“What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. ”

(Götzen-Dämmerung)

I. Inequities

Paul Stephan: I would like to start our exchange with Nietzsche and Taylor Swift with a kind of small, self-written aphorism that reads: “You are old when you only notice mass pop cultural phenomena after several years of delay.” I myself, as I must admit, only heard anything about her after a delay of maybe a good ten years in the course of the massive hustle and bustle surrounding her Eras tour. How are you doing?

ES: When she started to become famous, I was still relatively young and I knew her, but it has already passed me by. I never really listened to their songs and saw them more as a marginal figure. She was at the time

Not as big as it is now. I think she had a revival then, that was maybe in 2019 or 2020, when I heard about her, but I was already too old for that. This means that at no point was she really a particularly relevant figure for me and it is therefore all the more exciting to see that she has now become such a big phenomenon.

HH: My connection to her is also more from outside, but there is a certain family background: At some point I talked to my sister about what my two nieces do and like. That was maybe 2019 or 2020 when my sister said that they were very big Taylor Swift fans and I actually asked: “Who is that? “My sister was really mad at me that I didn't know that. She explained Swift's great importance to me, and also praised her feminism. This fantasy may have reached its peak during the Eras tour. That's when my sister and her daughters somehow managed to get tickets to see Swift in Edinburgh, where my family and I happened to be at that time. We didn't see Swift, but the city was jam-packed with the Swifties. Because you have to know that Swift not only plays a concert in a city, as usual, but always three or even more in a row, and there were really a lot of Swifties out and about, often with their cowboy hats, that is one of their trademarks. And in line with popular belief, around 80 to 90% of them were women, mostly under 30 — there are simply a few men who go for Taylor Swift and that is perhaps part of this phenomenon.

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II. Who is Taylor Swift?

PS: Maybe we should explain the background a bit in case some of our readers aren't that popular culture buff either. You've already introduced the term “Swiftie,” which Swift fans use to describe themselves. She herself is an American pop singer who originally comes from the country music sector, but has largely broken away from these origins and now simply makes pop.

HH: Your very first album, Taylor Swift, published in 2006. Her breakthrough into a megastar took place around 2018.

PS: She is now in her mid-30s and has just started her career very early. Even as a child, she was trained for this through dance lessons or participation in appropriate competitions. And that has led to success: She is now competing with greats like Madonna for the rank of most successful pop singer of all time and is also very successful in business. She is a billionaire and gives concerts all over the world, has an incredibly huge fan base — the Swifties — has also made various films and much more.

ES: Which films has she acted in?

PS: We've already talked about this Eras tour, which caused a lot of sensation. For me, it felt like nothing else was being talked about on the radio during this time. That was in the summer of 2024, it was there in Central Europe, where it was discussed very broadly. Overall, the tour was the most economically successful tour of all time — and she even made a movie of her concert, which was also very successful. But there is also, for example, a documentary biopic about her life — Miss Americana (2020) — and she has also worked on several other films.

HH: Yes, there are several films and documentaries that she has often directed herself. She really cares about control. Like Elon Musk, for example, she is often accused of being obsessed with steering and defining the narrative about her down to minute detail. And what stands out is also the sheer level of productivity. There is a huge production machine around them that wants to produce more and more cultural goods and that has tremendous self-dynamism. The Eras tour, for example, lasted two years and achieved a turnover of around 2 billion dollars. By way of comparison, the much older Paul McCartney has only recently reached a total net worth of one billion dollars. It is simply a gigantic device that, once set in motion, continues to run.

ES: It simply has something universal, such an omnipresence, which has also resulted very strongly from this marketing — if that term isn't almost an understatement. She is a brand, she has managed to turn herself as a figure and everything she stands for into a brand, which is reflected in different cultural sectors. Her music, her films — that's something of a self-referential system.

PS: Yes, a kind of parallel world. There is just this Swiftie culture, where she is referred to as “the Queen” and is sometimes worshipped as a kind of goddess. This certainly takes on religious features. There are young people who go into debt to go to all their concerts — and the tickets for them aren't exactly cheap, you have to start with at least €300.¹ There are people who actually go to all three concerts when they play in a city. Well, there is already a hype that really describes a whole new quality in pop culture. There have always been crazy fans, but the fact that it is so massive and goes so deep that they really adore and idolize people so much is something new. And it also affects all spheres: There are politicians who either strongly distinguish themselves from it or praise it to the skies — and that doesn't even stop at philosophy. So I actually only did very brief and superficial research before this conversation and have already come across a whole flood of philosophical publications of varying quality.² What struck me: There, too, the train clearly goes into the apologetic table. So it is really very difficult to find critical philosophical analyses of her; the basic tenor is that her texts are so profound, she is even referred to as a philosopher herself.³ As you can see, the hype is really all-encompassing — maybe we could deviate a bit from our colleagues and set a different tone.

