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Amazing stories from the future that never was: Neo Rauch and the haunted spaces of science fiction

The chapter analyses the realist painting of the Leipzig artist Neo Rauch by drawing upon the work of Fredric Jameson, particularly his writings on science fiction. The analysis uses Jameson’s concept of the ‘future anterior’ to rethink Rauch’s work as the expression of the failed project of the DDR – hence the idea of a utopian ‘future that never was’ and the paradoxical nostalgia surrounding that failed project. At a ‘micro’ level, the analysis also explores Rauch’s work in terms of a Freudian ‘family romance’, responding to parental loss and to the particular social role of the family within the DDR. It therefore addresses new ways of thinking about ‘realism’ in painting and attempts to think through the different levels of ‘reality’ (political, social, personal) represented in Rauch’s work. The project involved extensive research of Rauch’s work and a rigorous methodology that combined Jameson’s writings on modernity, postmodernism and science fiction, with psychoanalytical theory on the structure of the family and on the process of mourning. The psychoanalytical theory focussed on the work of André Green on parental loss and mourning. This research originated in a paper presented at the international conference Space, Haunting, Discourse, held at the University of Karlstad in Sweden, in June 2006. It was a contribution to a debate that responded to contemporary theoretical interest in the concept of spatiality within a globalised culture and formed part of a multidisciplinary conference that ranged across literature, photography, cultural studies and human geography. The work was peer-reviewed at the conference and subsequently selected for inclusion in this edited collection of what the organisers considered to be the most interesting and significant research presented in this area. This edited collection was republished as an i-book in 2010.