Stefan Krankenhagen

This article deals with the cultural-historical change of public self-presentation and construction of identity at the end of the 19th century with the examples of William F. Cody (“Buffalo Bill”) and Karl May. The impact of the various public, both real and virtual, stages, the change of self-representation as response to public reaction, and the interaction of public and private self-perception will be examined in particular with regard to the question how authenticity and illusion are negotiated individually and socially (within the media and publicly). The importance of physical presentation (as a sign of authenticity) and the increasing necessity to claim and proof (and thus to simulate) “reality” are particular objects of study. Both sample cases, within the specific cultural-historical context of their time, demonstrate change and diversification of public self-presentations which already display in their increasing virtuosity and plurality important aspects of modern mass mediality.

Popular culture, according to my thesis, has offered aesthetic responses to the excessive abundance of commodities and things since its historical emergence in the mid-19th century, particularly in the first half of the 20th century. Accordingly, this article attempts to describe specific qualities of popular things that represent conditions and consequences of mass culture which in turn stem from processes of medialization, individualization, and economization that have been intertwining since the late 19th century, making popular culture possible in the first place. In dealing with commodities in mass culture, as it will be shown exemplarily in a parallel reading of Georg Simmel and Laurel & Hardy, the history of the devaluation of mass culture is always also reflected. However, in the material effects of popular culture, a bodily- and proximity-oriented handling of the abundance of things could thus be observed, constituting the late modern subject rather than threatening it. To put it simply: Ifmass production and mass culture was and still is the challenge for the concept of bourgeoise culture, then popular and pop culture is the marketplace through which abundance turns into entertainment. In this sense, ChatGPT could also be understood as a reaction to and adaptation of the growing abundance, namely of scientific text production among others. As an experiment it will be argued that ChatGPT can be described as a specific answer, which turns quantities into qualities.

Die 2016 gegründete »Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift«, herausgegeben von der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, versteht sich als ein offenes Forum der kulturwissenschaftlichen Debatte, in dem historische wie gegenwartskulturelle The [...]