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III. Understanding the hype

ES: What I find exciting is the way this hype was created and on which logic it is based. Because she is very uplifted, declared a kind of “goddess” — and at the same time, admiration for her is based on her “authenticity.” She is a real person, understandable to everyone and she fights human battles. Just think of the very exciting conflict over the copyrights to her albums, which began around 2019 — although one cannot ignore the fact that she was already very wealthy at this point in time and has very little to do with the everyday struggles of the masses. So I find it interesting to see how this image of the accessible, “authentic” figure has brought her back to a new level at which she can actually no longer be accessible, because not everyone on such a religious level can be deified, for that you need a unique selling point — which in turn is authenticity. It's a paradox — it doesn't even surprise me, but above all fascinates me.

PS: I would even go so far as to say that anyone who understands our time, that is, wants to think about it, wants to say how Hegel formulated the mission of philosophy⁴ He must actually understand Taylor Swift.

ES: With such a specific example as Swift, you can really see the presence of the historical process in society. In all their contradictions, if you want to stay with Hegel.

HH: What do you mean by that exactly?

ES: For example, that one of the reasons why she is adored is precisely her “down-to-earth attitude.” Historically speaking, gods and goddesses were just not down to earth; perhaps fallible, but still exalted, they were heroic, not earthly, not human. With Taylor Swift, it's exactly the other way around: The reason why she almost has this status of a “superman” is because you say “Oh, but she is real,” you're dealing with a “real person,” she's kind of “real,” “authentic,” “comprehensible,” “grounded.” That is certainly a contradiction. Quite apart from that, as a billionaire, she is not confronted with the same reality as billions of people in the world; she is not a “normal person” — that would be a second contradiction. And you could go on and on. We can also address the musical quality, I think there is another contradiction.

PS: For me, the basic contradiction, or even the puzzle, that she gives me is the stark contradiction between what she is — the objectively assessable quality of her works and her performance — and what she seems — i.e. how blatantly she is hyped by her fans and the general public. So I'm not saying that she can't do anything, she can definitely sing much better than most of us and much more. But it is still the case when you look at the musical structure of her songs, for example, and she really tries to understand music theory, quickly realizes that even by pop standards, it is a very monotonous and very simple harmony that underlies these songs. For a good three quarters of her songs, she uses exactly the same worn out and trivial chord schemes and you can really layer her songs on top of each other and play them synchronously without being too noticeable.⁵ And even when it comes to the lyrics, whose “special depth” is praised by many, I would say that they are actually not very deep and creative even by pop standards. She actually only uses very few metaphors or any form of mystery — on the contrary, her principle is simply to say what she wants to say, i.e. not to express her message in a big rhetorical way. And the few metaphors she uses are also very worn out. Or am I missing something?

HH: So I pay particular attention to the lyrics, because musically speaking, their songs are really pretty boring. You often don't know whether there is a drum machine running in the background or a drummer playing. Drum machines can also create brilliant music, of course, but that doesn't happen with them. With the lyrics, especially in her more recent albums, she certainly tries to incorporate elements of “poetry” and “originality,” but the only thing that comes to mind is the philosophical term “floating signifiers,” the free-floating meaning carriers without meaning.⁶ I'm thinking about the song The Tortured Poets Department from their latest album, which has the same name. There is a section where she says:

I laughed in your face and said: “You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith, This ain't the Chelsea Hotel, we're modern idiots. ”⁷

Why do the celebrated yet hermetic Welsh author Dylan Thomas (1914—1953) and the American punk musician and author Patti Smith (born 1946) even appear in the song? I can't imagine Taylor Swift really being interested in these things; these empty signifiers simply serve to represent something “intellectual,” “bohemian.”

PS: I think that's why it's simply very post-modern. As early as the mid-80s, cultural theorist Frederic Jameson, for example, described this permanent quotation without a deeper meaning as a basic characteristic of postmodernism; he speaks of “pastiche.”⁸ Especially when you watch her music videos — which, you have to admit, are very elaborately made — they are full of allusions, such as when she imitates Lady Gaga. These are all forms of pastiche, not satire, for example. You don't know exactly what she actually means by that — but it is precisely these allusions that are often cited as proof of her “profundity.” Well, I would really like to say it so polemically: This entire philosophical and also general humanities discourse about Taylor Swift is really the complete surrender of the critical spirit to what exists — as if the quality of works of art has something to do with any allusions; as if the poems by Shakespeare, for example, were simply great for the reason that they were a collage of references of some kind.

