RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Holy Hate and Political Organization in Johannes R. Becher’s <em>(CHCl</em>=<em>CH)<sub>3</sub>As (Levisite) oder Der einzig gerechte Krieg</em>
JF Monatshefte
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 491
OP 513
DO 10.3368/m.111.4.491
VO 111
IS 4
A1 Hertel, Jeffrey
YR 2019
UL http://mon.uwpress.org/content/111/4/491.abstract
AB This article explores the relationship between negative affect and political organization as portrayed in Johannes R. Becher’s critically-understudied (CHCl=CH)3As (Levisite) oder Der einzig gerechte Krieg (1926). This apocalyptic novel depicts a world wherein the only thing standing in the way of global annihilation by poison gas is a revolutionary uprising hastened along by the cultivation of negative affect. Becher’s literary deployment of hate as a tool of working-class emancipation hearkens to a genus of politically-relevant negative affect that eludes contemporary theoretical discussions of hate, where it is usually considered as it relates to right-wing extremism. Reading philosophical and literary texts from the German tradition, this study establishes a brief genealogy of progressive hate in the context of the workers’ movement between the 1840s and 1920s, arguing that the “holy hate” of the working class constitutes an affective functionalization of historical class consciousness that reached its literary apotheosis in Becher’s writing. (JH)