example of adaptations of Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake by Hauptschule students and that of ‘trash talk’ during a workshop on antisemitism, I show that ‘clowning’ and ‘trash talk’ derive their appeal and their structure from ritualized provocation and the demonstrative negation of the school system. In so doing, the teenagers reactivate older elements of popular culture marked by rebelliousness, a focus on the body, and sociability, updating them under the conditions of processes of aestheticization and a society shaped by mediatization and migration.15 In the view I have chosen to adopt here, behaviours that seem banal and perhaps even ridiculous at first glance appear as complex forms of cultural self-expression that demand to be taken seriously.

Clowning: Adaptations of Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake In the summer of 2012, when I arrived at the Galilei-Schule on my return from a period working in South Korea where Gangnam Style was already in vogue, I was surprised to find that students in Berlin were also wearing Gangnam shirts and performing the dance moves. The following traces the path of Gangnam Style from South Korea to Berlin-Neukölln, and how, together with Harlem Shake, it became the most popular meme of the 2012/13 school year. During the same period, various other memes were circulating among the students, including humorous memes like ‘Thüringer Klöße’ (referring to a hit song about dumplings) and moral memes from the fields of politics, love and friendship. Memes are a format used to spread cultural content online in which image, sound and video files are imitated and modified, leading to the emergence of a distinct cultural frame of reference.16 Music video memes are spread mainly via

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YouTube, an online platform based on the principle of the free circulation of media content.17 Memes are often both catchy and banal, as well as bizarre and puzzling; their humour and positivity invites imitation and they compete in the digital struggle for attention by means of provocation and originality.18 As mentioned above, digital media and the associated pop-cultural genres provoke a vehemently negative response, especially in pedagogical contexts. At the Galilei-Schule, this was reflected above all in a blanket ban on smartphones – a ban largely ignored by students. Creative Context and Cultural Translations Gangnam Style was the most successful meme of 2012. In the space of a few months, the video became the most-viewed in the history of YouTube and has at the time of writing been watched more than 2.3 billion times.19 Psy and his song Gangnam Style were an export hit for K-Pop, the abbreviation for ‘Korean Pop’ used to describe South Korean pop music that is produced for both the domestic and global music markets, typically mixing Korean and English in its lyrics.20 The music itself is a mixture of catchy electropop, Korean rap and English chorus lines. Besides the dancing singer Psy and various big names from Korean pop culture, the video also features appearances by the ‘sexy ladies’ mentioned in the lyrics, adding a strong sexual charge. Gangnam is a prosperous district in the South Korean capital Seoul that stands here for a fashionable, hedonistic and consumerist lifestyle and for a hypermodern, turbo-capitalist South Korea. The music video exaggerates this lifestyle for humorous effect. The motif of the Gangnam lifestyle playfully addresses sociopolitical issues: Korean society is marked by a tense dynamic between egalitarianism and status-based hierarchy, the emphasis on homogeneity standing side-by-side with the quest for wealth. Both cultural currents borrow and transform elements from history, such as the Confucian emphasis on balance and obedience, or aspects of the centuries-long rule of an aristocratic elite, the Yangban.21 The main cultural driving force behind the post-aristocratic capitalist focus on status is the urban middle class that emerged during rapid industrialization from the 1970s and that has defined itself in neoliberal times in terms of a consumer lifestyle and educational success.22 At the same time, the majority of the Korean population is unable to match the consumer standards of the urban middle and upper classes as communicated by the media. Gangnam Style derives its appeal from this tension, referring to struggles for distinction in contemporary Korean society that can be observed in similar form elsewhere – one of the reasons why Gangnam Style can be intuitively grasped and appropriated around the world.

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The choreography developed to accompany Gangnam Style is a kind of horse dance without a horse: jockey-like movements including lasso-swinging, executed at different locations around Seoul including a children’s playground, a street crossing, a concert hall, a tennis court, and a boat. As a motif, the horse has historically been associated with status and power.23 It has usually been the rich and powerful who could afford to ride horses, presenting themselves and having themselves portrayed as riders. In Asian culture, too, horses are associated with high social status, especially in China and Japan, both of which have exerted a strong cultural influence on Korea. In addition, by quoting the motif of the lasso-swinging cowboy, Gangnam Style also links horse-riding to freedom and Americanization, masculinity and sexualization. Gangnam Style confirms Ulrich Raulff’s observation that the iconographic and metaphorical history of the horse motif by no means ends with the replacement of horse power by motor transport in the second half of the twentieth century, continuing in sublimated form in (pop) culture.24 By the end of 2012, Gangnam Style was losing its appeal, and 2013 brought a new viral dance video – the Harlem Shake. Originally, this was a variant of breakdance that emerged in the New York district of the same name in the early 1980s. Harlem’s legendary reputation as a cultural centre and hotbed of innovation in African-American culture and music extends from the Harlem Renaissance25 of the 1920s and 1930s, to the Cool Jazz26 of the 1940s and 1950s, to the emergence of hip-hop culture in the 1970s and 1980s.27 At the same time, Harlem long epitomized the American ‘ghetto’28 and thus stands as a symbol both for processes of sociospatial exclusion and for African-American solidarity and Black Power. These traditions are also latently present in the Harlem Shake meme, allowing Berlin Hauptschule students from migrant backgrounds to establish an imaginary connection to Harlem in the form of a cultural affinity. The Harlem Shake meme was triggered by a 30-second video of the same name posted on YouTube by Internet comedian Filthy Frank early in February 2013.29 It features excerpts from the 2012 song ‘Harlem Shake’ by the American DJ Baauer, as well as some peculiar dance moves: four young men in brightly coloured body suits rhythmically throw back their shoulders while thrusting their hips, a routine that barely recalls the AfricanAmerican Harlem Shake of the 1980s. Rather than this video, however, most instances of the meme copied a video response to Filthy Frank’s version by Australian teenagers. The resulting Harlem Shake meme is based on a relatively stable template that is then adapted to various circumstances and spaces. In most cases, we see a group of people in a seemingly banal everyday situation, often in offices or workplaces, but sometimes in unusual places and in bizarre costumes. After the first fifteen seconds, the

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bassline starts, accompanied by the line ‘do the Harlem Shake’, upon which everyone suddenly ‘goes crazy’, spending another fifteen seconds performing wriggling and jumping dance moves. By 15 February 2013, just two weeks after the posting of Filthy Frank’s version, there were already 40,000 versions of the Harlem Shake circulating online. Both Gangnam Style and the Harlem Shake spread hybrid dance styles that borrow from and evolve local pop-cultural traditions. Both sparked many adaptations and variations that were also spread mainly via YouTube. Due to his own career selling illegal mixtapes, Psy did not register a copyright for his song, opening the door to creative appropriations. During my research, however, both Psy’s original version and many adaptations of Gangnam Style were not accessible in Germany due to a legal dispute between YouTube and the German copyright society GEMA. The Harlem Shake, on the other hand, is based on a free-wheeling spiral of adaptations that can no longer be traced back to a single original version. In spite of, or perhaps precisely because of this, Harlem Shake also gave rise to disputes over copyright. As prime examples of processes of globalization, rather than being based on the principle of homogenization, both memes play with the visual and semantic appeal of cultural difference.30 New versions and hybrid combinations are prompted by this residue of untranslatable otherness, by affective and semantic surplus.31 Questions of power and hegemony play a central role here, although no longer based on the model of one-way cultural transfer from the centre to the periphery, but on that of complex interweaving within ongoing processes of media translation.32 The new interpretations based on local cultural contexts and frames of reference derive their appeal from the tension, friction and irritation generated by these processes.33 In the process of cultural translation, a distinction can be made between two typical forms of appropriation: copies repeat the basic concept of the meme with slight variations in different spatial contexts, ranging from films shot on mobile phones to professionally produced clips; and parodies riff on the ironic style of the originals, satirizing or reinterpreting them. The parodic variants of Gangnam Style included Gun-Man Style, Farmer Style and Gungan Style with reference to the Star Wars universe. Harlem Shake gave rise to similar adaptations: a Grandma Edition received more than a million clicks within just three days; there were versions with celebrities, ranging from Homer Simpson to CNN presenters, to basketball and football teams; one especially prominent parody was presented by Justin Timberlake during the TV show ‘Saturday Night Live’ on 9 March 2013, when he wore a tofu outfit and replaced the lines ‘con los terroristas’ with ‘tofu burritos’ and ‘do the Harlem Shake’ with ‘drink vegan shake’.

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The complexity and dynamism of processes of cultural transfer are especially well reflected in the career of Gangnam Style in the United States and Europe. Like South Korean culture as a whole, the K-Pop genre with its boy and girl bands is shaped by American influences. Since the end of the Korean War, Korean culture, formerly focussed on moral education, has moved towards obviously North American forms of coolness and consumerism. In the 1950s and 1960s, concerts for US troops brought Western pop music to Korea for the first time, resulting in a range of adaptations. At the same time, there was strong resistance to Americanization and the US military presence in South Korea. The rapper Psy himself lived in the United States for four years, bringing hip-hop to Korea and K-Pop to the United States: having sold K-Pop mixtapes during his studies on the East Coast, he went on to conquer the US charts with his distinctive brand of K-Pop. Initially, those listening to K-Pop in the United States were mainly Asian-Americans, but the style spread to a far broader listener base, including African-Americans. The success of Gangnam Style was fuelled by praise sent out by American pop and movie stars like Katy Perry, Britney Spears and Tom Cruise to their millions of Twitter followers. Psy appeared on stage with Madonna at Madison Square Garden, was invited onto The Today Show and Saturday Night Live, as well as playing at the United Nations and at President Obama’s Christmas concert. On his 35th birthday, Psy performed Gangnam Style during the New Year’s Eve celebrations at Times Square in New York. In Europe, K-Pop was initially popular mainly in London and Paris, where the first European K-Pop concerts also took place. At first, most fans of K-Pop had an Asian family background, but Gangnam Style became a pop culture phenomenon across the borders of social milieu. In Britain, the Eton Style adaptation made by students at the elite boarding school, including an appearance by a teacher, was viewed more than two million times on YouTube. Dressed in their black uniforms, the boys make fun of the uptight elitism of the British upper class: ‘We may be awkward, frustrated, lonely and insecure, hey, yes insecure, hey, … we’re not too social, can’t talk to women, although we try, hey, we’re just too shy, hey, if you approach us then we’ll just break down and cry.’34 In November 2012, at the Trocadero in Paris, Psy danced with a flash mob of 20,000 people organized by Radio NRJ. Flash mobs of a similar size took place in Rome and Milan around this time. There were also smaller flash mobs in almost all European countries, from Reykjavik in Iceland to Nicosia on Cyprus. In Germany, Psy appeared on the talk shows Wetten, dass..? and TV Total, as well as giving a concert in Cologne.

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Galilei Style: Adaptations by Neukölln Hauptschule Students Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake were discussed or performed by Hauptschule students in Berlin on numerous occasions. The acoustic, semantic and gestural potential of the originals were used, often combined with other cultural elements, for defiant boycotts of lessons and allusive attacks on teaching staff. Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake were deployed in specific situations of challenge to pedagogical authority because, as well as causing a disturbance and a distraction, they could be used to illustrate and symbolically process societal conflicts. Just before the Christmas holiday in 2012, after several months of Gangnam Style hype but before the release of Harlem Shake, I spoke to tenth-grade students about pop music videos as part of a project. During a double lesson, we watched YouTube videos together, either specifically requested by students as their current favourites or based on spontaneous suggestions. The Gangnam Style video was viewed with great amusement – ‘full-screen, really loud’ shouted one student as it started – and expertly interpreted. Field journal: Nadja: He’s got really famous. I like the way everyone joins in. Kai: He’s already got a billion clicks. Theo: The scenes at the pool and in the lift are especially crazy. Nadja: And in the toilet. Theo: It’s something different. When I first saw it on VIVA I thought it was funny. You have to watch it several times, then it gets better and better. Nadja: It’s an automatic hit, in the disco everyone dances to it. Momo: We danced to it, too, my brother and me, at a wedding. We were all standing in a circle and when the song came on everyone started jumping around. Kai: My ex-girlfriend sent me a link to it three months ago. After two days, I realized it was going to be huge. Theo: But I think he wants to stop now, because everyone’s copying him. Kai: It’s beginning to get on my nerves, always the same song.

The students showed themselves to be interested and involved in pop culture. In the discussion above, their main emphasis was on how famous Gangnam Style had become and how easy it was to dance to. They knew the video and the dance style from friends, from television and online media,

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or from the disco. In the course of the discussion, they also mentioned other variants of the meme, like the German Opa Gandolf Style – referring to a character from Lord of the Rings – as well as cover versions from their parents’ regions of origin, like Balkan Style and Turkish Style. What seemed to appeal most to students was the song’s crazy, ironic and puzzling quality, and the possibility of dancing to it in groups. Some of them knew that Gangnam is known as a place for ‘rich, far-out’ people in South Korea, and I had already seen others wearing Psy t-shirts around the school. Two students from Asian families had been interested in K-Pop for some time; one of them had taken part in a Gangnam Style flash mob at Alexanderplatz in Berlin in September 2012 and was disappointed that it had been so brief. When their interest in Gangnam Style waned after media oversaturation towards the end of 2012, at the beginning of 2013 the students at GalileiSchule turned their attention to the Harlem Shake. Two versions were recorded by tenth-graders and uploaded to the Internet. The first version was shot in the boys’ changing rooms at the school sports hall: at first, they sit around, demonstratively detached, but the swelling music and the hip thrusts of one boy standing on a bench wearing a facemask already hint at the inferno of the following fifteen seconds, during which the boys dance around wildly, some of them tearing off their t-shirts. The second version, shot in the school toilets, has a similar structure. At first, the boys stand in a row at the urinals, only one of them making thrusting motions with his hips and grasping his own buttocks. Here, too, an obscene party starts after fifteen seconds, with various roles: one boy performs a kind of masturbation dance, others point to the urinals or mount each other. The students used a smartphone app specially developed for producing Harlem Shake adaptations, thanks to which their film adheres to the pop-cultural conventions of the Harlem Shake meme. In spite of their display of freakishness, the dance movements appear to be carefully prepared and the participants are properly choreographed. The students claimed to have deliberately chosen locations around the school that were provocative, striking and unusual, but where they could also ‘have fun without being disturbed’. Two popular boys were the main initiators. In the days before the shoot, they secretly promoted the planned performance in the schoolyard, and they said they were surprised how many people joined in and how well the spontaneous action worked. ‘It was just fun for us. I love it when spontaneous things get so big. Everyone thought it was funny. But we never intended to upload it to YouTube.’ At first, the footage of both performances circulated within the school on smartphones, before being uploaded to YouTube where they received many comments. Overall, there were mainly approving comments in the form of general laughter, praise for outstanding individual performances and regret at

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Figure 2.1. Harlem Shake I. Facebook video screen capture.

Figure 2.2. Harlem Shake II. Facebook video screen capture.

having missed the event. In between there were also a few critical voices, for example discussing whether such films should be being shared and commented on at all. Reservations of this kind are probably the reason why the films are no longer available online, and why the person responsible for uploading them was taken to issue by the initiators. The most frequently mentioned aspect of the performance were the ‘breasts’ of a rather plump boy, who responded indignantly at first, before laughing it off. Other topics were also addressed, including the Israel-Palestine conflict that is always present at this school, with many students from Palestinian refugee families. One fatalistic remark, claiming that ‘this school will never change’, reflected a negative image of the students’ own educational institution. In this context, however, it was taken with humour and the ‘idiot’ performance received special recognition. Tolerance: A Grotesque Parody With their adaptations, the teenagers inscribed themselves into the transnational pop-cultural development of these memes, adding a new GalileiSchule chapter. In contrast to the English elite students from Eton, the students from Neukölln emphasized the vulgar, the sexual and the physical.

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During lessons, spontaneous performances of Gangnam Style, Harlem Shake and other music routines served above all to provide entertainment when things got especially boring, or to provoke specific teachers. At the same time, such performances sometimes came in response to the latent racism of certain lessons. Field journal: Ethics lesson with Ms Herrmann, the same chaos as usual. A group of boys are joyfully discussing leisure activities, one says ‘this Harlem Shake is so funny’, he’s wearing a t-shirt that says ‘I am hip-hop’. Ali arrives a few minutes late and is sent straight to the training room, which annoys him: ‘Fuck whoever made this law. I’m not going to the training room. Let them expel me. See if I care.’ Then he goes after all, but returns a few minutes later, triumphant. ‘No one there’, he says, the room was locked, and he sits down at his desk. Kai points to Ahmed’s shoes and calls out loudly: ‘Parents on welfare but shoes for 400 euros.’ Ali comes over, grabs Ahmed’s leg, lifts his feet into the air and shouts out: ‘400 Euro! Gucci!! Must be from POLAND!!!’ The teacher is unfazed and passes round a handout about tolerance. Ali reads aloud: ‘I’m watching Wetten, dass..? with my wife Dilta when my daughter Patricia comes in with her boyfriend Manfred.’ Ms Herrmann asks the class how they, in the role of the parents, would react in a tolerant way to this scene where the daughter brings her new boyfriend home for the first time. Everyone laughs. Ali begins with a seemingly serious answer: ‘I would draw up a list of pro and contra’, but then, after a brief pause, he adds: ‘And then he’d have to suck my dick!’ Kai jumps up and dances the Harlem Shake. ‘I prefer older women’, he calls out towards the not especially young teacher. Then he talks about a porn film about ‘two lesbian women with a garden hose’. This appeals to Ali: ‘I’m sexually horny. That needs to be TOLERATED!’ Other boys in the class also feel inspired, beginning to fantasize about sex in the staffroom: ‘Sometimes I think Ms Rieder is sitting there and then Rudi comes in and really gives it to her.’ Others add to the scene: ‘And Ms Mitroglou walks around the staffroom naked.’ Kai stands up and performs the teacher sex in Harlem Shake style with loud imitated sex noises – ‘Uh! Ah!’ Ahmed sings along ‘Oooh baby’, several other voices join in with ‘I wanna know, if you want to be my girl’, and then, finally, almost everyone together, especially loud, ‘UH! AH!’ the teacher protests: ‘I think it’s extremely intolerant of you to believe that old people have no right to intimate relations.’ Ahmed protests, outraged: ‘We want everyone to fuck. We are pro fucking. Sex for grandmas, too!’ Kai has apparently misunderstood the whole thing; he goes to the front and starts massaging Ms Herrmann’s back. ‘Get your hands off me’, she protests. Nevin sings a mashup of Gangnam Style and DJ Ötzi: ‘Hey, sexy lady. Uh! Ah!’ Other students are annoyed. ‘He’s got ADHD’, someone calls out, talking about Ali. ‘Sometimes you’re on the verge on madness. What’s the difference between an insane asylum and this school?’, asks the teacher. Ali answers: ‘What’s normal around here? Madness is what makes us human.’ The lesson continues to drift, and I think to myself, one day I’ll put all this in my book.

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Pop music references are used subversively in an ethics class to entertain and provoke. A small, dominant-acting group of male students borrows acoustic and gestural elements from strongly eroticized K-Pop and libido-charged commercial hip-hop culture, using this sexualized bravado to undermine a planned discussion about tolerance. With the hip thrusts in Harlem Shake and the catchy refrain ‘hey, sexy ladies’ in Gangnam Style, both memes are ideally suited to such sexually connoted clowning. Fragments of the lyrics are combined with quotations from other current pop music, mainly DJ Ötzi’s version of the much-covered classic Hey Baby from 2000 with its prominent ‘Uhs’ and ‘Ahs’. At the same time, the students play with the format and theme of the class, sometimes feigning serious answers only to make a mockery of them a moment later, or they parody the use of the concept of tolerance, robbing it of its gravity and seriousness. In this way, the students turned the ethics class into a lesson in clowning, challenging the hegemonic order and undermining the teacher’s position of power. In his theory of clowning, developed in the 1970s in the context of a study group on ‘Poetics and Hermeneutics’, Dieter Wellershoff stresses the tendency of such behaviour to strengthen normative values within a group rather than throwing them over board.35 He also referred to the generation-specific prevalence of such clowning among teenagers, as well as its frequently sexual character. Wellershoff interprets clowning around in political terms as an attempt to escape from conditions of alienation and constraint, but his focus on artistic avant-gardes and his overlooking of popular traditions make his analysis strangely elitist. He even posits a privileged socialization as a necessary precondition for the spontaneity, sensitivity and creativity involved in clowning, going so far as to describe this form of activity as wholly unregulated.36 At the Galilei-Schule, the contrary can be observed: precarious conditions of socialization and the school’s structures of power bring forth particularly elaborate forms of clowning that follow distinctive patterns of provocation. In their emphasis on the sexual, the teenagers play with attributions of cultural difference, at the same time as exposing the absurdities of the hegemonic discourse of tolerance. The paradox of the current notion of tolerance is that it is accompanied by sociospatial and sociomoral divisions, thus helping to generate precisely the deviant subject positions whose tolerance it advocates – and which, in aggravated cases, are then met with a ‘zero tolerance’ policy.37 In her impressive critique, Wendy Brown deconstructs the myth of a ‘tolerant West’ magnanimously championing universal values, interpreting the concept of tolerance in Foucauldian terms as an especially effective tool of contemporary governmentality.38 Behind its gesture of understanding and goodwill, this form of tolerance hides powerful claims to superiority; under its warm

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coat of openness and sympathy lurk cool rejection and aversion towards those it tolerates. In Brown’s view, the depoliticizing effect of this governmental discourse of tolerance consists in the way it hides its historical roots, its social selectivity and its excluding impact by universalizing conflicts, culturalizing differences and individualizing responsibilities. The hidden character and the exclusive tendency of current debates on tolerance are especially apparent in the treatment of Islam which, especially since 9/11, has been constructed as the generalized ‘Other’ of an enlightened, tolerant Western society posited as the norm.39 Initially the ethics class seemed to be about a generational conflict potentially affecting teenagers in general, arising when a new boy- or girlfriend is brought home for the first time. However, the names given to the protagonists marked the parents as migrants and their daughter’s new boyfriend as German, so that the problem actually being addressed was a supposed lack of tolerance in migrant families for a daughter’s choice of partner, as well as the broader issue of the oppression of girls and women in Islam. The prejudices on which this scenario for a discussion about tolerance was based, including the assumption of patriarchal conditions in migrant families, were not openly addressed but tacitly given as a supposedly neutral framing. The male students, especially, felt addressed by the scene, but they wilfully departed from the approach being suggested and instead used the clumsy pedagogical opening for provocative clowning. By joyfully acting out sexual and ethnic stereotypes while presenting themselves as overexcited ‘machos’, they subverted the teacher’s pedagogical expectations aimed at Muslim self-criticism, causing the discussion to collapse. They refused to play the false game of tolerance with its unfair rules, its veiled racism and its hypocritical intentions. The culturally pessimistic views of new media usage outlined above lament a loss of critical faculties among teenagers leading to a contemporary form of de-politicization, but on closer inspection the kind of clowning inspired by Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake at the Galilei-Schule can be seen as a form of situated critique. These dance performances are ‘social choreographies’40 that interrupt the social and discursive order of the lesson in a playful way, temporarily reversing the power structure of the classroom by means of rhythmic language and physical practices. At the same time, this caused power relations to be reproduced among the class, since those not wishing to take part (because they found the content dubious, the form inappropriate or the stakes too high) were marginalized. The students’ rebellion took place not in the mode of rational argument or programmatic political debate, but via an aggressive, sexist and chauvinist pop spectacle in which fantasies of sexual prowess were performed by socioeconomically marginalized students in everyday dance routines. During

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these pop-cultural performances, what emerged from the sexually charged ‘political unconscious’41 were unresolved societal tensions and undigested social upheavals. The students responded to this with an intuitive critique of postcolonial power relations in the form of a grotesque parody of tolerance.

Vulgar Conduct: Trash Talk during an Antisemitism Workshop The culture of humour among Hauptschule students deals with material and symbolic devalorization, closely linked to the contempt for this status group within society. This is especially clear in the many references to the stigmatizing ‘Hartz IV’ welfare programme, which were often both a joke and an insult. Crude and aggressive humour among students served not only as source of entertainment and provocation, but also as a way of negotiating group identities with relation to migration, gender and social status, and of taking control of the narrative in the face of personal experiences of stigmatization.42 In this way, foolish jokes and overexcited performances can take on a political meaning; in some cases, they can be read as subversive practices, as astute and strikingly disarming forms of critique, often delivered in a seemingly casual manner.43 Clowning and vulgarity are especially effective because they refer to the culture of negative labelling, exaggerating it in aestheticized form. With the switch from clowning to vulgar conduct, a noticeable increase in aggression occurs, as seen in the scene described below. From the viewpoint of the school authorities, such forms of communication, which I refer to here as ‘trash talk’, appear as a nuisance and are sanctioned accordingly, with punishments ranging from a warning, to being sent to the training room, to expulsion. By ‘trash talk’, I mean the kind of seemingly nonsensical or absurd exchanges or interjections used by students to amuse themselves at the same time as provoking their teachers and supervisors. Trash talk always walks a fine line between being fun and earnest, between play and aggression; it is crude, confrontational and brash, but sometimes also amusing, subtle and allusive. At its best, trash talk can contribute to conviviality and amusement, but it can also get out of hand and deteriorate into a serious clash. My use of the term ‘trash talk’ points to an affinity, mediated by hip-hop, between African-American language traditions and the cultural practices of Hauptschule students in Berlin. I would also relate it to American studies of ‘white trash’ that situate links between sociocultural devalorization and everyday pop-cultural appropriations of the symbolically excluded within the tradition of popular oral and performative traditions.44 While using the word trash, I by no means seek to classify the reported remarks by students as rubbish; instead, the term is understood here as referring to status struggles

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within the school in which dirt and litter stand for ‘lower’ standing and marginal positions within society.45 Related attributions of stupidity and foolishness can be understood as mechanisms of exclusion that are used to construct, naturalize and monitor social divisions.46 Rather than focus on these issues, however, I would like to take a different approach, exploring the playful character, the wealth of allusions, and the critical potential of ‘trash talk’. Using the example of a workshop on antisemitism, it becomes clear that on closer inspection, remarks that appear nonsensical and aggressive, as well as classist, racist and sexist, can sometimes be deciphered as considered and critical, as eloquent and clever comments on school, society and the content of lessons. The way trash talk interrupts the order of the classroom obeys certain rules and can be situated within a tradition of migrant and outsider speech. An Antisemitism Workshop for Hauptschule Students An antisemitism workshop might seem to be a wholly inappropriate occasion for trash talk, but at the Galilei-Schule, rather than prompting the teenagers to hold back, the earnest framing and the focus on an issue considered to be serious provoked especially vehement reactions. Before I take a closer look at the content and dynamics of the resulting verbal exchanges, it is important to call into question the conditions capable of bringing forth such tense discussion situations. What caused the boom in antisemitism workshops at Hauptschulen and Sekundarschulen in Berlin? And why do these events provoke absurd and aggressive humour from students? In the 1990s, the Central Council of Jews in Germany and various Muslim organizations stressed their mutual ties.47 At this time, xenophobic attacks on Turkish migrants in particular were sharply condemned by Jewish voices, and the Turkish side also highlighted the parallels to the former situation of the Jews in Germany. In the face of right-wing nationalist threats, this approach aimed to strengthen the voice of those affected by racism in Germany. By inscribing themselves into a historical narrative of victimhood, Turkish-German migrant organizations hoped to obtain minority rights similar to those of the Jews in Germany. At the same time, by this association with the fate of the Jews, they distanced themselves from the Palestinian refugees who began arriving in Germany in the 1980s and who had more of a hostile position with respect to the Israeli state. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, however, relations between the various ethnic minorities in Germany changed drastically. The dominant figure of the immigrant changed from that of the ‘guest worker’ in the 1960s and 1970s, to that of the asylum-seeker and refugee in the 1980s and 1990s, to that of a risk to public safety, the potential Islamist terrorist. In the 2000s, the conflict in

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Palestine also intensified, leading to a rise in antisemitism among Muslim migrants in Germany from various countries, while the Jewish side increasingly rejected comparisons with other minorities. In this climate of growing mistrust toward Muslim migrants and growing tensions between ethnic minorities, workshop programmes were created to address the antisemitism of Muslim youth, mostly run by Jewish organizations or decidedly proIsraeli left-wing Germans. The one-day workshop at the Galilei-Schule described below was organized by the ‘Kreuzberg Initiative Against Antisemitism’ (KIGA, founded 2003), an association specializing in antisemitism prevention with young people from Muslim backgrounds at local schools and youth clubs. The workshop at the Galilei-Schule was designed to sensitize students to the consequences of antisemitism using the example of Jewish life in Kreuzberg as it existed in the past. The workshop offers young people a brief overview of the history of National Socialism and gives examples of laws that stripped Jews of their rights, discussing this in terms of its impact on the everyday lives of those affected. The main part of the workshop focuses on the (survival) story of the Arndt family from Berlin-Kreuzberg under the Nazi regime, referring again to some of the discriminatory legislation. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, siblings Ruth and Erich Arndt were ten and eleven years old. In their teenage years they experienced disenfranchisement and persecution. The family escaped imminent deportation and began a life in hiding. With the help of many courageous Kreuzbergers they managed to survive persecution and war. In 1946 the family emigrated to the United States, where Ruth and Erich still live today. In small groups, the students work on individual sections of the family’s biography and present the results to the class, after which the workshop is discussed by the group as a whole.48

Alongside violence prevention and anger management training, as well as future planning and careers guidance, antisemitism is now part of the usual spectrum of projects offered to students by the state or by private agencies. Beginning by assuming the existence of specific problems – violence at school, looming unemployment, widespread antisemitism among young Muslims – such workshops attempt to combat this by means of warning, motivation and sensitization. The class was used to training formats of this kind, usually viewing them as a welcome distraction. Like the teachers at the Galilei-Schule, however, outside speakers often faced aggressive provocations from students, sometimes leading to the failure even of attractive events. Such verbal attacks might be critical comments and direct responses to content, but they could also be linked to the personal preferences and family problems of individual students, as well as being potentially

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influenced by the seating plan, the weather or the time of day. At other moments, attacks might emerge more or less at random as the result of spontaneous associations and the barely predictable unfolding of a discussion. Trash talk often has multiple sources and it is due to this complexity that it tends to be perceived as mere undifferentiated noise.49 Field journal: At the beginning, the two speakers – a man and a woman, a historian and a political scientist respectively – are strikingly friendly. They speak slowly and clearly and are sensitive in their use of language. This special effort is no doubt due in part to the presence at the back of the class of three assessors who will decide the future of the project. The programme begins with a Kreuzberg-themed game of Memory; apparently the workshop was originally designed for schools in Kreuzberg and not in Neukölln like this one. At first, the students just seem tired, yawning or staring into space, but as the workshop gets underway it seems to wake them up in a playful way. After the game, the workshop leaders deliver a long PowerPoint lecture on the history of the persecution of Jews, citing numerous statistics and old laws. The students make it known what they think of this, with loud cried of ‘boring’ and ‘you talk too much’. When the speakers carry on in the same vein, the mood becomes more aggressive. The class gradually gets up steam, putting the speakers to the test with a whole arsenal of provocative remarks. When the discussion of the Nazi period ended, Jasha replies: ‘It’s still going on. Nazi murders are still happening.’ And when asked if there still concentration camps, she replies: ‘Everywhere, except that now they’re called schools. Late arrivals are excluded from the ethnic community.’ This inspires the other students, giving rise to a rapid-fire verbal exchange with remarks, jokes and insults: one student reminds the class of the repression of the Kurds, another says the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party) tortures Turks, and another asks the speakers if they are Illuminati or Zionists. There are also racist remarks like ‘Open the window, it stinks of Yugos in here’. And because the workshop is about Jews, the class seems to feel obliged to tell a few jokes about them, too: ‘Did you know there are Jews sitting inside the ticket machines? Taking the money right out of your pockets.’ One student, feigning ignorance, says: ‘Oh, I thought “Jew” was an insult.’ The speakers are visibly stressed and they try to salvage the situation: ‘Let’s stick to the topic’, says the woman. Her colleague, now less friendly, agrees: ‘It’s too loud here, you need to calm down.’ The class is not impressed and the remarks get more and more absurd: ‘Some believe in the messiah, I believe in Chuck Norris’ – ‘Since Hartz IV [welfare programme] came into effect, everyone is a Jew’ – ‘Prenzlauer Berg is full of Jews, too’. Some of these comments are received with the words ‘Hey, you Jew’, presumably with the aim of further unsettling the speakers. Two boys put their arms around each other’s shoulders and gently lean their heads together. Another suddenly stands up and performs a short dance, which is followed by freestyle raps. The assessors shake their heads and exchange meaningful glances; one of them later tells me he is ‘shocked by conditions at the Galilei-Schule’.

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The search for distraction during the antisemitism workshop develops out of discontent concerning the monotonous second part. The rising sense of boredom is covered up with clever wordplay and physical performances. The students use bold irony and unbridled parody, with absurd exaggerations and invented comparisons – sometimes in the form of rhymes and often in the mode of insults. The characteristic quickness of these exchanges creates a dynamic of outdoing each other’s craziness. Once underway, such rituals of insulting are hard to stop. Though such clowning and trash talk may appear as meaningless provocation in the heat of the moment, questions of exclusion and belonging are also addressed: Jasha’s cutting comparison of the school with a concentration camp alluded to the school’s policy of locking the door to latecomers, and the reference to the series of murders carried out by the NSU (National Socialist Underground, neo-Nazi terror cell that committed a series of murders across Germany in the period 2000– 2006) referred to racist violence in today’s society. But cutting humour and aggressive comedy are usually misunderstood and taken as confirmation of negative prejudices about conditions in urban ‘problem schools’, in turn potentially contributing to further exclusion. Rather than joining in laments about disruptive students, or the use of a supposedly ‘restricted’ linguistic code by the lower classes, one could interpret the examples given in this chapter as forms of creativity – forms not recognized by mainstream society.50 In his genealogy of today’s dominant understanding of creativity, Andreas Reckwitz argues that it is one-sidedly oriented towards a romantic ideal of the artist, neglecting forms of creativity that emerge from everyday contexts.51 Writers in the field of cultural studies have highlighted the value and semantic richness of such forms of ‘profane culture’.52 The tendency to devalue non-bourgeois everyday aesthetics is based not on their supposed simplicity, but on a restricted hegemonic understanding of culture, language and creativity. Humour as a Form of Criticism The Neukölln teenagers articulated their critique both very directly (‘you talk too much’) and in more indirect, playful ways, ranging from cheeky remarks to deliberate provocation and absurd wordplay. Three closely linked distinct forms of clowning can be identified here: irony, when statements are knowingly deployed to unmask the other party’s tacit assumptions (as when a student with Palestinian roots acts stupid and ‘confuses’ the word ‘Jew’ with an insult); parody, when negative stereotypes about oneself are acted out in distorted and exaggerated form; and mimicry, consisting of joyful attempts to symbolically become a person with a different role, expanding the students’ repertoire beyond rhetorical skills to include

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theatrical performances. The dividing lines between playful and serious, between imitation and distancing, were often blurred, as in the parodic telling of derogatory jokes about Jews by Muslim students. The same applies to the kind of playful imitation deployed by especially devious students – as shown below – to play the part of ‘decent’ workshop participants, calling for respectful ‘quiet’ or adopting the pose of the ‘reproachful teacher’ lamenting a decline in standards at the school. With their playful behaviour, students thus addressed school norms and pedagogical expectations, using humour to expose their peculiarities and biases.53 Alongside these various forms of clowning during the antisemitism workshop at the Galilei-Schule, various interwoven forms of humour – aggressiveness, incongruence and relaxation – could also be observed. In his study of laughter, Henri Bergson stresses its function as a corrective; in this view, aggressive humiliation aims to modify behaviour or denounce social wrongs.54 Whereas Bergson sees humour as de-emotionalized, I see the irritating and agitating qualities of crude humour as an affective mode with its own patterns and as a form of self-assertion that complements the paralysing feeling of boredom.55 The trash talk that gained the upper hand in the course of the workshop also served as an aggressively provocative disruption. Being articulated in this mode of demonstrative fun, the challenging criticism was immediately relativized, helping the critic escape punishment and potentially rendering the criticism easier to accept.56 For Arthur Schopenhauer, humour is based on paradoxical subsumptions and absurd comparisons,57 in this case, for example, linking ‘Jews’ with the ‘Hartz IV’ welfare package, the wealthy district of ‘Prenzlauer Berg’, and money-grabbing ‘ticket machines’. In these comments, derogative stereotypes about Jews were both ironized and reproduced. In this game of vexation, joking and clowning can have a liberating impact; according to Sigmund Freud’s model of gratification, aggressive humour can ease or dispel pent up tensions.58 For the Muslim students at the Galilei-Schule, roughly one quarter of whose families were refugees from wars in the ‘Middle East’, the thematic complex Jews-Israel-antisemitism was a topic charged with huge tensions. Some of them boycotted products and shops perceived to be linked to Israel or its US supporters. In everyday interactions, like the discussion of Harlem Shake on YouTube documented above, declarations of support for the Palestinian side were frequent. On the students’ Facebook pages, too, alongside topics like football, leisure and pop culture, there were many references to their view of the conflict between Israel and Palestine: Free Palestine banners, collages of the Temple Mount with Palestinian flags, vilifications of Israeli politicians like Ariel Sharon, protests against German

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arms exports and one-sided reporting, the bodies of dead Palestinian children wrapped in green and white flags, or photographs of military parades organized by Hamas in Gaza. These expressions of a vehemently anti-Israeli position reflected the central role of the Palestine conflict in the self-image of students from Arab backgrounds. For all the obvious partiality of their positions due to their family origins, it was clear that the students were thinking and expressing themselves in political terms. In contrast to this, the antisemitism workshop pursued a strategy of not referring to the conflict in the Middle East. In her research into antisemitism prevention in Berlin, Sultan Doughan shows that references to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories have been systematically removed from KIGA workshop materials, making current examples of Muslim antisemitism at Berlin schools appear as totally groundless misbehaviour, as irrational hate and, indirectly, as a general problem among Muslim immigrants.59 As a consequence, attention is directed away from both the violence committed by the Israeli state and the experiences of flight and displacement in the students’ families. At the same time, a flattering picture is painted of Germany after the Holocaust, imagined as an enlightened society with a liberal self-image that naturally includes a condemnation of all forms of antisemitism. From the school’s point of view, successful integration means identifying unconditionally with this historical self-image. In the classroom at the Galilei-Schule, however, two incompatible visions of history clashed. For Palestinians, the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 marks the beginning of the still-ongoing expulsion of the Arab population from Palestine. In the antisemitism workshop, however, the corresponding narrative of Palestinian victimhood is negated as victim status is reserved solely for the Jews. The NSU murders mentioned by one Turkish-German student are not addressed, and nor are the Kurdish conflict or the origins of one student’s family in the warzones of the former Yugoslavia. Their national traumas appear to be less relevant in pedagogical terms, their family histories remain untold. Although they didn’t know the pedagogical background, the students nonetheless sensed that they were being treated as suspects, as potential antisemites. And they were quick to notice that their anger over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians could not be adequately articulated in a workshop about the history of the persecution of Jews in Germany. In this situation of being blamed and denied a voice, they used the indirect means of humour and comedy. As well as defusing tensions, however, aggressive humour can also create new ones and culminate in the exchange of insults, which we saw in the course of the workshop as it drifted into trash talk.

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Field journal: In the last part of the workshop, the group is supposed to present its work on the fate of the Arndts, a Jewish family in Kreuzberg. No one wants to begin. Finally, Mohamad and Jamil have to come to the front first. Jasha: You’re so shy! What are you doing at school in Neukölln? Teacher: Please be respectful and listen to the others, the same way you, presumably, want people to listen to you later on. Jasha: What we’re talking about here is all shit. Jamil: Please be quiet. Our group has worked hard on the Arndt family in Kreuzberg. [Laughter. The Arndt family’s biography is presented. Jamil forgets a date] Jasha: This is really bad. Jamil: They had a beautiful house, and they earned good money, the Arndt family, because he was a doctor. Kai: Loads of rich Jews live in Berlin. [Mohamad continues, but he mispronounces a street name, says ‘Waldmeister’ instead of ‘Waldemarstraße’, and then tries to correct himself.] Theo: You can’t get anything right. Jamil: Just be quiet, man. Teacher: Hey, calm down! Mohamad: I can’t concentrate anymore. Jasha: Shut your mouth. Jamil deserves a beating. I swear, I’ll hit him. Theo: Job Centre!

At the end of the school day, the previously playful balance of teasing and joking was lost, descending into a series of humiliating insults, a destructive interaction interrupted only by the occasional helpless attempt at pacification. The difference between actual and playful insults is key to trash talk as a communication format, but the dividing line between the two can be hard to identify. Varying connotations of one and the same insult are reflected, for example, in the ways ‘Fuck you!’ is used. One student told me she was expelled from school after shouting ‘Fuck you, you whore!’ at a female teacher. By contrast, during a relaxed barbecue session at the end of the school year in the Tempelhofer Feld Park, I observed students greeting each other with humorous exchanges of insults – ‘fuck you’, ‘yeah, suck dicks’, ‘I’ll take a wiener’ – hugging each other and obviously getting on just fine. American anthropologist William Labov situates such ritual insult within an African-American tradition of everyday language play.60 In his

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view, such exchanges are governed by rules, creativity and performativity. A successful response to playful insults will be inventive, quick-witted and original, often referring to previous utterances or to the context in which the interaction is taking place.61 In this process, the boundaries of good taste are deliberately transgressed, as in the habitual defamation of the other person’s mother, since breaking with conventional standards of decorum is the main appeal of such popular rituals of insult. In German-language culture, a comparable pattern of communication has not yet emerged. The closest equivalent is a form of teasing known as Frotzeln, which is mostly less poetic but which is also shaped by a give-and-take of insults, playful exaggeration, and a blurring of the line between provocation and play.62 Thanks to the shaping influence of media on teenage speech, especially via the reception of hip-hop culture, adaptations of African-American ‘dissing’ have now found their way into Berlin’s schools.63 The fact that students can distinguish between playful and genuine insults was made clear by a remark during the antisemitism workshop. When the teacher made a misguided attempt to use teenage language as a pedagogical tool, stating that the Jews had been ‘dissed’ by the Nazis, one student protested that such forms of humiliation could not be equated with dissing. Even if merely dismissed as just one more disruptive comment, the student was right to point out that the public vilification of Jews under the National Socialist regime should not be compared with such playful, ironic and dialogical forms of ritual insult. Subversive play with stereotypes and the ritual insults of ‘trash talk’ constitute a context-specific mode of rebellion and a possibility for self-empowerment. The students diverted attention towards seemingly absurd and irrelevant matters, constantly diverging from the intended objectives of the workshop. To understand its impact, this form of minority humour must be seen against the backdrop of denied options for self-expression and power structures of systematic misunderstanding.64 The subversive potential of the trash talk engaged in by Hauptschule students lies in its generation of ambivalence. When this succeeds, things usually taken for granted are incidentally called into question, situations given new readings, subject positions re-examined. On the other hand, it was clear that these exchanges were always just one step away from a self-destructive insult-based form of distraction. An ethnographic approach to the social and situational context, and to the content and structure of such trash talk, enables a shift in our view of Berlin Hauptschule students, allowing them to be seen neither as stupid ‘victims’ nor as romanticized ‘rebels’. By centring attention on the students’ humorously aggressive self-positioning, it also becomes possible to question teaching practices and the politics of exclusion and belonging inscribed within them.

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When I asked a group of German-Arab students what they thought of the workshop, they expressed differing views: Yussuf said he had enjoyed it, because ‘it was something different for a change’ and the teachers ‘had made an effort’. Ali also found the workshop day interesting, but mainly because of the chance for discussions with people whose views differed from his own. Ali: Some students felt provoked, for sure. Why do they come to us, Arabs, instead of going to Steglitz? But I thought to myself, now I can talk to people who think something about me that’s wrong, and I can prove to them that we’re not like that. I wasn’t as cheeky as the others and I remained objective, the teacher even praised me afterwards.

By mentioning the Berlin district of Steglitz, usually thought of as middle class, Ali was indirectly referring to forms of antisemitism in mainstream German society that are ignored by a one-sided focus on Hauptschule students from Arab migrant backgrounds. Usually considered an undisciplined student, his behaviour in dealing with the attributions of antisemitism present in the workshop was deliberately down-to-earth, with no clowning or trash talk. By contrast, Khaled, who fled the occupied Palestine territories with his parents, could only bear the workshop by deliberately ignoring its content: ‘To be quite honest, when they arrived, for me it was as if they weren’t there. I wasn’t the slightest bit interested. I just switched off. What can they tell me? Were they born there? Did their apartment get hit by a bomb?’ Palestine Berlin These differing opinions of the antisemitism workshop were also related to the students’ views of their Palestinian roots. Alongside descendants of Turkish guest workers, there were especially large numbers of students from Palestinian backgrounds at the school, as many Palestinian families fleeing the war in Lebanon have settled in the north of Berlin’s Neukölln district since the 1980s. Most of the teenagers from Palestinian immigrant families lived around Sonnenallee, close together, and their families often knew each other. In their friendships, shared Palestinian roots created an invisible bond based on a certain familiarity and on a basic solidarity in facing the outside world. At the same time, there were marked differences in their diasporic relations, whose typical traits are illustrated by the examples of Ali, Khaled and Yussuf. Ali: My father was born in Palestine in 1947, at the beginning of the Nakba. He lived with his family near Acre, in the north of Palestine. This was the time when the Israelis invaded and conquered the country. My grandparents

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were sitting with my father in the house – my grandfather fought for the Palestine nation, against the British and later against the Zionists. My grandfather and six others from the family were murdered. Not in the war. They were abducted, blindfolded and executed. I’ve been to Palestine three times, and I was told these stories during my visits. When my grandmother found out, she took my father and walked with him barefoot across the border into Lebanon. At the time, my father was still a baby. My grandmother kept going, to SabraShatila, to the refugee camp where Ariel Sharon later commanded a massacre. That’s where my father grew up.

Family history is told here in vivid language, referring to dramatic political events. The father’s biography appears as a kind of personified history of the Nakba, the bloody expulsion of roughly 80 percent of the Palestinian population from the territory of today’s Israel, marked by a series of traumatic episodes of war and violence.65 The Nakba is the key motif in the narrative of the modern Palestinian nation; the expulsion from Palestine forms the frame of reference within which recent history is constructed and through which the present is interpreted. This Palestinian national narrative remains a contested one. It has yet to find a happy ending and any mention of it is always also a political statement on the current situation in the ‘Middle East’. As we have seen, however, stories of Palestinian suffering tend to fall on deaf ears – especially in Germany, due to its particular responsibility towards Israel on account of the Shoah. At school, there is no place where Palestinian memories of violence and expulsion can find legitimate expression. During his time at school, Ali had a very clear and differentiated opinion about Israel and the issue of antisemitism – an opinion strongly shaped by his family’s experience of flight. Ali: I’m not against Jews. I’m against Zionism. I get annoyed when people tell me Israel is a legal state. In my view, it’s a colonial state. Religion should not be mixed up with warlike things. I’ve always been politically aware. My father always watched the news, so as a child I already saw the tanks and the expulsions. But there are also sometimes differences of opinion. My father would find it hard to sit down at the same table with a Jew. He’s still too hurt. His father was murdered, that sits deep inside of him. I’m more open, I would sit down with them and have a discussion, like with anyone else. The other Palestinians in my class also have very clear positions on this. No one would say they weren’t interested. If there was a demonstration against Israel, we would all get up and join in, immediately.

Ali is an eloquent speaker, capable of arguing in succinct and emotional terms. As student representative, he adopted a clear position against Islamophobic teachers who viewed Islam as incompatible with ‘Western’

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culture. At the same time, with his political reading of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians he guards against the accusations of antisemitism often levelled at Arab teenagers in Germany. The question does arise, however, as to whether, by fundamentally questioning the legitimacy of the Israeli state, he inadvertently strays into antisemitic territory. After the attacks on the Sabra-Shatila refugee camp, Ali’s father fled further north in Lebanon, before emigrating to Germany, where his wife later joined him. Throughout their decades in Germany, neither parent received a work permit, but they nonetheless raised six children. Four of Ali’s five sisters are now married to Arab men, living as housewives. In a way, Ali continued his father’s political struggle by mobilizing fellow students for the Palestinian cause. Students like Khaled had other priorities or, like Yussuf, displayed different levels of diasporic identification. Khaled was born in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and fled to Berlin with his family via Jordan during the second Intifada in the early 2000s. Like Ali, Khaled had five siblings and his parents, too, were part of a category of refugees who were merely tolerated, denied work permits and thus systematically pushed into illegal and unregulated forms of employment. Khaled was more stridently religious than Ali and more relentless in his opinions. His status was also more precarious; his family faced deportation several times and he had to get his residence permit extended every three months. Khaled: My father was in the war, the war of liberation, the Intifada. He was a member of Fatah, under Arafat, and he spent time in prison as a result. He’s an important figure in the Fatah group in Berlin and he still has contacts in Palestine and with the embassy. … There has been war in Palestine now for over sixty years. Palestine is a holy land, but it has no weapons. Israel will never triumph though, it will never bring Palestine under its control. The unbelievers will be conquered, as it says in the Koran. That’s how I see it. From the bottom of my heart I wish that every Christian and Jew receive guidance and convert to the right religion. I’m convinced Islam is the right religion. Once you understand Islam and the Koran, you change automatically.

In Khaled’s case, his vehement criticism of Israel tended much more clearly towards antisemitism, although some of his views were expressed in different, contradictory forms. His hostility towards Israel was not restricted to the actions and military operations of the state, often also including cultural and religious references. He also expressed a firm anti-Americanism, seeing the country’s politics as being controlled by Jewish lobby groups. He supported calls for boycotts of supposed supporters of Israel, like that against the Lidl supermarket chain, as well as justifying Palestine’s demands for autonomy in religious terms, not only denying the rightness of

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the Jewish religion, but also seeking to point out the ‘true’ path to God to Christians, Shiites and nonbelievers. Unlike his German-Palestinian friends, Yussuf tried to ignore political and religious issues, which he found too troubling. His father came to West Berlin from Syria as a Palestinian refugee in the 1970s. He later returned to Syria for several years, marrying an exiled Palestinian woman with whom he then returned to Germany. When we first met, three of Yussuf ’s older sisters were already married to Palestinian men, and Yussuf, too, eventually married a woman from a Palestinian refugee family. These striking ethnic marriage ties were presumably the result of a deliberate strategy on the part of the parents. Due to the precarious socioeconomic and legal situation faced by Palestinian refugees, both in the Middle East and in Germany, family support networks play an especially important role – for example in the difficult search for accommodation and work. Rather than being an ‘archaic custom’, then, this approach to marriage is in fact a pragmatic response to current social, economic and legal conditions. Yussuf himself limited his ethnic and religious references to a minimum of basic loyalty, something he saw as natural on account of his origins. Yussuf: I have German TV in my room, in the next room my father watches Arab broadcasters via satellite, mainly NBC and Al Jazeera. When you see what’s happening in Palestine, you do ask yourself why it isn’t shown on the German news. Sometimes I sit down with him in the living room with him and watch. But I don’t really like it. It depresses me to see bloodied children lying dead on the ground. I don’t use Facebook. Palestine is important in political terms, and one should support one’s people as well as one can. My family is constantly sending food and money, either directly to relatives or through organizations and mosques where there are many Palestinians. Sometime they also organize demonstrations. Of course, my father knows a lot more about it. I don’t engage with it so much, with all these conflicts – Christian against Muslim, Shiite against Sunni, Hamas against Fatah – my knowledge of all this is not so detailed. I live my life here, and I’ve never been to Palestine. My parents have built a life for themselves here and they no longer wish to go back.

Yussuf ’s main focus was on life in Germany and the everyday problems faced by someone growing up under precarious conditions. In Ali’s view, Yussuf thought about ‘nothing but family and work’, while Yussuf said that Ali ‘had always been more political’. A trip to Syria didn’t work out for Yussuf: when his mother finally received authorization, there wasn’t enough money for additional tickets; later the war in Syria put paid to other travel plans. Instead, from 2015 the family took in many relatives who had fled from Syria; here, too, Yussuf found it natural to help out. Through Khaled,

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he also found work in a security company, sometimes working as a guard at refugee residences where he helped with translating from the Arabic. For the Palestinian diaspora, the meaning of links to home has changed repeatedly over recent decades due to developments in the conflict and the precarious situation of Palestinian refugees in countries like Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.66 Palestinians like Yussuf ’s father who came as refugees in the 1960s and 1970s usually received an unlimited residence permit – unlike the parents of Ali and Khaled – which is also why Yussuf and his siblings were entitled to a German passport. Beyond ethnically marked circles of friends, diasporic affiliations were also displayed among the students via everyday tokens of loyalty such as the wearing of ‘Palestine chains’ with the outline of Palestine in the borders of 1947 as a pendant. In the research literature, it is always stressed that a striking renaissance of religious and ethnic identification can be observed in the second and third migrant generation, and that the associated emphasis on difference may be a response to racist exclusion.67 Due to their close connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for Palestinians this also inevitably raises the issue of antisemitism – which was also the focus of the workshop described above. Writing about Palestinian migrants, Nikola Tietze shows that antisemitic narratives can serve to mark membership of an ethnic group, while also being used to highlight one’s own experience of exclusion.68 In this context, Simona Pagano underlines strong individual differences and interprets antisemitic utterances as a constitutive element of displays of masculinity.69 Barbara Schäuble and Albert Scherr point to contradictory and fragmentary forms of teenage antisemitism, with various levels and nuances at play rather than fully fledged ideologies.70 These aspects – references to ethnicity and a shared history of suffering; different personal readings in the context of male adolescence; heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory ideological references – can also be observed in the Berlin teenagers presented here. The examples of Ali, Khaled and Yussuf show that the frames of reference among teenagers from Palestinian refugee families range from political activism, to religious nationalism with antisemitic connotations, to a family-oriented focus on privacy and tradition. As this variance makes clear, ethnicity is not a fixed cultural disposition but a cultural construct, a variable form of situating oneself and defining boundaries.71 This in turn means that as circumstances change, such forms of cultural positioning may shift back into the background: having held strikingly similar views concerning their ethnicity during their schooldays at the time of the antisemitism workshop, aged sixteen or seventeen, several years later Ali and Khaled resemble each other in their temporary departure from

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political commitment to Palestine. Their links to the country have not completely disappeared, but they have become less pronounced. Although Ali was outraged in 2019 when the Trump administration officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US embassy there, he no longer takes part in the resulting Palestinian protests in Berlin, as he would have before. With regard to the political situation in the Palestinian territories, Khaled now appears disinterested and resigned. These shifts in orientation have different causes; as well as generational and biographical factors, school also plays a decisive role. On one hand, the students were institutionally discriminated against, while also being constantly reminded of their cultural roots by teaching and workshop formats directed specifically towards them. This provoked ethnic affiliations that in most cases faded away again after those in question left school. These reversals show that affirmations of ethnicity, including exclusive and aggressive ones, are not necessarily due to deep-seated cultural influences, but that they can be partially brought forth by the school regime itself.

Conclusion: Wilful Resistance Stigmatized teenagers are not passive victims of oppressive structures; they actively seek out forms of distraction and alternative forms of self-empowerment. But this rebelliousness should not be romanticized out of sympathy with the oppressed. Instead it is important to examine its specific forms and features, its ambivalences and contradictions. In this spirit, ethnologist Lila Abu-Lughod has emphasized that many current forms of resistance no longer correspond to the conventional image of an organized movement; they should rather be imagined as situation-specific subversive acts whose study can tell us more about the way power structures work than about their collapse.72 Her colleague Sherry Ortner makes a similar argument when she criticizes the lack of ethnographic perspective in the many studies of resistance that became fashionable from the 1970s in the wake of the counterculture.73 In her view, the blind spot of this ethnographic subgenre lies in the way it often ignores the internal power structures of subaltern groups and the forms of oppression they themselves practise, mainly with regard to gender. She calls for a focus on the heterogeneity and internal divisions of the oppressed, highlighting their wealth of cultural ties, and not reducing subjectivization to an effect of power. Popular forms of aesthetic experience and minority forms of linguistic articulation follow genre-specific patterns whose cultural complexity and social positioning I have discussed here using the example of adaptations of Internet memes and versions of ‘trash talk’ at the Galilei-Schule. Forms

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of cultural critique schooled on bourgeois high culture and classical definitions of art will be defeated by such cultural phenomena, capable only of dismissing them as inferior.74 In order to understand them, notions and conceptual understandings of aesthetic experience must be rethought, and popular articulations must be analytically linked to situational conditions and social power relations. Whereas in aesthetic theory, the aesthetic is usually associated with the beauty of art, I have described popular aesthetics forming part of everyday situations, cultural practices and linguistic interactions that are characterized by physicality and expressiveness, vulgarity and coarseness, distraction and digression.75 The appropriations of Harlem Shake and Gangnam Style, as well as forms of clownish and aggressive humour, took shape at the Galilei-Schule in resistance to required school norms, aiming to disrupt classes at an already dysfunctional school. They contained critiques of specific aspects of these classes, as well as wilful forms of social critique, but also mutual attacks on personal honour. Rather than articulating critique from the elevated position of moral superiority, the students shocked observers with performances of craziness and insults. Such contradictory and ambivalent cultural forms could be described as wilful forms of subversion, a notion developed by historian of everyday life Alf Lüdtke.76 The notion of wilfulness (Eigensinn in German) has been used since the eighteenth century in discourse on popular education to disparage the peculiar unruliness of the ‘hoi polloi’, while philosophical readings also pointed to the related distancing of the lower classes with respect to the ruling elite. Specifically, Lüdtke reads the physical joshing and playful minor refusals to work engaged in by factory workers in Germany around 1900 as a modern proletarian form of wilfulness. In similar ways, although with less emphasis on solidarity, students at the Galilei-Schule created enjoyably ambivalent situations of rebellion in which personal idiosyncrasies were combined in uncalculated ways with sociopolitical issues. The instances of ‘clowning’ and ‘trash talk’ described above can be assigned neither to the ‘victim’ position of passively accepting problematic conditions, nor to the Marxist register of organized collective resistance; as such, they also assert their wilfulness in the face of conventional academic categories.77 The ethnographic challenge here consists in portraying popular forms of ‘clowning’ and ‘trash talk’ as socially meaningful without romanticizing or overrating them, but also without dismissing them as superficial and irrelevant. The pitfalls and potentials of focussing attention on the banal have already been discussed within cultural studies by Meaghan Morris and Gregory Seigworth. In the late 1980s, Morris rightly criticized the populist leanings of certain writers in the field.78 The academic celebration

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of the popular culture of ‘common folk’ was both theoretically overinflated and empirically reductionist, while the accompanying critique of conventional aesthetics was complacent and populistic. A decade later, under the influence of the affective turn, Seigworth sought to reorient research into the banal by calling for attention to be paid to its rhythms and intensities, and for accounts that did not neutralize its libidinous excesses and semantic surplus.79 In this spirit, the situations described above remain provocatively ambivalent and unsettling.

Notes  1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

See Sobe, ‘Attention and Boredom in the 19th-Century American School’. See Meyer Spacks, Boredom, 111ff.; Löffler, Verteilte Aufmerksamkeit, 35ff. See Maase, Grenzenloses Vergnügen. See Yao, Disaffected. See Holfelder/Ritter, Handyfilme als Jugendkultur; Reh/Berdelmann/Dinkelaker (eds), Aufmerksamkeit. See Stiegler, Taking Care of Youth and the Generations, 1. See Türcke, Hyperaktiv! See Jackson, Distracted. See Becker, ‘Abwesenheit und Störung als Ausdruck von Unaufmerksamkeit’; Frances, Normal. See Crary, Suspension of Perception. See Löffler, Verteilte Aufmerksamkeit. See Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice. See Tenfelde, ‘Ende der Arbeiterkultur’. See Kaschuba, ‘Mythos oder Eigensinn?’; Lüdtke, Eigen-Sinn. See Kaschuba, Volkskultur zwischen feudaler und bürgerlicher Gesellschaft. See Shifman, Meme. See Marek, Understanding YouTube. See Frank, Ökonomie der Aufmerksamkeit. See Holfelder/Ritter, Handyfilme als Jugendkultur; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Gangnam_Style (accessed 1 June 2018). See Kim/Choe, The Korean Popular Culture Reader; Hu, ‘RIP Gangnam Style’. See Lie, Han Unbound; Seth, Education Fever. See Lett, In Pursuit of Status. See Johns, Horses; Baum, Das Pferd als Symbol. See Raulff, Das letzte Jahrhundert der Pferde. See Huggins, Harlem Renaissance. See Vincent, Keep Cool. See Friedrich/Klein, Is This Real? See Wacquant, ‘A Janus-Faced Institution of Ethnoracial Closure’. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Shake_%28meme%29 (accessed 1 June 2018). See Shifman, Meme, 152ff. See Bhaba, The Location of Culture. See Clifford, Routes; Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns.

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33. See Hall, ‘Encoding/Decoding’; Hall, ‘Creolization, Diaspora, and Hybridity’; Tsing, Friction; Keinz/Schönberger/Wolff, Kulturelle Übersetzungen; Wellgraf, ‘Gangnam Style’. 34. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FtZkVRkusQ (accessed 1 June 2018). 35. See Wellershoff, ‘Infantilismus als Revolte oder das ausgeschlagene Erbe’. 36. Ibid., 355. 37. See Brown, Regulating Aversion. 38. Ibid., 78ff. 39. See Schiffauer, ‘The Logics of Toleration’. 40. See Hewitt, Social Choreography; Klein, ‘The (Micro-)Politics of Social Choreography’; Marchart, ‘Dancing Politics’. 41. See Jameson, The Political Unconscious. 42. See Kotthoff/Jashari/Klingenberg (eds), Komik (in) der Migrationsgesellschaft. 43. See Wellgraf, ‘Subversive Praktiken von Berliner Hauptschülern’. 44. See Hartigan, Odd Tribes; Stewart, A Space on the Side of the Road. 45. See Douglas, Purity and Danger. 46. See Ronell, Stupidity. 47. See Yurdakul/Bodemann, ‘We Don’t Want To Be the Jews of Tomorrow’. 48. See http://www.kiga-berlin.org/index.php?page=wjlik (accessed 1 June 2018). 49. See Rancière, Disagreement. 50. On this restricted code, see Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control. Volume 1; on this critique of Bernstein, see Labov, Language in the Inner City; on current links to the field of school see Gellert/Straehler-Pohl, ‘Towards a Bernsteinian Language of Description for Mathematics Classroom Discourse’. 51. See Reckwitz, The Invention of Creativity; Reckwitz, ‘Ästhetik und Gesellschaft’. 52. See Willis, ‘Profane Culture’. 53. See Critchley, On Humour. 54. See Bergson, Laughter. 55. See Sianne Ngai’s reflections on ‘stuplimity’ in Ugly Feelings, 248ff. 56. See Günthner, ‘Zwischen Scherz und Schmerz’. 57. See Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation. 58. See Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious; Freud, ‘Humour’. 59. See Doughan, Genealogies of Belonging. 60. See Labov, Language in the Inner City. 61. See ibid., 297–353; Sherzer, Speech Play and Verbal Art. 62. See Günthner, ‘Zwischen Scherz und Schmerz’. 63. See Androutsopoulos, ‘Ultra korregd Alder!’; Deppermann/Rieke, ‘Krieg der Worte – Boasten und Dissen im HipHop-Battle’. 64. On comparable ambivalences using the example of ‘prole-like’ styling, see Ege, ‘Ein Proll mit Klasse’. 65. See Sa’di/Abu-Lughod (eds), Nakba. 66. See Said, The Question of Palestine; Dorai, ‘The Meaning of Homeland for the Palestinian Diaspora’. 67. See Nökel, Die Töchter der Gastarbeiter und der Islam; Bozkurt, Conceptualizing ‘Home’. 68. See Tietze, ‘Zugehörigkeiten rechtfertigen und von Juden und Israel sprechen’. 69. See Pagano, ‘Also der Körper is da, die Seele nich’. 70. See Schäuble/Scherr, ‘Ich habe nichts gegen Juden, aber …’. 71. See Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries; Wimmer, Ethnic Boundary Making. 72. See Abu-Lughod, ‘The Romance of Resistance’.

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73. See Ortner, ‘Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal’. 74. See Maase, Die Schönheiten des Populären; Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories. 75. For such a broad understanding of the aesthetic, see Reckwitz, ‘Ästhetik und Gesellschaft’. 76. See Lüdtke, Eigen-Sinn. 77. See Hertel, ‘Zwischen Normbruch, Widerstand und ambivalenter Affirmation’. 78. See Morris, ‘Banality in Cultural Studies’. 79. See Seigworth, ‘Banality for Cultural Studies’.

PART II

Forms of Self-Empowerment

Chapter 3

Coolness Selfie Poses

Coolness is not emotionless. It is a demanding emotional style used by young people confronted with social devalorization to display emotional distance and demonstrate composure.1 Cool poses, laying claim to status and prestige, can be understood as an affective strategy of self-affirmation in the face of the emotional burden of stigmatization and social exclusion. In today’s Western capitalist society and beyond, expectations of coolness are especially widespread in certain social milieus, above all among teenagers and marginalized groups. Teenagers in Neukölln used the word ‘cool’ for anything welcome or worthwhile, making it the semantic opposite of ‘boring’.2 I follow this broad definition of cool, which can be applied to different things and behaviours, when reconstructing figures of desirability in photographic self-portraits. Coolness can be understood as a ‘hybrid subject culture’3 that affirms different cultural codes and traditions. In the context of this study, brand-oriented postmodern consumerism and an African-American affect culture shaped by coping with experiences of exclusion are especially relevant. Over the course of the twentieth century, these two components of coolness emerged in the United States and were adopted in (West) Germany after the Second World War as part of processes of cultural transfer, gradually spreading to the cultural mainstream over a period of decades.4 The fraught combination of hedonism and resistance gave rise to models of behaviour that could be deployed in many ways and that have been adopted under changing conditions of social conflict ever since – from disadvantaged proletarian youth in the 1950s to Hauptschule students

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from migrant backgrounds today.5 Coolness should not be misconceived as a fixed character trait, but as an age- and class-specific form of self-performance that is also articulated differently according to gender. Studying selfies posted by Hauptschule students helps us to understand the underlying aesthetic and behavioural patterns, as well as the accompanying social negotiations around acknowledging or denying coolness. Selfies are a prime example of current processes of sociocultural change and teenage community-building.6 They stand for the interlocking processes of digitization, facialization, visualization and mediatization that have given rise to new face-focussed visual practices and to altered ways of dealing with images.7 In the course of this development, teenagers have expanded their scope for self-portrayal. This was especially important for the Hauptschule students in my field of study as it allowed them to counter the prevailing negative stereotypes about them with more positive self-images. In my analysis, I use a definition of selfies that includes not only images shot by the subjects themselves and shared on digital media, but also various other kinds of photographic self-portraits posted on Facebook. The first social networks were created around the turn of the millennium, spreading rapidly over the following decade.8 Founded in 2004 as an internal platform for students at Harvard University, Facebook quickly monopolized the field. Whereas at the time of my previous research in 2008 and 2009, the platform was hardly used by Hauptschule students in Berlin, five years later it had become an everyday means of communication and presentation, only to be partially replaced by other platforms like Instagram and TikTok in the years after my research. In the 2012/13 school year, I was in digital contact with around half of the students, mainly through a Facebook group. This was also the time when smartphones caught on among students at the Galilei-Schule, accompanied by the establishment of digital photographic self-portraits as a cultural practice. Since then, popular culture and technology have advanced rapidly, with the result that the selfies discussed here have now become historical documents of the adoption of a once new visual culture by young people. Selfies act as representations in the double sense of self-portrayal and self-construction, making them promising material for studies of subjectivization. In my anthropological approach, I stress the sociocultural differentiation of selfie poses and embed them in a specific school context. For all the diversity of possible self-images, the aesthetic of selfies does not develop randomly, instead giving rise to conventions of media portrayal and established subgenres. Whereas ethnology has emphasized cultural differences in media adoption,9 I use the example of gendered selfie subgenres to show how social position in Germany manifests in media usage. Rather than rendering cultural and social distinctions obsolete, then, digital media

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usage creates new forms of inward self-affirmation and outward differentiation.10 Selfies are not authentic representations of reality; they are ideals that reveal how teenagers wish to be seen by others. The claim to authenticity staked via such media performances is then commented on and rated by viewers using various criteria.11 Rather than offering a representative study of modes of media representation within a status group, I combine analysis of selected modes of portrayal with interviews and participant observation of everyday school life. This allows me to link patterns of media self-portrayal with dominant styles and gender practices among Berlin’s Hauptschule students. With regard to the categories of class, gender and ethnicity, selfies by Hauptschule students tend to confirm traditional role models. Performing the quest for social prestige via ostentatious consumerism, the images emphasize binary gender difference and conservative gender norms, as well as reflecting processes of cultural positioning via ethnic-religious distinctions. In stylistic terms, these selfies take their cue primarily from gendered ideal types, showing the ways patriarchal and heteronormative power relations are reproduced in the students’ everyday lives. Unlike at the Gymnasium, at the Hauptschule, gender is not de-dramatized by an institutional habitus.12 Class-specific, ethnically marked and gender-coded ideals can be identified in everyday versions of cool that I have grouped under the terms ‘macho’ and ‘top girl’. These subject models can be understood as quintessential neoliberal figures in which the dominant market-orientation within society is not simply transferred to digital forms of self-marketing, but also celebrated in exaggerated manner, becoming popularized as a result. Although by no means all students matched these ideal types, neither offline nor online, the dominant forms of self-portrayal did reflect overarching patterns of what was desirable and worthwhile. ‘Macho’ is a super-category of attractive masculinity in the Hauptschule milieu with migrant and underclass connotations; it can in turn be broken down into various dimensions – rich, tough, strong, cool and sexy. In this analysis, I borrow Moritz Ege’s analysis of the male wannabe, and I follow Angela McRobbie in applying the same term to young women.13 The key to this approach, which sails dangerously close to cliché, is not to fall into the trap of a dismissive understanding of the wannabe, but to foreground the imaginary and aesthetic dimension of desirable cultural figures. If selfies are viewed as contemporary expressions of a quest for experiences of authenticity, and not as faithful reflections of a pre-existing authentic reality, then it is a matter of taking this quest seriously and tracing its path with all of the attendant temptations and vagaries, attractions and contradictions.

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‘Top Girls’: Performances of Attractive Modern Femininity Many young female Hauptschule students faced a catalogue of expectations that appeared both attractive and unaffordable: growing up under precarious conditions, they nonetheless wished to have a positive presence; they came from families living on tight welfare budgets, but they still wanted to indulge in the temptations of the consumer world; they wanted to be recognized within mainstream society, but they also wanted to affirm the Muslim religion and immigrant culture of their parents. In a word, they wanted to be ‘top girls’, but their position within society meant they had limited access to the resources needed to achieve this. British feminist Angela McRobbie uses the term ‘top girls’ to discuss a gendered ideal emerging within neoliberalism that expects young women to have successful careers, take part in consumer culture, while always being good-tempered and sexually attractive.14 Oriented towards the ideal of successful middle-class women and towards the fashion-beauty complex, female Hauptschule students, mainly from migrant backgrounds, also followed this model of subjectivization, applying its demands to their own lives. I would now like to examine a number of these expectations. Cute Presenting as a cute girl combines conventional clichés of femininity with newer formats of gender-specific media self-portrayal. Performances of the feminine as childishly inexperienced, girlishly innocent or womanly accommodating initially prompt a feminist critique that sees identification with the soft, the small and the unthreatening as a powerful variant of selfoppression.15 Agreeing with this critique but not wishing to leave it at that, below I outline the visual patterns of cute femininity and inquire into their identificatory potential and functions in the socialization of female Hauptschule students. Alongside rounded forms, fluffy fabrics and flowery patterns, smiling is a central visual marker of ‘cute’ femininity. Typically it will be a nice, harmless smile that avoids the potential aggressiveness of laughter and the grotesquery of the grin. On these students’ online profiles, such sweetly smiling faces were often accompanied by ‘cute’ pictures, many featuring animals, either cuddly toys or fluffy kittens. In addition, the young women associated themselves with childish or babyish qualities, thus fostering gender hierarchies with helplessness and dependence on the one side, control and dominance on the other. At the time, the most striking variant of the cute facial expression was the ‘duck face’ then popular on Social Media, a pouting gesture performed almost exclusively by young women.

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The connotations range from babyish sulkiness to erotic invitation – which is why the gesture was also initially known as the ‘kissy face’. Being close to kitsch and consumerism, cuteness is not considered a prestigious aesthetic category, but complex processes of cultural translation in the context of postmodern consumer culture can be identified here – for example in HelloKitty motifs shaped by an Asian model of cute femininity.16 In the field of selfies, for example, Japanese ‘purikura photography’, the digital processing of photo booth pictures to make them look childishly innocent, was instrumental in spreading notions of cute femininity.17 For female Hauptschule students, the positive identificatory potential of cuteness consisted in the appeal of levity and the hiding of social hardship. Cuteness pleases the viewer and solicits positive feedback, mainly via likes, smileys, hearts and emphatic comments – one comment under a baby photo read ‘hoooow cuuuute, wallah, mashallah’. This mobilization of positivity should be seen in the context of otherwise overwhelmingly negative media portrayals of Hauptschule students and migrants.18 This was used primarily to mask the particular hardships faced in everyday life by these students under conditions of exclusion and migration: experiences of war, flight and displacement in the family; strict control exerted over many Muslim girls by parents and male siblings; poverty and denied access to the labour market. In the face of such challenges, withdrawal into a seemingly trouble-free sphere of cute smiles has an element of relief that points beyond generation-specific forms of gendered self-affirmation. In some cases, however, I was struck by the way the playful gestures of cuteness did not entirely succeed, or at least refused to gel into a feminine image, as when one student wearing a baseball cap posed with a giant teddy bear in the sad-looking backyard of an unrenovated grey apartment block. In such images, everyday experiences subtly crept in as visual irritations, causing certain poses to look less carefree than the genre conventions of the cute girl look would usually demand. Female students were especially keen on posing as cute girls with their girlfriends. Such photographic performances serve to build and represent friendships – posing together is a typical everyday practice of friendship and posting pictures online is a powerful means of displaying social relations. In their now classic study on ‘the social uses of photography’, Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski emphasize the integrative function of amateur family photography in early-1960s France.19 By contrast, studies on the current social function of everyday digital photography place more emphasis on its communicative function among friends and peers.20 Especially among Hauptschule students from migrant backgrounds, both family and peer orientation could be observed on Facebook: festive and everyday family events, including posing with cute children, were given a similar importance to celebrations of friendship via cute group selfies.

