»Ensslin kaufte gern ein, für ihren Boyfriend und andere. Sie kaufte Qualität. Schon in Frankfurt überraschten wir Baader öfter mit einer neuen Hose. Das Einkaufen von guter Kleidung und Lebensmitteln spielte in den Jahren danach neben dem Nutzwert eine ebenso wichtige psychologische Rolle.«
—Astrid Proll, in Stefan Aust, Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, 2017), 40.
Ensslin, of course, was arrested in 1972 in a boutique. I don’t remember noticing this sort of thing when I read Aust twenty years ago, but since then I’ve been taken by the RAF’s Moby Dick imagery, the extent to which RAF and Bewegung 2. Juni members were impressed by Viva Maria!, and the photos of Souhaila Sami Andrawes being carried from the Landshut. These are all people very much conscious of image. In presenting an image one is an actor, and to be an actor one must have agency.
Fifty years ago Marcuse rightly critiqued the production and fulfillment of endless demand of consumers for useless stuff but it’s occurred to me that in the digital age consumers have reduced their claim on agency still further to now not even buying the clothes with which to cast shadows, but buying the right to be a part of the cave wall on which shadows are cast.