Krise und Selbstzerstörung: Ambivalente Figuren der Wende
Crisis and Self-Destruction: Ambivalent Figures of the Turn

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the concepts of crisis (following Koselleck) and self-destruction as ambivalent figures of the turn: situations of structural undecidability in which ruin and renewal are equally possible. Methodologically, the study combines conceptual/ intellectual history with a linguistic perspective and reconstructs three disciplinary key terms—creative destruction (economics), death drive (psychoanalysis), and autoimmunity (immunology). These describe processes in which systems turn against themselves; their assessment oscillates between productive and destructive and is often framed in a moral pro/con logic. Using the Anthropocene as a case, the article shows how literal narratives of self-destruction (ecological devastation) interlock with language-theoretical readings (deconstructive self-destruction of metaphysical concepts). Value attributions vary with disciplinary, historical, and rhetorical boundaries but are not congruent with them; self-destruction remains structurally ambivalent and cannot reliably be instrumentalized as creative destruction. The article proposes a dual analytic that intertwines historical alterity with linguistic performativity to lay bare the risk-laden figure of the turn as the core of modern crisis and self-destruction discourses.

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