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Like other types of photographic self-construction discussed below, cute girl poses can be understood as ‘controlling images’.21 With reference to derogative portrayals of African-Americans in the United States, Patricia Hill Collins uses this term to describe a limiting set of clichéd gender models, reproduced mainly via schools and the media, in which the ideological programmes of racism, sexism and classism are already inscribed. Rather than rebelling against this powerful form of oppression, the Facebook selfies clearly showed how the female students took pleasure in such models of femininity, trying them out, creating variations, playing with them. This form of creative appropriation does not mean they were behaving helplessly or that they imagined themselves as weak. I understand these and other gendered self-performances as media poses and, unlike Nadja Geer, I do not see a categorical difference between ‘selfing’ and ‘posing’.22 Geer views posing as a subversive masquerade, as a playful portrayal of situated, mutable self, while ‘selfing’ is a pure, direct form of identification in which self and performance coincide exactly. With such false conclusions in mind, it is important to emphasize that the students were not identical with their selfies, a claim supported by empirical and analytical arguments: firstly, the teenagers created their media self-images in different, sometimes highly calculated ways; and secondly, the critical thrust of Hill Collins’s concept consists precisely in stressing that controlling images do not correspond to the more positive self-images and more complex everyday experiences of many African-American women. Thus, for example, the same female students who are posing here as ‘cute girls’ will be seen later in the book rebelling angrily against a racist teacher. Sexy The dividing lines between performances as ‘cute’ and ‘sexy’ (as between the other types described below) are fluid. Both variants emphasize a binary model of gender difference. Like the male equivalent – hypermasculinity – the extreme feminization this involves seemed to appeal to female Hauptschule students for two reasons. Firstly, the Galilei-Schule was strongly divided along gender lines, with strict distinctions between male and female behaviour and with little mixing of genders in circles of friends. Strongly gendered manners were usually rewarded by other students, while transgressions of the binary, heterosexual gender norm were sanctioned by discrete exclusion or aggressive bullying. And secondly, in their search for alternative sources of recognition in the face of social disregard, students often resorted to their own gendered bodies as a vehicle for self-valorization. In this way, physical capital took the place of economic, social and cultural capital, making sexiness a way of generating social status.23

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In selfies by young women, classic elements of the ‘sexy’ look include scant or tight clothing, prominent breasts, red lipstick, long blond hair, and bathing or bedroom scenes. Here, too, the dominant everyday aesthetic deems even moments like applying make-up in front of a mirror or lying on a bed to be picture-worthy. Traditional motifs of erotic self-portrayal were adopted and adapted under the conditions of digital image production: self-portraits in mirrors had a long tradition before the genre of the mirror selfie emerged in recent years, with the female bathroom mirror selfie as a specific subgenre.24 The erotic spectrum among female Hauptschule students ranged from relatively open erotic self-portrayals to carefully concealed erotic allusions. The way Muslim girls in particular presented themselves on Facebook was far more reserved, which corresponds with the findings of a comparative ethnographic study on media usage, according to which Facebook in southeast Turkey is marked by a conservative Islamic model of femininity, prompting young women there to use other media like WhatsApp to arrange romantic and sexual contacts.25 Some students at the Galilei-Schule used Facebook either not at all or secretly, having been forbidden to access it. By posting their pictures, the young women followed an ideology of sharing propagated by Facebook, according to which the publication of images from areas of life previously considered private and intimate is not only accepted but also, increasingly, expected.26 Divulging personal data and pictures is encouraged by the website provider by, for instance, symbolically rewarding corresponding user practices.27 The News Feed algorithm that determines what content is seen by individual users when they open Facebook is programmed in such a way as to reward a participatory and self-portraying subject model.28 Such algorithms are not neutral aggregates of previous media practices; in keeping with the company’s ideology of sharing and the economic imperative of data collection, they are deliberately manipulated. With their shaping, selective impact on media content, they in turn influence users’ visual habits and posting routines, forming their visual and media socialization. In the resulting emotional economy, affective capital is generated by the digital circulation and social sharing of media content, while the corresponding feelings remain uncontrollable and unpredictable.29 In this way, cute girl poses and sexy girl performances adapt the contemporary ‘spirit of capitalism’ to the arena of popular culture.30 Selfies with a strong erotic connotation were mainly taken individually. The gaze inscribed in the sexy girl pose is defined by a complementary logic of being looked at and looking at oneself. The fundamental pitfalls of this logic were vividly described by Jean-Paul Sartre in the pre-Internet age using the example of the voyeur:31 the hidden eroticizing gaze rests directly on the (mostly female) body while keeping it at a distance as a

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sexual object; the avoidance of eye contact renders the voyeuristic relationship shameful for both sides; but precisely such a potentially embarrassing objectification may allow the person being looked at to experience herself as physically attractive and authentically feminine. Hence the seductive appeal of looking at one’s own erotic poses. The allure of the selfie consists of this promise of authenticity and uniqueness, but such self-recognition is also clearly reductive.32 While the erotic selfie is a perfect example of the way images of the body are transformed into objects in a visualized consumer culture, differences do remain between the mediatized body image, the emotions relating to this objectified self-image, and everyday experiences of the body in the context of socioeconomic marginalization.33 Such discrepancies were especially striking in the case of a female student from East Berlin encountered during my first period of Hauptschule research: she presented online as a ‘beauty babe’ and hoped for a career in modelling, but she also complained about routine sexual harassment and the association of young women from Eastern European backgrounds with prostitution.34 In my field of study, erotic self-portrayals by teenagers in online networks were geared towards a binary gender ideal: strong, dominant masculinity on the one hand and seductive femininity on the other.35 This hierarchic gender order fosters a ‘visual sexualization’ of girls and young women that tends to blur the line between the girlish and the sexual.36 At the same time, displays of feminine sexuality are subjected to stricter moral judgement than equivalent behaviours by men. With their image practices, the young women subscribed to a ‘new sexual contract’ linking calls for a ‘liberated’ heterosexual femininity with a fundamentally non-critical stance towards the hegemonic gender arrangement, thus ultimately helping to uphold a patriarchal order.37 In spite of this, the online self-performances of these students, characterized by cute looks, erotic poses and consumer activities, should not be seen, in a reductive feminist reading, as passive gestures of victimhood, and nor should they be simplified, in a one-dimensional male interpretation, as direct expressions of a search for sexual contacts. On Facebook, one can find hegemonic patterns of idealized femininity being appropriated in ways that associate successful feminine visualization with beauty, positive presence and sexiness. Rather than falling outside the social order, then, the female students affirm it and use media performances to lay claim to participation in society.38 Consumer According to Angela McRobbie, the fashion-beauty complex is at the centre of the neoliberal model of the top girl.39 The poses posted by female students from the Galilei-Schule reflected this, giving an important place

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to consuming fashion and to beauty-related activities. In this way, they inscribed themselves into the emerging genre of the shopping selfie. The variants of this selfie genre feature in enthusiastic online celebrations of the stages of a shopping trip, like one to Potsdamer Platz in the centre of Berlin documented by two female students. The facade of the Potsdamer Platz Arkaden mall, lit up for Christmas with sparkling stars and chains of flashing lights, looks like a gateway to paradise; gigantic ice creams suggest sweet temptations; miniature parties take place in the fitting rooms at H&M; and afterwards the young women ride back to Neukölln with contented grins, drinking bubble tea on the top of a double decker bus as the glittery panorama of the city at night slides past outside. Demonstrative good cheer was typical of such visual performances in the role of shopping girls. This capturing of ephemeral moments of consumer behaviour depends on access to smartphones with the necessary camera equipment. While the camera was sometimes used more as a documentary tool, practices of self-photography during dressing-up games in the fitting room, or model poses in front of the mirror, became important elements of the media performance in their own right. For these young women, shopping malls represent a doorway to the world of glamour. In the nineteenth century, glamour was an adaptation of extravagant aristocratic lifestyles as imagined by the aspiring bourgeoisie.40 Since then, glamour fantasies have been largely democratized by close ties with the world of consumerism. Popular women’s magazines like Glamour epitomize this nexus of attractive modern femininity and the fashion-beauty complex. Glamour promises a break from everyday problems and draws people in with a brightly coloured world of ‘stars and starlets’. For the female students from Neukölln, shopping and glamour offered both a way to participate in society and a path to small dreams and pleasures. But this glamour effect only works with a playful, relaxed approach, hence the many laughing faces and the emphasis on having a good time. As well as links with consumer products and the world of entertainment, there are also connections to corresponding media variants of female identity, like sexiness and cuteness, as well as the theatrical freakiness discussed below. Such displays of consumer behaviour can be understood as a central element of subjectivization in contemporary youth culture, as a blend of doing class, doing gender and doing race. Shopping was interpreted and experienced as a gendered practice, with many comments and jokes referencing women’s supposedly natural penchant for it. The students shared a number of humorous memes that repeated and normalized gender stereotypes, for example by showing young women wandering around shopping malls for hours while young men needed just a few minutes for their specific purchases. Shopping also has complex links with social

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class. In their devotion to its promise of glamour, the students implicitly aligned themselves with the consumer practices of an affluent middle class, although they usually lacked the corresponding financial means. Rather than gestures of frugality or a ‘taste for necessity’,41 they responded to this dilemma with displays of copious, exuberant and seemingly unbridled consumption. The ideal of the hedonistic ‘top girl’ was also markedly white, oriented towards the ‘Western’ consumer world and successful middle-class women. Although the young women in the selfies under study here grew up in migrant families, their shopping-based visual practices subtly and subliminally adopted visual ideals of American-style consumer culture. In the mid-twentieth century in the United States, a combination of white middle-class culture and consumerism became the model of a socially desirable life, prompting Peter Stearns to refer to the associated affective culture as ‘American cool’.42 This version of coolness was exported to West Germany as part of the process of post-war Americanization, together with a more rebellious African-American variant. In this way, capitalist consumer culture itself became an influential model of coolness, especially as it also managed to convert the countercultures of the 1960s and 1970s into a form of ‘hip consumerism’.43 In the course of neoliberal transformations since the 1980s, forms of demonstrative consumption have occupied an increasingly central place, with shopping as both the goal and a prominent form of expression for an accomplished life, while the distribution of opportunities for material participation became increasingly unequal.44 While students made provocative displays of resistance in school, with regard to consumer culture’s promises of glamour and coolness their behaviour was strikingly uncritical and socially conformist. The related question of the political dimension of ‘shopping girl’ performances is hard to answer. Gestures of consumer indulgence are used to compensate for social and academic devalorization, but they should not be reduced solely to this function, especially since female students of the same age attending Realschule and Gymnasium schools often have similar leanings. Even within a field like cultural studies, views on this issue diverge: while John Fiske euphorically interprets the micro-practices of shopping trips as moments of unruliness, Angela McRobbie now generally disparages young women’s orientation towards consumer behaviour as a willing adaptation to the prevailing capitalist-patriarchal regime.45 Individually, these positions both appear too one-sided, but taken together they point to the ambivalence of the shopping selfie, to its dialectic of self-empowerment and self-oppression. Playful shopping performances are a dubious form of empowerment, a passionate affirmation of capitalist consumer culture by those who actually lack the financial resources for extravagant consumption, but whose drive to consume is fuelled precisely by this lack. In their selfies, the female

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Hauptschule students aspired to the ‘white’ hegemonic culture that cynically disregards them as a status group while courting them as cheap customers. Freaky Like the notion of zaniness, described by Siane Ngai as an aesthetic blending forms of the crazy, the overwrought, the clownish and the odd, the concept of freakiness is a mixture of value judgement and style – a relatively open-ended everyday category, but also a loosely formalized pattern of everyday aesthetics.46 Unlike reductionist, withdrawn and distanced versions of coolness, the freak prefers boldly expressive performances that engage in a precarious game of exaggeration and obtrusiveness. A peculiarity of freakiness is that, having originated as a minority aesthetic category, processes of aesthetic normalization have since shifted it to the centre of contemporary culture. Whereas such aesthetic formats of the purposeless were originally located on the margins of society, in the field of child’s play or in the artistic avant-garde, they now sit at the epicentre of the ‘creativity dispositif ’, a concept used by cultural sociologist Andreas Reckwitz to discuss the rewarding of the extraordinary, especially the visually striking, in various areas of today’s society.47 Rather than being a marginal phenomenon, then, freaky selfies in fact epitomize the creative demands of today’s regime of subjectivization and aestheticization in which subjects increasingly perform themselves via images in front of an audience. These processes of subjectivization are not gender-neutral, combined as they are with a powerful regime of visibility in which women are made into objects of male visual pleasure.48 In the modern history of optical media, the power of the public male gaze has often led women to perform evasive manoeuvres in the form of freaky masquerade. Looking at the many and varied traditions of female self-performance for the camera, one sees a colourful strain of imaginative play with conventions and role models stretching far back in time.49 In such games with masks and costumes, women have appropriated a diverse repertoire of practices involving clothing, gestures and facial expressions. This may be one reason why the selfies by female students were more playful, imaginative and expressive than those of their male counterparts. In the wake of Judith Butler’s comments on the performativity of gender roles, feminine masquerade was seen as a paragon of subversive performance.50 More recently, however, this play with masks has been unmasked by Angela McRobbie, who sees in it not self-assured feminine unconventionality, but an anxious-submissive frivolity.51 A prime example of freaky femininity, also widespread among female Hauptschule students, is the culture of posing with crazy hairstyles or wigs, mainly in the company of girlfriends. Such media presentations of garish colours

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and wild styles can be understood as a play on the female norm of perfect looks that conforms to gender roles, flirting with breaches of the beauty imperative without calling women’s fixation on their looks into question. Paradoxically, feminine masquerade is accompanied by the establishment of new norms of facial expressivity, as even socially learned facial expressions of non-conformity are often informed by the imperative of feminine attractiveness. Most of the freaky selfies posted by female Hauptschule students in Berlin implicitly or explicitly followed prominent visual models from media society. Precisely in their emphasis on unconventionality, their visual self-portrayals resembled the facial expressions of female celebrities. The repertoire of bizarre facial poses, from twisted lips and lascivious tongue movements through to rapt gazes, has been acted out in advance by pop stars like Miley Cyrus and made available by processes of digital image production. Imitations of such gestures of expressive female individuality thus follow conventional patterns. To paraphrase Gilles Deleuze, the smartphone camera could thus be imagined as an abstract machine for the creation of standardized faces.52 Described by cultural historians like Thomas Macho, Hans Belting and Sigrid Weigel with reference to Deleuze, processes of facialization driven by media technology reflect the outstanding cultural significance of facial imaging in today’s ‘Western’ society, as well as important contemporary variants of the formation and standardization of self-images.53 From this viewpoint, the selfie is both symptom and expression of the facial society. At the same time, freaky selfies also proved useful in parallel developments of the media struggle for attention, such as the eroticization of self-portrayals or the dramatization of friendships.54 However, this cultural critique overlooks the fact that even standardized and copied gestures can have a self-empowering effect on individual students, and that teenage media practices are more complex and contradictory than the theory of facialization suggests. Their feminine play with masks and roles was based on processes of digital image production that allow visual codes to be combined, in turn allowing a range of different interpretations.55 As well as the standard gestures discussed above, there were also variants of the freaky selfie that criticized the conventions of portraiture and gender roles, subverting both the facial imperative and the hegemonic standards of beauty inscribed within it. This subversive genre of the non-portrait featured many and varied forms of pleasure in not showing one’s face – hiding it, turning away, making it unrecognizable – as well as many forms of digital overpainting or decoration that subverted the requirements of feminine attractiveness, such as women’s faces with digitally added pigs’ noses or beards. The promise of authenticity and the attractiveness imperative pertaining to female facial portrayals were called into question

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here as part of the media practice itself.56 In this case, the media practices of these teenagers were several steps ahead of the cultural critics. Muslim With regard to public debate around ‘parallel societies’ and German ‘Leitkultur’ – a reductionist version of ‘authentic’ German culture used in public debates at the time to exclude migrant claims to citizenship and belonging – these same students were not steps but miles ahead. While heated discussions of integration built up essentialist oppositions and called for one-sided declarations of cultural allegiance, the teenagers were casually combining cultural elements on Facebook. Although both young men and young women referred to their (post-)migrant ties, the women were more strongly visually marked as Muslim on account of their headscarves. Unlike in mainstream media discourse, the headscarf appeared here not as a stigma but as a positive expression of religious orientation and family bonds.57 At the same time, some engaged explicitly with experiences of discrimination, for example by posting humorous or moralistic memes denouncing the disadvantages faced by Muslims in Germany. One comic showed a veiled Catholic nun side by side with a Muslim women wearing a headscarf with a caption pointing out that the former is thought to be a figure of respect while the latter is thought to be a victim of oppression. Although the headscarf selfies were geared towards ideals of positive image, sexual attractiveness and flawless beauty, the performances were more discreet and understated. Crucially, covering body parts and hair should not be equated with neglect of the body or issues of style, as fashion conventions and distinctions were articulated in other ways, for example via variations within Muslim dress codes, such as different types of headscarf and ways of wearing them. Fashion consciousness was especially apparent in the stylish ‘Muslim hipsters’ occasionally found among female teenagers in Neukölln.58 Gender-specific rules were also reflected on, as when one Muslim student told me in conversation, with reference to her red nail varnish: ‘We shouldn’t really do this, we’re not supposed to draw attention to ourselves. I do it because I think it looks good.’ But she also stressed that this should not prompt anyone to ‘see her differently’ or call her honour as a woman into question. In contrast to media stereotypes of headscarf-wearing Muslim women as oppressed housewives in grim ‘ghettos’, the headscarf-wearing students liked to portray themselves with smiling faces in sunny locations, often during vacations in their families’ countries of origin. Such selfies thus contrasted starkly with the external image circulating in the media. This discrepancy produced an awareness of stigma, as well as an attitude of defensiveness and self-justification with regard to headscarves in school.

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The students had first-hand experience of the ‘stigma of the headscarf’59 – its instrumentalization by mainstream society as a symbol of cultural otherness and backwardness – and the attendant forms of exclusion and devalorization. During my previous field research in 2008, a conversation with two headscarf-wearing Hauptschule students in Neukölln showed how clothing practices must be protected against society’s projections. Both women stressed that they chose to wear headscarves. The fact that this was no ordinary choice was made clear by the fact that they both remembered the exact moment when they made the decision. While one began ‘one year and a few days ago’ as part of religious devotion to the Koran, the other adopted the dress code of her Muslim relatives ‘four years ago’ in the name of family cohesion. Both also mentioned other girls they knew who had been forced to wear headscarves. As well as justifying their religious devotion to Islam, they also had to defend their own positive body image against accusations. They vehemently rejected claims that headscarf-wearing women were ‘ugly and mannish’, and objected when a teacher told them they looked better without their headscarves: ‘I think I look better like this. But I also look good without my headscarf!’ None of the female students saw the headscarf as being directed against the school as an institution, but their clearly visible adoption of a publically stigmatized dress code, that was also disapproved of by the majority of the staff, nonetheless reflects an oppositional position or at least a divergent attitude. Visible symbols of a religious affiliation to Islam repeatedly lead to conflicts in schools, not least because they throw into relief the political outlines of the secular order and the public sphere – revealing the fact that in Western Europe, too, the separation of church and state is far from complete, consisting instead of an enclosure or containment of religion by the state. The ideal of a ‘civil religion’ that implicitly prevails in Germany, an institutional entity tamed by the state, takes the centuries-old established relationship of the German state to the Christian churches as its yardstick, thus systematically excluding other religions.60 Although training for Muslim teachers of religious education recently began at state universities in Berlin, most teachers still view Islam as an unwelcome foreign body at school. As these remarks show, state institutions like schools are far more biased in questions of religion than their enlightened self-image would suggest. The headscarf is a public affirmation of family and religious traditions that is met with distrust or even open rejection at school. Positive recoding of a practice proscribed by dominant discourse can have a self-empowering effect; the respectability associated with veiling can be understood as a response to stigmatization and discrimination. Although the dress code chosen by female descendants of Turkish ‘guest workers’ and Palestinian

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refugees at Berlin’s schools (among whom headscarf wearing is especially widespread) links them to the religiousness of their parents’ generation, they go one step further, abandoning defensive positions by representing Islam with self-assurance. In the process, the role of religion changes, from the traditional collective custom of an immigrant minority to a vehicle for personal meaning and public presentation. The ‘European Islam’ of the second and third generations thus differs significantly from the traditionalist, inward-looking Islam of the original immigrants.61 Facebook proved hugely adaptable to the female students’ hybrid forms of cultural self-placement and the corresponding image variants. With reference to the long-overlooked origins of the Western art of perspective, Hans Belting has described the West-Eastern history of European modes of seeing.62 The selfie aesthetic with its radicalization of central, one-point perspective could be seen as the latest chapter in this transcultural history of the gaze, adding a heightened dynamic of digital bricolage. At the same time, the students’ self-portrayals as young Muslims were marked by everyday nods to the conventions of youth culture: in their selfies, the young women quite naturally combined headscarves with symbols of ‘Western’ consumer culture, for example Gucci or Ray-Ban sunglasses and an Adidas tracksuit top. Although these stylistic convergences and cultural links took place in the context of a globalized media culture, visual tensions also arose, as when a figurative visual idiom like the selfie was framed with Arabesque ornament. On Facebook, shopping selfies were to be found alongside quotes from the Koran and elements of an aniconic visual culture with religious and spiritual connotations.63 Such a transcendental aesthetic of expansiveness and infinity, often using motifs from nature like clouds, lightning, water or the moon, contrasted with the ideal, propagated on the same Facebook pages, of the hedonistic and consumer-oriented ‘top girl’.

‘Machos’: Poses of Male Toughness and Dominance As an equivalent to the ‘top girl’ poses described above, the selfies posted by male students articulated aspects of a ‘macho’ type that was also considered cool in their milieu. In historical and cultural terms, the specific content and meanings of this type are surprisingly variable.64 The ‘macho’ image is shaped by variously coded fantasies of virility, violence and dominance. In Germany, stereotypes of the ‘macho’ are used as a discursive strategy to devalorize a migrant male underclass.65 By setting itself apart from a migrant culture supposedly characterized by aggressiveness and misogyny, mainstream German society can imagine itself as peaceful and equitable. Hauptschule students, on the other hand, adopted the ‘macho’ gesture of

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superiority and toughness as a way of experiencing agency and of masking socially produced feelings of inferiority. Rich A typical form of self-valorization involves posing as rich and decadent. In this case, the aesthetics of social aspiration are no longer limited to gestures of respectability, as described by Alison Clarke with reference to the domestic interiors created by relatively inward-looking British working-class families mindful of their good reputation.66 In the ‘rich’ selfies posted by male Hauptschule students in Berlin, there was no such striving for a secure, middle-class existence, at least not at first glance; instead, an aesthetic of affluence and extravagance was used to imagine a life of luxury. With parents often on welfare and the looming prospect of not finding work after leaving school, the proletarian role of the respectable family breadwinner, traditionally linked to stable employment, was nothing but a broken mirror. There was a striking discrepancy between actual poverty – more than 90 percent of students at the Galilei-Schule came from families on welfare – and projected wealth: the more inaccessible the path to secure employment, the more likely the production of unrealistic visions of the future and fantasies of luxury (at least on Facebook; more ‘down to earth’ dreams are described in the last chapter of this book). Such gestures of imagined status reversal are marked by a limited repertoire of recurring image sets, most prominently car and party motifs. Selfies with high-status vehicles, either luxury sedans or sports cars, drew on a symbolic language that is well established in Germany, where expensive cars are used strategically to compensate for socioeconomic marginalization, male prestige being conferred primarily by marques like MercedesBenz and BMW, Porsche and Ferrari. At the time of my research, however, none of the students owned a car or even a driving licence. All of the cars in the selfies belonged to relatives, acquaintances or strangers. The emotional charge thus derived less from the utility and exchange value of the cars in question, which were fetishized due to an aura that went beyond their value as commodities, allowing the students to associate themselves with wealth, progress and technology.67 This symbolic valorization was exemplified by a selfie in which a student stood next to a parked Ferrari, his hand resting on its bodywork in a reverent caress. The students’ party selfies were also aspirational. In contrast to the aesthetic of Berlin’s club scene, which is marked by romantic references to nature or industrial charm, the male students preferred party selfies taken at establishments viewed as exclusive, during visits to high-class shisha bars with selected friends or at fancy-looking event locations on the occasion

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of ostentatious family weddings. Insignia of coolness like leather jackets and sunglasses gave the shots with friends the necessary relaxed air, while white collar accessories like suits with ties or bowties represented a pose of distinguished prosperity. Although such party selfies symbolize luxury, extravagance and enjoyment, the students struck me as astonishingly well-behaved in these pictures due to their religiously motivated avoidance of alcohol and their strong community ties. With their selfies, the young men wanted to prove themselves capable of participating in Berlin’s party scene and not confirm negative prejudices about their social behaviour. It is also worth noting that even over the age of eighteen, Neukölln Hauptschule students from migrant backgrounds were not usually admitted to Berlin’s better known nightclubs, whose doors were often controlled by right-wing hooligans at the time. Dismissing such self-performances aimed at enhanced status and participation as the showy posturing of an urban ‘underclass’ is cheap, but they are indeed often mocked by the wealthy and established as the tasteless gestures of ‘wannabees’. When social boundaries are drawn in this way, the students’ fantasies of luxury can act as an unintended badge of marginality. But these ‘rich man’ poses were not aimed primarily at passing viewers, instead fulfilling specific functions in their immediate social milieu. On the one hand, young male students used their selfies to demonstrate to potential partners checking their Facebook pages that they could afford a possible partnership, something that could by no means be taken for granted, needing to be symbolically underpinned by corresponding gestures of affluence.68 Rather than focussing on a genuinely decadent lifestyle, then, the images of wealth depicted events that were perceived not as everyday occurrences but as out of the ordinary. Figuratively speaking, the poses stood for the desire for a secure, ‘normal’ existence plus occasional moments of pleasure. On the other hand, these images were potential vehicles for enhanced status and cohesion within male groups of friends: luxury party selfies would usually receive many ‘likes’ on Facebook, while those who had been present were expected to make additional affirmative comments like ‘yesterday was awesome’. Such forms of recognition contributed to the subject’s popularity and status within the group. For centuries, the history of portraiture was dominated by status. What was represented was not a unique individual, but primarily a corporate role or specific social type.69 Only after 1800 did the portrait begin to be understood as evidence of a distinct personal identity. But the showy gestures of officials and monarchs continued to be imitated by a nouveau riche bourgeoisie, pointing to (even then often imagined or exaggerated) financial wealth and commercial success. In this light, the gestures of wealth by Berlin Hauptschule students stand in a long tradition of aristocratic and

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bourgeois portrayals of status, now being adapted under altered media conditions by sub-bourgeois classes. The digital revival of the status portrait among the socioeconomically disadvantaged reflects the emotional power of capitalist consumer culture and the social fantasies that flourish in a neoliberal ‘society of precarization’.70 Tough ‘Tough guy’ selfies drew on a range of combinable elements: posing with guns and knives, lurking on street corners, or looking into the camera with suggestively concealed faces. There were also aggressive T-shirt prints, sinister tattoos and threatening captions. These and related self-performances as ‘tough’ typically resort to two related patterns of aggressive masculinity: ‘ghetto’ symbolism linked with delinquency and violence, and pugilistic metaphors associated with physical strength and determination. In both cases, superiority was claimed by using intimidation. Both presentations of male selfhood can also be understood as responses to experiences of exclusion.71 Later chapters in the book are devoted to the ‘ghetto’ and ‘boxer’ versions of tough masculinity, so I restrict myself here to discussing selfies and the peculiarities of the visual representation of aggressive masculinity in online communities. Elements of tough masculinity made an especially threatening impression in combination with a specific gaze. The dismissive message of a nasty, arrogant look was emphasized by motionless mouths that seem never to have tried a smile. Tough poses aimed for self-empowerment legitimized by male strength. In the Facebook universe of positively expressed self-portrayal with its likes and smileys, such gestures felt as provocative as they did in school and in the urban public sphere with its bourgeois codex of physical reserve and politeness. Moreover, the confrontational gesture of toughness lays claim to a powerful position within the student community. Such media performances could fail or lack credibility if they were not accompanied by some form of corresponding behaviour and assertiveness in everyday life, although this does not mean that male students had to fully inhabit role models of toughness in order to embody them convincingly. How the credibility of such self-performances was subverted and negotiated in online communities can be illustrated using the example of gestures of toughness by actual and fake Hauptschule students. In online groups with direct links to the schools in Berlin I frequented during my research in 2008/9 and 2012/13, there was always a surprisingly high number of fake profiles. This was most obvious on SchülerVZ, a German-language online portal targeted specifically at schools, which was finally shut down in 2013 having failed to compete with Facebook. Such fake profiles were set up by

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people who had never attended the school in question and they were used to make fun of Hauptschule students. Although the students usually did not react to such jokes, in some cases even unmasking the fake identity of the users responsible, it is worth noting that the profile photos often used gestures of toughness. The stereotype of the Hauptschule student deployed and reproduced here was that of an aggressive ‘ghetto’ thug. But it would be too easy to dismiss such images as wrong-headed clichés. The network of references involved becomes more complicated if one takes into account that Hauptschule students themselves liked to operate with visual aspects of the ‘ghetto’ and the ‘boxer’, both of which they themselves identified with gestures of toughness, flirting with them or creating ironic versions. Most revealing were moments of uncertainty and ambiguity, indicating that heroic presentations of tough masculinity by Berlin Hauptschule students on Facebook always remained precarious and ambivalent. Ali had already tried out several types of selfie on Facebook – the buddy, the joker, the playboy and sometimes slightly tougher versions – when he suddenly posted a sinister-looking portrait in black-and-white as his profile picture. With more beard and darker clothing than usual, he directed such an unfathomable gaze at the viewer that I was reminded of portraits of Islamist suicide bombers. The reactions of his friends were mixed: some praised the picture, for which Ali thanked them, while others criticized a portrayal they found overly tough: ‘Shit brother, stop it, what an evil eye, please don’t hurt me.’ Ali responded, saying ‘It’s not an evil look’, but his friend insisted: ‘Your eyes, I swear, you look like something really annoyed you.’ The critical comments came from a boy from a Turkish migrant background whose own profile images were full of male toughness. They tried to smooth over their disagreement with winking smileys so as not to endanger their friendship. His self-presentation clearly being perceived as too tough, Ali soon swapped his profile picture for a friendlier pose of himself laughing with a waving child on his arm. When I asked him about the tough selfie, he explained how the picture came about and played down its aggressive tone and the ensuing exchange. Ali: I didn’t have a proper background. The photo was taken in the toilets. In a café. I was done and I’d just washed my hands. The light went out and I thought ‘wow, that looks sinister’. With my beard and my cap, all so dark – scary! So I took the picture. But it was more a fun thing. It just happened. I didn’t want to show how dangerous I am. That’s not my style. Of course a few friends are going to make jokes, but there’s no need to take that so seriously.

On another occasion, the students created a parody of ‘ghetto’ images. In a series of photos taken by a group from the Galilei-Schule on Berlin’s

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subway, they jokingly posed as dangerous terrorists with black facemasks, celebrating themselves in the following comments for their amusing ‘ghetto’ performance. By acting out forms of harassment and assault, they simulated the potential for violence associated with male Hauptschule students and Muslim terrorists, at the same time distancing themselves from such stereotypes by their ironic, playful gesture. In both instances, there was an interplay between visual escalation, in the form of tough poses and intimidating performance, and narrative de-escalation via additional comments pointing to the unspectacular setting or the playful character of the image content.72 Cool In addition to the broad understanding of coolness as a model for genderand class-specific forms of the socially desirable, there is also a narrower definition of cool that refers to emotional self-control and demonstrative lack of feeling, a mode of behaviour traditionally connoted as male. Among young men at the Galilei-Schule, this kind of coolness was a key distinguishing feature, causing it to become a basic requirement for the portrayal of a masculine identity in selfies. The gestural repertoire of performative non-emotionality ranged from distant, unapproachable attitudes to ironic, playful gestures of nonchalance, accompanied by an emphasis on physicality and ‘cool’ poses of deviance symbolically articulating a male counterculture at the school.73 Young women also viewed demonstrative emotionlessness as typically male, often combined with expressions of regret against the backdrop of their own emotionality that was associated with femininity. Sila: Boys have a different way of dealing with feelings, they want to be cooler. For me, coolness means not being able to show your own feelings. Some girls are like that, too, and not all boys are like this – it depends on the type. I guess it has a lot to do with how you’re raised, it comes from their parents and siblings. And if they don’t learn it at home, then at school they’ll learn that boys are not supposed to show their feelings. They learn it very quickly here. They form groups and circles of friends who resemble one another, be it in terms of clothing or language, that can be a shaping influence. That’s not how I want to be. But every character trait has positive and negative sides. It makes you selfassured and less vulnerable, but you can easily appear arrogant.

Sila stressed the socially conditioned quality of male coolness, incidentally repeating the basic assumptions of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of socialization, including his distinction between primary habitus (family

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socialization) and secondary habitus (school socialization), while taking into account ambivalences and transgressions. In selfies, the impression of male coolness was generated mainly via a specific modelling of the face. Paradoxically, coolness as an emotional style was marked by displays of emotionlessness. The corresponding facial expression lacks movement, deliberately non-emphatic and frozen in place. The cool face looks like a mask. Once more here, we can refer to art historian Hans Belting, who advocates an expanded definition of the mask according to which living faces can also freeze into masks, as seen in portraits and some kinds of acting.74 In everyday life, too, the gaze can be frozen, facial expression refused. In this sense, many selfies by Hauptschule students appear as impenetrable masks fixed on a single cool facial expression. The mask metaphor is also helpful because it allows this facial variant to be understood as an aesthetic and as a performance that must be situated within a sociocultural context – as a kind of emotional shield, a means of deception or concealment used to demonstratively fend off everyday humiliations and negative value judgements. This form of coolness refers to evasive behaviour patterns that originally emerged primarily among African-Americans in the context of slavery and racism and that later also became widespread in Germany as a result of processes of Americanization, mainly through the globalization first of rocker subculture and then of hip-hop.75 Coolness offers a degree of protection against the emotional impact of being treated with contempt by society, but with reference to writers like Frantz Fanon one should also note the pitfalls of such masks of coolness.76 Cool gestures can become a burden, a stereotypical pattern of behaviour, easily adopted but far less easy to escape. How the deployment of coolness in the classroom could complicate communication between staff and students becomes clear in the following situation. Field journal: Sven is wearing a baseball cap, a T-shirt marked ‘Fight For Your Right To Party’ and Limited-brand tracksuit bottoms. He has a thick silver chain round his neck and a Byzantine-weave silver chain round his wrist. His voice sounds dark and smoky, as if he is always saying something forbidden or dangerous. His movements are slack and sparing, as if seeking to avoid any unnecessary use of energy. If absolutely necessary, he raises his hand only very slightly, and his gait is slow and measured. … The students have been asked to give short talks in front of the posters they were supposed to make during their course of work experience. Throughout the presentations, Sven keeps drawing in his exercise book. When it’s his turn, he remains seated, motionless, not least because, not having made a poster, he won’t get a good grade in any case. The other students and the teacher encourage him to come to the front anyway and say at least a few words to avoid getting the worst grade. But Sven does not appear touched by this, leaning back and sizing up the situation, the corners

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of his mouth turned stonily down. The well-meaning teacher keeps trying, reminding him of the poor grades he has received in recent days due to not turning up. Now it seems he must react, and he gives a fatigued smile and then immediately realizes that this unmotivated gesture is not welcome. The teacher is annoyed: ‘I’m sick of seeing this face!’

This confrontation symbolizes a cultural mismatch combined with a relational link between the pedagogical culture embodied by a committed teacher and the emotional culture of deviant male Hauptschule students.77 In a difficult communicative situation, Sven instinctively hid behind an emotional wall that allowed him to maintain distance at first, but which worked against him as the situation unfolded. The teacher’s reaction to his cool behaviour was overdetermined; she focussed on it, perceived it as a personal affront, and was ultimately angrier about her student’s facial expression than about his failure to complete the assignment. Playboy ‘Ms Milde is good at speaking, she’s a teacher. Stefan is good at writing, he’s at university. And we’re good at fucking, which is why we’re at this Hauptschule.’ In this provocative remark, a male student linked his low social status with an inversely proportional sexual status, incidentally formulating a self-ironic theory of class relations. ‘Macho’ poses of this kind had a twofold function. They attacked a largely female staff, undermining its authority with insolent male banter; at the same time, female students and reserved boys were also intimidated. Such claims to power rarely went unanswered, however, and male students striking such macho poses would be verbally attacked by a number of other boys, as well as receiving punishments from teachers. In digitally networked circles of friends and acquaintances, too, young men presenting as macho cultivated a laid-back, sexually successful image. While playboy gestures in class aimed more for provocation and power, in online communities they were more about gaining applause and admiration. This mechanism of self-affirmation can be seen in the comments generated by one such playboy selfie. The picture shows a young male Hauptschule student during a summer vacation on a sunny beach in the Mediterranean with two young women leaning in on either side – one in a tight-fitting catsuit, the other in a cropped Superman shirt. The picture received positive comments from several former classmates: ‘Lol nice bro, playboy’, ‘Meow meow, prrrr’, ‘hey you doing good’. In this way, the male commenters underscored their own affinity with the playboy style, but there was also approval from female viewers. In this way, having just left school,

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the former classmates celebrated their ongoing togetherness. The beach pose also bore a second message, boasting of being among the privileged students capable of affording travel to attractive holiday destinations. While some playboy selfies laid claim to authenticity, this one was a pose that took pleasure in openly displaying its contrived quality. The above-mentioned ‘macho’ comments in class also mostly walked a fine line between being playful and earnest, between irony and cynicism. In popular culture, playboy poses that claim sex appeal, innate coolness and irrefutable style are classic elements in performances of male self-empowerment. Humorous over-exaggeration and one-sided claims of sexual dominance are part of the established repertoire of such poses. With reference to conventional patterns of heroic masculinity that have long been considered obsolete in the dominant bourgeois culture, claims of dominance are articulated by the socioeconomically disadvantaged. The pose of the ‘macho’ playboy is especially well suited to being combined with gestures of demonstrative coolness and performances of decadent wealth. Instead of access to appealing consumer objects, what is displayed here is access to women, who are thus degraded to objectified accessories. Playboy poses are characterized by laid-back sexiness that underscores a claim to gender superiority, accompanied by visual gestures in which students would pose in markedly casual ways with young women to whom they clearly needed to pay little attention on account of their own irresistibility. In some cases, such performances were visually enhanced by the addition of erotic motifs like pinups of half-naked models. Within the heterosexual matrix, then, the hyper-virile playboy appears as the perfect counterpart to sexualized femininity. ‘Macho’ poses were a popular means of provocation – towards the standards of bourgeois decorum propagated by the school in general and towards its mainly female staff in particular, who understandably found the attendant gender politics hard to tolerate. The more shocked, offended and punitive the teacher’s reaction, the greater the provocateur’s success as his trap snapped shut. In such constellations, a measure of equanimity in the face of such attacks (admittedly not easy to achieve), a dose of understanding for their social meaning, and perhaps even a modicum of respect for their many-facetted tradition within popular culture would probably help to calm the situation down. It may help to remember that we are dealing here with self-stylizations, gendered gestures of superiority operating mainly with words and images, which often have relatively little to do with the students’ actual lived behaviour concerning relationships and sexuality. In this light, it would be wrong to view such poses of virility as reflections of the supposedly unbridled sexuality of the ‘porn generation’.78 In spite of their macho poses, most of the young men at the Galilei-Schule

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were interested in far more lasting, equal and romantic partnerships than their performances of promiscuity, toughness and dominance suggested. This was also evident in the curiosity of the many students who asked me about my own sexual behaviour and their subsequent warnings that I should ‘hurry up and marry’ my long-standing girlfriend. Statistical studies of sexual behaviour show no conspicuous values for male Hauptschule students, instead documenting quite average figures for sexual intercourse.79 According to these same statistics, female Hauptschule students, especially those from (post-)migrant backgrounds, are actually slightly more sexually reserved than young women from other types of school. However, Hauptschule students had higher numbers for the amount of sex they thought their classmates were having, as well as having a greater peer orientation than other groups of students. In the context of crumbling pedagogical authority and increasing media availability of sexualized image material, playboy gestures by Hauptschule students are a playful, provocative and self-ironic means of dealing with adolescent sexuality. Foreigner The term ‘wannabe foreigner’ might sound bizarre, as most Hauptschule students in Neukölln really did grow up in (post)migrant families. While I have already discussed bricolage-like portrayals of religious affiliation among young women, here I focus on male appropriations of ‘foreigner’ status as a vehicle for cultural self-valorization. Many forms of self-ethnicization could be observed in the students’ selfies: from T-shirts celebrating ‘Yugo-Power’, to poses with Palestinian flags, to displays of Turkish fan merchandise during important football games. These observations of male Hauptschule students on Facebook match the results of migration research in Germany that has identified a trend towards increased self-ethnicization among second- and third-generation migrant teenagers who have thus grown up in Germany.80 This affirmation of cultural identity by means of references to national authenticity and dignity can be read as a reaction to experiences of racism in school. The binary opposition between ‘Germans’ and ‘foreigners’ is interpreted in the (post)migrant teenage context as a distinction between ‘cool’ and ‘uncool’.81 Self-ethnicizing references to one’s own ‘Yugo-’, ‘Turk-’ or ‘Arab’-Power can be read as a typical and stereotyping form of male self-empowerment. Moritz Ege has already shown how Berlin teenagers use ‘foreigner’ poses to make ethnically exclusive claims to coolness and toughness, taking negative external value judgements based on ethnicity and reinterpreting them as proof of cultural attractiveness.82 Selfies based on this mechanism of reversal posted by the students in my study played with cultural attributions in a

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comparable way, adapting everyday essentialisms and assumptions of ethnic superiority/inferiority, the once marginalized now imagining themselves as the gold standard. Claiming the status of ‘cool macho’ as their birthright helped play down the latent unacceptability of their performances; according to this logic, a ‘foreigner’ can never be uncool because a laid-back style, physical toughness and sex appeal are hardwired ethnic character traits. A look at power relations among the students shows how those who adopted such positions also tended to devalorize the claims to self-empowerment of others, especially their ethnically German classmates. At the Galilei-Schule, the dividing lines between male peer groups were drawn along ethnic lines. Although certain Arab teenagers did not measure up to the ‘macho’ standards they themselves propagated, they nonetheless enjoyed the benefits of belonging to dominant peer groups. By contrast, efforts at coolness and belonging on the part of the few ethnically German teenagers were arbitrarily dismissed. Theo’s ‘macho’ style, for example, was not a success even though he performed it with far greater passion than some of the German-Arab teenagers. As ethnically German, Theo was considered uncool from the outset and his efforts to combat his own outsider position only made him more unattractive. On his Facebook profile, he described himself as ‘usually very COOL’. Whereas one female viewer praised his profile pictures, his male classmates responded disparagingly. Like many other boys, Theo insulted teachers with provocative comments and vilified female classmates as ‘sluts’. His tracksuit bottoms hung down even lower than those of his classmates. At the start of tenth grade, he struck me as a nice boy, but by the end of the year he came across as an angry young man. In his case, however, the usual poses of virility and dominance never felt really threatening, but awkwardly laboured: when he addressed the teacher Ms Sauer (sour in German) as Ms Süß (sweet), instead of laughing, classmates rejected his remark, saying ‘you’re not funny’. What he lacked was ethnically certified proof of street credibility and the support of a peer group, both of which gave his classmates from migrant backgrounds the necessary power to intimidate and a certain degree of self-assurance. This dilemma was summed up for me by a classmate from an Arab background: ‘Theo is just Theo.’ Cool poses may fail, partially or completely, which makes them risky. Because coolness is defined using a flexible set of criteria, cool selfies can draw on different sets of motifs and pictorial traditions. The success of such gestures of self-empowerment depends crucially on who the cool pose is presented by, on what occasion, and how it is received and rated by others. Both the personal choice of motif and the collective evaluation process are marked by gendered, socially conditioned notions of happiness and success.

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Being ways of rehearsing desirable versions of oneself and imagining worthwhile futures, selfies can be viewed as popular utopias.

Conclusion: Ambivalent Self-Images Coolness has a long tradition as an aesthetic of the marginalized, a repellent facade behind which lie complex communication processes and precarious attempts at self-positioning. Coolness is not a character trait, but a (not always successful) pose and an (often contested) attribute. Consequently, coolness can only be studied as such an uncertain performance. This also gives the lie to the common characterization of coolness as superficial, as we are dealing here with demanding and complex performances that cannot be understood divorced from cultural frames of reference and social contexts. In addition, the range of cool poses examined above articulated values and worldviews that were widespread among Hauptschule students in Berlin, especially an affirmation of consumer culture and a demonstrative rejection of school culture. Concentrating on selfies as the most widespread form of posing among today’s teenagers, I discuss these photographic self-portrayals in the context of everyday processes of negotiation, both on- and offline. The cool poses in question stand for different forms of self-empowerment, which were accompanied by forms of division and exclusion within the school. The selfies posted by Berlin Hauptschule students are also visual reactions to attributions of inferiority and an affective mode of processing experiences of exclusion. The links between self-portrayal and social positioning are not straightforward, shaped instead by media and popular culture; rather than a direct political approach, selfies cultivate the playful use of masks, fantasies and digressions. For teenagers, photographic self-portraits play an important role in processes of self-affirmation, especially under conditions of exclusion and contempt. The students’ selfies reflected the tension between negative stereotypes and their striving for a positive self-image. Selfies can be self-empowering, not only by demonstrating positive ways of viewing oneself, but also by helping to position oneself within the everyday school context. In this way, the students displayed media skills, forged stylistic alliances and consolidated friendships.83 But these visual practices were also shaped by power structures that have become inscribed in dominant discourses of the desirable and the worthwhile, in technological infrastructures, and in the forms of production, circulation and communication of selfies.84 Moreover, those students who failed or refused to present themselves positively via selfies posted on Facebook faced new forms of online bullying and peer

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group exclusion. In theory, social networks facilitate new forms of connection across social boundaries, but students at the Galilei-Schule used them primarily to underpin social cohesion within existing groups of friends. Ramón Reichert has identified two competing interpretations of the spread of media amateurs: a rhetoric of emancipation, and a cultural critique.85 While the former projects revolutionary fantasies onto mostly young media users, critical voices warn of a demise of cultural achievements, denouncing media alienation, digital narcissism or the threat of a degradation of language and morals. Both views fall short insofar as they offer no detailed study of situated everyday media practice in the context of media transformation, youth cultural socialization and societal power structures. The example of distinct selfie genres observed among Hauptschule students in Berlin shows how processes of transformation in media and society were associated with subjectivization models based on the gendered templates of the ‘top girl’ and the ‘macho’. Rather than reifying binary gender distinctions, this pair of terms is intended to permit an analytical view of on- and offline gender differentiation in the context of a Hauptschule. While female students tended to present themselves as pleasing, their male classmates tried to dominate, hence the striking lack of smiles in their selfies. Both forms of gendered self-affirmation shared a strong focus on the body and consumerism and an individualist response to social inequality. The result is not the reflection of an authentic social, cultural or personal character, but an aspirational performance that plays with self-images and stereotypes under the conditions of neoliberalism. The associated media usage cannot be understood one-sidedly in terms of either liberation or repression; instead, it constitutes a sometimes baffling blend of self-empowerment and submission.

Notes  1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.

On emotional styles, see Middleton, ‘Emotional style’; Gammerl, ‘Emotional styles’. See Holert, ‘Cool’. See Reckwitz, Das hybride Subjekt. See Stearns, American Cool. See Maase, Das Recht der Gewöhnlichkeit, 145–212. See Hugger (ed.), Digitale Jugendkulturen. See Lobinger/Geise (eds), Visualisierung – Mediatisierung; Eckel/Ruchatz/Wirth (eds), Exploring the Selfie.  8. See Boyd/Ellison, ‘Social Network Sites’.  9. See Ginsburg/Abu-Lughod/Larkin (eds), Media Worlds; Miller, Tales from Facebook; Miller/Horst (eds), Digital Anthropology; Miller et al., How the World Changed Social Media. 10. See Boyd, It’s Complicated.

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11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

See Brantner/Lobinger, ‘“Weil das absolute Poserbilder sind!”’ See Budde, Männlichkeit und gymnasialer Alltag. See Ege, ‘Ein Proll mit Klasse’, 416ff.; McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism, 54–93. See McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism. See ibid. See Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories; Yoshimi, ‘Consuming “America”’. See Sandbye, ‘Play, Process and Materiality in Japanese Purikura Photography’. See Wellgraf, Hauptschüler. See Bourdieu/Boltanski, Photography; Starl, Knipser; Raab, ‘Visuelle Wissenssoziologie der Fotografie’. See Murray, ‘Digital Images’; van Dijk, ‘Digital Photography’; Van House, ‘Personal Photography’. See Hill Collins, ‘Mammies, Matriarchs, and other Controlling Images’. See Geer, ‘Selfing versus Posing’. See Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’. See Macho, Vorbilder. See Cotta, Social Media in Southeast Turkey, 103–127. See van Dijk, The Culture of Connectivity; Payne: ‘Virality 2.0’. See Leistert/Röhle (eds), Generation Facebook; Eisenlauer, ‘Facebook as a Third Author’. See Gillespie, ‘The Relevance of Algorithms’; Beer, ‘Power through the Algorithm?’; Mager, ‘Algorithmic Ideology’. See Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion; Karatzogianni/Kuntsman (eds): Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotions; Parisi, ‘Digital Automation and Affect’. See Boltanski/Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism. See Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 259ff. See Wendt, The Allure of the Selfie. See Featherstone, ‘Body, Image and Affect in Consumer Culture’; Hansen, New Philosophy for New Media. See Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 68–75. See Schär, ‘Grenzenlose Möglichkeiten der Selbstdarstellung?’ See Dangendorf, Kleine Mädchen und High Heels. See McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism, 54–93; Albury, ‘Selfies, Sexts, and Sneaky Hats’; Dobson, ‘Laddishness Online’. See Dangendorf, Kleine Mädchen und High Heels. See McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism. See Gundle, Glamour; Thrift, ‘Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour’. See Bourdieu, Distinction, 374 ff. See Stearns, American Cool. See Frank, The Conquest of Cool; Holert, ‘Cool’. See Comaroff/Comaroff (eds), Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism. See Fiske, Reading the Popular; McRobbie: The Aftermath of Feminism. See Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 174–232. See Reckwitz, The Invention of Creativity. See Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. See Ingelmann (ed.), Female Trouble. See Butler, Gender Trouble, 175–203. See McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism, 54–93. See Deleuze/Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. See Macho, Vorbilder; Belting, Face and Mask; Weigel (ed.), Gesichter.

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54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

See Autenrieth, ‘Die Theatralisierung der Freundschaft’. See Lister, The Photographic Image in Digital Culture; Larsen/Sandby, Digital Snaps. See Lunenfeld, ‘Digitale Fotografie’. See Nökel, Die Töchter der Gastarbeiter und der Islam. See Greif (ed.), Hipster; http://muslimhipsters.tumblr.com/ (accessed 1 June 2018). See Kreutzer, Stigma ‘Kopftuch’; Korteweg/Yurdakul, The Headscarf Debate. See Schiffauer, Fremde in der Stadt, 50–70. See Göle, Europäischer Islam; Roy, Globalized Islam. See Belting, Florence and Baghdad. On the classical aesthetic of Islam, see Kermani, Gott ist schön. On current debates and visual culture, see Dornhof, Alternierende Blicke auf Islam und Europa. See Gutman, The Meanings of Macho. See Stecklina, ‘“Kleine Jungs mit zu großen Eiern”’. See Clarke, ‘The Aesthetics of Social Aspiration’. See Böhme, Fetischismus und Kultur; Museum Tinguely (ed.), Fetisch Auto. See Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 52ff. See Belting, Face and Mask. See Marchart, Die Prekarisierungsgesellschaft. See Huxel, Männlichkeit, Ethnizität und Jugend; Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 30ff., 61ff. On dynamics of escalation and de-escalation in practices of style, see Ege, ‘Ein Proll mit Klasse’, 340ff. See Willis, Learning to Labour. See Belting, Face and Mask. See Thompson, Aesthetic of the Cool; hooks, We Real Cool; Majors/Billson, Cool Pose; Maase, Das Recht der Gewöhnlichkeit. See Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. See Helsper/Kramer/Thiersch (eds), Schülerhabitus. See Melanie Mühl, ‘Generation Porno? Zu wild, zu hart, zu laut’, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9 October 2014; Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung (ed.), Jugendsexualität im Internetzeitalter. See Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung (ed.), Jugendsexualität. Fokus Bildungsdifferenzen. See Schiffauer, Migration und kulturelle Differenz, Bozkurt, Conceptualizing ‘Home’. See Schiffauer, Migration und kulturelle Differenz, 51. See Ege, ‘Ein Proll mit Klasse’, 421ff. See Nemer/Freeman, ‘Empowering the Marginalized’. See Burns, ‘Self(ie) Discipline’; Cruz/Thornham, ‘Selfies beyond Self-Representation’; Hess, ‘The Selfie Assemblage’. See Reichert, Amateure im Netz.

Chapter 4

‘Ghetto’ Pride Discourses and Practices

Pride can be viewed as the status-related affective state par excellence. In social theory there is a common perception that forms of self-valorization giving rise to pride can be viewed as emotional correlatives to experiences of social devalorization, while the criteria for legitimate pride are variable and thus remain disputed.1 Hauptschule students in marginalized neighbourhoods are more likely to be proud of their specific urban roots than their achievements in school. Although there are no actual ‘ghettoes’ in Germany, the development of a powerful and richly associative ‘ghetto’ discourse can be observed. This chapter looks at how this deeply ambivalent discourse and the practices of self-empowerment associated with it became a source of pride for teenagers in Neukölln. The question of ‘ghettoes’ in Germany can be discussed in sociological and in theoretical terms. Historically, the term ‘ghetto’ referred to the forced separation of the Jewish population from the rest of the city that spread from Venice across Europe during the Middle Ages. From the viewpoint of the majority, this configuration of social space aimed to permit economically beneficial contacts with a stigmatized group while preventing further social contact or ethnic mixing.2 Unlike other immigrant neighbourhoods, then, the ‘ghetto’ was intended not as a bridge into mainstream society but as a kind of island within the city. Alongside such Jewish enclaves, the concentration of the African-American population in Harlem in the early twentieth century is a prime example of ghettoization. But the key qualities of ghettoes as defined by urban sociology do not match deprived areas of German cities like North Neukölln: although many and varied problems

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can be identified in this part of Berlin, it is neither ethnically homogenous nor created by state dictates; it is not a clearly delineated area and in my view there are also no distinct institutionalized parallel structures.3 In sociological terms, then, districts like Neukölln that are stigmatized by the media and affected by above-average levels of poverty and unemployment cannot be referred to as ghettoes. Such findings notwithstanding, the notion of the ‘ghetto’ became established in West Germany in the 1970s as a widespread shorthand for an urban problem zone, linked in imaginary terms to African-American ‘ghettoes’ in the United States.4 Prior to this, the term had been used in Germany mainly in connection with Jewish ghettoes. For Christiane Reinecke, the adoption of the American concept of the ‘ghetto’ can be traced to West German sociologists borrowing from the Chicago School, and to the interweaving of social science, politics and the media that helped ‘ghetto’ discourse take on a life of its own beyond the academic sphere.5 She interprets the rise of ‘ghetto’ talk in the 1970s as an expression of a new crisis mindset in which economic uncertainty and issues of migration crystallized around a ‘crisis of the cities’. In a similar vein, the renaissance of ‘ghetto’ discourse in the 1990s, when public debate centred on mass unemployment and xenophobia, can also be read as crisis-related. In Germany today, urban districts associated with migrants or ‘underclasses’6 are still referred to as ‘ghettoes’ in political discourse, in the media, and in everyday usage, but also in certain academic contexts. This labelling is sometimes linked with processes of commercialization and marketing in an attempt to derive profit from social marginalization.7 In this second sense, rather than referring to any real geography, the term becomes a discursive placeholder, with place names like Neukölln symbolizing broader problems within society.8 The ‘ghetto’ label impacts on life in such areas: the neighbourhoods in question are devalorized and interventions legitimized, while those who identify with, play on, or distance themselves from the ‘ghetto’ image adjust their patterns of language, clothing and interaction accordingly.9 Since the 2000s, a number of ethnographic studies have examined adaptations of the ‘ghetto’ theme among Berlin teenagers. Ayhan Kaya showed how migrant youths constructed diasporic identities using various forms of hip-hop, associating ‘Kreuzberg’ with a feeling of belonging and security.10 Working with a group of teenagers, also in Kreuzberg, Julia Eksner reconstructed the ways they used stylized ‘Turkish German’ to set themselves apart from outsiders: while these poses reproduce ‘ghetto ideologies’ of criminality and ‘tough life on the street’, she also describes how the teenagers would switch to different registers in other linguistic situations.11 Moritz Ege discussed physical and sartorial performances involving the Berlin clothing brand Picaldi that had strong ‘ghetto’ association in the early 2000s.12 Using the example of

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teenagers in Cologne, Miriam Yildiz and Sonja Preissig listed a wide range of ways of dealing with socio-spatial stigmatization running from boredom, pride and attempts at justification and defence through to apologetic and distancing gestures, with neutral positioning seemingly not an option.13 With reference to earlier research on teenage gangs by Herrmann Tertilt, my own work interpreted the gang ‘Neukölln Ghetto Boys’ as a social group operating outwardly with aggressive gestures of intimidation while focussing inwardly on cohesion and mutual support, helping its members to process a lack of recognition from their families and society at large.14 This chapter examines the rules of ‘ghetto’ discourse and everyday patterns of ‘ghetto’ practice, interpreting them as ambivalent forms of self-empowerment and outlining a performative definition of ‘ghetto’.

The Ambivalence of ‘Ghetto’ Discourse The discursive construction of specific places as ‘ghettoes’ follows identifiable rules. In the eyes of the majority, they are negatively charged and badly designed spaces, ‘panic-stricken’ or ‘explosive’ spaces, spaces of ‘anomie’ and ‘pathology’.15 This basic construct is associated with dangers that change over time and depending on the specific location: in Germany since the 1990s this means mainly talk of ‘parallel societies’ and ‘teenage gangs’ and, since the 2000s, ‘Islamicization’ and ‘terrorism’.16 Berlin’s inner-city districts of Neukölln and Wedding have been referred to in the media as migrant ‘ghettoes’, and the term has also been used with other qualifiers for the peripheral districts of Spandau, Marzahn and Hohenschönhausen. Towards the end of the 1990s, Neukölln, which had long received little media attention, came to be seen as a problem district linked with migration, crime and unemployment.17 Debate around the troubles at the RütliSchule – where teachers complained in an open letter to the press about everyday violence and disengagement among the mostly migrant student body – reinforced these perceptions, as well as shifting the focus towards religion and ethnicity. In this way, Neukölln came to serve across Germany as a richly evocative symbol in discussions around immigration. Then, since around 2010, gentrification became the more prominent issue, gradually pushing the district’s ‘ghetto’ status into the background or being discussed alongside it. From the perspective of those concerned, talk of ‘the ghetto’ is marked by a striking ambivalence, serving both as a negative image and as a resource for identification. The way such places are constructed in literature, film and music matches the two sides of historical ghettoes which, as well as being stigmatized spaces, were experienced by their inhabitants as spaces of

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shelter, identification and pride. In this context, Loïc Wacquant points out that control/exploitation/deprivation and shelter/solidarity/cultural flourishing are two sides of the same coin.18 The artists and works discussed below are not rare outsiders but well-known and much-discussed American and German figures from the fields of ‘street’ literature, ‘hood’ films and ‘gangsta’ rap whose popularity gives them an important role in the perpetuation of ‘ghetto’ discourse.19 In my analysis of discussions of the ‘ghetto’ I have drawn primarily on theories developed by Michel Foucault and Ernesto Laclau. Using Foucault’s understanding of discourse as a rule-based formation of anonymous systems of judgement, resulting in an ‘order of things’, I examine the rules governing the formation of ‘ghetto’ discourse.20 And using Laclau’s notion of the ‘empty signifier’ I explore the political question of how the term ‘ghetto’ became a familiar buzzword in current debate in German around exclusion and belonging in the city.21 Street Literature: The Symbolic Importance of ‘Ghetto’ Since I am more interested in the genesis of discursive structures and the resulting adaptations of ‘ghetto’ discourse than in a conventional analysis of media coverage, I want to leave Berlin-Neukölln behind for a few pages to look at the American prehistory of the spatial practices of today’s youth. Terms like ‘street literature’ or ‘urban fiction’ refer to a literary genre shaped by African-American writers in which ‘ghetto’ experiences and the dark side of American cities play a central role.22 Though such motifs have a long tradition both in and outside the United States, it was not until the 1970s that the conventions of the genre became established, with its specific mix of crime story, gangster poses and settings in the African-American ‘ghetto’. References to the African-American culture of this period are important because it was the time when the specific portrayals of the ‘ghetto’ emerged that were picked up and developed by hip-hop culture from the 1980s, and which are now influencing the self-positioning of Hauptschule students in Neukölln via their contact with and adaptations of rap music. After Iceberg Slim, Donald Goines is considered the most important pioneer of ‘ghetto’ literature in the United States. In the early 1970s he wrote sixteen novels about life in the ‘ghettoes’ of his native Detroit and other cities like New York and Los Angeles. The gripping stories feature cool characters, young prostitutes and hard drugs, fast sex and raw violence. Written in rapid sequence, most of the books included the first chapters of the next volume. Although libraries initially dismissed them, these paperbacks sold over five million copies during the author’s lifetime. Goines expanded the urban noir genre that had been flourishing since the 1940s in film and literature, adding an African-American perspective and shaping

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the genre of street literature as it emerged in the 1970s.23 Goines’s short life would have made a good novel in its own right and it is likely that many of his fictional characters are drawn more or less directly from his lived experience.24 As a teenager, he lied about his age and joined up to fight in the Korean War, from which he returned with a heroin habit. To fund his addiction he committed crimes and wrote books, his first novel being written in prison. In the early 1970s he produced several titles a year, until 1974 when, aged thirty-seven, he was shot dead in his Detroit apartment. Inner City Hoodlum – his last book, probably completed by the publisher, and published posthumously in 1975 – bore all of the author’s usual trademarks. ‘Smack, money and murder in the black cesspool of Los Angeles’ proclaims the cover, with a photograph of a muscular young AfricanAmerican man in bed, a naked woman by his side and a pistol in his hand. This stylization epitomizes the African-American figure of the pimp as shaped since the late 1960s by the novels of Goines and Iceberg Slim and in the ‘Blaxploitation’ films that were the cinematic equivalent of street literature.25 The twin connotations of the word pimp define the pop cultural figure in question – a kind of ‘ghetto’ dandy typically characterized by ostentatious clothing and expensive jewellery combined with misogynous behaviour and criminal activities. The exaggerated egocentrism and the unbridled hedonism of this proud but precarious social climber symbolize the central contradictions of capitalism in a specifically ‘ghetto’ manner. As well as the figure of the pimp, street literature also established the narrative and linguistic conventions of ‘ghetto’ portrayals. At the beginning of Inner City Hoodlum, the black teenager Josh is shot by a watchman while committing a robbery, after which his accomplices Johnny and Buddy kill the watchman and slide into a vortex of violence. The two inseparable friends quit school, which can no longer teach them anything useful for their survival in the ghetto in any case, and they get off to a good start working for a local gangster boss, the Duke. But when they learn that he is using Johnny’s fifteen-year-old sister Leslie as a prostitute, they fall out, after which the Duke kills Leslie, and Buddy and Johnny also end up dead. The police are on the case, but always one step behind. The ‘ghetto’ provides the urban setting for this and other novels by Goines, as in a particularly striking scene where police officer Spence brings Josh’s mother the news of his death. Josh Newton’s mother lived in a small house that rested just beneath the Harbor Freeway near Manchester Boulevard. Around hers were other small homes, quickly decaying with age and the inability and desire of the residents to keep them up. Only Mrs. Newton’s home proudly displayed a perfectly green front lawn and a beautiful rose garden on either side of the badly cracked

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cement sidewalk leading up to the front door. Detective Jim Spencer stood at the end of the walkway and admired the little white frame house. The roar of the freeway rush-hour traffic was deafening, the smell of carbon monoxide and lead from the exhausts of the thousands of automobiles that passed only yards away was sickening. But even with that, thought Spence, the little house seemed to transcend the blight around it. … The house was clean and orderly, the furnishings were ancient. Nothing in the small house was newer than ten years old, but beyond that, there was a terrific sense of pride in everything about the place. Spence sighed to himself. Someone, he thought, tries to hold their head up and they get this. Damn.26

In Inner City Hoodlum, the ambivalence of ‘ghetto’ discourse is reflected in the outwardly visible pride in living an honest, upstanding life under such conditions. In order to put food on their parents’ table and keep their siblings in school, however, the sons of these honourable African-American families almost inevitably turn to crime. And the story usually ends not with petty robberies but rather, as in the case of Josh and his friends, with the death of the young protagonists. In Germany, too, although the tradition of ‘ghetto’ literature does not go back as far, motifs from the American version were adopted and applied to the lives of young urban males of Turkish and Arab origin. American street literature played an indirect role here via the reception of hip-hop, as prominent rappers like Nas and Tupac referred to Goines and influenced a new generation of musicians in Germany. Writers with an affinity to hip-hop culture like Feridun Zaimoğlu then used ‘ghetto’ motifs and applied them to migrant milieus. Especially Zaimoğlu’s publications of the 1990s – Kanak Sprak, Abschaum and Koppstoff – contain clear references to the ‘ghetto’. Abschaum tells ‘the true story of Ertan Ongun’, a drug-addicted criminal Turkish-German man from the north of Germany. Koppstoff presents ‘discords from the margins of society’ from a female perspective, a counterpart to Zaimoğlu’s 1995 debut Kanak Sprak. ‘Kanak’ is derived from the German slur Kanake, used to refer pejoratively to immigrants from Southeast Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, reinterpreted and reclaimed here as a source of pride. ‘Sprak’ (from the German Sprache, language) refers to a form of ‘ghetto’ talk, a rough idiom full of directness and swearing, not unlike the ‘trash talk’ discussed above in chapter 2 on provocation. Zaimoğlu links this assertive use of the term Kanake to the Black Power movement in the United States, and his use of crude language is intended as a literary response to a ‘whining, smarmy, publically funded “guest worker” literature’.27 Kanak Sprak brings together densely written accounts of life by marginal male migrants – rappers, unemployed people and pimps, junkies, prostitutes and vagrants – an excluded group with a shared sense of being considered inferior. In this context, the

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adoption of ‘ghetto’ symbolism and language reflects an attempt at selfassertion, presenting a ‘hard exterior with a soft heart’.28 With an aggressive ‘macho’ pose, these figures reject the odious image of the well-behaved integrated migrant, thus embracing an outsider position and potentially consolidating their own marginalization. The ‘ghetto’ is used here as a metaphor for the problems faced in immigrant neighbourhoods, referring to an urban space that offers shelter and that must therefore be defended, but which can also become a trap where a life on the margins seems inevitable. The ‘ghetto’ thus stands for both empowerment and exclusion. Although they now feel somewhat dated, in the 1990s Zaimoğlu’s ‘ghetto’ books were popular and added a discussion of migration and cultural hybridity to the debate around Leitkultur (guiding/core culture) and national self-image that arose after German reunification. Zaimoğlu’s texts have been adapted by filmmakers, dramatists and artists, and he was a founding member of ‘Kanak Attac’, a political, theoretical and artistic network active around the turn of the millennium that saw itself as a form of oppositional migrant self-empowerment.29 In order to understand the vehemence of this counterattack by the excluded, it is important to consider the political climate since German reunification. In the 1990s, increased use of the term ‘ghetto’ went hand in hand with the stigmatization of migrant neighbourhoods and a nationalistic fear of Überfremdung (a feeling of being overwhelmed by foreign cultures). Migration researcher Ayse Çaglar examined how, in this context, ‘ghetto’ became a key symbol in the order of discourse on ethnicity and cultural diversity.30 The term was used by politicians, journalists and academics, but also by some of those living in the neighbourhoods in question. The symbolism of the ‘ghetto’ spread through political, media, everyday and academic discourse, paving the way for similar terms like ‘deprived areas’, ‘problem neighbourhoods’ and ‘parallel societies’. Çaglar borrowed the concept of ‘key symbols’ from the prominent American ethnologist Sherry Ortner, who distinguishes between ‘summarizing’ (often religious) and ‘elaborating’ cultural key symbols, subdividing the latter into action-based ‘key scenarios’ offering recipes for action and ‘root metaphors’ offering a sense of orientation.31 According to Çaglar, ‘ghettoes’ fall into this last category: metaphors that make it possible to order and communicate diffuse everyday experiences. Key metaphors are both illuminating and limiting; they facilitate links between disparate elements, but the resulting insights are moulded by the discursive logic of the key symbols. Critics of ‘ghetto’ discourse point out that the dominance of this symbolism fosters negative views that ignore both the unspectacular ‘lows of everyday life’32 and the diversity of often transnational lifestyles within immigrant neighbourhoods.

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Cinema: From South Central Los Angeles to Berlin-Neukölln Whereas both street literature and Blaxploitation films tended to remain on the margins of the established culture industry, the 1990s saw the emergence of ‘ghetto’ movies as a commercially successful genre in Hollywood. The frequent appearance of rappers in these films and the references to storylines from street literature reflect the interwovenness of representations of the ‘ghetto’ in writing, music and film. Pioneering works in this genre were the American coming-of-age pictures Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society from the early 1990s, both set in South Central, an area of Los Angeles depicted here as rundown. The two movies revolve around the supposedly typical conflicts faced by an African-American teenager growing up in the ‘ghetto’, ending tragically in Menace II Society but more happily in Boyz n the Hood. The storylines also highlight the importance of love, care and friendship in the ‘ghetto’. Caine, the main character in Menace II Society, grows up with his grandparents following the early drug-related death of his parents. At the beginning of the film, he visits a Korean liquor store with his friend O Dog. An argument ensues and O Dog shoots the store owner’s family. This plunges Caine into a spiral of violence involving murder, drug dealing and robbery. His relationship with his girlfriend Ronnie offers a potential way out, but Caine’s violent past catches up with him just as he is planning to escape the ‘ghetto’ with her. In Boyz n The Hood, the main character Tré is sent to Los Angeles by his father after getting into a fight at school; he, too, learns the life of the streets and becomes involved in acts of violence. When his friend Ricky dies, in a key scene in the film, Tré decides not to take part in the campaign of revenge prescribed by the laws of the ‘ghetto’, a campaign that will take the lives of both enemies and, later, friends. Above all, it is the care of his responsible father and the relationship with his girlfriend Brandi that help Tré to survive in the ‘ghetto’. Among film theorists, these and other ‘ghetto’ movies were credited with a particular intensity.33 In their view, the ambivalence of life in the ‘ghetto’ was not only explored on the narrative level, but also experienced in a more direct physical and sensory manner by those watching in the cinema. Here, in contrast to conventional gangster movies or film noir dramas, white film critics and audiences seemed less inclined to distinguish between real and fictional violence by male African-American teenagers. In the ‘white cultural imagination’ the link between the two seemed so strong that the fictional character of the film’s plot was lost from view, allowing the violence portrayed on screen to be experienced in more intense form. Cultural theorists like Brian Massumi refer to such physical impulses taking place ‘automatically’ below the threshold of consciousness as affects.34 But

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this view of affect as a kind of pure sociality, beyond cultural categorizations, overlooks the shaping of emotions by cultural processes.35 In fact, it is ‘ghetto’ discourse that perpetuates the association of marginalized male teenagers from ethnic minorities in the United States and Western Europe with violence and criminality, a link that must be understood in terms of the history of discourse. Most often, however, the related feelings of fear and distrust towards inhabitants of the ‘ghetto’ on the one hand and, on the other, their proud, defiant responses and forms of self-empowerment that play with ‘ghetto’ symbolism, are not identified as the consequences of processes of subjectivation, but experienced directly, with no such reflection. A political reading of the positive and negative feelings associated with the ‘ghetto’ must place the production and impact of such feelings at the centre of a cultural analysis of stigmatized urban spaces.36 In Germany, a range of film and TV formats use ‘ghetto’ symbolism, from the Cologne edition of the popular police drama series Tatort, to reporting on the impact of the Hartz IV welfare laws in Berlin, to documentaries about ‘deprived areas’ in the Ruhr Valley and right-wing extremism in the former East Germany. In the absence of actual ghettoes in this country, the term serves primarily as a kind of ‘empty signifier’ that joins a chain of disparate elements into a single discursive whole.37 Deprived of its specific meaning in this way, ‘ghetto’ ultimately becomes shorthand for an equivalence between very different problems, obscuring their various socio-structural causes. ‘Ghetto’ discourse that operates with ‘empty signifiers’ in this way is a form of depoliticization and a vehicle for blame shifting, as the social structures, political liabilities and economic conditions driving processes of urban segregation are sidelined, focussing instead on the supposedly destructive behaviours of the inhabitants. The Berlin district of Neukölln is one of these symbolically charged spaces often presented in the media as the epitome of the ‘ghetto’. The ambivalence discussed above is articulated in the contrasting views offered by the movies Knallhart (meaning hardboiled, badass, brutal) and Neukölln Unlimited (working title: Life’s a Battle). Made by Detlef Buck in 2006, Knallhart tells the story of a fresh-faced blond boy from the middle-class district of Zehlendorf who ends up in the ‘ghetto’ of Neukölln, where he enters a downward spiral of crime and violence. Neukölln is portrayed as the more dreary and dangerous part of town, but also as the more fascinating and exciting. In Knallhart, the grey houses and the busy streets aim to create an atmosphere of drabness and oppression. In contrast, Neukölln Unlimited, made in 2010, could be characterized as a ‘colourful’ film. Visual elements like bright signage in foreign languages play a key part in the collective symbolism of the ‘ghetto’. Based on a striking visual politics of colour, an established cultural link can be identified, with grey symbolizing

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drabness and poverty, and thus ultimately the ‘ghetto’. An alternative model is the ‘colourful’ multicultural immigrant neighbourhood. At the same time, ‘problem hotspots’ are marked in an alarming shade of red in maps like those included in the Sozialatlas Berlin produced by Berlin’s municipal authorities in cooperation with urban sociologists.38 Whether urban districts like Neukölln are cast as depressingly grey, cheerfully colourful, or dangerously red depends crucially on the speaker’s position within ‘ghetto’ discourse. As a documentary film, Neukölln Unlimited tells the story of the Akkouch family who live in Berlin but face deportation to Lebanon. The film crew interview the siblings Hassan, Lial and Maradona and accompany them over the period of a year. As the press release for the film makes clear, this film breaks with the dominant negative views, offering a positive image of Neukölln and its inhabitants. Neukölln. A city within the city with a population of 300,000. People from more than 160 countries live here. The district is famous for its multicultural community – but it is also notorious, at least since Knallhart and the highprofile crisis at the Rütli-Oberschule. Neukölln as portrayed in the media stands for danger, gangs and drugs. But is it really like that? The Akkouchs are a ‘typical’ Neukölln family: young and creative, able to find a way out of any crisis. Oldest son Hassan is German breakdance champion, daughter Lial works as promoter for a boxing team, and the youngest, Maradona, wants to win a major talent show – and he might succeed. But one problem appears unsolvable: the Akkouchs come from Lebanon, having fled the civil war there, and their presence in Germany is merely tolerated. Deportation can happen quite suddenly. Neukölln Unlimited shows one year in the life of this family, accompanying them in their everyday life and struggles for recognition by the authorities and showing their unconditional wish to live in the country they love. Neukölln Unlimited is a passionate, uplifting and encouraging signal from an area many view as Germany’s answer to the Bronx. Neukölln Unlimited – a film that makes life fun!

