Showing papers in "New German Critique in 1985"
492 citations
TL;DR: In this article, German Literature, Department of, Women's Studies Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, sponsored by: German Literature and Gender Studies Program.
Abstract: Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Sponsored by: German Literature, Department of,Women's Studies Program., Lecture, March 16, 1985.
138 citations
TL;DR: Habermas was seen not only as a member of the Frankfurt School but also as a disciple of the older generation, someone who had started out from the position of Critical Theory as it was developed in the 1940s and 1950s by Horkheimer, Marcuse and Adorno.
Abstract: A well-known newspaper caricature, printed some twenty years ago, pictures the Frankfurt School as a closely knit group with Horkheimer as a large father figure watching over the other members of the school, among them Theodor W. Adorno andJiirgen Habermas. This view of the relationship between the members of the Frankfurt School was quite common in Germany at that time: Habermas was seen not only as a member uf the School but more specifically-as a disciple of the older generation, someone who had started out from the position of Critical Theory, as it was developed in the 1940s and 1950s by Horkheimer, Marcuse and Adorno. Although this interpretation cannot account for all of Habermas' early work, notably not for his Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit (1962) (Structural Change of the Public Sphere), it was plausible enough to find wide acceptance. Yet it was no accident that Habermas' first major study, which traces the evolution of the public sphere from the 18th to the 20th century and stresses the need for an enlightened and rational reconsideration of the public sphere under advanced capitalism, never found Adorno's and Horkheimer's complete acceptance. Their own critique of the process of enlightenment differed so markedly from the position which Habermas outlined that there could be no full consensus. In a certain way, I would argue, the later differences, especially those between Adorno and Habermas, were. already foreshadowed in Strukturwandel, although Habermas, when describing the decline of the liberal public sphere under organized capitalism, made use of the critique of mass culture formulated by the older generation and certainly did not indicate that he was in disagreement with the analysis offered in Dialectic ofEnlightenment. On the whole, however, conventional wisdom, treating Habermas as ajunior member of the Frankfurt School, was justified for the 1960s when Habermas, for instance, defended the position of the Frankfurt Institute in the Positivism Dispute against Karl Popper and his allies of the Cologne School. While Adorno and Popper in their addresses to the German Soziologentag of 1961 decided to suppress rather than highlight their theoretical and methodological differences, the younger generation, represented by Habermas and Hans Albert,
137 citations
TL;DR: Habermas as discussed by the authors argued that the sociopathologies of modern life can be traced to processes of rationalization, however he stands with Marx in regarding them as due not to rationalization as such, but to the peculiar nature of capitalist modernization and thus in treating them as treatable through transforming capitalist relations of production.
Abstract: There is a spectre haunting Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action, a close relation to the totally reified world that haunted Western Marxism's original reception of Max Weber. In the 1940s Horkheimer and Adorno had in effect abandoned Marx for Weber on the question of the emancipatory potential of modern rationality. The spread of instrumental reason represented for them the core of a domination generalized to all spheres of life. Habermas agrees that the sociopathologies of modern life can be traced to processes of rationalization; however he stands with Marx in regarding them as due not to rationalization as such, but to the peculiar nature of capitalist modernization and thus in regarding them as treatable through transforming capitalist relations of production. In this respect his position is
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TL;DR: In this article, German Literature, Department of, Women's Studies Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, sponsored by: German Literature and Gender Studies Program.
Abstract: Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Sponsored by: German Literature, Department of,Women's Studies Program., Lecture, March 16, 1985.
38 citations
TL;DR: The very form of the question "What is German?" already desecrates the irreparable experiences of the last decades as discussed by the authors, since it presupposes an autonomous collective entity, 'German', whose characteristics are then determined after the fact.