ES: I'd like to come back to the musicality aspect again. What I would look at critically would not be for an artist to write a musically simple song. There are many songs that only use the three to four skin chords that are very successful, that you can enjoy. I don't think anyone would dispute that. The problem with Swift — and others too — is that it's just That is, it doesn't go beyond that. You have a product that consists of four chords and builds your entire musical career on it. After all, music is a unique form of art, a form of aesthetic processing of social conditions that tries to express something that is connected with the environment. Behind this is a technique, skills, that you experiment, that you bring in a certain complexity. Music is much more than just a song that is then recycled over and over again. When you build an entire work on it, it crumbles in your hands and makes it unbelievable that so much success can be achieved as a result. The fact that it is, of course, a commercial success is easy to analyze again, i.e. the question of why, if it is relatively primitive and repetitive in terms of musical complexity, why is it still such a huge success: What is the aspect of it that can generate such gigantic masses, some of which get into debt in order to go to a concert? I'd rather look at that, wouldn't per se On the simplicity of a song, because that's not the point. And the same goes for the lyrics. What remains is a form of commodity that is characterized primarily by quantity and not by its qualitative substance.

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IV. A “mouthpiece”⁹ of the cultural struggle

HH: Perhaps it is the case that at least one contradiction among the several that you have identified, Estella, can be resolved: For the fans, it is primarily about the success or the skill of the production. She is regarded as down-to-earth, but you can't even speak of a real down-to-earth attitude. I don't know her biography very well, but she is said to have grown up in a relatively wealthy family in the countryside. For example, there is an early video from 2006 (link), when she was 16, where she performs at the well-known “Whisky a Go Go” club in Hollywood, and there she plays a few country songs on the guitar, with a fiddle and so on in the backing band: Nothing amazing, and yet it all sounds much more real, even more authentic than what came after that. It all still looks a bit “real.” Estella, you mentioned earlier that it is a product of the cultural industry — but perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is a product that produces itself. It has its own means of production — which very few of us do, you could envy it for it.

PS: I think you have already added a very important aspect with the “down-to-earth” or perceived “authenticity”, which is also often mentioned when you look at the discourse around them and what their fans also say. Because there is also a myth — which is certainly not a complete myth — that she writes her songs herself and so on. But it's also the case again that people who know their way around¹⁰ Say that if she would simply release her songs based on her chord and melody ideas, no one would like it; they are already well done by professional producers who then somehow “save” the song with some original rhythmic ideas or through the instrumentation. But I think that the more important aspect is actually the political orientation that she stands for or at least seems to stand for, i.e. that she is so clearly in favour of a particular form of wokeness in this cultural struggle, which is currently simmering in the USA in particular. Excitingly enough, this is not all that present in their song, apart from a few exceptions, but all the more so in their production on social media and the like. She is currently considered one of the most important champions by many young women, perhaps even: which The most important champion of today's feminism is perceived as a kind of anti-Trump or anti-Musk. It also seems very important to me for their fans that, with their fantasy, they express their affiliation to a certain political ideology and, as a result, to a certain lifestyle, i.e. to a woken lifestyle, which in turn almost includes being a swiftie.

ES: When I look at Taylor Swift in the more general cultural struggle, she strongly embodies this one side that you have just mentioned, i.e. this liberal, woke — which I mean not as a polemical catchword but as an analytical term. On the other hand, you have what you call the “reactionary conservative right,” i.e. Andrew Tate, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, etc. There is a clear cultural divide and I think it strongly represents what I would call “liberal feminism.” In principle, I criticize it as a bourgeois product. He represents an understanding of equality, which is about the fact that women, to put it casually, should now also become CEOs and can then oppress them in the same way as men — that is the narrative. That is the appropriation of feminism for class struggle from above. It is relatively self-evident that this does not create actual emancipation from or an overcoming of the patriarchal system. That's why I don't understand how you can regard her as such an icon of feminism — not even so much from Taylor Swift's perspective, we can't really know her, except perhaps from the few interviews that remain on a relatively superficial level. I don't want to negate the fact that she experiences sexism, but it doesn't go to the basis of the structural inequality system. In any case, I can rarely understand how her fans or not even her fans, but anyone who deals with it in any way, can claim in all seriousness that she is the pioneer of emancipatory feminism. And that brings us back to the level of material conditions. She is simply a billionaire and is not one of the billions of women workers. Both feminist struggles cannot be equated. In doing so, you take away its substance from the whole movement and reduce it to questions of recognition, but you can't stop there. Perhaps she is also experiencing or has experienced violence; you shouldn't push that aside. But when she is then elevated to a feminist icon, but not so many other figures whose victims are much greater, whose struggles are based so much more on the material basis, I cannot understand that, I find that undeserved. Instead, we should focus on the social struggles that take place in the middle of everyday life, on the streets.