The press release explicitly positions Neukölln Unlimited as a counter-model to negative views of the district, among others by distancing it from the earlier film Knallhart. In the film itself, Lial Akkouch perceives Neukölln as normal: ‘I don’t think Neukölln is so bad. Really it’s fine, just like every other district.’ The choice of artists and performers as the main protagonists, as well as the movie’s title and marketing campaign, present Neukölln as an extraordinarily creative and fun-loving part of town, as if the dominant negative discourse called for an equally emphatic positive counter-discourse. The polarity of the two films’ perspectives on Neukölln is exemplified by their respective portrayals of the police. In Knallhart, the police are portrayed as ‘friend and helper’, with officer Gerber finally

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the only one capable of freeing Michael and his mother from the darkness of life in the alien ‘ghetto’ of Neukölln. In Neukölln Unlimited, on the other hand, the police appear right at the start as the hostile organ of an arbitrary, racist and ruthless German state apparatus. Before dawn, police officers force their way into the Akkouchs’ apartment as grim, anonymous figures, humiliating the family and securing their temporary deportation to Lebanon in what feels like a brutal manner. I return to this specific episode in chapter 9 on social anxiety below. The promotional texts for both films offer striking examples of the way analogies in ‘ghetto’ discourse shape collective symbolism. Whereas the announcement of Neukölln Unlimited quoted above makes frequent comparisons between Neukölln and the Bronx in New York, the cover of the Knallhart DVD features a reference to ‘Parisian banlieus’. The construction of such analogies turns ‘Bronx’ and ‘banlieu’ into umbrella terms for ‘ghetto’: detached from their original frames of reference, they act as ‘floating signifiers’,39 as random-seeming labels for other urban districts. Floating signifiers are similar to the empty signifiers discussed above, their lack of specificity allowing them to be applied to different objects. According to the vague definitions used in ‘ghetto’ discourse, Neukölln becomes the German Bronx and then the German banlieu. In sociological terms, this is doubly misleading: firstly, the Bronx and the banlieus are wrongly interpreted as modern-day ‘ghettoes’, and secondly, the striking differences between the socio-spatial situations in Neukölln, New York and Paris are ignored.40 The way these films set Neukölln apart from other, wealthier parts of Berlin uses the same analogical approach, as when Knallhart establishes the special quality of Neukölln by comparing it with a similarly oversimplified version of Zehlendorf. The use of such comparisons shapes and reproduces the boldly reductive form of ‘ghetto’ discourse. As well as watching these films, some students from the Galilei-Schule were even involved in their production. Maradona, one of the central figures in Neukölln Unlimited, was attending the school at the time, and students and staff from the school were recruited for Knallhart to reflect the conditions at a ‘ghetto school’, although shooting took place at two other schools in Neukölln and Wedding. When I asked the member of staff in question, Mr Busch, about his double role as actor and teacher, he remarked drily that the film ‘was too close to reality’ but that it was nonetheless enlightening for the students involved, helping them to quickly abandon the dreams of ‘wealth and movie stardom’ prompted by their involvement in the project. Students from the school thus performed both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ version of their neighbourhood for the TV cameras. When I started my research, they asked me whether I, too, planned to make a film and seemed rather disappointed that I only wanted to write a book.

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Gangsta Rap: Leitmotifs of ‘Ghetto’ Discourse The ambivalence of ‘ghetto’ discourse can be observed in especially stark, commercially stylized form in contemporary rap music. The ‘ghetto’ is a leitmotif of US gangsta rap, a hip-hop genre in which experiences of ‘ghetto’ life are described by mainly African-American artists, focussing on fundamental tensions and conflicts. In the course of the spread and establishment of hip-hop in German youth and music culture since the 1980s, the ‘ghetto’ metaphors of gangsta rap have been transferred to German contexts. Marc Dietrich and Martin Seeliger attribute the genre’s huge popularity in Germany since the mid-1990s to a ‘vision of life connecting those who share it’, a life shaped by ‘struggles for recognition, self-assertion and self-determination, mainly by younger generations’.41 The need to assert oneself in the face of a hostile environment plays a central role in gangsta rap, with the overcoming of difficulty often presented in heroic terms, a source of pride set against outside stigmatization.42 Jay Z and Tupac, both born around 1970 in Brooklyn, New York, were pioneers in the musical portrayal of the ‘ghetto’, combining symbolic exaggeration with political condemnation. In his ‘ghetto anthem’ Hard Knock Life, Jay Z celebrates, aestheticizes and criticizes an upbringing shaped by jail, drugs and racism: ‘Instead of treated, we get tricked / Instead of kisses, we get kicked / It’s the hard knock life!’43 Tupac, too, wrote about and marketed his ‘ghetto’ roots, and the ‘underworld’ connections that led to his violent death in 1996, in many songs and as an actor in a number of ‘ghetto’ movies.44 Tupac’s Ghetto Gospel, a posthumously released single reworked by the rapper Eminem, which topped the charts in several countries, is a kind of prayer or meditation ‘to end the war on the street’, that also urgently reiterates the pop-cultural ‘ghetto’ repertoire from crack addiction to teenage violence and street murders through to Black Power resistance.45 Since its emergence in New York in the 1970s, hip-hop culture has been marked by a striking socio-spatial orientation, often with detailed references to the immediate urban surroundings. In the US context, the key symbol of the ‘ghetto’ was partially replaced by that of the ‘hood’, expanding the ‘ghetto’ motif ’s connotations by adding an allusion to familiar home terrain.46 Kristina Graaff has argued in favour of replacing the negatively charged term ‘ghetto’ in academic discourse with the more everyday notion of ‘street’.47 I have chosen to continue using ‘ghetto’, firstly because ‘street’ also has a number of similarly problematic associations,48 and secondly because references to the ‘ghetto’ are common in the discourses and practices I am discussing here. I do, however, use inverted commas as a reminder that the term refers to spaces that are constructed (by the media, by academics, by those living in these spaces) rather than reflecting a given reality.

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German-language adaptations of gangsta rap, too, have a strong socio-spatial orientation, for example via the inclusion of street names, subway stations, or views of the city. American rap music became established in Germany due to multiple interwoven factors: the presence of US troops, subcultural appropriations, use by social workers, and marketing by the culture industry.49 For German rap musicians, the racist and moral tone of ‘ghetto’ discourse since the 1990s offered an arena for creative appropriations, sometimes playfully ironic, often romanticized, mostly provocatively aggressive, sold as more or less ‘authentic’ products of a German ‘ghetto’ culture. Many German-language ‘ghetto’ songs and music videos have since been released, including Geddo by Eko Fresh or Ghettolied by Massiv. In German gangsta rap, the ‘ghetto’ functions metaphorically as a powerful symbol of exclusion, poverty and unemployment, rhetorically suggesting a certain similarity with the ‘ghetto’ in the United States. In the early 2000s, this association was promoted in particular by the then influential label Aggro Berlin. One of the most famous German-language ‘ghetto’ songs is Mein Block by the (white) Aggro Berlin rapper Sido, who at the time always performed in a mask. Following American models, the video for the song gives a tour of a supposed Berlin ‘ghetto’, symbolized in this case by a grey tower block in the Märkisches Viertel, a housing project in north Berlin, filmed in winter. We are shown an urban milieu marked by drugs, violence and prostitution, but also an urban lifestyle wholeheartedly embraced by the artist. The charisma of the city, based on urban myths, corresponds here with the production of charismatic urban figures.50 The detailed accounts of social problems in the verses are punctuated by the refrain’s demonstrative declaration of love for an urban milieu that is not explicitly referred to as a ‘ghetto’ but which is quite obviously being described as such. Sido: My Block

High-rise blocks, pollution, a few trees. People on drugs. Where dreams fall through. In this neighbourhood we can deal with this life. All my friends are from round here. I’m not scared of the guy with the knuckleduster. He’s a bit crazy, but I like him. … My city, my borough, my hood, my street, my home, my block, my thoughts, my heart, my life, my world stretches from the first to the sixteenth floor.51 In Mein Block, the concrete tower acts as a visual expression of the German ‘ghetto’ or, in terms of discourse theory, as a ‘collective symbol’ visually associated with the ordering key symbol of the ‘ghetto’, pointing beyond the specific context to the shared visual repertoire of a society. German literary scholar Jürgen Link uses ‘collective symbolism’ to refer to the entire

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system of a culture’s most widespread visual concepts.52 If one assumes that discourses are held together by a such a system, then collective symbols are hugely important in all forms of world-making, acting as ‘funnels’53 channelling the flow of knowledge while reducing and emotionalizing it, a process required to render it tangible and accessible to processes of subjectivization. Like discourses themselves, collective symbols are not static but culturally diverse and subject to change over time. In terms of tradition, high-rise apartment blocks built out of concrete slabs do not stand for the Jewish or the African-American ghetto, referring instead to a divergent German context.54 Within the symbolism of Berlin’s urban landscape and with reference to the home addresses of the teenagers I worked with, links can be made to both peripheral and inner-city ‘ghettoes’ – in Neukölln, the former category is represented by the Gropiusstadt housing project associated more with the ‘underclass’, the latter by the ‘immigrant quarter’ of North-Neukölln. Commercial American and German gangsta rap was among the favourite music of the students in Neukölln, more popular than R&B, techno and Turkish or Arab pop. In addition, as part of the workshops that had replaced regular music classes at many of Berlin’s Hauptschule schools, the teenagers were encouraged by social workers to try their hand at rapping. Alongside the themes of everyday chaos and the pains of love, destiny and the end of the world, the results also featured motifs from ‘ghetto’ discourse. SpongeBob on TV, flipping patties. I went to McDonalds and laughed at the burgers. Then I saw Massiv filling up on plankton and we sparred till Massiv got knocked out. … In Neukölln there’s tons of terrible stuff. Listen up, we need to do things differently. Many criminals running around in our area. Hey, what you do ain’t cool, it’s stupid. You all want to make fast money and always wear the best clothes. I tell you, you need to wake up. Stop kicking down, you’ll end up laughing at yourselves. Hey people, drop the criminal stuff. Tell me where you expect it all to lead. … Every day I see how the unhappy go down. When it comes to violence, no one wants to go down. I’m fed up of seeing parents pleading with God. Many will end up in jail and no one will see sense. They’re ruining the future. No one looks up, no one thinks of the others. Even little kids start dealing hashish.

The rap performed and recorded the previous year by the tenth-grade students I worked with begins with a fictional encounter, embroidered with surreal details, between a student and the well-known German gangsta rapper Massiv. The negative ‘ghetto’ image of Neukölln is evoked by buzzwords like ‘fast money’, ‘jail’ and ‘hashish’. The pedagogical thrust of the workshop is clearly audible in its result, whereas freestyle raps spontaneously performed

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by students on other occasions were far less politically correct. One can argue over whether it is such workshop programmes targeted specifically at socially marginalized teenagers that turn them into ‘ghetto’ kids, or whether they appeal to an existing interest. In either case, students are trained to talk about the ‘ghetto’ and learn to make links between gangsta rap and their own lives.

Sources of Pride: ‘Ghetto’ Adaptations by Neukölln Hauptschule Students ‘Ghetto’ discourse is shaped by a fundamental tension between devalorization and self-empowerment. Besides the literature, film and music outlined above, one might also examine ‘traditional’ media like newspapers and magazines, as well as ‘new’ media like blogs and computer games. The broadsheet Süddeutsche Zeitung, for example, uses ‘ghetto’ labelling in its coverage of Neukölln schools,55 and Grand Theft Auto, a game popular with school students, involves acting out a criminal career in urban ‘ghetto’ settings. The chosen examples suffice, however, to highlight the underlying patterns of ‘ghetto’ discourse, which rests on morally charged key and collective symbols, memorable metaphors, empty signifiers and striking analogies that each open up certain ways of seeing while closing off others. Rather than reflecting reality, ‘ghetto’ discourses are fantasies and fictions that are part of the ‘imaginary of the city’.56 Michel Foucault rejects the notion that texts can be traced back to their author’s intention or to a pre-existing reality.57 Rather than portraying reality, discourses produce the objects they deal with. Applying this to adaptations of ‘ghetto’ symbolism by Berlin teenagers allows further insights into the ambivalence of ‘ghetto’ discourse. Hauptschule students in Neukölln integrated fragments of ‘ghetto’ discourse into their self-image and everyday behaviour in many different ways. Positioning oneself within a part of the city that has been discursively labelled a ‘ghetto’ is an ambivalent procedure because one’s own behaviour is always viewed through the negative lens of hegemonic discourse, while an affirmative relationship with the place one lives seems indispensable for the establishment of a positive self-image. Appropriations of ‘ghetto’ discourse often resemble each other in the way they seek to achieve effects of self-empowerment via an active reinterpretation of stigmatizing discursive elements. In the following, I examine forms of ‘ghetto’ pride via forms of identification with urban spaces, the wearing of jewellery, and adaptations of the krump hip-hop genre. Drawing on Charles Taylor’s pioneering study on the making of modern identity, Sources of the Self, I refer to such precarious

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contemporary self-positioning in relation to spaces, objects and the body as ‘sources of pride’.58 Following a suggestion made by cultural sociologist Andreas Reckwitz, I work on the assumption that formations such as the ‘ghetto’ constitute a convergence of discourse and practice.59 This avoids an obstructive distinction between the analysis of discourse and practice, focussing attention instead on different dimensions, aspects and forms of the ‘ghetto’ complex and on its instabilities, contradictions and ambivalences. This also allows me to avoid speaking about a generalized ‘ghetto’ culture in Neukölln, instead highlighting differences and tensions between this specific practice/ discourse formation and others such as ‘school’, ‘family’ and ‘religion’. Urban Pride: Talking about Places At times, Hauptschule students expressed extremely negative views of the place where they lived, describing it as dirty and rundown, while on other occasions they would stress their sense of belonging and their boundless affection for Neukölln. Depending on the context, they referenced urban space on a range of levels: ‘Berlin’ (city level) was used in contrast to their often sceptical view of the rest of Germany; ‘Neukölln’ (district level) served as a biographical marker within Berlin; and street names like ‘Sonnenallee’ or ‘Hermannplatz’ (local level) referred to their immediate neighbourhood. Especially for young migrants, such urban identification facilitates positive collective positioning beyond the demands for clear declarations of loyalty demanded by a discourse of belonging dominated by the nation state.60 References on district and local levels included elements of the negative discourse prevailing in the media, but this was also countered by idealized views of Neukölln and feelings of belonging with respect to streets, squares and specific blocks – a difficult balancing act for which ambivalent ‘ghetto’ discourse provided role models and narrative scripts, while hip-hop culture offered a frame of reference due to the way its focus on urban space has specialized in forms of territorial appropriation.61 My discussions with groups of students on the subject of gangsta rap produced contradictory and competing appropriations of ‘ghetto’ discourse. During a project day, I had the opportunity to conduct a YouTube session with the two tenth-grade classes in the school’s only room with the necessary equipment. We began by watching preselected videos, which were then discussed, before students were allowed to screen their own choices. Before the session, I passed round sheets of paper for students to list their favourite music, and Tupac and Sido were named several times. After watching the videos for Tupac’s Ghetto Gospel and Sido’s Mein Block with class 10b, the students made many links to their own neighbourhood.

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Elton: Sido has a positive attitude to his neighbourhood. It has everything he needs. He’s proud there’s something going on there. Ali: Neukölln may have a problem with violence, too, but before, around ten years ago, it was worse. Now it’s different. There’s still unemployment, people on welfare, violence, but not as bad as before. Drugs are now at Kottbusser Tor and Wedding is becoming the new Neukölln. Samantha: There’s a German who lives in our building, beyond the courtyard, who deals on Leinestrasse and I have to go shopping there. And sometimes he opens the door and spits right at me. And there are loads of junkies in the basement of our building, I had to go down there once to get my sister’s bike. I was really scared! We live on the first floor. This is what it’s like in most neighbourhoods round here. But when the police come, no one ever knows anything. Ali: This is just music business. He’s a businessman. Everyone in the video is getting paid, those aren’t prostitutes, they’re models or people he knows. Sido’s no big mafia, he just does his work – same as we’re sitting here. Except his work is a bit dirtier, more insulting, more sexist. The youth are given bad role models – ‘Oh, I want to be like that, too!’ – but that’s his work, same as other people make action movies. Thomas: He shows what goes on behind the facades of the concrete tower blocks. Ali: I know people who still deal drugs but we grew up together and we’re like brothers. I can’t just say: ‘Fuck off, I want nothing more to do with you.’ As a good friend, I can maybe tell them ‘Stop doing that!’ Sido is the same. He grew up there, with his friends, cousins, and all the rest. But he doesn’t say ‘You’re bad for me, I’m out of here!’ That’s not on. I’m the same. If I see someone doing worse than me, going astray, I try to help him. Tupac was like that, too. He wanted to do good, then he went astray and then he kept going back and forth. He was the same. And then he got shot. Samantha: On VIVA I heard this was his farewell song. He really did get shot, like it says in the song. Elton: Tupac is still alive!

The wavering value judgements in this conversation reflect the ambivalences and tensions of ‘ghetto’ discourse. On the positive side, they emphasized the solidarity of rappers with the neighbourhood they claim as their own. Sido’s professional ethos as a player in the music business was also respected and compared with my work as a university sociologist. Mention was made of the bad example set by gangsta rap – at the students’ request, we also watched Sido’s song Schlechtes Vorbild (Bad Example) – but also of the potential of a healthy moral compass to exert a positive effect on others. In this conversation, abstract references to the urban space of Neukölln

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were dominated by more positive assessments of a gradual improvement of the socio-spatial situation, while specific descriptions from the students’ own lives were dominated by negative examples, in particular involving drug-related crime. Several more discursive fragments were picked up in the course of the discussion, sometimes combined in distinctive new ways, as when Wedding figured not as the next fashionable neighbourhood but as a new problem zone, departing from the usual narrative of that time. The final questioning of Tupac’s death can also be interpreted figuratively: for the students, Tupac is still alive because the conflicts he articulated and the lifestyles performed by gangsta rap still feel relevant to them. Historicizing remarks like ‘not as bad as before’ reflected shifts in discourse around Neukölln. As mentioned above, during my field research in the years 2012/13, the district was marked by a contradictory mix of ‘ghetto’ and gentrification discourse, with the topic of schools playing a special role due to the ‘Rütli scandal’ of 2006.62 During my previous research on Hauptschule students in 2008/9, ‘ghetto’ discourse was more dominant in Neukölln, but then, too, students were ambivalent towards it, adopting negative views from the media but also stressing the contrast between these images and the normal, mundane quality of their own lives. During this first period of field research, two students moved away from Neukölln with their families, a move they interpreted as an escape from dirt and neglect. By 2012/2013, perceptions had changed, the students had a clearer view of changes in their neighbourhood, and media reports increasingly referred to Neukölln as a ‘former problem area’.63 This occasionally led to contradictory socio-spatial positions, but it also created new options for distancing and relativization. In class 10a, a discussion of the same songs prompted students to reflect on the media image of Neukölln, a gradual departure from ‘ghetto’ discourse relating to the district, or at least an increasingly retrospective viewpoint. Mustafa: These journalists drive me mad. I’m always watching television, I switch to Stern TV, they’re talking about Neukölln, making Neukölln sound like the worst place in the world. They say Neukölln is criminal and who knows what else. Interjection: It is criminal! Kai: Every week a shooting! Jamil: A shooshing! Mustafa: One reaction is to say: ‘I’m cool. My district is cool.’ There’s a camera in front of me and it’s live, so the person plays it cool: ‘Yeah, I live in Neukölln, in the ghetto, etc.’ He just wants the attention. But there are also people who tell the actual truth.

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Kai [raps]: We’re the ghetto boys. Here comes Neukölln, we’re the KHB boys. Mohamad: A few years ago, all the gangs still existed here: NGB and KHB and Spinne, etc. The area was bad then because there were so many gangs that all just wanted to be better than the others, so they did robberies to show they had more money, more power, that they were stronger, etc. They robbed people and beat people up. To build up their reputation and gain respect for their name. S.W.: During my last field study, I accompanied one of the Neukölln Ghetto Boys. Mustafa: Yes, but they don’t exist anymore, they dissolved the gang. Mohamad: I think Spinne still exists. Kai: The Hells Angels and the Bandidos exist. Those are real gangs! Theo: Gang bang!

Prompted by one student’s indignation over what he perceived as excessively negative media coverage, a discussion arose, punctuated by the usual ironic comments and spontaneous raps, about whether Neukölln was a ‘ghetto’. Although the student’s view of the urban space was framed by the image of the ‘ghetto’, the way they dealt with the corresponding stereotypes was playful and thoughtful. The dissolution or ongoing existence of local gangs – in this case that of ‘Spinne’ (German for spider), the ‘Neukölln Ghetto Boys’ (NGB) and the ‘Köllnische Heide Boys’ (KHB) – was interpreted as a measure of ‘ghettoization’. In the course of the conversation, tensions and friction emerged between largely irreconcilable realistic and constructivist views: an implicit link to reality, once again combining mentions of actual crime with claims of unspectacular urban normality, contrasted with references to the performative character of ‘ghetto’ discourse, accompanied in turn by a critique both of media hysteria and journalistic ignorance and of the way young people perform for the camera when encouraged to do so. In her studies of the transformation of urban spaces into social places, Doreen Massey stresses that places do not offer clear, static identities, but are characterized instead by competing, conflicting forms of appropriation that change over time.64 Gangsta rap has brought forth ‘spatial stories’65 that are richly associative, disjointed and fragmentary, narratives with ambivalent, contradictory and incompatible readings. With their digressions and improvisations, the students’ stories affirmed, relativized or criticized the discursive order of ‘ghetto’ discourse. Their narratives created a Neukölln full of contradictions that was considered both as home and as a hotbed of violence and crime.

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Black Pride: Material Culture After the Easter vacation I was telling some students about my trip to Brazil and one of them sighed: ‘Sometimes I dream of really going into the ghetto. In Rio de Janeiro or New York and then to hang around with the negroes there. But they probably think we’re total pussies, they just gun each other down straight away.’ In addition to a longing to travel to faraway countries, this student articulated a cultural elective affinity with African-Brazilian and African-American populations similarly impacted by social marginalization, but also a feeling of insecurity concerning his own ‘ghetto’ status as a Hauptschule student from Berlin. In the following, I examine this elective affinity, including its peculiarities, using the example of the cultural history of gold and silver chains in hip-hop fashion.66 In commercial mainstream rap, experiences of social marginalization are met not with shame and submission, but with displays of status. With reference to Bourdieu’s classic study of the ‘fine distinctions’, one might argue that sub-bourgeois classes, too, are now capable of aesthetic judgements that go beyond the taste for necessity, but that their versions of luxury consumerism are also accompanied by new bourgeois forms of moral distancing from the showy displays of the underclass.67 In global hip-hop, such displays are referred to using the term ‘bling’, with key roles played by shiny cars, full breasts and expensive jewellery. Tricia Rose speaks in this context of ‘a style nobody can deal with’, a joyfully parodic style whose egocentrism, misogyny and commercialism irritate even well-meaning observers.68 This style is a grotesque exaggeration of consumer mores in capitalist-patriarchal class society, highlighting its contradictions in joyfully lascivious performances. This has a long tradition in African-American history, specifically in the figure of the pimp, which played an important part in street literature before becoming a stylistic role model in West Coast rap in the 1990s. Alongside other items of jewellery (watches, rings, gold teeth), gold and silver chains play a central role in the ‘bling-bling’ world of hip-hop. In 1980, on the cover of his debut album, rap pioneer Kurtis Blow was the first to wear nothing but an array of chains, while in the decade that followed Run-DMC turned outsize chains into a staple of hip-hop fashion. Since then, rap has seen an ever-evolving chain culture, including parodic variants like the chain around the neck of the black panther on the cover of LL Cool J’s 1989 album Walking with a Panther, status-oriented variants like the chain with the Death Row logo worn by Tupac and others signalling an association with the leading hip-hop label of the 1990s, as well as other over-stylized variants including the huge $300,000 Horus chain worn by Kanye West in the video for his 2010 single Power. References to power are key here, as the chains worn by African-American musicians recall those

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worn by slaves, making their symbolic appropriation a gesture of self-empowerment in the ongoing struggle against racist oppression. With the trans-Atlantic spread of ‘ghetto’ literature, movies and music, gold and silver chains also gained popularity in German youth culture, becoming a bone of contention in the fight for supremacy between the German gangsta rappers Kollegah and Kool Savas. In his 2007 song Kuck auf die Goldkette, Kollegah made especially direct use of chains as a gesture of male self-empowerment: ‘Look at the gold chain, always freshly polished. / Look at the gold chain, no doubt about it / … it shows that Kollegah is like Adam – a man in full … no doubt about it, look at the gold chain.’ Kool Savas then satirized Kollegah’s claims: ‘Look at the wooden chain / sadly it’s not polished / I’m freshly shaved’.69 Later he even marketed a wooden chain with his initials. On the streets of Neukölln, the wearing of gold and silver chains by young men mainly signals an orientation towards hip-hop fashion, often worn with trainers, baggy T-shirts and baseball caps, and combined with expansive, casual body language. Such ‘sidewalk’ displays do not aim for bourgeois status; instead, gestures of power, success and money remain tied to an ‘outlaw’ pose of coolness and toughness. In Berlin’s migrant neighbourhoods, shops have emerged to cater for these fashions, with cheap jewellers to be found in Neukölln mainly along the Karl-Marx-Strasse and in Wedding on Müllerstrasse and Badstrasse. Some shops were known among students for selling fake gold and silver at especially low prices, while some Arab shops also sold religious and political emblems such as Allah symbols or Palestine pendants. Alongside a traditional range aimed mainly at their female clientele, these shops also stocked hip-hop-style gold and silver chains aimed primarily at young men, at the time of my research mainly Byzantine chains, Figaro chains and flat-link chains, each with a distinct pattern and design, but all tending to be longer and thicker than ‘conventional’ male or female jewellery. They cost between 20 and around 100 euros, with most pendants costing between 20 and 30 euros. The chain-wearing students at the Galilei-Schule took their cues from fellow students and from prevailing cultural figures like the ‘gangsta’ and ‘bling-bling’ rappers, using them to help process problems resulting from their social status in symbolic form.70 Had there been a ‘bling’ contest among the students at the school, no one could have beaten Kai, who presented himself as the ultimate embodiment of the chain-wearing ‘Yugo macho’ and upcoming ‘Neukölln pimp’. Kai liked to show off with expensive designer clothes and boasted about his many girlfriends. During our YouTube session, he sang along loudly to Mike Posner’s song Cooler Than Me, which features scenes from the life of a rich playboy, following up with an animated rap.

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Kai: He’s not cool, because he’s no cooler than me. Not one bit. Arrogant as a diamond, wearing a rhinestone chain. I’m arrogant, maybe it’s true. The Bosnian from the South, can these eyes lie? I have fun with women, wake up in the afternoon, like Charlie Harper, wear a belt made from the skin of Alice Schwarzer. You all have to squeeze into the Volkswagen and I show off my Colgate smile.

Kai applied the swaggering song title to himself, provocatively stressing his cool arrogance and associating it with glittering chains. This was followed by lines from the song Badboyz 4 Life by German rapper Key One, with ‘Greek from the South’ altered to refer to his own origins. Another student called out ‘Stolen from Key One!’ but Kai claimed to have invented the lines himself. When I asked him, he was able to tell me about Charlie Harper, the playboy lead played by Charlie Sheen in the series Two and a Half Men, but he didn’t know who Alice Schwarzer was (she is Germany’s most prominent feminist). The degree of identification with role models, the level of self-reflexive distance to constructed personas, and the ability to code-switch varied strongly from student to student, with fashion missteps and awkward performances far more common than convincing ‘ghetto’ poses. Tensions arose between displays of ‘ghetto’ amorality and the demonstrative religiosity of several Arab students, between an emphasis on physical dominance and visible actual states of physical fitness, and between high-fiving casualness and the post-adolescent uncertainty of many students. There were also issues of bad timing, and conflicts with ‘school’ as a formation of practice/ discourse, as discussed above in chapter 3 on coolness with reference to Sven (who often wore chains, sometimes T-shirts with rappers on like Run-DMC, and was very reluctant to remove his baseball cap) and his teacher’s desperation at his ‘ghetto’ coolness. The pioneering anthology, The Social Life of Things, suggests a shift from one-dimensional economic models to the social life of things and the cultural biographies of objects.71 It has been rightly pointed out that the metaphor of biography is misleading when applied to objects, implying beginnings and endings, wholeness and autonomy, and thus obscuring their fragmentary and ambiguous character.72 But with regard to the use of gold and silver chains by Hauptschule students, such approaches can serve to highlight the cultural entanglement and social embeddedness of objects.73 For teenagers in Neukölln, luxury goods like gold and silver chains sold by local stores acted primarily as markers signalling self-assertion, coolness and style as a way of claiming social status. These social functions depend on visibility-enhancing qualities of the material and the cultural connotations of jewellery. However, such gestures of self-empowerment can also fail,

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contributing to a further societal devalorization of the ‘gold chain wearers’. This happens above all when the stylistic peculiarities and political thrust of hip-hop culture are misunderstood, when the cultural biography of gold and silver chains in rap music is ignored, and when displays of ‘bling’ fashion are deprecated as proof of bad character. Body Pride: Krump As well as identification with urban space and the use of objects, the body, too, can be a source of pride for teenagers in Neukölln. As mentioned above, physical capital played such a central role for these students mainly due to their lack of access to other forms of capital.74 Although various kinds of hip-hop dance were popular at the Galilei-Schule (breakdance, locking, popping), through the influence of local youth clubs Neukölln became the centre of an especially aggressive-looking form known as krump. Krump is a dance style derived from clowning in the African-American community in South Central Los Angeles in the early 2000s.75 In the early 1990s, at the time of the Rodney King riots, clowning emerged when Thomas Johnson, a drug dealer who had done time in jail, became popular with children and teenagers as the hip-hop dancing comedian ‘Tommy the Clown’. He saw clowning as a way of keeping youngsters away from the violence and crime of the ‘ghetto’. Alumni of his Clown Dancing Academy include Tight Eyez and Lil’ C, dancers who went on to establish krump in the early 2000s, a more emotional dance style less oriented towards entertainment. At the same time, krump music emerged as an especially danceable version of West Coast rap. Krump can be understood as an aesthetic processing of experiences of exclusion. With a repertoire of basic moves – foot-stomps, arm-swings, chest-pops and jabs – the body is used to tell personal stories, mostly angry stories of poverty and marginalization, violence and racism. On the one hand, the dancers seek flow states and experiences of transcendence; on the other, krump often occurs in spontaneous or organized contests (battles) between crews, with high levels of audience participation. The audience see themselves as ‘fams’, a kind of (substitute) family, which is attractive especially for teenagers from precarious family backgrounds, also offering them an alternative to gang membership. Krump culture includes a Christian response to street violence: casting krumping as a kind of prayer gives the teenagers access to spiritual experience, and an emphasis on moral values fosters positive development. With this demonstrative seriousness and virtuousness, krump sets itself radically apart from the ‘bling-bling’ world of commercial West Coast rap.

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In the 2000s, krump became an established part of hip-hop, as well as inspiring pop musicians including Madonna, Missy Elliot and Christina Aguilera. In Germany, apart from the VIVA and MTV channels, key roles in its spread were played by a documentary film and initiatives by local youth clubs. The documentary Rize by the well-known director David LaChapelle was released in 2005 and was received enthusiastically by many Hauptschule students in Berlin. The film tells the story of the emergence of clowning and krumping in Los Angeles, presenting Tommy the Clown, Tight Eyez and Lil’ C. Early in 2007, Tommy the Clown toured Germany, including appearances on the TV show Let’s Dance and at the Columbia Halle in Berlin. His itinerary also took him to Neukölln on the invitation of Manege, a youth club located opposite the Rütli-Schule. For a few years, with dance courses and regular battles, Manege was a hotspot for krump culture in Berlin. In their extensive field research on Berlin’s krump scene around 2008, conducted as part of my seminars on marginalized youth at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Jasna Ibach, Jacob Methner and Juscha Anderegg found that key elements of American krump culture, like the organization in ‘fams’ and the Christian worldview, were originally adopted in Berlin.76 Teenagers, especially between the ages of fourteen and twenty from precarious backgrounds, were attracted to the new dance style from the United States. Krump allowed them to physically articulate and emotionally process their life stories, as well as gaining recognition from fellow students. As teachers and role models, two dancers with African roots were especially important in the spread of krump in Berlin: Ben-Joel was born in Cameroon, Prince in Ghana; both lost their mothers when young and used dance to help them get back on their feet. Today, they and other teachers offer courses in krump at youth clubs and dance schools in Berlin. Some students at the Galilei-Schule, mainly young men, participated in this trans-Atlantic krump culture. They had admired Tommy the Clown as young teenagers at the Manege and later saw Tight Eyez perform in Berlin. They took part in local battles as spectators or dancers, getting to know the main players in city’s krump scene. Some of them took lessons from Prince at a local youth club or, like Moe, founded their own ‘fam’. Moe: I started with hip-hop: popping, house, locking, trying out all kinds of stuff. I’d also sometimes watch my brother training and join in. Then I saw others krumping. At first I didn’t understand, I thought: ‘Hey, how are they freaking out like that?’ My brother explained it to me and I took lessons with Big B – an amazing dancer! And when I saw Tight Eyez I almost lost it. So amazing! In one video the other people even started crying. You have to

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understand it and express what you feel. Then krump isn’t aggressive. It’s about telling a story. I stamp on the floor, I stick out my neck, I fling my arm away – stuff like that. They start slowly and at the end they go crazy. These stories aren’t written down, they write themselves when you’re chilled or when you’re angry. They don’t always have to be proper stories either, sometimes it’s just short scenes, like ‘I punch a face’ or ‘I catch something, throw it on the floor and stamp on it’ – things like that. You don’t immediately ask yourself ‘What’s this story about?’ But you do notice it. To tell a story, you have to really feel it, but you also need narrative skills, most people just do the same basic moves, stamping, etc. That’s not a big deal though, no one laughs at you. And there are special battles for newcomers, which I took part in from the start. Back then I knew almost nothing, but it was an important experience for me. After that my trainer only wanted to do routines, no more battles, because he was performing himself. So we said ‘OK, we’ll found our own group!’ Originally there were four of us, but one person hardly ever shows, so it’s just Samir, Tom and me. We met through dancing, each of us has his own style. We don’t have a teacher, just a room at the youth club, Tuesdays and Thursdays, where we battle each other. We stand in a circle and put music on. When I’m stressed or exhausted after school, I just let everything out. When I dance, I can let go of all that’s on my mind. I’m not thinking of anything at all. I just start dancing, whatever. Krump is best for letting off steam. Any kind of dancing works, but in krump you can see it best. If you’re annoyed, you stamp on the floor and let it out through your foot. I can’t explain it, you have to experience it.

Moe, who actually had an Arabic name, preferred to go by an Americansounding moniker as a krumper. His brother was a professional hip-hop dancer with an international company. At dance lessons, Moe made new friends, using hip-hop slang to refer to them as ‘bros’ – brothers with whom he founded a newcomer crew. They had ambitious youthful dreams of maybe ‘making it big’ and they produced a number of still awkward-looking attempts at media self-presentation on YouTube. The teenagers undogmatically mixed various hip-hop dance styles, dancing krump when they ‘felt krumpy’, as Moe put it elsewhere in the interview. Their dance trainer taught them the basic moves of different hip-hop styles, allowing them to improvise freely, with spontaneous personal expression valued higher than rehearsed group choreographies. As well as hip-hop, Moe tried out other youth cultures, including parkour which he discovered through the film District 13. Moe describes the way stories are told through dance and highlights the way this helps to channel emotions, especially negative ones like anger and stress. Here, social, school and family problems are dealt with not by linguistic articulation and rational reflection, but in a physical, sensual way. Everyday experiences are dramatically condensed into snapshot scenes and disjointed images – dialectical images as described by Walter Benjamin, in

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which ‘what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation’.77 The pressure caused by problems is overcome in trance-like flow states, moments of self-loss experienced as liberating and exhilarating that can be achieved in sport, music and dance on the basis of focus, skill and presence in the now.78 Such moments are perceived by dancers and audience alike as especially authentic. Realness, the central criteria for quality in hip-hop, emerges here in performances that are not intended as direct portrayals of reality, but that offer heightened accounts of real experiences in symbolic, artistic form.79 The focus is on internalizing an aesthetic communicated by hip-hop – rather than faithful replications of US ‘ghetto’ culture by socially disadvantaged youth in Germany, it is about wilful appropriations and the emotional experiences they allow.

Conclusion: A Performative Understanding of ‘Ghetto’ As a formation of practice and discourse, ‘the ghetto’ is shaped by inherent tensions and contradictions. Its ambivalence as a negative stereotype and a source of pride, as a danger zone and place of shelter, as a site of both dreariness and adventure defines the way it is portrayed in literature, film and music. As Raymond Williams shows in The Country and the City, such a two-sided emotional mapping of spaces is not unique to ‘ghetto’ discourse, but the ambivalence between pride and contempt is especially pronounced here, as the negative descriptions prevailing in the media trigger similarly vehement emotional declarations of solidarity. Forms of empowerment that refer to the ‘ghetto’ – hip-hop-inspired forms of identification with urban locations, with gold and silver chains, and with krump – are also ambivalent, defiantly reclaiming or creatively reworking stigmatized cultural elements, but without ever being able to fully erase the stigma. On the contrary, the degree of self-empowerment correlates with the degree of social devalorization: pride in Neukölln only acquires its true meaning against the backdrop of the district’s negative ‘ghetto’ image; the outsize gold and silver chains symbolize ongoing racism; and adaptations of krump refer to the precarious living conditions of marginalized youth. Combined analysis of ‘ghetto’ discourses and practices calls for a redefinition. The concept of the ‘ghetto’ currently used in the social sciences was shaped primarily by the Chicago School; in the 1960s and 1970s, a human-ecological approach to the study of ‘ghettoes’ that had dominated in the 1920s and 1930s was replaced by culturalist viewpoints, which were in turn subjected to heavy sociological criticism in the 1980s and 1990s.80 The human-ecological approach viewed the city as a kind of living organism.81 By analogy with natural processes, ‘ghettoes’ were attributed

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to the distribution of population groups following waves of migration, temporary waypoints in the process of integration where new arrivals could have children and adapt to their new surroundings.82 This view of the city was linked to the idea of the cultural otherness of the ‘ghetto’. It was this latent exoticism that motivated ethnographic research in the 1960s and 1970s into a supposedly distinct ‘ghetto’ culture, with different political slants: while Oscar Lewis’s claim that problematic patterns of thinking and living were passed on from generation to generation of ‘ghetto’ dwellers fostered the fatalistic notion of a self-perpetuating ‘culture of poverty’, Ulf Hannerz used the term ‘soul’ to capture the African-American ethos of the ‘ghetto’.83 In the 1980s and 1990s, such culturalist readings were vehemently criticized and replaced by sociological explanations. Framing the worsening ‘ghetto’ problems of this period in socioeconomic terms, William Julius Wilson pointed to the lack of a stabilizing African-American middle class due to unemployment caused by deindustrialization or to the relocation of this demographic caused by labelling.84 Loïc Wacquant attacked both the academic romanticization of ‘ghetto’ dwellers and the watering down of the concept of the ‘ghetto’ in published works; on the basis of his research in Chicago, he proposed a narrower concept of the ‘ghetto’ as a place where forced ethnic segregation of a stigmatized population group in a closed area is accompanied by the emergence of parallel institutional structures.85 This redirected attention away from the problems and characteristics of the inhabitants towards socio-structural processes of exclusion, a shift that also took place in Germany with the transition from poverty and unemployment research to exclusion and precarity research.86 The various generations of the Chicago School have produced many impressive studies of the ‘ghetto’, from The Ghetto (Louis Wirth) to Street Corner Society (William Foote Whyte) through to Slim’s Table (Mitchell Duneier) and On the Run (Alice Goffman). These works frequently mention the effects of sociospatial stigmatization and examine the ways ‘ghetto’ inhabitants deal with social devalorization.87 But although the empirical ethnographic orientation is usually the strength of such approaches, it proves problematic when, as in the case of Berlin, it is impossible to speak of ‘ghettoes’ in the true sense. At the same time, however, the concept of the ‘ghetto’ cannot be simply ignored, as it plays a key role in public discourse and personal narratives. Taking ‘ghetto’ talk and ‘ghetto’ poses seriously means developing a definition of ‘ghetto’ that is discursive and performative. In this view, ‘ghettoes’ in Germany should be understood not as urban territories to be entered by the researcher, but as discursively produced, spatially marked articulations of exclusion and inclusion that do not correspond directly with urban ‘reality’.88 This calls for modified research methods, analysing patterns of discourse and their impact on the

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places in question and their inhabitants on the one hand and, on the other, practices of ‘ghetto’ appropriation, including their contradictory politics, as well as how the two are interrelated. Ultimately, stressing the discursive and performative character of the ‘ghetto’ also means questioning the authority of science to define ‘ghetto’, presenting it instead as one specific ‘way of world-making’89 among others. One useful point of reference here is the work of British urban sociologist Michael Keith, who reinterpreted the Chicago School’s definition of ‘ghetto’ from the viewpoint of ethnography and cultural studies. On the basis of empirical studies on areas of southeast London associated with the ‘ghetto’ label, where the sociospatial orientation of young males often depends on ‘ghetto’ adaptations, he rejected a binary opposition of ‘actual’ reality and ‘falsifying’ metaphors, thus also rejecting a strict distinction between the ‘objective’ concepts of science and the ‘subjective’ concepts of popular culture.90 Although these performative forms of the production of space vary, the difference is gradual rather than absolute. Of course ethnologists should continue to formulate interesting views of the ‘ghetto’ and offer them up for discussion. But sociologists who critically deconstruct ‘ghetto’ poses of ‘realness’, while upholding the authenticity of their own narratives of ‘problem zones’ and ‘parallel societies’, or even ‘hybrid cultures’ and ‘third spaces’, undermine their own credibility.

Notes  1. See Demmerling/Landweer, Philosophie der Gefühle, 245–258; Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature.  2. See Wacquant, ‘Ghetto’.  3. See Eksner, ‘Revisiting the Ghetto in the New Berlin Republic’; Veith/Sambale, ‘Wer drinnen ist, ist draußen’; Wacquant, Urban Outcasts.  4. See Jaffe, ‘Talkin’ ’bout the Ghetto’.  5. See Reinecke, ‘Auf dem Weg zu einer neuen sozialen Frage?’  6. See Lindner/Musner (eds), Unterschicht.  7. See Zukin, ‘The Spike Lee Effect’.  8. For a similar view of a different field, see Sonntag, Illness as Metaphor and Aids and its Metaphors.  9. See Balzer, ‘“Wenn die Autobahn kommt, dann gibt’s da auch keine Armut mehr.”’ 10. See Kaya, ‘Sicher in Kreuzberg’. 11. See Eksner, Ghetto Ideologies, Youth Identities and Stylized Turkish German. 12. See Ege, ‘Ein Proll mit Klasse’, 168–266. 13. See Yildiz/Preissing, ‘“Ghetto im Kopf?”’ 14. See Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 61–68; Tertilt, Turkish Power Boys. 15. See Ronneberger/Tsianos, ‘Panische Räume’; Yildiz, ‘Was heißt Parallelgesellschaft?’ 16. See Eksner, ‘Revisiting the Ghetto in the New Berlin Republic’. 17. See Friedrich, ‘Geballtes Neukölln’.

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18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

See Wacquant, ‘A Janus-Faced Institution of Ethnoracial Closure’. See Stehle, Ghetto Voices in Contemporary German Culture. See Foucault, The Order of Things; Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge. See Laclau/Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy; Laclau, ‘Why do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?’ See Norris/Tyree (eds), Street Lit; Graaff, Street Literature. See Andryeyev, ‘Whose Mean Streets?’ See Allen, Low Road. See Slim, Pimp. Goines, Inner City Hoodlum, 51–53. Zaimoğlu, Kanak Sprak, 17, 11; see also Stehle, Ghetto Voices in Contemporary German Culture, 20–63. Zaimoğlu, Kanak Sprak, 33. See http://www.kanak-attak.de (accessed 1 June 2018). See Çaglar, ‘Constraining Metaphors and the Transnationalization of Spaces in Berlin’. See Ortner, ‘On Key Symbols’. On the metaphorical content of everyday language, see Lakoff/Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. See Yildiz, ‘Was heißt Parallelgesellschaft?’ See Gormley, ‘The Affective City’. See Massumi, Parables for the Virtual. See Leys, ‘The Turn to Affect’. See Thrift, ‘Intensities of Feeling’. See Laclau, ‘Why do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?’ See Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung Berlin (ed.), Monitoring Soziale Stadtentwicklung 2010. For a critical discussion, see Lanz, Berlin aufgemischt, 146–163. See Mehlmann, ‘The “Floating Signifier”’; Nightingale, ‘A Tale of Three Global Ghettos’. For a differentiated comparison of different states’ handling of urban migration and of different municipal models, see Schiffauer, Fremde in der Stadt. See Straub, ‘South Bronx, Berlin und Adornos Wien’, 8; Dietrich/Seeliger, eds., Deutscher Gangsta-Rap. See Friedrich/Klein, Is This Real?; Janitzki, ‘Sozialraumkonzeptionen im Berliner Gangsta-Rap’. See http://genius.com/Jay-z-hard-knock-life-ghetto-anthem-lyrics (Accessed 1 June 2018). See Dyson, Holler If You Hear Me. See http://genius.com/2pac-ghetto-gospel-lyrics (accessed 1 June 2018). See Forman, The Hood Comes First. See Graaff, Street Literature. See Lindner, ‘Straße – Straßenjunge – Straßenbande’. See Ege/ Wright Hurley, ‘Periodizing and Historicizing German Afro-Americanophilia’. See Blom Hansen/Verkaaik, ‘Introduction – Urban Charisma’. For the original German lyrics, see http://genius.com/Sido-mein-block-lyrics (accessed 1 June 2018). See Link/Beucker/Gerhard, ‘Moderne Kollektivsymbolik’. Ibid., 73. See Reinecke, ‘Auf dem Weg zu einer neuen sozialen Frage?’ Wellgraf, Migration und Medien, 74–87. See Lindner, ‘The Imaginary of the City’.

‘Ghetto’ Pride: Discourses and Practices  •  143

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

See Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’ See Taylor, Sources of the Self. See Reckwitz, ‘Praktiken und Diskurse’. Schiffauer, Parallelgesellschaften, 91–107. See Forman, The Hood Comes First. See Friedrich, ‘Geballtes Neukölln’. Ibid., 118. See Massey, Space, Place and Gender. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 115–129. See Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things. See Bourdieu, Distinction. See Rose, ‘A Style Nobody Can Deal With’; Rose, The Hip Hop Wars. See http://genius.com/439596 (accessed 1 June 2018). On cultural figures, see Hartigan, Odd Tribes; Ege, ‘Ein Proll mit Klasse’. See Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things, especially Kopytoff, ‘The Cultural Biography of Things’. See Hahn, ‘Dinge sind Fragmente und Assemblagen’. See Hofmann, ‘In Geschichten verstrickt … Menschen, Dinge, Identitäten’. See Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krumping (accessed 1 June 2018). See Ibach, ‘“Krump war meine Rettung”’. Benjamin, Arcades Project, 462. See Csikszentmihalyi, Flow. See Friedrich/Klein, Is This Real? See Lindner, Walks on the Wild Side. See Lindner, Die Entdeckung der Stadtkultur. See Wirth, ‘The Ghetto’. See Hannerz, Soulside; Lewis, The Culture of Poverty; Lindner, ‘Was ist “Kultur der Armut”?’ See Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged; Wilson, When Work Disappears. See Wacquant, Body & Soul; Wacquant, ‘Ghetto’. See Knecht, ‘Von der “Kultur der Armut” zu einer “Ethnologie der Ausgrenzung”’. See Wacquant, ‘Urban Desolation and Symbolic Denigration in the Hyperghetto’; Goffman, Stigma. See Veith/Sambale, ‘Wer drinnen ist, ist draußen’. Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking. Keith, After the Cosmopolitan?, 61–80.

PART III

Feelings of Inadequacy

Chapter 5

Grading On the Pedagogical Production of Feelings of Inferiority

In the German system of school grades, from 1 (the best) down to 6 (a fail), the grade most often given at the Galilei-Schule was 6. Rather than reflecting maliciousness on the part of the staff, these grades are an almost inevitable result of the Hauptschule system. In most cases, the teachers inadvertently reproduced social conditions, later facing the question of how to deal with such an excess of negative grades. For the students, this was a particularly clear illustration of their socially produced inferiority. Sustained extreme low grades pose a huge threat to the development of a positive self-image, leading here to feelings of shame and inferiority that were articulated, repressed or concealed in many and varied ways at school and elsewhere. School grades reflect growing divisions within society: at the ‘upper’ end of this educational hierarchy people are acquiring more and more certificates and outstanding grades, while at the ‘lower’ end, increasing numbers are dropping out or receiving poor grades.1 The social exclusion of Hauptschule students was reproduced at school in the form of collective devalorization. Students could not simply ignore their grades because they were at the mercy of the system, as well as being emotionally entangled in it: the former because they were subjected to the asymmetrical power relations of the grading system, with its peculiar blend of arbitrariness and inevitability, every day at school, always aware of the potential impact of school grades on their future life; the latter because in principle they recognized the authority of the grading system – the symbolic violence of school grades lies in the fact that those subjected to them not only experience

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power relations, but also internalize and reproduce them.2 Grades are more than just numerical evaluations of defined areas of performance, always also commenting to some extent on the personality and character of the individual in question. Grades are especially insidious with regard to the value judgements they contain, suggesting objectivity, neutrality and fairness while being significantly predetermined by relations of inequality within society. Forms of denied recognition in school generate feelings of shame and inferiority. In the early 1990s, Sighard Neckel described social shame as the perception, interpretation and consolidation of social inequality, identifying a structural shift in inferiority ‘from collective status to deficient individuality’.3 Since then, the rise of an entrepreneurial model of the self based on personal responsibility has reinforced this trend in Western societies.4 Today, rather than being a shared, class-specific experience, inferiority is increasingly understood and experienced as a sign of personal defects. Many Hauptschule students, too, felt they were responsible for their grades. Shame was often accompanied by feelings of guilt, in some cases also anger and aggressiveness towards themselves and others. But at the Galilei-Schule, something even more astonishing happened, for which the sociology of inequality has yet to provide an explanation: the system of grades took on a life of its own and ran amok, producing an excess of negativity that was more or less beyond the control of the staff and that students were no longer able to counter or cope with by means of the usual reactions of shame. Studies on Hauptschule students have often warned of the close link between these schools and feelings of inferiority.5 Three recent examples once again examine the emotional impact of attending a Hauptschule and the image constructed by society of these students. In her sociological study of education as a status symbol, Anke Clasen shows that the way school as an institution fosters the internalization and adoption of the existing order by young people is full of contradictions: between the emphasis on personal achievement and the proven impact of social barriers, between an integrative educational model and a socially exclusive school reality, and between the constantly stressed goal of vocational training and the reality of a path leading to unemployment.6 Matthias Völcker and Mareke Niemann deal empirically with the impact of attending a Hauptschule on students’ self-image and self-esteem.7 Völcker shows how structural disadvantage is perceived as a personal flaw, leading to damaged identities: in addition to the material consequences of exclusion in the education market, symbolic forms of exclusion – the many negative and derogatory stereotypes about Hauptschule students – become inscribed in the students’ bodies, perceptions and actions, with even their attempts at self-defence

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marked by a general lack of self-assurance. In Niemann’s study, the way Hauptschule students position themselves with in the education system is shown to be shaped by ambivalent attitudes, on the one hand acknowledging the necessity of school, achievement and grades, while maintaining a strong sense of distance and alienation. This in turn creates significant potential for disappointment, leading to negative school experiences even for students who are basically motivated. Such contradictions and dilemmas also characterized the system of grading at the Galilei-Schule and the way this practice was perceived by students. Feelings of shame are hard to write about because they are often hidden. Elsbeth Probyn recommends writing about social shame in a way that understands society not as an abstract construct but as a precisely described relational structure in which feelings are generated and affects circulate. These emotions also touch the person writing, which is why honest language should be passionate and interested, rather than distanced and pseudo-neutral.8 In their analyses of shame, authors like Michelle and Renato Rosaldo, Jeniffer Biddle and Didier Eribon show how shaming has become normalized in society, how writers themselves are emotionally entangled in this, and how difficult it is to get beyond the supposedly ‘natural’ quality of certain emotional states.9 In order to address this still unresolved issue, I begin with a detailed description of the production of negative grades, followed by the social aftereffects of these grades in and outside school. My description is an indictment, but one that looks at structures, addressed not to individual teachers but to all those among us who uphold grading systems in the education system.

Hauptschule Grades: Discipline and Humiliation The system of grades in use today was established in Berlin around 1800 with the introduction of the Abitur, based on older text-based forms of assessment for various aspects of learning such as talent, hard work, conduct and progress.10 As developed by the Prussian state, the system combined motivation with discipline from the outset, acting as both a pedagogical and a bureaucratic tool. With the rise of educational equality as a normative ideal, the problems inherent in such grading became apparent, in spite of which the principle of individual performance assessed by grades played an increasingly important role in the German school system. The close linking of school certificates and future career opportunities only began to make its full impact at Hauptschule schools after the educational reforms of the second half of the twentieth century.11

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Ambivalences in grading are concealed behind a semblance of objectivity based on scientific notions of impartial knowledge whose rise began in the mid-nineteenth century. In their pioneering study of the emergence of objectivity in the natural sciences using the example of illustrated atlases, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison distinguish between three competing and corresponding forms of objectivity: truth to nature, capturing a fundamental essence; mechanical objectivity, focussing on the highest possible degree of undistorted detail; and trained judgement, with data smoothed out and rearranged by the researcher’s trained eye.12 The system of school grades combines all three aspects: it produces a kind of student essence (‘A-grade student’) that only appears natural as a result of the practice of grading itself; this is done ‘mechanically’, compressing complex issues into abstract grades; and finally the attribution of grades corresponds largely to the form of a ‘trained judgement’ in which staff gauge student performance against the backdrop of their teaching experience and personal preferences. Based on this scientific approach, I understand the objectivity claimed by current processes of grading not as a given ideal, but as a field of conflict that can be studied by reconstructing frameworks of justification and forms of assessment. The different pedagogical viewpoints and situation-specific grading practices must be taken seriously, including both their contradictions and their claims to validity and fairness, while also relating them to high-order power relations within society.13 By combining complex internal and external views, I attempt to arrive at a well-founded ethnographic critique of Hauptschule grades. With regard to the emotional impact of school grades, I stress that practices of evaluation are always also practices of valuation by which superiority and inferiority are attributed.14 Objectivity in Doubt: Varying Approaches to Grading With the crisis of legitimacy surrounding the Hauptschule, due among other things to the debate sparked by the PISA report, ‘the illusion of equal opportunities in the education system’ was lastingly called into question, and with it the claims to objectivity made in the name of school grades.15 Schools acknowledge that grading practices cannot match a scientific ideal of standardized measurement, but the claim to objectivity is usually defended, as grades would otherwise lose their legitimacy.16 At the Galilei-Schule, this claim was called into question, regular assessment seeming almost impossible because the majority of students were no longer loyal to their school. In this difficult situation, teachers developed various approaches to grading as they saw fit. Mr Steiß continued to believe in objectivity; as a maths teacher, he saw student performance as clearly measurable.

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Mr Steiß: For comparison tests, we use a standardized set of roughly 100 exercises. We enter the results into a computer interface, up to a maximum of 25 parameters, and then a maximum of 4 additional factors. This system records performance within the class, the school, Neukölln, Berlin and Germany as a whole – which allows the school to be precisely classified. The Galilei-Schule is always in the bottom 16 percent. The software calculates all this within minutes, it was developed by the Institute for School Quality. Which means we’re connected to an objective system of assessment. There’s no point in me giving a 3 to a student who can’t calculate percentages. We’ve already had companies ringing us up to ask: ‘Your applicant can’t draw a right-angled triangle, what are you doing?’ For the old Hauptschule certificate, today’s vocational certificate (Berufsreife), there is now also a comparison test, whereas it used to be internal, within the school, so not comparable. In maths and German everyone now does the same. I think that’s good. But it took a while before the other teachers accepted it. You can’t make a silk purse of a sow’s ear. It won’t make our students better, but they are now aware where they really stand. It used to be far more pronounced, these unrealistic self-assessments. This allows the students to get in touch with reality; after all, many of them are ineducable.

In Mr Steiß’s view, computer-aided evaluation not only increases precision, but also enhances comparability. While other teachers were sceptical about the increased exam load that came with a growing culture of audits and assessments in the German school system, he thought this step was necessary in order to adjust the school’s grading practice to his positivist view of student performance. Shortly before retirement, this allowed Mr Steiß to see himself as a trailblazer, making a name for himself among teachers of other subjects. Even by Hauptschule standards, his grading was usually negative, almost never awarding anything above a 4; in his eyes, however, this was not due to him and his lessons, but accurately reflected an objective fact. Comparing the teacher’s self-description with my observation of his maths class, a discrepancy emerges that calls his claims to objectivity into question. In chapter 1 on boredom above, I included a scene from Mr Steiß’s maths class where the students did push-ups instead of their maths exercises. His classes were dominated by long monologues which the students endured without interest. Field journal: Mr Steiß asks rhetorical questions, but he doesn’t react when, at first, the occasional student responds, choosing instead to give his own answers, which he then embroiders into stories. At some point he comes over to me and shows me the display of his calculator, showing the number 142857. ‘Look, my favourite number. The digits stay the same if you multiply it with an even number, they only change their sequence.’ The students look at me, amused. ‘You see, he’s crazy’, one of them giggles. But the teacher won’t be deterred. After a while I tell him he should probably get on with the

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lesson. So he carries on telling stories only vaguely related to maths: about his neighbour whose car was towed away; about his brother who bought a house cheaply ten years ago in a fire sale; about a dispute over a bill with his dentist who wanted to report him to the credit bureau; and about naïve East Germans after reunification who thought they didn’t have to pay back their loans. I’m waiting for the ‘criminal Arab clans’ about whom Mr Steiß is especially fond of telling his German-Arab students, but instead he is now speaking about Cologne Cathedral, ‘the most-visited place in Germany … it took 800 years’. Of course, Mr Steiß has already climbed the spire, but only ‘around 75 metres up’. Theo calls out ‘crap’ twice, but he also says ‘I need maths for my job’ (he wants to be a salesman). Later he pulls the wire out of his folder, putting it round his neck to simulate suicide. The wire is then passed round the classroom for further creative usage. One person tries it as a belt. Khaled uses it to tickle the back of Momo’s head, after which they have a tug-of-war. Theo calls out ‘I need morphine’ and, looking out of the window, ‘it’s snowing!’ Momo wins the tug-of-war and realizes that the wire makes an excellent back scratcher. Then he tickles the student in front and finally, when the metre-long wire has gone half way round the class, Mr Steiß throws it in the bin. ‘That’s my wire’, calls out Theo, ‘it took me 800 years’. At the very end of the lesson, the teacher goes through a sample calculation before announcing: ‘Next week a test on instalment loans’. Theo is shocked. ‘We haven’t learned anything. I’m tired.’ After the lesson, Khaled complains to me: ‘You see, he’s a lunatic, no one understands anything, then we have to write a test, and everyone gets a 5.’

As this excerpt from my field journal makes clear, the claims of objectivity are not reflected in practice here. The students were prepared neither for the forthcoming maths test, nor for potential career paths. In the light of the teaching method described above, grades appeared dubious from the outset. Moreover, when talking to me, Mr Steiß referred to his students as ‘crazy’. Paradoxically, then, teacher and students accused each other of being disturbed and insane, appealing to me (the researcher) to take their side. Theo and Khaled, especially, considered to be the strongest students in maths, were very critical of Mr Steiß. Addressing his teacher directly in class, Theo once summed up his negative view as follows: ‘I feel insulted by you every day.’ Conversely, Mr Steiß also complained to his students that he viewed their conduct ‘as an insult’. If one only considers their respective behaviour in class – the teacher’s monologues, the students’ ‘clowning around’ – it is easy to understand how each side arrived at its negative assessment. Other members of staff who did better at managing their classes under difficult conditions also clung to the claim to objectivity, as it offered a last bastion in the defence of their self-image as teachers. Notions of objectivity derive from specific subject models, shaped in this case by the historical ethos of the teaching profession, as updated via university teacher training

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courses.17 At the Galilei-Schule, as claims to objectivity came under threat, this also affected the teachers’ self-image, which had to be defended or rearranged. Ms Mitroglou, for example, felt obliged not to give students a false image of themselves, in order to avoid subsequent disappointments. And Mr Dombrowski explained helplessly: ‘We try to save ourselves with the official grading table, to achieve at least some degree of objectivity.’ When handing out grades, he would sometimes produce this set of printed guidelines, holding it up to the class. Even if no one could read the numbers at such a distance, this symbolic gesture gave at least the impression that the practice of grading was objective and justified. Other teachers based their grades more on social criteria, bringing them into conflict with the school’s regime of assessment and discipline. Ms Herrmann: For me, attendance and social skills are the two main things. What I’ve learned at this school is to give a 5 to people who really just sit there distracting and annoying others – or who deliberately stay away. I still find giving grades a disadvantage. I’d rather write a text. I have a list of plus and minus points. Some students are always responsive, even if they’re chatting in between. Others are totally unresponsive, they only turn up to avoid legal action over absenteeism. But some really are responsive. I can’t be totally strict with them, added to which I speak to them before report conferences. Overall, I give slightly better grades. The first time I gave a 5 I found it very hard. Same for the first official reprimand. I’d never given one in my life, always just avoided the issue, but then a colleague told me: ‘You have to do it!’ Now I find it relatively easy and in emergencies I send them to the training room. I’ve also suspended someone, and then spoken with the parents. But really only in absolute emergencies, if there’s really no other way.

In a situation where many students failed to attend class and many of those present openly boycotted the lesson, Ms Herrmann rewarded attendance and responsiveness with relatively favourable grades (other teachers took into account whether or not students brought materials with them). She had lowered her expectations for active participation to the point where it was enough not to be overly disruptive and to more or less follow the lesson. In spite of this generous predisposition, during her time at the Galilei-Schule Ms Herrmann, too, got used to downgrading and punishing. Over time, she bowed to the system of punitive grades, even though it was at odds with her self-image as a teacher. This institutional reshaping of her educational concepts shows that such grading practices become established not due to maliciousness on the part of teachers, but as a result of structural factors. Her generally empathetic approach, including her doubts over the principle of numeric grades and her discomfort with strict disciplinary measures, is unmistakably inscribed with traditional female role

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models, while the rigid grading practised by Mr Steiß might also reflect his self-image as a male teacher. Between these two poles – strict adherence to the principle of objectivity on the one hand, greater consideration of the students’ conduct on the other – there were also other versions of grading at the school, of which I present just one more as an example. Mr Busch: Sports grades are very personal. I don’t do it like it says in the guidelines. That’s totally nonsensical and every teacher knows it. I look to see who’s making an effort and who isn’t. If a student who’s not so gifted works really hard, then it’s quite possible that I’ll give him a 2 for small amounts of progress, even if his performance would usually merit a 5. It’s more a grade for cooperation and willingness. Anyway, I have little time for rigid definitions that say this is exactly how it should be – be it in science or sports. If I happen to have a group that’s really good, then of course I teach differently. What we lose sight of in our school system – due to PISA, endless exams, and studying for comparison tests – is enabling students to develop an overall understanding and to develop as individuals.

Unlike Mr Steiß, the sports and chemistry teacher Mr Busch saw the objective grading framework he was required to use as a technocratic instrument detached from reality that was more of a hindrance than a help in long-term learning. In his teaching practice, he decided against the principle of grades linked to standardized performances and against a social reference value based on the performance of the group as a whole. For him, what was most important was personal effort and progress, meaning an individual reference value. Whichever type of grading was chosen – strict assessment of performance, social grades, or grades based on effort and progress – each version was plausible and justified in its own right. As with the nineteenth-century natural scientists studied by Daston and Galison, staff at the Galilei-Schule applied a range of different, sometimes overlapping, but also conflicting and contradictory notions of appropriate grading practice. Although only the first version matched the school’s official guidelines, the headmaster gave his staff considerable freedom in their grading practice in the years leading up to the end of the Hauptschule. In an interview, he defended the long-standing practice of independent experimentation with grading systems ‘that would not have been possible had we been in a tight corset with high pressure to perform – a practice that is now under threat as a result of ongoing educational reforms’. Although forms of grading vary and lack objectivity, their impact is far-reaching, both for the student body as a whole, assigned a place within society by grades and the resulting school-leaving certificates, and for individual students, who have to emotionally process these assessments of their performance. The school system plays a key role in dividing the

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population into social classes. Its hierarchical structure is based on a fundamental divide between ‘upper’ and ‘lower’, which – in the form of distinction between manual and intellectual labour – underlies the divide between Gymnasium and Hauptschule.18 In a fundamental sense, then, the different, variously justified practices of categorizing Hauptschule students via grading are socially produced and mediated, and the same can be said of their impact. Gestures of Powerlessness: Punitive and Disciplinary Grades This social character is especially evident in the case of punitive grades. One reason why grades at the Galilei-Schule were so poor was that besides serving as an indication of performance, attendance or effort, they were also systematically used as a means of discipline. For every lesson missed without an excuse, for every piece of homework not handed in, for every major disruption in class, students risked a 6. In view of the meagre effectiveness of such measures, this form of grading often appeared as a gesture of powerlessness on the part of the teachers. But the grades in question were not without consequences, further depressing the already fraught atmosphere at the school and worsening the students’ overall average. Since disciplinary grades depended strongly on the students’ relationship with the teacher in question, big differences were observed. Here, the already dubious claim to objectivity collapsed entirely, replaced by subjective notions of an appropriate punitive practice. Ms Hille: Well, I take a look at the register. It tells me who has missed what lessons. If there’s no excuse, the student gets a 6. If someone has too many 6s at the end of the school year, they get a 5 instead of a 4. I’m fair. If you turn up just once or twice, you don’t get a 4. Some students think they get a 4 just for turning up. Ten percent performance is a 5. But you have to do the 10 percent, and many don’t do even that.

On the one hand, 6s handed out as punishments counted for less than other grades, used more as a way of reducing grades for a specific subject on the year-end report. On the other hand, they counted double, not only reducing the overall average, but also exerting a key influence on the assessment of a student’s conduct on reports. What is fair or unfair was decided more by ‘gut feeling’, with teachers often not treating students equally, sometimes applying inconsistent standards. In the interview quoted above, although Ms Hille claims to proceed fairly, it remains unclear what is too much and what is too little, and how attendance and performance relate to one another. In this way, the teacher gave herself a relatively broad scope

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for varying low grades between 4 and 6 (the grades she gave to most of her students) as she saw fit. The extent to which disciplinary grades influenced overall assessment is illustrated by Ms Mitroglou’s grading table. In this overview drawn up by the teacher to show grades in German for class 9c in the months of September to November 2012, the ticks are for attendance, the letter ‘f ’ stands for absence, either with an excuse (‘e’) or without (‘ue’), the latter leading to a 6 by way of punishment. In just a few weeks, this approach generated around fifty 6s in a single subject. When students arrived late, the number of minutes was usually noted. A 6 next to a tick stands for no homework, meaning students could be given more than one 6 in a single lesson. The rare cases where a 6 has been crossed out reveal that in principle, grades can be improved by late submission of homework. The grades from 19 and 27 November are the results of mid-term tests, in the first case noting page numbers from the workbook in question. The female student who received the only 1 recorded anywhere on the table, in the test on 19 November, received several 6s for missing other lessons or failing to submit homework. On 26 November, when just four of fifteen students were present, the teacher added extra plus or minus signs for good and bad conduct in class, the majority of them negative. Most of the punitive 6s were the result of unexcused absence and failure to submit homework, with some teachers also using them to punish disturbances in class, although this was in fact not allowed under Berlin’s school legislation. These grounds for punitive and disciplinary measures were closely interrelated in the everyday life of the school, as students

Figure 5.1. Teacher’s grading table. Photo by Stefan Wellgraf.

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who frequently missed lessons also often forgot their homework, as well as tending to disturb lessons when they did turn up. The main cause of these problems was the widespread disengagement among students at the GalileiSchule, as discussed in chapter 1. Especially clear illustrations of this are provided by days like 24 September, when only two students turned up, meaning that almost the entire class was absent without any excuse. Some students were absent without excuse on more than thirty days per term, each of which would, if treated strictly, gain them a 6, meaning that in theory a single student could collect more than one hundred 6s over the course of a year. And because almost no one ever did their homework, setting some always involved the risk of a 6 for the whole class. The resulting quantity of 6s could no longer be dealt with meaningfully in pedagogical terms, as reflected in the fact that the teachers themselves sometimes lost track of the reason for a specific 6. The consequences of this overuse of punitive grades was a hollowing out of their disciplinary effect and a marginalization of grades based on course content. Once you’ve collected a few dozen 6s, it feels like you’ve already lost. In such cases, the threat of further punitive grades had a limited ability to make students turn up for school. Intrinsic motivations (like ‘learning is fun’) or promises for the future (‘learning is worthwhile’) had already lost their credibility due to the contempt reproduced by the school and cemented by socioeconomic marginalization. In spite of all this, the largely self-referential system of punitive grades was upheld because no one felt able to stop it. Hauptschule grading became a grotesque farce reflecting the wider crisis of legitimacy affecting this type of school. But what happened to these many 6s? The role of punitive grades in report-writing was ambiguous: they had a lesser weighting when calculating the final grade, but once given they could not be totally ignored. Among the staff at the Galilei-Schule, the prevailing attitude to punitive and disciplinary grades was one of pragmatism. Ms Hille: Basically you’d have to give a 6 for every lesson, but that mostly doesn’t happen. These punitive 6s do impact the final grade, but of course they shouldn’t dominate. Otherwise you’d have to always give a 6 to those who disrupt classes, even if it’s a good student. You have to make sure they don’t gain too much weight. But they do mean a really good grade is no longer possible. Were one to strictly observe the guidelines, no one here should be getting a good grade anyway. I don’t sit there with my calculator adding up the 6s. I look at the number of days missed, but I also consider what the person is capable of. The absences are evened out if students turn up halfway regularly, or at least have an excuse. If someone misses a few lessons, you tell yourself: it’s not such a big deal, other students have never turned up at all.

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The high overall level of absenteeism relativized the importance of individual missed lessons. The teacher’s idea of a student’s actual performance being obscured by other factors was also reflected in the grade given, although this potential could only be guessed at in most cases. In this situation, an everyday understanding of appropriateness prevailed, according to which the end-of-term report grade should also reflect a student’s potential performance. Punitive grades were accepted by students as necessary in principle. Although individuals often felt their own punishment unjust or excessive, the system of punishments itself was not called into question. The way absenteeism was dealt with depended strongly on the specific personal relationship between students and staff. Where absenteeism or misconduct was deemed excessive, it tended to be punished severely, while for students who did not openly boycott class a blind eye was more often turned. Also, the true level of absenteeism suggested by Ms Mitroglou’s table did not figure in official statistics. The school, which hoped to lose its negative image in the process of structural reform, would have got into trouble with the inspectors and scared off interested parents. The attention now devoted by schools to self-marketing reflects the impact of a more competitive model, leading to further polarization in schools, accompanied by processes of sociospatial segregation and an educational vision primarily oriented towards measurable output.19 In this way, the political focus on elite education also systematically produces its opposite in the form of ‘sink schools’ like the Galilei-Schule. This highlights the flipside of claims to objectivity. There is a far-reaching alliance between the scientific ideal of the incorruptibility of numbers and bureaucratic administrations whose actions possess scant democratic legitimacy but that appear well-grounded when officially based on the results of standardized measuring procedures.20 For James Scott, modern standardization measures, which include school grades, are instruments of state control, a bureaucratic project to render the social legible. Although the schematic quality of such statistic abstractions prevents them from doing justice to the complexity of social conditions, they provide the relevant state bodies with authority and options for action.21 But when such results are unpresentable, bold tactics are sometimes used to massage school statistics. And the official figures are shocking enough: according to Berlin’s Senate Office for Education, Young People and Families, an average of one in ten students leave school in Berlin without a qualification; in the 2012/13 school year the figure was 9.2 percent, rising to 10.9 percent by 2015/16, in spite of the reforms, and the figure for Neukölln was significantly higher at 15.4 percent.22 Other statistics are concealed or manipulated. At the time of my research, for example, the state of Berlin refused to provide official numbers for students dropping out of individual schools, thought to be around 27

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percent of students at former Hauptschule schools.23 Manipulation took place above all concerning the numbers of school leavers entering the labour market, with the actual state of affairs largely hidden from public view behind state-funded training programmes disguised as ‘apprenticeships’. The nexus of power and knowledge revealed here brings us directly to Michel Foucault and his reflections on modern forms of governance. With his concepts of biopolitics and governmentality, Foucault describes a shift in logics of political power since the late eighteenth century with a new focus on the population as a collective entity and on the self-modelling of subjects.24 The corresponding form of government replaced the regimes of discipline that had dominated since early-modern times, though still resorting to its repressive instruments if subjects failed to develop the ‘correct’ attitudes. Forms of government based on this logic shaped the neoliberal societies that emerged in the twentieth century, as calculations of economic utility gained in importance, gradually becoming the regulating principle of the state.25 Applied to the Galilei-Schule, this analysis highlights the political dimension of bureaucratic measuring instruments like school grades, revealing an interwoven mechanism of governmental, biopolitical and neoliberal power behind the objectivist facade. The modern German school system came into being and established itself at roughly the same time as the regime of governmentality, translating central elements of an activating mode of rule into everyday pedagogical practice, with grades in particular intended to foster conformist self-management.26 At the same time, school assessments were used as a biopolitical tool to divide the population into superior and inferior groups, with Hauptschule students now classed as essentially ‘superfluous’ in economic terms.27 And finally, the neoliberal logic also blames students for their own failure in school, since grades are viewed as impartial and meritocratic. However, as well as confirming Foucault’s theories, an ethnography of Hauptschule grades also prompts us to develop them further, although I limit myself here to brief remarks on productivity, materiality and affectivity.28 Hauptschule grades do not function smoothly, displaying a surprising level of unproductivity: they neither motivated students to learn independently, nor did they have a disciplinary impact. Many qualified teachers with civil servant status took matters into their own hands and subverted state grading guidelines, openly rejecting the associated objectives. Looking at the grading tables used by teachers gives an idea of the material character of these practices. Once-established, systems of notation developed a life of their own, shaping the resulting grades to a certain extent, while teachers subsequently relativized what they found to be the shocking results of this form of assessment. The rest of this chapter looks in more detail at the highly ambivalent emotional impact of school grades: the production of

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feelings of shame and inferiority has consequences reaching far beyond the school context, while the huge quantity of bad grades make emotional processing difficult, provoking reactions based more on grotesque humour. In their grading practice, the staff at the Galilei-Schule far exceeded their official brief of objectively reflecting the students’ performance. Most of their attempts to encourage learning via punitive grades also failed, as such practices do not solve fundamental issues of legitimacy, added to which their disciplinary impact is subject to diminishing returns. The grading practice led to a torrent of 6s that went beyond the teachers’ control. But how can such a bizarre grading practice be understood if it is neither objective nor effective? Humiliation: Contempt and Blaming at School More than anything else, being given a 6 was a humiliation, a routine pedagogical expression of the contempt in which society holds Hauptschule students. The resulting negativity could not be reduced to individual students or teachers, being produced instead by society, damaging the teacher–student relationship as a whole. The dominant principle of punitive grades, in varying ways by different teachers, was a core element of the ‘school culture’ at the Galilei-Schule, meaning the specific way in which historical and sociostructural frameworks, educational targets and fundamental ambivalences of the teaching profession are symbolically processed and translated into everyday practice.29 The actual impact of this form of assessment consisted in the devaluation of Hauptschule students, often inadvertently abetted even by well-meaning members of staff. The moral and emotional dimension of the class system appears in pathological form in the grading practice as described above. Class divisions are not neutral. In our society, those who are ‘lower down’ are also assigned negative traits such as laziness, stupidity and violence.30 This in turn establishes moral boundaries that can be used to defend privilege and legitimize social exclusion. Knowledge of this basic hierarchy-building mechanism is largely repressed, however, upholding the illusory self-image of an open society based on meritocratic and democratic principles. The symbolic violence of this notion lies in the fact that even many Hauptschule students believe in the related myths of upward social mobility, and that educational ideologies continue to be defended by teachers even when their pedagogical conscience tells them otherwise.31 The staff at the Galilei-Schule were prisoners of the grading system; in a difficult teaching situation, it was all they could cling to. Using various tactics to salvage their professional self-image, they developed their own grading practices based on personal understandings. Some worked to break through the cycle of contempt with

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empathy, while others passed on the contempt they themselves experienced as Hauptschule teachers to their students. For his assessment of class conduct, instead of a grading table Mr Steiß stuck photos of the students to a sheet of paper, labelled with their names as an aide mémoire. In the pictures they still looked like children, probably not the most recent set of photographs. The grades were noted alongside the faces – the best a 3–, otherwise mostly 4s and 5s for the boys, while the shyly smiling girls had only 5s and 6s. In conversation, looking at this sheet of paper, he gave a brief summary of class 10a in maths. Mr Steiß: This is Anuschka, maternity, has stopped coming. Actually a capable student. Turned up yesterday for the first time in three months. Looked bad, very tough situation. Apparently her mother has withdrawn and stopped looking after her. Family problems en masse. This one here thinks she’s a high flyer, totally deluded, no good at all. At all! This one here, too, she’s a very weak student. This one I thought would get a 3, but now he got a 5, will probably just about manage a 4 in the end. He’ll get a 5, has no idea. She’s a truant. She’s special needs, very weak, educationally retarded. And this one here, a tough case, zero performance, will get a 5. Khaled was thrown out of another school, I don’t have a photo of him yet. He’s actually not so bad. Theo neither, but he’ll only get a 4, messed up a test yesterday. Zeinab is nineteen, in psychiatric treatment. So that’s the overview. These are only the class participation grades, I have a different sheet for results of written work, and attendance is also recorded separately. At the end, all three are combined via a points-based system. Overall, it’s a disaster. Which is also a sign that no sustained maths teaching has taken place here. That’s reflected in the grades. They lack the basics, a lot of missed chances. If I’d been their maths teacher for four years, things would look different. And the disastrous attendance record – but that’s nothing to do with maths.