Abstract: "What is German?" I am unable to answer this question immediately. First it is necessary to reflect on the question itself since it is burdened by those smug definitions which assume as the specifically German not what actually is German but rather what one wishes it were. The ideal suffers at the expense of the idealization. The very form of the question already desecrates the irreparable experiences of the last decades. It presupposes an autonomous collective entity, 'German,' whose characteristics are then determined after the fact. The fabrica-
32 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the audience of the cinema as a "class of those who live without books", defined as "those with a vocabulary of sixty words" and "those never reached by a literary author, perhaps by a newspaper, possibly by a flyer, perhaps during a five-minute speech during an electoral campaign".
Abstract: Social movements of the 20th century, from the Russian Revolution through the proletarian mass movements of the 1920s up to the student movement and new women's movement have declared a particular interest in the cinema, motivated by the appearance of film as a mass phenomenon. Carlo Mierendorff, a German expressionist writer who became a leading social democrat in cultural politics and the resistance against Hitler, gives the following description of the cinema's audience in a programmatic essay of 1920: "They are the class of those who live without books. Those with a vocabulary of sixty words. (...) Those never reached by a literary author, perhaps by a newspaper, perhaps by a flyer, perhaps by a five-minute speech during an electoral campaign before they re-emerge into anonymity. They belong to the cinema: where they feel free to come and go, as a matter of course; where they do not have to mistrust but may experience enthusiasm, pain, pleasure, enrapture (absorption?). An audience of millions which comes and lives and goes, which has no name and yet exists, which moving as an enormous mass is the shaping force of everything and which therefore we must get hold of. There is no other means but the cinema. (...) Whoever has the cinema has a lever for subverting the world."' The politically motivated interest in the cinema as mass phenomenon, however, is inseparable from insights into the quality of cinematic fascination, insights that go beyond the mere statistical juggling with capacity figures of movie theaters. For anyone seriously involved with cinematic fascination, an investigation into the aesthetics of cinema became inevitable. Thus B6la Balizs writes in 1924: "I feel like the
21 citations
TL;DR: Baudelaire's sonnet "Correspondences" as mentioned in this paper plays a crucial role within the Fleurs du mal and it is not the first poem, but it occurs in the opening sequence.
Abstract: Baudelaire's sonnet "Correspondences" (from which these lines are taken) plays a crucial role within the Fleurs du mal. It is not the first poem, but it occurs in the opening sequence. Its significance in directing our reading of the poems as a whole can hardly be side-stepped. Anyone who would understand and fully enjoy the power of Baudelaire's verse will take note of this disclosure by the poet of one of the vital sources of his poetic gift: his ability to provoke the imagination by evoking "correspondences" between sensations of apparently quite different orders. Benjamin himself, for instance, in his response to the kaleidoscopic disorder of the no-longer-fashionable arcades, shows that he has been schooled in Baudelaire's sensuous discipline. Benjamin's treatment of Baudelaire as an allegorist is, however, directed against a sympathetic misreading of Baudelaire which allowed the doctrine of the correspondences to eclipse allegory as a less obvious, and less directly influential doctrine at work in the poetry. The statement of the doctrine of the correspondences in the sonnet is so succinct and eloquent, so illuminating of one's experience of the poetry, that Baudelaire's most ardent admirers, the Symbolists and the poets of the decadence, tended to approach the Fleurs du mal as a whole as if, in this one poem, the last critical and explanatory word had been said. As a result they not only obscured important counter-tendencies at work in Baudelaire's poems, they succeeded also in making of the doctrine of
19 citations
TL;DR: Adorno's contribution, broadcast on May 9th of that year with the name of the series as its title, follows Nietzsche's lead in its refusal of nationalist generalizations and its shift of emphasis to the very question itself.
Abstract: In 1965 the prescience of Nietzsche's observations was dramatically confirmed by a series of radio lectures organized by the Hessische Rundfunk on the topic "What is German?" Adorno's contribution, broadcast on May 9th of that year with the name of the series as its title, follows Nietzsche's lead in its refusal of nationalist generalizations and its shift of emphasis to the very question itself. Indeed, when Adorno's essay is republished in 1969 in Stichworte, it is indicative that, besides the deletion of two phrases, the only significant change is an addition to the title which now reads "On the Question: What is German?" The ambiguity of this query allows Adorno to develop another quite literal line of response: what is German?, it's a language. But such a recasting of the question of nationality as a question of language and linguistic nationality generates new problems. In order to sayjust what is (the) German (language), one must be able to establish the identity, limits and character of a national idiom. To do this, Adorno argues, one must take a trip to another language, a voyage, as we shall see, of translation.
