El territorio de la fotografía, entre la modernidad y la utopía en el pensamiento de Kracauer.pdf

7/27/2019 El territorio de la fotografía, entre la modernidad y la utopía en el pensamiento de Kracauer.pdf

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T H E TE R R IT O R Y OE P H O T O G R A P H Y :

BETWEEN MODERNITY AND UTOPIA IN

K RA CA UE R S T H O U G H T

Elena Gualtieri

1. SiegfriedKracauer, Photography , inThe Mass Ornament:

Weimar Essays

Thomas Y. Levin(ed, trans andintroduction),Camhridge, HarvardUP, 1995, p61.

2. SiegfriedKracauer, The Mass

W here does pho tograp hy belong in Kracauer s though t? In the W eima

essays it is practically synonymo us with m odernity, o ne of the mass orn am en t

whose surface reveals the meaning of the age. In Theory o f Film i t becom es th

foundation for an aesthetics of the pho tog raph ic m edia which casts them a

redeemers of the physical reality we can no longer perceive. In History: th

Last Things efore the Last the book which Kracauer himself s w as the sum

of his life s work, it provides both a mod el for historical prac tice an d a m ap

for Kracaue r s Utopian imag inings. Photography, th en, seems to accom pany

Kracauer wherever he goes, both intellectually an d geographically, le ndin g

his oeuvre the coherence of a running thread. Yet the very ubiquity of thi

thread emphasises the radical dis-unity of the corpus of Kracauer s writings

which span jou rna lism an d sociology, film history and theory, M arxism an d

liberal humanism, operetta and philosophy of history, two languages, thre

countries, and a long series of political crises, from the fall of Imperia

Germany to the rise of Nazism, from World War II to the Cold War. Wha

app ears to guaran tee the cohere nce of Kracauer s oeuvre is the consistency

of his interest in photogra phy. But if pho togra phy unifies this he teroge neo u

collection of writings und er Kracauer s signature, the n the question must be

asked whether what we have come to call Kracau er mig ht no t in fact be

name for the problem of photography in modernity, a vector through wbicb

tbe question of photography is raised in its intractability.

In wbat follows I propose to examine this intractability by mapping tb

develo pm ent of Kracauer s tbinking about pho tog rapb y from the 1920s to

the 1960s, in an arc that traces bis transformation from critic of modernityto pbiloso pbe r of utopia. This transform ation tells us mu ch n ot jus t ab ou

Kracauer s intellectual trajectory, but also about the mobility of pbotography

as a cultural and historical signifier. Although usually subsumed under tb

discipline of film studies, Kracauer s writings on pb oto gra ph y draw m ucb

of tbeir figurative arsenal and conceptual power from literary sources

especially from those of European modernism. It is through tbese texts

that Kracauer rearticulates his original understanding of photograpby from

modern mass ornament to trace of an immaterial world located in between

existing ideological cam ps. In tbe process, be invites bis reader s to reco nsidetbe question of tbe territory of photo grapb y, of where ph oto gra phy m igh



MODERNITY AS VABANQ UE-SPIEL

The question of photography's position within the historical process was

given a first, una m big uou s answer by Krac auer in 1927: 'No different from

earlier m odes of represen tation, photog raphy, too, is assigned to a particular

developmental stage of practical and material life. It is a secretion of the

capitalist mo de of prod uction '. ' As this emission of capitalism, pbo togra phyparticipates in that process of tbe em ancipa tion of reason from tbe bonds of

nature wbicb Kracauer in 'Tbe Mass Ornament' posits as tbe driving force

of history.'^ But pbotography also marks a point where it is not the force of

reason but tbat of nature tbat gains tbe upper band. Stripped of ts symbolic

and mytbological meaning, tbe nature from wbicb capitalism emancipates

bumanity becomes simply a 'mute', brute pbysical reality wbicb buman

consciousness cannot encompass or comprebend. It is tbis alienation of

nature from tboug bt tbat pbotograp by portrays: 'Tbe same mere n ature wbicb

appears in pbotograpby flourisbes in tbe reality of tbe society produced by

tbe capitalist mode of production'.*

Alt bou gb Kra caue r is very clear abo ut tbe bistoricity of tbe society

portrayed by pbotograpby, bis cbaracterisation of capitalism as part of

a process of emancipation from myth is in fact bistorically a-specific, a

translation of industrial production into a metapbysical language wbicb

clearly sbows Kracau er's form ation in Kantian idealism.** 'Pb oto gra pb y' does

not specify tbe structural cbaracteristics of tbe mode of production from

wbicb pbotograp by ema nates . 'Tbe Mass Orn am ent ' makes some reference

to Taylorism an d overp rodu ction, bu t we bave to turn to Kracau er's study

of tbe salaried employees in Berlin, publisbed as a book in 1930, to find a

more precise description of tbe salient aspects of m ode rn Germ an capitalism.