With his frequent references to social, mental and family problems, the teacher made clear that his students are subject to multiple sources of stress, creating an extremely difficult teaching situation. The students and their families are cast as the main cause of the awful grades. In the course of the interview, he also spoke of ‘welfare parents’ who spend ‘half the day in bed’ thus failing to instil into their children the virtues necessary for a successful school career. Although he also referred to failings of school as an institution, his own lessons were exempted from this critique. Most striking of all is the disparaging tone, with absolute judgements like ‘no good at all’, ‘no idea’ or ‘zero performance’, giving the teacher’s expectations an especially negative edge. Unsurprisingly, Mr Steiß was not well liked by students. The negative atmosphere at the school weighed not only on the students, but also on the staff. In this situation, maintaining a positive self-image as

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a teacher seemed to require denying all responsibility for the terrible state of affairs, thus slightly reducing the emotional burden. As well as blaming students, complaining about the lack of support from parents was also especially common. Ms Tellmann: On attendance we’ve tried so many things, including with this class, but we always seem to hit a wall. We’ve locked the doors in the morning. The names of those absent were then noted and the school secretary called them. The result was that she had to suffer insults or they just switched off their phones because they didn’t want to be disturbed in the morning. The parents play an important role; if they don’t help, we usually lose their children. Many parents think: school’s meant to educate my children, I send them and the school can see if it can handle them and turn them into decent people. But that’s not how it works. Of course we try to contribute to their education, and there are children who like coming to school – but not to learn, just to meet their friends.

Absenteeism had various causes, but for the most part it was produced by the school itself. Whatever the staff tried, it was impossible to bring the problem under control as long as the institution failed to offer young people any prospects for the future. In addition to punitive grades, attempts to reason with individual students, or the above-mentioned locking of school doors dealt with in chapter 1, students who missed especially large numbers of lessons were sometimes reported to the authorities. If, as in most cases, this brought no lasting change, the student in question would often leave the school. In this and similar ways, around one third of students left the Galilei-Schule in the course of years nine and ten, including many considered especially problematic and unmotivated. Looking back during year ten, teachers would sometimes remark how things were now ‘relatively relaxed’, having been ‘much worse’ in year nine. In view of the scenes I was witnessing at the time, this left me rather perplexed. This constant thwarting of the staff’s efforts by the broader situation within society led to frustration. The routine of handing out punitive grades made them feel bad, provoking attempts at justification in which they struggled with the grading system or the education system as a whole. Mr Steiß: I don’t have a good feeling about it, especially in year ten I always think of the impact of a grade on the student’s future – whether it might block or obstruct someone’s path. Because a grade is always a judgement, not of the person, but of their work. It’s not an objective indication of the student’s abilities, because there’s a strong element of hard work. And the students need to realize: nothing will come of nothing. If you don’t work, we can’t say you do. And all these 5s and 6s – almost all of them reflect refusal.

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By upholding the principle of objective measurement of performance, the teacher found himself in a dilemma: sticking to his basic position forced him to give his students bad grades, which weighed on his conscience. As seen above, other teachers responded with greater flexibility and pragmatism by adjusting the grading practice to the circumstances. The question of whether Hauptschule grades are a judgement of a person or their work is central to my argument. Unlike Mr Steiß, I would say it is no longer possible to adequately measure performance at the Galilei-Schule. Hauptschule grades are, above all, a moral judgement of a person or group of students, of their supposed character deficits and attitudes to learning, as expressed indirectly in the ‘strong element of hard work’ and the accusation of refusal. Since this grading practice is both an expression of and a tool in a system of social hierarchization extending beyond the students’ schooldays, it later forms the basis for further categorizations which, in the case of students at the Galilei-Schule, often lead into the no less humiliating welfare system. In Germany, an especially pronounced belief in bureaucratic grades and certificates adds to the long-term social stigma of having attended a Hauptschule. In a situation marked by crisis and conflict, in which the basic aim of giving young people a future collided with the social devalorization and exclusion of Hauptschule students, those involved came up with various justifications and rationalizations.32 In view of their students’ disastrous outlook, some teachers called into question the future of such schools. Mr Dombrowski: Basically I think the new structure with the Sekundarschule still doesn’t work. Almost all of us wanted to see the Hauptschule abolished because problems are so focussed here, and because the students – at least here in Berlin, with very few exceptions – really did have no prospects. But what is now called Sekundarschule is largely the old Hauptschule, so there is a hierarchy between first- and second-rate Sekundarschule schools. And with our social makeup, we’re still quite clearly a problem school. Something needs to change. We should really develop individual diagnostic tools for the new Sekundarschule and make our teaching far more personalized. This is costly and will probably fail here due to the circumstances and to low performance levels.

In the opinion of this older teacher, abolishing the Hauptschule had merely shifted the problems of school hierarchy into a new format. This speaks of a dashing of hopes placed in Berlin’s programme of structural reforms, which for teachers at the Galilei-Schule led mainly to more administrative tasks and a worsening of the staff–student ratio. The critical views resulting from such experiences prompted even well-meaning members of staff to doubt the success of reforms and the political will to implement basic claims to justice.

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Having described and contextualized the construction of Hauptschule grades from the viewpoint of teachers, examining their rationalizations and grading practices, I now focus on the students’ emotional experience of school grades and certificates.

Feelings of Shame: On the Emotional Experience of Inferiority Years of being confronted with the stigma of attending a Hauptschule and with negative assessments of school work damages young people’s selfesteem. When the hegemonic benchmarks by which the education system’s so-called ‘losers’ are associated with a lack of character and talent are interiorized, this generates emotional responses including shame and guilt, self-denigration and feelings of uncertainty, but also defensive attitudes and aggressiveness.33 Shame arises when a negative external image is integrated into one’s own self-image. Sociologists like Thomas Scheff and Sighard Neckel assign a central role to shame in contemporary society, but they also speak of a ‘taboo on shame’ as a way of stressing that feelings of shame remain largely invisible and unarticulated.34 This is especially true of schools where institutionalized practices of evaluation constantly generate cause for shame, but where this ubiquitous shame is rarely discussed.35 One reason for this is that feelings of shame themselves have shameful connotations. In the following I concentrate on school-related status shame, dealing with other forms of shame, including the body shame widely experienced by adolescents, considered in further detail in the chapter 6 on ‘ugly feelings’. The Hauptschule Certificate: A Document of Failure and Shame In view of the grading practices described above, it is no wonder that the grades on the students’ Hauptschule graduation certificates also tended to be poor. Attending a school low on the hierarchy did not mean better grades, leading instead to a double humiliation: they graduated from a stigmatized school, severely reducing their chances of finding an apprenticeship, and the grades on the certificate were depressingly bad, further darkening their outlook. This lent institutional legitimacy to the process of negative social selection, as their poor grades for conduct and academic achievement made them appear both undisciplined and untalented – ‘uneducable’ in official parlance, and thus not suited to the labour market. Hauptschule certificates are documents of failure, in which poor school-leaving grades appear to be the result of personal shortcomings.36 If the very name of the school you attend is stigmatized, and school life is also dominated by negative assessments, this has a lasting emotional impact.

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Contempt and shame are interrelated here, with contempt as the emotional vehicle of social hierarchization from ‘above’ and shame as the mode in which repressive class structures are experienced emotionally from ‘below’.37 Contemptuous grades and graduation certificates become documents of shame when students acknowledge the assessments they contain, thus integrating these valuations into their sense of self-esteem. Pierre Bourdieu refers to such adoption of dominant standards by those being dominated as symbolic violence.38 Such self-subjugation takes place primarily on an emotional level, in this case as shame over reports as a whole or disappointment over grades in subjects significant to a student’s self-image or plans for the future. At the end of the 2012/13 school year, the average grade on the graduation certificates of the two year-ten classes at the Galilei-Schule was 4+, with the results of individual students ranging from 6 to 2–. Overall, three students of the last Hauptschule class at the Galilei-Schule (consisting of two classes, down from the original three) gained the Mittlerer Schulabschluss (MSA). An average of 4 or more qualified them for an advanced rather than a simple Hauptschule certificate (probably one reason why this grade was disproportionately common). However, some students with better averages failed to achieve this goal due to a 6 in maths. As a result, in terms of the qualification achieved, their attendance in year ten had counted for nothing. This final Hauptschule class thus made a relatively inglorious exit from the school stage. The example of Khaled’s report (in this case from year nine) paints a disastrous picture, both for the student himself and for his parents and potential employers. He was given a 5 in nine of fourteen subjects; because English and German had separate grades for written work and class participation; the report actually featured thirteen 5s out of a total of eighteen grades. Then there were 4s in geography, ethics and art, a 3 in biology, and a 2 in sport. Khaled’s average of 4– was only slightly below average for the class, and his twenty-five unexcused days of absence were hardly above the official average. In other words, this was an ordinarily bad Hauptschule report. And this although Khaled was considered capable by teachers. In maths, as seen above, he was even considered among the best in his class. His 5 in this subject is explained by the contents of the first page of the report, offering ‘information on work-related and social conduct’. Five key social skills (willingness to learn and work, reliability, autonomy, willingness to take responsibility, teamwork) are assessed on a scale of 1 to 4 (again with 1 as the best). Khaled received only 3s and 4s. A report with these grades means almost no chance in the regular labour market, acting instead as a ticket to the unemployment office. The major role played by social and disciplinary grades in educational practice was also reflected in the

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evolution of report layouts at the Galilei-Schule. Assessment of social skills was gradually expanded until ‘conduct’ took up a whole page of its own. It was also possible to note punishments like official reprimands or suspensions from school, as well as periods of work experience and participation in projects. Negative conduct grades have an especially high potential for exclusion and shaming, acting as early disqualifiers in application procedures while publically degrading the attitudes and character of the person in question. The way year-end reports are handed out can also reinforce negative emotions. In a comparative study of Hauptschule schools, ethnographers Georg Breidenstein, Michael Meier and Katrin Zaborowski observed a downplaying of reports and performance.39 Year-end reports tended to be presented at informal events with only the class present, and grades appeared as something external, their genesis not discussed. This approach articulates a break in the school’s bond with the notion of achievement: although good performance is upheld in principle, Hauptschule students are not considered capable of good results – otherwise they wouldn’t be at a Hauptschule. ‘In order to maintain the ability of the Hauptschule to function, the way the students’ situation is interpreted must change: the focus needs to shift from stigmatizing poor performance and negative school careers to making the Hauptschule a place where personality is recognized and where individuals are given support and encouragement.’40 This would certainly by a welcome approach, but such a shift from stigmatization to encouragement is only one possible response to the dilemma of the Hauptschule; at the Galilei-Schule, by contrast, I observed a perpetuation of negative experiences by means of grades. Field journal: Before year-end reports are handed out, a brief call and response takes place, with students answering the teacher’s rhetorical questions in unison. Ms Tellmann: Why are these reports so important? Students: For job applications! Ms Tellmann: How often have I told you this? Students: Thousands of times! Ms Tellmann: What good did it do? Students: None! Ms Tellmann: All but two of you can throw your reports straight in the bin.

After this, the reports are handed out in class with little ceremony. It seems to be an event that all involved want to get through as quickly as

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possible, without further mishaps. Nonetheless, the students are visibly tense, the teachers agitated. First, each student is given a letter from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry with offers of advice, as well as certificates from various school programmes. The two teachers then hand out an old school journal from year seven and a personal photo album. Looking at the old class photographs, it is striking how many students have gone missing on the way to year ten. In this personal part of the event, the teachers sometimes euphorically raise their voices (‘Oh, a leaving present!’), but the next moment students arriving late are coolly denied access to their last lesson. In the second half of the double lesson, the actual reports are handed out. Four students have improved their grades, and two have no unexcused absences – for which each is awarded a lollipop. After this, the reports are handed out in ascending order, in some cases with brief personal remarks, for example that the student was ‘sadly not able’ to fulfil the teacher’s hopes or that a student had ‘spoiled their own grade’ by missing school too often. As the grades are read out loud, starting with the 6s, some students have to swallow hard, while others are encouraged by their classmates (‘3.9 doesn’t sound so bad’). At the end, the students quickly and quietly skulk out of the classroom. This event began with a seemingly ritualized apportioning of blame by the teacher, with the students fatalistically joining in. Thanks to the symbolic violence exerted by the school, the students did not rebel against this collective humiliation. At first, they all seemed absorbed in personal disappointment, added to which they barely grasped the conditions under which they had been graded, leading to depressed ‘amorphous communal action’ rather than any class consciousness in a Marxist sense.41 In conversation outside after the event, students expressed various, mostly negative emotions like sadness, anger, astonishment and shame: ‘I’m angry with myself and with Mr Steiß’, one student said. Others self-critically added that they had been ‘too lazy’, now having to accept ‘the consequences’. Some were surprised by what they thought were relatively favourable grades: ‘I did absolutely nothing and I got a 4 for it.’ But even those with the best grades were not really happy with them: ‘I got plenty of 2s and 3s, but at this school I should really have 1s.’ In his above-mentioned work on the assessment of school performance, the educationalist Georg Breidenstein recommends focussing less on selection, arguing that this has surprisingly little to do with the routine practice of giving grades.42 I would oppose this depoliticizing viewpoint on the grounds that the problems with grading at the Galilei-Schule are not self-explanatory. Student disengagement, to which the school responded with punitive grades, is directly related to the crisis of legitimacy of the Hauptschule, and the lack of self-assurance on the part of the staff is a consequence of the collision

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between exclusive practices and inclusive guidelines. Not a day passes at the Galilei-Schule when the students are not reminded of their social status and prospects by forms of assessment. Ethnographers who think they can ignore the selective function and social impact of school grades are contributing to the invisibility of social exclusion. Fear of Shame: Feelings of Inferiority In and Outside School Shame is hidden and contagious in character, spreading among the socially degraded like a virus.43 Especially in neoliberal times, when the losers in competitive processes are blamed for their situation, shame itself is shameful. When shame is experienced not due to transgression of a specific social norm, but on account of one’s social status itself, this complicates behaviours designed to defuse shameful situations. Shame thus manifests in schools and in society at large mainly in the form of fear of shame and shame avoidance, as the negative reactions of others are anticipated and relevant strategies developed.44 But the more status-related feelings of shame are repressed, the more those excluded are isolated, and the deeper the shame becomes ingrained in the fabric of society. Feelings of inferiority do not stop at the school gates, their impact extending out into students’ everyday life and putting a strain on social interactions in many ways. Using the examples of Jasha, Thomas and Jussuf, I examine the forms taken by shame in and outside school and the occasions where it typically occurs. All three were viewed by their teachers and peers as especially strong students, causing them to be especially ashamed of the school they attended and the grades they achieved there. Jasha was eloquent, driving some teachers to despair with her cheeky comments. She was unpredictable, a model student one day, rampaging round the classroom the next. Mr Dombrowski gave me a description of her family background. Mr Dombrowski: Jasha – that’s another very specific story. When I first called her family, it was like in a film: ‘Mr Dombrowski, I can’t talk to you now, the emergency helicopter has just landed and the fire brigade are here, too.’ I didn’t know what was going on. Later I learned that her father had a brain tumour with extreme epileptic fits. He was looked after at home, where he eventually died. And when I called he was having such an extreme fit. But the family situation had already been problematic before this. The father was never around. The mother knows that both children need psychological or even psychiatric care, some kind of therapy, but she doesn’t deal with it. Jasha’s brother has ADHD, but I only knew him by sight. She was recently absent unexcused for a few days again. I think it’s because her mother was in Turkey and she has a very young sister she has to look after. Otherwise she’s really very intelligent, but her conduct isn’t great. She’s not from Neukölln,

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she lives in Steglitz, but there were problems with her school there – so she ended up here. … Jasha has incredible potential. She actually wants to be a teacher or something educational. In years seven and eight, she would sometimes volunteer to help look after other children – the staff were impressed. She certainly doesn’t belong at a Hauptschule, she could do Abitur. We’ll have to see how thing progress with her.

Like certain other students – and a number of teachers – Jasha had been expelled from other schools in the past. The Galilei-Schule had a concentration of people with school careers of this kind, often involving family problems. Some teachers took the social situation of students into account when judging absenteeism and misconduct, sometimes forgoing punishment when, as in this case, the student missed class for a good reason. Like Jasha, most of the students had ended up at the Hauptschule not due to a lack of intellectual capacity, but primarily for social reasons. But those who were considered especially intelligent did not necessarily gain better grades; instead, capable students seemed to find the insanity of the school routine and their own lack of prospects especially hard to bear, sometimes tending towards deviant behaviour. This inevitably led to punitive grades, which they experienced as a further source of depression. Just because feelings of shame are concealed, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. On the contrary, the latent presence of shame exerted a sustained shaping influence on the Hauptschule as a social space. At the GalileiSchule, feelings of shame were often articulated inadvertently in spontaneous remarks and self-assessments. Jasha, who judged the school, its students and herself negatively in her comments, was a good example. On the type of school she was attending, she once remarked fatalistically: ‘Even with Abitur you’re nothing. What’s the point of a Hauptschule certificate?’ When a teacher was absent, she remarked: ‘She just wants a holiday from us.’ And regarding the statistic that the Galilei-Schule had the second highest number of truants in Berlin, she responded with sarcasm: ‘We can’t even make number one in something like that! How useless we are!’ She also commented on her grades and reports. With remarks like ‘I couldn’t manage Gymnasium. Just look at my grades’, she voiced doubts over achieving her career goals. And when she forgot to get her report signed at home, prompting the school to send her back to Steglitz during lessons, the teacher unthinkingly asked on her return if her mother had been happy to see her: ‘Happy? She was not happy!’ In these examples, Jasha used both the first person singular and the first person plural, displaying a strong awareness of stigma and a certain degree of identification with problematic role models. This reflected a broken and deeply ambivalent form of negative self-description, tacitly suggesting that she actually expected the opposite of herself – that she wanted to graduate from a Gymnasium and that she had

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ambitions. In spite of the circumstances, she clung to her goal of becoming a teacher: ‘I think it’s shit the way Hauptschule students are always immediately downgraded. We have teachers here who went to a Hauptschule and still managed to become teachers. Worked their way up!’ Rather than being perceived as isolated assessments of specific performances, attributions of inferiority via school grades were taken personally by individuals or groups. Although the resulting low-threshold shame affected all students at the Galilei-Schule, they dealt with it in very different ways. Jasha’s offensive and provocative self-denigrations and other forms of ‘black humour’ were one way of partially sidestepping the emotional burden associated with inferiority. Playful forms of communication subvert the taboo on shame and offer a way of expressing feelings of inferiority in the school context. Another option consisted of ruling out potentially shameful situations from the outset, either by avoiding contact with higher-status groups or by concealing the identity of one’s own school. In these cases, social shame manifested in the fear of being found out or unmasked as a Hauptschule student. Thomas and Jussuf avoided mentioning the school they attended when interacting with students from other types of schools. Especially when meeting potential girlfriends, they did so to avoid making a negative first impression. Thomas: I don’t tell my friends what kind of school I’m at. I tell them it’s a Gesamtschule. And if they keep asking then I say: ‘Galilei Galilei’. And if they ask what kind of a school it is, I say it’s a former Realschule that’s now an Integrierte Sekundarschule, and sometimes I even say it’s some kind of astronomy school. After all, there used to be an observatory, and it used to be a Gymnasium. But the name Hauptschule is so ugly. At the end of year six I had a recommendation for Realschule, but my parents sent me to this school because of my brother. I said ‘What am I supposed to do at a Hauptschule with a recommendation for Realschule, I’ll definitely be under-challenged.’ And that’s what happened. Jussuf: When a girl asks me what school I go to, I always lie and say ‘Otto Hahn’ or ‘Heinrich Mann’ – some Realschule or other. If I admitted I go to a Hauptschule I’d be too ashamed. Because the school is well known. And maybe they’d say: ‘You’re at a shitty school, I don’t want to be your friend.’ Thomas: Because they think: ‘Only foreigners and criminals go there.’ S.W.: Is this bad reputation deserved or is it exaggerated? Thomas: It’s true in part. Teachers here get all kinds of stuff thrown at them, and they don’t do anything about it. Once a New Year’s Eve banger was let off in class. And last year the toilets were destroyed. People even say the caretaker got stabbed. But some things are exaggerated. There are lots of friendly students here, too.

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With an average grade of 2.4, Thomas was officially the best student in the class, added to which his conduct grades were all positive. As one of the few ethnically German students, he openly set himself apart from his classmates, especially undisciplined (post-)migrant males, and was aiming for a career in the German army. Through his family and his hip-hop activities, Jussuf was more involved in migrant circles. Although his motivation for school was sporadic, he still had above-average grades with an average somewhere around 3. Both distanced themselves from and were ashamed of their school, as their positive self-image as high-achieving students could not be reconciled with the school’s negative image. Their status as Hauptschule students proved an obstacle above all in interactive situations marked by uncertainty, such as flirting. In such cases, they creatively associated themselves with other types of school, pre-empting the contempt directed towards anyone attending a Hauptschule. But their attempts at concealment also had emotional risks, accompanied as they were by the unpleasant feeling of lying and the shameful fear of being unmasked, which would mean an even greater loss of face due to being forced to admit dishonesty and feelings of shame. Such a tricky situation was experienced by Thomas when he first spoke to the parents of his new girlfriend, who probed him for details of his schooling and career plans. A meritocratic understanding of success in school fosters a personalization of the experience of social exclusion and hampers criticism of the production of feelings of inferiority by means of grades and reports. At the Hauptschule, this principle of social selection creates an emotional culture shaped by latent shame and fear of shame. Evaluating and valuating grades lead to ‘hidden injuries of class’ and feelings of ineptitude and unworthiness.45 The stigmatization of shame itself discredits a pattern of emotional behaviour that openly articulates shame. Fear of shame driven by social expectations and educational norms prompted Jasha to respond with subversion and opposition, while Thomas and Jussuf concealed their status and the related feelings of inferiority. These behaviours had consequences, accompanied by ambivalent positions within the school and a lack of assurance in everyday interactions. Society of Shame or Shamelessness? As long as shame itself is stigmatized, it is hard to deal productively with feelings of shame. Under certain conditions, a very limited degree of shame can have positive effects in school, providing motivation and stimulating development.46 But the many 6s received at the Galilei-Schule were damning and humiliating with no such constructive impact. Instead, a pedagogically irresponsible excess of shaming factors created a concentration of feelings of inferiority.

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The way students dealt with the unavoidable challenge of grading and assessment was marked by a demonstrative rejection of feelings of shame. This mainly took the form of differentiating between grades. In interviews they stressed the importance of grades in general, but in their everyday practice they distinguished between grades that were more or less important to them personally. Grades for subjects they liked, in which they considered themselves to be strong, or where they liked the teacher tended to be given more weight. Grades in other subjects counted for less accordingly – for most students this applied especially to maths, the subject with the worst grades and the least popular teacher. But here, too, they had to find a way of dealing with discouragingly bad grades. Field journal: At the end of the lesson, Mr Steiß fishes the marked worksheets out of his bag. When the students notice, they approach and form a tight knot around his desk, all bent over: ‘What did I get?’, ‘Just one point?’, ‘I’ve got a 6, too, right?’ ‘6+’, calls out one student as he stands up. ‘At least a plus’, he says with a laugh, performs a handshake with the boy beside him, puffing up his chest and embracing him with a theatrical gesture that requires the other boy to step back. The embrace lasts a moment too long, drifting slightly from celebration towards consolation. It is followed by several more amused handshakes. ‘I’ve got a 4 Stefan! Yes, I’m the best!!!’ calls another student and comes to where I’m sitting in the back row to hug me. I’m not sure if this is just a show, but I don’t want to probe further. One girl jokingly criticizes his gesture, calling out ‘Ugh, you’re a swot!’ Another girl is then engaged in a playful sparring match by the same boy. She holds him at arm’s length, saying ‘I got a 3’. She then corrects this to ‘5’ and holds out the five fingers of her hand before waving her hands around and skipping back to her desk.

How to interpret these peculiar reactions? The fact that the students ran to the teacher’s desk, and that for a moment the room was filled with tension, shows that grades made an impact even in unpopular subjects. It is this interest and attribution of importance that make the subsequent emotional defence mechanisms necessary.47 Once they knew their mostly negative grades, the tension dissipated, replaced by an almost party-like scene. They glossed over their poor grades with the kind of gallows humour that finds grounds for amusement in seemingly hopeless situations – in this case the unusual addition of a ‘plus’ to the 6 grade. By responding to depressing grades with a display of high spirits, they refused to submit shamefully to the verdict of their unloved teacher. The situation developed a dynamic of its own, the students started inventing grades and outdoing each other’s celebratory gestures. None of these imagined grades were 1 or 2, however, suggesting that even here the reality principle exerted a regulatory effect. The lines between celebration and consolation, between fun

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and pain, were blurred. The school’s grotesque grading practice found an equivalent in the students’ macabre performance. Celebrating each other’s bad grades can be compared with the ironic and parodic behaviours described in chapter 2. While ‘trash talk’ and other provocations targeted the members of staff in question and the way they taught their classes, in the scene described here the teacher, although present, was hardly addressed. By refusing the shameful reaction that would usually be expected in such cases, and by ignoring his claim to authority both before and after the results were handed out, the students did of course send him an indirect message. Overall, however, the gestures seemed to be aimed more at the other students as a means of collective grieving and demonstratively coping with shame. The theatricality of the situation recalls descriptions of queer performativity in which socially produced shame is broken through and at least symbolically overcome by celebratory self-performances of stigmatized identities.48 The students’ refusal to make gestures of shame should not, however, be taken to mean that feelings of inferiority played no part here. Emotional defence mechanisms do not make grades disappear, and the same applies to the related negative emotions. But the negative grades in maths had taken on such proportions that a corresponding shameful reaction on the part of the students no longer seemed possible. Another form of defence against shame involved open criticism of the education system. Although rare among students at the Galilei-Schule, such political interpretations, in which exclusion mechanisms are identified as the cause of personal failure, were occasionally expressed. Jamil: You know, the problem is simple: Germany knew that Hauptschule students don’t get apprenticeships – that maybe 100 or 200 will get a place. Which is why they created the Sekundarschule, to at least give them a chance. But if they knew this, why didn’t they do it from the outset? This should have been changed ages ago!

Jamil was arguing from the position of someone who had lost out – as a member of Berlin’s last Hauptschule class, he would not benefit from the better career opportunities promised by the programme of reforms. His view of mainstream society was ambivalent: on the one hand, he recognized that the prospects of Hauptschule students had been knowingly destroyed, but he also acknowledged that the recent reforms actively aimed for an improvement. Instead of shamefully blaming himself for the dire state of schooling, he formulated questions about the responsibility of society as a whole. Although the dominant view of academic success and failure among Hauptschule students was individualistic, mentioning the abolition of the Hauptschule, a move welcomed by teachers, allowed Jamil to address the

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structural problems of this type of school. In this case, there was a risk of shame turning into anger towards society. Paradoxically, fear of shame and shame avoidance are the dominant forms of articulation for feelings of inferiority in Western society today. Shame is defined by a double structure of revealing and concealing, with emotional defence mechanisms already pointing to a lack of emotional protection, to vulnerability in general, and to having suffered specific hurts.49 Although causal connections can be observed between the production of inferiority by society and the way it is experienced, the links are not linear or uniform. Instead, the impact of school grades discussed above points to a ‘broken circuit’, a metaphor used by psychologist Sylvan Tomkins to refer to a shame-driven disconnect between a subject and a cherished object.50 Applied to the school context, this means that feelings of shame are produced by the fact that Hauptschule grades have become largely arbitrary and worthless, preventing them from being valued. With this in mind, we might also ask whether we are living in a society of shame or whether, on the contrary, the present is marked by a lowering of shame thresholds. With reference to the decline of the bourgeois behavioural codex, Ulrich Greiner identifies a ‘loss of shame’ as older cultures of inner-directed shame and guilt are replaced by an other-directed culture of superficial embarrassment, with the ‘underclasses’ no longer even affected by embarrassment due to their general loss of pride.51 Even in today’s world, such arrogant claims are something to be ashamed of. A similar argument is proposed by historian Ute Frevert who blames the weakening of social hierarchies and gender role models for a decline in the quantity and quality of feelings of shame over the course of the twentieth century.52 Such analyses echo older positions and debates: Ruth Benedict’s distinction between cultures of shame in Japan and the United States;53 David Riesman’s theory on the increase of inner-directed rather than other-directed character types in the middle classes of wealthy consumer societies;54 and the opposing positions of Norbert Elias and Heinz Peter Duerr on the question of whether ‘civilized’ society is becoming more controlled or more uninhibited.55 Against the latent cultural pessimism of Greiner and Frevert, who suggest that shame leads a shadowy existence in modern European societies, Sighard Neckel argues that the individualization of social inequality spreads and aggravates feelings of shame.56 With reference to the Galilei-Schule, one can go further still: neoliberal contempt for society’s ‘losers’ creates a society of shame marked by contradictions and tensions. The gulf between a meritocratic understanding of academic success and the related claims of objectivity on the one hand and the routine practices of social selection and arbitrary grading on the other can no longer be bridged by teachers, prompting some of them to abandon their claim to objectivity. In addition,

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the process of devalorization at the bottom end of the school hierarchy has now advanced to the point where the condemnation usually associated with a 6 grade was no longer reflected in conventional emotional responses of shame, leading instead to forms of subversion.

Conclusion: Social Pathologies As well as failing to match the standards of objectivity proclaimed by school as an institution, the practice of grading at the Galilei-Schule also became a failed instrument of discipline and a powerful vehicle for humiliation – an everyday expression of the contempt in which society holds Hauptschule students. The inflationary use of 6s is symptomatic of the irresponsible excess of negativity faced by ‘educational losers’ in neoliberal society, with huge implications for emotional experiences of inferiority. Punitive grades forfeit their pedagogical effectiveness; long-established patterns of emotional response to negative school grades are disrupted. Grades appear extreme and the students’ reactions sometimes seem strange, but this chaotic normality reproduces the prevailing conditions of social inequality in institutional and emotional form. My study of Hauptschule grades confirms the findings of sociological research into inequality, but goes one step further concerning the alienation of school life. In his analysis of school grades, sociologist Herbert Kalthoff recommends that instead of measuring grading practices against abstract normative ideals like objectivity, they should be studied not as individual pedagogical measures or neutral institutional procedures but as contingent and contextual practices of valuation.57 The resulting look inside the usually closed black box of grading practice sheds light on the dark side of our class system. In the case of the Galilei-Schule, such a contextualization means no longer basing one’s assumptions, as most sociologists do, on the model of teaching as controlled imparting of knowledge followed by an evaluation phase. In addition, the usual checks and balances of grading had ceased to be functional. Teachers ignored the important warning light that flashes when even strong, motivated students obtain mainly bad grades. And the students ignored the red stop signs held up by the staff in the form of 6s, defiantly continuing on their path towards an educational dead end. In this light, it seems fitting to understand Hauptschule grades as expressions of a social pathology, a critical concept used by the philosopher Axel Honneth, inspired by Rousseau and the early Frankfurt School, to describe social developments that are so damaged by aberrations and disruptions that they no longer assure the conditions for individual self-realization.58 Although Honneth’s concept of social pathologies has various flaws (an

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implicit universalist understanding of normality and an overly rationalist understanding of society and social agency)59 it does permit a critical analysis of social ills that maintains a focus on their roots in capitalist class society and on their negative impact on those concerned. As an institution, the Hauptschule is a pathological social structure that blocks learning processes rather than facilitating them, using an assessment practice based not on recognition but on contempt.60 In this way, school grades are hollowed out, but they still have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the students’ lives. Because their genesis remains in the dark, processes of evaluation can take on a life of their own in a way that serves neither teachers nor students. Understanding Hauptschule grades as pathological does not depend on philosophical reflections on social rationality or individual freedom. It suffices to judge the institution by its own standards – not the untenable claim to objectivity, but the minimum requirement to be a functioning school and a place of education.

Notes  1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

See Bosse, ‘Die Krise der Abschlussnote’. See Bourdieu/Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Neckel, Status und Scham, 146ff. See Bröckling, The Entrepreneurial Self. Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 100. See Clasen, Bildung als Statussymbol. See Völcker, Und dann bin ich auch noch Hauptschule gekommen …’; Niemann, Der ‘Abstieg’ in die Hauptschule. Probyn, Blush, 129–162. See M. Rosaldo, ‘The Shame of Headhunters and the Autonomy of the Self ’; R. Rosaldo, ‘Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage’; Biddle, ‘Shame’; Eribon, Returning to Reims. See Bosse, ‘Die Krise der Abschlussnote’. See Helsper, ‘Wandel der Schulkultur’. See Daston/Galison, Objectivity. See Boltanski, On Critique. See Lamont, ‘Toward a Comparative Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation’. See Geißler, ‘Die Illusion der Chancengleichheit im Bildungssystem – von PISA gestört’. See Breidenstein/Meier/Zabarowski, Leistungsbewertung und Unterricht. See Daston/Galison, Objectivity. See Douglas, How Institutions Think. See Bellmann, ‘Das Monopol des Marktes – Wettbewerbssteuerung im Schulsystem’. See Porter, Trust in Numbers. See Scott, Seeing like a State. See Senatsverwaltung für Bildung Jugend und Forschung, https://www.berlin.de/sen/ bjf/ (accessed 1 June 2018).

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23. See Constanze von Bullion, ‘Transparenz ungenügend. Berlin verweigert Auskunft über Schulabbrecher’, in Süddeutsche Zeitung, 31 January 2013. 24. See Foucault, Security, Territory, Population; Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics. 25. See Bröckling/Lemke/Krasmann (eds), Gouvernmentalität; Folkers/Lemke (eds), Biopolitik. 26. See Caruso, Biopolitik im Klassenzimmer. 27. See Bude/Willisch (eds), Exklusion. 28. For more detail on the relationship between governmentality and New Materialism, see Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway; Lemke, New Materialism. For a sociomaterial view of school and grading practices, see especially the work of Estrid Sørensen and Herbert Kalthoff: Sørensen, The Materiality of Learning; Sørensen, ‘STS goes to School’; Kalthoff, Wohlerzogenheit; Kalthoff, Practices of Grading; Kalthoff, ‘Observing – Treating – Classifying’. 29. On the concept of school culture and the fundamental tensions of the teaching profession, see Helsper, ‘Schulkulturen – die Schule als symbolische Sinnordnung’; Böhme/Hummrich/Kramer (eds), Schulkultur; Helsper, ‘Pädagogisches Handeln in den Antinomien der Moderne’. 30. See Sayer, The Moral Significance of Class; Sayer, Why Things Matter to People. 31. Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 271–301. 32. See Boltanski/Thévenot, On Justification. 33. See Goffman, Stigma. 34. See Scheff, ‘Shame in Self and Society’; Neckel, Status und Scham. 35. See Holodynski/Kronast, ‘Shame and Pride’; Wertenbruch/Röttger-Rössler, ‘Emotionsethnologische Untersuchungen zu Scham und Beschämung in der Schule’; Marks, ‘Scham im Kontext von Schule’. 36. See Solga, ‘Das Scheitern gering qualifizierter Jugendlicher an den Normalisierungspflichten moderner Bildungsgesellschaften’. 37. Sedgwick/Frank (eds), Shame and its Sisters, 139. 38. See Bourdieu, ‘The School as a Conservative Force’; Schmidt/Woltersdorff (eds), Symbolische Gewalt. For a reading of Bourdieu’s theory of inequality through affect theory, see Matthäus, ‘Towards the Role of Self, Worth, and Feelings in (Re-) Producing Social Dominance’. 39. See Breidenstein/Meier/Zaborowski, Leistungsbewertung und Unterricht. 40. Ibid., 312f. 41. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 533. 42. See Breidenstein, Teilnahme am Unterricht; Breidenstein/Meier/Zaborowski, Leistungsbewertung und Unterricht; Breidenstein, Zeugnisnotenbesprechung. 43. See Biddle, ‘Shame’. 44. See Wertenbruch/Röttger-Rössler, ‘Emotionsethnologische Untersuchungen zu Scham und Beschämung in der Schule’. 45. See Sennett/Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class; Eribon, Returning to Reims. 46. See Marks, ‘Scham im Kontext von Schule’. 47. See Sedgwick/Frank (eds), Shame and its Sisters; Probyn, Blush. 48. See Sedgwick, ‘Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity’. 49. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 101–121. 50. See Berlant, ‘The Broken Circuit’; Sedgwick/Frank (eds), Shame and its Sisters. 51. Greiner, Schamverlust, 76. 52. See Frevert, Vergängliche Gefühle. 53. See Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword; Ivy, ‘Benedict’s Shame’. 54. See Riesman, The Lonely Crowd.

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55. See Elias, The Civilizing Process; Duerr, Der Mythos vom Zivilisationsprozess; Paul, ‘Die Gewalt der Scham’. 56. See Neckel, Status und Scham. 57. See Kalthoff, Practices of Grading; Kalthoff, ‘Observing – Treating – Classifying’. 58. See Honneth, ‘Pathologies of the Social’; Honneth, ‘A Social Pathology of Reason’; Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. 59. See Freyenhagen, ‘Honneth on Social Pathologies’. 60. See Jaeggi, ‘Was ist eine (gute) Institution?’

Chapter 6

Ugly Feelings Envy, Resentment and Embarrassment

Not only specific types of school, but also the emotional states they elicit can be marginalized. Those subjected to systematic social degradation are prone to denigrated feelings like envy, resentment and embarrassment. The paradox discussed in the preceding chapter – that neoliberal society systematically produces shame while simultaneously delegitimizing the articulation of feelings of inferiority – is explored further here with reference to feelings that are considered repulsive. When such negatively connoted emotions are demonstratively dismissed by schools and society at large, this repression risks making them all the more powerful and unpredictable. Consequently, these negative feelings are examined here not in their ‘pure’ or ‘natural’ forms, but in hidden and latent ones. Public lamentation over Germany’s ‘society of envy’ is itself a symptom of the social vilification of this and related emotional states.1 Rather than joining in these laments, I seek to trace their impact. Hauptschule students respond to social conflict with differentiated forms of envy, resentment and embarrassment, thus becoming emotionally entangled in the powerful structures of today’s capitalist class system. To feel envy and resentment, others must be perceived in terms of comparison and competition.2 Embarrassment, too, is socially determined, arising from forms of shaming and humiliation that are an established part of the contempt shown by society towards Hauptschule students. The fact that the unequal distribution of recognition and goods brought with it negative feelings like shame and envy was already clear to Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth century.3 Thomas Piketty has used statistics to show that

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capitalist society as it has taken shape since Rousseau’s time has brought an increasing concentration of wealth, and that social inequality is not a coincidental but a structural feature of capitalism.4 In his historical study of social inequality in Germany, Hans-Ulrich Wehler shows how the wealth gap has further widened in recent years.5 Rather than presenting a simple picture, however, political feelings allow social structures to be experienced and reproduced in various indirect and contradictory ways. Some of these detours, contradictions and shifts are discussed in this chapter using the example of Hauptschule students in Neukölln. In her book Ugly Feelings, American literary critic Sianne Ngai shows that emotions like envy, resentment and embarrassment always have an aesthetic dimension and that, conversely, aesthetics are always linked with specific affects.6 Envy usually arises in the form of an unfavourable comparison ‘when someone else has qualities, skills or possessions that one would like to have oneself but that are beyond reach’.7 Although envy most often concerns unfair distribution of goods and opportunities, it is not usually accepted as a legitimate form of political articulation, perceived instead as a personal deficit, as a lack of motivation or capability, as an expression of negative character traits, and as a form of egocentrism.8 This value judgement is closely linked to descriptions of envy as a specifically female flaw, most concisely summed up by Sigmund Freud in his theory of ‘penis envy’.9 Such views of envy as a private, inferior and negative emotion deprive envious reactions of their critical potential. Instead of interpreting envy as a justified reaction to an unjust society, the envious are usually blamed for their own misery. In the hierarchy of emotions, resentment occupies an even less favourable position, seen as destructive and aggressive since it can be applied to things and privileges which the resentful do not even desire for themselves. In practice, the various forms of embarrassment are hard to distinguish from shame, as discussed in the previous chapter. Although poor school grades generate feelings of shame and inferiority, the way these grades are handed out can also be experienced as embarrassing. Shame tends to be directed inwards, embarrassment outwards: while feelings of shame point to an internalized negative self-image, embarrassment describes an awareness of being perceived negatively by others in specific social interactions. Like fear of shame and shame avoidance, avoiding potentially embarrassing situations plays an important role in the everyday reproduction of social norms.10 Students were exposed to embarrassment mainly via exposure in front of an audience, either as the result of their own behaviour or due to that of teachers and fellow students. For some students, this resulted in sustained exclusion, while others refused to react with embarrassment or broke out of the cycle of negative emotions at the school.

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Latent Classism: Envy and Resentment Although class-related social inequality underlies the school system’s hierarchic structure, including its guiding principles of success and education, there is a lack of awareness of classism within society. Under the individualist ethos of personal responsibility, failure at school is not viewed by those concerned as the result of an unjust distribution of opportunities, but is perceived instead as a personal shortcoming for which they have only themselves to blame. Lacking vocabulary that would allow the impact of the class system at school and beyond to be understood and criticized as a structural issue, they experience class-related devalorization primarily on an emotional level, with feelings like envy and resentment playing a crucial role. Rather than being counted as ‘authentic’ expressions of class consciousness, however, these emotions themselves are integrated into a neoliberal value framework via their negative connotation as ‘loser’ feelings. By analogy with racism and sexism, Andreas Kemper and Heike Weinbach define classism as a status-related ‘form of discrimination and repression’ characterized on the one hand by ‘exclusion from material resources and political participation’ and on the other by ‘the denial of respect and recognition’.11 Besides the institutional underpinning and reproduction of attributions of inferiority by means of grades and reports discussed in the previous chapter, at least three other forms of emotionally charged status hierarchy can be found in everyday school life: contempt for ‘them up there’, which is often accompanied by similarly disparaging views; an internalized classism in which negative public stereotypes lead to shameful self-images; and finally ‘lateral’ exclusion of those within a marginalized status group considered to harbour educational and career ambitions.12 This aggressive reproduction of competitive structures at the lower end of the social hierarchy is the main focus in this chapter. Envy and resentment are shaped by class structures and their neoliberal framing. But viewing feelings as ‘political’ doesn’t mean grasping them solely as expressions of socio-structural developments. The societal modelling of envy and resentment cannot be adequately described from a top-down perspective, only becoming identifiable in all its complexity via an examination of its varying manifestations and the sometimes contradictory ways in which these emotions are articulated. The Delegitimation of Envy In a society that proclaims its commitment to social justice and social mobility, but which is in fact marked by an ever-growing and nearunbridgeable divide between rich and poor, occasions for envy are produced

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systematically.13 In order to be legitimate, however, articulations of envy must conform to the system’s competitive mindset. In line with the normative ideal of the ‘entrepreneurial self ’, even the socioeconomically disadvantaged in today’s society are expected to behave as market subjects, to claim agency, to take responsibility for their own success or failure.14 Although Hauptschule leavers were faced primarily with the problem of limited options, even they were not able to entirely escape these demands. The resulting fault-lines manifested mainly in emotional tensions and conflicts, shaping the students’ ambivalent relationship with envy. There are many shades of envy, ranging from antipathy to admiration, and its impact can be either paralyzing or motivating. In spite of this complexity, envy is among the most negatively connoted emotions in contemporary Western society; in the Christian tradition it is one of the seven deadly sins.15 Claims to participation expressed in terms of envy are discredited as egotistic and disparaged as reflections of a weak character. As Sighard Neckel explains, accusations of envy are often products of class society: ‘In the public sphere, ‘envy’ serves as a political battle cry, used mainly – as one might expect – by those in positions of relative privilege. If you always get whatever you want, it’s easy to identify resentment among those whose aspirations look less distinguished. In symbolic struggles over the distribution of goods and positions, accusations of envy are a popular rhetorical device with which to discredit calls for greater participation as expressions of ugly character traits. This rhetoric always also bears a message of social contempt, as the better-off also seek to elevate themselves over ordinary people in moral terms.’16 The value attributed to specific emotions by society influences everyday perceptions and interpretations, thus impacting on the emotional experience of Hauptschule students in Berlin. Although symbolically and materially disadvantaged, they refused to accept additionally humiliating accusations of envy. Field journal: Today I’m supposed to be telling the students what I’m doing here. I tell them about my first study of Hauptschule students and mention that this time I’m especially interested in emotions like boredom, shame, anger and envy. The latter is immediately singled out for discussion. Mustafa: I’m sometimes envious when I see what good grades Maria gets. Maria: I don’t think you should be envious. It’s up to you how you organize yourself, how you learn and so on. Mustafa: I’m happy, the Job Centre pays for everything. Kai: We’re all in illegal employment here.

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Mohamad: My father’s a millionaire. Nevin: Many people who go to Realschule are stupid nonetheless. Mustafa: Anyone can be clever if they read a book at home. You can gather experience everywhere, including for school. But unfortunately, many Hauptschule students bring stress from outside or from home and spread it around school. Which is also why Hauptschule students are marginalized. Maria: Those who attend a Gymnasium don’t have better prospects. Kai: My family has three cars. Mustafa: There are people who go to a Gymnasium and end up with no qualification. Jamil: Yes, I know someone like that. Mohamad: My friend graduated from a Gymnasium but he has no work. He works in an Internet café. S.W.: What do you think, is everyone is responsible for themselves, or does it have something to do with the conditions into which one is born? Maria: It has nothing at all to do with that! Kai: He means we’re all poor and have nothing to eat. Mustafa: But if someone is a total big shot, it’s obvious they’re going to get the job. Kai: Take care of the cents and the euros will take care of themselves. Mohamad: My parents had good qualifications – in Syria. Mustafa: Why should we be envious? Because they get a 1 or a 2? I couldn’t care less! Teachers have to study for ages and they don’t earn much money. Does Mr Dombrowski have a car? He doesn’t even have a driver’s licence! Jamil: He still takes the bus! Mustafa: And the people who work at the Job Centre, they drive cars. Kai: Yes, I live off the Job Centre, we drive three cars, E-class. Whatever, I don’t want to cheat. Jamil: No envy here. Mohamad: If someone is successful I’m happy for him. And if I’m successful he’s happy for me. You should always be able to be happy for someone, not grudgeful. I have friends from primary school who are now at a Gymnasium. You mustn’t be envious. Jamil: Envy isn’t good.

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The students gave the impression of being obsessed with not seeming envious. Due to the moral reproach included in accusations of envy, they rejected this emotion in various ways: they claimed it simply didn’t exist among them; they claimed that comparisons with others gave them no grounds for it; and they disapproved of envy in and of itself as a destructive emotion. Comparisons with Realschule and Gymnasium students, and between teachers and people on welfare, reflected the comparative mode of status-related self-positioning. There was also a tendency to interpret social comparisons in their own favour: many Gymnasium students can’t find a job either; Realschule students are no more intelligent; some Hauptschule teachers don’t even own a car, unlike the students’ own families. This kind of self-positioning via status-oriented comparisons reveals the power of the competition for education, possessions and jobs to which the students feel themselves to be exposed. It is striking how vehemently the students rejected structural explanations for the unequal distribution of opportunities and possessions. Due to the discursive linking of social disadvantage with ‘loser’ and ‘victim’ status, the students sought to minimize the degree of their own exclusion. Although unjust privilege and adverse circumstances in the job market were mentioned, the principle of achievement and with it the system of competition were defended. As well as referring to material lack, envy was seen as deficient in its own right. In the market logic currently prevailing among Hauptschule students, envy that manifests not in the form of competitive striving for profit and advantage, but as an indictment of inequality, is delegitimized as unproductive. At the same time, a shift in the subject model of the ‘entrepreneurial self ’ can be observed: as the meritocratic ideal gradually fades, replaced by status factors like risk or inheritance, the students become more aware of the contingency of life situations and of generational experiences of precarity that cut across status groups.17 Besides social framing and narrative convention, the scene described above was also shaped by situational dynamics and conversational logics. The discussion took place at the beginning of my period of research, when the students were not yet sure how I viewed them, prompting them to play ironically with negative stereotypes. Provocative praise of the Job Centre and exaggerated boasting of ‘millions’ were usually deployed to shock passing visitors. If the performative character of such self-portrayals is not taken into account, populistic analyses of society may treat them as authentic proof of laziness and passivity, or of the pampered arrogance of a migrant ‘underclass’ in Berlin.18 This does not mean that the students’ claims have no link to their actual lives, but the legal and social background of their behaviour should be kept in mind. Although some had family members who were employed illegally, this was mainly because their status as refugees denied them

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legitimate access to the labour market. And if some families had bought luxury cars, whose importance as status symbols I dealt with in chapter 3 on coolness above, then in most cases they shouldered debt to do so. Although this conversation was dominated by relativizing and provocative remarks, tending to undermine political positions, the majority of the students stuck to the moral principle of meritocracy. In most cases, they viewed their educational career in terms of ‘working their way up’ step by step, from the advanced Hauptschule certificate to the MSA, followed by apprenticeships or staying at school for the Abitur. By contrast, little mention was made of socialism, communism or other utopian models aimed at overcoming class divisions, a tendency evident only in a religious emphasis on the Muslim Ummah, the community of all believers. In pointed terms, one might say that the students defended capitalism, including its inequalities, against forms of risk-oriented neoliberalism in which social advancement no longer seems to depend on hard work. ‘States of Unfulfilled Desire’ Although they demonstratively rejected envy, when leaving school Hauptschule students faced expectations, wishes and desires that were hard to fulfil. Envy indirectly shapes experiences of inferiority by giving aspirations an emotional charge and transferring them into scenarios based on comparison. Students thus inserted themselves into a social hierarchy of desirability and competition; rather than any kind of revolution, they wanted successful participation.19 A distinction can be made here between the roots of envy and the field in which it becomes intensified.20 While envy builds up gradually due to structures of social inequality combined with social proximity and valid moral claims to justice, this feeling intensifies in the field of careers and consumer goods. Envy is produced structurally but experienced personally, an emotion whose comparisons and expectations reflect moral values and social desires. From this viewpoint, envy appears as a form of everyday emotional judgement on conditions within society, and not as an irrational intrusion into an otherwise orderly normality.21 Based on memories of her mother and her own childhood in a mining community, the British historian Carolyn Steedman describes envy of material goods as a political feeling in the context of the socioeconomic deprivation and moral delegitimation of sections of the working class: ‘By allowing envy entry into political understanding, the proper struggle of people in a state of dispossession to gain their inheritance might be seen not as sordid and mindless greed for the things of the market place, but attempts to alter a world that has produced in them states of unfulfilled desire.’22

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Signs of ‘states of unfulfilled desire’ among teenagers in Neukölln were evident in the ‘wannabe’ selfies described above, and in other pop cultural or pedagogical formats like the wall newspapers in which students were asked to imagine their lives in five years’ time. Cutting out images from magazines, with motifs from advertising, entertainment and celebrity culture, they combined these illustrations with their own texts and drawings. The results ranged from down-to-earth predictions through to the wildest dreams and fantasies. Modest wishes like ‘a nice apartment, maybe a wife, nice holidays, a car’ pointed to a horizon that nonetheless seemed remote for many students. The specific teenage longing for independence was reflected in the wish for ‘my own money’ and ‘my own apartment’. With reference to school qualifications, students wished for things like ‘passed my MSA’, ‘resit my MSA’ and ‘maybe Abitur’. The reference to ‘resitting’ here anticipates the fact that most of these students would not pass their MSA first time, while ‘perhaps’ factors in future uncertainty. Career-related wishes ranged from having an apprenticeship at all, to specific professions including chef, beautician, doctor’s assistant and car mechanic, through to fantasies of wealth as a businessman or millionaire. Details of such prosperity were given, including a sauna and luxurious interiors, a premium model Mercedes or BMW, and travel to western cities or beaches in the South Pacific. Female students were more likely to wish for parenthood than their male classmates, including quite specific details about the number of children – usually ‘two to three’, not immediately after leaving school, but also not waiting too long. These children would grow up in a conventional

Figure 6.1. Students’ wall newspaper. Photo by Stefan Wellgraf.

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family, symbolized by a ‘husband’, the social status of ‘being married’ and a romantic relationship symbolized by hearts or ‘I love you’. One female student complained of the available images of men being limited to Western celebrities, whereas her ‘dream man’ was the Turkish singer Gökhan. This recalls the teeny bopper culture described by Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber in which girls use adoration of male stars to approach the normative domestic model of coupledom while holding it at arm’s length for a while longer in favour of childish carefreeness and girlish community.23 The male students wavered between the respectability and comfort offered by family life and the hedonistic promise of remaining single. One combined elements of both, surrounding himself with sexually attractive companions (‘my ladies’) and a good-looking but more discretely presented spouse (‘my wife’). Other students also used the images provided by the magazines for playful choices of partner, with one male student similarly complaining that there were only ‘white models’ whereas he preferred darker-skinned women. The poster reproduced here (figure 6.1), made by a male student, also features other signs of a glamourous life: a luxurious villa with a pool (‘my apartment’), references to boxing (whose importance for male Hauptschule students I examine in more depth below), and finally no less than four references to the fashion house Hugo Boss. Also used by other students, this brand stands for glamour and money, power and self-determination. For Hauptschule students, whose parents can be situated between welfare and illegal employment, being a ‘Boss’ for once stood for their wish to avoid such social conditions of poverty and humiliation. This poster could be titled ‘Landscape for a Bad Boy’. Following Carolyn Steedman, I of course understand ‘bad boy’ here not as a descriptive category, but as a reference to the ambivalence of gender roles and the moral bias of everyday categories whose effects of power Steedman highlights with reference to ‘good mothers’ and ‘dutiful daughters’. However, today’s male displays of competitive consumption differ from Steedman’s female wish for a ‘New Look’ skirt in the 1960s. Even if the female students were slightly more reserved when presenting their imagined futures than their male classmates, they too displayed a tendency towards celebrity and luxury. Although this can be explained in part by the specific magazines they were given, it is still worth asking about the vision of society associated with this tendency. Growing class divisions in Western Europe since the post-war decades seem to have been accompanied by a widening of the gap between status-driven fantasies of consumption and actual socioeconomic status, a development that is especially noticeable in the sub-bourgeois classes affected by poverty and marginalization. If this is true, then ‘states of unfulfilled desire’ would be a specific hallmark of neoliberal times.

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This emphasis on states of unfulfilled desire suggests a psychoanalytical reading of processes of valorization, raising the question of links between subject formation and structures of desire. In their ideal visions, Hauptschule students were oriented towards the prevailing symbolic order, either favouring the model of an economically secure ‘normal biography’ or dreaming of excessive consumption. With an unorthodox reference to basic assumptions of psychoanalysis, one might say that these fantasies of prosperity or wealth are attempts to become a fully realized, socially recognized self, but that they conceal a constitutive lack. This lack is not, as Lacan would have it, located within the subject itself, and the coveted consumer goods do not point to the phantasm of an unattainable unified primal subject.24 The emotional focus on material things points here to a far more profane lack that results from the discrepancy between culturally dominant notions of a good and full life and society’s denial of the material means needed to realize such a life. This structurally caused lack is one that could certainly be remedied. The objects and references featuring on the students’ posters stood primarily for the promise of a good and happy life. And such a life was associated with striving for a successful career, a family, and a wealthy consumer lifestyle.25 Those who denigrate such striving as materialistic can usually afford to flirt with foregoing property or a career. But such paternalistic gestures amount to a dismissal of attempts to imagine a secure life for oneself under precarious conditions. The visions of the future illustrated by the students reflect forms of class consciousness that do not fit into existing political pigeonholes. In a Marxist sense, they may appear alienated rather than progressive, but we should question and expand our notions of class consciousness rather than ignoring the contradictory nature of lived experiences of social class. Both modest and presumptuous visions – the defence of meritocracy and the dreams of sudden wealth, the striving for a ‘normal’ life and the fantasies of luxury and millions – are active and affective reactions to structural inequalities in contemporary capitalism. Resentment: Bullying and the Consequences When I told Sila about my book project, she replied that she, too, was currently writing a book. I showed surprise, for which I was immediately sorry, and I enquired further. She told me about her work on the first thirty pages of a fantasy story about a dreamy loner like herself, as well as a number of poems. I suggested that as fellow writers, we could exchange texts, and a few days later she gave me some poems, which she apologetically described as ‘pretty childish’. To me, they looked pretty depressing: she spoke about ‘shadows’ cast over her joy of life, about her fear of the ‘darkness’, about her struggle against ‘fatigue’, but also about a longed-for ‘light of hope’.

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Sila struck me as a sensitive, romantic girl, often still childish in her behaviour, but already grown-up and considered in her judgements, shy around others, unsure and reserved in class, where her quiet contributions were often hard to understand – unlike those of her forthright best friend Hazal, who always sat next to her. Sila’s career ambitions also seemed out of place at the Galilei-Schule. She really wanted to be an architect or technical draftswoman, but she already sensed that her grades wouldn’t be good enough – on her year-ten mid-year report her average was 3.4, by the end of the year this had improved to 3.2. She was thinking of going to Turkey, where her parents came from, to make a new start. Her parents – her father was a construction worker, her mother had a job at a stationery shop – were cousins. After primary school, Sila had first attended a Protestant secondary school, where she was ‘bullied’, as she said, and where she repeated year ten before ending up at the Galilei-Schule: ‘I wanted to try my luck here, to resit my MSA because I didn’t feel confident enough there last year.’ At the Galilei-Schule she was once more immediately excluded. I recall a conversation in class about cyber-bullying when Kai loudly proclaimed: ‘I wouldn’t bully anyone – except for Sila.’ This went unchallenged. Sila stuck it out until the mid-year reports, then she starting getting paler and paler, went into therapy, and finally, for the last few months, stopped turning up at all. Because she was officially off sick, she was still given the advanced Hauptschule certificate. Although Sila was at pains not to make a negative impression, her attempts collided with the unwritten behaviour and dress codes at the Galilei-Schule. At the start of the school year, she was elected class representative, as the sole candidate, but in her case this was the opposite of approbation, elected by classmates with a sceptical attitude towards school, thus reinforcing their mistrust of her intellectual and career ambitions. Mistrust was mixed here with resentment, a radicalized form of envy in which the other person is begrudged the thing she wants, with a loss of privilege or other form of suffering being wished upon her. Bullying among Hauptschule students, a group already marginalized within the education system, can be interpreted in this case as a form of ‘lateral’ classism in which someone arriving from a ‘higher-status’ school is shown the social boundaries and tripped up when seeking advancement. This was not necessarily deliberate, initially taking the indirect form of differences in style and behaviour, which were then used as targets for attack. Field journal: Sila is clearly motivated when she arrives in class, but she is greeted with the remark ‘hello Russian mafia’ because she’s wearing a leather jacket with a fur stole. Her body recoils and her flu symptoms are soon in evidence. Later, when a Brecht poem is being recited and she says we’ve already

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‘gone over’ this, her words are immediately twisted into crude sexual remarks. She responds with a despairing gesture intended to show how asinine she finds the behaviour of her male classmates.

Sila was in a weak, minority position, but she was not a passive victim. In an interview she criticized the exclusion of students on the grounds of their clothing as superficial and hinted at her strategies for dealing with this. Sila: I always used to dress very plainly so as not to draw attention. So that no one would make fun of me or say anything. It’s only recently that I’ve begun to dress more colourfully. I no longer want to look dark all the time, but I have to be careful not to look too much like the others. Now I dress almost exactly like all the other girls at this school. But there are often complications. I recently bought some boots that I really liked. But they were immediately labelled as weird. And I’ve heard people saying I’m a Nazi. I wish I was confident enough to wear certain things. When I saw the boots I thought it was time for me to get a bit bolder. And I liked the idea. But this Nazi business – I never imagined other people could think about me that way.

Attempts at self-empowerment can fail or unexpectedly cause new conflicts. Sometimes Sila believed she could simply ignore the animosity, sometimes it hit her hard. During the first half of the year, she displayed increasingly clear signs of physical discomfort, mainly complaining of pains in her stomach and heart. She attributed these health problems primarily to her social position with the student body. Sila: In any case it’s not always much fun coming here, for me. I’m not really self- …, I mean, I have no self-confidence. I’m very self-critical, too, and I can never really assess and evaluate what I’m doing. Yes, sometimes I’m insecure. My mood’s normal when I arrive, but when I experience something negative, from students or teachers, then it influences you, you immediately have different feelings. Especially when you hear people bitching about you, or through bullying and things like that. I’ve had these health problems for three weeks now and that makes it hard to enjoy coming to school. Sometimes I think it could have something to do with my surroundings – this school, the stress here. Maybe I just take everything too seriously and that’s what causes it. The doctors also say there’s nothing wrong with me, and they’ve done many blood tests. … Sometimes I walk past a group and they’re bitching about me and they say something to me. I think I keep this kind of thing too much to myself, and then it comes bursting out when I can’t take any more. I already had problems at the other school, and that makes me feel a bit weaker. I experienced very bad things there and I’m just scared it’ll happen again. As a result I might appear intimidated, but I’d like to prove the opposite. I’m actually a cheerful person.

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Bullying refers to a process of exclusion in which individuals or groups of students are subjected to repeated negative treatment, either physical or verbal, over an extended period.26 Such victimization is usually based on an imbalance of power, with reserved students who are perceived as weak, unattractive or unpopular being mobbed or harassed. The bullies often have a negative attitude to school, with many having suffered exclusion themselves in the course of their school career. The impact of bullying is reinforced by onlookers who support it, look away, or at least don’t intervene. For those being bullied, typical effects include social isolation, withdrawal from school, anxiety and depression. In Sila’s case, the emotional impact culminated in a series of physical breakdowns in class, which struck all concerned as arbitrary and unpredictable. But although they may not have corresponded directly with a specific bullying situation, they were certainly related to Sila’s social position within the school. Field journal: Sila suddenly collapses at her desk. She has trouble breathing and extreme heartburn. The teacher catches my eye and together with her friend Hazal I accompany her outside. We have to support her because she can hardly walk and she seems close to fainting. I’m worried and helpless, Hazal is agitated and slightly panicky. We wonder about calling a doctor but Sila says there’s no point. We let her calm down and get some fresh air on a bench in the school yard. She’s shivering although she’s not cold. She bends over with her arms around her chest. Sometimes the pain seems to recede, sometimes it returns sharply. She says she’s seen many doctors and also been to hospital, but no one can find anything. Her ribs, her heart, maybe her thyroid gland – no one has a proper explanation. She’s to take Ibuprofen, say the doctors, then it will go away. We call her home. Only her grandmother is there, who speaks no German. We call a taxi. On our way to the street, police come storming towards us. A moment of silent perplexity: they seem to think we’re bringing out the wounded. Then they walk off. During the rest of the school day, a few more conversations about this incident. One teacher tries to reassure me by saying there have been far worse cases in the past: ‘Once a girl having an epileptic fit crashed into a radiator. That was terrifying.’ Another teacher says this has often happened to Sila before and that she is receiving psychological treatment: ‘Quite a lot has gone wrong in her teenage years.’ During the next break, a few boys with guilty consciences ask me how Sila’s doing. They think she collapsed out of shame because they were calling her ‘heroin junkie’ and ‘Christiane F. from Istanbul’. Another student has a more profane explanation, saying she ‘just hadn’t eaten a proper breakfast’.

The teacher’s unspecific reference to Sila’s problematic family background strikes me as an overly simple way of shifting the blame for her

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failure at school. Her parents’ family history is not untypical of Turkish migrant workers in Germany, where one parent arrives first to be joined later by the other, creating a period of separation that is often harmful for the children. The teacher’s negative assessment of the family situation may also have drawn on racist prejudices concerning consanguineous marriage, which sparked heated disputes between students and teachers over the course of the school year, as we will see. Although I didn’t meet her family myself, in interviews Sila referred to specific problems with both students and teachers, while underlining her positive relationship with her parents: ‘My family supported me the whole time and I’m very grateful to them. Because they were always there for me, they comforted me, they were really worried, they looked for ways for me to deal with the whole thing. So I can’t complain. Having focussed on bullying by fellow students and the impact it has, I now explore the ways teachers, too, inadvertently contributed to Sila’s tragic situation. Her physical collapse was attributed to poor health, although it was probably due to social problems. Philosophers like Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth have stressed the fundamental human need for recognition, defining non-recognition as disregard, a form of repression with long-term negative effects on self-esteem.27 Hauptschule students faced widespread social disregard, but many of them received at least compensatory recognition from one another, in friendships, in activities outside of school, and sometimes in mutual affirmation of anti-school attitudes. Having switched from a higher-status school, Sila felt the full weight of this degradation while lacking a social safety net to cushion the blow. Instead, as a former Realschule student, she was marginalized by her new classmates and subjected to personal abuse. The support provided by her parents and by her friend Hazal was not enough to mitigate these violations of her identity and the resulting psychosomatic reactions.

Embarrassment: On the Aesthetics of Exclusion The political ambiguity of negative emotions manifests mainly in their aesthetic dimension – in the sense of a broad definition of the aesthetic that is not reduced to beauty or art, but that takes as its point of departure forms of sensory perception, emotional mood and physical experience.28 In the following, I focus on emotional moments of irritation and confusion, on failed performances and ‘deviant’ bodies, and on situations of shaming and speechlessness. Such states were often experienced by students as embarrassing.

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Self-Grading: Forms of Shaming and Loss of Face at School Teachers contributed to feelings of shame and embarrassment among their students with pedagogical forms of humiliation that shape and impose relations of power. Although certain forms of classroom humiliation like the dunce’s cap and being made to stand in the corner have gradually disappeared from German schools, related practices still exist.29 Some students are able to deal with the resulting negative experiences, while others, like Sila, find it more difficult. Especially the occasional practice of asking students to grade each other, thus delegating the unpleasant task of handing out negative assessments, caused her strong feelings of embarrassment – partly because she took grades very seriously on account of her ambitions, and partly because she was already insecure. Sila: I’m very self-critical. I’m never happy with anything I do. I don’t need constant praise, but I do need someone to maybe say ‘yes, that could be it, that might be right’. I’m often unable to judge such things myself, can’t say whether I was good or bad. But my work experience folder really was bad because there were too many questions where I couldn’t find an answer. And we had to hand it in on Friday and I was only at school twice last week. Such weird incidents keep happening. I just wasn’t really happy with the folder.

The ‘incidents’ she refers to here are the health problems and cases of physical collapse described above. Over the year, the resulting absences further contributed to Sila’s inability to settle in properly at the GalileiSchule. The folder was part of an extended follow-up in careers classes dealing with the weeks of work experience at the beginning of year ten, also including posters and verbal presentations. In these talks, the students were asked to rate their own work; in doing so, they not only followed the negative line usually taken at the school, but actually surpassed it. Field journal: In careers class, the teacher begins by asking how the students are getting on with writing applications. Some have already sent off eight or ten, others don’t know what to apply for. ‘You have to write at least a hundred’, the teacher warns them. Then it’s time for the last verbal presentations of the posters. Sila hasn’t made a poster, causing everyone to stare at her during her talk. She’s nervous, stands in front of the class with her legs crossed, scratching her throat with her hand. Her voice cracks and she finds it hard to breath. ‘I’m quite nervous because I hardly slept last night. And then I drank coffee on an empty stomach. So I’m shaking a little.’ Her hand holds her elbow and she starts doubling over forwards. The class freezes at this pitiful spectacle. The students are expected to assess themselves first and they all rate themselves worse than the grade they are finally given. Sila, too, rates herself as ‘bad’ and doesn’t want to accept the 3– the teacher gives her with a gesture of pity. The

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other students rate her ‘between 4 and 5’. One student tries to encourage her: ‘Not bad at all. 4+.’ The other two presentations are just as unpleasant. When rating himself, the next student says: ‘I could stutter less, then it would be less embarrassing.’ He wants to give himself a 7. He finally gets ‘between 4 and 5’. Now it’s Miray’s turn, the last student. She doesn’t know what to say, repeating the brief descriptions from her poster, soon falling silent again. She laughs uncertainly. ‘I don’t know.’ She, too, is barely capable of rating herself, managing no more than ‘bad’. Her classmates criticize in her place. ‘Honestly, a 5’ says Ali. Miray brings her hands up to her eyes twice, as if she were crying. But there are no tears and the gesture feels contrived. Instead, she tries laughing again. The theatrical dimension of such classroom humiliation reminds me of a casting show. The teacher gives her ‘between 5 and 6’ and adds: ‘The way you make fun of it is especially bad.’ During the lesson, Sila once more has to leave the room with stomach ache, but afterwards she feels slightly better.

Verbal presentations were actually among the few occasions where it was possible to obtain relatively good grades at the Galilei-Schule. But the teacher managed to turn even this assessment format into a fiasco for the students. In the drama she staged, she even managed to figure as the merciful one, while the students took the blame for their own failure. The lack of self-assurance and the resulting embarrassment during the talks had little to do with any lack of articulacy on the part of the students, who in interviews or on other occasions proved remarkably eloquent. Their speechlessness was generated by the school and by society itself. A school environment in which students are constantly humiliated and devalorized by poor grades is hardly conducive to the delivery of a confident talk. In Sila’s case, her history as a student subjected to bullying at two different schools contributed to her anxiety at such moments of exposure in front of the class. The fact that she had not produced a poster made things worse, her self-confidence already damaged by the 6 she received for not handing in her folder. Moreover, the excessive focus on work experience at the GalileiSchule was a fig leaf for the students’ lack of realistic career prospects. The teacher’s advice to write ‘at least a hundred’ applications was also more of a gesture of despair, counting on chance rather than on secure access to the labour market. As I describe in more detail in chapter 9 on social anxiety, this constellation provoked self-doubt, nightmares and physical unease in the students – destabilizations that manifested in their presentations. Unlike the kind of ritualized embarrassment described by Julia Döring using the example of stag nights, here the effect was not symbolically cancelled out by the interactive framework.30 At a stag night, supposedly embarrassing acts are performed in a non-everyday setting, playfully squelching the awkwardness and confining it within the bounds of the ritual. The desired effect is one of mutual affirmation, intended to help

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in coping with the uncertainties connected with the imminent switch to married life. The embarrassing experience of the verbal presentations, on the other hand, took place in an everyday school context and reflected the practice of negative grading that was usual at the Galilei-Schule. Here, there was no mutual affirmation that those concerned were not ‘really’ embarrassing. On the contrary, the students were meant to learn and confirm just how embarrassing they ‘really’ were. As a result, the situation was not liberating but humiliating. In such cases, Döring distinguishes between ritualized embarrassment and rituals of degradation and shaming intended to publically dishonour and devalorize.31 Using a term explored by Erving Goffman, the forms of shaming involved here could be described as ‘loss of face’.32 By stressing the orientation towards the other, Goffman highlights the social character of emotional states like embarrassment, as well as exploring the situational dynamics and the physical and emotional forms in which actual or impending loss of face is expressed: secret avoidance strategies, gestures that suddenly go wrong, desperate attempts at correction, confusion, nervousness, and physical reactions such as shaking, blushing and freezing. But Goffman is overly optimistic in his assumption of an underlying structure of interaction based on mutual attention, marked by a combination of self-respect and tactfulness towards others.33 He understands forms of embarrassment and loss of face as disruptions of this interactive order that nonetheless confirm it via their appeal to its rules. Goffman and the American school of emotional sociology he founded overlook how strongly emotional and interactive orders are shaped by power and status.34 At Hauptschule schools in Berlin, rather than being based on respect, trust and mutual considerateness, the social space was dominated by the principles of social exclusion and contempt – with far-reaching consequences. The impact of self-grading and loss of face on the self-confidence of young adults is apparent in Sila’s account of an experience at her old school. Sila: I once had a music teacher who asked us to present something in class. Everyone was supposed to choose their favourite music or musician and give a talk. I went first and I thought my talk was good. The teacher thought so, too, but then he wanted the class to rate me. I wasn’t very popular back then, either. You can imagine, they all wanted to give me a 4 or a 5, definitely not a 3. The teacher had said he wanted to give me a 3, but after listening to the class he gave me a 5. That was bad, because that kind of thing isn’t really allowed. And since then I’ve been more self-critical.