PS: In the preliminary discussion, you used a very appropriate term for this, namely you spoke of Girlboss feminism spoken. A term that I did not know before, but which sums up very well in one word what form of feminism it actually stands for.

ES: As we've already talked about this, she has created a very successful business model, i.e. in a capitalist logic, you could of course say that she has achieved a certain form of equality — but beyond that, the question of course is: Do you want to stop with such an understanding of feminism? And beyond that: What kind of feminist work does she do in terms of content? Her lyrics are often about her ex-boyfriends or the fact that she herself is the problem. That is a romanticization of failed relationships. Where is the feminist message there? If you produce songs that indicate how independent you are from men, but these songs actually only talk about men, then that is inherently inconclusive. Nothing against breakup albums, but the way Swift does it doesn't actually amount to the fact that it leads to emancipation from exactly these relationship structures that are patriarchal.

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V. Suffering and Love

HH: I would like to take this opportunity to mention that among the many good links Paul has sent us in advance, there is one that, in a sense, reflects your words and who is not so apologetic. I mean the article by Mary Harrington from UnHerd (link). The headline, translated into German, reads: “The dark truth about Taylor Swift. Too many young women are longing for extinction.” That is an interesting thesis. And it is Swift's tragic right now Love songs, mostly about the ex-boyfriends who run best. Harrington speaks of a “kamikaze mysticism”; psychologically speaking, it is almost in the direction of self-harm. It's pretty weird and I wasn't so aware before that it could actually revolve around it. What does that say when so many young women are in the mood for songs that, to put it less romantically, are about bad relationships, about relationships that end badly? What is it about — also with regard to this feminism, which may not be one?

ES: Yes, it is a feminism that doesn't really demand anything and is therefore devoid of substance. In the 2010s, there was also the phenomenon of Tumblr girls.¹¹ Back then, this was related to Lana Del Rey, who has certain similarities to Swift in this regard. In any case, this image of the tragic, sad “girl” was romanticized and glorified. It served as an alternative to the popular American girl, according to the motto: “I'm not like that, I'm struggling with life and suffering from world pain.” This was then really often accompanied by self-harm and it was then played down very heavily and almost became a trend, it became coolthat you hurt yourself — and that's all based on a narrative of tragedy: “No one really understands me.” Swift builds on this to a certain extent. There is something slightly nihilistic about her becoming a drama queen and says “It's me, hi, I'm the problem.”¹² or “You look like my next mistake”¹³. She already knows that this person is not good for her and yet she gets involved. There is little feminist integrity in it for me, then you can't actually claim feminism for them if you recognize these mechanisms and at the same time say: “Yes, I still want that. ”

PS: Yes, according to my subjective impression, this theme or the prevailing mood that we were talking about is really at least actually in three quarters of their songs The main aspect. So failed relationships with “boyfriends.” So there is also a certain monotony on the content level.

ES: Based on a spectacle of emotion, I'd say. So the excitement of falling in love and then the failure of the relationship that this becomes such a big spectacle is perhaps the reason why it is so dragging on for many.

HH: You call this a “spectacle of emotions” because the fans enjoy watching it, empathizing without really having to experience it themselves, right? It remains an interesting circle of contradictions. We actually experience them as absolutely inauthentic, but it is still possible that so many fans are living these relationships after all, because otherwise where does this great comprehensibility come from?

ES: Yes, maybe the basis for this is simply human emotion and interpersonal relationships. But perhaps the opposite is also true. After all, when it comes to a spectacle, it's often the case that you just find it exciting because you're not experiencing it yourself. In soap operas, for example, even the wildest things happen that are very unlikely or even impossible in reality. The pleasure or desire for it comes precisely from the fact that this extremely hyperstimulant exists, i.e. a superlative. These songs, which process this aspect of the relationship drama over and over again — or it is actually not even a processing, it is simply brought to the table very openly over and over again — give me the feeling that they always have something saturated and highly frequented. You can really get yourself into an emotion there. Although the interesting thing is that, statistically speaking, the younger generation has much fewer romantic relationships, there is a clear trend towards a decline in social and sexual relationships. Perhaps there is a trend — but that is now very speculative — that people do not experience such drama in their actual lives, but in Swift's music instead. You have the desire for it and this is a fantastic experience.

PS: Isn't Swift's conventionality also reflected in the fact that she actually only revisits the topics of stereotypical “women's literature” or “women's films” — I'm thinking of Rosamunde Pilcher or Hedwig Courths-Mahler, for example — who often follows exactly this plot, that a woman falls in love with a man who is actually not good to her and then goes through a very exciting and heartwarming development with him?

