Aesthetic manure: Strategies of new-right literary politics

Abstract

The New Right is pursuing an extensive literary policy since 2000. Activities in the literary business, publications and an expanding literary journalism (which, in addition to books and magazines, also includes internet blogs, podcasts and videos) are used to implant new-right ideologies in the cultural establishment with increasing skill and success. This became apparent, among other things, in the 2020 debate surrounding the writer Monika Maron, which the essay takes as its starting point in order to present the most important meta-political strategies of new-right literary politics: a change in the reading canon, a political functionalization of aesthetics and aesthetic education, as well as activism in the literary business. Finally, the controversy surrounding the debut novel by Simon Strauß will be used to discuss how to react appropriately (also in terms of literary studies) to new-right literary politics.