Tbere Kracauer noted tbat 'structural cbanges in tbe economy' sucb as tbe

'deve lopm ent towards large-scale enterpris e' and a 'growtb of tbe app aratu s

of distribution' bad led to a demand for increased 'rationalization' of clerical

and administrative tasks. Tbese cbanges were modelled 'on tbe American

pattern' and at tbeir most intense 'from 1925 to 1928'. ' 'Ki-acauer's precise

dating and bis reference to tbe American model of industrial organisation

trace tbis restructuring of tbe German economy back to tbe introduction

of tbe Dawes Plan in 1924. Tbe plan was meant to address tbe political

an d financial crisis of 1923, wbicb saw tbe collapse of tbe m ark after years

of byperinfiation' and tbe Frencb occupation of tbe Rubr in response to

Germany's inability to meet its reparation payments for World War I. Dawes

offered Germany foreign loans (mainly from tbe US) to belp tbe country

rebuild its economy and tberefore enable it to meet a newly renegotiated

scbedule of payments.

T be p base of capitalist dev elop m ent identified by Kracau er in The SalariedMasses was in tbe process of transforming tbe German economy into wbat

3. Kracauei','Photography', inThe Mass Otiiament

op . cit., p61.

4. In 'llie CuriousRealist: On Siegfried

Kracauer' Adoi'noremembers speudingSaturday af'lernoousreading The Critique

of Pure Reason witli

Kracauer (in Noteii

to Literature Shier iy

Weber Nicholsen(traus), New York,Columbia, 1992,pp58-9). For adetailed treatmentof Kracauer'searly intellectualformation inexistentialism andthe subsequentpi ogramme of'self-modernisation'of the early 1920ssee David Frisby,Fragments of

Modernity: Theories of

Modernity in the Work

ofSimmel Kracauer

and Benjamin

Cambridge, Ml'F,

1986, pp 109-26.

5. Kracatier, 'TheMass Ornamen t', op.cit., p78.

6. SiegfriedKracauer, TheSalaried Masses: Duly

an d istraction in

Weimar Gennany

Quintin Hoare(trans), London,

Verso, 1998, pp29-30.

7. The exchange ratemark to dollar wentfrom 9.44 in May1921 to 16677.58 in

Jun e 1923. On thecollapse of the markand the economicpolicies that causedit see Charles 1'.Kindlebei^ger, A

Financial History ofWestern Europe 2nd

edition, Oxford,



8. V.R. Berghahn ,Modem Germany:

Society Economy a nd

Politics in the Twentieth

Century 2 n d

edition, Cambridge,

Cam bridge UP,1987, plOO.

9. Giovanni Arrighi,Tli£ Long Twentieth

Century: Money

Power and the

Origins of Our Times

London, Verso,1994, p266.

10. RndolfHilferding,Finance Capital: a

Study of the Latest

Phase of Capitalist

Development orris

Watnick and SamGordon (trans), TomBottomore (ed),

London, Rontledge,1981.

11. Arrighi, The ongTwentieth Century o p .

cit., p286 .

This dependency made Germany especially vulnerable to the sudden reca

of loans from the US after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, producing t

'bankruptcy, economic collapse and mass unem ploym ent'* of the early 193

which propelled Hitler to power. The collapse of the German econom

in the last few years of the Weimar Republic effectively revealed that t

structural weaknesses that had long besieged it had not been resolved in th

post-war years. The se weaknesses stemm ed from the protectionist chara ctof German capitalism and the strong interdependence of industry and sta

which protectionism had fostered. Under Bismarck the state had pursue

econom ic policies which encourag ed the centralisation of industry and fman

into a select num ber of enterp rises which in their turn had help ed the sta

to build a unified economy and put to its service its military and industri

capacity.*

By the beg inning of the twentieth century the impressive de velop me nt

German y's strongly centralised economy h ad come to be seen as represen tin

a specific type of capitalist developm ent, o ne tha t had b een left una ddre ssein Das Kapital but to which in 1910 Rudolf Hilferding gave the na me