ES: Yes, although Swift shows a quality, because for her, it is always linked to feminist empowerment. It is not like classic love stories that follow a specific plot, a conservative plot that has been known for decades, but it is about being labelled as “feminist” in one way or another. And I personally find that dangerous because feminism, which was and is historically a revolutionary practice, is being appropriated for a market, i.e. it simply becomes a commodity. A political term is depoliticized, it gets its breath out; it is made compatible with what you were talking about.

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VI. Well-portioned eroticism

PS: Another very important aspect seems to me to be eroticism. We've already talked about the fact that we're dealing with music whose target group is primarily young women and perhaps homosexual men — that's the stereotype anyway, but we've already seen that it doesn't completely contradict reality, even though there are, of course, heterosexual male Swifties on the sidelines. And that brings me exactly to the aspect of eroticism. To get a bit personal: What irritated me when I saw her picture for the first time was that she is such a blatant pop star but doesn't seem very erotic to me personally. Well, she is definitely a beautiful woman, but it is important to understand that beauty and eroticism are not the same thing, sometimes even mutually exclusive. So there are — and I think Swift is one of them — that are almost “too beautiful.” So they definitely look attractive, but not erotic — which is definitely very unusual for a pop star. I then asked myself whether this was only due to my subjective taste, but I quickly realized that this was not the case. That is definitely a topic that is discussed very often.¹⁴ In fact, there are also objective criteria for eroticism. There are simply women who are considered erotic by almost all men, and other women are not, that is quite obvious. And Swift is simply not considered erotic by many men.

But at this point I've made another discovery and I have to admit that various of her songs actually made me think, because she also addresses this in various songs herself. She certainly shows herself in erotic poses there — but at the same time makes it a topic that she is just playing a role to please a man. I found it interesting how simple these methods actually are, with which a woman can present herself as erotic. Of course, this has a lot to do with clothing — such as clothing that highlights the breasts — or certain ways of looking at you. I actually found these videos a bit instructive. And that's when I would see a new quality in her, that it's just a pop star who really doesn't rely on eroticism anymore. And that has nothing to do with her appearance, but with her nature, i.e. that she makes it clear that eroticism is essentially the product of a particular performance and that she is perhaps really the first successful female pop star to refrain from this type of performance. I find that remarkable.

HH: I can understand your statements — although that's just eine Perspective is. But yes, if you asked 1,000 straight men: “Who is more sexually attractive, Madonna in the 80s or Taylor Swift? “, then this would simply not be a competition, then 950 of them would vote for Madonna. And that is simply because it was part of Madonna's self-production right from the start: She knew that she was sexually attractive to many men and effectively exploited this as part of her production and art production. I find that absolutely legitimate. And Swift didn't want to go that route. From every perspective, from any sexual orientation, it looks good. She is, in Paul's words, “beautiful.” But she doesn't want to market herself sexually — which is also absolutely legitimate, but is perhaps only noticeable because up to now this has been more of an exception in the pop industry for women who have sold a lot. But it's actually true: In certain videos, she presents herself in this stereotypical cliché way — but in doing so, she conveys a very different message than most women in the pop industry have so far.

ES: I think the criterion of eroticism or sex appeal was the decisive factor when it came to female celebrities until the early 2000s. And that was also a marketing criterion. But I think that there has been a change in the narrative and that this is no longer the only decisive factor for women's careers, to be the object of desire for heterosexual men. I would say that now we are dealing with a completely different discourse, now it is primarily about the liberal feminism that it represents. But what I find exciting is that it comes down to something similar in practice. It's not like she only appears fully clothed now and you can't see a piece of skin. Billie Eilish, for example, saw such an explicit refusal much more in comparison at the beginning of her career. But when Swift does that, when she shows herself that way, she does it based on a completely different narrative, then she does it as self-empowerment: “Nobody tells me how to dress.” This moment is woven into the discourse anew. But I can't imagine that Swift is not aware that this, of course, still includes the aspect of male desire. Because what is perceived as erotic as sexy is, in our given reality, strongly determined by a masculine definition of desire, you can't just release yourself just as much as the rest of the world knows that this is of course appealing to heterosexual men.

