Kraftwerk and the international ‘re-birth of Germany’: Multiplicity, identity and difference in music and International Relations

Abstract

Kraftwerk are widely recognised as one of the most important groups in the history of popular music – and for (West) German national identity in the 20th century. They have been labelled as both typically German and thoroughly cosmopolitan, but, rather than being paradoxical (as some have claimed), this tension reveals an under-explored international politics at work. Using the emerging approach of Multiplicity, I illuminate Kraftwerk’s international dimensions to develop the insight that all societies are inter-societal and all nations international. The article thus intervenes into an ongoing debate in International Political Sociology (IPS) that has seen calls to abandon ‘the international’ in favour of ‘the global’. In practice, this would also ignore ‘the national’ which, as Cultural Studies scholarship on Kraftwerk and recent sociological work shows, remains an important mode of meaning-making. Yet these same literatures dismiss cosmopolitanism or afford no constitutive role to the international, meaning they slide back into methodological nationalism. Using Multiplicity, I address both the national and the cosmopolitan elements of societal identity and suggest a newly co-ontological conception of identity and difference for International Relations (IR). Sketching Kraftwerk’s genesis, innovations, inspirations, influence and importance, I thus illuminate the inter-national politics of the musical ‘re-birth of Germany’.