Article:

Sokal Squared, Jordan Peterson und die rechten Affektbrücken von Siegen

To think and let think presents a calculated scandal that hinges not on ›free speech‹, but is situated within contemporary attention economies. Schönecker’s seminar took cues from ›metapolitical‹ strategies of the right that generate atten- tion and frame debates. The article sorts seminar and its speakers into the agitational network that is defined as the »Alternative Rechte«. This network organizes itself over the self-stylization as an endangered minority, oppressed by an allegedly ›leftist‹ mainstream. The Alternative Right sheds the marginalization of ›Others‹ for performances of their own ›oppressedness‹. Seminar and the ensuing debate provide the stage on which such affective productions of the right take place and generate connectivity. The article parallelizes the events of Siegen with the Sokal Squared Hoax, which produced similar »scenarios of oppression« – e.g. through Gender Studies – in the US in 2018. Reading of this academic mal- practice, and briefly analyzing the resistable rise of psychologist Jordan Peterson, I conclude that the Alternative Right produces ›events‹ to generate discursive climates in which critical humanities appear at once ›tyrannical‹ and ›ridiculous‹, and they themselves as ›victims‹. The Alternative Right does not defend »scholarly freedom«, but work against its foundations.