PS: There is one song in particular where what I mean is very clear Look what you made do.¹⁵ This is also another form of pastiche. All sorts of male fantasies are portrayed in a video. I think that was really successful. There is, of course, a certain ambiguity; I think it succeeded for two reasons, so to speak. Once I found it successful as a man because I find it really erotic. But I also find it successful as a philosopher, as it were, because it was very instructive, because it made me understand a great deal about the nature of erotic staging. It's not just about lightweight or absent clothing — that's how Swift is almost permanent. But that is not the point, it is indirectly very, very clear in the video. She could also undress completely naked, but it wouldn't necessarily be erotic without the appropriate gestures. For example, it also has a lot to do with the camera, where it focuses, how the woman looks at the camera. In this video, for example, I noticed that looking directly at the camera, combined with appropriate clothing, looks very erotic. Or even other camera settings. And it is, of course, not least about fantasies and scenarios that are hinted at; eroticism is something mental, not just a physical phenomenon. You could now analyse that for hours. I think that this is definitely a step forward that a new type of woman is emerging, I definitely think that is not bad, even though she picks me up much less as a private person than any Madonna songs that actually appeal to me a lot.

ES: When the lyrics read “Look what you made me do,” then I ask myself: What is the feminist message there? Of course, a woman is not responsible for the patriarchal structures into which she was born. But this line of text does imply that you deny any responsibility. This once again glorifies passivity. After all, it also has a certain form of agency power. Instead, however, she says “Look what you've brought me to” — without, despite realizing it, changing anything about it. Or how is the message of the song to be understood?

PS: Yes, that's the message. You almost forced me, i.e. you as “The Man” — there is also this video where she portrays herself as a “typical man” as a counterpart (link) — that I have to play all these roles just to please you. Well, I don't think the message is that profound at all, you can certainly do that these days in the bravo Read if they still exist. Of course: This video has an ambiguity, it definitely picks up heterosexual men for now with the various scenes that are shown there. But at the same time, it has certainly succeeded in questioning me and other men in the sense that it can also have an effect on me and other men: What do I actually find erotic? Am I not actually very manipulable? At the same time, she's already doing things differently in her other videos because she doesn't use exactly these gestures and codes. I would highlight that.

HH: I think that 70 to 80% of Swift's fan base actually consists of women. Most of these women must desire her in some way. I think that's part of this kind of fanship, whether you define it as sexual desire or as another kind, they want a piece of it, so to speak. I wonder whether this massive female desire directed at Taylor Swift could even contribute to a redefinition of eroticism in the medium or long term; that it is no longer defined so one-sidedly by male desire.

On the subject of desire, I Look What You Made Me Do looked at it and compared it with Nobody No CrimeWhat I know better. These two songs have similar motives. A love triangle is told, including cheating and so on. And it ends, unsaid, with the murder of a woman of a man. It's a kind of living revenge fantasy. That is actually the same as what is actually in Look What You Made Me Do goes: That she finally takes revenge on her ex-boyfriends and can live out who she actually is. And that is not a feminist motive, because everything continues to revolve around these men. From Swift's perspective, another type of feminism is hardly possible either, because it has no connection to the everyday struggles of 95 to 99% of women on this planet and simply cannot have because of the billions it has accumulated.

ES: Perhaps we should differentiate between desire and eroticism. I think straight women's feminine desire regarding Swift has a lot to do with identification. Freud differentiates between these basic types of desire: sexual and identifical. In this sense, it is already an authorization. I can also recognize feminism when you recognize your own autonomy or patriarchal repression. Perhaps this is the first basal step on the path of liberation. This is where identification takes place in order to find a vocabulary for it in the first place and to make it intelligible.

Another aspect is that she also has a very large queer fan base. And there is definitely a desire, even among gay men, but I don't know how erotic it is or whether it's more about identification or representation. In particular, you have a motif of “angry but nice” or even the term “wholesome”, which can barely be translated into German — healthy, sincere, lovable. This “wholesome” character is just popular, but it's not necessarily about eroticism. Nevertheless, it will certainly become an erotic object for many, not just for heterosexual men.

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VII. Nietzscheanism for the People

PS: But the paradox lies precisely in the fact that it is still heard and well found by all these “normal women” (nurses, nurses, cashiers, etc.). I think that in order to understand this, such a Marxist understanding has its limits. But that is precisely the peculiarity of the ideology of our time, that people are really completely steeped in and firmly convinced of an ideology that does not suit their material living situation at all. In order to understand the paradox, or even stronger: absurdity, you certainly have to draw on other theorists, such as Freud, whom you have already mentioned, in order to understand this specific attractiveness of the “leader figure,” as he described in Crowd psychology and ego analysis describes. Or even Nietzsche. What does Taylor Swift have to do with Nietzsche?

