Lecture on "The resistance stagings of the 'Querdenken' movement"

The protests of the "Querdenken" (lateral thinking) movement already occupy a certain exceptional position within the recent history of protest in the Federal Republic. This becomes visible on the one hand in the dynamics of the observable radicalisation processes within this movement and the (non-)reactions of the state to it. From the perspective of movement research, the lecture will use the example of the nationwide large-scale demonstration on 7 November 2020 in Leipzig to characterise the movement as a collective movement and platform protest. In particular, the function of historical references and the retrospective identification of the "lateral thinking" movement will be asked about.

Greta Hartmann is a research associate at the Institute for Cultural Studies at the University of Leipzig. Since February 2019, she has been a research assistant in the BMBF joint project "The Contested Legacy of 1989". Alexander Leistner is a research associate at the Institute of Cultural Studies at the University of Leipzig. He is responsible for two research projects within the BMBF research network "The Contested Legacy of 1989".