Finanzcapital or finance capital. ' Taking as a mo del the Ge rma n econom

Hilferding had argued that finance capital constituted the end towar

which modern capitalism tended, as the financial and industrial system

developed towards an ever-closer integration that would eventually brin

the bank s to control no t jus t capital flow, but also industrial prod uctio

Although extremely influential within the history of Marxist thought, th

teleological mod el of the de velopm ent of capitalism has mo re recently bee

challenged by compa rative studies in the history of capitalism. Am ong the

studies, Giovanni Arrighi's The Long Twen tieth Century has proposed a

alternative unde rsta nd ing of capitalist develop me nt th at revises the lineari

of Hilferding's model into a more cyclical one. For Arrighi the history

capitalism is composed of successive cycles of accumulation which repe

themselves, with notab le variants, across history b ut are essentially articulate

into two distinct phases. In the first capital is invested in the production an

tradin g of comm odities, while in the second increasing com petition leads

the withdrawal of capital from commodities to circulate as flnance. With

Arrighi's model, the type of centralised capitalism develop ed in Germany

the end of the nineteenth century represented a response to the competitiv

pressures of world-ma rket economy w hich was conceived as an a lternativ

to the econom ic liberalism pro mo ted by British imperialism. But G erman y

answer to intern ation al com petition could only 'su sp en d' the eflects

those pressure s. In th e long run its failure to flnd more lo ng-lasting solution

to world-wide competition and the dynamics of capital accumulation ha

disastrous political consequences, as it set the German Reich on a collisio

course with the British Em pire which er up ted in World War I and the collap

of Imperial Germany.



Germany on the one hand appears to mark an entirely new phase of

develo pme nt, while on the othe r this new phase is being experienc ed as

a failure of capitalism itself The inability of German capitalism to develop

away from monop oly and towards internation al finance m ean t that G ermany

could not complete its cycle of capital accumulation, leaving its economic

and political structure in a state of permanent crisis. In post-war Germany

capitalism presented itself as the engine of a historical process of increased

rationalisation and centralisation which nevertheless failed to renew the

stiTicture of its economy. In th e late 1920s Rracau er clearly saw that th e proc ess

could not be further exten ded or expan ded beyond the levels it had already

reached. In the terms set out by Photography any further development of

the econ om ic an d cultural system oft he late 1920s could only have led to the

trium ph of the mute nature of the illustrated magaz ines over any re ma ining

shreds of human consciousness and rationality. Gonversely, the collapse

of the existing system would have turned the alienation of humanity fromnature promoted by capitalism into the starting point for the establishment

of a different social order, guided by ration al principle s and no t the na tur al

greed of th e few. ̂ Associated with a stage of capitalist deve lop me nt, that of

finance capital, which Germ any is both striving for and structurally incap able

of achieving, photography marked then a point of crisis in the historical

dialectic.

Photography is, then, risky business, part of a historical process that has

reached the end ofth e line and which can only inaugura te its own dem ise. Th e

apocalyptic character of Kracauer s warn ing that the turn to photo grap hy isthe go for broke game [Vabanque Spiel] of history ^ must be understood within

the specific context ofth e dev elop me nt of Ge rm an ca pitalism. Yet Kracauer s

choice of words to charac terise this particular m om en t of crisis - the Vabanque-

Spiel of mode rnity - locates it not in th e halls of power or th e co rrido rs of

industry but in the world of the casino and of the card-table, the world of

gam bling . This choice certainly conveys the specific flavour of Ge rma ny s

economic and political position in the late 1920s. But it also suggests a

parallel with Krac auer s later analysis of nine teen th-c entu ry French society,

where gambling and financial speculation are the hallmarks of a societycaught in the illusion of capitalist accumulation. In the narrative Kracauer

developed in Orpheus in Paris nineteen th-century France was the location of

a historical process that saw gambling transformed from leisure occupation

of the aristocracy to structural principle underlying the economic activity

and development of the country. From the reign of Louis-Philippe, during

which specu lation b ecam e the religion of the state, with the Bourse as its

temple , •* Kracauer traces a spiral of ever increa sing c apital accu mu lation

which exposes the instability ofthe bourge ois regimes constituted as bulwarks

against the revolutionary forces agitating within nine teenth-c entury France.Louis-Ph ilippe s reign was term ina ted by a series of econo mic disasters