TL;DR: Habermas as discussed by the authors argued that there are no moral "truths" in science or truth which ground the effectiveness of goal-oriented actions, and that the correctness of norms is something different from the truth of propositions or the efficacy of teleological actions.
Abstract: Jtirgen Habermas defends an ethic which he describes as "cognitivist, but cautious as regards ontological interpretations" (RHM 338)' "Practical questions," according to Habermas, "admit of truth," and "correct (richtige) norms must be capable of being grounded, in a way similar to true statements" (LC 111, W 226). Habermas rejects ethical naturalism, however. For him, there is a fact-value distinction, and there are no moral "truths" in the sense that there are truths in science or truths which ground the effectiveness of goal-oriented actions. The correctness of norms is something different from the truth of propositions or the efficacy of teleological actions. The truth of propositions
TL;DR: A central feature of Habermas' social theory is the claim that a critical theory of society is to be a theory which can be practically enlightening as discussed by the authors, i.e., it cannot control the determination of the validity of its insights, simply by referring to standards of theoretical cogency, and of conceptual and explanatory adequacy.
Abstract: This essay aims at the restoration of a central feature of Habermas' social theory, most clearly articulated in his writings preceding his incorporation of sociological systems-theory into the design of a critical theory of late captialist societies and also preceding his programmatic essays on the reconstruction of historical materialism and on the theory of language (universal pragmatics).2 The feature in question is the claim that a critical theory of society is to be a theory which can be practically enlightening. I understand this claim to mean that the ultimate test for the validity of a critical theory of society consists in the possibility of the incorporation of its insights into practically consequential interpretations of social situations. A critical theory of society is a theory which cannot control the determination of the validity of its insights, simply by referring to standards of theoretical cogency, and of conceptual and explanatory adequacy. In the final analysis, its truth can only be ascertained if relevant groups in the society can integrate its claims into their practical deliberation, carried out under conditions of the need to act, and thus transform theoretical insights into practically consequential interpretations of their situation.s Habermas' Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (both
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TL;DR: Reitz's film Heimat as discussed by the authors was released as an eleven-part TV series in the summer of 1984 and subsequently screened in Munich and at film festivals in Venice and London; it reached the United States the following spring.
Abstract: The quotations printed below* are taken from reviews of Edgar Reitz's film Heimat, which was released as an eleven-part TV series in the summer of 1984 and subsequently screened in Munich and at film festivals in Venice and London; it reached the United States the following spring. We present these excerpts as contributions to a debate which has yet to take place. The conflicting positions the authors assume have implications beyond this particular film implications with regard to current political developments in the Federal Republic, especially on the left (or, rather, what used to be considered the left); implications for the discourse on German history; implications for the state of West German film and TV culture; implications for a more general debate in film studies revolving around issues of reception theory, discourse analysis, historical and cultural specificity and a critique of ideology. Heimat deserves attention, not just as yet another instance of New German Cinema as canonized by international auteurists, not even as yet another film dealing with German history. The most significant aspect ofHeimat is its reception which includes the overwhelming success of both the TV series and the subsequent theatrical release of the film as well as the conflicting critical responses in part reprinted here. Unlike any other "New" German film, Heimat relates to crucial changes in the West German public sphere during the 1980s, ranging from the emergence of the Peace Movement, the Greens, a "new regionalism" and anti-Americanism to the effects of the "Wende,"' encapsulated in
TL;DR: In the fall of 1984, the First (West) German Television Network, ARD, telecast Edgar Reitz's 16-hour television epic, Heimat, a miniseries consisting of eleven episodes of varying length.