The notion that such self-grading is somehow democratic is made to seem hypocritical here because, ultimately, it is still the teacher who decides. The fact that Sila interpreted the teacher’s final grade as unfair and as a

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populistic taking of sides against her only served to reinforce the negative impact. The experience of not being supported, of being left at the mercy of her tormentors, and of being humiliated by the teacher was a decisive moment in her school career. Besides the question of whether it is advisable to expose an already marginalized and mentally unstable student to grading by the class, it is baffling that a presentation of the students’ favourite music should be used for such a degrading ritual of humiliation. If one imagines Sila’s current taste for romantic ‘girly music’ like Christine Perri’s love song ‘A Thousand Years’ being publically rated by the ‘gangsta’-rap-listening male students now bullying her at the Galilei-Schule, one would have to seriously question whether those responsible are really suited to the teaching profession. Even without teacher training, it is easy to see that ‘quite a lot has gone wrong’ at the schools attended by Sila. Gender – Body – Religion Embarrassment is negotiated in the classroom via physical, aesthetic and sexual issues. Often it is a case of who does or does not fulfil normative expectations of gendered behaviour, physical appearance and sexual attractiveness. In the following, I discuss the motif of embarrassment in connection with gender, body and religion using the examples of note passing, attributions of fatness, and discussions about headscarves. Even in the digital age, teenagers continue to write and pass notes in class, a practice focussing on the issue of who and what is considered embarrassing. Such covert communications are also strongly gendered, as shown by the following scene. Field journal: In maths class, several boys and girls pass notes back and forth almost the entire time. There is also much use of smartphones. The girls keep their handbags on their desks to shield this activity from the teacher. While the boys try to appear cool and clever, the girls are visibly concerned about what others think and write about them. Neither group is especially interested in the teacher’s monologue. In the break, two girls try to piece together torn up notes thrown into the trash by the boys on their way out. The gender-specificity of this practice is revealed by the preceding scene where a male student demonstratively tore up the notes into tiny pieces and threw them into several different bins, saying to the girls: ‘There, that’ll give you something to do!’

In their practice of doing gender, the young men make a display of confidence, rejecting embarrassment, while the young women’s gendered self-display was oriented towards the motif of embarrassment. By stressing their worries about not measuring up to hegemonic expectations of attractiveness and respectability in the eyes of others, they performed a feminine focus

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on beauty and the body. This binary gender model is linked to a heteronormative order and a corresponding gender-specific repertoire of emotions, requiring young men to be cool and powerful, and young women to be submissive and insecure. As well as socializing and self-assuring aspects, the emphasis on ‘traditional’ gender roles in this note passing scene also has a playful dimension; the quoting and repeating of gender role clichés reinforced social bonds among the girls, as well as distracting and entertaining them in an otherwise uninspiring school milieu. The fact that embarrassment had less to do with objective standards than with strongly gendered expectations and behaviours was also apparent in another example. Although many male students at the Galilei-Schule also showed clear signs of obesity, the fat bodies of female students were sanctioned as departures from the norm and marked as embarrassing to a far greater extent. As a result of processes of national and cultural confidence-building that began in the second half of the nineteenth century, corpulence is no longer perceived as a sign of prosperity, but as a personal flaw.35 In today’s culture of self-optimization, fatness has become a stigma associated with a lack of self-control and with pathological behaviours. Due to historical gender stereotypes, according to which women’s bodies are primitive and their emotions uncivilized, women are particularly strongly affected by fatphobia.36 As with bullying, an already stigmatized student body dealt with obesity by defining specific subject positions as inferior using physical and sensory markers. In view of the many health studies pointing to the statistical correlation between obesity and low social status, we are also dealing here with class bodies.37 In everyday interactions, however, physical traits were both viewed and experienced as primarily the personal responsibility of the individual in question. Whereas Sila was bullied for her ambitions and clothing, in Camille’s case it was because the others saw her as fat and ugly. Here, too, open hostility came mainly from her male classmates, although Camille was also avoided by many female students. This led to a period of withdrawal during which she came to class less and less, finally hardly turning up at all. But her marginalization was not perceived as a health problem, and the resulting absences from school were not legitimized by clinical findings. Not only was Camille considered less worthy of compassion than Sila by the others, she also willingly accepted responsibility for her own ‘truancy’. By the end of the first half of year ten, she had already chalked up thirty-seven unexcused days of absence, and by the end of the year there were more still. The number of punitive 6s this involves is dealt with in detail above in chapter 5 on Hauptschule grades. As a result of all this, her average was very poor: on the mid-year report it was 4.7 and on her school-leaving certificate it was 5.3.

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Camille: At my old school I was abused for my appearance. After primary school I no longer got on well with teachers either. I did behave foolishly, but I sometimes felt unfairly treated. I’m not the type of person to take everything from them. And then we moved. Which is why I’ve now changed school twice. But I’m still in touch with three or four students from my old school. It’s OK here. Some people are a bit strange. I do get bullied, but I just don’t listen anymore. I don’t really care. … I stay away from school a lot. I’m not someone who likes going to school. I don’t enjoy the lessons. Hopefully school will soon be over. I’ve had enough. I mean, I would like to learn, but I’ve had enough of the lessons and the people here. It all gets on my nerves!

Here, too, there are signs of a long history of social exclusion and marginalization at school. In their interviews, both Sila and Camille stressed that they were able to ‘simply’ ignore the taunts addressed to them, but only Camille had developed a defensive strategy of ignorance, her behaviour at school seeming defiant, outwardly often standoffish and uninterested. But this approach was neither simple nor without consequences. Her ability to maintain a positive self-image depended mainly on separating what she perceived as the negative space of the school and the inevitable negativity of what she experienced there from a small select group of positive personal contacts. She had deliberately not joined her class’s Facebook group because, as she put it, she ‘didn’t want to be friends with that lot’. Instead, she used Facebook to connect directly with individual female students. Setting herself apart in this way by deliberately avoiding contact with most of her classmates reinforced her existing marginal position within the class. The Facebook group in question was not very active anyway; several other female students had also not joined, some of them because their parents didn’t allow them to use Facebook. The group became inactive after the end of year ten, a moment when it could have helped the students keep in touch after leaving school. More than a year later, Roberto asked the group ‘Hello, anyone still here?’ and received no answer. This points to low levels of identification with school and one’s own class. Using the example of working-class British women, Beverly Skeggs has shown that disrespectful treatments of physicality, sexuality and class lead to symbolic defence and a lack of identification with one’s attributed social status – in this case, class struggle means above all a struggle against negative classifications.38 Due to the negative connotations associated with this type of institution, Hauptschule schools in Berlin had relatively little community-forming potential beyond the groups of friends formed within them. Their time at school was marked by disengagement and having left they tried to escape the stigma of Hauptschule and the shameful experiences associated with it as fast as possible. There were exceptions, however: one former student told me that, beginning in year nine, her class had developed a strong feeling of

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family-like community with the teachers at the Galilei-Schule, helping to counteract marginalization. The two cases of bullying described above are examples of a lack of solidarity between students, of exclusionary struggles at the lower end of the class hierarchy. Students like Sila and Camille were subjected to additional social devalorization, isolated within their class, and slowly but surely pushed out of the Galilei-Schule. A third example that closely links marginalization along lines of gender, body and religion involves headscarves. In the German school system, wearing a headscarf often means unpleasant experiences, typically slander from other students and expressions of regret from teachers. In this case, embarrassment produced by public defamations has the function of affirming and upholding the norm of religion having no place at school. Whereas school is understood in the hegemonic discourse as an incarnation of modernity and its staff present themselves as agents of the Enlightenment, religion is associated with premodern morals, in particular with the oppression of women and a lack of sexual freedom. This antagonistic construction is a regular source of tension between Muslim families and German schools, channelled through symbolically charged themes like the wearing of headscarves or girls’ participation in swimming lessons.39 The normative linking of enlightenment, secularization and school with gender equality and sexual liberation in the powerful discourse of ‘sexularism’ ignores opposing historical perspectives and conceals current inequalities within the Western system of society and education.40 Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the separation between a male-connoted public sphere and a female-connoted private sphere that underlies the secular model of society produced and legitimized new, modern forms of gender division. And positioning German school children in the tradition of the French Enlightenment with its claim to ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’, as headmasters in particular like to do, is a travesty if one considers the institutionalized discrimination in the German education system. Today, ‘sexularism’ is bringing forth anti-Muslim racism disguised as enlightened discourse, assigning female students who wear headscarves a precarious marginal position where they are barely able to articulate the ambivalences of growing up between a Muslim family and a German school.41 In this unfavourable constellation, the headscarf-wearing students at the Galilei-Schule tended to be quiet and reserved in class. I, too, had little contact with them. When a former student came back for a training programme, I was able to gain insights into the emotional dimension of wearing a headscarf at school. Amira: I always got a bit sad, it’s painful not being accepted just because of the headscarf. Due to a piece of fabric on your head. For me it’s sad because

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I’m simply not being acknowledged. It doesn’t make me a different person, but that’s how society sees it. If the girls would stand up for themselves then eventually maybe it would become routine, but it’s hard work. Maybe then the real bullying will start or you get into arguments. It’s about self-esteem, too, and you try to avoid certain conversations because they could be too hurtful. Even today, people say things like ‘headscarf mafia’ to me, but now I’m more relaxed about it, making a joke of it or laughing myself. But racism does touch you, because you think ‘this concerns me personally, it has nothing to do with the mafia’.

In her comments, Amira switched between past and present, between her own memories and views of the current Muslim students. The retrospective mode allowed her a certain distance, but she was still clearly affected by the stigmatization of the headscarf. At the time of the interview, she was active in a Muslim community, having built herself a confident, modern Muslim identity since leaving school, although she still didn’t feel properly recognized by society. When I spoke to her, she had a book with the title You Can Be the Happiest Woman in the World beside her.42 In the book, recommended morals and behaviour for Muslim women are presented using verses from the Koran and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, outlining an image of woman based on ‘faith, hope, patience and acceptance’, with the path to happiness lying ‘in clarity of knowledge and solid education’.43 In this version of Muslim femininity, the headscarf plays an important part; the author stresses that the ‘wise, dignified woman’ ‘pays attention to her hijab’, that it was ‘prescribed by Allah’ and has the purpose of ‘protecting yourself ’.44 Amira’s engagement with Muslim tradition was neither straightforward nor free of contradictions. In her interview, she complained that as a Muslim woman she was ‘controlled too much’ by her family, something she found unfair in comparison with the more relaxed treatment of her brothers. But she also stressed that an ‘Islamic woman’ belonged with an ‘Islamic man’ and that he would decide whether or not she was allowed to work. At the same time, she encouraged female students at the Galilei-Schule not to be content with the role of housewife and to be more confident in their career goals. The experience of having job applications fail on account of the headscarf was something she had suffered several times. Her approach to dress code was also ambivalent: she wore a headscarf, as well as striking jewellery and fashionable Western brands, although she was aware that this was at odds with the Muslim gender roles prevailing in her milieu of origin. Amira’s experience of exclusion is comparable with those of Muslim students at Gymnasium schools interviewed by Nina Mühe, for whom wearing a headscarf was also accompanied by discrimination, conflict, fear and insecurity.45 Some of these girls, too, used self-empowering acquisition

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of knowledge about Islam to intellectually process experiences of stigmatization and to reflect critically on their own position in family and society. At the Gymnasium, these young women were often isolated pioneers, whereas headscarf-wearing students had long since ceased to be a rarity at the Galilei-Schule, where they often formed separate groups of friends. But whereas at the Gymnasium, forms of knowledge acquisition and the associated processes of intellectual development tended to be appreciated, the general contempt for Hauptschule students, staff monologues on the ‘stupidity of Islam’ and laments about the idiocy of students meant that as a headscarf-wearing Muslima at the Galilei-Schule in Neukölln, becoming the happiest woman in the world was an extreme challenge. An age where group identity is defined strongly in terms of the female body and its sexuality systematically produces gender-specific standards of propriety and thus also occasions for embarrassment. Many students only managed to deal with the resulting experiences of bullying, shaming and humiliation after leaving school, but some found collective or individual ways of escaping embarrassment at school to some degree. Disruptions: When Embarrassment Fails to Materialize Emotions have contradictory social effects, stabilizing and reproducing the social order while also having the potential to disrupt it. Feelings cannot be reduced to a sociological mechanism of cause and effect, on account of their complex links with education and character, memory and the unconscious. Students at the Galilei-Schule reacted in wilful and idiosyncratic ways to expectations of embarrassment. They surprised me and they went through changes, developing contradictory collective behaviours and complex individual personalities. This didn’t make norms disappear, but it did mean they could no longer be taken for granted, sometimes being challenged by alternative norms. Field journal: Double maths with Mr Steiß. A female student who has not turned up since October (we are now in January) enters the class. She seems rather unsure of herself. On her way in, she says ‘hmm, well’ and accidentally knocks over the bin with her handbag. ‘No need to run riot’ says the teacher. He has two worksheets too few, as another female student has also turned up after a prolonged absence. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. And because I’m always thrifty, I made fewer copies.’ The two girls don’t seem too bothered; without the disturbance of teaching materials, it’s easier to have a conversation. And they seem to have plenty to talk about. The teacher responds with outrage: ‘Your chatting is disrespectful to me and to the class. I must say: why did you come? Stay away!’

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The students’ answer to the question of why they turned up after a prolonged absence was implicit in their behaviour: they were not there because of the teacher and his lesson; they came to meet friends and perhaps because, to some extent, they felt obliged to do so by the normative model of compulsory attendance. Students violating this norm are usually expected to at least simulate a credible gesture of contrition, excusing or regretting their behaviour and thus acknowledging the ongoing validity of the norm. As a result, the arrival of a latecomer in class is always a potentially embarrassing moment. The female student seemed unsure on entering the class, appearing to consider the possibility of apologizing, but she then decided against this option. I observed similar situations in other lessons, with latecomers simply going to their desks without saying anything, in many cases with no reaction from the teacher. Although there were major differences in the treatment of absenteeism within the Galilei-Schule, depending crucially on the teacher–student relationship in question, even the possibility of such behaviour points to a fundamental fracturing of the framework of school norms. When absence becomes routine, school forfeits its integrative function. Although the normative standard of compulsory attendance continued to apply at the Galilei-Schule in principle, the lack of embarrassment caused by violations makes clear that in practice school had long since lost much of its persuasiveness and cohesive force. Instead, the outlines of an alternative system of norms emerged – a norm of deviance and absence. This does not reflect a liberation from social power relations, since (with the exception of potential access to subcultures or petty crime) refusal to attend school is not associated with social recognition. In spite of this, the absence of gestures of embarrassment did have a self-empowering and subversive impact. By refusing to feign symbolic subservience on returning to class, they could be said to have saved face. By openly refusing to accept guilt or shame, they also refused to relieve the teacher of the related moral responsibility for their absence. Most teachers responded to this disruptive behaviour with a defensive gesture, in this case by telling the students to stay away from his classes in future, which amounts to a declaration of pedagogical bankruptcy. However, there were also students who liked going to school, in spite of the adverse conditions. One such student was Roberto. He was considered quite uncool, but he wasn’t really unpopular. Although he broke many of the behavioural codes for male Hauptschule students, he did so with such confidence that he was accepted as eccentric. As one example, he was clearly overweight, but he seemed at ease with his body. During sport lessons in the gym, while the other young men tried to outdo each other with gestures of strength, he walked at a gentle pace on the treadmill and engaged in

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good-natured conversation. Roberto was not part of any established group of friends, but he had little problem communicating with various different people. He didn’t cut classes and he didn’t disengage – on the contrary, he was often one of the first to arrive at school. In the morning, he would usually be in the lobby around twenty minutes before class was due to start, engaged in lively conversation with students and teachers. ‘At home it’s boring’, he explained. He would often speak to me on such occasions, telling me about events he had attended or suggesting titles for my book (like Hauptschule Is Everywhere). Most striking was his political engagement in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), although this ended soon after he left school. Sometimes he would take me with him to local political events in Neukölln, where he was usually the only Hauptschule student. Roberto: Even as a child I was interested in politics. I should have joined earlier, that would have been better still. Because I think the SPD is a great party, they really help, and they think I’m great, too. Recently the Hay Bale Roll took place in Rixdorf. Anyone can take part. We were faster than the Young SPD, but we didn’t win. The Slovenians won again, they come here specially for the event. I’m still doing the rounds to get to know the party. Today is a Young SPD working group in the city. There are working groups for Jews, for Christians, for self-employed people, or for those persecuted under the Nazis. In total, I have six or seven meetings a month. There are all kind of different people, a big mix of ages and professions, the youth organization is mostly university students, but three or four of us are still at school. … I think I have a few chances at regional level. Everyone has a chance there, you just have to make an effort and turn up for events. Otherwise no one knows you, so you don’t have much chance of becoming a delegate or member of the district parliament. The next regional elections in Berlin are in ten years, maybe then I’ll be elected to the district parliament. That would be great. You get a bit of money, but not much, maybe around 500 euros. As a deputy you get 20 euros, I’ll stand for election next year. Anyone can do that.

Roberto’s political ambitions were unusual, and he was sometimes mockingly referred to as ‘our politician’, but they did not lead to him being excluded. As well as the pleasure of encountering new people and ideas, this activity was also associated with specific career plans. At the same time, Roberto was trying hard to secure an apprenticeship in a craft trade. Although he was considered a middling student, his attendance and positive attitude meant he was well liked by the staff. At the end of year ten, he was among the very few students to be offered an apprenticeship. He sent off thirty-two applications, each of which took an entire afternoon to write, and he made extensive use of the careers advice and support offered by the school. In some cases, he went to the company in question to post his

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application by hand. As a result, his afternoons during year ten were almost entirely filled with his political activities and with submitting applications. As we have seen, other students were bullied for far less ambitious career plans, were shamed for far less conspicuous behaviour, and suffered far more severely from their experience of being an outsider. Without being able to gauge Roberto’s emotional universe in its entirety, we can at least outline a comparatively favourable constellation of factors. A stable family background gave him a sense of security and his successful application strengthened his confidence. Unlike Sila, he did not come from a higher-status school and was thus perceived as less of a threat to existing hierarchies. Unlike Camille, he had been at the Galilei-Schule since year seven, allowing him to establish stabilizing networks of contacts with other students and trusting relationships with individual teachers. And unlike Theo, who strove to replicate a form of migrant machismo associated with coolness, Roberto was not competing with the aggressive male opinion-makers. However, there were also potential stress factors, including the precarious status of his parents: following a long period living on welfare, at the start of Roberto’s final year at school they managed to modestly improve their standing by securing work as a cleaner and kitchen porter. But this situation continued to be threatened by their uncertain residency status as refugees from the Bosnian War. The insecurities caused by this are discussed in more detail in chapter 9 on social anxiety below. Roberto’s distinctive preferences and his unusually successful first steps in the world of work despite his stigmatization as a Hauptschule student point to a certain flexibility in structural mechanisms and norms. As well as prevailing social constellations, many factors play a part in the production and experience of ‘ugly feelings’, including early childhood influences and mental dispositions. Feelings of embarrassment are never fully predictable; both their uncontrollable occurrence and their unexpected failure to materialize have potentially disruptive effects.

Conclusion: Emotional Regimes The historian William Reddy attempts to make a similar link between unstable emotional practices and higher-order structures. In his influential study The Navigation of Feeling, he bases his remarks on a ‘disaggregated self’ that is shaped by discourses and transformed by practices, as well as discussing the French Revolution and its aftermath as an example of a higher-order ‘emotional regime’ – a historically mutable normative order of emotions which he understands as the basis for political power. He distinguishes between dictatorial regimes that demand strict emotional discipline and more open

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or liberal regimes that only require such discipline from specific institutions like the military and schools while otherwise permitting a relatively free emotional life. Drawing on John Austin’s speech act theory, his concept of ‘emotives’ also shifts the perspective from the question of what emotions are to that of what they do, how they alter individuals and situations.46 A critical updating of Reddy’s theories opens up interesting possibilities. In a related, competing approach, rather than dominant emotional regimes, Barbara Rosenwein speaks of ‘emotional communities’, which she understands as largely identical with social communities like families and neighbourhoods or with institutions like factories and universities.47 But her concept feels too monolithic to be applied to the Galilei-Schule: students there did not form an emotional community, neither in the sense of a bond of solidarity, nor in the sense of an identifiable school or group identity. Instead, the neoliberal emotional regime undermines the conditions for joint action and dissolves forms of collective class consciousness in favour of individualistic attributions and perceptions. This seems to be more in keeping with Reddy’s approach, but that, too, needs revising. In neoliberal times, emotional freedom appears distinctly restricted. In more and more areas of life, people are expected to orient their behaviour towards a relatively narrow set of supposedly market-compatible options, and as a result, neoliberalism also means an ongoing colonization and streamlining of emotions and affects under the primacy of the market. At the same time, the emotional norms established by the ruling bourgeois class are losing their cohesive force at the Hauptschule. In terms of the politics of emotions, then, the picture is the opposite of that painted by Reddy: in everyday life, the seemingly open, liberal emotional regime becomes increasingly dictatorial, while in core institutions like schools it is being eroded. The historical consequences of this remain to be seen, but if, like Reddy, one assumes that excessive emotional suffering is the main factor in bringing about social change or even revolutions, then the current depoliticization of ‘ugly feelings’ could turn into the opposite.

Notes  1.  2.  3.  4.

See Karsunke/Michel/Spengler (eds), Die Neidgesellschaft. Demmerling/Landweer, Philosophie der Gefühle, 197. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. See Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century; Boushey/DeLong/Steinbaum (eds), After Piketty.  5. See Wehler, Die neue Umverteilung; Lessenich/Nullmeier (eds), Deutschland: Eine gespaltene Gesellschaft.  6. See Ngai, Ugly Feelings.

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 7. Scheve/Stodulka/Schmidt, ‘Guter Neid, schlechter Neid?’, 41.  8. Ngai, Ugly Feelings, 126–173; Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 263–269.  9. See Freud, ‘On the Sexual Theories of Children’; Klein, ‘A Study of Envy and Gratitude’; Ngai, ‘Jealous Schoolgirls’. 10. Goffman, Interaction Ritual, 5–45. 11. Kemper/Weinbach, ‘Klassismus’, 7. 12. Ibid., 22f. 13. See Neckel, ‘Blanker Neid, blinde Wut?’ 14. See Bröckling, The Entrepreneurial Self. 15. See Hareß (ed.), Neid; Epstein, Envy. 16. Neckel, ‘Blanker Neid, blinde Wut?’, 147. 17. See Neckel, Flucht nach vorn. 18. See Buschkowsky, Neukölln ist überall; Sarrazin, Deutschland schafft sich ab. 19. Neckel, Flucht nach vorn, 142. 20. See Demmerling/Landweer, Philosophie der Gefühle. 21. See Solomon, ‘On Emotions as Judgments’; Solomon, True to our Feelings, 101–113. 22. Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman, 123. 23. See McRobbie/Garber, ‘Girls and Subcultures’. 24. See Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function’. 25. Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 21–49. 26. On bullying, see Cowie/Jennifer, New Perspectives on Bullying; Scheithauer/Hayer/ Petermann, Bullying unter Schülern; Wöbken-Ekert, ‘Vor der Pause habe ich richtig Angst’; Lawson, Treibjagd auf dem Schulhof; Brinkmann, Mobbing, Bullying, Bossing. 27. See Taylor, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition; Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. 28. Ngai, Ugly Feelings, 6; Reckwitz, ‘Ästhetik und Gesellschaft’, 222ff. 29. See Frevert, Die Politik der Demütigung. 30. Döring, Peinlichkeit, 171–225. 31. Ibid. 32. Goffman, Interaction Ritual, 5–45. 33. Ibid., 97–112. 34. See Katz, How Emotions Work; Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains. 35. See Mackert, ‘Writing the History of Fat Agency’; Farrell, Fat Shame. 36. See ibid. 37. See Max-Rubner-Institut (ed.), Nationale Verzehrsstudie II. 38. See Skeggs, Formations of Class and Gender. 39. See Schiffauer, Schule, Moschee, Elternhaus; Fürstenau/Gomolla (eds), Migration und schulischer Wandel. 40. See Scott, ‘Sexularism’; Asad, Formations of the Secular. 41. See Nökel, Die Töchter der Gastarbeiter und der Islam; Laborde, ‘Female Autonomy, Education, and the Hijab’. 42. See Al-Quarni, Die glücklichste Frau der Welt (translated by Nicholas Grindell from the German edition). 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. See Mühe, ‘Managing the Stigma – Islamophobia in German Schools’. 46. See Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling; Cavell, ‘Performative and Passionate Utterance’. 47. See Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’.

PART IV

Anger and Aggressiveness

Chapter 7

Anger Political Feelings and Patronizing Education

It’s raining so I take the bus. On the way I get talking to a female student from the Galilei-Schule who complains that the staff have ‘no respect’ for the students, and that the students show none for each other either. She says she has been told by teachers to ‘shut the fuck up’, and that insults like ‘fuck you, you whore’ are commonplace among students. She also admitted that she, too, had ‘lost it’ several times during her time at the school, for which she was once suspended. This scene from early in my field research points to a key issue in this chapter: the communicative order at the Galilei-Schule violated the values of those involved, prompting deviant reactions from students and disciplinary measures from teachers. This relationship was emotionally charged, with anger playing a crucial role. Anger is a ‘much-misunderstood emotion’ and this partly shapes the way it is experienced.1 In Christianity, as in other religions, anger is viewed primarily in negative terms. Christians are encouraged to free themselves from such negative emotions, transcending or overcoming them with a view to a divine order, or at least to control and limit them in everyday life.2 Beginning in the nineteenth century, psychology and psychotherapy were especially influenced by notions of an ‘angry soul’ or a biological aggressive drive.3 Although the Freudian assumption that bottled-up energy should be released rather than repressed permitted a positive interpretation of certain expressions of anger as cathartic, the linking of emotional behaviour to the individual and to nature also had a depoliticizing tendency. In anthropology and cultural studies today, by contrast, there is more emphasis on the contextualization of emotions within society and the ways they are shaped

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by culture. Feminist writing has stressed the emancipatory force of anger, reclaiming it as an expression of justified outrage and as a necessary means of political mobilization and solidarity.4 In this same vein, I link specific forms of anger at the Galilei-Schule with a wounded sense of justice and examine their political potential. Conflicts at school, typically involving mutual blaming, are especially revealing for those studying anger as they reflect moral standards and failed expectations. Although anger sometimes erupts with great vehemence at such moments, it is not an irrational emotion. Robert Solomon has argued for emotions to be understood not as sudden outbreaks of something irrational, but as a system of interlinked judgements connected to moral stances.5 Judgements are understood here not in a neutral or disinterested sense, but as reflections on and reactions to the world one is concerned with. To give an idea of the anger built up by students over their time at school with regard to perceived injustice, I begin by describing various scenes of contempt, viewing the resulting conflicts not as random adversities or purely personal animosities, but as symptomatic of the school order. Anyone seeking to describe structures of emotion in ethnographic terms must face the challenge of speaking for and about others. Ideally, ethnographies should combine detailed empiric portrayal with a high level of theoretical reflection, with projections by the author and demands on potential readers playing an important but mostly hidden role. For example, when faced with a week-long boycott of lessons at the end of the school year, I would have liked to write about a ‘strike’ against a ‘racist teacher’, but the students did not situate their actions within a framework of organized resistance. As demonstrated below, they refused to be instrumentalized by a leftist social worker or to be intimidated by a policeman, instead taking pleasure in playing the two off against each other. Rather than lamenting a lack of political awareness among Neukölln teenagers in Marxist terms or joining the conservative disparagement of their notorious tendency to violence, I begin by describing how feelings of anger arise and then how the resulting conflicts are dealt with at school. As long as one is not scared off by angry, aggressive behaviour, it soon becomes clear that angry students are still able to articulate their positions in clear, differentiated terms, and that their aggressive behaviour often has specific, plausible roots. To understand these, one must start by listening carefully to the Hauptschule students in question in order to reconstruct their expectations and the conditions under which they are being expressed. The forms of anger under study here are closely linked with feelings of not being heard or of not being able to express oneself adequately within the given institutional framework. In recent years, the ability of marginalized groups to express themselves has been discussed in postcolonial studies

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under the heading ‘Can the subaltern speak?’6 In this context, literary scholar Gayatri Spivak uses the term enabling violence to describe a mechanism by which subalterns can only voice their position by adopting hegemonic patterns of articulation. Applied to Hauptschule students in Berlin, the concept of the subaltern (originally coined by Antonio Gramsci and now widely used in postcolonial studies) helps to highlight structures of social and discursive exclusion.7 Here, subaltern is used as a category including all marginal groups whose status within a hegemonic culture denies them sufficient recognition and forms of legitimate self-expression. In the second part of this chapter, the instruments used at the Galilei-Schule for violence prevention and conflict management – class council, training room – are examined in terms of the ways they link power with communicative and disciplinary structures. Such a description is political in a double sense: firstly, by reconstructing the ways power relations are reproduced and experienced in political fields like schools and, secondly, by then addressing and criticizing specific institutional instruments for conflict management. The treatment of so-called ‘problem students’ was marked by a refusal to engage with the underlying problems. This approach led to further situations of speechlessness and more anger on the part of students, but also to forms of subversion and solidarity. Both this chapter and this book as a whole are marked by the tensions arising from this ‘political difference’ between forms of political control in school as a state apparatus in the narrow sense and broader issues concerning the societal order articulated in schools.8 Avoiding the self-referential framework of political theory, questions of ‘the political’ are discussed here with reference to everyday situations where their impact is felt.9 Because the Hauptschule could no longer offer students a credible promise of education, they withdrew their allegiance. Neither the angry behaviour of the students nor the pedagogical and disciplinary measures used to combat it are unpolitical: although conflicts over the school order played out primarily on a personal level, they were framed and brought forth by contradictions within society as a whole.

Political Feelings: Getting Angry In my previous book, Hauptschüler. Zur gesellschaftlichen Produktion von Verachtung, with reference to the theory of recognition formulated by Axel Honneth, I showed that Hauptschule students are marginalized not only in socioeconomic terms, but also symbolically. In everyday school life, this contempt mainly took the form of degrading and humiliating treatment. At such moments, students often felt powerless and defenceless,

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but they also developed critical approaches that were often accompanied by or articulated via anger. Philosopher Hilge Landweer links such emotional responses to violations of basic norms with the ‘righteous feeling of having been humiliated’.10 It is especially at moments when they are not upheld that moral standards become visible and are appealed to in emotional terms. Based on a fundamental sense of justice, according to which each individual should be treated with respect, students became increasingly outraged over their time at school, sometimes leading to anger and aggression. Experiences of Exclusion Early in the year, to give the students an idea of what I planned to do at their school, the tenth-grade teachers gave me the opportunity to discuss a few passages from my first book about Hauptschule students with them. The lesson began with questions from the class about my work (‘How long does a book like that take to write?’, ‘What do you get paid for it?’) and about the school where I did my field work. Nevin: What kind of a school was it? S.W.: It was a Hauptschule in Wedding, comparable with this school. Nevin: Are you saying our school is bad? Jasha: In Wedding! Of course that’s what he means. What do you expect? That he says this school is good? Nevin: We ranked fifth for truancy! Jasha: We can’t even top that ranking. That’s how bad we are! Mustafa: That was before. Now we’re all integrated. Jasha: Integrated? What about the gypsies? S.W.: One problem at the other school was that only two or three students per year found a training place when they left. Mohamad: Yes, it’s the same here. Jasha: We won’t make it anyway. Sekundarschule is even worse. No one gets to repeat a year. Even the stupidest students make it through.

A label like ‘Wedding’ – a (post-)migrant, (post-)proletarian district comparable with Neukölln – was enough to trigger an ironic play on negative associations. The unpleasant nature of such attributions of inferiority was reflected in the fact that many comments on the students’ own experiences of exclusion were formulated in sarcastic or ambiguous

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terms. Jasha dominated the exchange with an extremely negative reading of her own school situation. The students referred to the transition of their school from Hauptschule to ‘integrated’ Sekundarschule, which had been underway since 2010. At the time of my research, this had yet to bring any noticeable improvement, contributing instead to an additional marginalization of the reformed school’s final Hauptschule class. The pejorative distancing from ‘gypsies’ pointed to status struggles at the bottom end of the school hierarchy that were being fuelled by further reforms: as part of changes to Berlin’s special needs schools, most Roma students had been moved to neighbouring schools, where, mainly in the lower grades, they initially formed large groups, some of them being taught separately. Soon after, the wave of refugees arriving from Syria was to put these schools’ integrative capacities to another tough test. In spite of the irony involved, the students’ self-denigrating gesture points to the impact of symbolic violence on their self-image. As mentioned above, Pierre Bourdieu uses the notion of ‘symbolic violence’ for forms of submissiveness not imposed by physical violence but made possible by the internalization of value judgements prevailing within society.11 In Bourdieu’s view, the conservative effect of school consists in upholding the dominant order and helping to legitimize social inequality, as even those repressed by this order affirm standards of education and success that are geared towards the ruling bourgeois class.12 The students confirmed the stratifying effects of the hierarchical school system, in which their type of school in general and their specific school in particular were subjected to negative categorization. With their comments about ‘truancy’ and ‘repeating years’, they also reproduced the moral condemnation of the education system’s so-called ‘losers’, from which they themselves suffered (some time later, incidentally, the Galilei-Schule did indeed rank first for truancy among Berlin’s schools). In emotional terms, such self-exclusion is typically articulated via forms of self-humiliation and self-castigation, as well as in emotions like shame, envy and anxiety. Symbolical violence also brings forth anger – anger at oneself and at those one blames for one’s own inferiority. For the discussion with the students, I had chosen mainly descriptions of classroom scenes, including a passage from my field journal in which students reacted with anger to discrimination experienced in the labour market when looking for work experience placements. ‘It was only because I was a foreigner’, one student complained at the time with reference to what he perceived as a discriminatory rejection of his application. The teacher then mentioned that companies had had ‘bad experiences’ with ‘foreigners’ and warned the teenagers to behave better.

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Jasha: That’s mean on the part of the teacher, and on the part of the companies. That the teacher thinks it’s the students’ fault that the companies don’t want foreigners anymore. Because not all foreigners are the same. But when foreigners have prejudices against Germans, then they say we’re unable to integrate. S.W.: Why do you think the teacher said that? Jasha: Because she’s a Nazi. [Laughs] Male student: She’s a cannibal. They want to destroy our last hope by her telling us no one will take you foreigners anyway. S.W.: I think she actually wanted to motivate the students. Jasha: We don’t have a chance here, regardless of how integrated we are, regardless of how German we are. Because the first foreigners who came, meaning our ancestors, behaved like shit. Theo: Well, my friend, he’s Turkish, and he’s already written thirty or forty applications, but he hasn’t been taken. And his best friend is German, he wrote six or seven and immediately got a place. Mohamad: If you send thirty or forty applications you should get a place, surely! Mustafa: No my friend! Sometimes you have to send 100. That’s how it is. Female student: One beautician said to me: ‘Not with a headscarf, forget it.’ Isra: It’s true. I wanted to train as a beautician, too, and they said the same to me. Jasha: The worst thing for my mother is she speaks perfect German, she calls and they don’t realize she’s a foreigner, and then she turns up, they see her headscarf, and they say ‘Sorry, the job’s already been taken.’ It’s so mean! S.W.: And how does your mother react? Jasha: What can she do? We go back in the evening and set the shop on fire. Maral: I was sad because I’d like to do it, but now I can’t. Mustafa: It’s no wonder if you go to Germans. Why didn’t you go to a foreign beautician? Did they say the same thing? Isra: Yes, they said the same thing. Then I did my work experience with a hairdresser. The grandmas who came in would ask me: ‘Why are you wearing a headscarf? Is it because you have to?’ Jasha: I know someone who worked in a kitchen and she always had to come in through the emergency exit so the Germans wouldn’t see that someone in a headscarf was working there. The cook said otherwise everyone would stop coming.

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Jasha’s use of the word ‘mean’ reflects a sense of injustice she associates with stories of racist discrimination in the labour market, where Hauptschule students of non-German origin are doubly excluded, degraded on account of the type of school they attend and discriminated against as migrants, with headscarves proving especially disadvantageous when looking for a job. Paradoxically, although the accusation raised in the passage under discussion – that migrant students were to blame for their own misfortunes in the job market on account of their bad conduct – was vehemently rejected in general terms, the underlying interpretive model itself was not called into question. By merely shifting the blame back one generation, transferring it to her ancestors, Jasha in fact indirectly endorsed the accusations. Elsewhere, too, it became clear that even in their critique of racism, the students were operating within a dominant discursive order, for instance by adopting fixed categories of ethnic difference based on nation states (‘Germans’ vs. ‘foreigners’). Their views of the applications procedure were similarly ambiguous: on the one hand, the students identified and criticized exclusionary structures, but chances of success were also attributed to individual endeavour and fate (‘the way things are’). Classist and racist exclusion from the labour market goes hand in hand with moral devalorization. In class, such socioeconomic and symbolic marginalization was met with a mix of sadness and outrage, with regrets over denied opportunities and indignation over the behaviour of businesses. The fact that experiences of inferiority can also evoke anger and turn to aggression was at least alluded to in the ironic reference to nocturnal acts of revenge. Rather than being limited to the labour market itself, however, the discrimination of Hauptschule students was also produced within the school itself. Everyday Classism and Racism at School Field journal: Mr Steiß warns those present that they will have a ‘hard time’ as Hauptschule students and that their chances in the labour market are ‘near zero’. He then writes ‘HONK’ on the blackboard in large letters and asks if anyone knows what it stands for. The students look puzzled, no one seems to know the answer. Finally, he gives the solution – ‘Hauptschüler ohne nennenswerte Kenntnisse’ (Hauptschule student with no notable skills). Then he asks what an employer does first on receiving a hundred applications. Someone answers: ‘They look to see who’s a honk.’

In German, ‘honk’ is a slur, an acronym designed to humiliate. Originally used in teenage slang for a person with little intelligence and antisocial manners, it is now widely used as a synonym for idiot, no longer referring

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to students from a specific type of school.13 In the course of the 2000s, this may have given rise to a culture of mocking Hauptschule students based on the stereotype of their being stupid and morally degenerate. True or not, this claim is made in several books and reports, including Anke Clasen’s Bildung als Statussymbol and Ernst Rösner’s polemic Hauptschule am Ende, as well as a major piece on schools in Focus magazine and a discussion of current research on the transition from primary to secondary school in Die Zeit newspaper.14 The latter piece adds that the term is now commonly used by children as young as six.15 All of the above-mentioned texts use the shock effect of this defamatory term for a spectacular opening. The fact that Neukölln teenagers, otherwise well versed in insults, needed a teacher to explain that the term referred to them, raises the question of where this slur has mainly been used and spread. The usage of ‘honk’ outlined above suggests that, to a certain extent at least, it is a product of the media bubble, highlighting the discursive impact of catchy negative expressions. Like myself, the authors of the texts listed above risk unwittingly reproducing current negative stereotypes while writing critically about them. Many writers use the term as an eye-catching element of their argument, neither tracing its roots nor examining its usage. This feeds an interplay between popular, scientific, media, and pedagogical discourse in which the spread of such a slur can gain unwanted momentum.16 Mr Steiß may have read such reports or heard about the slur from other teachers before confronting students with it. Rather than situating its usage among the teenagers themselves, as is usually the case, he understood it as a current category in application procedures. Although the links between ‘honk’ and the labour market are often alluded to in the media,17 the teacher took it one step further by painting it as part of a systematic practice of categorization. His use of the term left it unclear whether he was critically drawing the students’ attention to a form of insult being used against them, or whether he, too, thought they lacked notable skills. When I asked him about the episode, he defended his approach in pedagogical terms based on the need to confront students who systematically overrate themselves with their actual performance and development. Mr Steiß: But I explained the business with honk to the students. And it really exists, I didn’t make it up. It’s important to confront them with this bitter reality from time to time. This is how they are classified. To put it bluntly: the qualified people who allocate apprenticeships consider our students as Category D, meaning uneducable. Their shortcomings in core competences are so great that they can only find work in a very few fields. And then there is a lack of secondary virtues such as punctuality, reliability and attention to detail. This will cause them to fail as long as they don’t improve. In most cases, it’s only at age eighteen or nineteen that they achieve a certain maturity,

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developing a sense of responsibility for themselves. My pedagogical goal is to motivate them to take the next step in this direction. And change always begins with an analysis of the facts. They don’t realize that they’re among the bottom 5 percent of students. One can imagine how a class of twenty at this school is made up: according to performance criteria, it’s ten times the two worst students from any class. And what can you expect from such a group?

The teacher’s disparaging tone invites contradiction. The propagation of ‘honk’ as reconstructed above shows that rather than offering an ‘objective’ reflection of ‘reality’, the word always also constructs, shapes and interprets. Even if this and similar negative terms really are used by employers, reiterating it in class seems like a questionable move, especially as the students already face extensive devalorization. One-sided attributions of blame were also evident in his complaints about the students’ lack of social skills. These allegations are problematic for other reasons: firstly, because they imply a higher level of social skills on the part of the speaker and, secondly, because they ignore existing social skills such as those resulting from the fact that many Hauptschule students are involved to a significant degree in taking care of younger siblings. Although the students’ grades for social conduct were indeed poor, many of their disciplinary offences such as lateness and disruptiveness were clearly linked to failings of the Hauptschule as an institution. The teacher focussed on such shortcomings, rather than asking why the school was unable to create a learning environment in which students might systematically acquire or develop the relevant skills. As a consequence, if the verdict of ‘uneducable’ applies to anything at all, it is to institutions like the Hauptschule itself, in the sense of ‘not capable of providing an education’. Finally, his negative comments about the make-up of the student body cannot go unchallenged. The seemingly neutral mechanism of this procedure, according to which the two least talented students in every primary school class are filtered out, is not backed up by empirical studies on the transition from primary to secondary school. Mechthild Gomolla and Frank-Olaf Radtke speak instead of ‘institutional discrimination’, underlining the fact that children from migrant families are structurally disadvantaged.18 Decisions concerning which school route students will take are far more strongly influenced by social criteria than those involved like to admit. Discriminatory control over the ethnic and social make-up of the student body is exerted both directly, by downgrading migrant students in spite of comparable results, and indirectly, via negative assessments of their linguistic and social skills. As a result of such racist selection practices, young people of Turkish and Arab origin were strongly overrepresented at Hauptschule schools in Berlin, while the majority of Roma children were sent to special needs schools.19 The German school system itself generates

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ethnic and social difference and legitimizes these classifications in terms of achievement and talent. The teacher’s reckless comment about a class made up entirely of the ‘bottom 5 percent’ thus tells us more about his negative outlook than about the students’ actual abilities. Mr Steiß was not deliberately malicious, but his teaching style was perceived as especially insulting by his students. His humiliating treatment had a demotivating effect, and soon no one wanted to attend his maths classes. One student complained to me that Mr Steiß had told him he ‘couldn’t get anywhere anyway’ coming from a Hauptschule. Another then remarked: ‘If I was headmaster, I would have thrown Mr Steiß out long ago.’ As well as such status-related devalorization, students were also enraged by his anti-Muslim racism. Mr Steiß: Sometimes I’m exposed to profane, simple-minded Islamism, and I try to combat that. But moderation is required. There are students who claim the world is flat, Hodscha said it: ‘Just look at the American photos of Earth from space – it’s flat!’ It’s hard to argue with that. We’ve seen it all. And of course feelings ran high after 9/11, when most of the Muslim students thought that Jews were responsible. Things have calmed down of late, but many Muslims do have extremely antisemitic views. You have to contest this and point out a few things. Otherwise I have no problem, I’m very tolerant. But occasionally I have to make fun of how hypocritical this religion is – and how stupid.

Disconcertingly, in spite of his openly Islamophobic viewpoint, expressed in unveiled form at the close, Herr Steiß sees himself as tolerant and enlightened. His educational stance, combatting generalizations and conspiracy theories, slipped into discriminatory rabble-rousing, thus forfeiting its credibility. In lessons, the teacher’s claim to cultural and rational superiority expressed itself in his tendency to deliver monologues to the students on the subject of their own religion and origins. Besides complaining about their shortcomings in maths, he would lecture them about ‘criminal clan structures’ in extended Arab families in Berlin, about the Palestine conflict, and about Islam, which in his opinion could never achieve the standards of the European Enlightenment. Here, racism is a discursive practice of self-positioning in which negative distancing from a culturally marked Other is used to reinforce the liberal-secular norm of a ‘German school’.20 This racism is anti-Muslim because it equates Islam with Islamism, constructing Islam as a homogenous whole that is inferior by definition. Not all teachers at the Galilei-Schule showed such arrogance and lack of respect towards their students, but Mr Steiß was not the only one to humiliate them. In view of this ‘culture of disrespect’21 towards Hauptschule students, it was no wonder trouble broke out before the end of the school year.

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A School Boycott and the Consequences Field journal: Class council, like every Tuesday morning. Less and less students, but still just as many problems. Ms Hille: Looking at this tiny group makes me sick. Lots of people mess up their school-leaving certificate on the home straight. [Silence from the class] Ms Hille: And what’s worse, I met Ms Scherger and she told me that Thomas and Roberto were the only ones who helped with the buffet. That’s a disgrace! Ms Scherger depends on you and you don’t come. As a punishment, the class will receive 200 euros less. [Silence from the class] Duc: Sorry. Yasmin: I don’t think it’s fair. I was always there until now. She should apologize first! Ms Hille: It would be a shame if you wanted nothing more to do with Ms Scherger. You do something like this once in your employment career, and then that’s it.

Besides teaching classes, Ms Scherger was responsible for a catering business run by the school, with students preparing food for school-related events as a way of familiarizing them with a possible career field. In order to authentically simulate a work environment, they had to apply with a CV and an interview. Profits were supposed to be divided up and paid back to the various classes, but in this case they were withheld as a disciplinary measure – the reason being that for several days, the students had refused to attend Ms Scherger’s classes or to take part in the catering. Even students who liked helping out in the kitchen no longer turned up. Only Thomas, one of the few ethnically German students, and the always motivated Roberto were left over. What had happened? The week before, there had been a fierce dispute that I didn’t witness but that was vividly described to me by several students who were there. During class, Ms Scherger allegedly made disparaging remarks about consanguineous marriages in Turkish migrant families. When she claimed that children born to such couples were ‘disabled’ Hazal flew into a rage, jumping up from her chair and screaming at the teacher: ‘Are you trying to say I’m disabled?’ Hazal, like Sila who used to sit beside her, was the child of a marriage between cousins. There followed an angry exchange during which, the students’ reported, the teacher uttered insults like ‘Your fucking Allah! Who reads such stuff?’ In the following days, almost all of Hazal’s classmates boycotted Ms Scherger. Soon there were rumours that the teacher had ‘insulted our Allah’. One student announced a divine punishment, claiming to know her fate: ‘Each person is punished singly, whether or not they pray.

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I’m sorry for Ms Scherger, for what will happen to her, because her punishment will be severe.’ Other teachers criticized their colleague’s behaviour. Ms Hille told me ‘she has very extreme views on this matter’ and the headmaster spoke in the staffroom, asking for more ‘political correctness’. When all this was discussed in the class council, a week after the events in question, the focus was on ending the boycott as quickly as possible, not on the underlying problems of racism and Islamophobia among sections of the staff. During this session, Ms Hille made a concession to the students by stressing that Ms Scherger had apologized. But the students pointed out that this was not credible and that it had ‘not even been a full sentence’. Ms Hille put the students under obligation to start attending Ms Scherger’s classes again, and she demanded an apology from them as a way of placating Ms Scherger, who was offended by their failure to turn up. This failure to take the students’ perspective into account was regrettable, since their anger struck me as well-founded. In his capacity as student spokesperson, Ali in particular had criticized the teacher’s conduct several times. Ali: She hates Islam – 100 percent Islamophobic. Tars everyone with the same brush. In her view, every woman who wears a headscarf is forced to do so. She thinks young women in Arab countries are all raped and beaten or forced to marry an 80-year-old. And of course we all engage in incest. She’s insulting. An intelligent person can make criticisms, but in a way that doesn’t make the other person aggressive. She lacks this talent. For me, she’s not an educator.

This was not the first time in the school year that conflicts between the students and Ms Scherger had led to the need for apologies. On one occasion, the headmaster stormed into the classroom mid-lesson and demanded, with a theatrical gesture, that a student hand over his mobile phone ‘immediately’. He threatened to call the police or get the student expelled, as if he was talking about a gun. The scene appeared especially bizarre as the other students visibly still had their phones about their persons. Although mobile phones were officially banned inside school, the rule was barely enforced and sometimes disobeyed even by the staff; once, for example, due to a lack of other instruments, a chemistry teacher asked his students to use their phones as stopwatches during an experiment, tacitly assuming they had them about their persons at all times. By contrast, during a dispute with a student, Ms Scherger had demanded that he hand over his phone. At first he tried to talk himself out of it (‘It was something urgent about my mother’, ‘Barack Obama was calling’). Finally, when none of this helped, he refused to obey. The teacher then went to the headmaster in a rage to complain. During the next lesson, the headmaster felt obliged to intervene in order to restore the balance of power. Besides having to surrender his phone, the student was also required to apologize to the teacher.

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Although the headmaster stood by the teacher in this situation, he already had his doubts, both about Ms Scherger and about Mr Steiß, as I learned when I spoke to him about my manuscript several years later. Mr Rüttgen: I had to speak to them often in my office. They never overcame their habit of verbally bashing students. We tried various things, once even dividing up classes differently to stop things escalating any further. We also assigned a kind of coach to Mr Steiß, but it didn’t change his basic attitude. He would go a bit easier when the coach was there. And he did get a warning. He just talked his students to death. In Ms Scherger’s case it depended on her mood. She came from a business background, where she was already known as a strict boss. She couldn’t deal properly with disruptions and was quick to say things like ‘maybe you do it that way in Rumania’, which is of course unacceptable. She was one of the few teachers I was never on friendly terms with. I warned her several times to ease off a bit – sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn’t.

During the boycott, due to the severity of the confrontation, not only a verbal apology was demanded of the students, but also an additional symbolic act of atonement. During class council, they were told to bake a cake for Ms Scherger. The teacher refused to discuss her suggestion and took the astonished silence of those present as a kind of consent. During the next ethics class, the students were told to go to the school kitchen to bake the cake, but they saw no reason to apologize, nor to bake a cake. Once again, Thomas and Roberto were the only ones willing to comply. ‘The class decided’, they said, while making air quotes with their fingers, presumably implying that it had been decided for them. They called their cake the ‘200 euro cake’, stressing their hope of obtaining a reduction or cancellation of the fine imposed. While they were baking, the other students attended ethics class in the next room, during which there were humorous references to the cake issue, as when Momo ironically asked ‘Can I help them bake? I want to apologize too’, to which Ali replied: ‘If you do, you’re no longer my friend.’ Finally, Thomas and Roberto presented the cake to Ms Scherger and apologized to her in the name of the class. Some students then started attending her classes again, while others continued to stay away. The school year was almost over in any case. In this way, the conflict was ‘resolved’ without addressing its causes. The angry students’ sense of injustice was viewed merely as an obstacle to the continuation of regular lessons, not taken seriously in pedagogical terms. The migrant teenagers preserved their dignity in a wilful manner by withdrawing from the form of apology imposed by their teacher, although they were unable to stop it entirely. Neither staff nor students ever used the word ‘strike’, although the refusal to attend lessons could have been described

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as such. Rather than demanding a systematic examination of a structural problem in school and in society, they settled for a spontaneous boycott of an unpopular teacher, framed in personal terms. Moreover, the teacher’s behaviour was not addressed as ‘racism’. In other, less tense situations, the students did explicitly mention racism, but in the face of actual racist insults they were often speechless. Hazal’s angry reaction, provoked by the extreme nature of the insult, broke through this helpless silence. The majority of the class declared solidarity with her, perceiving her anger not as an idiosyncratic disruption of the lesson but as a rightly vehement critique. Hazal’s emotional response was not ‘blind’ but ‘dignified’, an act of resistance against everyday racism.22 The forms of contempt described above include various modes of discriminatory speech: us/them distinction (‘I’m very tolerant’ vs. ‘your fucking Allah’), categorization and stereotyping (‘honk’, ‘category D’, consanguineous marriage), and devalorization (lack of skills, stupidity, alleged antisemitism).23 Why are these forms of speech hurtful? The political dimension of angry reactions to insults and humiliation is revealed by an analysis of the relationship between language and violence. For philosopher of language John Austin, words are always also acts that we use to construct the world and establish social relations.24 Judith Butler radicalized and politicized Austin’s speech act theory by arguing that we are constituted as subjects by being addressed in language, and by showing how power relations are (re-)produced by such processes.25 The insults at the Galilei-Schule were a product of society and could not be reduced to individual teachers or students, even if they were experienced primarily as personal animosities and feelings. The ‘physical force of language’ was expressed in practices like jumping up to scream and in emotional forms of anger and rage.26 Whereas the literature tends to focus on linguistic violence on the part of students (as I do in chapter 6 on bullying and chapter 2 on ‘trash talk’), I also describe insulting behaviour by teachers towards students to make it clear that linguistic violence not only takes place in schools, but that it is produced by the institution itself.27 In the following discussion of instruments used to deal with conflicts, I focus on a form of linguistic violence that is especially prevalent in school settings and that consists of restricting another person’s ability to speak, or barely acknowledging what they say.

Speechlessness: On Dealing with ‘Problem Students’ When students at the Galilei-Schule discussed possible ways of dealing with disturbances in class, their suggestions were far from lax. During the lesson featuring passages from my first Hauptschule book, we also discussed

Anger: Political Feelings and Patronizing Education  •  223

a scene in which a boy had addressed a female classmate as ‘Du Schlampe’ (you slut) and later tried to defend himself by claiming he had said ‘DuschLampe’ (shower light). The students explained how they would respond to such behaviour. Mohamad: Training room! Jasha: Thrown out. End of story! Nevin: Sent home. Suspension. Jasha: Or no more boys in the class. Mohamad: To be subjected to Mr Steiß. Nevin: He would sit down and start telling stories. Jasha: About what it was like when he was young. About how back then there was no such thing as a shower light.

In this half serious, half humorous banter, the students referred to disciplinary measures like the training room, to which I return below. In spite of their stated desire for punishment, the students in Neukölln behaved similarly to their counterparts in Wedding. The same day, when a student didn’t turn up until the fourth lesson, her late arrival was greeted with by a classmate with a call of ‘Go home, you problem child!’, to which she replied ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Though Neukölln teenagers propagated a tough approach to deviant behaviour, they could be fiercely critical when facing such measures themselves. But in spite of such individual feelings of injustice, they largely accepted the school’s regime of punishments as a necessary evil. Class Council The conflict between Ms Scherger and the students that led to the boycott was discussed in the class council, where the measures for its ‘resolution’ were decided. At the Galilei-Schule, the students and their class teacher met for class council once a week to discuss current issues. The goal of class councils is to strengthen community spirit within the school through participation, as well as giving students practice in democratic formats of negotiation. However, ethnographic studies like that written by Heike de Boer about a primary school class in Hessen have shown a large discrepancy between democratic ideals and school practice: students often use the class council to show off, and teachers use it mainly to regulate conflicts.28 In the face of huge disciplinary challenges, a similar situation prevailed at the Galilei-Schule. The scope for open exchange was minimized by negative

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agendas, an authoritarian tone, and a non-negotiable reading of the rules. Especially in the discussion about the conflict with Ms Scherger described above, in which the students had no opportunity to give their own viewpoint, the pseudo-democratic character of this pedagogical instrument was plain to see. Taking place mostly on Monday or Tuesday, the class council often began with direct questions, allegations and reprimands from the staff for late arrivals, truancy and other offences. A typical opening statement was: ‘What’s going on? I’ve been getting more and more complaints about you lately.’ Having worked through the current ‘list of disasters’, talk would eventually turn to the students’ prospects in the labour market, mainly because the class council was always held at the start of the careers lesson. This was another reason for a blurring of the line between a democratic forum and a more controlled classroom discussion. Field journal: Class council begins with Ms Hille addressing a reproachful ‘long time no see, two and half weeks’ to Maria. Then the usual round of questions about how the application process is going. The students look at the floor, they speak in low, muffled tones. Apart from Roberto, who has secured the prospect of a training contract, the situation looks bad. Some write no applications or don’t send them off, others have twenty or thirty rejections behind them. One says he has a place but doesn’t respond to further questions. The round of inquiries on this topic dampens the mood, and Ms Hille’s appeals for the students to write applications and use the careers information centre feel slightly desperate. One student replies: ‘The result is always the same.’

This lack of prospects was a major emotional burden for the students, made worse by exposure in front of the class. For many, the seamless transition from disciplinary conflicts to careers outlook made the class council torture. Rather than addressing the causal connection between exclusion from the labour market and rebellious behaviour at school, only the opposite argument was presented, according to which bad conduct at school reduces the chances of future employment. As a result, students were blamed in multiple ways: for not respecting the school rules, for ruining their own futures, and for not making enough effort to obtain apprenticeships. Their mumbling, diversions and silence were structurally determined by the fact that the given situation in the class council offered them no adequate way of raising their concerns.29 Their attempts to move on quickly from the vexatious subject of applications and their remarks about the perceived meaninglessness of the recommended sources of assistance were ignored. As this shows, the practice of the class council was at odds with its stated aims: the topics and forms of discussion were imposed one-sidedly and the students’ views disregarded.

Anger: Political Feelings and Patronizing Education  •  225

Occasionally, the principle of an open-ended exchange and the discussion of students’ personal issues was at least simulated via ritualized opening questions. Once, a visibly bad-tempered class teacher began a class council session by asking students to ‘tell us what’s been going on over the past week’. They remained silent, probably guessing where this would lead. Without really waiting for an answer, the teacher launched into a furious lecture, telling the students their conduct had again been ‘beneath contempt’ as they had disrupted classes, arrived late, or not turned up at all. The teacher’s frustration was understandable, as her attempts to teach the class would become meaningless if students failed to turn up and cooperate. Nonetheless, such a negative choice of subject matter dampened the mood of the discussion. The teachers were aware that positive incentives have a motivating effect, but they were working in a problem-rich milieu where discussions of positive matters were the exception, with any such discussion also indirectly pointing to the dominance of the negative. On one occasion, ‘to say something positive for a change’, the class teacher followed up her usual reprimands by reporting a replacement teacher’s words of praise for the class, although not without adding that such positive feedback ‘has unfortunately become a rare thing in recent times’, as the class’s conduct had ‘deteriorated badly’. Besides the dominance of disciplinary problems, an open-ended exchange was also at odds with the teaching style of certain staff members. In the first lesson of term, when there were no current problems or conflicts to deal with, the teacher asked what people had done during the vacation; when one student spoke of a trip to a thermal spa, the teacher used this to ask if they knew ‘what thermal actually means’ and then immediately told the class they had a great deal of catching-up to do in physics. The examples above show the authoritarian tendency of this and other forms of classroom discussion. In structural terms, this relates to the institutional imbalance of power between teachers and students, but it may also reflect a specifically ‘German’ school culture. On the basis of a comparative study, Werner Schiffauer discusses the differences between dominant teaching methods in European countries: teacher-centred approaches in France, relatively free discussion in the Netherlands, group work in Britain, and, in Germany, teacher-guided discussion. In this latter model, although students theoretically have the possibility of contributing personal viewpoints, the topics and results of the discussion are defined by the teacher in an authoritarian manner.30 This latent authoritarianism was seen in the class council at the GalileiSchule, and it could even be observed in discussions of matters directly concerning students, as in the planning of their graduation ceremony. In the class council, two students suggested organizing a Julklapp. The teacher was sceptical and moderated the discussion in such a way that one or two

226  •  That Sinking Feeling

students were allowed to speak, after which she would present her counterarguments and her suggestion of Wichteln. In this latter form of Secret Santa, the gifts are collected and distributed anonymously to a random member of the group, giving teachers the option of adding gifts where necessary to prevent anyone coming away empty-handed, whereas in the case of Julklapp, lots are drawn to see who will gift whom, allowing more targeted, personal presents. When students began responding to the teacher’s input in a lively discussion, she prevented this with controlling comments like ‘I’m speaking now’ or ‘You’re welcome to say something, but now it’s my turn’. Having failed to persuade the students, the teacher postponed the decision, telling the class to ‘have another think about it’. Two weeks later, the tenth-grade classes came together for a joint class council to discuss the final details of the graduation ceremony. Field journal: Jasha and Maria are not happy that the graduation ceremony will be taking place at the school, but they then consent to this cheap, pragmatic solution favoured by both class teachers, with Jasha saying: ‘It’s OK, do it your way.’ The food is to be provided by the school kitchen, prompting one male student to joke: ‘The girls will be ashamed to eat it, so it will all be left for us!’ Now it’s time to make the decision about the type of Secret Santa that was postponed at the last class council meetings: Wichteln or Julklapp? A female student suggests a vote, whereupon a clear majority chooses Julklapp and no one votes for Wichteln. ‘I think it’s a problem’, intervenes Ms Hille, joining forces with her colleague in trying to persuade the students to choose Wichteln, mainly using the argument that they can’t be trusted. But the students prefer to know who they are buying a gift for. At the end, there is another vote, and Julklapp once again obtains a clear majority. The teachers keep trying to alter the result: ‘We want to make sure no one comes away disappointed.’ Finally, they impose their version without another vote, to which one student responds: ‘OK, then I guess it’s Wichteln.’

Lacking any apparent potential for conflict, the question of the mode of organizing a Secret Santa event could have been an opportunity to do justice to the democratic principles of the class council. The failure of ‘democracy in miniature’ described above is linked with the alienation discussed in chapter 1. The staff shunned the effort involved in the democratic decision-making processes, which would have involved helping the students look for a suitable venue outside the school. This was presumably due to years of negative experience in organizing such parties. The students appeared too resigned and disengaged to protest against the unpopular choice of venue, or to insist on their chosen form of gift-giving. Another democratic deficit was the fact that the rules of the class council were defined one-sidedly and that the unfolding of the discussion was dominated by the teachers, whose

Anger: Political Feelings and Patronizing Education  •  227

position in conflicts is not always neutral. This allows them, where necessary, to impose their viewpoints and positions not only against the will of the class, but also with disregard for democratic procedures. Another scene that illustrates this understanding of school rules, according to which the teacher is always right, took place during a sports lesson. When it was pointed out to a tough-talking teacher (‘Earrings off, hands out of your pockets, off we go, this isn’t a sewing course!’) that her instructions for the class to start running didn’t match the description of this optional course as ‘ball games’, the student in question was rebuked: ‘That’s none of your business. If I say this is what we’re doing, then that’s what you’ll do.’ Such disregard for procedure raises the question of who respects the rules of democracy here – those who are supposed to be teaching them, or the mainly migrant Hauptschule students who are often accused of lacking democratic values? In view of the contrast commonly reproduced in media discourse between democratic German schools and a supposedly unenlightened Muslim student body, one might ask who needs saving from whom here.31 What kind of democratic example is set by these teachers acting on behalf of the state as civil servants? Answers might include terms like ‘post-democracy’ (Colin Crouch), ‘culture of dominance’ (Birgit Rommelsbacher), or ‘disciplinary power’ and ‘governmentality’ (Michel Foucault). The form of class council practised here has more akin with a post-democracy in which political participation is merely simulated, while power relations are regulated elsewhere.32 The institutionalized form of negotiating interests can be understood as an expression of a ‘culture of dominance’ – while considering itself egalitarian, this self-legitimizing claim to freedom and equality is not put into practice at the school, which is instead dominated by imbalances of power and hierarchical structures.33 As well as producing subjects via subtle interventions of power, in some cases these same subjects are ruthlessly made to toe the line. When appeals to self-regulation based on the model of governmentality fail to achieve the desired effect, the school reactivates undemocratic forms of dirigisme and authoritarianism or, as shown below, sets disciplinary and punitive mechanisms in motion.34 At the Galilei-Schule, democracy and freedom only applied as long as the students complied with the demands of staff. As soon as this compliance was refused with reference to the principle of democratic majorities, the rules of democracy were suspended. Violence Prevention The picture painted by society of teenagers in general and Neukölln Hauptschule students in particular is reflected in the many forms of violence prevention implemented at the school.35 Prevention is an elementary part of

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current forms of government in which there is a special focus on marginal groups.36 Violence prevention at school is the pedagogical expression of a culture that anticipates fear and damage, and that identifies a specific group of students as a source of danger, addressing them as potential perpetrators of violence. While symbolic violence on the part of the school was not discussed in class, students at the Galilei-Schule were confronted with various forms of violence prevention. In a three-day course of anti-aggressiveness training, for example, they had to act out various conflict situations.37 They were also taught what counts as a criminal offence (slander, intimidation, bodily harm, damage to property, theft, etc.) and they were informed of possible legal consequences. In regular classes, too, the issue of violence was regularly discussed, especially in ethics lessons. Field journal: In ethics, the class is discussing Morton Rhue’s book Give a Boy a Gun. In the aftermath of several high-school shootings in the United States, the author of the famous novel The Wave deals with the issue of violence at schools. The students are asked to begin by reading the foreword of the German translation. Mohamad points out: ‘This book is about violence. My parents say I shouldn’t read things like this.’ Without being asked to do so, Ali takes over reading aloud. After a few sentences he asks what the word ‘obligatory’ means. When Ms Herrmann can’t think of an answer, I am asked and I answer ‘compulsory’. ‘Very good answer. You see, he’s got a PhD’, says Ali, adopting a teacherly tone. He continues reading in dramatic style. When the shooting at the Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt is mentioned, he adds ‘You son of a bitch’ and when the word ‘sex’ is mentioned he groans loudly. When Mohamad is due to read, Ali doesn’t want to hand over. They have a playful struggle, beginning with kicks under the table and continuing with feigned punches. When Theo wants to say something, the teacher snaps at him. Instead, Kai intervenes: ‘He wants to express himself.’ ‘Shut up’, answers Mohamad. Ali turns the conversation away from the book: ‘What would you do if a student came to you and said he was depressed and planning to commit suicide? Not Kai, who always says stupid stuff like that, but Martin, who would never say such a thing.’ Frau Herrmann: I would take time to listen to him. And if I had the feeling that he’s in danger I’d talk to his class teacher – depending on who it was – and with the headmaster. And then I’d call the police. Ali: I’d say: ‘Have fun and get a move on.’ Kai: I’d say: ‘Hey, what’s up? Let’s go see a shrink!’

Several students ask ‘Are you serious?’, not having expected such an empathetic response from Kai. He laughs and replies: ‘And then the doctor fucks him in the ass.’ Ali jumps up and acts this out. ‘That’s not funny’, says Mohamad. The teacher mentions hearing about a student committing

Anger: Political Feelings and Patronizing Education  •  229

suicide in ninth grade: ‘I think its terrible when a student doesn’t know how to go on.’ Mohamad: I once had a situation where a student didn’t know how to go on. He always broke out in a sweat and started to faint when he was mugged by my friends. Frau Herrmann: You have no compassion. Kai: She’s only saying that because we’re foreigners. Ali [Outraged]: How can you know? I don’t just stand here and claim you don’t have an orgasm when you have sex. Mustafa: Sex for grandmas, too! Male student: How many months pregnant are you anyway? Eight or sixteen? Kai runs up and gives the teacher [around fifty, slightly overweight] a consoling hug. Ms Herrmann wriggles out his grip: ‘Get your hands off me!’ Male student: Sexual assault in the old people’s home! Ali jumps up, pulls the belt out of his trousers, runs over to Kai, who is still standing around, and starts whipping him as punishment. Ms Herrmann: Are you crazy? Shall I bring a rattle next time? [Rassel in German] Male student: Ooh! She said ‘race’ [Rasse]. Mohamad [To me]: Write it down! You can’t imagine how much I hate this class!

The lesson ended in chaos, the book abandoned. The ethics teacher’s non-authoritarian style did lead to lively participation from some students, but also to unusually dissolute behaviour, even by Galilei-Schule standards. The students took every opportunity to make fun of the teacher, including references to alleged racist gaffes. Rather than relating to actual remarks, this latter strategy was used because the students thought it was a good way to provoke their openly anti-racist, leftist teacher. On several occasions, the violence under discussion was ironically acted out both verbally and physically. The teacher, too, went along with all this to a degree; to me, it seemed as if she sympathized with the rebellious but ‘cool’ migrant students, while inadvertently excluding Theo who was considered ‘uncool’. Having grown up in Neukölln, Ms Herrmann was active in the Berlin squatters scene of the 1980s and now worked for a private agency that supplied staff to the Galilei-Schule. She demonstrated her unconventionality with striking

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jewellery and many piercings, including a skull ring on her middle finger and a skull pendant on a chain around her neck. In an interview, she described her view of pedagogy. Ms Herrmann: By nature I’m a convinced anti-educationalist. Which means I’m at totally the wrong school. My aim is to create a different awareness, an alternative, to show them another possible way of living. I wouldn’t necessarily call it left-wing. But I do feel a need to change something about the way we deal with one another. I have the feeling that teachers too often address students condescendingly and make decisions without consulting them. Maybe left-wing teachers are better able to adjust to a different clientele than more conventional teaching staff.

Violence prevention measures at school can take various forms, usually focussing on avoiding or limiting anticipated future damage.38 A most unusual example took place ahead of the annual May Day demonstration in the neighbouring district of Kreuzberg, which has often turned violent over the years. Field journal: Ethics with Ms Herrmann. She recently dyed her hair pink and she’s wearing the same jeans and Chucks as some of her students. She’s also chewing gum, which is banned at the school. The discussion centres on May Day. Ms Herrmann rails against ‘fascist pigs’. The students agree and call for ‘No sex with Nazis!’ Then she asks when the stone throwing began. Presumably she’s thinking of the legendary May Day riots of 1987, but the students answer ‘in Palestine’. She then talks about the squatters in the 1980s, who ‘made vacant houses habitable’ and fought against ‘the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer’. Thomas says they’d be better off ‘building highways’. Ms Herrmann is indignant: ‘I’ve a mind to box your ears. You been sniffing spices or what?’ One student picks up on the culinary theme: ‘Have you ever eaten a fried Snickers bar?’ Ms Herrmann thinks the reason for the rioting on May Day is that people are unhappy. ‘And you?’ she asks provocatively, ‘apparently none of you are unhappy’. The students give amused answers: ‘Everything’s going great!’ ‘Yes, no worries here!’ Sounding slightly desperate, the teacher asks: ‘So you never get the idea of wanting to smash things up on May Day?’ ‘Do you know what it costs?’ reply the students, telling her about the visit they had from a policeman who explained that one stone-throwing incident can generate costs of 8,000 euros. The teacher ends the discussion: ‘Right, I’ve had enough.’

This failed attempt at politicizing the class shows how these Neukölln teenagers refused to be instrumentalized by a leftist former squatter. Although generally liked by the students, the teacher’s personal agenda and class struggle rhetoric did not appeal to them. Moreover, she failed to pick

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up on the students’ mention of the conflict in Palestine or the cost to society caused by violence. When I asked her about this lesson, she stressed that she is ‘actually a supporter of non-violence’ and she admitted the failure of her pedagogical concept: ‘I wanted to talk about their own sense of discontent, which also makes them aggressive. And then I wanted to discuss ways of dealing with discontent other than destroying other people’s property. The idea was good, but I got it wrong. Didn’t work at all, because the students had already moved on to something else.’ On closer inspection, the students had actually not moved so far at all, merely responding to the teacher’s input in a way they knew would aggravate her, using rhetorical ruses and ironic provocations to thwart her blatant appeal to Marxist class consciousness. Among other tactics, they deployed arguments they knew from the visit of a policeman a few days earlier, whose visit had also been linked to the upcoming May Day demonstrations. Field journal: The man is around forty years old. His black boots shine, his uniform is sky blue. He has a striking face and a clear, deep voice. He begins by asking about an injury to the hand of one of the students, who answers: ‘From boxing.’ The officer responds knowledgeably: ‘You weren’t hitting straight enough?’ Then he asks about the class’s grades and whether they have any questions. He sits at the table in a relaxed stance, speaks with a Berlin accent, and makes the occasional friendly joke. The students seem to like him well enough. Thomas wants to know something about requirements for joining the police and what a typical working day is like. The policeman shifts the discussion towards the actual reason for his visit: he is ‘worried’, he says, about ‘what goes through the students’ heads’, ‘attitudes’ he finds ‘unqualified and stupid’. The students give their usual quick-witted responses: ‘The police should be grateful. If we weren’t so criminal-minded you’d have nothing to do.’ The officer is not put off: ‘Many of you don’t understand that teachers and police are there for you, so that you can lead a good life.’ The main problem, he claims, is ‘a lack of decency and respect at home’. Then he sternly warns the class: ‘You are role models for others. The older you get, the more you are responsible for yourselves. Soon your mum won’t be cleaning up after you. … Some people don’t think about criminal offences and their impact, and that starts with everyday interactions. Even the way people speak to each other at school – cunt, asshole, son of a bitch, these are commonly used forms of address. It’s not OK that a criminal offence – and slander is a criminal offence – is perceived as normal and correct. It didn’t used to be this way, even if we also got up to mischief. Once you take the first step, it’s easy to take the next, and that’s where you are now. All of the little punches and wrangling I see here are very close to bodily harm. Any offence you commit is marked on your criminal record, and you need a copy of that for job applications. Writing on school desks is already damage to property.

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As in the case of the antisemitism training course discussed in chapter 2, the friendly opening was intended mainly to conceal the officer’s actual, negative view. Although the police presented itself as a caring institution, the discussion was not truly open and the officer was not genuinely interested in the students’ concerns. In his eyes, they were already taking their first steps towards a criminal career, for which he blamed neither school nor society but their home environments, which he labelled as morally degenerate. The policeman did, however, show more pedagogical skill than the ethics teacher. They hardly showed it, but after his visit the students did seem slightly impressed. Possible explanations include the fact that several male students were considering careers in the police and security sector, while others were already directly concerned by the clearly expressed warning about the legal consequences of crime. The interpretations and explanations voiced by the police officer may seem convincing at first, but when compared with the literature, they prove prejudiced and one-sided. His view of violence is symptomatic of a discursive shift away from institutions towards individuals. Werner Helsper has studied changing interpretations of violence in schools, pointing out that whereas in the 1970s the impact of structural violence was emphasized, the focus now is on the personal liability of those committing violent acts.39 This lack of focus on institutional violence, he argues, is accompanied by a broadening of the definition of violence that reinforces the blaming of deviant students. The policeman’s lecture reflected an ever-growing catalogue of criminal offences and a strict definition of culpability. Some of the practices he branded criminal, like insults and sparring, are interpreted quite differently in the chapter 2 on ‘trash talk’ and in the chapter 8 on boxer style – as popular cultural modes of processing experiences of exclusion. In academic studies on teenagers, school and violence, the role of family background stressed by the policeman is discussed, but the impact of socialization and context on violent behaviour is defined in far broader terms.40 When trying to understand anger and aggressiveness in school, it is important to take the social relations between students and teachers into account, as well as the school’s educational and disciplinary culture.41 The policeman did not mention, for example, that the hurt students may experience at home is perpetuated and reinforced by humiliation at school. Only when this interplay is factored in does the frequency of violent behaviour correlate with the social situation at school: in statistical terms, violent incidents are disproportionally common at Hauptschule schools because the students in question are subject to especially high levels of stress and are treated with particular contempt.42

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Training room Field journal: During a ninety-minute double lesson, four or five students accumulate in the training room. ‘I swear it’s like being in prison’, one of them jokes as he comes in. Most were sent by the same teacher, for talking and laughing in class (‘I was bored.’). One of the others cut through a cable somewhere. Later they all compare the number of times they’ve been suspended and jokingly boast of their long lists, even nostalgically recalling past misdemeanours: ‘One time we were suspended together, remember?’