12. Kracauer, TheMass Ornam ent , op.cit., pp80-81.

13. Kracauer, Photography , op .cit., p61.

14. Kracauer, rpheus in Paris:

ffenbach and the

aris of His TimeGwenda David andEric M osbacher



a l l i ance wi th the in su rgen t worker s o f 1848 . In i t s t u rn Lou i s Napo leon

r e g i m e w a s u n d e r m i n e d p r e c is e l y b y t h e r a m p a n t c o r r u p t i o n w h i c h i

o w n e c o n o m i c p o l i c i e s h a d d o n e m u c h t o p r o m o t e , p r o v o k i n g t h e r i s i n g o

t h e C o m m u n a r d s in 1 8 7 1 o n t h e a s h e s o f t h e S e c o n d E m p i r e d e f e a t e d b

Bisma rck ' s P russ i a . W he th er a t t he t ab les o f t h e cas ino o r i n the Bo urse ,

t he h i s to r i ca l nar ra t ive oí rpheus in Paris g a m b l i n g i s a lw a ys t b e h a r b i n g

o f a r evo lu t ion to come.

W h i l e e x p l i c i t l y d e v i s e d b y K r a c a u e r f o r n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y F r a n c

t h is n a r r a t i v e o f u n s t a b l e g o v e r n m e n t s r e s t i n g o n r e c k le s s e c o n o m i c a n

m o n e t a r y p o l i ci e s w h i c h t h e n p r o d u c e r e v o l u t i o n a r y u p r i s i n g s w a s a l

c l e a r ly i n f o r m e d b y h i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h e h i s t o r y o f t w e n t i e t h - c e n t u

G e r m a n y . W r i t in g rpheus in Paris as an ex i l e f rom Nazi Ge rm an y in 1934-3

K r a c a u e r c o u l d n o t f a i l t o p e r c e i v e t h e p a r a l l e l s b e t w e e n t h e c h r o n i c s o c i

a n d p o li t ic a l i n s ta b i li ty o f n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y F r a n c e a n d t h e c o n t e m p o r a

s i t u a t i o n of p o s t- W W I G e r m a n y . L i ke t h e F r a n c e o f t h e 1 8 3 0 s t o 1 8 5 0

i n t h e l a st q u a r t e r o f t h e n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y G e r m a n y h a d u n d e r g o n e

r a p i d p r o c e s s o f i n d u s t r i a l a n d e c o n o m i c e x p a n s i o n , w h i c h h a d t h e n b e e

fo llowed by W or ld War I, t he co l l apse o f Im pe r i a l G erm any , a nd the w orke r

r e v o l u t i o n s o f 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 . T h e s e , li ke t h e F r e n c h o n e t h a t b r o u g h t a b o u t t h

demise o f Lou i s -Ph i l ippe , were b ru ta l ly squashed by the bou rgeo i s i e . Grea te

o u t of t h e a s h e s o f I m p e r i a l G e r m a n y , t h e W e i m a r R e p u b l i c r e p r e s e n t e

t h e r e a l i s a t io n o f a d e m o c r a t i c d r e a m w h i c h w a s n e v e r t h e l e s s c o n s t a n t

t h r e a t e n e d b y t h e s o c i a l t e n s i o n s w h i c b t h e s u p p r e s s i o n o f t h e r e v o l u t i o

b a d f a i le d t o re s o l v e , a n d w h i c b w e r e e x a c e r b a t e d b y e c o n o m i c i n s ta b i li t

B y t h e t i m e K r a c a u e r c a m e to w r i t e h i s b o o k o n O f f e n b a c h , t h e d e m o c r a t

a s p i r a t i o n s o f t h e W e i m a r R e p u b l i c b a d a l r e a d y b e e n d e f e a t e d b y H i t l e r

r i se to po w er fir st a s G er m an G ha nc e l lo r an d the n as Füh rer , i n a par a l l

w i t h L o u i s N a p o l e o n ' s t r a j e c t o i y t h a t K r a c a u e r c o u l d n o t h a v e f a i l e d

n o t i c e .

