Organised by Yvonne Albers, Research Area 1: "Competing Communities", and Moritz Neuffer (Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin).

Histories of political, intellectual, literary and aesthetic movements are often told through documents of their beginnings: Manifestos, declarations, and programs testify to what groups, avant-gardes or collectives stand for, what they want to achieve, and what they oppose. The importance of 'beginnings' and the practices and narratives they entail have been emphasised in cultural theory and historiography alike: "A beginning not only creates but is its own method because it has intention," Edward Said wrote in his study Beginnings: Intention and Method in 1975, in which he theorised forms of beginnings in modern literature.

Yet, in contrast to the clarity of beginnings, endings seem much harder to grasp. This is not least due to the fact that the late and final stages of political-intellectual projects are often underdocumented, as many avant-gardes and collectives in history disperse, fade out, or lose their social and intellectual coherence gradually. Studies on endings, understood as a set of intentional practices, politics, or—with Said—"methods," are thus rare to find. One example has been given by French sociologist René Lourau, who in 1980 collected final documents from a variety of groups for his book on the Autodissolution des avant-gardes: from Dada to the Situationists, from the Sex Pistols to numerous journals and magazines, Lourau tried to show how and to what purpose endings were narrated, justified, and communicated. For the sociologist, manifestations of self-dissolution always combine analytical and performative dimensions, describing and enacting endings at the same time.

Starting from such observations, the workshop focuses on concrete textual and medial representations of endings in modern cultural and intellectual history. Our working hypothesis is that materialised representations of endings give expression to temporal experiences of individuals and collectives, shedding light on the self-given interpretations of their own past, present, or future afterlives. Hence, the workshop aims to transfer Edward Said’s questions on beginning—on what is special about beginning as an activity or a moment or a place—to its opposite, asking how we can reconstruct endings, theorise them and read them as interventions into the present.

Programme

Thursday, 10 October

14:00–14:30

Yvonne Albers (Freie Universität Berlin/EXC 2020) & Moritz Neuffer (ZfL Berlin): "Il faut savoir terminer." On Autodissolutions

14:30–16:00

Julia Soytek (Universität Hamburg): "Invest Your Money in Dada!" Dadaist Endings between Dissolution and Durability

Johanne Mohs (Technische Universität Berlin): Never-ending Story? Oulipo and the End of its Offshoot ALAMO

Moderation: Patrick Eiden-Offe (ZfL Berlin)

16:30–18:00

Eric-John Russell (University of Potsdam): "The Situationist International spoke, and history confirmed it"

Morten Paul (Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen, KWI): We must get rid of Freudo-Marxism”. Ends of the Repressive Hypothesis, ca. 1976

Moderation: Yvonne Albers (Freie Universität Berlin/EXC 2020)

18:30–19:45

Kate Eichhorn (Emmerson College, Boston): Dispatches from the After-Revolution (Keynote)

Moderation: Moritz Neuffer (ZfL Berlin)

Friday, 11 October

9:30–11:00

Gregory Jones-Katz (Goethe University Frankfurt): Imagined Deaths of Theory in America

Simon Godart (Freie Universität Berlin/EXC 2020): On the End of Poetik & Hermeneutik

Moderation: Eva Geulen (ZfL)

11:15–12:45

Ivana Perica (ZfL Berlin): "No end, but a new beginning": Oto Bihalji-Merin as Editor of a State-Representative Art Magazine in Post-War Yugoslavia

Mariam Elashmawy (Freie Universität Berlin): A Stillborn Relaunch: Narrating al-Ma'rifa and its Endings

Moderation: Hanan Natour (EXC 2020/FU Berlin)

14:00–15:30

Anouk Luhn (Freie Universität Berlin/EXC 2020): Ending Change

Julian Klinner (University of Tübingen): "Daily life has grown up". Der Alltag and its Final Issue

Moderation: Hagen Verleger (Kiel/Berlin)

15:30–16:00

Wrap-Up & Proceedings