In the following, I deal with questions concerning the meaningfulness of the training room as a form of discipline by looking at the original concept and at the way this model for dealing with conflict has been implemented. So what is a training room? According to an internal concept paper from 2010: ‘The training room is for the supervision of temporarily unteachable students in order to ensure an appropriate working atmosphere in the classroom. A student is temporarily unteachable if, having been warned with reference to the school rules, he or she fails to modify his or her behaviour.’ This is already at odds with the psychological orientation of the training room as recommended in the literature, where it is understood not as a place for the compulsory isolation of deviant students, but as a voluntary offer for independent reflection with support from teachers.43 On the spectrum of the available disciplinary measures, this form of temporary removal from class can be situated between warnings or punishments in the classroom and temporary or permanent expulsion from school. At the Galilei-Schule, punishable offences included: ‘lateness (in the morning and after breaks)’; ‘missing materials (incl. sports gear)’; ‘refusal to work’; ‘obtrusive behaviour (shouting, swearing, dissing, walking around, etc.)’ and ‘conflicts (between students but also between teacher and student)’. The training room was also used to ‘collect’ all students found ‘wandering the corridors’ for various reasons, although this makeshift form of detention was not counted as an official visit to the training room. The criteria for punishment listed above were fulfilled by most students at the Galilei-Schule. Disruption of lessons, lateness and refusal to work were routine, as well as deviant, provocative and aggressive behaviour, so that many students always had one foot in the training room. The way this measure was applied varied strongly, however. According to the original concept (see diagram 7.1), the students spend their time in the training room working on a ‘plan for return’. A system of points allows them to have a specific visit to the training room removed from the class register if the improved behaviour noted in the plan is maintained for four weeks. Visits to the training room are counted, triggering various further disciplinary measures on an ‘escalating scale’. Originally, the rule

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at the Galilei-Schule was that the third visit to the training room meant a letter to the student’s parents, while the fourth, fifth and sixth visits led to ‘immediate suspension from lessons’. After the third such suspension, students could only return to class following a class conference. During my field research in the 2012/13 school year, the model was modified: because its use had taken on excessive proportions, the ‘spiral of escalation’ was toned down slightly and the ineffective points system was dropped. The first suspension, accompanied by a meeting with the parents, still came after the fourth visit, with the second suspension now coming after the seventh visit. Students arriving late or without required materials were no longer sent to the training room. Following these changes, I continued to notice serious problems with the way the concept was implemented. These began with the arbitrary way misbehaviour was treated: sometimes students would be sent out for mere trifles, while major breaches of discipline, as in the ethics class on violence prevention described above, went unpunished. Sometimes there would be absurd scenes: in a number of lessons marked by ‘trash talk’ the teacher would meticulously keep tally of provocative utterances and then ‘automatically’ punish them on the third offence. On other occasions, students would punish themselves: ‘OK, I guess I’ll go to the training room.’ The training room was commonly used by teachers to get rid of difficult students. Further problems arose from the handling of conflicts, which often failed simply because the training room was not regularly staffed. As a result, punished students would sometimes find the door locked, upon which they either returned to their class or enjoyed an unexpected free lesson. In the training room itself, students usually discussed their conduct with the member of staff on duty, although the plans for return were sometimes filled out in silence and without comment. Examples of both cases are discussed below. Some teachers refused any form of assistance. If they did make an effort, their first question usually concerned the student’s personal relationship with the specific subject teacher. Students often undermined the expected gesture of repentance with humorous comments, for example when explaining the reason they had been sent: ‘We’re here of our own free will. Training room is fun.’ Although this comment was ironic, training rooms have been observed at comparable schools that really were enjoyable for students or that offered a protected space, having been reinterpreted by members of staff as a counterweight to school’s repressive disciplinary culture.44 The following three rules apply at our school: 1. Every student has the right to learn without being disturbed. 2. Every teacher has the right to teach without being disturbed. 3. Everyone must respect the rights of others.

Anger: Political Feelings and Patronizing Education  •  235

The following sequence applies:  

  

  





        

 



  



    

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 Diagram 7.1. The Training Room Model. Source: Galilei-Schule 

Looking at the ‘plans for return’, emotions and conflicts are evident, often with problems of communication and feelings of anger and aggressiveness playing a central role, as in the following questionnaire example.

236  •  That Sinking Feeling

Plan for Return What happened? Well, I spoke in class (without putting my hand up) and I was warned, but the way the teacher spoke to me made me a bit aggressive and I told her what I thought of her. What did you do?

What I said: (my opinion) What could you have done differently?

As the teachers say: I could have kept my mouth shut! How did you suggest you would improve your conduct last time? I actually kept it up for a long time. But I’m someone who lets their feelings out in words. What would you do to make amends for your behaviour?

Try to take part in class quietly again.

What would you do if such a situation arises again?

Go out and punch the wall.

The questionnaire’s structure and the way the questions are formulated already puts the blame for the conflict on the student. The repeated use of the active verb ‘do’ (What did you do? What could you have done differently? What would you do to make amends?) appeals to the student’s sense of personal responsibility. With this in mind, and with reference to Foucault and Deleuze, Ludwig Pongratz describes the training room as a ‘neoliberal punitive set-up’ and an ‘attunement to the society of control’.45 As described above, the training room is a striking example of the ‘generalized crisis in relation to all the environments of enclosure’ diagnosed by Deleuze.46 In his view, in spite of constant reforms, modern institutions like schools are increasingly unable to enforce norms and standards of discipline while combining the interests of individual and society, instead merely managing their own demise. Although the plan for return appeals to the student’s sense of personal responsibility, this amounts to blackmail as failures to fill out the form or alternative descriptions of the conflict in question bring the threat of further, tougher sanctions. The way the training room operates is thus depoliticized and functionalistic, as disciplinary issues with structural roots are not properly discussed and solutions not seriously sought out, with problems merely set apart and managed so that lessons can

Anger: Political Feelings and Patronizing Education  •  237

continue. Anger stems here primarily from the feelings of powerlessness and injustice that result from an imbalance of power in the student–teacher relationship, and from the way the school requires students to exert self-control, suppressing their opinions and emotions in order to be allowed to return to the classroom. The conflict dealt with in the plan for return quoted above centres on a problem of speechlessness, the student’s frustration due largely to the fact that he is unable to voice his criticism of the teacher in any legitimate way. Epistemic violence consists here in the options for self-expression being systematically restricted in such a way that the student’s views and experiences of conflict are excluded either entirely or to a large extent.47 Under these conditions, the student in question filled out his plan for return in a shrewdly honest manner, observing the disciplinary conventions while making it unmistakeably clear what he thought of the teacher. The unfairness of the conflict resolution process (one-sided problem diagnosis, disregard for student’s views) generated anger and aggressiveness. In the schoolyard, a student who had often been sent to the training room told me: ‘If you say it’s not all the students’ fault, that the teachers are partly responsible, then they start laughing. They just say it’s not true. They punish us or say we’re trash.’ Although discussions with teachers are better suited to dealing with conflicts than questionnaires, allowing the prehistory and unfolding of a dispute to be dealt with in more depth, as well as the motives and concerns of those involved, the underlying disciplinary logic of the training room tended to lead to imbalanced conversations. Field journal: Training room – Ms Mitroglou and Amira, an intern, are on duty. Two students look cheekily round the corner: ‘Yoo-hoo, the police is here’, says one. The teacher calls them in. ‘We just wanted to look’, adds the other. The two boys disappear again. The teacher follows them and brings them back to the training room. ‘What happened?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘We were just chatting.’ The teacher looks at her list and mentions suspension. The student is shocked and explains that it’s not the seventh time. The teacher takes a closer look and realizes she has mixed him up with another student with the same name who has long since left the school. ‘So many Husseins. You’re lucky – only the fifth time. No suspension, just a letter to your parents.’ This news does not have a calming effect on the student: ‘Another letter – I just had one yesterday. If I get another letter home, I’m going to freak out.’ ‘And what will you do?’ He threatens to ‘throw the table at the teacher’ but immediately smiles and adds ‘just joking’. The other student asks: ‘How do you spell “chatting”?’ The teacher asks: ‘What happened the other times you were sent here?’ ‘Can’t remember, too often, disturbed the class.’ While the students fill out their plans for return, the following conversation unfolds.

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Ms Mitroglou: Do you actually want to learn anything? Student: I don’t know. I just wanted to see what this school is like. Now I know it’s shit. The teachers have no respect. This witch reprimanded me even though I wasn’t talking. Ms Mitroglou: Do you have a goal? Student: Welfare. Then I don’t have to do a job and I can have a smoke. Ms Mitroglou: But then you won’t have any money left over for cigarettes. Student: No problem, I’ll steal them from my mother. Amira, who was at this school herself until recently, says that she’s friends with the student’s sister and that he behaves respectfully towards his parents at home. Student: Or I’ll have 100 children, let them starve and steal the child benefit money. Ms Mitroglou: You should ask yourself whether that’s really such a great outlook. Student: You’ve no idea, you can’t see into the future either. If we all perish in a few days then we’ll have attended school for nothing. Ms Mitroglou: You’re not the first person to talk to me about welfare. Student: But I bet I’m the first to mention 100 children! Ms Mitroglou: Maybe later you’ll want to have a real family with real children. Show me your questionnaire. Ms Mitroglou: [She reads aloud] ‘What did you do wrong? ‘Talked’. How can you do better? ‘Don’t talk’ and she asks: ‘Are you serious?’ Student: [Answers with a cheeky grin] Yes, I’m serious. The second student doubles up with laughter. Student: I don’t want to write the truth anyway, otherwise she’ll think I’m lying. The teachers are so stupid. How did they go to a Gymnasium? I want her to be scared of me. Ms Mitroglou: Do you think the teachers are there to torment you? Student: Yes, I want to learn something, but the teachers won’t let me. Ms Mitroglou: Then you’ll have to go to a different school. Student: I’ve tried, but my mother says: ‘Be good. Get good grades.’ But I don’t get good grades. It feels like I’m always to blame. I think the teacher is xenophobic.

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Ms Mitroglou: Why are you claiming to be a victim? You can go to a different school. Student: It’s all the same, people are people. Whether teachers or police. I want to eat!

He gets out his food and grins cheekily at the teacher. She begins writing a letter on a separate sheet of paper. He senses that this spells trouble: ‘What!? Are you writing a letter?’ He tries to relativize his behaviour: ‘In America students go on shooting sprees. In Palestine they get shot. And I’m not even allowed to eat a sandwich? That’s really shit!’ A difficult situation to which the students, the teacher and, indirectly, society itself all contribute. One of the students behaves provocatively but also feels he is not being taken seriously. His claim that no one is interested in his version of the ‘truth’ reflects a moral understanding of the fact that claims to truthfulness are strongly shaped by power relations and social status.48 In view of his conduct and his record of punishments, his threats do not appear harmless. It is possible that the teacher really is scared of him. On the other hand, the student has always been sent to the training room by the same member of staff, which raises questions about her contribution to the conflict. This issue is not raised in the training room, however, because the discussion is guided by a teacher whose understanding of conflicts involves always blaming the student. The student’s social situation and lack of career opportunities also play an important part. Welfare hangs like a cloud over the entire conversation. The teacher’s warnings about the future make no impact, not least because society offers such students no prospects. The anger and indignation expressed by the student are provoked by differing perceptions of the situation. The discussion in the training room documents a student’s attempt to articulate his criticism of the school. He inadvertently talks himself into trouble, whereas his more cautious classmate avoids responding to Ms Mitroglou’s remarks. Although the teacher’s questions suggest a genuine interest in the student’s views, ultimately she is conducting an interrogation. Once she has gathered sufficient damning material, she starts to write it all down. This is not the letter to the student’s parents she threatened to send at the start of the conversation, an option she keeps open. Instead, her notes on the student’s anti-school and antisocial attitudes are the next steps in two other disciplinary processes, as yet unknown to the student, to permanently expel him from the school and to send him to the Charité Hospital for psychological tests. In accordance with the guidelines for training room duty, she remains calm and avoids being reproachful, a deliberately unemotional approach intended to underscore the image of a rational procedure.49

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While preparations for the student’s expulsion are part of a predefined logic of escalation, the fact that he is also to be referred to a hospital does come as a surprise. Although I lack background information on this student because he was in ninth-grade class, which was not part of my research, it seems at least possible that deviant behaviour with social roots was being pathologized here. Conspicuously often, aggressive male Hauptschule students are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), leading to the prescription of psychotropic drugs that ‘sedate’ these students, but which can also have serious side-effects. In one lesson, a student’s speech became slurred and incoherent, prompting the teacher to explain to me that his drugs were ‘not properly dosed at the moment’. The main symptoms of ADHD are inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, with diagnoses often based on a self-reinforcing loop of input from teachers, parents and doctors.50 The spread of such diagnoses has been encouraged by the pharmaceutical industry in the interests of profit, forming part of a wider psychologization of social and educational problems.51 In the scene described above, the teacher seemed to suspect the student because he addressed the school’s shortcomings in clear terms – ‘teachers have no respect’, this school is ‘shit’, others are no better. Viewed within a broader societal context, the way schools deal with disciplinary conflicts reflects a double structure within current neoliberal discourse which, according to the sociological literature, encourages the deregulation of markets and competition while calling for a policy of law and order, thus ‘liberalizing markets and tightening regimes of punishment at the same time’.52 An individualistic understanding of success and failure leads to a ‘winner takes all’ dynamic and a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to the losers, who are blamed for their own failure. Especially at the lower end of the hierarchized education system, neoliberal restructuring has led to a resurgence in mechanisms of exclusion and punishment.53 Although deviant behaviour is often a direct or indirect response to social inequality and conditions at school, it is perceived as an individual transgression and a lack of personal responsibility, triggering punitive measures that push those concerned into increasingly precarious situations. This misunderstanding causes additional anger and aggressiveness, creating a spiral of exclusion that feeds on discrimination, deviance and punishment.54

Conclusion: The Political Dimension of Anger When political feelings are viewed in depoliticized terms, their social roots are ignored. Emotions like anger are closely linked to power relations. These power relations underpin the negative selection and stigmatization

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to which Hauptschule students are constantly subjected; they underlie the racism and classism reproduced in class by teachers at the Galilei-Schule; and they shape the hierarchical deployment of instruments like the class council and the training room. In this light, a pedagogical approach that avoids the underlying issues is by no means unpolitical; its structural roots and social impact are merely not recognized as such. Instead, angry students are given the blame for conflicts and the responsibility for resolving them. Within the school’s disciplinary apparatus, the construction of the ‘problem student’ is especially discriminatory, since the pedagogical measures by which students are blamed also strip them of their ability to express themselves as responsible, articulate individuals. The underlying tension at school between coercion and autonomy is dissolved, giving rise to a new tension between repression and responsibilization.55 Young people higher up the educational hierarchy are usually considered to have a stronger interest in political issues, while Hauptschule students are more often associated with violence and aggressiveness. But if one departs from a narrow, functionalist definition of politics, instead viewing the prevailing culture of disregard and the way conflicts are dealt with as forms of the political, then one arrives at a broader view that is more strongly focussed on actual, everyday life.56 Treating anger primarily as a disciplinary problem that must be removed or at least kept in check is already a biased strategy with serious consequences. Anyone who has observed a school strike in Brazil or a student protest in Argentina knows that reactions to school conflicts can take on very different proportions. In Germany, the dominant mode of controlling social conflicts relies primarily on strategies of externalization and depersonalization, shifting the focus to pedagogical discussions and disciplinary measures in which supposedly neutral teachers apply codified conflict resolution procedures.57 Although such an approach allows teaching to go on undisturbed in the short term, the reasons for the conflict go untreated, further fuelling the students’ anger, which increasingly manifests in an antagonistic, personalized mode, often directed against the teachers and punishments themselves. If such anger is understood too much in terms of personal resentment, however, focussing the ethnographic gaze one-sidedly on the intensity of the associated emotions, then we lose sight of the reflexivity and political potential of this feeling. ‘Dignified rage’ can express critical insights and ethical standards; it can give energy and provoke solidarity, motivate resistance and alter situations, stimulate social change or even fuel revolutions.58 The students’ angry reactions to experiences of exclusion reflected their morality and sensitivity, while their responses to pedagogical measures demonstrated their wilfulness and assertiveness. The students’ anger was neither irrational nor unproductive, their aggression neither blind nor deaf.

242  •  That Sinking Feeling

In the Middle Ages, anger was seen as a codified expression of sovereignty, but its democratization has been accompanied by a loss of respectability.59 Today’s dominant negative framing of this emotion as irrational is probably due, above all, to fears of losing control and a perceived threat to the dominant order. A return to more respect for anger would also mean facing up to the contradictions and conflicts of our society.

Notes  1. See Tavris, Anger; on the distinction between anger, hate and rage, see Ben-Ze’ev, ‘Anger, Hate and Rage’.  2. See Thurman, Anger.  3. See Tavris, Anger.  4. Lorde, Sister Outsider, 124–133; Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 168–190.  5. See Solomon, ‘On Emotions as Judgments’; Solomon, True to our Feelings.  6. See Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’; Morris (ed.), Can the Subaltern Speak?; Spivak, ‘Scattered Speculations on the Subaltern and the Popular’.  7. See Rodríguez/Steyerl (eds), Spricht die Subalterne deutsch?  8. See Marchart, Die politische Differenz; Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’.  9. See Adam/Vonderau (eds), Formationen des Politischen. 10. See Landweer, ‘Ist Sich-gedemütigt-Fühlen ein Rechtsgefühl?’ 11. See Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, 164–204; Bourdieu/Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 140–173; Schmidt/Woltersdorff (eds), Symbolische Gewalt. 12. See Bourdieu, ‘The School as a Conservative Force’. 13. See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honk (Schimpfwort) (accessed 1 June 2018). 14. See Wolfgang Bauer, ‘Eine Klasse für Sich’ in Focus Magazin 31/2009; Martin Spiewak, ‘Was Eltern wollen’, in Die Zeit 06/2010. 15. ‘First-graders already know what they definitely don’t want to be later – a “honk”. The term is a common insult in Berlin’s schoolyards. It stands for “Hauptschule student with no notable skills”. No sooner have they started school than these six-year-olds already seem familiar with the hierarchies of the German school system.’ 16. See Lindner, ‘Zwischen Akademia und Medienwelt’. 17. See Maren Hoffmann, ‘Karriere? Mir doch wurscht!’, in SPIEGEL-Karriere, 19 April 2011, http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/job-rewelution-karriere-mir-doch-wurschta-757346.html (accessed 1 June 2018). 18. See Gomolla/Radtke, Institutionelle Diskriminierung. 19. See Solga/Dombrowski, Soziale Ungleichheit in schulischer und außerschulischer Bildung. On anti-Roma discrimination in schools, see Fürstenau/Redecker, ‘Hier sind die Leute schon gewöhnt an Roma’. 20. See Amir-Moazami, ‘Dämonisierung und Einverleibung’; Weidner, ‘Our Rage at Islam’; Mecheril, Einführung in die Migrationspädagogik. On the fraught relationship between school and Islam, see Schiffauer, Schule, Moschee, Elternhaus. On racism at Berlin schools, see Karakayali/zur Nieden, ‘Rassismus und Klassen-Raum’; Kollender, ‘Die sind nicht unbedingt auf Schule orientiert’. 21. See Weinbach, ‘Kultur der Respektlosigkeit’; Kemper, ‘Klassismus im Bildungssystem’. 22. See Neckel, ‘Blanker Neid, blinde Wut?’; Rodríguez, ‘Digna Rabia – Dignified Rage’.

Anger: Political Feelings and Patronizing Education  •  243

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

See Krämer, ‘Sprache als Gewalt oder: Warum verletzen Worte?’ See Austin, How to Do Things with Words. See Butler, Excitable Speech. See Gehring, ‘Über die Körperkraft der Sprache’. See Markert, Ausgrenzung in Schulklassen. See Boer, Klassenrat als interaktive Praxis. See Achino-Loeb (ed.), Silence. See Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 277; Schiffauer/Baumann/Kastoryano/Vertovec (eds), Staat – Schule – Ethnizität. See Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? See Crouch, Post-Democracy. See Rommelspacher, Dominanzkultur; Attia/Köbsell/Prasad (eds), Dominanzkultur relo ominanzkultur aded. On the link between disciplinary power and biopower, see Foucault, ‘Security, Territory, Population’; Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. See Burmeister, ‘Angst im Präventionsstaat’. See Bröckling, Gute Hirten führen sanft, 73–112. See Krasmann, ‘Gouvernementalität der Oberfläche’. See Bröckling, Gute Hirten führen sanft, 95. See Helsper, ‘Schulische Gewaltforschung als Lückentext’. See Sutterlüty, Gewaltkarrieren. See Büttner, Wut im Bauch. See Klewin/Tillmann, ‘Gewaltformen in der Schule’, 195f. See Bründel/Simon, Die Trainingsraum-Methode, 142f. See Hertel, ‘Unterlaufen und Kontern statt “Überwachen und Strafen”?’ See Pongratz, ‘Einstimmung in die Kontrollgesellschaft’. See Deleuze, ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, 3. See Fricker, ‘Epistemic Oppression and Epistemic Privilege’; Dotson, ‘Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression’. See Foucault, Dispositive der Macht, Foucault, ‘Discourse and Truth’ and ‘Parresia’, Shapin, A Social History of Truth. See Pongratz, ‘Einstimmung in die Kontrollgesellschaft’, 241f. See Becker, ‘Abwesenheit und Störung als Ausdruck von Unaufmerksamkeit’. See Frances, Normal. See Klimke, ‘Die Politische Ökonomie der Sicherheit’, 139, Wacquant, Punishing the Poor; Wacquant, ‘Der neoliberale Leviathan’. See Heisig, Das Ende der Geduld; Weidner/Kilb (eds), Konfrontative Pädagogik; Bueb, Lob der Disziplin. For a critique of the current German regime of punishment, see Amos/Cremer-Schäfer (eds), Saubere Schulen; Kury/Scherr (eds), Zur (Nicht-)Wirkung von Sanktionen. See Matt, ‘Schulbiographien, Delinquenz und Ausschluss’. See Helsper, ‘Pädagogisches Handeln in den Antinomien der Moderne’. See Helsper et al., Unpolitische Jugend?; Marchart, Die politische Differenz. See Radtke, ‘Disziplinieren’. See Rodriguez, ‘Digna Rabia – Dignified Rage’; Foessel, ‘Les raisons de la colère’. See Boucheron, ‘L’émotion souveraine’.

Chapter 8

Aggressiveness Boxer Style

Boxing gestures are ubiquitous at Hauptschule and Sekundarschule schools in Berlin. At the Galilei-Schule, mainly male students constantly feigned punches or karate chops as part of play fighting, most often stopping just before physical contact was made. In some cases, they would follow through, but not with full force. Such brief, playful exchanges often served as a greeting ritual at the start of the day or during breaks with which I, too, was occasionally welcomed. Drawn from a sporting context, I use the term ‘boxer style’ as shorthand for a specific popular cultural style associated with consumer and body practices and shaped by conventional notions of male toughness and the motif of fighting as a central point of reference for attitudes and worldviews. Although the confrontational nature of these gestures and poses can be intimidating, their omnipresence should be understood not as evidence of the prevalence of actual violence at Berlin schools, or the brutality of their students, but as an everyday aesthetic enabling the transformation of anger and aggressiveness, and as a playful form of male self-understanding. The students interacting via such gestures were usually on good terms, often friends, and their coordinated performances often ended with them laughing and joking together. Physical violence did occur at the GalileiSchule on other occasions, both as fist fights and in other forms, but the boxer style tended in the opposite direction, marked by the channelling of hostile impulses, playful belligerence and a stylization of agonistic behaviour. At the same time, thanks to its migrant-proletarian influences and its prizing of aggressive masculinity and physical strength, in a figurative sense it is also embedded in social power relations and structures of violence.

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In my first Hauptschule book, I briefly presented boxing poses as a specifically male reaction to society’s contempt for students attending these schools, a defiant form of self-assertion in the context of a rebellious antischool culture.1 In this reading, boxer style is both a provocation and a physical experience, a symbolic language of protest in the context of denied recognition, and a physical practice prompted by stigmatization. I now want to go into more detail, examining how the spread of boxing gestures came about and how it can be interpreted in political terms. While chapter 7 on anger stressed the moral dimension of feelings, this chapter on ‘boxer style’ centres on the embodiment of anger in aggressive gestures. In my remarks, I do not separate the moral, rational and reflexive dimension of emotions from their physical, embodied and sensory qualities, viewing these different aspects as multiply interwoven. In the modern age, the two have often been played off against one another, as if they belonged to separate categories, obscuring the fact that they are two sides of the same coin.2

On the Genesis and Aesthetics of Agonistic Stylizations The notion of style is used in various academic disciplines to discuss everything from styles of painting and thinking to styles of life. In this chapter I use the term as defined by cultural studies in Britain that produced especially influential accounts of subcultural and teenage styles. This neoMarxist approach is based on the assumption that subcultural styles emerge as ways of dealing in symbolic terms with societal constellations and social tensions like those resulting from class hierarchies and patriarchal family structures.3 Rather than catering to a progressive consensus, such youth culture styles are often confrontational and arrogant, tending to celebrate contested and nostalgic visions of society. In this sense, styling oneself a boxer and fighter can be understood as an aesthetic practice allowing experiences of exclusion to be processed in a physical, sensory manner with reference to traditional notions of masculinity. The boxer style is an ensemble of bodies, objects and worldviews, the result of a process in which homologies und bricolage play a key role. For subculture researchers like Paul Willis, homologies are structural resonances between physical and material styles on the one hand and, young people’s social experiences and cultural frameworks on the other.4 The central question here is why particular elements of style are selected and charged with meaning. Studies examining processes of bricolage focus on how this happens – mostly by recombining and rearranging different practices, objects and references.5 These elements of style – such as stances and hairstyles – are already part of a specific (commercial) frame of reference, but

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the teenagers combine them in a distinct way. Creating a style is a relatively open-ended process, but it is not entirely arbitrary, as modes of cultural expression and worldviews must match and add up to a coherent whole. In cultural studies, the holistic and resistant qualities of subcultural styles have been somewhat overemphasized. Rather than assuming a uniform style, I begin by exploring processes of stylization by describing the affinity of many male students for boxing, as well as martial arts and related body practices; then I look at how this orientation gains significance beyond the sporting context, in everyday life; and finally I reconstruct the origins of this ensemble of elements and references from boxing among male Hauptschule students. At the same time, rather than viewing the styles created by marginalized teenagers as an expression of political resistance per se, I explore the ways boxer style both challenges and reproduces different power relations.

Sport: Tournament and Training In Ancient Greece, boxing was recognized as an Olympic sport, but it subsequently fell into oblivion. Modern boxing has its origins in the prize fights of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. That is also where the current rules were established in the mid-nineteenth century, after which the sport spread around the world, with the United States becoming the leading boxing nation in the twentieth century.6 Thanks, among other things, to media coverage of the success of African-American fighters, boxing acquired its image as a sport of the repressed and the discriminated, as a path to glory and as a potential way out of the poverty of the ‘ghetto’. This image contributes to the popularity of boxing among male Hauptschule students; besides football, martial arts was the most popular sport among the teenage boys in the classes I accompanied. Most of them could perform karate chops and knew the basic boxing stances. Many of them had personal experience of various forms of martial arts training and some had ambitions in the field of organized tournaments, as reflected in the following scene. Field journal: Saturday afternoon at a sports hall somewhere in the Berlin district of Spandau. On the wall hang a South Korean and a Japanese flag. To get an overview, I go to the stands, where around fifty people are sitting, standing and shouting, making a lot of noise. Mothers with babies on their arms and fathers who look like they would like nothing more than to get in the ring themselves. One boy coming back from a fight is greeted with the words: ‘Hey, still got your teeth.’ Although most of the fighters are male, I also notice a few young women. I have ended up at a contest between two martial arts schools. At the moment we are watching kick boxing: both fists and feet may be used,

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and no face protection is worn. As well as counting strikes, the referees also judge style, mainly in terms of focus and hardness. The audience follows the action with great enthusiasm, with hard kicks drawing especially ecstatic screams: ‘Knock him over!’ After each match, there is a gesture of mutual respect. The matches and the fighters are very different; one skips around like Muhammad Ali, teasingly cool with lowered guard, while another seems more inspired by the attacking style of Mike Tyson. After a while I meet Ali with his father and two classmates who have accompanied him. Ali is very disappointed that he won’t be fighting today. His opponent stepped down at short notice – ‘out of fear’ as he says – and no one else wants to take him on.

Events like this were special social occasions for the students. The news would go round the schoolyard beforehand and the fights would be discussed afterwards. Ali was part of a group of German-Arab teenagers whose afternoons were often spent at such contests or at the necessary training sessions. He began with karate at age six and had tried out various other martial arts. In his last year at school, he trained at kick boxing three times a week and he preferred the full contact version in which – unlike in semi- and light-contact – adults may fight on until one person is knocked out. ‘I like it especially hard. I like testing my limits. With each strike, I let out some kind of stress. School stress, family stress – bang, bang …’ At school, Ali had long been known to terrorize the staff, before finally becoming a respected student spokesperson. In spite of being trained as a mediator at school, he long remained a street fighter and continued to be involved in brawls. The same was true of Khaled, whose ‘fighting career’ on the streets of Neukölln had earned him many appearances in court, for grievous bodily harm, among other charges. For a while, Khaled trained at the same boxing school as Ali. His older brother Mohamad, who I met during my first year of Hauptschule research in 2008, was also obsessed with martial arts and had won several prestigious competitions. The role of martial arts as an important form of self-positioning was reflected in the way Khaled’s brother Mohamad chose the setting of a boxing tournament when I gave him and his friends in Wedding a camera and asked them to take pictures of their everyday lives (figure 8.1). Mohamad posed with serious expression in a typical boxing stance, both fists raised, a position of both defence and attack. Here, the boxing pose is seen in a sporting context, but it is already being adopted by others not directly involved in the contest. It also seems to be of little importance that this was a karate rather than a boxing tournament. The boxing stance symbolizes a fighting attitude that is not limited to one specific situation. Incidentally, Mohamad later put an abrupt end to his sporting career just before he got married – he now has two children and spends most of his free time with his family.

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The complex interrelations between various phases of life and commitments to martial arts, and especially the ambivalent role of family ties, which offer the stability needed for successful training while creating new priorities outside boxing, are a staple of novels and movies about boxers, such as John Huston’s melancholy drama Fat City. They are also discussed by sociologist Loïc Wacquant, whose ethnographic study Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer has become a classic, presenting the results of his three-year participant observation of a boxing club in Chicago’s ‘ghetto’ in the late 1980s.7 Many of his fellow boxers were also former street fighters who processed stress through boxing, leaving it at the door to the club. Wacquant gives detailed descriptions of the mechanisms for disciplining the body via sequences of movements learned and constantly repeated in training, interpreting the gym as the centre of the boxer’s universe. He describes the boxers’ basic attitude as ‘a mix of limited peer-group solidarity and defiant individualism, physical toughness and courage (‘heart’), an uncompromising sense of masculine honour, and an expressive stress on personal performance and style’.8 By centring his account on the training routine with its constant, exhausting repetitions, but also its brief moments of reward, Wacquant develops a demystifying view of boxing beyond the limelight of major bouts. In contrast, others have focussed precisely on the surface glamour of boxing with its many heroes and myths. Kasia Boddy’s comprehensive cultural history of boxing is built mainly around artistic representations, including many references to the interweaving of prevailing regimes of class, ethnicity, gender and body.9 Joyce Carol Oates and Kath Woodward stress the links between boxing and traditional notions of strong, heroic

Figure 8.1. Boxer style. Photo by student.

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masculinity, illustrating the interplay of fact and fiction using the example of boxing legends like Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali, as well as influential blockbuster movies like the Rocky series.10 Here, too, boxing points beyond sporting competition, acting as a key symbol of the struggle for self-assertion in disadvantaged milieus. Everyday practices and products of the imagination are closely linked in boxing, as well as being intertwined with other forms of knowledge, making it impossible to draw a clear analytical line between the levels of action and representation, calling instead for an integrated approach.11 This allows approaches from ethnography and cultural studies to be combined: the gym described in great detail by Wacquant, for example, is decorated with posters of famous boxers, creating an imaginative link between everyday training and the glamour of boxing fame and glory – such boxing myths soon lose their credibility and appeal, however, once detached from lived practice. At the Galilei-Schule, too, there were links between cultural representations and everyday practices, as rumours and stories often circulated about Neukölln’s ‘Fight Club’, an illegal event inspired by David Fincher’s famous film of the same name, with high-stakes betting and without the usual protective measures. Modern boxing itself emerged from such unregulated bouts, the above-mentioned culture of prize fighting. Since those times, the sport has never entirely lost its links to the underworld, contributing to its dubious reputation, but also to its fascination. Play: Noncommittal, Open, Ephemeral Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga interprets the establishment of professional sports like boxing in the late nineteenth century as an ousting of traditional cultural forms of play and as compensation for the resulting loss of experience.12 In the same vein, Georges Bataille rejects the widespread assumption of an incompatibility between play and seriousness, highlighting the role of sporting competitions as an elementary form of play.13 Most recently, the lines between sport, play and everyday life have been blurred in new ways under the conditions of consumer capitalism in postmodern popular culture, as sporting and body-focussed leisure practices become less and less restricted to organized sport, mixing instead with other cultural elements such as clothing, language, everyday myths, body images and types of movement to create new communities of shared style or meaning.14 In this context, motifs and practices from the world of sport combine with practice clusters and discourse fragments from other fields, boosting the cultural value of fitness, physical strength and competitiveness, but also prompting people to relate to themselves in ways that are more playful, expressive and performative.15 In the case of boxer style, this

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aspect is especially apparent in the above-mentioned feigning of punches and chops regularly performed by male students. I would like to illustrate the interrelation between sport and play using the example of two complementary episodes – a sporting scene at a public fair and a playful moment during a sports lesson. At the ‘Neuköllner Maientage’, a popular spring event in Hasenheide Park, a boxing stand was one of the biggest attractions for the young men I went with. Here, activities relating to boxing culture were integrated into a setting marked in sociospatial terms as a place of amusement, making them more open, more ephemeral and more noncommittal than they are in the context of organized martial arts contests.16 At this popular event, then, boxing made a partial return to its roots as a form of ‘fairground’ entertainment. Field journal: At the boxing stand, you can hit a punch bag five times for one euro. The force of the blow is registered and displayed electronically. Positioned at the edge of the fairground, this unspectacular device shows up strongly on the cultural and social radar of some male visitors. A loose group of ten young men, students from the Galilei-Schule and their friends, stand around the punching bag for around twenty minutes. It’s about hitting hard, of course, but also about the pleasure of watching and making humorous banter. Many cries of ‘Wallah!’ are heard; in the background, screams from the rollercoaster. Occasionally they squabble over who gets to show off their skills next. Excuses are found to explain why a specific punch was not harder (I slipped, I’m injured, I didn’t hit straight) or earlier record punches are mentioned instead. The boys also discuss which boxing machines of this kind are the best, and they ask each other where and how you need to strike to get the magical 1,000-point score that none of them has yet achieved. Suddenly, one of the boys throws a punch with such lack of control that the follow-through catches a boy standing beside the machine in the stomach. Amused laughter and a face contorted with pain. Unintentionally, I capture the scene with my camera on my phone. The teenagers laugh their heads off while watching the video and say I should upload it to YouTube. Soon after, the group moves on to the next attraction.

The game is defined by a basic degree of formalization, a competitive orientation, and an ethos of strength. Sporting elements are introduced by the machine’s framing as a ‘boxing stand’ and by expert discussions of details such as how best to position one’s hands and feet when punching, although this does not detract from the stand’s playful character. The emotional quality of such scenes could be described as ‘ordinary affect’, a term coined by Kathleen Stewart.17 For a specific period of time, the young men are emotionally engaged, alternating between tension and relaxation, visually focussed on the person punching and the display with the score.

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The episode is marked by a spatial orientation towards the machine and the physicality of the series of punches. Just as the game is beginning to get boring, the misjudged punch and the video bring a surprising surge in intensity. Finally, the scene dissolves back into the bustle of the fair, as the young men’s interest wanes and their attention focusses on something new. Whereas the fair was designed to offer a mix of playful and sporting activity, the lack of discipline and seriousness displayed by students during sports classes at the Galilei-Schule was viewed by the staff as problematic or at least challenging. Field journal: Sports lesson for the boys. Apparatus work is scheduled, but the various pieces of equipment are more like props. During the lesson, the students have engaged in arm wrestling and some kind of actual wrestling. Now, two students are standing opposite each other in the middle of the gym, performing and blocking a series of karate chops. Two others are chasing each other around. Khaled seems to have injured himself slightly when performing a chop. The sports teacher, who is running from one chaotic situation to another without losing his composure, comes to him. Meanwhile, Kai runs up to me and shows me his muscular upper arms, before returning to where Khaled is sitting on the floor, feigning a running kick from behind. Another student is inspired by this. As if miraculously healed, Khaled leaps up and uses the arm of the teacher standing next to him as a support for a flying karate kick in the direction of Kai’s face. Everything remains within the limits of a playful fight situation that is clearly enjoyed by all involved. For a few seconds, Yussuf and Nevin perform a kind of acrobatic show fight with high jumps and spectacular spinning blows. While all this is going on, Theo is the only one who does exercises on the bars. Previously, two students merely tried to lift the heavy bars and drop them on the floor, making a loud noise. As Theo is hanging upside-down from the bars, Zeinab runs up and softly kicks his backside. Later, someone pulls the mat out from underneath the bars. In the end, Theo is hanging from the bars all alone, head down, staring at the chaos around him.

For many of these male Hauptschule students, the sports lesson was a highlight of the school day, allowing them to satisfy their urgent need for movement. But instead of the apparatus work on the curriculum, they evidently preferred playful martial arts exercises. The teacher showed implicit understanding for this and left them largely to their own devices. Occasionally the students really did exercise on the gym equipment for a few minutes, giving the lesson the absurd appearance of a mixed gym and martial arts class. Before the scene described above, the boys had already measured their physical strength in various ways, including a bout of spontaneous wrangling, which the teacher helped them transform into a controlled wrestling match. I also observed moves and movements from sports other than boxing, including taekwondo and karate. In most cases,

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the blows were merely simulated. As the students constantly sought out new sparring situations, the focus was on agility, being able to break through the opponent’s defences, skilfully avoiding blows, or performing impressive and spectacular moves. In the relationship between play, sport and everyday life reflected in these episodes, the three elements overlap and refer to one another. Games create a kind of ‘unreal reality’, they have their own rules and meaningfulness while referring to reality; but they lose their playful quality if they fail to go beyond reality, sticking too closely to the reality principle.18 At the same time, this everyday scene in a sports lesson is rather ‘unreal’ in character, lacking the minimum of seriousness and discipline associated with ‘normal’ school lessons. Sport, too, is not a totally separate sphere of society; boxers offer a striking example of the blurring of sporting and everyday roles.19 Martial arts, especially in its orientation towards competition and physicality, corresponds with specific models of self and society. As these various interconnections make clear, the significance of boxing for Hauptschule students cannot be adequately discussed purely in terms of play and sport. Everyday Life: The Diffusion of Boxing Gestures and Fight Narratives As motifs and gestures from boxing are often linked with other styles, body practices and narratives, they can also be observed outside the arenas of martial arts or competitive games. The significance of boxing in everyday culture can be understood by its shaping influence on modes of selfpresentation, the diffusion of boxing gestures in everyday contexts, and references to ‘fighting one’s way through’ (sich durchboxen in German). These various references are in turn connected to everyday morals, to ethically coded identities and worldviews. In this light, boxer style can be seen as a specific form of being-in-the-world. Since playful trials of strength in sports call for different levels of body control and physical strength, they often involve deliberate practices of muscle building.20 Kai’s very muscular upper arms, which he proudly showed off, were evidence of his regular visits to the gym. While Kai was among the most ambitious fighters in his class, boasting of his physical strength, references to boxing could also be observed among less sporting students. Being slightly overweight, Roberto and Ahmed were sometimes teased by fitter boys; compared with their often aggressive classmates, they came across as jovial and gentle. But when they posed for a portrait they, too, clenched their fists, because boxing gestures were an almost unquestioned part of the repertoire of everyday gestures of male Hauptschule students. The student in the background was wearing a bandage on his wrist, having been injured during boxing training outside school.

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The motif of boxing was referred to not only by the students themselves but also by teachers and social workers, who often told them they would have to ‘fight their way through’ in later life, and even the official government careers magazine Planet Beruf told the students: ‘Everyone can fight their way through.’ These seemingly casual remarks and expressions reflect a social situation in which students are largely denied simple, straightforward career paths and where social recognition is not given freely, having instead to be fought for. ‘Fighting one’s way through’ also means ‘not taking any shit’ and thus ultimately an attempt to assert oneself in surroundings perceived as hostile.21 The boxer motif is not limited to a set of isolated stances, deriving broader cultural importance from its use as a metaphor for life – a life in the context of exclusion and precarity that is understood as a ceaseless struggle. Thanks to the near-irreversible selection mechanisms of Germany’s three-tier system, negative experiences at school give way to long-term experiences of exclusion, which in turn cause far-reaching problems in students’ later life. This situation corresponds with a worldview according to which nature is perceived as fateful and uncontrollable, life as a constant battle or as a merciless lottery. Faced with a perceived lack of options for shaping their careers and life situations, many Hauptschule students focus on ‘fighting back’ at this hostile environment in order to ‘somehow scrape through’ (in German both expressions refer directly to boxing).22 In the pictures, videos, statements and everyday chat posted on Social Media by the students, I also noticed many references to boxing and fighting. During my research in 2008/9, one student in Wedding stated his attitude to life on the Social Media app, jappy.de: ‘However hard life gets, you have to fight harder, that’s the only way to get somewhere in life!!!’ In 2012/13, too, with most students now on Facebook, boxing legends like Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson were revered by the students. Whereas Ali’s conversion to Islam was stressed by the mainly Muslim boys, they identified with Tyson primarily on account of his poor background. A moral meme often shared by the students combined a picture of the intimidating but pensive-looking boxer with the words: ‘Mike Tyson: No matter how high you fly, don’t forget who you crawled with.’ In a similar context, in a study of Berlin teenagers from what is usually categorized as the ‘underclass’ who cultivate a ‘chavvy’ style, Moritz Ege has also highlighted the persistence of agonistic worldviews and definitions of reality, as well as their diverse forms of expression in popular culture; as one example he cites tattoos with the slogan ‘Live to Fight – Fight to Live’.23 Such everyday aphorisms reveal the normative dimension of self-stylizations, as well as showing that in spite of its aggressiveness, boxer style is far from amoral.24 However, rather than being formulated and explained in

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abstract terms, ethical positions are articulated within the style itself. The morals of boxer style are based on generalized references from the world of martial arts, such as the conviction that the path to the top is a ‘rocky road’, that one must respect one’s opponent, or that only the fighting spirit will prevent you from being crushed. These are joined by adaptations of general notions of goodness, like the appeal in the Tyson quote for successful individuals not to disavow their roots and old friends. Many of these moral demands are especially persuasive for teenagers in underprivileged milieus, but they also find broader acceptance within society. The ethos of self-improvement in particular shows that in principle the students are open to discipline and learning. This in turn suggests that their lack of discipline and refusal to learn have more to do with school as an institution than with their characters. Style: Coordination and Aestheticization Having explored the attractiveness of martial arts for male Hauptschule students and the spread of boxing gestures and semantics beyond the field of sport, let us turn to the way these elements are combined into an everyday cultural style. From this perspective, boxing is more than just a sport. In the sense of a ‘practical sense’ shaped by habitus, boxer style is not only associated with body practices, but also corresponds with homologous mindsets and worldviews.25 For Bourdieu, differences between forms of life are based on the incorporation of unequal living conditions into corresponding forms of habitus, which in turn form the basis for various lifestyles. The taste associated with each specific habitus, understood as an everyday form of classification, valuation and assessment, is referred to by Bourdieu as the ‘generative formula’ on which a specific lifestyle is based.26 Boxing gestures developed and learned in a sporting context, filtered through milieu-specific experiences of exclusion, become everyday forms of expression for identities and worldviews based on the motif of struggle. When success does not come easily, achieved only by overcoming major obstacles, when paths are blocked and doors shut, when one is confronted with disregard and devaluation – then fighting and the fight can become stylistic leitmotifs for one’s own life. In this process, boxing and fighting gestures take on a life of their own, with playfully feigned punches becoming an everyday form of greeting, regularly accompanying other verbal and nonverbal acts of communication. Taken together, the various motifs and body practices I have discussed in connection with boxing can be understood as the components of a specific youth culture – boxer style. As a system of signs, symbols and references for social orientation, as an outward expression of self-image, style manifests a person’s link to a specific group or way of life.27 Styles

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have a double function as markers of both distinction and belonging. To achieve this, they must refer to interactions and be visibly staged. Stylization describes the bundling together of stylistic elements to obtain a coordinated self-representation, with aesthetic components playing an important part. This aesthetic dimension points to the way such practices go beyond considerations of pragmatic necessity, focussing instead on physical enjoyment. This often involves exaggerations and excess, usually linked with specific fashions and consumer practices, with hairstyles and clothes in particular acting as signals in the field of youth culture. Aestheticization and consumerism feed into one another: on the one hand, young people take available consumer products and actively reinterpret them in accordance with their material and symbolic possibilities and, on the other, youth culture styles are marketed by creating consumer goods specifically for this demographic. In the case of boxer style, this consumer loop extends from footwear to hairstyles. Boxing boots are training shoes that reach up above the ankle; originally designed to reduce the danger of ankle injuries during bouts, as part of the popularity of sports shoes in general such boots are now also worn outside the ring. Boxing boots stand not only for sportiness but also, due to their design, for stability and thus, figuratively, for a solid, straightforward stance. Boxer shorts are long and loose-fitting to give boxers greater legroom, with various types now also available for use as everyday underwear. In contrast to small, tight-fitting briefs, they symbolize the principle of ‘big’ trousers with their connotations of proletarian masculinity.28 The boxer cut is a hairstyle that was widespread among male Hauptschule students during my research, consisting of shaved back and sides, sharp transitions, and short hair on top. Seen as particularly manly, this style was worn, for example, by the well-known Berlin rapper Bushido, whose moniker is Japanese for ‘the way of the warrior’. The students I worked with not only copied the boxer style, but also varied and adapted it in various ways, for example by embellishment or by combining with other styles – including the undercut hairstyles that were popular for a time among both Hauptschule students in Neukölln and among the district’s hipster population. In the context of cultural studies, analyses of style view individual elements like shoe fashions, types of shorts and hairstyles not as random everyday phenomena, but as parts of a meaningful whole that reflects cultural patterns. Rolf Lindner stresses the fascination and the analytical potential of this approach, which can be used to understand how patterns of action, cultural orientation and social experience solidify into cultural forms via practices of everyday aesthetics.29 But he also underlines the danger of over-interpretation, when isolated elements are sought out as evidence and then assembled into a perfectly fitting whole. Kaspar Maase makes

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a similar point, warning against interpreting styles simply as ‘expressions of’ as one does with artworks or texts, as this implies a finite form, thus shutting down and essentializing situative and ambiguous practices.30 In the same vein, in remarks on young men in Berlin who present as aggressive, Moritz Ege points to style’s complementary logics of escalation and de-escalation: escalation consists of expressive displays of toughness in situations of confrontation or provocation, while de-escalation consists of references to the genre conventions of such performances of aggressive masculinity, their playful components and popular-culture framing.31 The ambivalences and ambiguities of styling oneself as a boxer or fighter derive primarily from this switching between hostile seriousness and playful fun. With these warnings in mind, I aim to explore cultural patterns and historical traditions, but also the processual and fragmentary nature of stylebased practices. Boxer style has a certain coherence and logic, bundling together elements that are widespread in the context of a Hauptschule in Berlin: an affinity with boxing and other martial arts; body practices oriented towards an ideal of strong masculinity; aggressive and agonistic behaviour; views of the world and life as a (mostly unjust and hopeless) struggle; and everyday aesthetic practices and forms of consumption geared towards sportiness, steadfastness and masculinity. Despite this emphasis on cultural elements, boxer style should not be misunderstood as a new version of the theory of a ‘culture of poverty’32 that views cultural orientations as the primary cause of tendencies towards self-exclusion. On the contrary, studying boxer style offers insights into class- and gender-specific forms of processing experiences of exclusion. However, caution is necessary here, as focussing on selected male-connoted behaviours can divert attention away from other, less confrontational responses to similar problems. Moreover, the hyper-masculine male fighters described above do not form a homogenous partial culture. In addition to their displays of aggression and physical intimidation, in other situations the same students also showed forms of empathy and affection, for example walking around hand in hand with male friends or posing for smiling photographs with their siblings’ babies. And finally, the teenage fighters changed over time, as in the case of Khaled’s older brother whose transition to adulthood was accompanied by an orientation towards the ideal of the family man.

Rebellion and Conformity: The Politics of Boxer Style Having outlined boxer style in terms of its various constituent elements, I now want to focus on the ambivalent political dimension of this everyday

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practice. Boxer style can be read both as a gesture of rebellion and as a form of conformity. On the one hand, the image of the fighter is a striking expression of anger at prevailing conditions and a refusal to put up with things without resisting, if necessary by violent means. On the other hand, the programme of subjectivization associated with boxer style, based on self-discipline, physical self-optimization, aestheticized self-presentation, constant competitiveness, and personal responsibility for success and failure reads like a set of instructions for creating the ideal neoliberal individual. Boxer style is also inscribed with complex stories of social discrimination, racist oppression and male dominance. As a result, boxer poses as part of everyday aesthetics are linked on many levels with the power structures associated with class, race, gender and the body. From the outset, modern boxing and the corresponding aesthetic practices have always also been a form of combined doing class, doing race, doing gender and doing body. In order to go beyond a hasty, reductive image of boxer style, it is necessary to bear in mind both aspects – resistance to perceived injustice, and the reproduction of prevailing structures of inequality and notions of order. Boxer style can thus be described as a complex formation, in which different power relations are articulated, reproduced and challenged. With an emphasis on forming, on processes of making, I study the emergence of interwoven power relations, basing my approach largely on the triad of class-race-gender, as established in sociological inequality research, while treating the issues usually discussed in the category of race with a greater focus on origins and family. As boxer style is a strongly body-oriented practice, I follow the lead of Winker and Degele by including the body as an added analytical category.33 Each of these categories centres on a different aspect of societal structuring. With regard to class, although boxer style stands in a long tradition of revolt among the oppressed, its myths of advancement are based largely on individual achievement. In terms of origins, I develop a critical view of the supposed naturalness of fighting among ethnic minorities and explore the ways teenagers from migrant families engage with their parents’ generation. With regard to gender relations, boxer style can be read as a performative construction of masculinity, while the model of ‘tough’ and ‘strong’ masculinity in question has recently been discredited. With regard to the body, I discuss modes of modelling the self in which working on one’s body and mind proves to be a project full of fault lines and obstacles. In spite of this emphasis on individual aspects, the dimensions of inequality described here are interwoven in everyday life, which is why I have not chosen to select a single aspect as an anchoring or central category.

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Class: Individualistic Rebellion Young people associated with boxer style are often perceived by the establishment as aggressive underdogs. Boxing is seen as a sport for the ‘underclass’, boxing events as commercial mass spectacles of dubious repute. The dangerous and disreputable aura of boxing events and their rituals of heroic masculinity raise hackles among the educated middle classes, but precisely this rejection of boxing also exerts a secret fascination on intellectuals – from Lord Byron to Bertolt Brecht to Ernest Hemingway. As this makes clear, boxer style is interwoven in complex and contradictory ways with class relations and the attendant struggles for distinction. From a different perspective, boxing can also be described as a way of integrating the working classes into society, deploying classic aspects of proletarian culture like body-orientation, but without calling the principles of social hierarchization itself into question.34 Representations of boxing in art, literature and cinema also centre on the motif of the low-status outsider, with revolt against injustice and the affirmation of societal principles often going hand in hand. A classic example of this is Rocky, a series of six films starring Sylvester Stallone that began in the mid-1970s. Devised and played by Stallone, Rocky is a washed-up boxer in precarious employment who lives hand to mouth before chance offers him the opportunity of a lifetime – a fight against the world champion Apollo Creed on the bicentenary of American independence. At the end of the second movie, after a series of dogged bouts, he finally claims the world title; in later episodes he makes friends with Creed, defeats a Russian boxer, and heroically survives further adventures. The first film is loosely based on a true story: in 1975, then world champion Muhammad Ali fought against a brave underdog by the name of Wepner, providing Stallone with his inspiration. The name Rocky refers to Rocky Marciano, a legendary Italian-American champion boxer of the 1950s known for his aggressiveness and ability to absorb blows. By fighting his way to the top with hard training, Rocky embodies the ‘American Dream’ of a ‘Land of Opportunity’. Although this myth of social mobility, according to which anyone can make it if they work hard enough themselves, plays with the motif of resisting the dominant order, its individualizing viewpoint also helps to legitimize this order. The figure of ‘Rocky’ may be a product of the United States, but he has now become established in Western popular culture more broadly as an epitome of the socially marginalized individual with a fighting heart. Rocky is not only about winning in the ring, but also about asserting one’s place in society, about regaining respect and recognition.35 This battle for appreciation is fought by the film’s main character in the name of all those who

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society treats with disregard. The film’s message was received loud and clear by the Hauptschule students in Neukölln, who themselves faced various forms of denied recognition, often with a highly problematic mix of social contempt and cultural humiliation, under precarious family conditions and without German citizenship. For all the similarities, Rocky and comparable ‘white’ movie heroes like Rambo lack a trace of African-American coolness, somewhat limiting their identificatory potential for migrant youth. During my first period of Hauptschule research in 2008/9, I was struck by the online profile of Lukas, a Polish-German student from Berlin’s Lichtenberg district, whose photo showed him in an aggressive boxing gesture.36 The accompanying text clearly reflected experiences of disregard (‘Fuck anyone who wants to change my life or insult me’), while the words and images showed a threatening combativeness with no fear of injury (‘I’ll fight even if I know I’ll fall’). As positive elements, contrasting with a society that despised him, he foregrounded his own ‘family’ and ‘Kampfgruppe Ost’, a group of right-wing football hooligans associated with the East Berlin club ‘Berliner Fussball Club Dynamo’. With his defensive stance towards society, his willingness to get hurt, and his ‘white pride’, this self-stylization as a young fighter had clear parallels to the fictional Rocky. In addition to a historical affinity between boxing and the ‘underclass’, Germany has seen a growth in the appeal of boxing across class lines. The 1990s saw a boxing boom, driven mainly by media stylizations of successful professional boxers like Henry Maske and Graciano Rocchigiani as cultural role models for different sections of the population. With the rise of fitness culture and the ethos of self-optimization, boxing as a sporting practice has now spread right across society, even to elite circles. This recent rise of boxing has been interpreted as an expression of a neoliberal zeitgeist, as an embodiment of contemporary social models like aggressive individualism, competitiveness and combative ways of life.37 Origins and Family: Processing Experiences of Migration and Racist Profiling From the viewpoint of British cultural studies, youth subcultures can be read as articulations of twin issues – as an engagement with hegemonic culture and as a reaction to the situation of the parents’ generation.38 Applying this view of class, origins and family to boxer style, the example of Lukas showed that criticism of prevailing conditions may be accompanied by a defence of one’s own family or peer group. When looking at intra-family dynamics and the parents’ situation, questions of ethnic origin and migration automatically come to the fore, as most of the students I worked with grew up in migrant families. The resulting family constellations are illustrated by the examples of Ali and Khaled.

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Ali, who we met at a martial arts event at the start of this chapter, grew up in a family of Palestinian refugees who came to Berlin via Lebanon. He described his father as a ‘martial arts fanatic’, and other members of his family practised various martial arts. Like Ali, Khaled came from a Palestinian family, he also had five siblings, and his father had been a karate coach. As described in chapter 2, he was born in Ramallah and only came to Berlin during his school years, when his life was made difficult by a lack of German, the living conditions in the refugee hostel, and his parents’ separation. Besides their shared refugee experience, one striking aspect in the story of these German-Arab teenagers is the role of martial arts in their families. If one looks at their fathers, one sees two former practitioners of martial arts who now live as Palestinian refugees in Berlin. Refugee situations like this often involve problems of language and communication, a constant struggle to secure the right to remain for oneself and one’s family members, and structural discrimination including the denial of work permits and civil rights. The one-time Palestinian fighters appear as supplicants deprived of agency in key areas of life. When I spoke to Ali and Khaled about their families, they always defended their fathers with demonstrative pride. But why did they adopt such a defensive stance? Although they would never admit it, I suspect that they suffered from their fathers’ social situation, while also seeking their attention within the context of the extended family. With their commitment to boxing and martial arts, they not only connected with the interests and passions of their parents’ generation, but also, in a figurative sense, fought for the reestablishment of their fathers’ pride and for a rehabilitation of their parents’ sidelined generation of refugees. In this way, the interpretation of fighting as an ambivalent form of self-assertion practised by excluded groups can be extended to include migrants and refugees. The related image of boxing as a sport of the oppressed and discriminated against was key to the appeal of boxing gestures among Hauptschule students in Berlin. Especially in the United States, the dominant boxing nation of the twentieth century in both sporting and cultural terms, boxing has a strong tradition as part of the struggle for emancipation by ethnic minorities. Due to widespread media coverage of their triumphs, successful African-American boxers also became role models for Hauptschule students in Berlin, who would then claim that they fought ‘like Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson’. With such boasts, they inscribed themselves into pop cultural stories of the heroes of the African-American resistance, without being aware of the ambivalent relationship between boxing and racism in the United States. In the first half of the twentieth century, conflict was sparked by the successes of the first African-American heavyweight world champions Jack Johnson and Joe Louis.39 They opened

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the door for African-American boxers to enter a sporting world that had previously been dominated by whites and understood as proof of their racial superiority. In the second half of the twentieth century, African-American fighters then came to play a key role in boxing. While Muhammad Ali, who converted to Islam in the 1970s, became a symbol both of Black Power and of the anti-war movement, in the 1980s Mike Tyson’s near invincibility was attributed precisely to his ‘ghetto’ roots. Tyson is a particularly good example of the way African-Americans are associated with a supposedly natural penchant for fighting and of how such racist stereotypes operate with images of strength and virility that reflect feelings of both admiration and fear. In this view, Tyson’s black skin stands not only for the anger and aggressiveness of the ethnically oppressed that drove him on as a boxer, but also for ‘the animal in the man’ – the unbridled brutality, excessive sexuality and notorious violence that finally led to his downfall with several jail sentences. For Tony Jefferson, the self-destructive mechanism of warding off fear by adopting the hardest available version of masculinity is the key to understanding Tyson’s biography, establishing a broader link between ethnicity and gender.40 The iconic figures emerging from the triumphs of African-American boxers in recent decades embody an ambivalent political programme of ethnic empowerment and new forms of racism. They stand for successful forms of self-assertion, but they also generate fantasies of a superior ‘black’ vitality and virility that is based on biological arguments. This consolidates and commercializes the racist reduction of African-Americans to their bodies. While the associated cool poses take the desperation and bitterness out of the struggle for recognition, they risk drifting into a hubristic ‘machismo’ that responds to racist exclusion with arrogance and misogyny.41 Gender: Heroic Masculinity as a Response to Crisis As well as dealing with class and origins, then, boxing-related practices also contribute to the reproduction of masculinity – an idealized, heroic masculinity based on claims to physical superiority. In the brief fight scenes with feigned blows mentioned at the start of this chapter, the students were generating masculinity via performance. Masculinity researcher Michael Meuser describes such duels as ‘serious games’.42 While this behaviour has a playful element (improvisation, clowning, laughter), it also involves consequential, high-risk power games in which male peer groups negotiate internal hierarchies at the same time as reassuring themselves of their gender status. But such claims to superiority over other young men and over women, who are largely relegated to the status of observers, are being increasingly

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called into question. Ideals of heroic masculinity, with their emphasis on unbridled courage and fearlessness in the face of danger, of physical strength and violent confrontation, now look almost like an atavism in view of postmodern notions of hybrid, ambiguous and fluid masculinity.43 For cultural sociologist Andreas Reckwitz, aggressive masculinity of the kind typically expressed in boxer style constitutes an antipode to the positive cultivation of a gender-indifferent emotional self that has been observable since the 1970s. This hegemonic postmodern affect culture promotes the emergence of moderate, constructive and economically productive emotions.44 This has led to a destabilization of the traditional male habitus based on strength, aggressiveness and assertiveness. While the claim to male superiority required to defend such forms of habitus became less persuasive, a distinct new ideal of masculinity had yet to emerge. The result was the much-discussed ‘crisis of masculinity’ which, interestingly, brought forth a mythopoetic countermovement in academic circles in Germany and the United States in the 1990s, including the use of boxing as a kind of therapy designed to reconnect with ‘authentic’ masculinity.45 By contrast, boxer style stands for a proletarian counterculture, emerging from a sporting context, in which references to strong masculinity also mark a non-bourgeois class status. Boxer style can be understood as a counterweight to prevailing societal and gender norms, as a milieu-specific form of ‘protest masculinity’.46 Conversely, the students’ aggressive gestures point to their role within postmodern culture as stigmatized outsiders whose very exclusion, via processes of cultural distinction, helps to outline the ideal of a moderate, affirmative emotional self. A role is also played here by ethnic stereotypes of masculinity from dominant media discourses, where Turkish, Kurdish and Arab immigrants in particular are associated with an outdated, pre-modern masculinity which, according to a widespread view, is marked by everyday violence against women and archaic notions of honour.47 Gender is closely associated here with origins and ethnicity, while hegemonic depictions of migrants are constructed on the basis of gender stereotypes. In this context, boxer style’s cult of masculinity can be understood as a strategic appropriation of stigmatized masculinity that permits distinction via markings of difference, at the same time as allowing power to be exerted over women and other young men. As discussed above, however, with their symbolic protest, the ‘tough guys’ and ‘Turkish machos’ run the risk of consolidating negative stereotypes of ‘violent young male migrants’ and the related exclusion. The appeal of boxer style among Berlin Hauptschule students stands for a certain persistence and contemporary reanimation of traditional views of ‘real’ masculinity, as well as the related ideal of a binary gender model. But

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when did this traditional image of masculinity emerge? According to Georg Mosse, the masculine ideal took shape in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century, and has remained essentially unchanged ever since.48 Geared towards virtues like a strong will, honour and courage, as well as being associated with a healthy body politic, the ideal male took shape in opposition to male and ethnic anti-types including Jews and homosexuals. But ‘manliness’ was also defined in contrast to ‘womanliness’, a complementary type viewed as gentle, soft and reserved. Sporting practices played an important role in this context, although sports like football and boxing were still frowned upon in nineteenth-century Germany as overly aggressive. Instead, gymnastics was considered the proper and moderate path to male perfection, which Mosse interprets as a path of discipline and militarization. The ancient Greek aesthetic of boyish masculinity, upheld by gymnastics around 1900 and still alive today, reflected the ideals of the bourgeoisie of that time, an ideal that lacks appeal for Hauptschule students in Berlin today, as shown by the sports lesson described above. Notions of femininity and marginalized ‘protest masculinity’ also played an important part in the relational concepts of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ developed by Raewyn Connell in the 1980s in Australia, where a mixture of oppression and incorporation also helped to define dominant models of masculinity.49 Connell understands ‘hegemonic masculinity’ not as a fixed, homogenous aspect of gender, but as a set of historically and culturally variable practices that ultimately serve to maintain male dominance. An especially striking impression of the precarious and insecure character of the male dominance claimed in boxer style can be gained by looking at female roles that are not compatible with the ideal of male dominance. Field journal: Break. Two boys come over to tell me I should go and look at the ‘whore war’ over there. At the other end of the schoolyard, right under the staffroom window, a crowd of students is forming, as half the school gravitates towards the action. I maintain a slight distance but of course I also want to see something. In the middle of the throng, two 16-year-old girls are scrapping, egged on by their friends. They fight wildly, screaming, calling each other ‘whores’, rolling on the ground and pulling each other’s bleach-bold hair. When a few teachers intervene, the two girls prove hard to separate, refusing to let go of each other’s hair. Once they have been pulled apart, they retreat like boxers to opposite corners of the schoolyard where they are nursed and encouraged by their excited girlfriends. Then they start again, this time with even greater intensity, leading to an enormous screaming tangle of girls brawling on the ground and teachers leaping into the fray. Finally, the warriors are taken away to the headmaster’s office; later, they will sue each other. An ambulance arrives with its blue light flashing, and the police also turn up. The boys watching this spectacle are interested but

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relaxed. A female student standing next to me say: ‘Nothing but rumours. One of them called the other a slut. Typical girls.’

This fight between the ninth-grade students Samantha and Selina was the talk of the school for the rest of the day. The two girls, it was said, had once been best friends who then had a falling out. In the weeks leading up to the fight, a video circulated among the students in which one of the girls allegedly made derogatory remarks about the other, prompting her to announce the violent reestablishment of her honour, so that the schoolyard showdown came as no surprise to the students. Some female tenth-grade students said such behaviour was inappropriate for girls, while others pointed out how hurtful such insulting talk can be for a woman. During the next break, Samantha’s older brother, informed by mobile phone, appeared in the schoolyard to beat up Selina, but he couldn’t find her. Several writers have studied fighting and boxing women and their important role in the cultural history of boxing.50 On the one hand, they note the marginalization of women in contemporary boxing and the ongoing impact of binary gender roles that associate women with physical and emotional vulnerability and with weakness and care-giving. On the other hand, they note the growing numbers of boxing women and ask how to find and establish a cultural position for these fighters that goes beyond mere mimicry of age-old heroic masculinity. For men, the rise of women’s boxing calls into question their control over a classical arena for the affirmation of male dominance. The above-mentioned studies document a range of defensive responses from men, ranging from calls for women to be banned at boxing venues to benevolent, generously smiling chauvinism. Male Hauptschule students were secretly fascinated by fighting women. Although they hardly let it show during the scene described above, they couldn’t take their eyes off the violent spectacle. On their Facebook pages, male Galilei-Schule students frequently posted and commented on videos of women fighting. The appeal likely lay in what Stuart Hall calls the ‘spectacle of otherness’ – in these young women’s refusal to conform to conventional gender roles.51 With this concept, Hall refers to the constitutive role played in processes of subjectivization by unconscious relationships with the disconcertingly other, which both fascinates and threatens, and is thus approached with a mixture of voyeurism and revulsion. Images of fighting women threaten an already precarious male self-image by questioning the clear divide between strong masculinity and weak femininity. With reference to Julia Kristeva, one might speak here of an ‘abject’ relationship: what stands outside the imagined whole of the subject is rejected or scorned, while also representing a sexually charged object of desire.52

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Body: Working on the Self Our discussion of these issues can be extended by bringing in the body, beginning with the interrelatedness of body and society, before focussing on forms of body modelling. Classic theories of the relationship between body and society have been developed by Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler. In his analysis, Bourdieu uses the term hexis, an overall physical disposition corresponding with specific worldviews, self-images and postures.53 For Butler, a ‘corporeal style’ is used for the performative production of gender difference via incorporated cultural fictions of sexual identity.54 Although, as is often rightly pointed out, Bourdieu tends to privilege stability while Butler emphasizes the possibility of transformations, the relationship between social status and physical disposition is never simple or immutable, and Butler does note that styles have a history that guides and limits the choice of stylistic positions. Both theoretical approaches can be applied to boxer style: it can be understood as an incorporated hexis that need not be based on a fully integrated and coherent habitus; and it can be shown to be based on binary notions and fictions of masculinity whose reproduction via body practices functions anything but smoothly. Including a focus on the body in our discussion of boxer style also allows us to touch on related attempts at physical self-optimization. The vision of masculinity based in the ideal of the boxer demands physical and mental investments, a process of working on oneself that soon proves to be never-ending and full of obstacles. This focus on the body promises a last refuge in the face of the above-mentioned crisis of masculinity, but body and mind cannot be shaped at will. As a result, physical ideals may not be achieved, and bids for body-related self-empowerment may fail. In addition, as noted by Anja Tervooren, young people with less experience in ‘practising gender and desire’ tend to display high levels of disconnect and dissonance.55 Correspondingly, Hauptschule students oriented towards boxer style did not always fulfil the physical ideals they themselves propagated, as seen in the following scene in the gym at the Galilei-Schule. Field journal: In the gym in the basement of the school, twelve students are working out on the equipment under the supervision of the sports teacher, while the girls play ball games in the hall. The teacher has a relaxed approach; at one point he feigns a boxing match with one of the students, after which he says approvingly: ‘He’s good!’ The students are more motivated here than in other classes. Nonetheless, Roberto does no more than walk on the treadmill, and another boy has a fit of dizziness. On the wall hangs a huge mirror in which Elton can’t stop admiring himself, inspecting the results of yesterday’s trip to the solarium and regularly checking whether his muscles have grown

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yet. When I ask him about this, he says it’s ‘for motivation’. He trains mainly his biceps and his shoulder and chest muscles. When he stands in front of the mirror, he sticks out his chest and tenses his arms, sometimes turning around like a bodybuilder on stage, which looks slightly out of place on account of his fat midriff and backside. While turning, he tests the effect of several grimaces. Finally, he takes off his T-shirt and poses topless in front of the mirror. Two other quite plump boys copy him. The three of them together look quite comical. ‘How do I get rid of this belly’, one of them asks. ‘Luckily, the mirror always makes you look better’, answers the other, referring to a slight distortion of the mirror image.

This mixture of narcissism and latent insecurity is too good an example not to be related to Jacques Lacan’s remarks on ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function’.56 According to Lacan, children over a certain age begin to see themselves in the mirror as a complete, unified self, identifying with it in a narcissistic manner. This unity of the self is, however, imaginary, since in the eyes of psychoanalysis subjectivity has no solid inner core, being based instead on a lack. In spite of this, individuals seek a unified subject via imaginings. In the case of male subjectivization, these might be the dominant fictions of masculine strength and virility – fictions whose impact is felt even by male Hauptschule students who do not match the corresponding physical ideals. The distorting effect of the mirror alluded to above thus has a figurative significance that goes beyond this scene, its optical illusion standing for a systematically deluded self-perception. Various cultural techniques can be used to maintain the illusion of a stable male identity that compensates the abovementioned fundamental lack. In his body-oriented performance, Elton’s primary point of reference is the ideal of the bodybuilder whose spectacular shows involve presenting specially trained groups of muscles one by one. In his study of the social history of bodybuilding, Mischa Kläber argues that, because of the traditional bourgeois/proletarian division between mental and physical labour, such bodybuilding practices and the related instrumental relationship with the body were originally associated with the culture of the sub-bourgeois classes.57 As part of the emerging culture of self-optimization, most strikingly reflected in the booming fitness industry, the body-fixated ideal of the bodybuilder has gained relevance across class lines and can now be interpreted as a transformation of self-images in the context of processes of neoliberalization. In this light, the scene in the gym described above features a mixing of contemporary phenomena of masculinity, body and class. When attempting to shed light on individual dimensions of inequality within boxer style, the conclusions are complex and contradictory: boxer style can be read as a reaction to the societal contempt and family problems faced by Hauptschule students, and as a way of dealing with experiences of

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migration and exclusion that often helps to cement negative stereotypes. At the same time, boxer style draws on a physically assertive vision of heroic masculinity that is increasingly being called into question as the basis for masculine identities and male dominance. All this is connected with specific body practices, with body-related strategies for empowerment that also have parallels with patterns of neoliberal subjectivization. Although I have dealt with the relations of class, origins, gender and body articulated in boxer style one after another here, they were treated not as individual forces that reinforce or weaken one another, but as interrelated dimensions of a complex formation. Such formations are not static, being constantly reproduced and varied in everyday life. In this way, the example of boxer style makes it clear that Hauptschule students are not only confronted with existing stereotypes and forms of inequality, but that they themselves are involved in their reproduction.

Conclusion: Embodied Contradictions While the term ‘boxer style’ refers primarily to a sporting context, I have also used it here to describe aesthetic self-stylizations shaped by traditional notions of male toughness, agonistic behaviour, and the leitmotif of fighting. I began by tracing the steps in the emergence of a style from sport, to play and everyday life, to forms of aestheticization in popular culture. I then looked at the impact of various categories of inequality, their complexities and inner contradictions, and their interwovenness. Rather than existing in some isolated, raw state, these forms of inequality, like the forms of style, emerge, come together and are reproduced in practice. The concept of ‘formation’ focusses attention on processes of creating, developing and replicating in the course of everyday practice. I refer here to the definition developed by Louis Althusser, who used formations to argue against simplistic base-superstructure models in the Marxist discussions of his time and in favour of a more complex, more dynamic double articulation between ‘structure’ and ‘practice’.58 In the context of British cultural studies, his approach was adopted and developed by Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall.59 The concept was later used by Beverly Skeggs, Ann Stoler and others to highlight the ways language transports hegemonic understanding of categories such as class, ethnicity, gender and body.60 Around 1970, Michel Foucault also used the concept of formation, especially in The Archaeology of Knowledge,61 where the term ‘discursive formation’ is used to discuss the dynamism and open-endedness of systems of statement, in which heterogeneous elements are bundled together without creating a fully integrated structure.62 In recent years, following on from Althusser,

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Foucault and others, praxeology and subjectivization theory have studied the everyday and political dimensions of processes of formation, on the one hand the tensions between routine actions and stylistic innovation and, on the other, those between political affirmation and subversion. In the 1970s and 1980s, cultural studies expanded its focus on style in empirical and theoretical terms to more unspectacular, more ordinary practices and more complex relations of power. But with this expansion, the discipline may also have forfeited some of its competence in the analysis of youth cultural styles, and the links to the respective socio-historical constellation ceased to be explored with the same (self-)critical energy. Socialization involves not only adaptation and submission, but also aggressiveness and conflict. In this light, fighting emerges as a constitutive aspect of modern subjectivity, something that manifests in especially striking and accessible form in modern boxing.63 As Ulrich Bröckling has noted, fight metaphors from the world of sport are now becoming widespread in many fields of society, and at the Galilei-Schule they were also clearly inscribed into the students’ bodies.64 For Hauptschule students growing up under precarious conditions in Neukölln, the boxer had become a cultural ideal of combative self-realization, reflecting the extent to which competitive principles have become established. At the same time, such borrowings from the world of sport mask a legitimacy deficit of the neoliberal order by suggesting that social success depends primarily on individual effort and personal achievement.65 Boxer style is a manifestation both of the zeitgeist and of an attitude to the world. Its aggressive gesture should be a source of ongoing discomfort, as it articulates contradictions at the heart of our society.