These para l l e l s i nv i t e u s to cons ider whether pho tog raphy migh t no t s t an

t o W e i m a r G e r m a n y i n t h e s a m e r e l a t i o n a s O f f e n b a c b ' s o p e r e t t a s t o o d

the Secon d Em pi re . In Kraca uer ' s ana ly s i s t he oper e t t a was bo rn p rec i se

o f t h e h i s to r i c a l t r a u m a o f t b e s u p p r e s s i o n o f t h e 1 8 4 8 r e v o l u t i o n , w h e n t hbourgeo i s i e had tu rned aga ins t t he p ro le t a r i a t , t he i r fo rmer a l ly in the ba t t l

f o r d e m o c r a t i c r i g h t s :

T h e b r e a c b o f t h e b o u r g e o i s i e w it h t b e p r o l e t a r i a t w a s a l s o a b r e a c h w i t

i ts own consc ienc e . A v io len t r eac t ion t he n se t i n . . . t he des i re fo r ' o rd e

an d a ' s t ron g ma n ' was he ard o n eve iy s ide . T h e bou rgeo i s des i r e for

s t rong man was the r esu l t o f shock . The even t s and exper i ences tha t ha

led to i t , the whole ro le p layed by the pro letar ia t , thei r own al l iance wi t

i t, an d the r easo ns why they had l iqu ida te d i t were de l ibera t e ly r ep ress e

in to the unconsc ious , wh ere they fo rm ed a com plex . Peop le s imp ly re fuse



Founded on the repression of the truth ahout itself, the Second Empire w s in

Kracauer's account a dictatorship paradoxically ho rn of the desire for freedom

and democracy hut driven hy the need to distra ct its suhjects from the loss of

the righ ts they ha d willingly ah roga ted. Puhlic works such as the expa nsion of

the railways, of the sh ipp ing ind ustry a nd the effective rehu ildin g of Paris were

not the hasis on which Louis Nap oleon's regime rested, hut rath er necessary

props to the staging of an illusoiy gr ndeur hehind which lay the corpses of

the w orkers victim of the 1848 repression. 16. ibid., pi27.

Offenbach's operetta had emerged precisely from this separation between

the façade of wealth and prosperity erected hy the Second Empire and the

reality of its origin in the bourgeoisie's betrayal of its former allies. It had

occupied the space left empty hy the 'social reality [th at] had heen hanished

by the Emperor 's orders ' , enabling it to reflect back the glamorous surface

of the Second Empire with distortions that satirised the 'corruption and

author i tar ianism' h iding beneath it. Dressed 'in a g a r m e n t of frivolity

and concealed in an atmosphere of intoxication' the satire of Offenhach's

operettas had acted as a conduit for the revolutionary energies which n eithe r

the hourgeoisie, 'politically stagnant', nor the 'imp oten t' Left had heen able

to harness: 'it released gusts of laughter, which shattered the compulsory

silence and lured th e public towards opp osition , while seemin g only to amuse

jhem'. I7.ibid.,p289.

Kracaue r ' s i n s i s tence upo n the eve r -widen ing gap tha t sep a ra ted the reality

of the soc iety of the Second Em pir e f rom its ideologica l se l f - rep resenta t ion has

c lea r e choes o f the ana lys i s o f ph o t og rap hy he had p r o p o s e d a l m o s t ten yea rsear l ie r . If ope re t t a in se r t ed i t se lf in the gap h e t w e e n a p p e a r a n c e and reali ty

o n w h i c h the S e c o n d E m p i r e was f o u n d e d , p h o t o g r a p h y t ak e s r o o t in the

a l i e n a t io n o f n a t u r e f r om h u m a n c o n s c i o u s n e ss p r o d u c e d hy indus t r i a l i sa t ion

a n d a d v a n c e d c a p i t a l i s m . In ho th ca se s a frac ture has o p e n e d up b e t w e e n

rea l i t ies tha t had p rev ious ly seemed to c o i n c i d e - in E r a n c e , the e c o n o m i c

and po l i t i c a l s t ruc tu re s , in G e r m a n y the n a t u r a l and h u m a n o r d e r s. Out of

t h is f r a ct u r e h a v e e m e r g e d m o d e s of e n t e r ta i n m e n t - O f f e n h a c h 's o p e r e t t a s ,

t h e p h o t o g r a p h s of i l lu s t ra t ed maga z ines - which hav e g iven th i s pa r t i c u la r

h i s to r i ca l j u n c t u r e a ma te r i a l r ep re se n ta t io n ; they have , in o t h e r w o r d s , m a d ei t v i s ib le . O pe re t t a had e x p o s e d the c o r r u p t h e a r t of the S ec o n d E m p i r e hy

p u s h i n g to its l imi t the façade of fr ivol ity be hi nd w hich it h i d . Eor t h e i r p a r t ,

t he i l l u s t ra t ed magaz ines of the W eimar R epu b l i c r e f lec t hack to its society

t h e a l i e n a t e d n a t u r e p r o d u c e d hy the capi ta l i s t system on w h i c h its d e m o c r a cy

preca r ious ly re s t s : 'One can ce r t a in ly imag ine a soc ie ty tha t has fallen pre y

to a m u t e n a t u r e w h i c h has no m e a n i n g no m a t t e r how a h s t r a c t its s i l ence .

