The Actuality of Adorno

This chapter details Alexander Kluge's acceptance speech on the occasion of receiving a prize named for Theodor W. Adorno. Kluge met Adorno when he was twenty-four years old and working as an attorney in Frankfurt. Adorno was a friendly and communicative man of his day. However, when it came to his work, he was a man of extreme incorruptibility and strict earnestness. In order to describe him more accurately, Kluge cites a central point in his thinking. He then mentions Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative: every moral individual should plan his actions such that they could provide maxims for a universal system of laws. Friedrich Nietzsche radicalized this principle: one should always act such that one could live with one's behavior knowing that one would have to repeat one's actions for all eternity. Adorno would presumably find Nietzsche's idea more lively and practical than Kant's formulation, but Nietzsche's phrasing would have been too existential for him, meaning irrelevant compared to the practical experiences of the 1940s. Adorno thus presents a more practical and decisive standard. Public expression, learning and education, in fact every expression of life, he says, exists under the postulate that Auschwitz not repeat itself. One sees in this imperative of Adorno's a sentence that repeats itself: There is no praxis without theory.

Medialization—Musealization

This chapter evaluates Alexander Kluge's discussion of the tension between “medialization” and “musealization.” Kluge thinks that the word “medialization” primarily alludes to “television,” but when all its parts are examined, then the “long-distant vision” that the word “tele-vision” implies has nothing at all to do with any of the television stations he knows. Medialization could be generally translated as mediation, but then there must be immediate experience if there are plenty of mediated experiences on the other side. However, Kluge cannot say that as much immediate experience must be saved, preserved, or organized as possible because the principle of immediate experience is a purely private matter. He then suggests that there is a way of dealing with temporalities and modes of experience that can be quite differentiated. Only when all of these differentiations come together is reality rich, which means they are also all real. The isolation or hegemony of one temporal mode over others, even if it were the polite optative, would essentially be a dictatorship of unreality. This would already be the factual contribution, the machinery, leading to the loss of history. If the concept of “musealization” is taken seriously, understood correctly, and interpreted within this context, then it can only mean labor against the loss of history.

No Farewell to Yesterday

This chapter studies Alexander Kluge's reflections on the organizational politics that gave rise to New German Cinema as seen through the uncertainty of cinema's future in the new millennium. It has been nearly fifty years since a group of young filmmakers, who up until that point had distinguished themselves only with shorts, spoke up at the Short Film Festival in Oberhausen. In their now-famous Oberhausen Manifesto they demanded a renewal of the intellectual attitude in filmmaking in a direction toward authenticity and away from commerce; an intellectual center for German film, meaning film education; and opportunities for young filmmakers to make their first films. The Kuratorium junger deutscher Film (Board for Young German Film) emerged out of the final demand with an endowment of five million marks. North Rhine-Westphalia's funding agency for short film, which formed the foundation of the Oberhausen group, added up to 800,000 marks distributed over six years. A shift in German film occurred right from the start. At that point, the history of film was seventy years old. What later grew out of the Oberhausen movement up until Rainer Werner Fassbinder's death filled a quarter of this history. This included lots of mistakes, a lot of claims to fame, variety, enthusiasm, and many works that have enriched the history of film.

A Plan with the Force of a Battleship

This chapter explores Alexander Kluge's retrospective evaluation of Soviet avant-garde cinema practices. Kluge recounts Sergei Eisenstein's plan in 1927 to film Capital, “based on the scenario by Karl Marx.” During the following two years, Eisenstein pursues his plan, which no one is willing to finance. Kluge sees Eisenstein's grand plan to film Capital as a kind of imaginary quarry. One can find fragments there, but one may also discover that there is nothing to be found. Dealing in a respectful way with the plans of a great master like Eisenstein is similar to excavating an ancient site; one discovers more about oneself than actual shards and treasures. Kluge suggests that “today we experience the proliferation of existent conditions. Objective reality has outstripped us, but we also have reason to fear the mass of subjectivity that eludes our consciousness.” In 2008, it is dangerous to confront this reality with the method and the expectations of Marx: one becomes discouraged. Kluge then provides a definition of images.

Word and Film

This chapter details the coauthored 1965 essay “Word and Film” by Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, and Wilfried Reinke, which was originally published when all three taught at the Ulm School of Design's trailblazing film department. Words can interact with film in a hundred different ways. Add to this the diversity of conceptions of film. For every one of these conceptions, for every kind of literary expression, the issue presents itself differently and demands a different answer. Walter Hagemann argues that film does not raise any new questions, “because it does not speak a new language; rather it conveys the old language through a new medium. This is the real reason for the backlash which the language of film suffered with the advent of sound.” The authors of the essay then recognize the need to examine how the old language relates to the old film, how new forms of language available today relate to new concepts of film, and how the interplay of word and film may produce new, nonliterary forms of language.

What Is a Metaphor?

This chapter examines the dialogue between Rainer Stollmann and Alexander Kluge wherein they talked about the power and importance of metaphors. Kluge explains that a metaphor is the creation of a web of ideas. He says that Karl Marx's description of primitive accumulation is one of these webs. That is why Marx let English history serve as his example, even though primitive accumulation assumes a different form in every country, which he also acknowledges. Kluge then argues that one needs to dissolve historically specific metaphors. The creation of metaphors is not an end in itself. Their brevity lasts in the time immediately after they evolve. In later eras, they provide a foil or commentary. Ultimately, metaphors do not reflect observations, but instead provoke questions.

Theory of Storytelling

This chapter studies the first of four lectures that Alexander Kluge gave in 2012 in conjunction with the acclaimed series, Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics. Kluge's Frankfurt lectures were entitled, “Theory of Storytelling.” A praxis of poetics and narrative can be explained. A collection of every practical experience is also a task none too difficult. A theory, however, is something very difficult. Kluge uses the term “theory” in the sense of Critical Theory. Theory in the sense of Critical Theory is always nourished on interests that are simultaneously practical, political, and vital. It does not theorize in any old manner, but rather serves as an orientation for essential questions. Kluge then explains that reality has many properties when it comes to narration. When it comes to enumeration, registration, or balancing accounts, reality is fairly straightforward. But once one begins to tell stories, one begins to notice that reality has catacombs, wells, and abysses. Below every linear narrative lie happiness and misfortune. In addition to the objective inconsistencies of reality, which are neither smooth nor clear and thus constitute a kind of spirit world, there exists within humans an antirealism of feeling. Kluge also provides a definition of narrative and notes that narrative distinguishes itself from information quite clearly.

Storytelling Means Dissolving Relations

This chapter explores the dialogue between Piero Salabè and Alexander Kluge wherein they talked about Kluge's book Tür an Tür mit einem anderen Leben (Next Door to Another Life, 2006). Kluge claims that there are always two aspects to sadness: it isolates, but it can also bring people in contact with one another. Sadness and crying are capable of dissolving hardened relations. When asked whether he believes in progress, Kluge answered that he does not believe in linear progress because for him “the past is always coming at us from the future.” Instead, he believes in circular movement like those in whirlpools. The concept of enlightenment must begin with the real phenomenon that time does not actually pass. Kluge says that “we must continue to tell stories about problems in the world, and with storytelling we must also push back against these problems that people fail to respect.” Storytelling means dissolving in the literal sense of “analyzing.” Kluge believes that this is the great, unfinished project of enlightenment. Salabè and Kluge also discusses the individual's capacity for differentiation.