Notes  1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

See Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 61–68; Willis, Learning to Labour. See Williams, ‘Modernity and the Emotions’. See Hall/Jefferson (eds), Resistance through Ritual. See Willis, Learning to Labour. See Hebdige, Subculture; Clarke, ‘Style’. See Boddy, Boxing. See Wacquant, Body & Soul. Ibid., 40. See Boddy, Boxing. See Oates, On Boxing; Woodward, Boxing, Masculinity and Identity. See Schindler, Kampffertigkeit. See Huizinga, Homo Ludens. See Bataille, The Accursed Share. See Alkemeyer/Borschert/Gebauer/Schmidt (eds), Aufs Spiel gesetzte Körper.

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15. See Alkemeyer/Borschert/Gebauer/Flick/Schmidt, Treue zum Stil; Butler, Das Spiel mit sich. 16. See Alkemeyer/Borschert/Gebauer/Flick/Schmidt, Treue zum Stil. 17. See Stewart, Ordinary Affects. 18. See Schäfer/Thompson (eds), Spiel. 19. See Gerhardt/Wirkus (eds), Sport und Ästhetik. 20. See Kläber, Moderner Muskelkult. 21. See Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 61–68. 22. See ibid. 23. See Ege, ‘Fight to Live/Live to Fight’. 24. See Sayer, Why Things Matter to People. 25. See Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 66–79. Bourdieu/Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. 26. See Bourdieu, Distinction, 173. 27. See Soeffner, ‘Stil und Stilisierung’; Soeffner, ‘Stile des Lebens’. 28. See Ege, ‘Carrot-Cut Jeans’. 29. See Lindner, ‘Apropos Stil’. 30. See Maase, ‘“Stil” und “Manier”’ in der Alltagskultur’. 31. See Ege, ‘Ein Proll mit Klasse’. 32. See Lewis, ‘The Culture of Poverty’. 33. See Winker/Degele, Intersektionalität, 37ff.; Hess/Langreiter/Timm (eds), Intersektionalität revisited. 34. See Gems, ‘The Politics of Boxing’. 35. See Sezgin, ‘Axel Honneth im Boxring’; Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung; Gugutzer, ‘Rocky I-VI’. 36. See Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 63f. 37. See Junghans, ‘Die Wahrheit des Boxens’. 38. See Hall/Jefferson (eds), Resistance through Rituals. 39. See Boddy, Boxing, 166ff. 40. See Jefferson, ‘Tougher than the Rest’. 41. See Majors/Billson, Cool Pose. See also chapter 3 on coolness. 42. See Meuser, Männerwelten; Meuser/Klein (eds), Ernste Spiele. For a slightly different reading of ‘serious games’ see Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory, 129–153. 43. See Woodward, Boxing, Masculinity and Identity. 44. See Reckwitz, ‘Umkämpfte Männlichkeit’. 45. See Meuser, ‘Dekonstruierte Männlichkeit und die körperliche (Wieder-)Aneignung des Geschlechts’. 46. See Connell, Masculinities; Connell/Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity’. 47. See Scheibelhofer, ‘Intersektionalität, Männlichkeit und Migration’; Stecklina, ‘Kleine Jungs mit zu großen Eiern’; Spindler, ‘Im Netz hegemonialer Männlichkeit’. 48. See Mosse, Das Bild des Mannes. 49. See Connell, Masculinities; Connell/Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity’. 50. See Boddy, Boxing; Woodward, Boxing, Masculinity and Identity; Paradis, ‘Boxers, Briefs or Bras?’; Hargreaves, Sporting Females. 51. See Hall, ‘The Spectacle of the “Other”’. 52. See Kristeva, Powers of Horror. 53. See Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, 143–144. 54. See Butler, Gender Trouble, 190f. 55. See Tervooren, ‘Männlichkeiten und Sozialisation’. 56. See Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function’.

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57. See Kläber, Moderner Muskelkult. 58. See Althusser, For Marx; Althusser, Reading Capital. 59. See Williams, Marxism and Literature, 115–120; Hall, Signification, Representation, Ideology; Hall/Gieben (eds), Formations of Modernity; Hall, Cultural Studies 1983. 60. See Skeggs, Formations of Class and Gender; Stoler/McGranahan/Perdue (eds), Imperial Formations; Owen/Winant, Racial Formations in the United States; HoSang/ LaBennett/Pulido (eds), Racial Formations in the Twenty-First Century. 61. See Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language. 62. See Angermüller, Nach dem Strukturalismus, 115f. 63. See Baratella, Das kämpferische Subjekt. 64. See Bröckling, Gute Hirten führen sanft, 243–259. 65. See ibid.

PART V

Fears and Hopes

Chapter 9

Social Anxieties Unemployment and Deportation

Do we live in a society of fear? According to historians, fear has become a dominant feeling in Western societies.1 Fear and anxiety are often counted among the basic human emotions, but in their concrete manifestations they are primarily historical, cultural and social phenomena.2 Certain types of fear have a specific place in history, as Joanna Bourke has shown using the examples of fear of being buried alive in the Victoria age, fear of nuclear war during the Cold War, and the widespread fear of terrorism in our own times.3 Sociologists also describe a climate of anxiety, as the recent disintegration of modern societies has replaced collective promises of relative prosperity and security with individual fears of social decline.4 In addition, the fears associated with terms like deindustrialization and mass unemployment are unevenly distributed within society, with post-proletarian classes most severely affected.5 This chapter looks beyond school to deal with social anxieties – with fears caused by societal structures, in particular our current labour market and border regimes. Coming mainly from migrant backgrounds, Berlin’s Hauptschule students are disproportionally impacted by unemployment and deportation. The resulting fears are fears for the future, and the underlying forms of exclusion are linked in many and varied ways. Those at risk of deportation have trouble accessing the labour market, if they are allowed to work at all, while conversely, successful employment can delay or prevent deportation. However, these processes of exclusion and the resulting emotions are treated differently: at the end of their time at the Hauptschule, students face the imminent threat of unemployment and their fear of it is

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evoked by constant mentions in class; the statistically less probable threat of deportation, on the other hand, is systematically ignored by schools and the attendant fears spread in more hidden ways, via informal conversations, rumours and stories. Both kinds of fear are present in the everyday life of many students, fostering a general feeling of insecurity. At first glance, this focus on statistically probable unemployment and statistically improbable deportation recalls the widespread philosophical distinction between a specific anxiety and a more diffuse fear.6 Although this analytical distinction should be treated with caution, as it corresponds neither to the everyday language nor to the everyday experience of these young people, it may prove helpful when addressing the cultural communication and processing of social anxieties. The historian Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner has interpreted the development of Western anxiety as a reaction to the lack of meaning and accessibility in the historical process.7 In early modern times, the God-given order and the associated fear of ‘evil’ lost their cohesive force, leading to the emergence of an open horizon for the future that also brought a new, more diffuse set of uncertainties. In this way, modernity itself came to be experienced as a source of fear and menace.8 In the course of modernization, fears tended to become reflexive and thus interiorized, while phases of crisis caused latent fears to be translated back into emotionally charged bogeymen (‘witches’, ‘Jews’), allowing fears to be symbolically diverted via displays of agency.9 Applying this historical reading to contemporary forms of dealing with fear, it is clear that Hauptschule students in Berlin also lack options for shaping their future, which has a destabilizing impact on their self-esteem. Their anxieties, too, are articulated via symbolic frames of reference, with places like the Job Centre and the Aliens Registration Office painted as nightmare scenarios, while bureaucratic documents like unemployment certificates or residence permits become emotionally charged. This chapter looks at several of these interrelated forms of internalization and displacement of fear. The first section describes physical reactions, language usage and forms of activism in the context of looming unemployment. The second section reconstructs the different ways fear of deportation is experienced, the associated mechanisms of exclusion, and the potential impact of actual deportation. Such far-reaching precarization confirms the theory of a society dominated by fear and insecurity, as alluded to above. The term precarization, coined by French sociologist Robert Castel, refers to the systematic spread of insecure and unstable jobs in the low-wage sector in Western Europe as part of its transition to a post-Fordian economy.10 Although the so-called ‘precariat’ is not identical with a specific social class, in its merging of ‘precarity’ and ‘proletariat’ the term points to a close connection between

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class status and degree of precarization. Klaus Dörre, who made key contributions to the spread of precarity research in Germany, distinguishes between a narrow, empirical usage of the concept and its application in broader critiques.11 Whereas Dörre mainly carried out empirical studies, focussing on groups including those on welfare and troubled industrial workers, Oliver Marchart used the notion of precarization as a tool for systematic critique, in turn distinguishing between his view of all-encompassing precarization and an understanding that sees precarity only at the margins of society or in a specific sector of the labour market.12 In his view, precarization is a characteristic of contemporary society as a whole, not limited to specific milieus or spheres. I take up elements from both approaches, using ethnographic observation to better understand the peculiarities of fears for the future at the lower end of the educational hierarchy.

Fear of Unemployment Fear of unemployment points both to societal values and to the moral dimension of emotions. It was only in the course of modernization that wage labour became a commodity and a key factor in the distribution of status and recognition.13 In the process of industrialization, our society became a society of labour in which participation required integration into the capitalist labour market and success was aligned with the model of male wage labour.14 In earlier times, when work was more closely associated with risk to life and limb, work itself was a source of anxiety, and freedom from the need to work was a coveted privilege. In modern times, the opposite is true: fear is now focussed on the loss or absence of work.15 Unemployment did not emerge as a social category and political problem until around 1900, when people began to distinguish between poverty and joblessness.16 Since then, being unemployed has been stigmatized, accompanied by a noticeable loss of social status. In the students’ eyes, the threat of unemployment stands for the danger of not being able to successfully make the step into adult life. This in turn risks the perpetuation and even aggravation of problems resulting from their failure and humiliation at school. Recent transformations of labour market policy, including the Hartz reforms based on a carrot-and-stick approach, have significantly spread and intensified the fear of unemployment. According to sociologist Stephan Lessenich, the current ‘reinvention of the social’ is based primarily on activating individual responsibility: ‘The new mode of governance centres on a transition from public to private security, from collective to personal risk management, from social insurance to individual liability, from state welfare to self care. The aim of these changes is the sociopolitical construction of

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subjects who are doubly conscious of their responsibilities – responsible both to themselves and to society.’17 Even in times of crisis, unemployment is now viewed less as a largely blameless collective plight and more as a sign of personal malfunction, resulting in moral devalorization and state sanctions. As standards of education have risen in recent decades, the school system has come to play a decisive role in this process of shifting blame to the system’s less qualified ‘losers’.18 The insecurity produced by society is also reflected in those sectors of the labour market most at risk of unemployment, where it contributes to alienation and the erosion of solidarity.19 These developments towards a self-activating society form the anxiety-inducing backdrop for the fears experienced by many Hauptschule students concerning the search for vocational training and the associated dangers of personal ‘failure’. Embodied Fears In the course of their search for apprenticeships, tenth-grade students gradually realized their lack of prospects in the labour market, a situation caused largely by structural factors beyond their control. During this period, fear of unemployment grew into a clearly perceivable collective emotion, placing a huge strain on many students in the final months of the school year. The collective loss of status suffered by Hauptschule students in recent decades was experienced as an individual threat, dealt with by these young people in very different ways. While some glossed over the everyday struggle of looking for an apprenticeship with brash fantasies of becoming a millionaire, others saw each step towards employment as hugely important. Their main fear was that of being left behind. The urgency of these fears manifested in the extent of their mental and physical internalization, in the nightmares and stomach pains they typically provoked. In my first Hauptschule book, I stress the mental impact of fears for the future, interpreting them in Freudian terms as three interrelated forms of the ‘uncanny’: fear of career failure; fear of giving up and accepting a seemingly hopeless situation; and fear of the kind of misfortune that was strikingly common in the students’ biographies and families.20 Fears for the future were articulated in nightmare scenarios of social decline, symbolically personified by doppelgänger figures from the students’ families or circles of friends. These fears were ‘uncanny’ because the young people were anxious about something that also felt familiar to them in an unpleasant way. Unemployment represented a possible life outcome the students wanted to avoid at all costs, although many were nonetheless headed in that direction. In addition, I want to highlight the physical experience of social anxieties. In anthropology and cultural theory, the corporeal dimension

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of social exclusion has been addressed more recently in studies of embodiment, which posit the body as a medium of expression deeply implicated in social norms and power structures.21 This turn towards the body is accompanied by and connected to a growing interest in emotions, affects and the senses. The somatic character of social anxieties is especially evident in artistic, cinematic and literary portrayals of precarious conditions, as in the striking social studies produced by the Dardenne brothers. Their film Rosetta (1999) is a portrait of a young woman living in a trailer park and her desperate search for a job and a ‘normal life’, including all the stomach cramps, fits of rage and moral dilemmas that result from such a situation. In the social sciences, the physical dimension of exclusion is still largely ignored. But reconstructing the societal production of such anxieties in purely abstract terms risks overlooking their emotional impact and physical manifestations. Field journal: English class, the day’s last lesson. Most of the students are already tired. Martin suddenly has trouble breathing, gasping for air and barely able to remain standing. The teacher says he needs ‘some fresh air’. Jamil and I accompany him outside to sit in the sun. Martin says he has bad pains in his lungs and stomach, and he keeps doubling over. ‘If it gets worse’ he warns us, ‘I’ll have cardiac arrhythmia and a kind of epileptic fit.’ We suggest he should take it easy. But he wants to get back to class as fast as possible. ‘I need every minute I can get, especially in English. Although grades don’t matter anymore, I still want to leave school with a good report.’ Then he asks if I have my phone with me, saying he feels calmer if he knows I can call an ambulance any time, should he collapse after all. I’m not reassured. ‘My hand’s going numb’, he suddenly says. He also has pains in his back. His doctor has told him it’s ‘anxiety disorder’, a kind of panic that overcomes him when he has trouble breathing. Martin himself calls it a ‘state of shock’. So far, the doctors have been unable to find anything wrong with him; some think it’s asthma, others suspect a virus, but no one has a proper explanation. Martin looks pale and bleary-eyed. His hair hangs so far into his face he’s hardly recognizable. He does some breathing exercises recommended by his doctor. ‘Let’s call the doctor’, says Jamil. I say we should wait: ‘A few minutes of English aren’t so important. Take time to relax.’ But Martin really wants to return to the classroom. Going up the stairs on the way back, he has to take a break. He asks me to open the window for him when we get back to the classroom. When we arrive, Martin really does go straight back to his English exercise. The teacher smiles contentedly, the problem seems to have been dealt with.

A depressing scene, especially since it was far from unusual. I have already described a similar episode involving Sila, during which I was also asked to assist. In Martin’s case, too, I have no precise knowledge of the causes of his physical ailments, but his social situation seemed to play a

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key role in his discomfort. When I met him the following day, he was still complaining of nausea. Asked if he had been to see a doctor, he was evasive. When I asked what his mother thought (in the case of ethnically German students, I automatically assumed the fathers were not at home), he replied: ‘What’s she supposed to think?’ I later learned about the family’s problems; Martin’s unemployed single mother had been assigned some domestic help but had refused. Hauptschule students incorporated social conditions in a range of ways, embodying them in different ‘styles’. Their bodies were products of society, into which structures and values were inscribed, but they also produced society, by influencing forms of coexistence and shaping social arrangements.22 In this context, with reference to Anthony Giddens, sociologist Robert Gugutzer speaks of a ‘duality of structure and embodiment’ in which social structures and embodied actions both shape and produce each other.23 Martin’s ailments point to the way family problems and social anxieties become inscribed in bodies, as reflected in typical symptoms like nausea, dizziness, trouble breathing, and stomach ache. However, this emphasis on the physical experience of social exclusion should not lead to the conclusion that these students were unable to reflect on their situation. Instead, fears for the future manifested physically, and these physical symptoms of anxiety were related to rational considerations, in Martin’s case the relevance of learning English for his career and the importance of school grades for his self-esteem.24 Martin was afraid of getting behind in a subject that is considered crucial to career success in Germany. In a different sense, he was scared of being pushed even further towards the margins of society. Sociologists have diagnosed a ‘shift in social self-assessment’ in German society,25 with the striking return of social conflict accompanied by a decrease in the consensual identification with the middle classes that characterized West German society before reunification, and an increase in antagonistic self-descriptions. For already marginalized Hauptschule students, this view must be further differentiated: firstly, due to the precarious employment situation of most of their parents, the ‘old’ proletarian worker’s pride was not available as a basis for positive identification with ‘low’ social status, and secondly, they were especially hard hit by cultural devalorization of the ‘new underclass’. While many in the middle classes are afraid of slipping into precarity, the Hauptschule students clung from below to the hope of middle-class status which they associated with at least a certain degree of security and respectability. When, during my first year of Hauptschule research in 2008/9, I asked students to situate themselves within the social hierarchy, almost all of them placed themselves slightly below the middle, on level three or four

Social Anxieties: Unemployment and Deportation  •  279

of a ten-level scale. When asked to defend this lower-middle-class rating, they referred to the presence below them on the scale of a disreputable class of ‘gypsies’, ‘special-needs students’ and ‘dropouts’, while the distance between themselves and Realschule students, whom they associated with the ‘middle’ of society, was considered small due to the possibility of obtaining a Realschule certificate at the Hauptschule. This self-assessment perpetuated the moral coding of social hierarchization, except that the students sought to assign themselves the most flattering position within it. In both of my periods of research, the desire for middle-class status was articulated primarily via the kind of demonstrative consumerism whose cultural forms I have examined in previous chapters. What the students lacked, however, was the self-image and resources of the middle classes. The importance of this fact is reflected in two ethnographic studies on teenagers from precarious backgrounds in Austria. Gerlinde Malli looks at young people living in care who are affected by drug addiction, unemployment and homelessness, and whose families have in some cases been living in poverty for generations.26 Gilles Reckinger focuses on lower-middle-class teenagers who struggle in school due to family breakups and other crises, but who were in some cases able to compensate for their lack of school qualifications with their middle-class habitus, allowing them to adapt to the precarious conditions of the neoliberal labour market.27 When leaving the Galilei-Schule, students like Martin arrived at a crossroads where they would usually set off towards one of these two options. Martin’s commitment to his English class showed how seriously he took this imminent parting of ways, while his delicate health showed the strain he was under. Language: Dialogues on Welfare Berlin secondary school pupils ‘spoke’ not only with their bodies. Due to their palpable social insecurity, there was a real need to exchange information about their social positions. The threat of unemployment was addressed in various ways in tenth grade, in both class discussions and informal conversations. Unemployment was discussed in culturally specific ways, allowing fears to be processed and vented. Metaphors and talking points like ‘problem school’ or ‘welfare’ played an important part in this, bundling together anxieties and allowing them to be dealt with through language. Male students in particular often used stigmatizing labels in ironic ways, describing negative behaviour by classmates as ‘totally Hartz IV’ or ‘typical problem school’. At the same time, being constantly confronted with negative stereotypes made a huge impact on students’ self-confidence, creating a need for them to discuss their own position within society.

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Roberto: Schools with more than 75 percent students on welfare are going to get an extra 100,000 euros next year. Only problem schools will get it. Ms Herrmann: Why do you think problem schools exist? Mustafa: It depends on where the school is. Here, 98 percent of students come from Neukölln. Almost all foreigners, people who are poor or who have problems. They vent their anger at school, against teachers or their classmates. Burak: Some people are just cleverer, others stupider. Roberto: But it means we’ll get new computers! Burak: And then someone will cut the cables again. Ms Herrmann: Who cuts the cables? Burak: The problem school students! Mustafa: This school is actually quite relaxed. Everyone lives their own life and you don’t get beaten up. Ms Herrmann: What makes a school a problem school? Various students: ‘Bullying.’ ‘Truancy.’ ‘Students against teachers.’ Ms Herrmann: Disengagement and a bad graduation record. Burak: Students who sit around lazily doing nothing. Mustafa: Every Saturday, as I lie in bed, I swear to myself that I will do my school stuff at last. That’s laziness! I do my other stuff, but when it comes to school I’m lazy. Yussuf: There are actually plenty of opportunities to do things here. Theo: Rubbish, our school is the poorest in the world. Duc: That’s true! Mustafa: You should visit your home country and not eat so much rice. Roberto: At some schools, the walls are full of holes. Ms Herrmann: How many students have an apprenticeship? Roberto: I’m the only one. Thomas: And I’m joining the army. Theo: I’ll earn more money than all of you put together. Ms Herrmann: Two of you have a training place, and two or three others might make it later through vocational college. That makes just five out of forty-five. Well, congratulations! And how many long-term absentees? [Takes the class register and starts counting out loud]

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Theo: Almost everyone at the school is on welfare. No one pays for books. That’s why the school is poor. Burak: I don’t believe it has to do with the welfare children. Mustafa: My mother works but she still gets welfare. Theo: Illegal employment! Mustafa: You little rat! But many foreigners, who maybe don’t speak German, think they’ll have more money for their families if they do illegal work and claim welfare. Thomas: But then you don’t get a pension. Ms Herrmann: Where does welfare come from? Mustafa: From those who work. But many foreigners think they’ll get more this way. Some Arabs here on Sonnenallee are really rich. The shisha bars and casinos are all owned by Arabs. I know some, they live in Rudow, they all drive big cars and have many girlfriends. Roberto: Why do students go to problem schools? Ms Herrmann: Because the education authority sends them. We get the students who don’t get a lawyer or who got thrown out of other schools. Roberto: But maybe we’ll also get new smartboards. Ms Herrmann: What am I supposed to do with smartboards under these conditions? I prefer blackboards anyway.

In this ethics lesson, prompted by one student’s mention of the prospect of state subsidies for schools facing especially large problems, the students discussed their own school situation. Under the heading ‘problem school’ this began with issues of sociospatial exclusion, moving on to forms of securing one’s existence under precarious conditions under the heading of ‘welfare’. The exchange was marked by differences of opinion and by the adoption of hegemonic viewpoints. Mustafa and Roberto saw things in a positive light, referring to schools in worse positions and to the existence of opportunities. Theo and Duc contradicted this with reference to the school’s disastrous financial situation. Burak stressed the deficits and shortcomings of the students. The teacher, too, displayed a negative view of the school. Surprisingly, in the course of the discussion the students themselves emerged as one of the school’s biggest problems, accusing themselves of lacking intelligence and admitting to a lack of commitment, thus repeating stigmatizing stereotypes, according to which Hauptschule students are stupid and lazy and thus to blame for their own situation. Common claims that migrant families abuse the German welfare system were also confirmed, though relativized when it came to the student’s own family.

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There were also various insults, including racist ones, and the hope of personal wealth. Although this discussion in class offered a welcome chance for those affected to compare notes, it did not lead to mutual support in the face of precarious conditions, tending instead to illustrate a loss of solidarity and patterns of neoliberal blaming. Language can be used to generate and mobilize fears, to name and communicate them, to intensify and mitigate them.28 The negative views that began to dominate in the course of the discussion will not have helped to lessen existing fears for the future. Having been in a relatively positive mood before the lesson, the students were confronted with a devastating verdict from their teacher, and all of those present could work out whether they would be among the minority with or the majority without a training place on leaving school (this also applies to those students who didn’t take part in the conversation, that is, all of the girls present, plus shy boys like Martin). The lesson can thus be said to have generated negative feelings of disappointment, forsakenness and frustration. The labels ‘problem school’ and ‘welfare’ created a framework within which the discussion unfolded. Since the importance of sociospatial metaphors has already been discussed in chapter 4 on ‘ghetto’ pride, I limit myself here to a few remarks on language usage around ‘welfare’. The specific welfare programme the students referred to in German is the ‘Hartz IV’ package defined in the ‘Fourth law on modern services in the labour market’ drawn up by the SPD and Volkswagen CEO Peter Hartz, the last in a series of laws that transformed Germany’s welfare system towards a self-activating model in the early 2000s.29 The new measures included the amalgamation of unemployment and social security benefits at a level below that of the previous social security payments, a cut in the duration of eligibility for unemployment benefits, and changes to the criteria for the reasonableness of work placements. Germany was a latecomer to the process of neoliberal restructuring of the welfare state, a reform agenda pioneered by the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1980s under Reagan and Thatcher, and also pushed through by Eastern European states during their transformation in the 1990s.30 After the Hartz reforms, unemployment benefits were only paid out once the applicant’s savings had been used up, reinforcing the link between unemployment and impoverishment. At the same time, a new low-wage sector emerged, offering those on Hartz IV welfare legal and illegal opportunities to cover their material needs. The example described by Mustafa was probably one such form of ‘topping up’.31 In colloquial speech, soon after the new measures were introduced, ‘Hartz IV’ began to be used to refer to a new kind of bare-bones welfare with strings attached. The term was also used to refer stereotypically to the kind of negative character traits formerly associated with ‘pauperism’

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and more recently with the ‘new underclass’.32 In this way, the contempt for unemployed people in need of welfare, which became the official state position in the course of the government’s ‘Agenda 2010’ programme, crystallized around the term ‘Hartz IV’ – which became shorthand for precarity and ‘unemployability’. The Hauptschule students in Neukölln, too, used the term not only descriptively but also pejoratively. Since most of the students’ parents relied on ‘Hartz IV’, their use of the term indirectly articulated negative self-images and their own fears for the future. In their use of language, the teenagers reproduced derogatory and individualizing stereotypes, thus translating societal trends into the everyday life of the school. The way the students interact in the passage quoted above appears hurtful, a precarious form of dialogue with prominent instances of moral blaming and ideological resentment. In this particular ‘precarious narrative’, the focus is not on attempts to retrospectively establish a coherent, continuous biography, a form of processing observed by Ove Sutter in his interviews with precarious workers in Austria.33 Instead, the ‘Hartz IV’ dialogues at the Galilei-Schule were dominated by negative stereotypes and attempts by individual students to look good at the expense of their classmates. The conversation was neoliberal in tone, using language of blaming and fear – a fear taking hold against the backdrop of an uncertain future and a lack of solidarity. Application Madness: Keeping Fear at Bay and Producing Fear As the door to the labour market was inexorably shutting, attention was obsessively focussed on the increasingly narrow opening. Regular classes, special events and individual efforts all focussed on the hope of managing to obtain an apprenticeship against all the odds. This allowed those concerned to experience themselves not as passive, but as actors with options, and the intense focus on the application process helped to channel their fear of unemployment. The practice of keeping fear at bay in this manner was especially evident in the careers lessons during which tenth-grade students were taught about the options for work placement. In the first half of the school year, lessons often revolved around work experience and internships that were discussed over a period of months using folders, wall newspapers and presentations – a focus that was strikingly at odds with the limited usefulness of such internships for most students. At the same time, and with increasing frequency in the second half of the year, teachers inquired about the progress of the application procedure – here, too, credibility was undermined, as constant appeals to the students’ consciences were not matched by believable prospects of success.

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Field journal: The teacher desperately appeals to the students to use the counselling services offered by the Job Centre and other organizations. She tells me that they miss too many sessions, but that most then have a guilty conscience. A female student who did an internship in social work proudly tells that she has been allowed to continue there on a voluntary basis. She is very happy, as she hopes this may be her chance of getting an apprenticeship. ‘Normally only people doing Abitur are allowed to work there.’ The teacher encourages her to carry on ‘at all costs’ and ‘not to mess it up’. Then she asks those present which jobs they’d like to do: Theo wants to work in retail as a salesman or buyer. ‘I don’t know, no idea’, says another student who was recently thrown out of the ‘Netzwerk’ careers advice programme because he – like many others – stopped turning up. The teacher reminds him that this was noted by the Job Centre and the school was informed. ‘If you want support later, the fact that you didn’t take the assistance offered may cause you problems.’ ‘How can they know what I want when I don’t even know myself?’ says the student, annoyed. Martin wants to work in IT, Susanne wants to be a geriatric nurse, and Maria is not yet sure – she definitely doesn’t want to go to vocational college. Jasha wants to study, but she knows ‘it will be tough’. The students want to know how much one earns as a trainee and how to find out. One student who seems to know finally says: ‘700 euros’. Finally, the teacher asks once more how many applications the students have written. Many already have seven, eight or ten attempts behind them, while others don’t really know what to apply for. ‘You have to write at least 100’, the teacher warns, once again encouraging the students to make use of the available careers advice.

In their search for a job, students at the Galilei-Schule had access to many programmes offering advice and help with applications – from the school itself, from the Federal Employment Agency, and from numerous independent organizations. As a result, they could receive advice on applications from different, sometimes competing sources. However, this huge effort on the part of society did not translate into any noticeable improvement of their chances in the labour market. On the contrary, control mechanisms operating at an intermediate level between state and businesses actually tended to further close the labour market; rather than opening up prospects for Hauptschule students, this actually culminated in existing training places remaining empty.34 This exclusion of part of the young population, in spite of a shortage of skilled labour, is explained by claiming that many students are, as the official jargon has it, ‘not ready for training’, embodying the opposite of the ‘employability’ demanded by neoliberalism. An unpleasant task for those responsible for delivering the various counselling services consisted in ‘cooling down’ the students’ expectations and helping them to gain a ‘realistic’ self-image – preparing them for a life of precarity.35

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Such ‘support’ went hand-in-hand with forms of state surveillance. The teachers’ warnings implied that failure to take advantage of such offers would be recorded by the state and that this could have a negative impact on assessment by the Job Centre at a later date. The above-mentioned ‘Berliner Netzwerk für Ausbildung’ was run by the Federal Employment Agency, which was also responsible for the later assessment of Hartz IV benefit rates. This created a paradoxical situation: on the one hand, the applications submitted by Hauptschule students had little chance of success, but on the other they faced the threat of punishment if they refused to write applications or if the limited options meant they didn’t know what to apply for. The fact that students didn’t lack motivation when presented with a seemingly genuine opportunity is reflected by the example of the student who sought to improve her chances of obtaining a training place by continuing to work on a voluntary basis. But this system of managed unemployment generated despairing teachers and anxious students. The students were not the only ones affected by this application system based on fear and intimidation, as the social workers supervising them were also often on the verge of unemployment, as shown by this interview with a women who helped students with applications at the Galilei-Schule. Ms Förster: It’s basically my job to help people. In careers counselling, with students who find it especially hard to find a training place, we look to see if we can help them find something after all. I actually really enjoy it. The hard part is not the students but all the paperwork. Because we have to write reports and assessments. S.W.: How many of the students you advise find a training place? Ms Förster: We’re happy if just one out of twenty students we talk to finds something. We have people here that are really hard to place. Mostly due to high levels of absenteeism. We work on this with the students. And we continue to help them after school. S.W.: What is your employment status here at the school? Ms Förster: I’m from an independent organization, an education PLC. My background is in the natural sciences, and I entered this job via vocational training. We all have temporary contracts. A burnout, like the teachers here, is something I can’t afford. I have no safety net. We mostly work from one sixmonth period to the next, sometimes longer, but never more than two years. I’ve switched employers several times because the programmes are always limited-term. I’ve also been unemployed between jobs. Because of the need to register as unemployed three months in advance, I’m often confronted with this problem myself. It’s a huge burden, in addition to the emotional strain of the work itself. But you learn to live with it. Unfortunately this leads to a lot of rivalry between colleagues. Some social workers are only funded by the Job

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Centre. Luckily, I’m used to dealing with this stress. So far, I’ve always found a solution. It’s not nice, and I wish it was different. Mainly because of the students, they need stability. How are they supposed to learn stability if the people supervising them keep changing? S.W.: When students come to you, what are they feeling? Ms Förster: The tenth-grade students are very anxious about what awaits them in the summer. Leaving school is already a big step, and then the career uncertainty, it scares them. They try to repress it, but I still notice. But that’s normal. I think everyone knows this feeling. Some make a huge effort, sending off tons of applications, while others send no applications at all, because they believe they won’t be taken anyway. We even accompany some of them to their interviews, if they panic too much.

The social worker’s uncertain employment situation is the result of privatizations in the welfare sector. At the time of my research, the Federal Employment Agency was hiring commercial firms to conduct such programmes for very limited periods, and according to Ms Förster cheaper offers tended to be chosen over those with more credible content. The social workers helping students with the application process had to work flexibly under precarious conditions; they, too, were driven by perpetual fear of unemployment. At the time of this interview in February, Ms Förster assumed that her job would not be extended beyond the end of the school year, as the local programme was to be reduced from a staff of nine to just five, and a different firm had already been awarded the contract. An additional, complementary form of dealing with fears for the future was based on motivating students, and encouraging optimistic outlooks more generally, via a number of extra-curricular activities. At the GalileiSchule, these included the ‘Teach First’ fellowship programme, the ‘School Turnaround’ programme, and various workshop formats. The emphasis here was on positivity, expressed, among other ways, via show elements and a culture of praise. Explicitly rejecting the ‘old-fashioned’ ideological battles of previous generations of social workers, these programmes fostered a ‘timely’ form of social engagement that encouraged students and teachers to take responsibility for themselves rather than criticizing structures of social inequality. The process of implementing such programmes, however, revealed contradictions: firstly, the discrepancy between the promises made in the name of such events and their meagre impact, and secondly the doubts expressed even by those running the events concerning their meaningfulness. One such workshop asked students to fill out a poster with a large yellow smiley next to the words: ‘I firmly believe I’ll find a job I like.’ They were supposed to fill in their names and then put a cross next to ‘yes’, ‘maybe’, or ‘no’. Apart from one ‘no’ and one ‘maybe’, the students all obeyed

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the implicit call to choose ‘yes’. The posters then hung in the classroom for weeks. Obtrusive optimism of this kind cannot dispel the fear of unemployment if it is not accompanied by actual improvements in the structural situation of Hauptschule students in the labour market. The suggestive character of such measures and the constant pushing for application-related activity could only deceive the students for a limited time, as they eventually developed quite a realistic sense of their chances of finding work. The application frenzy whipped up at the Galilei-Schule, as reflected in the often-heard claim that each student should write one hundred letters, only served to focus attention on the looming negative scenario. The carrot-and-stick application system, based on hopes and warnings, intimidation and surveillance, generated the very fears it claimed to banish.

Fear of Deportation Alongside fear of unemployment, the threat of deportation was one of the biggest sources of insecurity among Neukölln Hauptschule students, most of whom had grown up in migrant families. Majority society’s fears of excessive foreign influence and migrants’ fear of marginalization are not just regrettable by-products of processes of political regulation. Instead, they are a basic element of today’s ‘border regime’.36 Labour and migration policy are closely linked, as border policies play a central role in filtering and controlling the supply of workers.37 The inflow of migrants puts the existing workforce under pressure and weakens resistance to the step-by-step dismantling of the social safety net, while the illegalization of migration legitimizes forms of racist exclusion in the labour market and encourages forms of illegal employment. Gradations of social participation based on residence status, educational qualifications and access to the labour market create borders not only at the edges of a clearly defined geographical territory, but also within society and within institutions like schools. Current welfare and border policy is paradoxical in structure: while open borders are propagated with regard to the flow of money, and while workers are required to be flexible, the options for workers with few qualifications, and the freedom of movement of migrants are subject to severe restrictions. In the accompanying political discourse, a key role is played by threats to the security and culture of the majority – and thus also by fear. Students at the Galilei-Schule were strongly impacted by this two-faced form of neoliberal control. Discursive framings of fears focussed on immigration must be understood both in their historicity and in terms of a ‘national order of things’.38 According to Peter Nyers, a specific nexus of flight and fear was already

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inscribed in the Geneva Convention of 1951.39 In this document, fear was associated with the supposedly turbulent conditions of flight, while the well-ordered host society was imagined as a zone of safety. In this way, the text situated fear largely beyond the political influence of Western nation states, and one of the aims in this chapter is to re-establish this connection.40 After the end of the Second World War, naming ‘illegal’ migration as a problem increasingly featured on the political agenda of Western European countries, playing an especially prominent role in Germany since the 1990s.41 In the 1960s and 1970s, migration movements were understood in Germany primarily in terms of ‘guest workers’ and in the 1980s mainly as a ‘refugee problem’. From the 1990s, the threat of ‘illegal migration’ became a political leitmotiv. In the 2000s, this perceived threat escalated as migration became associated with discussions of terrorism and security. At the same time, the end of guest worker recruitment in 1973 and limits on the right to asylum since the 1990s have led to illegalization of existing forms of migration. As a result of this discursive linking of migration and fear, the restriction of legal options for immigration, and the spread of control and border regimes, deportation has become an increasingly important issue and instrument in migration policy.42 Deportations are part of a politics of insecurity in which fears within society are evoked and instrumentalized instead of focussing on positive notions of the common good or freedom of movement.43 For majority society, deportations function as proof of political agency, even if their minimal impact in fact allows them to be interpreted as a sign of political impotence in the face of global interconnectedness and barely controllable migratory movements.44 For the (post-)migrant population, they act as a kind of deterrent, as a demonstrative denial of belonging, and as an instrument of discipline. The resulting uncertainty affects even those not directly threatened with deportation. Politics of Insecurity: Emotional Responses to Residence Permits Uncertain residency status is created via politically legitimized and discursively flanked administrative procedures for denying citizenship rights. Students at the Galilei-Schule experienced the developments in migration policy outlined above mainly in the form of official documents and the steps required to obtain them. In many cases, the teenagers differed not only in terms of residency status, but also in their emotional responses to the everyday challenges this entailed. Roberto: I only have a residence permit, not citizenship. But the permit states I’m allowed to work. The business where I have a training place said I should

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make a copy and send it to them. Here, look, it says ‘gainful employment allowed’. This is just a replacement ID, because my passport has expired. Soon I’m going to apply for German citizenship. That’s important for me. Then I can vote, too. It costs 90 euros. They also told me to do it, and that they would give me a letter saying I’m doing an apprenticeship with them. That always looks good, and then it goes quicker. But it will probably only say they’ve taken me on until I get a German passport. S.W.: Hmm, it says here ‘Until the expiry of his residence permit – deportation deferred (see page 5)’. And then there’s a date, here. Roberto: WHAT? DEPORTATION? Where does it say deportation? [Looks at the document] I’ll have to go back there again, otherwise I’ll be stateless if I don’t get an extension. I was born here, they can’t deport me. And if they do, I’ll sue them, I’ve got an apprenticeship now, I’ll get myself a lawyer!

At the time of the interview, Roberto was worried he would be unable to sign the training contract he had finally secured due to not having German citizenship. He had written dozens of applications, spent months waiting for answers, and now feared the longed-for position might be jeopardized or cut short. When I rather carelessly read the word ‘deportation’ aloud, it became apparent just how scared he was by the topic of residence and the related documents. In legal terms, his panic was unfounded, but in sociopolitical terms it made perfect sense. At the time, his residence permit was valid for a further year, until his eighteenth birthday, and the company seemed to be content with a copy of his previous ID. His parents arrived in Germany in the 1990s as refugees from the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina; at the time of my research, they had been living in Berlin for around twenty years with a temporary residence status. Although born in Germany, Roberto did not have German citizenship. In bureaucratic terms, this ongoing denial of an official sign of belonging was aggravated by his residence permit being marked ‘deportation deferred’, implicitly proclaiming deportation to be the norm, an event that had merely been delayed. The destabilizing potential of such threatening gestures, especially for students already living under precarious conditions, is abundantly clear in Roberto’s case. Illegality is an effect of the law, the result of migration legislation, and not a pre-existing character trait of those concerned. The legal production of migrant ‘illegality’, as Nicholas de Genova has called it, has a far-reaching impact on individuals’ access to areas of society including education, employment and accommodation.45 Due to their key role in processes of integration, residency documents are associated with hopes and fears, becoming emotionally charged ‘phantasmatic objects’ that have real effects even when they are based on false statements or legal errors of judgement.46 Asylum is granted or refused via bureaucratic processes whose peculiarities

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and imbalances of power between ‘applicants’ and ‘decision-makers’ have been detailed by Thomas Scheffer in his micro-sociological study of asylum procedures.47 Official judgements of immigrants are based on emotionally coloured assessments of cultural belonging, influenced by current constellations of political power.48 At the same time, they can be situated within processes of neo-liberalization, indirectly in the way migration is discussed in terms of individual responsibility and profitable human capital, and directly via specific bureaucratic restructuring, like the outsourcing of parts of the asylum process to the private sector, which reflect a strategy of delegating political responsibility.49 Migrant students at the Galilei-Schule typically had family members with different legal statuses, parents mostly having longer or shorter residence permits, siblings either with, without or awaiting German citizenship. After years of social and legal contempt, the possibility of obtaining a German passport tended to be met with mixed feelings. Yussuf: I just got my German passport, at a strange ceremony. I was conflicted. The whole thing was a bit weird, with hand on heart and reading aloud. But that’s part of the deal. I had to give up my Syrian passport. My father organized it all with the Aliens Registration Office, I didn’t know anything about it. My father now has unlimited residence and my mother another three years, but she can’t be sent back at the moment due to the war in Syria. Over time, all of us children have obtained German passports.

Like Yussuf, many migrant students at the Galilei-Schule obtained German citizenship when they turned eighteen towards the end of their time at school or after leaving, while their parents often had to carry on living with permanently or temporarily limited residence permits and all of the attendant restrictions. But for some students, too, the situation was problematic, with the risk of deportation growing once they reached adulthood, especially those not born in Germany or anyone involved in criminal proceedings. This applied especially to Palestine-born Khaled whose parents had fled in several stages via Lebanon to Berlin during his childhood. While at school, his residence permit had always only been extended for short periods on account of his various criminal offences. When I met him again three years later, he was facing both prison and deportation. Khaled: They always used to give me six months, five times in a row. Then I once got three years, and then I got in trouble with the police again. So now I only get three months residence. Then I have to turn up at the Aliens Registration Office again. My parents always get three years, eventually they’ll be able to apply for unlimited and then maybe a German passport. We’ve often been threatened with deportation. Actual letters with the date we would be

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picked up, telling us to pack our bags. We would get a lawyer and we always managed to prevent it. Deportation is not really an option. Because we’re from Palestine, no one is allowed to send us back there.

Although Khaled’s situation appears far more threatening, when talking to me he didn’t let it show. The deportation of his family, announced multiple times but always prevented, caused no apparent signs of fear. The only slight sign of uncertainty came when he said that deportation is not ‘really’ an option, due to his statelessness as a Palestinian. But even this legal eventuality, which could be considered worrying due to continuous revisions of the official list of countries where it is ‘safe to return’, did not seem to unsettle him. The same applied to the threat of prison. Several days before this interview, police had stormed his apartment with a search warrant because they suspected him of being involved in an abduction. Although this proved unfounded, he was subject to parallel criminal proceedings for robbery and grievous bodily harm. When I asked if he was scared of losing his current job with a security firm, he answered with a joke: ‘I’ll carry on working from inside!’ Khaled’s striking nonchalance was due in part to his long experience of legal proceedings, concerning both his own criminal career and his family, whose legal issues he also dealt with. He knew a number of judges and consulted different lawyers for ongoing criminal and asylum cases. He once recommended me a lawyer he considered especially good, ‘in case you ever get in trouble’. Exclusion mechanisms do not translate smoothly into feelings of exclusion. Although a clear correlation exists between legal uncertainty and emotional destabilization, causing widespread fear among students faced with the threat of deportation, examples of the contrary show there is no simple link between the existence of a threat and the way that threat is experienced. Instead, uncertain residence status was dealt with in different ways: Roberto panicked although his residence situation was comparatively favourable; Yussuf had mixed feelings on acquiring German citizenship; and Khaled maintained his cool facade even when facing a highly precarious legal situation. Finally, however, the double threat of deportation and prison did not leave Khaled as cold as it might seem. Criminalization As mentioned above, criminal proceedings had a negative impact on Khaled’s residence status, including an increased threat of deportation. Around the year 2000, increased penalties saw the numbers being deported from youth detention centres rise to 20 percent.50 Khaled’s case clearly illustrates how closely processes of exclusion, criminal prosecution and deportation are interlinked.

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Khaled: I wasn’t born here. I’ve been living here around ten years. When I arrived, everything was totally different for me. I couldn’t speak the language. I spent a year at home trying to learn a little German. I only started school at the end of third grade, that was in Wedding. Well, at primary school and later at secondary school you meet people with shit for brains. As a result, I went slightly astray. Then we moved to Neukölln, Hermannplatz, where it was even worse. Real criminals. But I got on with them, because they were Arabs, too. And that’s where it began. … At first I was anxious and often had a guilty conscience. Later, I wouldn’t even think about it, I had no feelings at all.

A childhood in Lebanese refugee camps and German refugee hostels led gradually, via teenage migrant gangs, to a serious criminal career. Having been caught by the police, Khaled and his friends ended up in custody. In his life story, this was a crossroads. Khaled: So you’re sitting there alone in a cell, just a wooden bench. It’s cold, and you’re not allowed shoes. Anything you could use to strangle yourself, like shoelaces, you have to hand over. Some people only had boxer shorts and a vest. So we were inside, we got caught. At first, we thought it was funny, we made fun of them. We didn’t want to show that we were scared. We kept cool, kept laughing and making jokes. When a policeman asked ‘Did you have a clown for breakfast?’ we said ‘No, we ate at city chicken.’ Because we were so cheeky they put us in separate cells, with two empty cells between so we couldn’t talk to each other. After eighteen hours, my parents came to fetch me. I was scared of my father’s reaction. My mind was rushing. After that I stopped. But there were a few more prosecutions for bodily harm. And I got thrown out of my old school. They asked the police to come for the class conference. People from the board of education and the youth welfare office, plus all my teachers and the headmaster. They sat there and they just wanted to finish me off. After that, I sat at home for six months. Like homeless people on the street, except I was inside. And at some point I said to myself: I can’t go on like this. I’ll never get anywhere – without school, without qualifications. How am I going to feed my children? How can I make my parents proud? If I carry on like this I’ll end up in prison.

The ways young offenders are dealt with has a major impact on the development of criminal careers.51 Khaled’s example shows a tough approach in school and a blurring of the dividing lines between police, school, youth welfare and the judiciary, a trend fostered in Berlin-Neukölln by the juvenile magistrate Kirsten Heisig.52 In an international context, these developments are part of a ‘punitive turn’, a range of measures tightening laws (for young offenders) with an increased emphasis on individual responsibility, flanked by added measures for social control.53 Such measures reflect a technique of government based on responsibilization, with an emphasis on personal

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blame rather than mitigating circumstances, as part of the process of neoliberal transformation.54 But instead of ending up in prison, Khaled found himself back in his parents’ apartment, and soon after at the mosque: following the arrest, the police had not been able to prove the involvement in any crime. Some of the released then pursued a criminal career, while others took this incident as a chance for a fresh start, and for Khaled this involved a turn towards Islam. Khaled: Then I asked myself what was wrong, how I could get back on track. There were a few fake friends, I told them ‘OK, we’re still friends, but I won’t hang out with you anymore.’ When I see them I still greet them, out of respect, but we have nothing to do with each other. After I got thrown out of school I arrived at the Galilei-Schule and I said to the headmaster, who knew my history: ‘I want to make a new start.’ Just sit quietly in class and not make any trouble. At this time, my father spoke to me a lot. We’re Muslims and what I did is a sin. If you really understand Islam and the Koran, then you automatically change. My father wasn’t allowed to work. His deportation was merely suspended. We’ve always lived on welfare. He told me: ‘As you can see, I sit at home every day. I’m bored to death. I want to go to work and I can’t. Do you want to end up like this? I tell you, such a life is shit. Do you want to end up like me? Look at me, this isn’t the right way.’

A rearrangement of Khaled’s circle of friends, urgent warnings from his father, a new start at school, and a stronger religious orientation – these were the bricks Khaled used to build a new life. It is striking that Khaled’s father, who lived apart from the family, used his own life as a cautionary tale, describing a refugee existence shaped by a ban on working as the epitome of an undignified life. His son went through a religious phase, praying regularly and visiting the mosque. This consolidation of his faith – he referred several times to the importance of a ‘strong imam’ – was accompanied by a process of character reformation and inner stabilization. His forswearing of alcohol and drugs, which may have preserved him from relapsing, was also explained in religious terms. In this case, then, rather than the hazard for marginalized young people it is painted as in current discussions of terror, Islam acted as a kind of transcendental fallback in a precarious situation. After leaving school, this demonstrative religiosity became less pronounced again in Khaled and several other Arab teenagers; some of them then slipped into alcohol and drug abuse, while others found alternative anchors in work and parenthood. Khaled’s emphasis on the emotional impact of police custody slightly obscured the fact that this moment was part of a longer, arduous process. At his old school, Khaled had already made several attempts at a fresh start, all of which had failed – among other reasons, he claimed, because

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his teachers didn’t believe he wanted to change. But he also admitted to severe bad behaviour at this time. At the new school, the headmaster offered him the chance to leave this inglorious record behind. Khaled did not become a model student, and early on he was even charged in connection with spontaneous outbreaks of violence, but over the course of the tenth grade, he behaved peacefully at school and kept his distance from criminal groups on the streets. This gradual growing out of criminal entanglements is typical for the majority of teenage serial offenders.55 During tenth grade, however, Khaled was still dealing with old legal proceedings and still doing community service for previous offences. As these appearances in court approached, he was scared. Khaled: It’s certainly a burden. I try to concentrate on school. But I can’t stop thinking of the court appearances and the possible penalties, maybe social service or detention. Things like that. It’s always there in the back of my mind, and it’s almost impossible to concentrate, because I’m thinking I could really take a fall now. So in court I’m really anxious about what’s coming. This time I got two sets of forty hours and one acquittal. The judge even knew the grades on my school report.

While Khaled found the hours of service, at a social project in nearby Berlin-Kreuzberg, not especially unpleasant, he was troubled by the legal uncertainty of ongoing court cases and the prospect of more severe punishments. The impact was profound not least because it applied to more than just one area of his life: besides a prison sentence, he was in danger of being deported, as well as facing unemployment, in addition to the potential impact of his behaviour on the residence status of his parents and siblings. In both structural and discursive terms, society contributes to criminality among migrant youth, as processes of exclusion help to produce it and mythmaking helps to keep it in the spotlight. In the study Ausgegrenzt, eingesperrt und abgeschoben, the authors use the example of Cologne to show how migrant teenagers who have been treated as unwelcome in various ways during their lifetimes become entangled in a net of deviant orientations and state control.56 The close links between social marginalization and criminal careers, for example via the blocking of educational paths and the withholding of civil rights, are largely ignored in conventional views of migrant youth crime. Instead, three fear-laden issues – excessive foreign influence, crime and youth – are combined in such a way that various threatening scenarios mix together and reinforce one another. As Khaled’s example shows, the conditions for breaking out of criminal careers are also shaped by society, with factors like family support, fresh prospects, and access to alternative sources of meaning playing a key role at a decisive point in his biography.

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‘Psycho Stress’ Although none of the students at the Galilei-Schule were deported during my research, some of them had to live with the possibility. Fear of this eventuality spread in (post-)migrant circles of friends via accounts of visits to the Aliens Registration Office and the stories of actual deportations like that of the Akkouch family. This case featured in a documentary film familiar to most students, which I discuss below in addition to my own field research. As mentioned above in chapter 4 on ‘ghetto’ pride, Neukölln Unlimited tells an uplifting story about hip-hop and youthful creativity, but also the depressing story of a deportation and its impact. The events portrayed in the film took place around 2009 in Neukölln along Sonnenallee, a street with many Arab-owned shops. It focusses on an extended Arab family that was part of a movement of Palestinian refugees from Lebanon to Berlin in the 1980s, many of whom still have no official residence status, merely having their deportation deferred. Thanks to decades of exclusion from the labour market, this group of refugees was systematically pushed into the fields of illegal employment and criminality. Today, however, this tendency resulting from legal exclusion is being retrospectively explained in cultural terms, as an expression of the backwardness and criminal leanings of ‘Arab clans in Neukölln’. The film focusses mainly on three siblings: at the time, Hassan Akkouch was doing Abitur, Lial Akkouch was doing an apprenticeship, and Maradona Akkouch was at the Galilei-Schule. Although he was a year or two older than ‘my’ students, some of them were friends with him or knew him through mutual friends. The plight of this family as documented in the film offers particularly drastic evidence of the disastrous impact of Germany’s policy of deportation. The subject of deportation and the threat it poses is introduced at the beginning of the film during a visit to the Aliens Registration Office. Hassan and Lial get lost in the corridors of the notoriously labyrinthine building in Berlin-Moabit. A poster declares ‘We’ll help you return home’ – an ambiguous offer, as such euphemisms conceal the fact that deportations are often carried out by brute force against the will of those concerned.57 In systemic terms, they stand for a policy of deception about the number and circumstances of deportations from Germany, as also manifested in misleading official distinctions between ‘deportation’, ‘pushback’, ‘retransfer’ and ‘voluntary departure’.58 The film now cuts between school and Aliens Registration Office. In the classroom, a Lebanese flag hangs next to the blackboard, and in maths class exercises are based on calculating welfare payments.59 ‘How much is left over if a monthly welfare payment of 247 euros is divided by 30?’ Back to the Aliens Registration Office: Lial is happy because she has been granted a three-year residence permit to

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finish her apprenticeship – almost reason enough for the kind of ‘potato party’ sometimes held to celebrate the acquisition of German citizenship (Germans are sometimes associated with potatoes). Hassan gets just one year. The following year, he forgets the certificate from his school and is only granted two months. The authorities clearly don’t believe he can complete his Abitur. When he complains about this, he is told: ‘You shouldn’t even be here anymore.’ Like 140,000 people across Germany (in 2015), the rest of his family, who have been living in Germany for fifteen years, merely have their ‘deportation deferred’, constantly at risk of having to leave.60 Their single mother has no work permit and the children’s freedom of movement is severely restricted due to the official requirement to remain within a specific area. The Akkouch family have already been deported once, but they managed to return to Berlin. In the film, this episode is portrayed as a cartoon, narrated by Hassan Akkouch as a nightmarish family memory. Film transcript: It was Wednesday, 2 April 2003. Maradona’s ninth birthday. Around five or six on the morning. Everyone was fast asleep. [Knocking at the door]. I woke up straight away and before my mother got to the door I knew what was happening. At this moment, I felt as if my heart was made of stone. I showed no emotions. I just reacted like a machine. I don’t know why, but I felt no sadness, more something like indifference. Through the door, we could hear a man’s voice: ‘Police! Criminal investigation squad! Open up!’ Four officers stormed in immediately and asked after the children. They went into every room, wearing their shoes, and counted us like a herd of sheep. They told my mother we were to be deported. She tried to talk to them, because our asylum procedure was ongoing. We should not have been deported. But of course it was no good. They woke all the children and told us to pack our things as fast as possible. Because we were being sent back to Lebanon today. The policemen also said: ‘If you want, you can take a toy.’ This made me really furious, because they could have spared us this kind of comment at such a time. Suddenly my mother fell to the floor, her whole body was shaking. I didn’t know what the matter with her was. The policemen told her to stop, to cut out the play acting and that it would make no difference. That was her first epileptic fit. Lial tried to talk to her, but she was out of it, unresponsive. After about ten or fifteen minutes, she finally opened her eyes, but she couldn’t move on her own. The policemen insisted that she get up and get ready, so we could leave. We were driven to a police station near Tegel Airport. All the way there, everyone was silent. I took a last look at the neighbourhood where I had grown up and tried to imagine what lay ahead for us.

Maradona is a cheeky, lively student, both the problem child and the clown of the family. He likes to wear baseball caps and silver chains, and he loves aftershave. As a talented break-dancer he successfully applies to take

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part in the talent show Deutschland sucht das Supertalent, but doesn’t get past the first round. He gets into trouble at school, has bad grades and is suspended several times. When he takes a weapon to school, he is reported to the police. His older brother appeals to his conscience, reminding him that his behaviour is putting the residence status of the whole family at risk. Maradona’s response is unusually rueful, admitting that he has thought about this ‘very often’. At the same time, the Berlin-born Galilei-Schule student demonstratively turns towards the culture of his parents, stressing his Palestinian roots and Muslim faith. The film hints that he suffers in particular from the absence of his father. His brother sees the deportation as the main reason for his self-ethnicization, as he ‘feels rejected’ by German society. The deportation happened to fall on his birthday. Film transcript: We were the first on the plane and we had to sit right at the back. The whole crew knew what was going on. At this moment, you pray to God and ask him to send a bolt of lightning to make the plane unfit for take-off. We looked out of the window and saw our home being taken away, getting smaller and smaller. As the plane took off, I realized life was no longer a game. I guess everyone knows this moment, when you sense that your childhood is over. This deportation tore me out of my child’s world. At fifteen, I was able to deal with it. But what about my siblings? Could they take it? Could they deal with it? At this point, I didn’t know what lasting damage they would sustain. What with all the stress, we even forgot to wish Maradona a happy birthday. But after that, he never wanted to celebrate his birthday again anyway.

The fact that the family was deported on Maradona’s birthday made a lasting impression on students at the Galilei-Schule and it was often cited in their conversations as proof of the particular cruelty of Germany’s treatment of foreigners. The deportation continues to trouble the family after their return to Berlin, especially as their legal status remains precarious. In the course of the film, the family is notified by Berlin’s hardship commission that it voted for the family to be allowed to stay, but that the verdict was overruled by Berlin’s then senator of the interior, Ehrhart Körting. Only the older siblings are given the prospect of remaining in Germany, on condition of completing vocational training. As the family is in danger of being split up, Lial and Hassan wonder whether it would be strategically better to go with the family or to stay in Germany and campaign on their behalf. Initially, they both try to earn enough to cover the family’s living costs with ‘hard work’, Lial as an event manager for boxing matches and Hassan as a hip-hop dancer, but they don’t make enough money. Later, Hassan confronts the senator at an event in Neukölln, accusing him of ‘stoking hate’, to which Körting responds by telling Hassan that families

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from Lebanon are a ‘major problem’ and that they had often ‘swindled the state’ in the past. Hassan is angry and in the next scene he describes the after-effects of the deportation, Hassan Akkouch: On the day we were deported, my mother had her first epileptic fit. When we came back, my sister had bulimia, spending a lot of time at a special clinic for people with this illness. My brother has ADHD. Every morning, when the doorbell rings, he is scared. They don’t know the impact it has on people.

Hassans’ sister Lial also highlights multiple emotional burdens, speaking of ‘trauma’ and the fact that their parents’ separation and the deportation was doubly difficult, especially for the younger siblings. One of her friends criticizes the fearmongering of the authorities: ‘The psycho-stress is deliberate.’ For Lial Akkouch and her family, fear of deportation is a constant companion: ‘You’re always scared they’ll turn up at your door in the morning and tell you and your family to leave. We have to live with it, we’ve lived with fear all our lives.’ The example of Maradona Akkouch and his family resembles the case of Khaled described above, and it’s no coincidence that they knew each other well. They were both of Palestinian origin, both had come to Berlin via Lebanon as refugees with their families, both had grown up in large families with mostly absent fathers, and both had ended up in Neukölln at the Galilei-Schule. They also both had problems with the police and lived through a phase of devotion to Islam and political activism for the Palestinian cause. Whereas Körting cast Lebanese and Palestinian immigrant children as an especially problematic group, playing on widespread stereotypes about criminal Arab youth and abuse of the welfare state by migrant families, I have emphasized the construction of social marginality and juvenile deviance by interlocking forms of exclusion, criminalization and illegalization. Social anxieties are the hidden driving force behind these processes of exclusion: fear fuels stigmatization and helps to deliver punishments; it is both a tool and a result of today’s migration policy.

Conclusion: The Politics of Fear This reconstruction of fear of unemployment and deportation shows how closely social and legal exclusion are interwoven in the students’ everyday lives. Borders and boundaries refer to different forms of social hierarchization, with the borders of nation states based primarily on selection, while social boundaries owe more to social distinction.61 But these mechanisms

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of classification interlock and overlap in many way in forms of emotional experience. In their excluding and destabilizing effects, they reinforce one another and make the Galilei-Schule a space where social and legal uncertainty are rife. The students’ anxieties and insecurities go far beyond the problem of denied access to regular work and full civil rights, affecting both their own personalities and the wellbeing of their families, causing the anxieties to be perceived as all-encompassing fears. If human value is measured in terms of work, and if deportation threatens the survival of families, then these fears are existential in a very real sense. Young people’s fears of unemployment and deportation, like fears of terror and excessive foreign influence within society at large, become instruments of political control; they result from contemporary forms of neoliberalism and nationalism, serving to discipline ethnic minorities and the socially downgraded.62 Social anxieties take effect within specific structures and maintain existing distributions of power, being deliberately highlighted and deployed by political elites.63 Social insecurity, the feeling of a lack of solid ground beneath one’s feet, is a basic element of neoliberal practices of self-activation and flexibilization.64 Unemployment and precarious work put both jobseekers and workers under pressure, counteracting collective political mobilization in the low-wage sector. Deportation policy aims to ringfence the nation state, a seemingly anachronistic programme that is nonetheless effective in garnering votes. The function of deportation lies less in its actual effect on migratory flows than in its symbolic impact – signalling political clout to the majority population and letting specific migrant groups know that they do not belong. The state’s obstruction of prospects and self-realization by denying secure residence permits and comprehensive civil rights has disastrous consequences for families, leading, among migrant teenagers in particular, to forms of re-ethnicization, often accompanied by a turn to Islam. Deportations themselves put those affected under huge mental strain, above all with feelings of desperation and hopelessness, as indicated by strikingly high suicide rates in pre-deportation detention facilities.65 Fear is a trademark of the ‘society of decline’ in which the promise of upward social mobility has been replaced by growing social inequality, far-reaching precarization, and downward social trends.66 For the lower social classes, this emerging formation offers few opportunities for upward mobility, instead imposing greater existential worries and ruthless forms of state control. For the students, the prospect of unemployment and deportation is linked with fears of further marginalization in the future and definitive exclusion from society. Their feelings indicate that they view even a basic minimum of social respectability and participation as highly jeopardized. They are afraid of falling lower still.

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Notes   1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

See Stearns, ‘Fear and Contemporary History’. See Koch (ed.), Angst. See Bourke, Fear. See Bude, Gesellschaft der Angst. See Rackow/Schopp/von Scheve, ‘Angst und Ärger’. See Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety; Heidegger, Being and Time, 309ff, 391ff. See Delumeau, Angst im Abendland; Kittsteiner, Die Stabilisierungsmoderne. See Böhme, ‘Zur Kulturgeschichte der Angst seit 1800’. See Kittsteiner, Wir werden gelebt, 103–128. See Castel, Die Metamorphosen der sozialen Frage; Castel/Dörre (eds), Prekarität, Abstieg, Ausgrenzung. See Dörre/Happ/Matuschek (eds), Das Gesellschaftsbild der LohnarbeiterInnen. See Marchart, Die Prekarisierungsgesellschaft; Dörre, ‘Prekarität als Konzept kritischer Gesellschaftsanalyse’. See Honneth, ‘Work and Recognition’. See Kocka (ed.), Geschichte und Zukunft der Arbeit; Bierwisch (ed.), Die Rolle der Arbeit in verschiedenen Epochen und Kulturen. See Schäfer, ‘Arbeitslosigkeit’. On the socio-political problematization and emotional experience of unemployment, see Zimmermann, Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland; Jahoda/Lazarsfeld/Zeisel, Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal; Bohlender, ‘Von “Marienthal” zu “Hartz IV”’. See Lessenich, Die Neuerfindung des Sozialen, 82. See Solga, ‘Ausbildungslose und die Radikalisierung ihrer sozialen Ausgrenzung’. See Schultheis, ‘Der Lohn der Angst’. See Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 128ff. See Van Wolputte, ‘Hang on to Your Self ’; Mascia-Lees, A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment. See Gugutzer, Soziologie des Körpers, Schroer (ed.), Soziologie des Körpers. See Gugutzer, Soziologie des Körpers, 149. See Krämer, ‘Einige Überlegungen zur “verkörperten” und “reflexiven” Angst’. See Neckel, ‘Die gefühlte Unterschicht’. See Malli, ‘Sie müssen nur wollen’. See Reckinger, Perspektive Prekarität. See Scheer, ‘Emotionspraktiken’; Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling. See Schmid, ‘Moderne Dienstleistungen am Arbeitsmarkt’; Hassel/Schiller, Der Fall Hartz IV. See Ther, Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent. Ibid., 277–305. See Lindner/Musner (eds), Unterschicht. See Sutter, Erzählte Prekarität. See Protsch, Segmentierte Ausbildungsmärkte. See Walther, ‘The Struggle for “Realistic” Career Perspectives’. See Hess/Kasparek (eds), Grenzregime. See Mezzadra/Neilson, Border as Method; Pijpers, ‘Waiting for Work’. See Schiffauer, Fremde in der Stadt, 71–91; Malkki, ‘Refugees and Exile’. See Nyers, Rethinking Refugees, 43–67. See Betzelt/Bode (eds), Angst im neuen Wohlfahrtsstaat.

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41. See de Genova, ‘Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life’; Karakayali, Gespenster der Migration. 42. See de Genova/Peutz (eds), The Deportation Regime. 43. See Huysmans, The Politics of Insecurity. 44. See Oulios, Blackbox Abschiebung. 45. See de Genova, ‘Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life’. 46. See Navaro-Yashin, ‘Make-Believe Papers, Legal Forms and the Counterfeit’, 81. 47. See Scheffer, Asylgewährung. 48. See Graham, ‘Emotional bureaucracies’; Tuckett, Rules, Paper, Status. 49. See Gill, ‘Presentational State Power’; Eriksen, ‘Diversity versus Difference’. 50. See Ostendorf, ‘Strafverschärfungen im Umgang mit Jugendkriminalität’. 51. See Dollinger/Schmidt-Semisch (eds), Handbuch Jugendkriminalität. 52. See Emig, ‘Kooperation von Polizei, Schule, Jugendhilfe und Justiz’; Heisig, Das Ende der Geduld. 53. See Albrecht, ‘Internationale Tendenzen in der Entwicklung des Jugendstrafrechts’. 54. See Biebricher, Neoliberalismus zur Einführung. 55. See Schumann, ‘Jugenddelinquenz im Lebensverlauf ’; Naplava, ‘Jugendliche Intensivund Mehrfachtäter’. 56. See Buckow/Jünschke/Spindler/Tekin, Ausgegrenzt, eingesperrt und abgeschoben; Scherr, ‘Jugendkriminalität’. 57. See Oulios, Blackbox Abschiebung. 58. Ibid., 19ff. 59. In 2012, the standard rate of unemployment benefit (ALG II) was 374 euros. See Biebricher, Neoliberalismus zur Einführung, 148. 60. See Oulios, Blackbox Abschiebung, xvi. 61. See Lamont/Molnár, ‘The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences’; Kearney, ‘The Classifying and Value-Filtering Missions of Borders’. 62. See Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 62–81; Massumi, Ontopower, 171–187. 63. See Robin, Fear. 64. See Massumi (ed.), The Politics of Everyday Fear. 65. See Oulios, Blackbox Abschiebung, 38ff. 66. See Nachtwey, Die Abstiegsgesellschaft.

Chapter 10

Cruel Optimism The End of the Future

Neoliberal times, when employment prospects for large sections of the population appear increasingly precarious, fuel fantasies of ‘the good life’ – a life of prosperity and security. This view of the future under difficult conditions is summed up by Lauren Berlant using the paradoxical notion of ‘cruel optimism’. In her book of that name, she examines typical and emerging forms of this view on the future in crisis-ridden Western capitalism, inquiring into the resulting cultural genres and modes of emotional experience. In her view, optimistic ties to ‘conventional’ future scenarios are cruel not only because labour market reforms are making such outcomes less and less likely, but also because fixation on such fantasies can impact negatively on mental wellbeing and career advancement. This chapter looks at the links between a longing for normality and the normalization of precarity, drawing on the dreams and everyday coping mechanisms of students who attended the Galilei-Schule in Berlin. Visions of the future and the hopes attached to them are shaped by historical, cultural and social factors. Historian Reinhart Koselleck has dated the birth of the future to the early modern period, between 1500 and 1800, before which, he argues, people in Europe largely submitted to the prevailing corporative and divine order.1 With the rise of bourgeois society, especially over the course of the eighteenth century, experience and expectations drifted apart, as anticipation of change and the unexpected spread, and with it the notion of the future in the modern sense.2 In the course of the Enlightenment, this understanding of the future was linked with the discourse of progress, prompting a switch from pessimistic to optimistic

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scenarios for the future. Since the beginning of the new millennium, the future has begun to look less bright. An ‘attack of the future on the rest of time’ has been diagnosed – an increase both in the amount of future scenarios and in the significance attributed to them.3 At the same time, such visions have forfeited their basic optimism, as the future is associated less with the promise of progress than with the threat of catastrophe.4 Under these conditions, preparing for the future means above all anticipating dangers and preventing disasters. In cultural and social anthropology, writing about the future has also changed, the scenarios described becoming bleaker and less hopeful.5 As the significance of Marxist-inspired alternatives dwindled, the ‘principle of hope’, in the sense of a utopian striving to go beyond prevailing capitalist conditions, could no longer be upheld.6 Faced with all-encompassing neoliberal transformations, whose promises for the future have often proved disastrous, anthropologists are no longer sure what they should hope for. They also view progress as a long-since compromised concept. For decades they deconstructed the ideological narratives of modernization, but now that the neoliberal world is ruthlessly leaving behind entire regions and sections of the population, they are realizing that for many people living in poverty, calls for ‘progress’ are entirely justified. The new anthropology of hope takes a sceptical view of undifferentiated endorsements of the ‘principle of hope’. Faced with neoliberal appropriations of the future and of optimism, field researchers are taking a closer look at what is being promised and hoped for in specific socioeconomic contexts, and at what is ultimately realized.7 The subject of the future has a strong emotional charge. Like the fears discussed in the previous chapter, the forms of hope dealt with below also have an affective dimension. I explore the social factors shaping emotional visions of the future by pursuing a number of ideas from my previous work with Hauptschule students in 2008/9.8 When asked about their dreams for the future, they mainly spoke of secure employment and the protection offered by family life. However, the first six months after leaving school were marked above all by disappointment and humiliation in the labour market: most of the students failed at interviews and recruitment tests, or felt exploited as interns or unpaid temps. In 2012/13, I asked the students about their dreams in more detail in workshops. And this time, rather than following them immediately after leaving school, I met some of them three, five or even (in the case of one student from my first period of research) ten years after their graduation. My aim was to gain some mid-to-long-term insights into the former students’ careers and personal lives, focussing on the question of what had become of their former dreams. The unusual format of a dream workshop was something I had already tried out shortly before my field research with South Korean students as

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part of the outreach programme of the Busan Biennale in 2012. Inspired by the French Surrealists, whose playful attempts to access the unconscious via séances, sleep experiments, dream protocols, automatic writing and collages, the young people were asked to lie on mats with their eyes closed, while classical music played, following their dreams before recording them in a form of their choice and presenting them to one another.9 I followed the advice of Sigmund Freud, who wrote that those reflecting on dreams should ‘take up a restful position and close [their] eyes’ while avoiding criticism or filtering. Because dreams are primarily visual in nature, I also provided pens and paper.10 The Korean students, mostly from families where education was highly valued, longed above all for oases of peace and quiet where they could escape the stress of school and the city for a while. The dream workshops at the Galilei-Schule took place as part of a project week, and I was interested in which dream motifs would be evoked and what vision of the future they would reflect. When conducting the workshop in BerlinNeukölln, it worked in my favour that I already knew the students well, and that I had good relationships even with those who otherwise tended to disrupt lessons. In addition, the groups were not too large, with a total of 23 students from classes 10a and 10b taking part, about half of that year’s tenth grade. If by ‘having a future’ one means the normative notion of the smoothest possible transition from school to working life, followed by the founding of one’s own family, then for Hauptschule students in Berlin, the future really does seem to have come to an end. This also shatters the aspirational hopes of future social advancement that have traditionally played a key part in status-oriented capitalist societies. But what comes after the end of the future? What do young people dream of in a ‘society of downward mobility’?11 And what hopes develop in school contexts where hopes are being destroyed?