Abstract: In the fall of 1984, the First (West) German Television Network, ARD, telecast Edgar Reitz's 16-hour television epic, Heimat,' a miniseries consisting of eleven episodes of varying length. Co-produced by Reitz and the ARD stations WDR and SFB, the series realized an ambition which very few products of the New German Cinema (of which Reitz is a charter member) can boast: it was both a critical and tremendous popular success. While the two-part theatrical version (a weekend commitment like Fassbinder' s Berlin Alexanderplatz and a sensation at the 1984 Biennale), was enthusiastically celebrated by cinephiles in West Germany, France and England, the television productions were seen by more than nine million viewers 26% of the total viewing public (with 25 million viewers or 54% of the viewing public watching at least one or several episodes).2 Heimat's location is the Hunsrtick, a small, impoverished rural area in the west of the Federal Republic, hitherto remembered by only a few as the retreat of the famous 18th-century outlaw "Schinderhannes" (Johannes B6ckler), Germany's Robin Hood. Spanning 61 years of German history (1919-1980), the series is loosely centered around the life of the female protagonist, Maria Wiegand, who early in the first installment marries Paul Simon, the blacksmith's son. Paul has brought back from the war both an expertise in radio technology and a far-away look in his eyes. When, at the end of the first episode, he disappears without a trace, without a word of explanation, the series has established two of its major themes: on the one hand, there is the dialectical relationship between the development of mass communication (radio, telephone, television figure prominently in the series) and the destruc-
TL;DR: This paper argued that the definition of anti-Americanism, as it is popularly used, mistakes reasoned protest for irrational prejudice, and thereby deprives the term of its usefulness in identifying this phenomenon where it really exists.
Abstract: Reports of a dramatic increase in West European anti-Americanism have filled the American media in the past few years, giving casual readers the impression that the alternative and peace movements in these countries are motivated by an almost pathological hatred of the United States. Demonstrations which condemn, for example, NATO missile deployments are taken to be thinly-veiled attacks on the American way of life and are reported as such, to the exclusion of coverage of the protesters' reasons for demonstrating.' Nowhere is this phenomenon more prevalent than in press coverage of oppositional movements in the Federal Republic of Germany. Some observers on the Left have suggested that the emphasis placed by the media on the "anti-American" component of alternative movements in West Germany is a deliberate effort to divert attention from the "real" issues at hand.2 While I do not necessarily concur, I would contend that the definition of anti-Americanism, as it is popularly used, mistakes reasoned protest for irrational prejudice, and thereby deprives the term of its usefulness in identifying this phenomenon where it really exists. The perception of West German anti-Americanism on the part of journalists and politicians in the United States is largely the result of structural factors inherent in the nature of the alliance between the two
TL;DR: Helma Sanders-Brahms' film Germany, Pale Mother (1979) as discussed by the authors begins with a silent close-up of a swastika, the slightly blurred image of a flag reflected in water.
