{"title":"A Plan with the Force of a Battleship","authors":"A. Kluge","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":345609,"journal":{"name":"Difference and Orientation","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129171150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"War","authors":"Alexander Kluge","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.003.0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.003.0024","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter studies war and harks back to both Alexander Kluge's controversial book on the Battle of Stalingrad, The Battle (1964), and those portions of the third book of History and Obstinacy (1981) coauthored with Oskar Negt on war as a special case of the public sphere of production. War lays waste to fields, depopulates provinces, and turns cities into dust. War is a fight between rulers carried out with the help of weapons. This definition comes from Louis de Jaucourt's article, which was written in 1757 during the second year of the Seven Years' War. Like a vaccination, societies internalized the excesses of a war that would not end, the religious wars in France, and the barbarism involved in the founding of the early colonies. Rules of war were developed. The way in which people deal with the catastrophe of war is regarded as a high art form. This art consists not only in conquering the enemy, but also in reining in the autonomous forces as well as war's movements, which subjugates the entire world to its destructive power. Ultimately, this art of war is considered to be the highest of art forms, above even architecture. Thirty-five years later, what erupts out of the escalation of the French Revolution is a form of modern war Jaucourt could not have known when he wrote his encyclopedia article: the people's war. Kluge then considers how the image of war changed in the second half of the twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":345609,"journal":{"name":"Difference and Orientation","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127786902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inventory of a Century","authors":"A. Kluge","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.003.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.003.0028","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter looks at the dialogue between Prof. Dr. Burkhardt Lindner, editor of the Benjamin Handbook, and Alexander Kluge wherein they talked about Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project (1982). According to his exposé of 1939, Walter Benjamin divided Arcades Project into six parts and called the first “Arcades,” the second “Panoramas,” and the next “World Expositions.” And then came “Interiors,” “Streets,” and then finally “Barricades.” He wrote his exposé incidentally in the present tense such that it did not appear like a story from the past, but rather as if he were an eyewitness of something taking place now. He then assigned a figure to each of these six keywords such that there was within Benjamin's imagination one person who did, planned, or achieved something, on the one hand, and an object world naturally far more powerful, on the other. Lindner and Kluge also considers Benjamin's anthropological materialism.","PeriodicalId":345609,"journal":{"name":"Difference and Orientation","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134364279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Companions in Now-Time","authors":"A. Kluge","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter presents Alexander Kluge's oblique meditation on books and collecting. In a letter to a Mr. B., Kluge describes his library and his relation to books. He claims that books have a will of their own. They find each other on their own accord. That is the principle guiding their rows, stacks, and piles. He says he does not own books he most admires; he lives with them. What Kluge finds trustworthy about books is that they connect centuries. No other medium connects authors over 2,000 years so reliably as the book. Ultimately, how Kluge treats his beloved books cannot be compared to the nurturing of a library. He then details how, in his parents' house, books were kept in an orderly fashion in the so-called gentlemen's study. This room was not for reading, but rather was especially meant for playing bridge.","PeriodicalId":345609,"journal":{"name":"Difference and Orientation","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115709098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"2. Storytelling Is the Representation of Differences (2001)","authors":"","doi":"10.7591/9781501739224-006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501739224-006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":345609,"journal":{"name":"Difference and Orientation","volume":"184 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123351643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"15. On the Expressions “Media” and “New Media”: A Selection of Keywords (1984)","authors":"A. Kluge","doi":"10.7591/9781501739224-019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501739224-019","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":345609,"journal":{"name":"Difference and Orientation","volume":"90 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123162194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"13. No Farewell to Yesterday: New German Cinema from 1962 to 1981 as Seen from 2011 (2012)","authors":"","doi":"10.7591/9781501739224-017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501739224-017","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":345609,"journal":{"name":"Difference and Orientation","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124636805","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"6. Theory of Storytelling: Lecture One (2013)","authors":"","doi":"10.7591/9781501739224-010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501739224-010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":345609,"journal":{"name":"Difference and Orientation","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132000229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Actuality of Adorno","authors":"A. Kluge","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.003.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.003.0027","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":345609,"journal":{"name":"Difference and Orientation","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126668354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"5. Storytelling Means Dissolving Relations (2008)","authors":"","doi":"10.7591/9781501739224-009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501739224-009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":345609,"journal":{"name":"Difference and Orientation","volume":"564 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132455507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}