HH: What strikes me time and again in my very unsystematic way of reading Nietzsche is his deep hatred of what will later be referred to as “mass culture.” I don't share this hate, but I'm impressed by how tough it is and how much Nietzsche expresses himself in it. Nietzsche's hatred of newspaper readers and especially newspaper readers is very well known: “Of course, there are enough stupid women's friends [...] [,] who want to bring the woman down to 'general education, 'probably even to read newspapers and politicize. ”¹⁶ So if people read newspapers at all, especially women, then the mail goes off for Nietzsche, that doesn't work at all. What he can't bear is the idea that if 10,000 people have read the same newspaper articles, they will think and feel roughly the same way about a particular topic at that moment.¹⁷ And it's not just about 10,000 people, but maybe 50,000 or 100,000 people or more. And to get to the present tense, it's now about millions of people who listen to a Swift song and then have roughly the same emotional experience. Because these songs do not allow for a wide range of feelings, the affective reaction they are supposed to evoke is relatively simple. And this hatred of mass culture is not on the margins of Nietzsche's work, but right at the center.

ES: Well, I would defend Marx because I think that the Marxist concept of ideology can cover this aspect that you mentioned quite well. With Nietzsche, I find that a bit difficult. But I believe that one could criticize her position in the cultural struggle with Nietzsche — not only among her but also her opponents — with the help of concepts of resentment and slave morality. But at the same time I ask myself to what extent Nietzsche is a good choice as an anti-feminist. If I disregard this aspect and simply look at what remains for Taylor Swift's analysis, you can build on Nietzsche's analysis of mass culture that modernity is creating new gods for itself. You think that you have left Christianity behind, but as a supposedly atheistic society, you no longer understand that you create new deifications of your own, towards which you also place yourself in a new relationship of dependence. Perhaps this perspective helps to understand how there is a form of control again, that people want their own submission; that is, the problem of voluntary submission.

PS: Yes, Taylor Swift is an expression of our time in the sense that, speaking from a Nietzschean perspective, there is obviously a stark absence of meaning and orientation figures, but at the same time also a strong desire to be fascinated or carried along by some leading figures. You can really see that on both sides of this cultural struggle, including Trump or Musk, for example, that there is a very comparable cult of personality there. I find this exciting and, in turn, fascinating, but also unsettling and frightening at the same time. So I'm not so afraid of this specific fan culture for now, it is also quite likeable compared to other fan cultures — but this fundamental willingness to submit to authoritarian leaders and structures... Sure, Taylor Swift embodies a very gentle and indirect authority, she is also, fortunately perhaps, not a political leader, that looks completely different with the two men I've mentioned and that's when it gets really dangerous, frightening and threatening. But there is a fundamental willingness on both sides to make this, to speak with Kierkegaard, “leap into faith,” to practice this dedication and fascination and to find in it a form of freedom — which is, of course, complete pseudo-freedom, the opposite of freedom — that seems to me to be a disturbing expression of the blatant irrationality of our era, which arouses serious fears. In this respect, I would say that Taylor Swift is often portrayed as a great source of hope. But if it is really our biggest hope, perhaps our only hope, then we are really living in a very hopeless time.

ES: Nihilism is also a good bullet point. The tendency towards musical, stylistic and thematic repetition, that little new substance is being created there, as an expression of a nihilism that can actually no longer imagine anything for the future.

PS: I also came across a very short but interesting YouTube video, where it is almost understood as the embodiment of the “last person” (link). In truth, she is perhaps only an appearance of an “overwoman,” but rather an expression of profound nihilism. But what makes this nihilism even more difficult to understand or even more difficult: To whom Swift, which some colleagues like to refer to in order to substantiate her “profundity,”¹⁸ Nietzsche also alludes to or at least seems to allude to again and again. It's about that famous phrase “What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.” I'm even on two songs — Cruel Summer and Cassandra — in which she quotes him, varying slightly in each case; which is of course also remarkable that she apparently came across this sentence and then immediately muddled it into two song lyrics. And she was awarded a prize and also quoted this sentence in her acceptance speech, but without mentioning the name Nietzsche (link). I think that this sentence as a motto of their own self-image and that of their fan base is actually very central in the sense of: “We are all women and queer people who have had a very difficult time, but who come out stronger and look forward to these various traumas and so on that we have been exposed to. ”¹⁹ This kind of “Nietzscheanism for the people”²⁰ Nietzsche certainly wouldn't have liked it, but for now I think it's good or at least better than other ways of dealing with such experiences. But of course, this attitude remains abbreviated because it remains completely stuck in this neoliberal thinking of individual self-empowerment, but yet in certain situations of “oppression” — or in any case: discrimination — it seems to me to open up a certain leeway to be able to deal with it, even though this does not now reveal a larger social perspective and thus ultimately fails. Although I have the assumption that Swift is not actually referring to Nietzsche with this quote, but to a song by a colleague called Kelly Clarkson, which was released back in 2011. His first chorus line is exactly “What doesn't kill you makes you stronger” (link). In any case, I believe that it is Clarkson's and not Swift's credit to have brought this saying so heavily into today's pop culture. I also listened to this song by Clarkson and that once again made me vividly aware of the paradox we were talking about. Well, I found him really strong, especially because of her strong voice. Music experts often say that Swift's voice is actually quite average, at least not particularly powerful.²¹ So this is really a song that has power, carried by a powerful female voice with a great deep response; really an objectively better pop song in every respect, especially since in the following line of the chorus, Nietzsche is quoted again on a very profound level, namely with “Just me, myself and I” the beginning of Ecce homo (link). Well, he is really also very Nietzschean, both in terms of lyrics and music. I find it remarkable and sad that Clarkson, even though she is also very successful, is in the second row compared to Swift.