Abstract: Helma Sanders-Brahms' film Germany, Pale Mother (1979) begins with a silent close-up of a swastika, the slightly blurred image of a flag reflected in water. As the camera pulls back and our angle of vision widens, we are able to situate the image and ourselves as viewers in relation to a context: we see a pond, a boathouse with a Nazi flag; two men in a rowboat cut through the water, across the wavering reflection of the swastika. On shore we see a group of SA officers playing with a German shepherd; a young woman walking by is attacked by the dog. The men in the boat watch as she struggles to free herself; we watch her struggle through their eyes. Throughout the entire scene the representational realism of the events is underscored by the exclusive use of diegetic sound: we hear the two men in the boat talking, the SA officers shouting, and the dog barking. Only the woman remains silent. The female voice we hear on the soundtrack is not hers, but the disembodied, extradiegetic voice of the film's narrator (the filmmaker herself), who identifies herself as the (as yet unborn) daughter of the woman we see onscreen. From the very outset, then, woman's presence is marked by her simultaneous absence: voice without body, body without speech. While the presence of the men appears self-evident, "natural" as it were (we hear them as they speak, we see them as they act), the presence of woman is marked, different and (in a Brechtian sense) "made strange." Either mute or invisible, she appears incomplete and fragmented, split into disembodied voice on the one hand and voiceless body on the other. There is something unsettling, disturbing about this presence-absence that compels our attention far more powerfully than the seemingly natural presence of the men. Within the narrative world of the film itself, the woman's silence also draws attention, making a deep impression on the two men watching her from the boat. "She didn't scream," remarks Hans, the man who is soon (although
TL;DR: It is not sufficiently known to what extent Georg Lukics, the author of The Theory of the Novel and The Metaphysics of Tragedy, stood guard over the conception of Benjamin's classic text, the title of which is incorrectly translated as Origin of the German Tragic Drama as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: It is not sufficiently known to what extent Georg Lukics, the author of The Theory of the Novel and The Metaphysics of Tragedy, stood guard, in a manner of speaking, over the conception of Benjamin's classic text, the title of which is incorrectly translated as Origin of the German Tragic Drama. Even the best monograph on Benjamin by Richard Wolin' speaks of this influence in general and vague terms. In fact, The Theory of the Novel, a book Benjamin knew well and held in great respect, served as encouragement and methodological support for him to write the
TL;DR: Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture ofDorian Gray conjures the narcissistic fantasy of eternal youth and beauty against the background of a story of seduction, initiation and failed social responsibility as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture ofDorian Gray conjures the narcissistic fantasy of eternal youth and beauty against the background ofa story of seduction, initiation and failed social responsibility. The device of visualizing the moral turpitude of Dorian in the form of an ever increasing ugliness in his portrait addresses not only the romantic theme of the double, it also invokes a peculiarly modern preoccupation: questions of identity no longer conceived of in terms of some "inner" substance, but, in the face of the enormous proliferation of images, as a problem of appearance. Little less than half a century later, the story of Dorian Gray acquired a new sinister bend, namely the possibility of manipulating lives through the manipulation of images. As Fritz Lang's worst apprehensions crystallized in the figure of Dr. Mabuse were surpassed by political realities shortly after, the wave of euphoric expectations about the emancipatory potential of the mechanical reproduction of sound and image subsided throughout Europe. Ulrike Ottinger's new film The Image ofDorian Gray in the Yellow Press (Dorian Gray im Spiegel der Boulevard Presse) which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 1984 (ominous year and title for another grim future fantasy of the misuse of the media), gives little cause for optimistic speculations about impending changes for the better in this area.
TL;DR: In the course of writing "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire" in Summer and Fall 1938, Tiedemann as mentioned in this paper, it became clear that this project would stand on its own and take on an elaborate and expansive architecture of its own.
Abstract: In 1937 Walter Benjamin separated his work on Baudelaire from the seemingly infinite, and therefore interminable, labor of theArcades Project, on which he had been working since 1927. He hoped that the work on Baudelaire might amount to a "miniature model"4 of the Arcades, but in the course of writing "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire" in Summer and Fall 1938, it became clear that the Baudelaire project would stand on its own. Like the Arcades, it took on an elaborate and expansive architecture of its own. According to Tiedemann, "The three sections of the 1938 work ('The Boheme,' 'the Flaneur,' and 'the Modern') should together make up the second part of the projected tripartite book... In the book's overall construction as Benjamin represented it to himself ... a first part was projected under the title
TL;DR: In this article, the UCI Committee on Research provided the material support that enabled me to write this essay during the fall months of 1985, which was delivered as a special presentation at MIT on November 12, 1985.
Abstract: *This paper was delivered as a special presentation at MIT on November 12, 1985. I would like to express my thanks to Inez Hedges of Northeastern University and Michael Geisler of MIT for organizing the lecture and encouraging me to present it in that forum. Also, I would like to acknowledge the productive impetus offered in conversation by Miriam Hansen and Gertrud Koch. Finally, I want to credit the UCI Committee on Research whose generous Faculty Research Fellowship provided the material support that enabled me to write this essay during the fall months of 1985.
