Gerd Schwerhoff

The text deals with the genre ‘pasquill’ from the 16th to the 18th century in the German speaking world. Two strands of tradition can be ideally distinguished, which only gradually merge with each other. Originally, as in other regions of Europe, the Roman figure of the shoemaker Pasquino is adapted, who comments on actual politics or famous persons in mocking, more or less literary dialogues. This figure appears in printed works from the middle of the 16th century, mostly written by Protestants. At about the same time, the term ‘pasquill’ began to become synonymous with the mostly handwritten, anonymous libel, which is now increasingly criminalized by the authorities. The article characterises the early modern pasquill as a very special medium of communication, which served not only for personal defamation but also for objective criticism.

This article aims to introduce the concept of „Invecticity“ as a new perspective for social and cultural studies. It understands phenomena of insult and debasement, of humiliation and exposure as – cross-cultural and epoch-spanning – basic operations of societal communication. Due to their disruptive, stabilising or dynamising effects on social order, invective communication have the potential to unite and shape societies. This article subsumes such phenomena under the term Invectivity. The term includes all aspects of communication (either verbal or non-verbal, oral or written, gestural or graphic) that are used to degrade, to hurt or to marginalize others. Manifestations and functions of the Invective are not systemised under strict patterns but medially, politically, socially and aesthetically contextualized depending on the diverse historical contexts and complex constellations they occur in. Thus, they can only be properly understood as performative events which develop through the interaction of ascription, response and follow-up communication as well as by means of the social, discursive and media conditions in which they arise.