Setting Eyes on the Gorgon: Siegfried Kracauer and Film Theory After Holocaust
Abstract
The significance Kracauer assigned to the camera's interest in the meaningless and the marginal in his Theory of Film (1960) goes hand in hand with the way he situates pertinent-feeling fragments of his own discourse on the margins of the main flow of the argument. They are the most troublesome fragments if read from the perspective of a unifying, realistic interpretation of Theory of Film. In many cases, these offhand digressions have turned out to be the pieces of a primary theoretical concept from the 1940-1941 - as revealed by Kracauer's notebooks now known to us. Kracauer notes here the relationship between the extermination as the utter disappearance of people and the erasure of their deaths from the composition of an image - and claims this connection to be central to the Holocaust. When the film image reaches a place where all representation must be annihilated, it becomes the last refuge of violated human dignity. Some of this arguments derivate from the discussion on the allegory of the skull from Walter Benjamin's Ursprung des Trauerspiel. This view can, of course, in no way be reconciled with Theodor Adorno's famous, iconoclastic stance. In the light of Kracauer's discussion with Adorno the thesis of impossibility of representation of the Shoah should be read in new perspective.
Keywords:
Siegfried Kracauer, film theory, HolocaustReferences
Adorno Theodor W., Curious Realist: On Siegfried Kracauer, trans. A. W. Nicholsen, “New German Critique” 1991, Autumn, no. 54, s. 177.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/488432
Google Scholar
Adorno Theodor W., Dialektyka negatywna, tłum. K. Krzemieniowa, PWN Warszawa 1988, s. 11.
Google Scholar
Adorno Theodor W., Transparencies on Film, trans. Th. Y. Levin, „New German Critique”, Autumn 1981 – Winter 1982, no. 24-25, s. 202.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/488050
Google Scholar
Agamben Giorgio, Co zostaje z Auschwitz. Archiwum i świadek, tłum. S. Królak, Warszawa 2008, s. 164.
Google Scholar
Anderson Mark, Siegfried Kracauer and Meyer Schapiro: A friendship, “New German Critique”, September 1991, no. 54, s. 24.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/488424
Google Scholar
Barnow Dagmar, Critical Realism. History, Photography and Work of Siegfried Kracauer, Baltimore-London 1994, s. 147-149.
Google Scholar
Benjamin Walter, O pojęciu historii, tłum. K. Krzemień, w: teW. Benjamin, Anioł historii, Poznań 1996, s. 418.
Google Scholar
Benjamin Walter, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. J. Osborn, London – New York 1998, s. 166, 215.
Google Scholar
Despoix Philippe, Siegfried Kracauer, essayiste et critique de cinema, “Critique” XLVIII, 1992, no 539, s. 318-319
Google Scholar
Didi-Huberman Georges, Obraz mimo wszystko, tłum. M. Kubiak Ho-Chi, Kraków 2008, s. 222.
Google Scholar
Hansen Miriam, „With Skin and Hair”: Kracauer’s Theory of Film, Marseille 1940, „Critical Inquiry”, Spring 1993, nr 19, s. 447, 458-461.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/448682
Google Scholar
Hansen Miriam, Introduction, w: S. Kracauer, Theory of Film. The Redemptions of Physical Reality, Princeton 1997, s. xxiv. Koch Gertrud, “Not yet accepted anywhere”: Exile, Memory and Image in Kracauer’s Conception of History, “New German Critique” 1991, Fall, no. 54, s. 98.
Google Scholar
Koch Gertrud, Siegfried Kracauer: An Introduction, trans. J. Gaines, Princeton 2000, s. 113.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400823642
Google Scholar
Kracauer Siegfried, History: The Last Things Before The Last, Oxford 1969, s. 91.
Google Scholar
Kracauer Siegfried, Od Caligariego do Hitlera. Z psychologii filmu niemieckiego, tłum. E. Skrzywanowa, W. Wertenstein, Warszawa 1958 (1947), s. 198, 259.
Google Scholar
Kracauer Siegfried, Teoria filmu. Wyzwolenie materialnej rzeczywistości, tłum. W. Wertenstein, Warszawa 1975, s. 39, 40, 78, 109, 318, 324.
Google Scholar
Michael Klaus, Vor dem Café: Walter Benjamin Und Siegfried Kracauer in Marseille, w: „Aber ein Sturm weht vom Paradise Her”: Texte zu Walter Benjamin, Liepzig 1992, s. 221.
Google Scholar
Palmier Jean-Michel, Weimar in Exile. The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America, trans. D. Fernbach, London – New York 2006, s. 445-449.
Google Scholar
Siegfried Kracauer 1889-1966, red. I. Belke, I. Renz, “Marbacher Magazin” 1988, nr 47, s. 107.
Google Scholar
Authors
Tomasz Majewskikwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
University of Lodz Poland
Adiunkt w Katedrze Mediów i Kultury Audiowizualnej UŁ. Publikuje w „Tekstach Drugich”, „Przeglądzie Kulturoznawczym” oraz „Estetyce i Krytyce”. Przygotowuje do publikacji ksiazkę na temat pamięci Holocaustu w filmach Marcela Ophülsa i Claude Lanzmanna.
Statistics
Abstract views: 54PDF downloads: 26
License
Copyright (c) 2009 Tomasz Majewski
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The author grants the publisher a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Kwartalnik Filmowy, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Kwartalnik Filmowy should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). The journal is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. By submitting an article, the author agrees to make it available under this licence.
In issues from 105-106 (2019) to 119 (2022) all articles were published under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Tomasz Majewski, Lycopodium – From Pyrotechnics to Xerography: Toward a (Bio)Archeology of Media , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 99 (2017): Tricks, Special Numbers, Attractions
- Agnieszka Rejniak-Majewska, Tomasz Majewski, “Nothing Is Missing”: Video Heteroglossias , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 80 (2012): Film at the Meeting Point of Cultures
