\nThe basis of democracy is a citizenry that is able to think analytically and values the common good and compromise rather than \u2018me first\u2019 political agendas, that succumb to the demagogy of simplistic answers when dealing with new and unknown social and economic issues. Only a sufficiently large critical mass of people with the capacity for analytical and abstract thought and empathy, guarantees that, through dialogue and compromise, we will invent the social, economic and cultural policies that will \u2013 in radically changing circumstances \u2013 prevent us from being dragged into new forms of witch-hunts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The digital-humanities researcher Gerhard Lauer tours the alternative literary ecosystems that have flourished in the social-media age and wonders what such phenomena betoken for the future of the written word. Do new genres such as Romantasy, New Adult, and Dark Academia, and \u2018social storytelling platforms\u2019 like Wattpad and Archive of Our Own, reflect an impoverished conception of literature, a loss of aesthetic complexity? And if so, does it even matter, given that they are empowering entire new communities of would-be readers?<\/p>\n
Lauer contends that \u2018the complexity of our interaction with literature is actually growing\u2019 and adduces a host of reasons in support. Chief among them is the radical inclusivity of the new genres and platforms, which more easily incorporate voices from the \u2018fringes of the literary scene\u2019 than traditional publishers. Fan-fiction sites such as Archive of Our Own or Wattpad, which enjoy tens of millions of reader\u2013writers, offer a range of tools and forums for honing one\u2019s craft. And in any case, the gravitational pull of the \u2018classics\u2019 will eventually be felt by the bookish and exert its improving influence \u2013 Lauer cites the perennial popularity of Jane Eyre<\/em>, 1984<\/em> and The Great Gatsby<\/em> on social-media discussion boards. \u2018The habit of reading often leads one toward more complex reading experiences; the path from [New Adult author] J. S. Wonda leads for quite a few to Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy.\u2019<\/p>\nIn the new readerly dispensation, however, traditional notions of \u2018high\u2019 and \u2018low\u2019 culture fall by the wayside: \u2018democratization also means that less educated people have an equal say in aesthetic matters and that aesthetic evaluations are being renegotiated\u2019. It is clear from Lauer\u2019s conclusion which notion of complexity \u2013 that is, the sociological rather than the aesthetic \u2013 he sees as the way forward: \u2018The informality of the new reading is an opportunity. We should seize it.\u2019<\/p>\n
Political communication<\/h2>\n
How to deploy complexity to encourage people to make politically revolutionary connections is the subject of a conversation between the Bulgarian\u2013German novelist Ilija Trojanow and US political communications expert Arun Chaudhary, the creative director of Bernie Sanders\u2019s 2016 presidential campaign and now a Berlin-based advisor on strategies for combatting the far right. In their conversation, Trojanow and Chaudhary tackle the perennial question of how the Left, which tends to embrace the complexity of facts rather than making its case through direct emotional appeals, can win over voters in a \u2018post-truth\u2019 age driven by affect rather than reason.<\/p>\n
Trojanow wonders whether today\u2019s highly diverse media landscape brings a pressure to make one\u2019s message as simple as possible, in order to gain a competitive advantage. Chaudhary partly agrees: \u2018Simplicity can be a word, a colour, a feeling to get the message across in a sea in which most information is lost.\u2019 But he prefers instead the idea of \u2018redundancy\u2019, in the sense of repetition: \u2018Successful political communication is about building redundancy, getting the same message across in a way that is slightly varied\u2019.<\/p>\n
Of course, the populist Right is expert at crude manipulations, and Chaudhary is careful not to go too far down this road: \u2018I think people are actually happy when confronted with complexity to a certain extent. We make a mistake by trying to oversimplify things \u2026 I think the fact that Kamala Harris never said that things were more complicated than what the opposing side said cost her votes.\u2019<\/p>\n
Ultimately, though, Chaudhary plumps for an affective \u2013 and thus less complex \u2013 approach: \u2018I think the aim is to arouse desire. I would argue that certain emotions \u2013 anger and hope, for example \u2013 are scalable. The more hopeful I am, the more I will do; the angrier I am, the more I will do. There are ways to make people want to make big changes.\u2019<\/p>\n
Complexity and avant-garde<\/h2>\n
Composer and musicologist Jan Kopp identifies the idea of complexity as a through-line in the self-understanding of the classical-music avant-garde of the twentieth century. The term \u2018New Music\u2019 refers to the epochal shift from the tonal system that had defined western composition since roughly the seventeenth century to the apparently chaotic atonality of the early 20th<\/sup> century, which brought with it \u2018a marked increase in complexity\u2019.<\/p>\nArnold Schoenberg\u2019s twelve-tone theory, the musical grammar that resulted from the \u2018emancipation of the dissonance\u2019 and that formalized the emergent complexity, would for a time define the language of the avant-garde. Musical complexity thus became synonymous with the notion of a progressive, future-oriented art.<\/p>\n
Kopp also points to the development of musical notation in the fifteenth century and the subsequent evolution of written scores as key to facilitating complex contrapuntal textures. Here, another twentieth-century revolution \u2013 John Cage\u2019s postwar experimentation with nonstandard, idiosyncratic systems of notation \u2013 would make everything even more complex.<\/p>\n
Minsk School<\/h2>\n
This issue of Wespennest<\/em> is a collaboration with the poet Dmitri Strozev\u2019s Minsk School, an ongoing anthology of nonconformist Belarusian writers of the 1970s and \u201980s. The issue contains Strozev\u2019s text \u2018Poetic Reportage\u2019. Owing to the current political climate in Belarus, Wespennest<\/em> is also co-publishing the fifth issue of Minsk School<\/em> out of Vienna.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n[ad_2]
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