TL;DR: The concept of reconciliation with nature is a puzzling concept in the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse as mentioned in this paper and it is difficult to grasp in a comprehensible manner, yet it can hardly be dismissed as an afterthought of these authors, as so much of their work seems to lead back to it.
Abstract: Reconciliation with nature is a puzzling concept in the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse. It is difficult to grasp in a comprehensible manner, yet it can hardly be dismissed as an afterthought of these authors, as so much of their work seems to lead back to it. To transform the concept of reconciliation with nature into ecology and environmental consciousness hardly seems consonant with their intent. Yet, Jiirgen Habermas seems quite correct that in some respects the concept is irrational, indeed eschatological in its implications. I employ the category of narcissism, popularized recently by the work of Christopher Lasch, in order to reinterpret the concept of reconciliation with nature. My thesis is that the quest for reconciliation with nature in the work of the first generation of critical theorists is a quest for narcissistic feelings of lost omnipotence and wholeness. However, let there be no misunderstanding on this point. If the theory of narcissism developed by Bela Grunberger, Janine ChasseguetSmirgel, and Lou Andreas-Salome" is correct, any comprehensive social theory must be concerned with this quest. It is not a criticism, only a compliment, to state that Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse are seeking paradise lost. The issue is only whether reconciliation with nature as they understand it is a fruitful direction in which to proceed. I argue that in some respects it is not, and that the theory of narcissism suggests how the concept of reconciliation might be reinterpreted in a more mundane albeit still thoroughly utopian fashion, without losing its critical power. It is curious that Horkheimer and Adorno, who otherwise drew so freely and brilliantly upon psychoanalysis, did not draw upon psychoanalysis to illuminate the quest for reconciliation with nature. Part of the reason they did not is surely that the intensive psychoanalytic study of the first two years of life the years from which the quest for reconciliation springs was only undertaken by Freud's followers, especially Melanie Klein, of whose work they show no awareness (Klein's first major work, "A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States," was published in 1935). To be sure, Adorno clearly grasps the way in which the "end of the individual" (i.e., the
TL;DR: Fassbinder's adaptation of D6blin's Berlin Alexanderplatz as mentioned in this paper was one of the most successful adaptations of a novel in history, running for fifteen hours and twenty-one minutes.
Abstract: Any attempt to sketch a topography of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's expansive and complex Berlin Alexanderplatz has a vast territory to cover. First of all, one must take into account the film's textual basis, Alfred D6blin's many-voiced urban epic of 1929, as well as PhilJutzi's 1930 rendering of the novel starring Heinrich George, "an underworld drama with many documentary shots."' Second, Fassbinder's reception of the novel demands consideration. The filmmaker's lifelong obsession with D6blin's book proved to be a dynamic relationship, one which Fassbinder depicted in a lengthy essay.2 In the passionate article, the director openly admitted just how crucial Berlin Alexanderplatz had been for his own development, how the novel had left decisive marks on his impressionable young mind, and how these traces are to be found throughout his entire oeuvre. Finally, the most sizable challenge remains Fassbinder's mammoth adaptation of the novel, a work of fifteen hours and twenty-one minutes. Accounting for the terms of this personal rendering of a work privileged by the auteur remains a strikingly imposing task, in 1984, two years after the filmmaker's death, four years since the film's controversy-ridden premiere on West German television,3 a year following its resoundingly success-
TL;DR: In a letter to Karl August Varnhagen, Rahel VarnHagen, while describing herself, offers an advice to her husband: "I see, I love truth; am simple, strict, but soft; have no results beforehand in my eye and mind; and am always willing to grasp things innocently as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In a letter to Karl August Varnhagen, Rahel Varnhagen, while describing herself, offers an advice to her husband: "I see, I love truth; am simple, strict, but soft; have no results beforehand in my eye and mind; and am always willing to grasp things innocently. Think therefore only of such a human being; and so, with your other talents and skills, in this large, literary, baked-together-with-lies world, there must be produced things that are worthwhile reading."' Karl August Varnhagen