Medialization—Musealization

Abstract

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.