Longing for Normality My study of the dream images of Neukölln Hauptschule students is guided by Freud’s fundamental insight that dreams are imaginary fulfilments of wishes.12 If one follows Freud by distinguishing between types of dream according to their degree of meaningfulness, then most of the dreams described here appear more or less structured and meaningful.13 This is not intended as a limitation; since dream work always relies on consolidation and the dream’s ability to be visualized, dreams never directly replicate the unconscious.14 In my work, I use a broad definition of dreaming more akin to that used in the nineteenth century, when dreaming was understood to cover nocturnal dreaming, daydreaming, visions, fantasies and

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imaginings.15 Rather than being related to an oedipal model, as they are in Freudian psychoanalyses, the students dreams are interpreted in terms of the conditions of social inequality that generated the wishes in question. Particular emphasis is placed here on the prospective function of dreams, promoted by Carl Gustav Jung as a complement to Freud’s understanding of dreams as wish fulfilment.16 In this view, dreams anticipate future achievements, constructed out of a mix of perceptions, thoughts and feelings. Consequently, accounts of dreams can be used to study latent hopes for the future. Among the social sciences based on empirical approaches, ethnology has developed a particular fascination with dreams.17 The structuralist method usually applied to dreams by ethnologists resembles psychoanalytical interpretations insofar as deeper meanings are thought to lie behind the dream content. Studies of non-Western dreams have sometimes been doubly exoticizing, focussing not only on remote indigenous peoples but also on their especially ‘premodern’ dream worlds in an attempt to leave Western civilization as far behind as possible. Several ethnologically inspired works dealing with non-Western dreams, including Hans Peter Duerr’s Dreamtime and Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, became bestsellers. But since the late 1980s, anthropology has become more interested in ‘Western’ dreams, in dream practices in European and North American contexts, and in dream content related to Western civilization. This has been accompanied by increased interest among cultural theorists more generally in the ‘dark’ sides of modernity, in uncanny and repressed aspects of modernization, and in everyday daydreaming and fantasizing.18 Dream Times Although students at the Galilei-Schule dreamed of different things, the workshop revealed shared patterns and telling motifs. Unable to do justice here to the full breadth of dream content gathered within this research format, I again follow Freud’s lead by focussing on selected episodes and aspects rather than entire dreams.19 These include the temporal dimension of students’ dreams, the striking frequency of dreams about home ownership, and a pronounced desire to forget about the future – to avoid, in dreams at least, the strain of dealing with what lies ahead. The issue of time in dreams is complex, requiring us to first define which level of temporality we are talking about.20 Firstly, the dream workshop itself was a temporal practice integrated into the school timetable in a specific way. The teachers granted me a day within the school’s annual project week, so that the dream workshop was an obligatory part of the educational programme while also differing from regular lessons in its

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experimental character. Secondly, dreaming is a very specific form of engaging with time in which repressed elements of the past may resurface and futures may be imagined. Dreaming can thus be both a form of coping with the past and a vision of the future, in both cases constituting a temporal practice. And finally, the dream content itself also had a temporal orientation, dealing either with the immediate present (including the past few days) or with a more remote future. This future was not specifically dated, but it referred non-specifically to the students’ later adult life. The tensions inherent in this juxtaposition of immediate present and remote future were particularly obvious in a dream image made jointly by Khaled and Mohamad. In the upper half of the drawing, Khaled visually linked the Berlin skyline of TV tower and high-rise blocks with his own pulse – his heart beating to the rhythm of the city, an image of absolute presentness. In the lower half of the picture, Mohamad sketched an idyllic rural scene: a house in a sunny meadow with a tree and a zebra, a positively connoted fantasy location at some unspecified time. The students’ references to the present were many and varied: Roberto, for example, painted a man in a bucket of paint, explaining: ‘We’re moving, still in the middle of renovating. And the day before yesterday someone I know got paint on his clothes and I thought it was funny. That’s why this guy is in the paint bucket. It was my uncle, we all laughed.’ Their references to the remote future, on the other hand, were strikingly similar, almost always linked to the motif of a house, as I explain below. The parallel emphasis on the immediate present and on a remote future is a hallmark of the neoliberal order of time. In her studies on concepts of time in neoliberal economic theory and evangelical Christianity in the United States, Jane Guyer has diagnosed a noticeable shift in the dominant time horizon, with the future and the present gaining importance over an orientation towards the mid-term.21 As early as the 1950s, she argues, neoliberal theory began to orient itself towards the largely abstract motif of future growth, while political programmes and regulatory instruments, most of which are designed with mid-term goals in mind, tended to become discredited. In Guyer’s view, such future orientations display striking parallels with protestant concepts of prophetic time and their focus on an auspicious future. In his linking of religious and economic worldviews, Joseph Vogl goes one step further, positing a shift away from the older notion of ‘theodicy’, based on faith in divine providence, towards an ‘oikodicy’ marked by faith in the rationality of a self-regulating market.22 According to Vogl, this doctrine of justification can already be found in eighteenth-century liberal economic theory; with the rise of neoliberalism since the 1970s, it has become established as a model for political action. This temporal orientation has political consequences. Obvious calamities, such as today’s social inequality, but also

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the recurring crises of the financial markets themselves, are justified with reference to an unquestioning faith in the irreplaceability of a ‘free market’, with alternative systems considered irrational and dangerous. In this light, the neoliberal transformation is far more fundamental than it first appears, altering not only the relationship between market and state, but also our everyday understanding of temporality and our relationship with time. The dreams of Berlin Hauptschule students, too, were dominated by the immediate present and the remote future, largely lacking views of the mid-term in which specific career steps are taken and plans for the future realized. At this point, one might object that these rather pragmatic aspects of mid-term action do not fall within the purview of dreaming, which is all about overcoming the reality principle. The link between dreams and (future) visions, in the sense of transcending the given scope of perception, is made by a number of dream theories, especially those of Romanticism and Surrealism.23 Moreover, compared with adult dreams, teenage daydreams are usually considered less connected with reality and more far-fetched, as they are more closely connected with childish fantasy.24 Surprisingly, however, the question of the realizability of the dream content was absent not only from the dream images, but also from the discussions. Another striking aspect was the prevalence of millionaire fantasies, as mentioned above. According to dream research, dreaming about sudden wealth, for example by winning the lottery, is far more widespread among (post-)proletarian teenagers than among their middle-class contemporaries, who also test out various future scenarios in their dreams, but who are more likely to link them with specific ideas for their realization.25 In imaginary terms at least, the students lived in the now or in fantasies of the future. What they largely lacked was any notion of how one might get from the present to the future. This was due in part to their inexperience concerning the steps required to enter the adult world of work, and their reluctance to confront the unpleasant issues of the application procedure and potential unemployment. But it was already clear from this dream practice that the paths to realizing their dreams were largely closed to them. By creating divergent visions of the future in this way, social inequalities go far beyond questions of the equitable distribution of material goods. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has examined the impact of poverty on visions of the future among slum dwellers in India, concluding that they lacked not the imagination to produce visions, but the aspirational capacity to put them into practice.26 Their hopes were either too small and focussed on the present to lead them out of poverty, or inordinately large. What people lacked were realistic options for navigating their lives, options that would help to lead them out of poverty. This focus on specific, realizable futures goes hand in hand with a critical reappraisal of the vocabulary

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of futurity: rather than being divorced from reality, imaginings are now everyday energies and emotions; aspirations are not unrealistic reveries but unequally distributed notions of the possible; and anticipations refer not so much to visions of a different society as to concepts of a good life in the existing society. Martin Seel’s revision of the usual understanding of utopias points in the same direction, focussing attention not on the impossible, but on what can actually be realized, meaning that the conceivability, satisfiability and achievability of utopias should always be taken into account.27 It is no coincidence that such a practical everyday politics of hope puts the emphasis on the mid-term timescale of planning, negotiating and realizing. The students’ notions of time were closely linked with spatial localizations. While the present usually took place in urban space in general or at specific places in Berlin, futures tended to be situated in suburbia or in the countryside. In some cases, they referred to their parents’ countries of origin. Such future scenarios may have adopted or at least partially integrated parental visions of the future. The first generation of ‘guest workers’ from the 1960s and 1970s most often imagined they would return home at some point in the distant future, while their immediate present unfolded in Germany. Over the years, many postponed the realization of this desire to return home again and again, but it remained as a temporal perspective within migrant families. The second generation, to which most of the students at the GalileiSchule belonged, included this handed-down desire in their own dreams of the future, but they also altered it. Rather than a specific wish for a return to fixed, traditional family and social structures, it became a nonspecific imaginary world, a counter-model to a present in Germany marked by contempt and everyday difficulties. This shows that socially and culturally embedded visions of the future can also cross the borders of nation states. Post-Fordist Dreams Most of the students’ dream images did not require much deciphering, depicting their wishes in a relatively direct, undisguised manner. One boy said he dreamed of ‘just a house, a car, and sunshine’ (figure 10.1). While Ernst Bloch understood the daydreams of the working class as ‘concrete utopias’ in which dissatisfaction with prevailing social conditions gave shape to a better future, the dreams of Hauptschule students in Berlin were dominated by conventional notions of happiness. To a large extent, Bloch’s idea of revolutionary dreaming, in which workers, unlike the bourgeoisie, dream of a ‘life without exploitation’ and ‘victory in the proletarian class struggle’, was probably an idealized projection in any case.28 Especially when compared with this revolutionary romanticism, the material focus of the dreams of Neukölln teenagers was especially striking. This raises the

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question of how objects are emotionally charged in dreams, which objects were chosen by the students, which hopes they attached to them, and how their choices relate to structures of power. In psychoanalytical theory, the object of desire imagined in the dream can never be fully attained.29 In this view, affective desires do not exist a priori, being constructed instead by imaginings or fantasies that relate to an object. What is desired must be imaginable, and above all visualizable, in order to be transformed from latent into manifest dream content. Through this dream work, dream ideas are transformed back into images and objects.30 But how can such dream images be approached by cultural studies? Martin Saar has suggested drawing on Spinoza to open up the psychoanalytical concept of a social or political imaginary to a broader linking of affectivity, imagination and politics.31 Rather than involving only individual mental or psychological processes, such a social imaginary consists of a reservoir of emotionally charged objects. One of these objects played a leading role in the dreams of Berlin Hauptschule students – a house. The especially frequent appearance and central importance of private homes in the dream images of Neukölln teenagers points to the cultural prevalence of specific fantasies of a ‘good life’. The houses they imagined were not villas; in material terms, their dream homes reflected a longing for relative prosperity and moderate social advancement. It was the wish for normality and belonging that focussed the aspirational emotions of so-called ‘problem students’ on the blueprint of a ‘normal life’. The hegemonic model of the future, in which a home of one’s own acts as a key symbol of a

Figure 10.1. Dream image I. Student’s image. Source: Dream workshop, Galilei-Schule.

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happy life, powerfully limits the students’ imaginative horizons by linking desirable futures with a heteronormative family model and the corresponding domestic set-up. The related emotional images and their associations with sheltered spaces and family idylls featured so strongly in the students’ dreams not least because a disproportionate number of them came from problematic backgrounds, often growing up in extended families living under cramped conditions in urban settings. Consequently, their dream images were also a form of ‘cruel optimism’, reflecting emotional ties to cultural forms like the family, whose dysfunctionality was a contributing factor in the many of their own problems. Another student’s account of his dream image (figure 10.2) was more specific: ‘This is my dream, my own house, a car, what you see here. A house I’d like to live in one day, for me, my wife and two children, with a garden. The house isn’t really in Germany, too many tower blocks. It’s more in Turkey. We have a house, almost the same as this. It has two floors, but one isn’t finished yet. My brother already lives there.’ The student drew a house that already existed in Turkey, home to his older brother. Unlike his classmates, then, his vision of the future was tied to a concrete plan for its realization; it also reflected lives and futures extending beyond Germany’s borders. Typically for such returnee houses, a single floor was built for the time being, in the hope that other family members would follow and complete the project.32 This architectural practice takes into account processes of migration in which the wish to unite the various generations of a family under one roof is also related to the family’s geographical

Figure 10.2. Dream image II. Student’s image. Source: Dream workshop, Galilei-Schule.

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fragmentation. Unlike the single-family home still preferred in Germany, then, such a migrant dream house would be a multi-family home. A third student, whose family had immigrated from Lebanon, imagined his future home as part of a terrace of houses (figure 10.3), setting his future in a residential set-up marked by seriality. But he did add that this housing project was located at the seaside, meaning the Mediterranean, which he presumably knew from visits to relatives or from his parents’ stories. The life imagined here is Fordist in character, with a separate access road and a separate cloud for each terraced house. Here, too, experiences of migration may have played a part; the wish for stable living conditions manifested by the fantasy of a terraced house possibly related to the Kurdish family’s experience as refugees. Lauren Berlant, and other writers following her lead like Nitzan Shoshan and Andrea Muehlebach, have explored the peculiar impact of Fordist fantasies of the good life in post-Fordist contexts.33 Fordism refers to the production line approach developed in the interwar period by carmaker Henry Ford and, figuratively, to the promise of stable middle-class status associated with standardized mass manufacture and consumption. Antonio Gramsci noted that the promises of American Fordism were already attractive to an Italian working class that was on the defensive between the wars, and this is all the more true of the precarious post-proletarian milieu of our times.34 In romanticizing retrospect, Fordism now stands for a model of life associated with secure jobs, stable families and relative prosperity. Although the promise of Fordism was never fully kept at the time, being

Figure 10.3. Dream image III. Student’s image. Source: Dream workshop, Galilei-Schule.

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an anachronism from the outset in many ways, the corresponding ideal of normality has continued to shape visions of the future beyond its own historical period. In neoliberal times, when employment and living conditions appear especially precarious, Fordism is even experiencing a peculiar renaissance. A home of one’s own becomes a ‘happy object’, emotionally charged with the promise of a better future.35 But this object-oriented relationship with happiness is also linked to a moral economy within which alternative modes of feeling and anticipating are marked as being outside the norm. The fact that one student even drew a garden fence (figure 10.2) should not be mocked as a petit-bourgeois fantasy. The desire for normality under precarious conditions is also a desire for a life in dignity; its social meaning lies not in maintaining an antiquated status quo, but in the wish to achieve any kind of recognized social status. In spite of this, the significance of a privately owned one-family home in the social and cultural imagination should also be called into question. Australian sociologist Melinda Cooper views such fantasies as symptomatic of the current marriage of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism. In her book Family Values, she questions the common claim that neoliberalism privileges the atomized individual over forms of family solidarity, arguing that a shift is taking place in which the family is increasingly performing the social functions of the state, as well as being expected to shoulder the risks generated by the market. As a result, step-by-step dismantling of the welfare state and deregulation of the financial markets are ideologically framed in a way that appears to many of those affected as an attractive return to forms of community based on solidarity. In this view, the neo-conservative emphasis on family values and gendered roles, indirectly articulated in state subsidies for those wishing to build their own home, is actually not as backward-looking as it might seem, instead representing a fundamental element of the neoliberal social order. Post-Fordist emotions are unequally distributed in social terms, and the willingness to admit to them also varies between social classes and within age groups. The cultural and emotional counterpart to the desire for normality described above is the striving for singularity described by Andreas Reckwitz, a quest for the special and the unique.36 This emotional programme also has an economic slant, its characteristic striving for the new rather than the normal corresponding with the imperatives of the post-industrial economy. What we have here, then, are complementary post-Fordist emotional registers in which the future is imagined in different ways. Elements of both orientations are found in all sections of the population, but specific social centres of gravity can be identified: while the quest for singularity is found primarily among the educated middle-classes, striving for normality is more likely to shape visions of the future in sub-bourgeois milieus where, in uncertain times, a conventional lifestyle is already

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considered an achievement. However, since the norms of taste are one-sidedly defined by the dominant bourgeois class, singularity is considered innovative while striving for normality tends to be seen as boring or culturally backwards – and thus as emotional proof of inferiority in its own right. This devalorization might prompt us to consider the social background and the integrative orientation of this emotional programme. The students are not interested in unique houses or particularly creative families; instead they dream of just being able to build a house and feed a family at all. Their dreams of home ownership articulate the social wish for belonging and participation under precarious conditions. Forgetting the Future Rather than centring on future adult life, a number of escapist dreams imagined more restful, relaxing and happy worlds beyond school, work and family life. Rather than representing these worlds in great detail, the students tended to immerse themselves in them, causing them to appear more detached from reality. The temporal dimension remained largely undefined here, as the dreams unfolded in timeless spheres that could mostly not be assigned to past, present or future. In this way, dreaming as a phase of calm became a time outside of time in which the economic imperative of making the most of every available minute was temporarily suspended.37 Here, too, however, the students made direct or indirect links to the conditions of their own lives.

Figure 10.4. Dream image IV. Student’s image. Source: Dream workshop, Galilei-Schule.

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Sven seemed to particularly enjoy the relaxation exercise. He drew himself in a park and described his picture (figure 10.4) as follows: ‘I really went to sleep. I drew a park where I’m sitting. Here I’m chilling. And here I’m swimming in a lake. I was lying there so relaxed and this is how it came to me. Not a specific park. I sometimes do this in some nearby park, doesn’t really matter which.’ Besides natural motifs like parks and lakes, several students came up with references to outer space: ‘I had to think of space. I often hear melodies and at night I sometimes go with a friend to a tower block or a hill, we look at the stars and talk about everything. Which is why I’ve included a comet, like the Milky Way. Outer space is endless time.’ Although both students imagined non-specific places, they linked their fantasies to specific leisure practices of their own (visiting parks, stargazing with a friend). For students facing the worrying transition from school to adult life, such moments outside of regulated schedules, in which it was possible to reflect on, discuss or forget their own situation, were especially important. In her dream, as well as imagining herself in a natural setting, Sila was looking through the eyes of a butterfly, after which she wrote the following text. Sila: As soon as I closed my eyes, I saw a butterfly. I saw the world from the viewpoint of the butterfly, although it was also my viewpoint. It took me to various places. First a forest. The sounds coming from there were calming. Then we were in the city, the people there were hurrying, paying no attention to me and the butterfly. Then we were in the mountains. From the top, we looked at the view, it was marvellous and also somehow scary. Then we went across the ocean and the smell of sea salt filled my lungs. At the end, we were back in the forest and the butterfly settled on a flower.

As a dream motif, the butterfly has feminine connotations. Frigga Haug has rightly objected that the romantic reveries of women she studied did not correspond to the masculine heroic ideal of the class warrior, but her critical perspective allowed her to interpret even dreams that struck her as kitschy as a form of female self-oppression.38 Tanja Modleski argues against the widespread tendency in various political camps to devalue or ridicule romantic girlish fantasies.39 In her view, the popularity of these daydream motifs lies not only in the obvious appeal of escapism, but also in the suitability of such fantasies for processing social problems. Sila’s butterfly narrative articulates fears, wishes and desires that are likely linked with her experience of bullying at the Galilei-Schule, as discussed above, which put her under huge mental strain. As well as describing a fantasy world, the butterfly dream also takes a different look at the real world and indirectly articulates a vision of a better life.

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Motifs from pop culture and memories of media content also played an important role in escapist dreams. Under great pressure to succeed, the Korean students imagined themselves in online worlds and TV series like The Simpsons. Prompted by the classical music used in the workshop, some male students in Berlin-Neukölln found themselves inside computer games like Dota 2 or World of Warcraft. Yussuf: Dota 2 is a strategy game where you have to think a lot. You have to work out how to get through and kill the person to get to the centre. But I just had an image of the game in my head, not the name. It’s always the same image and the same goal. In World of Warcraft it’s more like in reality, there’s a map with three continents and specific countries. In the dream I was in my favourite country, because there are mountains there and a few dinosaurs and plants and all with the music. That was great, too. But I haven’t played for ages. My brother told me I should stop and focus on school. The music reminded me of it.

The association with computer games was awakened by the quiet classical music that was playing during the dream workshop; the rising musical drama at certain moments, in particular, reminded the students of game soundtracks. The impact of computer games on the imagination seems to result in particular from their synaesthetic qualities, the way they address multiple senses at once. The students remembered computer games as pleasurable, confirming the findings of an ethnographic study by Christoph Bareither, who has interpreted computer games as popular entertainment, including a detailed examination of the associated emotional experiences (such as perceived self-efficacy), physical impact, and competitive appeal.40 The student’s closing remark, that such positive emotional experiences were viewed by others as an obstacle to success in school, reflects the prevailing negative public image of computer games, especially those based on violent narratives.41 In addition to nature and media, vacations offer a third complex of fantasy motifs associated primarily with relaxation and enjoyment. Some students drew classic holiday scenes – a beach with palm trees at sunset – which they then associated in their presentations either with specific memories of holidays in Croatia and Turkey, or with places they wished to travel to including California and the Caribbean. Other students connected various escapist visuals with visions of the future, as when one student divided her dream into three parts, giving them the titles ‘parachute jump’, ‘swimming with dolphins’ and ‘getting married’. These escapist motifs point to the compensatory character of dreams, a key quality alongside their prospective and wish-fulfilment functions. C. G. Jung stressed that although such compensatory processes are always

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personalized, articulated in dreams in very different ways, ‘certain typical basic features emerge’ when they are studied as a whole.42 Among the students in Neukölln, nature, media and holidays emerged as dream motifs that were used to temporarily escape the demands of the present and the threats of the future.

Normalized Precarity The wish for a good life articulated in the students’ dreams was marked by neoliberal notions of time, by post-Fordist longing for stability and by fantasies of relaxation and leisure. Such conformist wishes for normality point to a desire to overcome material uncertainty, social marginalization and mental strain. Striving to escape the working class and the related poverty is an often underestimated motif whose significance has been highlighted by Jacques Rancière in his studies of the ‘the workers’ dream’ using the example of intellectually ambitious workers in the nineteenth century.43 Studies of the aftereffects of visiting stigmatized schools have underscored the biographical relevance of the associated forms of disregard, triggering an ongoing negative spiral of recognition in the lives of those concerned.44 In such cases, continuous emotional strain and crises often result from the wish to escape or compensate for previous negative experiences. Not only in their dreams, but also in their attempts to find their feet in everyday life after school, the Neukölln teenagers strove to escape their stigmatized social status as Hauptschule students. But they felt that they were travelling this road alone and that they themselves were largely to blame for the setbacks they faced. As a pillar of the prevailing neoliberal order, the privatization of precarity shaped their mode of emotional experience. The students experienced their lives after school as a succession of personal successes or failures, but when the biographies of Hauptschule graduates are compared, various common experiences and shared plights emerge. In Cruel Optimism, Lauren Berlant examines cultural and emotional forms of experiencing and processing precarity. Foremost among these are the widespread feeling in times of economic turbulence that life is unfolding as a kind of permanent crisis. The normalization of precarious conditions shakes up life narratives and ways of life, allowing new, unstable patterns to emerge. The following sections examine some of these emerging forms of precarity using the example of typical emotional states among Hauptschule students in the years after leaving school: the impression of living on the edge, of always facing dead ends, and of navigating precarious work situations and problematic family backgrounds.45 In this way, their lives offer a negative mirror image of their dreams, where a longing for normality and

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stability corresponds with their anticipation and experience of precarity in everyday life. On the Edge: Life in Crisis Mode By the time students noticed a crisis in their lives, they were often already in the midst of it, and when they thought they had put it behind them, the next storm was often already brewing, unbeknownst to them. When I met Khaled, Ali and Yussuf again three years after leaving school, they had serious problems, but they were sure they would soon master the situation. Another two years later, their situation had barely changed, except that now they faced new troubles. By experiences of crisis, I mean not just everyday mood swings, but serious events like sudden job losses, pressing debts or the threat of incarceration. The constant switching between welfare, precarious employment in the low-wage sector and serially abandoned vocational training courses fostered a sense of perpetual crisis. The legal, financial and private problems they faced in addition to their insecure social situation made it feel like they were living on the edge, the only constant being the endless succession of mostly short-term occupations. Khaled: After school I attended a training scheme, but I couldn’t stand it for long. As you saw, school wasn’t really my thing. Then I left and through contacts I got into insurance. I set up my own business, aged seventeen, selling insurance, savings accounts, investments, etc. First I did a three-week training course, to find out what’s available. And then I started. At first I made good money, but the deal with insurance is that if something is cancelled you have to pay it back yourself. You’re not always in the black and it’s easy to get into debt. Most of my customers were Arabs, who thought they had a special loan. I didn’t like that and after a year I gave it up. Then friends told me about a security firm and I worked there for a month. But the people behaved badly and we lost the contract. Then I switched to a different security firm where my brother works, a big company with 900 people, 7 euro 50 an hour. But after a year I got a call from a friend at the first company telling me he was starting a new firm, and me and my brother switched again. So now I do job management and team scheduling, there’s always stress: one person gets drunk, another oversleeps, some others get into a fight. We provide security for all kinds of things: refugee hostels, building sites, designer shops, various events.

Khaled’s experience of employment after leaving the Galilei-Schule school was typical for male students of migrant origin, due not least to a strong orientation towards their own peer group. Most of them started courses of vocational training, which they often failed to complete. Other former students from the Galilei-Schule also became self-employed in the

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insurance sector, boasting to friends about the fast money and concealing their debts. And most of them ended up working in the security sector, which offered male school leavers with their level of qualification a halfway respectable career opportunity. The influx of refugees from Syria in 2015, especially, provided unexpected short-term employment for many male students from the Galilei-Schule, whose background and language skills meant they well suited to guarding refugee accommodation. But this, too, was precarious work; the students reported having to deal with violent conflicts, and the need for such accommodation was only temporary. Khaled tried to improve his social status slightly by switching between companies, but this didn’t last long either; when I last met him, he was no longer working for his friend’s security company. Khaled: Three years have passed already? How time flies. Honestly, I hope such times don’t come again. I had a great many problems. I messed up – court cases, debts that I’m still paying back – and I had to change jobs several times. My grandad died and my grandma had a stroke. They’re in Palestine and I can’t help, which makes it doubly bad. I had financial problems, only last month I finished paying off some damages. And then stress with girls. It all lasted years. In any case, it was tough. I hope things are slowly changing, things are certainly looking a little better.

Looking back, Khaled sums up the years since leaving school as an accumulation of small and large disasters, amounting to the impression of a crisis-ridden period. The problems he alludes to here included the criminal career discussed in the previous chapter, the resulting increased threat of deportation, and the related legal proceedings – a constellation of problems he had brought more or less under control towards the end of his time at school with support from his parents and a turn towards Islam. In contrast to this period, the young adult Khaled was significantly less religious, and unlike when he was still under eighteen, he was now in greater danger of receiving prison sentences rather than hours of social service. For other students, too, the period after school was an emotional rollercoaster. Ali: In tenth grade I fought my way through the MSA and passed. My goal was to do a vocational Abitur, but my grades weren’t good enough. I always wanted to work in the social sector with teenagers and children from migrant backgrounds like myself. I trained as a social assistant and passed the exams. That allows you to train as an educator, and I got a place at a primary school. I started there, but I didn’t carry on. I stopped a few months ago. It had always been my dream, to work with teenagers in the social sector. But it turned out not to be my thing after all. I sensed that. So I handed in my notice and I thought: ‘Shit, now I’m back to zero’. Everything I’d built up

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since school had been leading up to that. I’d always wanted to work in the social sector. It didn’t work out. Now I’m on welfare. My plan is for this to be brief. In the worst case, I’ll do some kind of training. I’m a bit distraught right now. I don’t know what I really want. That’s the worst of all.

The position of social assistant mentioned by Ali is not a full training programme, after which one might successfully enter the labour market, but a preparatory measure to help young people gain access to the training market. The way the welfare state deals with poorly qualified school leavers is experienced by those concerned as a politics of detours, waiting and tests of patience that institutionally reproduces and legitimizes the alienation of Hauptschule students from the training system.46 The resulting feeling of being stuck, or at least of not advancing properly, prevented from realizing one’s plans by conditions within society, is cited by Pierre Bourdieu as typical of the sub-proletarian experience of time.47 This institutional denial of access to work perpetuates experiences of devaluation in school and puts the brakes on individuals’ striving for a better future, leading to forms of dissatisfaction and yearning in the meantime.48 This denial of agency has an especially demotivating impact on those urgently seeking a new start after school. But I was puzzled that Ali himself suddenly slammed the door just as he was about to enter the profession he had always wanted. Before returning to the reasons for this, I will briefly outline what happened next: Ali was unemployed for a year, hanging around with friends, doing casual work, practising martial arts, and travelling to Morocco. At the end of this year, he started a new training programme, also in the social sector. Although he liked it much better this time, when I met him two years later, there was already new trouble on the horizon. Ali: The last two years were shitty, too. My life is like walking along a precipice, there’s always an abyss you could fall into, and small obstacles you have to get over. There are stones you have to watch out for, but sometimes you see them too late. Sometimes you stop and enjoy the view for a moment. That’s what my life’s like, but my life never turns out well. The perfect life doesn’t exist anyway. But there are people who are happy, and there are people who say: ‘Shit, I’m standing right on the edge!’

Like Khaled, Ali’s recent problems included the death of close relatives and the threat of legal proceedings. Although he had already done hours of social service for bodily harm while at school, he found these new legal problems less manageable and more likely to have serious consequences – even if it looked to me like a minor offence. For example, he feared that a potential criminal record would cause him to lose his driving license and

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jeopardize his chances of getting a job as an educator. In this way, new plans for the future built up after a period of disorientation once more threatened to collapse: ‘I haven’t been able to sleep for three days because of this, my brain keeps working, sometimes I cry, too, I’m really fucked.’ The more adult life and the world of work were experienced as oppressive, the more the years at school appeared in retrospect as a relatively sheltered and happy time. For Ali and other former students of the Galilei-Schule, this even led to a nostalgic nocturnal return to the school: ‘We met up last year for a smoke in the playground. I wanted to reawaken the memories. It was really nice. We climbed over the fence at midnight, stood in the smokers’ corner and smoked a cigarette. I almost cried, I thought this was the best time, the nicest time. We were still children, real life only began after leaving school. Only then did we notice all that was coming, and what a burden it was. School was learning, chaos, fun – all mixed together.’ Dead Ends Lauren Berlant views dead ends as one of the defining features of the present. Like the correlation between the linear plots of realistic novels and the selfimage of the educated bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century, this semantic figure articulates current experiences of obstructed futures on the edges of society.49 Berlant uses the term ‘impasse’, which has a stronger sense of passivity, a feeling of being at the mercy of external forces,50 while ‘dead end’ reflects the social situation of being stuck and no longer moving forward. Students leaving Hauptschulen are routinely sent down dead ends, such as Job Centre programmes, which tend to confirm their marginal position in the labour market rather than helping to overcome it.51 But students also often choose wrong turns themselves, or even create car crash situations. A typical form of self-obstruction was the repeated starting and abandoning of training programmes. The sister of a student from my first period of Hauptschule research who was considered a model student and who later passed his vocational Abitur, told me that her brother had ‘suddenly packed it all in’ just before the end of his training and thrown in his lot with a gang of migrant petty criminals. The reasons behind such apparently abrupt actions are usually complex, with Ali’s example clearly illustrating a sense of creeping dissatisfaction and doubt. Looking back, he described the reasons for breaking off his training as follows. Ali: One reason was that it was difficult. Too much for me all at once. I’m not used to doing so much homework and all kinds of things – and all with no support, all alone. That was part of it, and the other thing was that I just didn’t feel like it anymore. It stopped being so interesting. The need to help teenagers

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and do social work was still there, but no longer to the extent that I had to do it as work. Also, working as an educator is demanding, but it’s not as well paid as it should be. And money is very important if you want to start a family. When you’re twenty-one you think about what’s going to happen next. And then I saw friends my age who were already making large amounts of money. Legally. Of course, there were a few doing it illegally, too. And the idea of doing three or four more years of school … wow, then I’ll be twenty-five and I’ll have established almost nothing. Maybe that was part of the reason. There were various different factors.

As mentioned above, most of Ali’s former classmates were working in the security sector at this time, promising far more masculine prestige and, in the short term at least, better pay. Others got their money fast through petty crime. As a result, some could already afford to rent apartments and buy cars of their own. Ali’s older sisters, too, had all left home early to start families. By comparison, a course of training lasting several years to qualify him for a relatively poorly paid profession chosen mainly by women held little attraction. The coveted entry into employment and the resulting ability to start a family were taking too long to materialize, as reflected in his multiple references to specific ages. Ali’s discomfort was also connected with specific notions of a ‘normal biography’, which definitely included starting a family. Female former students from the Galilei-Schule often wanted to have children in their early twenties, their male counterparts in their mid-twenties, putting them far below the national average in Germany. Tensions and puzzling behaviour resulted from the disconnect between the Neukölln teenagers’ ideas of how their lives should be unfolding and the socially dominant notion of a ‘normal’ life, and also from the fact that the educational options available to them after school seemed to further delay the desired transition to financial independence. Rather than being accidental by-products of the welfare state, the long waiting times, low pay and uncertain outcomes involved in such situations are trademarks of neoliberal government of the poor, as documented by Javier Auyero in his ethnography of (mostly impatient and annoyed) waiting in Argentinian state welfare offices.52 Those dependent on such offers are both rendered passive and held in check by inscrutable bureaucratic procedures. Society’s lack of respect for the time of those with few qualifications is epitomized by the emphasis on resitting school exams and the simultaneous travesty of ‘training’. The options available to school leavers offered little in the way of extra qualifications, apart from retaking exams missed out on at school; neither did they ensure access to a training place or apprenticeship.53 Even students like Ali, who had already obtained the MSA school leaving diploma during regular attendance, had to attend such training schemes before being offered a training place. Such programmes gave students access

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to the status of ‘readiness to choose a profession’, implying that they did not previously possess the necessary maturity. Hauptschule graduates often spend several years in various institutional settings unsuccessfully trying to obtain school leaving diplomas or being prepared for vocational training. In some cases, these delays create new problems, not to mention the additional obstacles that emerge once any such training begins. Alongside the prolonged waiting for training places, the concept of training itself is being hollowed out. Both state and commercial bodies now also use the term for preparatory measures in order to enhance training statistics. While students adopt this euphemistic usage to make their precarious position sound better, this gradually erodes the value and promise of vocational training. Ultimately, this prompted one former female student to tell me her children should ‘not do training’. Precisely because of their pressing wish to leave unstable conditions behind at last, students made decisions in the short term that actually tended to hinder their project of a ‘good life’. If there is an emotional state common to today’s precariat, then it would be marked by such contradictory decisions and attitudes below the level of an articulated class consciousness.54 With a little distance, Ali was able to identify the reasons for his erratic path, giving them a positive turn. Ali: I always thought social work was just right for me. Then I set off on this path. I threw myself in at the deep end, starting this training course as a social assistant. That was all very well, but after a while I felt there was something missing. Something told me ‘this isn’t for you’. But it wasn’t to do with me or with the training course, it was the school. The teachers weren’t competent enough, I had no individual teaching like I need. I had to learn how to learn again. At school, we just clowned round the whole time, missed classes, all kinds of stuff. So then I stopped for a year. Cut! I was desperate, had a very tough time. Then I found my way back and restarted the training course to become an educator. At some point there was also pressure from my family to carry on training. I’m my parents’ only son, with five sisters, the four eldest are already married. And I didn’t want to deprive my parents of hope and pride in their son. But I managed it, I’m back training as an educator, at a private school. There are thirteen of us, individual learning, helpful teachers. I’m very happy with it so far. I’m almost through the sixth-month trial period. My grades are OK too. I’m going to go through with it!

This biographic narrative obeys a logic of progress in which crises are overcome and false starts are followed by further, successful attempts. The tip to try a private school as an alternative to state-run training as a social assistant came from one of Ali’s friends, and he associated this fresh start with a new outlook on life, talking about ‘my new goal’ of

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doing a supplementary training course to become a kindergarten teacher the following summer. Lauren Berlant describes structurally determined intermediate zones and recurring transitional phases as a biographical pattern typical of normalized precarity that goes hand in hand with strong feelings of insecurity and experiences of reduced self-efficacy.55 Although the phases of waiting are filled with various activities and movements, they still feel like idle time because they are connected with a feeling of non-progress. In this context, sociologists speak of a ‘broadening of the intermediate zone’ in which alternating between unemployment and a sequence of precarious jobs, with all the risks and uncertainties this involves, becomes normality for a growing section of the population.56 Due to the lack of a fitting narrative for such lived experiences of social instability, they are usually squeezed into older linguistic templates. In their quality as temporary detours from the path of biographical progress, crises can take on positive meanings in retrospect, allowing Hauptschule graduates to integrate precarity into conventional narratives of the ‘good life’, normalizing it in social terms. Ali even saw his uncertain future as a sign of the times: ‘The world is changing. The classic career path – school, apprenticeship, job, family – no longer exists.’ In addition to these more subtle forms of everyday social insecurity, the students also had much experience of open forms of exclusion. Especially when moving beyond the familiar territory of Berlin-Neukölln after leaving school, migrant students sometimes faced drastic forms of racism. Yussuf: Since school it’s gone back and forth. During tenth grade, I was already looking for an apprenticeship in civil engineering. After a while I found a company and stayed there six months. The problem was, it was in a small village in the Havelland region, two and a half hours from here. They had a boarding facility and I was there for a while. But I didn’t feel comfortable. I was one of the few foreigners. They said things like ‘go back where you came from’. My teacher supported me and told me to ignore it and complete the training. But then they said things like ‘back in the day, they burned people like you’. Nazi stuff like that. Then I couldn’t hold back anymore, we argued and it almost came to blows. Sometimes I was able to keep calm, but when they insulted my family I became aggressive. After six months, I felt so bad I abandoned the training programme. That was a pity, for sure, but I couldn’t carry on, I wouldn’t have able to take it for two years. Yussuf ’s reference to the ‘back and forth’ suggests that he understood the way his life was unfolding less as a progression and more as an unpleasant alternation between precarious conditions. Together with Khaled, Yussuf did an internship at the company two and a half hours outside Berlin, but only he was then offered an apprenticeship. He was sceptical about going to Brandenburg on his own, suspecting it could be a ‘dead end’. The fact that

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he decided to give it a try nonetheless, due a lack of alternatives, reflects his strong desire to enter stable employment. However, the years that followed were mostly spent unsuccessfully chasing this dream. Yussuf: After that I worked here and there. A cousin of mine opened an Arab restaurant, I spent six months there. Never anything stable, always back and forth. Then I started another training course, in physiotherapy, as a movement therapist. With yoga and so on. I abandoned it after six months. I had to pay for it myself. It was only 100 euros per month, but with no help, on welfare, it was impossible. The Job Centre didn’t support it. And the hours were too long for another job on the side, especially as the hours were irregular. I actually liked it. Then I went into the security sector. We work at refugee hostels. I thought it was very suitable, because I speak Arabic and I can help out with translations. My parents were refugees, too. But I can’t imagine continuing to do this in the long term.

Yussuf ’s father is from a Palestinian refugee family living in Syria; he came to Germany to work in the 1970s, aged sixteen. Ten years later he returned to Syria for a few years, married an exiled Palestinian woman, and returned with her to Germany. At the time of our interview during the Syrian War, the family regularly took in relatives fleeing the war zone. Yussuf felt depressed by their dramatic plights, but he was happy to be able to help them get their bearings. When I asked after him again five years later, he had married a woman from his extended Palestinian family network. It was striking that neither Khaled, Ali nor Yussuf attributed their precarious situation to fundamental social inequalities. They blamed themselves for most of their disappointments, criticizing only specific institutions and individuals. Yussuf even said: ‘I think it’s quite normal. It’s quite normal to have to fight your way through at first, and that you have to try here and there before finding the right thing. My problem was that when I was at school I didn’t know what I wanted to be.’ On leaving school, the vast majority of Galilei-Schule students had no training place and kept their heads above water in similar ways during the years that followed. But even the three students who did secure a proper training opportunity before leaving school were by no means on the path to a secure ‘future’. Five years later, only one of them, Roberto, had completed his training as planned and been given a job by the company that trained him. The other two, Thomas and Hazal, experienced their apprenticeships as dead ends and had to find different paths. Thomas was ‘very disappointed’ with the army, but found an alternative in the fire brigade, where he had already volunteered as a teenager. During her training in a doctor’s surgery, Hazal felt ‘totally exploited’ but this position did bring her into contact with a doctor who took her with him when he opened his own

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surgery, where she was also no longer working. Although they were able to mitigate early setbacks in the world of work, then, even the most successful Galilei-Schule students were accompanied by feelings of being exploited and of having too few options. Withdrawal into the Private Sphere? Family Orientations So far, I have described male forms of coping with precarious conditions marked by unemployment, vocational training and casual jobs. Many former Galilei-Schule students topped up their welfare payments with lowwage labour, not always on a legal basis. This contrasts with a mainly female approach to navigating precarious conditions that was marked by a greater degree of parental control and an earlier onset of family obligations. Views of young Muslim women often have an especially strong moral charge: while families worry about their children becoming estranged from their culture, the discussion within mainstream society is dominated by a fear of ‘forced marriages’. The examples of Amira and Çiğdem below show how female Hauptschule students coped with this situation. After long and fruitless attempts, Amira found a placement through the Job Centre, returning to the Galilei-Schule during my period of research as part of her training. In our interview, she initially adopted the state perspective of a trainee careers adviser whose job was to inform girls about career options beyond housewife status. At the same time, she showed understanding for the situation of female students, many of whom were doubly stigmatized in the labour market as headscarf-wearing Hauptschule students. Amira: I found it very hard to get a training place. I got my extended Hauptschule diploma, but not the MSA. I wrote loads of applications and I was invited for interviews. But when they saw my headscarf they immediately rejected me. ‘No, don’t need you, don’t want you.’ But I didn’t sit around at home doing nothing. I kept doing work experience and writing applications. Many girls here think they’ll soon be married anyway and then they’ll be housewives. They know it from their families – the men go to work, the women stay at home. But they also aren’t given much chance to do something else.

In the course of our conversation, Amira repeatedly drew parallels to her own situation, gradually drifting into the role of a Muslim woman confronted with the conflict between her own wishes and the expectations of others. In this way, criticism of the female students’ family influences gave way to an explanation of the influence exerted by her own family.

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Amira: As Muslim women, we simply belong to a Muslim man. I once had a different boyfriend and my parents went crazy. I didn’t think it was worth it. You always want to make your parents happy and proud. I’ve heard from many people that girls get thrown out and are no longer part of the family. My family also says I’m not allowed to choose a Turkish man, or – I’m Lebanese – it can’t be a Palestinian, even if he’s also a Muslim and an Arab. This kind of thing is drummed into you from childhood, without giving any real reasons. Until eventually we say: ‘Yes, my husband will be a Lebanese Shiite.’

The importance attributed to ethnicity within the students’ families was not an expression of genuinely irreconcilable cultural differences.57 Instead, this emphasis on specific roots resulted from a migratory context in which the integration process threatened to reduce the parents’ degree of influence on their children. In this social constellation, the ethnic origins of future partners became a constant issue, prompting huge efforts to strengthen the sense of belonging via an ethnically oriented marriage policy. As well as stressing difference from the majority German population, there was a vehement policing of the unclear dividing lines between the various immigrant groups themselves. This was especially clear in the case of Çiğdem, who I met during my first year of Hauptschule research. At the end of her time at school, suffering badly from anorexia, she narrowly failed to pass her MSA, and she narrowly failed again when she resat the exams a year later, experiencing both failures as emotional lows. I had already met her three years after leaving school, in the midst of a major dispute with her parents, who refused to accept her new boyfriend. Whereas the marriage between one of her brothers and a German woman drew nothing but short-lived displeasure from her father, Çiğdem’s relationship with a young Kurdish immigrant was viewed as an irreconcilable cultural problem, even though Çiğdem’s mother was of Kurdish origin and the two families knew each other. The parents thus played the ethnic card to justify a status-based migrant marriage policy towards a daughter who was seeking to assert her emotional autonomy. Seven years later, I met Çiğdem again in a Neukölln café frequented mainly by migrants. She now wore a headscarf and had her two young daughters with her; I was able to placate one of them with a chocolate muffin, while the other was more interested in my recording device. Çiğdem summed up her time since school as a constant up and down of minor progress and recurring setbacks. Çiğdem: After school I did a year at a vocational college, where I planned to resit my diploma, my MSA. Unfortunately, I failed again by a very narrow margin. Then I spent a year in a different programme where you can resit your

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MSA. And then came the three-year training course as an office clerk, which I didn’t finish, sadly. After two years, I met my husband, then we got married and there were family problems because my parents didn’t approve. Eventually, I just missed too many days. Later, after the wedding, I started a new training course with Vivantes as a geriatric nurse. I really liked that, but then I got pregnant with her. It wasn’t planned, my doctor told me I couldn’t get pregnant. So I left, but they assured me I could start again later. But then I’d rather train as a medical assistant. I haven’t worked since. She’s now four years old, and she’s six months. I found a good kindergarten that I’m very happy with. We’ve had a few problems with the child protection office, because my husband was violent towards me on two occasions. I threw him out, but of course he came back and wanted to come inside. I had to call the police, and they got the child protection office involved. We’re back together now, but we’re both getting help. That has made things much better.

Çiğdem has maintained an optimistic attitude in spite of the major problems she faces in her life, the nature of which emerged during our conversation. Following their dispute, she had no contact with her Turkish father for three years. At the same time, her relationship with her new Kurdish parents-in-law was strained due to their ‘extremely conservative’ views on the role of women in marriage. During their extended summer visits to Turkey, Çiğdem always had to wear a headscarf, something her own father had tried in vain to impose on her during her teenage years. Having long taken a pragmatic approach, wearing a headscarf in family settings and never wearing one at work, after the arrival of her children she decided to wear one all the time. Her husband, described by Çiğdem as ‘extremely jealous’, also long found himself in an especially insecure situation due to his lack of a valid residence permit, causing many restrictions concerning work, healthcare and accommodation.58 The years of illegality made him rely on others for support and the resulting dependencies later caught up with him, when former helpers blackmailed him, threatening to report him to the police. And the relatives who initially gave him work in the family kebab shop now expected him to pay earnings from future jobs to family members remaining in Turkey, which Çiğdem vehemently opposed. Such matters of money led to huge family arguments, as when the young couple bought a car rather than investing in a house for the extended family in Anatolia, as the Kurdish family had expected. When the dispute with her husband and his family escalated, Çiğdem moved back for a month with her parents, with whom she was by then reconciled. In retrospect she agreed with her father and attributed her problems to the differences in mentality between ‘Turks’ and ‘Kurds’, even if her own descriptions suggested the blame actually lay mainly with precarious living conditions. By fleeing to her parents, she escaped the domestic violence, but there were also added

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restrictions and strains: strict requirements from the child protection office, her father’s ban on visits from her husband’s family, children born with illnesses, and much more. Çiğdem’s former female classmates faced similar problems. Çiğdem: Safa has two sons, but sadly she also has many problems. She wanted to go to Lebanon. She went, too, but she argued with her motherin-law. Then she returned to her parents, but she couldn’t get a divorce. Two years later, he came here, now he works at a carwash, she’s training to be a dental technician – with a headscarf in Hellersdorf! Things have calmed down now. Hayat had a husband in Jordan and she went with him to Dubai. Now she lives alone with their child in Berlin and works for a jeweller. When I last saw her, she wanted to go back again. Khadir got married, too, but she’s divorced twice already. Now she’s with a Turkish man and she has a son. Because she married a Turk, she became estranged from her Arab family. My father would never accept an Arab either! Hasna married a German, it’s different for her, her mother is German and her father is Arab. She’s very happy, she did two years as a social assistant and now she works at a kindergarten. Rinda started training in the kitchen at a hotel, but she didn’t stay to the end. After two years, she got married and abandoned it. Her daughter’s still quite small.

Female Hauptschule students in Neukölln, most of them from (post-) migrant backgrounds, usually married and had children quite soon after leaving school, in their early twenties. The parental strategy, typical of this milieu, to push young family members to marry individuals from their ‘own’ ethnic group, caused many conflicts that strained the young women’s relations not only with their parents but also with their spouses. The ethnically justified marriage policy was not wholly successful, however, and none of the cases mentioned involved a ‘forced marriage’. Nonetheless, pressure was exerted and marriages in extended family and friendship circles were deliberately pursued. This early entry into family life, compared with female students from other types of school, was not just the withdrawal into housewife status prophesied by many teachers while the young women were still at school. As Çiğdem’s account makes clear, most female school leavers experienced a precarious alternation between periods of training and family life. Çiğdem, too, clung to her wish to re-enter vocational training in the mid-term; though she feared her husband might resist the idea of male classmates, she thought he would eventually bow to the financial necessity of a double income. Her family activities, too, were experienced not as withdrawal but as a particularly intensive form of devotion. Early on, looking after the children involved many visits to doctors and consultants. In addition,

Cruel Optimism: The End of the Future  •  329

due to her husband’s limited knowledge of written German, Çiğdem dealt with the bureaucratic organization of the household, communicating with the child protection office, the landlord and other authorities. She also volunteered as parents’ spokesperson at a large kindergarten where problems with other children and their parents had to be solved, as well as organizing events, hiring clowns and photographers, applying for funds, or voicing parents’ concerns with the management. Mastering these challenges while dealing with family tensions and precarious work conditions was an everyday balancing act. For Çiğdem, too, this altered the way she viewed her schooldays. Çiğdem: I really miss school. Sometimes when I meet my girlfriends we reminisce about those times. Looking back, I should have done things differently, made more effort to get a really good job. If I could start again, I’d do it better and get married later. Of course I now regret having abandoned my training, but when I was pregnant I couldn’t carry on in hospital. I hope my children will take a different path to me. They should complete their schooling, do Abitur, and then do something solid, a better job with more security.

Conclusion: The Normalization of No Future Lauren Berlant describes ‘cruel optimism’ as the mindset of those who still dream of the promise of a ‘good life’ while having at the same time to cope with increasingly precarious conditions. This form of hope also shaped the outlooks of Hauptschule students in Berlin. As Georges Canguilhem has shown for the example of France, the spread of the notion of normality was closely linked with the establishment of the modern school system.59 The word ‘Hauptschule’ (main school) already points to a standard of social normality. Today, however, the Hauptschule model and, to a degree, the Sekundarschule that replaced it, have come to symbolize the normalization of precarity. They no longer correspond to the prevailing educational norm within society, which is why Hauptschule students do not gain access to the labour market even at a time when companies are having trouble filling their training schemes.60 Most of the students at the Galilei-Schule came from precarious family backgrounds, a social constellation that begs the question of whether the notion of a ‘standard of social normality’ still has any meaning at all. The Galilei-Schule was a social institution engaged in normalizing the lack of a future, reflecting the transition from a positive to a negative outlook. The emotional impact of such a shift can be studied in the long marginalized Global South. A situation in which exclusion and poverty have been the

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norm for many generations is described by Dia Da Costa using the example of India. When fantasies of a ‘good life’ can no longer be linked with optimism and hopes of upward mobility, it may make more sense to speak of a ‘cruel pessimism’.61 Another situation is described by James Ferguson using the example of a former mining area in Zambia that became largely disconnected from world trade following its deindustrialization.62 In the process, the region was stripped of its modernity, as existing transport links were cut and life expectancy and incomes went down again. This outcome was only possible because the hegemonic neoliberal discourse, unlike the older, differently corrupt discourse of development, no longer makes any claim to general progress, focussing one-sidedly on economic profit. As a result, those who are ‘surplus to requirement’63 in socioeconomic terms can be filtered out, leading to experiences of degradation and humiliation. In the case of Zambia, they are left with nostalgic memories of modernity’s promise of progress, and a return to traditional forms of subsistence. This chapter has examined the students’ dreams and trajectories, but the question remains of how the Galilei-Schule itself developed following my research there in 2012/13. Although I have not conducted any research there since, reports from former teachers have tended to be negative. This is all the more remarkable since they also told me that the chances for the school’s students in the labour market had improved, mainly due to the removal of the Hauptschule stigma, and that the number of students finding qualified training places was gradually increasing. This time, the negative developments were attributed less to external circumstances than to internal factors, first and foremost the change of headmaster shortly after my year of field research. Since this time, many teachers have left, including all heads of departments, and the lack of teaching staff in Berlin has made it impossible to find adequate replacements. As well as staff, the school was also losing students. Following the transition from Hauptschule to Sekundarschule, rather than decreasing as expected, rates of absenteeism actually rose again, and the Galilei-Schule was soon at the top of Berlin’s ‘truancy ranking’. In view of current neoliberal developments, the question of whether there can be ‘hope without optimism’ is of central importance. In this context, Terry Eagleton claims we have largely lost the ability to imagine and articulate alternative futures, but that even as revolutionary utopias have faded, the principle of hope should not be wholly abandoned.64 It may be possible to live without naïve optimism, then, but not without dreams and longings. In the students’ dreams described at the beginning of this chapter, hope itself was kept alive, and even under the precarious conditions described thereafter, the wish for a different life, a life more worth living, remained as an ideal. All hope is not yet lost, then, but the outlook has become palpably bleaker.

Cruel Optimism: The End of the Future  •  331

Notes  1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

See Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft, 9–37; Luhmann, ‘The Future Cannot Begin’. See Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft, 349–375. See Uerz, ÜberMorgen. See Horn, Zukunft als Katastrophe. See Jansen/Kleist, ‘Hope Over Time’; Ortner, ‘Dark Anthropology and its Others’. See Bloch, The Principle of Hope. See Cross, ‘The Economy of Anticipation’. See Wellgraf, Hauptschüler, 105–134. See Barck (ed.), Surrealismus in Paris, 1919–1939. See Freud, On The Interpretation of Dreams. See Nachtwey, Die Abstiegsgesellschaft. See Freud, On The Interpretation of Dreams. See Freud, Schriften über Träume und Traumdeutungen. See Freud, On The Interpretation of Dreams. See Hareaus, Traumvorstellung und Bildidee. See Jung, Traum und Traumdeutung. See Tedlock, ‘The New Anthropology of Dreaming’. See Jay, Cultural Semantics, 157–164; Gordon, Ghostly Matters; Collins/Jervis (eds), Uncanny Modernity. See Freud, On The Interpretation of Dreams. See Reckwitz, ‘Zukunftspraktiken’. See Guyer, ‘Prophecy and the Near Future’. See Vogl, The Specter of Capital; Comaroff/Comaroff (eds), Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism. See Reck, ‘Traum/Vision’. See Singer, Phantasie und Tagtraum. See Ehn/Löfgren, The Secret World of Doing Nothing, 177ff. See Appadurai, The Future as Cultural Fact, 179–195. See Seel, ‘Drei Regeln für Utopisten’. See Bloch, The Principle of Hope, 35. On different psychoanalytical theories of affective cathexis, see Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’; Klein, ‘A Study of Envy and Gratitude’; Žižek, Enjoy Your Symptom! See Pontalis, Zwischen Traum und Schmerz. See Saar, Die Immanenz der Macht, 275–328. See Bürkle, Migration von Raum. See Berlant, Cruel Optimism, 161–189; Muehlebach/Shoshan, ‘Post-Fordist Affect’. See Gramsci, ‘Americanism and Fordism’. See Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 21–49. See Reckwitz, The Society of Singularities. See Crary, 24/7; Stein, Work, Sleep, Repeat. See Haug, ‘Tagträume’. See Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance; Gohl, Liebe, Lust und Abenteuer. See Bareither, Gewalt im Computerspiel. See Sørensen, ‘Violent Video Games in the German Press’. Jung, ‘The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology’, 108. See Rancière, Proletarian Nights.

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44. See Sandring, Schulversagen und Anerkennung; Schneider, ‘Schulische Aufwärtsqualifizierungen bei Hauptschülern im Rahmen biografischer Prozessverläufe’. For a long-term biographical perspective on Hauptschule graduates from the 1970s, see Held, Kehnken, Handlungsforschung an einer Hauptschule 1972/74. 45. See Stewart, ‘Precarity’s Forms’. 46. See Auyero, Patients of the State. 47. See Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World. 48. See Jansen, Yearnings in the Meantime. 49. On the links between literature and society, see Goldmann, Towards a Sociology of the Novel; Williams, Culture and Materialism, 11–30. 50. See Berlant, Cruel Optimism, 191ff. 51. See Solga, ‘Increasing Risks of Stigmatization’. 52. See Auyero, Patients of the State. 53. See Walther, ‘The Struggle for “Realistic” Career Perspectives’. 54. See Reay, ‘Beyond Consciousness?’ 55. See Berlant, Cruel Optimism, 191ff. 56. See Grimm/Hirseland/Vogel, ‘Die Ausweitung der Zwischenzone’. 57. See Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries; Wimmer, Ethnic Boundary Making. 58. See Münz/Alscher/Özcan, ‘Leben in der Illegalität’. 59. See Canguilhem, The Normal and The Pathological; Link, Versuch über den Normalismus. 60. See Protsch, Segmentierte Ausbildungsmärkte. 61. See Da Costa, ‘Cruel Pessimism’. 62. See Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity. 63. See Bude/Willisch (eds), Exklusion. 64. See Eagleton, Hope Without Optimism.

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Index

A Abu-Lughod, Lila, 77 ADHD, 40, 45, 51, 60, 168, 240, 298 aesthetic practice, 67, 78–79, 95, 100, 180, 19 affect theory, 1–2, 6–13, 20–21, 33–34, 39, 45, 79, 85, 94, 121–122, 149, 174, 180, 205, 250, 262, 277, 303, 309 aggressiveness, 4, 7–8, 35, 39, 41, 51, 62–71, 77–78, 99, 102–103, 116, 120, 126, 148, 164, 180, 209–212, 215, 220, 231–233, 235–237, 240–241, 244–268, 323 Akkouch family, 123–124, 295–298 Ali, Muhammad, 247, 249, 253, 258, 260–261 alienation, 21, 24, 29–32, 35, 41–46, 61, 111, 149, 175, 226, 276, 319 Althusser, Louis, 267 Anderson, Ben, 21 anger, 4, 7–9, 20, 65, 69, 138, 148, 167, 174, 182, 209–222, 232, 235, 237– 242, 244–245, 257, 261–262, 281, 292–292, 295, 298, 317, 324, 326, 328 antisemitism, 63–76, 222, 232 anxiety, 124, 191, 194, 204, 213, 273–278 Appadurai, Arjun, 307 Arab migration, 69, 72, 74–76, 108–109, 119, 134–135, 152, 217, 218, 220, 247, 260 asylum, 60, 64, 288–296 Austin, John, 205, 222

B Bareither, Christoph, 315 Bataille, Georges, 294 beauty, 88, 92–93, 96–97, 197 Belting, Hans, 96, 99, 105 Benedict, Ruth, 174 Benjamin, Walter, 42–43, 138 Bergson, Henri, 68 Berlant, Lauren, 11, 302, 311, 316, 320, 323, 329 Biddle, Jennifer, 149 Black Power movement, 54, 119, 125, 261 blaming, 3, 12, 69, 122, 134, 159, 162, 167–168, 173, 180–181, 191, 194, 210, 213–217, 224, 232, 236, 239– 241, 276, 281–283, 292–293, 316, 324, 327–328 Bloch, Ernst, 308 Boddy, Kasia, 284 body practices, 5–6, 13, 20, 52, 91–92, 97–98, 102, 111, 128–129, 134, 136, 164, 196–197, 199, 201, 244–246, 248–249, 252, 254–268, 276–278 Boer, Heike de, 223 Böhme, Gernot, 20, 28 Bollenbeck, Georg, 24 Boltanski, Luc, 89 boredom, 7–8, 19–21, 24–25, 28–33, 36–46, 51, 67–68, 116, 233, 293 Bourdieu, Pierre, 11–12, 26, 37, 89, 104, 133, 165, 213, 254, 265, 319 Bourke, Joanna, 274

364 • Index

boxer style, 232, 244–249, 252–259, 262–268 boxing, 123, 187, 231, 244–265, 268 Breidenstein, Georg, 31, 33, 40, 166–167 Bröckling, Ulrich, 268 Brown, Wendy, 13, 61–62 bullying, 13, 90, 110, 188–201, 204, 280, 314 Butler, Judith, 95, 222, 265 C Çaglar, Ayse, 120 Canguilhem, Georges, 329 capitalism, 9–10, 30, 53, 86, 91, 94, 102, 118, 133, 176, 179–180, 185, 188, 249, 275, 302–304 Castel, Robert, 274 Chatwin, Bruce, 305 Chicago School, 115, 139–141 Clarke, Alison, 100 Clasen, Anke, 148, 216 class consciousness, 167, 181, 188, 205, 322 classism, 8–9, 43–44, 63–64, 90, 148, 165, 174–176, 179–189, 197–198, 215–216, 241 collective symbolism, 122, 124, 126–127 Connell, Raewyn, 263 contempt, 3–4, 13, 63, 105, 110, 139, 157, 160–161, 165, 171, 174–176, 180– 182, 195, 201, 210–211, 222, 225, 232, 245, 259, 266, 283, 290, 308 coolness, 7–9, 13, 56, 85–86, 94–95, 101, 104–111, 134–135, 185, 204, 259 Cooper, Melinda, 312 Crary, Jonathan, 42 creativity, 3–4, 20, 38, 52–53, 61, 67, 71, 90, 95, 123, 139, 295, 313 criminalization, 41, 102, 115, 118–119, 122, 127–128, 131, 152, 170, 218, 228, 231–232, 290–295, 298, 319– 320 crisis, 3, 14, 22, 34, 38, 115, 123, 150, 157, 163, 167, 236, 261–262, 265, 274, 276, 302, 316–318 critique, 2, 5, 11–14, 21, 25, 37, 40–41, 44–45, 50–51, 61–63, 67, 78–79, 88, 96, 111, 132, 150, 161, 215, 222, 275

Crouch, Colin, 227 ‘cruel optimism’, 11, 302, 310, 316, 329 D Da Costa, Dia, 330 Daston, Lorraine, 150, 154 Degele, Nina, 257 Deleuze, Gilles, 11, 96, 236 deportation, 65, 74, 123–124, 273–274, 287–299 Dewey, John, 7–8 Dietrich, Marc, 125 discipline, 25, 34, 36, 72, 149, 153, 155, 159, 164, 171, 175, 204–205, 233– 236, 251–254, 257, 263, 288, 299 discourse, 3, 5, 50–51, 61–62, 78, 97–98, 110, 114–132, 135, 139–141, 199, 204, 216, 227, 240, 249, 262, 287, 302, 330 discrimination, 77, 97–98, 181, 199–200, 213–215, 217–218, 222, 240, 246, 257, 260 Doehlemann, Martin, 40 Döring, Julia, 194 Dörre, Klaus, 275 Doughan, Sultan, 69 dreaming, 43, 93, 100, 124, 126, 133, 138, 186–188, 302–318, 329–330 Duerr, Hans Peter, 174, 305 E Eagleton, Terry, 330 educational reform, 1, 5, 26, 43 149, 154, 158, 163, 173, 213, 236 Ege, Moritz, 87, 108, 115, 253, 256 Eksner, Julia, 115 Elias, Norbert, 174 embarrassment, 8, 92, 174, 179–180, 192–205 emotion, 1–14, 33, 42, 45, 58, 68, 85, 91, 104–106, 114, 122, 139, 149, 164– 165, 171, 174, 179–182, 192, 195, 201, 204–205, 209–210, 240–242, 245, 250, 273–277, 312–313 envy, 9, 180–186, 189, 213 Eribon, Didier, 149 ethnicity, 2, 10, 23, 62, 64–66, 75–77, 87, 108–109, 114–116, 122, 140, 177,

Index • 365

215, 217–219, 248, 257, 259–263, 267, 278, 297, 299, 326–328 exclusion, 1–14, 26, 29, 43–46, 54, 62, 64, 66–67, 71, 76–77, 85, 89–90, 97–98, 102, 110, 119–120, 136, 140, 147– 148, 160, 163, 168, 171, 173, 181, 184, 191, 195, 198, 200, 211–213, 215, 224, 240, 245, 253, 256, 261– 262, 273, 277–278, 281, 284, 291, 294–295, 298–299, 323, 329 experience, 7–10, 19–20, 33, 43, 138–139, 192–193, 302 F Facebook, 8, 59, 68, 75, 86, 89–92, 97, 99–103, 108–110, 198, 253, 264 family, 4, 65, 69, 72–76, 89, 97–98, 104– 105, 129, 136, 138, 161, 168–169, 186–188, 191–192, 199–201, 204, 232, 245, 247–248, 256, 259–260, 278–279, 290–298, 303, 308–313, 321–329 Fanon, Frantz, 105 fashion, 88, 92–93, 97, 133–136, 187, 200, 255 fear, 3–4, 7–8, 122, 168, 170–171, 174, 180, 188, 200, 228, 242, 261, 273–276, 279, 282–283, 285–291, 294–295, 298–299, 303, 314, 325 femininity, 13, 88–97, 104, 107, 196, 200, 263–264, 314 feminism, 88, 92, 135, 210 Ferguson, James, 330 Fiske, John, 94 Foucault, Michel, 117, 128, 159, 227, 236, 267–268 Frenzel, Anne, 39 Freud, Sigmund, 68, 180, 209, 276, 304–305 Frevert, Ute, 174 Friedeburg, Ludwig von, 43 friendship, 52, 72, 89, 96, 103, 110, 121, 192, 328 future, 6, 8, 32, 35–36, 39, 42, 45, 65, 100, 110, 147, 149, 157, 162–163, 165, 186–188, 202, 224, 230, 238– 239, 273–276, 278, 282–283, 286,

299, 302–316, 319–320, 323–324, 326–327, 329–330 G Galison, Peter, 150, 154 Gangnam Style, 52–58, 60–62, 78 Geer, Nadja, 90 gender, 2, 10, 37, 63, 77, 86–93, 95–97, 104, 107, 109, 111, 174, 187, 196–197, 199–201, 248, 251, 257, 261–268, 312 Genova, Nicholas de, 289 ‘ghetto’, 7–8, 54, 97, 102–104, 114–136, 139–141, 246, 248, 261, 282, 295 Giddens, Anthony, 30, 278 Goffman, Erving, 12, 195 Goines, Donald, 117–119 Gomolla, Mechtild, 217 Goodstein, Elizabeth, 40 Götz, Thomas, 39 governmentality, 61–62, 159, 227 Graaff, Kristina, 125 grading, 4, 14, 41, 106, 147–176, 180–182, 189, 193–197, 217, 278 Gramsci, Antonio, 211, 311 Greiner, Ulrich, 174 Gugutzer, Robert, 278 Guyer, Jane, 306 H Hall, Stuart, 10, 13, 264, 267 Hannerz, Ulf, 140 Harding, Jennifer, 10 Harlem Shake, 52, 54–55, 57–62, 78 Hartz IV, 63, 66, 68, 122, 279, 282–283, 285 Haug, Frigga, 314 headscarf, 97–99, 199–201, 214, 220, 325–328 Heidegger, Martin, 42–43 Heisig, Kirsten, 292 Helsper, Werner, 232 Highmore, Ben, 10 Hill Collins, Patricia, 90 hip-hop, 8, 54, 56, 60–61, 63, 71, 105, 115, 117, 119, 125, 128–129, 133–134, 136–139, 171, 295, 297

366 • Index

Honneth, Axel, 3–4, 175, 192, 211 hope, 8–9, 278, 303–310, 329–330 Huizinga, Johan, 249 humiliation, 3–4, 68, 70–71, 105, 124, 160, 163–164, 167, 171, 175, 179, 182, 187, 193–196, 201, 211–215, 218, 222, 232, 259, 275, 303, 330 humour, 31, 51–53, 59, 61–64, 66–71, 78, 93, 103–104, 136–137, 152, 160, 170, 172, 200, 244, 261, 292 Huston, John, 248 I Ibach, Jasna, 137 identity, 2, 4, 6, 22, 93, 101, 104, 108, 128, 170, 192, 200–201, 205, 265–266 inferiority, 2–8, 12–13, 50, 52, 78, 100, 109–110, 119, 147–148, 150, 159– 160, 164–176, 179–181, 185, 197, 212–215, 218, 313 infrastructure, 7, 19, 21, 26, 28–29, 42, 46, 110 Islam, 41, 62, 64–65, 68–69, 73–74, 88–89, 91, 97–99, 103–104, 116, 185, 199– 201, 218, 220, 227, 253, 261, 293, 297–299, 318, 325–326 Islamophobia, 73–74, 76, 199, 218, 220 J Jackson, Maggie, 51 Jaeggi, Rahel, 42, 44 Jefferson, Tony, 261 Jung, Carl Gustav, 305, 315 K Kalthoff, Herbert, 175 Kaya, Ayhan, 115 Keith, Michael, 141 Kemper, Andreas, 181 Kittsteiner, Heinz Dieter, 274 Kläber, Mischa, 266 Körting, Ehrhart, 297–298 Koselleck, Reinhart, 302 K-Pop, 53, 56, 58 Kristeva, Julia, 264 Krump, 128, 136–139 Kurdish Migration, 23, 262, 311, 326–327

L Labov, William, 70–71 Lacan, Jacques, 188, 266 Laclau, Ernesto, 117 Landweer, Hilge, 212 language, 19, 24, 34, 51, 62–64, 66–67, 69–71, 73, 100, 104, 111, 115, 119– 120, 126, 129, 138, 140, 149, 184, 194, 211, 222, 237, 240, 245, 249, 260, 267, 274, 280–283, 292, 314, 318, 322 Lebanon, 72–73, 123–124, 260, 290, 292, 295–296, 298, 311, 326, 328 Lefebvre, Henri, 21, 30, 35, 45 Lessenich, Stephan, 275 Lewis, Oscar, 140 Lindner, Rolf, 255 Link, Jürgen, 126 Lohrmann, Kathrin, 39 Löw, Martina, 30–31 Lüdtke, Alf, 78 M Maase, Kaspar, 255–256 Machismo, 13, 62, 87, 99, 106–111, 120, 134, 204, 261–262 Macho, Thomas, 96 Malli, Gerlinde, 279 Marchart, Oliver, 275 marginalization, 3–4, 8–9, 62, 64, 85, 92, 100–101, 109–110, 114–115, 119–120, 122, 128, 133, 136–137, 139, 157, 179, 181, 183, 187, 189, 192, 196–199, 210–211, 213, 215, 228, 246, 258, 263–264, 278, 287, 293–294, 298–299, 316, 320, 329 Marx, Karl, 40, 44 Marxism, 10–11, 25, 35, 40, 43, 78, 167, 188, 210, 231 masculinity, 54, 76, 87, 90, 92, 102–107, 244–245, 248–249, 255–258, 261– 267, 314, 321 Massey, Doreen, 132 Massumi, Brian, 7, 121 McRobbie, Angela, 87–88, 92–95, 187 meme, 50, 52–61, 77, 93, 97, 253 meritocracy, 12, 159–160, 171, 174, 184– 185, 188

Index • 367

migration, 1–2, 9, 23–24, 52, 54, 62–65, 69, 72, 74, 76, 86–89, 94, 97, 99, 101, 108–109, 114–116, 119–120, 123, 127, 129, 134, 140, 171, 184, 192, 204, 215, 217, 219, 221, 227, 229, 244, 257, 259–260, 262, 267, 273, 281, 287–290, 292, 294–295, 298–299, 308, 310–311, 317–318, 323, 326, 328 mobbing, See bulliying Morris, Meaghan, 78 Moser, Johannes, 38 Mosse, George, 263 Muehlebach, Andrea, 311 N narrative, 63, 69, 73, 76, 104, 118, 131, 132, 140–141, 252, 283, 303, 315– 316, 322–323 Neckel, Sighard, 148, 164, 174, 182 neoliberalism, 2, 4–5, 7, 10–14, 24, 53, 87–88, 92, 94, 102, 111, 159, 168, 174–175, 179, 181, 185, 187, 205, 236, 240, 257, 259, 266–268, 279, 282–284, 285, 293, 299, 302–303, 306, 307, 312, 316, 321, 330 Ngai, Sianne, 95, 180 Niemann, Mareke, 148–149 normality, 4, 60, 93–94, 101, 123, 131– 132, 149, 175–176, 185, 188, 190, 231, 252, 277, 284, 302, 304, 309, 312–313, 316, 321, 323, 329 Nyers, Peter, 287–288 O objectivity, 20, 22, 45, 141, 148, 150–155, 158–160, 162–163, 174–176, 197, 217 Ortner, Sherry, 4–5, 77, 120 P Pagano, Simona, 76 Palestinian refugees, 23, 41, 59, 64–65, 67–69, 72–77, 98, 108, 134, 218, 260, 291, 295, 297–298, 318, 324 pathologization, 45, 51, 116, 240 performativity, 58–63, 67–68, 71, 78, 86– 94, 97, 101–102, 104–105, 107–111,

115–116, 132–133, 135, 139–141, 173, 184, 192, 244, 249, 256–257, 261, 265–266 phenomenology, 20, 39, 45 Piketty, Thomas, 179 PISA report, 1, 150, 154 police, 22, 118, 123–124, 130, 191, 210, 220, 228, 230–232, 239, 263, 290– 293, 296–298, 327 Pongratz, Ludwig, 236 post-Fordism, 311–312, 316 post-Marxism, 9, 30 poverty, 5–7, 26, 29, 89, 100, 115, 123, 126, 136, 140, 181, 183, 187, 230, 246, 256, 276, 279–281, 303, 307, 316, 321, 329 practice theory, 11–12, 20, 30, 129, 139– 140, 204, 267–268 precarity, 2–4, 9, 13–14, 52, 61, 74–76, 88, 102–103, 118, 128–129, 136–137, 139–140, 184, 188, 199, 204, 240, 253, 258–259, 263–264, 268, 274– 275, 277–286, 289, 291, 293, 297, 299, 311–313, 316–318, 322–330 Preissing, Sonja, 116 prevention, 65, 69, 114, 211, 227–232, 234 Pribram, Deirdre, 10 pride, 8–9, 24, 115–117, 119, 125, 128–129, 133–134, 136, 139, 174, 259–260, 278, 282, 295, 323 Probyn, Elsbeth, 149 psychoanalysis, 188, 209, 266, 276, 304– 305, 309 punishment, 13, 35, 63, 68, 106–107, 153, 155–160, 162, 166–167, 169, 175, 197, 209, 211, 219–220, 223, 227, 229, 233–237, 239–241, 285, 292–294, 298 R racism, 8, 13, 29, 60, 62, 64, 66–67, 76, 90, 105, 108, 124–126, 134, 136, 139, 181, 192, 199–200, 210, 215, 217–222, 229, 241, 257, 259–261, 282, 287, 323 Radtke, Frank-Olaf, 217 Rancière, Jacques, 316 rap, 56, 66, 117, 119, 121, 125–137, 255

368 • Index

Raulff, Ulrich, 54 Reckinger, Gilles, 279 Reckwitz, Andreas, 11, 67, 95, 129, 262, 312 Reddy, William, 204–205 Reichert, Ramón, 111 Reinecke, Christiane, 115 resentment, 179–182, 190, 241, 283 Riesman, David, 174 Rosa, Hartmut, 44 Rosaldo, Michelle, 149 Rosaldo, Renato, 149 Rosenwein, Barbara, 205 Rösner, Ernst, 216 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 175, 179–180 ruination, 21, 25–29, 42, 45–46 S Saar, Martin, 309 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 91 Schäuble, Barbara, 76 Scheer, Monique, 11 Scheff, Thomas, 164 Scheffer, Thomas, 290 Scherr, Albert, 76 Schiffauer, Werner, 225 Schmitz, Hermann, 20 Schomäcker, Sabine, 39 school architecture, 21–24 school grades, See grading Schopenhauer, Arthur, 68 Schützeichel, Rainer, 10 Scott, James, 158 Scott, Joan, 8 Seel, Martin, 308 Seeliger, Martin, 125 Seelinger, Martin, 125 Seigworth, Gregory, 78–79 selfies, 8, 85–111, 186 sexuality, 62–63, 88, 90–92, 97, 106–109, 187, 190, 196, 199, 201, 228–230, 261, 264–265 shame, 4, 7–8, 24, 92, 133, 147–149, 160, 164–175, 179–181, 192–193, 195, 198, 202, 213 Shoshan, Nitzan, 311 Skeggs, Beverly, 198, 267

social class, 2, 6, 13, 19–20, 23, 52–53, 56, 67, 78, 102, 133, 155, 160, 185, 187–188, 205, 213, 258, 262, 266, 273–274, 278–279, 299, 307–308, 311–312, 316 Social Media, 8, 59, 68, 75, 86, 89–92, 97, 99–103, 108–110, 198, 253, 264 social pathology, 40, 116, 160, 175–176, 197 Solomon, Richard, 210 speechlessness, 192, 194, 211, 222, 237 Spivak, Gayatri, 211 Stearns, Peter, 94 Steedman, Carolyn, 185, 187 Stewart, Kathleen, 250 Stiegler, Bernard, 51 stigmatization, 25, 63, 74, 86, 97–98, 114–116, 120, 122, 125, 128, 138, 140, 163–166, 171, 173, 197–198, 200–201, 240, 245, 262, 275, 279, 281, 298, 316, 325, 330 Stoler, Ann, 11, 29, 267 stress, 138, 161, 191, 204, 232, 247–248, 265–268 structures of Feeling, 9–11 Sutter, Ove, 283 T Taylor, Charles, 128, 192 Tertilt, Hermann, 116 Tervooren, Anja, 265 Tietze, Nikola, 76 tolerance, 59–63 Toohey, Peter, 30 training room, 60, 63, 153, 211, 223, 233– 239, 241 ‘trash talk’, 8, 51–52, 63–72, 77–78, 119, 173, 222, 232, 234 Türcke, Christoph, 51 Turkish migration, 23, 58, 72, 98, 103, 108, 115, 119, 192, 214, 217, 219, 262, 327–328 Turner, Victor, 8 U ‘ugly feelings’, 8, 164, 180, 204–205 unemployment, 2–4, 14, 25, 36, 38, 65, 115–116, 126, 130, 140, 148, 165,

Index • 369

273–279, 282–287, 294, 298–299, 307, 319, 323, 325 utopia, 9, 45, 110, 185, 303, 308, 330 V violence, 24, 41, 50, 65, 67, 69, 73, 99, 102, 104, 116–118, 121–122, 125– 127, 130, 132, 136, 147, 160, 165, 167, 210–213, 222, 227–232, 234, 237, 241, 244, 257, 261–262, 264, 294, 315, 318, 327 Völcker, Matthias, 148 W Wacquant, Loïc, 117, 140, 248–249 Weigel, Sigrid, 96 Weinbach, Heike, 181 welfare, 26, 36, 63, 66, 68, 88, 100, 122, 130, 161, 163, 184, 187, 204,

238–239, 275, 279–285, 287, 292– 293, 295, 298, 312, 317, 319, 321, 324–325 Wellershoff, Dieter, 61 Wetherell, Margaret, 11 Williams, Raymond, 9–11, 139, 267 Willis, Paul, 13, 31, 245 Wilson, William Julius, 140 Winker, Gabriele, 257 Wirth, Louis, 140 Y Yildiz, Miriam, 116 YouTube, 53–58, 68, 129, 134, 138, 250 Z Zaimoglu, Feridun, 119–120