HH: Where in Cassandra There are also two modified Nietzsche quotes in a row from 2024, which indicates that she deliberately quoted Nietzsche there. It initially says, “What doesn't kill you makes you aware”²² — an interesting shift compared to the original — and it's called directly, interestingly enough again on Ecce homo alluding to the subtitle of the book: “What happens if it becomes who you are? ”²³ Although this is also a free-floating carrier of meaning, I would say. But otherwise I agree with you, Paul: If Swift was the only hope, then it would actually look really bad — but I don't think she is. But we will probably have to find out at another opportunity who could be hopefuls instead.

ES: However, it is also due to Nietzsche's own aphoristic writing style to a certain extent that individual sentences can be used phrasewise in this way. And sometimes you can see a lot in an aphorism and sometimes very little — that depends not least on what you make of it.

Last but not least, who I wanted to bring into the game as an alternative to Swift is Mexican singer Natalia Lafourcade. In my opinion, it shares a lot with Nietzsche's philosophy of life, even though it doesn't quote him. In her music, she gets more out of it than Swift, especially when it comes to the topic of separation that Lafourcade often deals with. For example, she has a song that starts with the line: “I thank death for teaching me life” (link). It is not about natural death as a factual phenomenon, but the many small dying processes that pervade life; that something dies at every stage and that you learn something from it for life. I see a lot more Nietzsche in there. That would be my final word: You also make it much more substantial than Taylor Swift.

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Source of the article image template: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taylor_Swift_%286966830273%29.jpg

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footnotes

1: Note: When buying directly, the cards are sometimes cheaper, but you usually have to buy them on the secondary market, where they cost significantly more (see e.g. this report).

2: See, for example this series of articles, this item about their “authenticity,” this anthology, which is only about their practice of re-recording old songs, this anthology and those. For a German-language article, cf. this.

3: Cf. this Article by Susan Andrews, this by Jessica Flanigan and this by Catherine M. Robb (unabridged version).

4: See the introduction to Principles of the Philosophy of Law (works Vol. 7. Frankfurt a. M. 1986, p. 26.

5: See these two very good, albeit apologetic, music-theoretical analyses of their work (here and there).

6: French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss introduced this concept to language theory (cf. Introduction to the work of Marcel Mauss. Transated by Henning Ritter. In: Marcel Mauss: Sociology and anthropology, Vol. 1. Wiesbaden 2010, pp. 7—41; 39) .7

7: “I laughed in your face and said, 'You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith. It's not the Chelsea Hotel, we're idiots of the moment. ”

8: Cf. Postmodernism — on the logic of culture in late capitalism. Translated by Hildegard Föcking & Sylvia Klötzer. In: Andreas Reckwitz and others (eds.): Aesthetics and Society. Basic texts from sociology and cultural studies. Berlin 2015, pp. 335—350; 342—344.

9: Cf. On the genealogy of morality, paragraph I, 5.

10: See analyses cited in footnote 5.

11: The page Tumblr was a predecessor of today's popular social media-Platforms.

12: “Hi, it's me, I'm the problem” (Anti-Hero).

13: “You look like my next mistake” (Blank Space).

14: See, for example, the article Successful, beautiful — and unsexy by Michalis Pantelouris (link).

15: Other examples include Lavender Haze and Bejeweled.

16: Beyond good and evil, Aph 239.

17: See this study Nietzsche, the aristocratic rebel by Marxist historian Domenico Losurdo (translated by Erdmute Brielmayer. Hamburg 2009, pp. 449—456).

18: See e.g. this Article in the zeit.

19: For this position, see also the song I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.

20: In the preface, Nietzsche speaks of Beyond good and evil of Christianity as “Platonism for the 'people'” (link).

21: See e.g. those and those assessment.

22: “They say: What doesn't kill you makes you more aware.”

23: “What happens when that becomes who you are? “; Cf. Ecce Homo, title page.