T h e c o n t o u r s of such a soc ie ty emerge in the i l lust ra ted journa ls ' . ' . ̂ 18. Kracauer,

T h i s c o n f r o n t a t i o n h e t w e e n the soc ia l r e a l i ty p roduced by the system J

o f a d v a n c e d c a p i t a l i s m and its d i s t o r te d a p p e a r a n c e is a r t i c u l a t e d in' P h o t o g r a p h y ' t h r o u g h the c o m p a r i s o n h e t w e e n the p h o t o g r a p h of th e fi lm



19. Ibid., p47.

20 . Ibid., p48.

d., p47 .

22 . Karl Marx and

Friedrich Engels, The ommun st Manifesto,

with an introduction

relation between appearance and reality, for which photography is held t

be responsib le. Th e film diva snap pe d on th e steps of the L ido may well be

contem porary incarnation of the divas who had grace d the op eretta stages i

nine teen th-c entu ry Paris, hut she is no dece ptive m irag e. She is in fact on e o

the Tiller Girls, part of those mass ornam ents which continually pe rform th

reduction of humanity to the Ratio of capitalism, the metam orph osis of'fle

and bloo d', of legs, hang s and eyelashes into the clockwork mech anism of th

assembly line. Materially the dots that make up her image in the illustrate

magazine are indistinguishable from those that make up 'the waves, th

hotel' '^ against which she stands. The photograph of the grandmother, o

the oth er ha nd , app ea rs to he ma de of quit e different stufl̂ , signifying pe rh ap

the continued survival of family relations in a private realm left untouche

by Tiller Girls or fllm divas. Yet the g ra nd m oth er can only be identified wit

her photograph hy the oral tradition, itself unreliable since 'none of he

conte mp oraries are still alive'. Since the referent of her p ho tog rap h has no

survived, the pho tog rap h itself cannot be said to have captured her likenes

Th e gr an dm oth er could in fact be 'any you ng girl in 1864'.^ Eternally fixed i

the same position and with the same expression, the presu me d gra nd m oth e

of 1864 is in fact as lifeless as a mannequin modelling the fashion of he

t ime. Rather than capturing her image forever, the photograph has rippe

that image out of its context and re duce d it to an empty husk, leaving just

hollowed crinoline to hold the shape of the grandmother.

The photograph of the grandmother reif ied into a crinoline is th

precursor of that of the demonic diva, its obverse side. We can have divaonly because grandmothers have all heen killed off, reduced to a hollow

externality. The grandmother's photograph already displays the mute natur

without meaning which is then inhabited, taken over hy 'our demonic div

[unsere dämonische Diva]'\ better still, it is the mute nature which becom

itself the demon. The diva is demonic because she has taken over the shel

of the gran dm other, an empty hu sk that can be occupied by an insubstantia

being made up of dots. But she is also demonic because she has turne

the grandmother inside out, to reveal what had been lurking beneath th

surface of bourgeois respectahihty all along. As the demon of the bourgeoigrandmother of the 1860s , the photograph of the mass ornament , o

Septemher 1927, represents the historical truth hehind the photograph o

nineteenth-century bourgeois family relations.

The mute nature which comes to face us in photography may the

present itself not as an absence or eradication of consciousness, but as a

interior dem on. U nde r the guise of the mass orn am ent, ph otog raph y reveal

the being that hides within the capitalist mode of production as its secre

genie, in Marx's words, ' the spectre that is haunting Europe', revolutionary

Communism.^^ If ph oto gra ph y is the Vabanque Spiel of capitalism, its ultim

gamble, it is because it gives substance to the proletariat, the mute natur



a machine. Under the appearance of a democracy united in its consumption

of the entertainment industry lies in fact a society that is always threatened

from within by the emergence of the mass as the unthinking, un-conscious

form hum anity takes un de r a dvanc ed capitalism.^ ̂

SANC HO PANZA S U TO PIA

T he proletariat that ph otogra phy reveals as the genie of capitalism is the o ne

Krac auer set out to describe in The Salaried M asses, a proletariat tha t does not

know itself if no t in the disto rted reflections of the be er halls, cinem a theatre s

an d sp ort arenas of the en terta inm ent industry. W hat distinguishes this new

prol etaria t of salaried em ployees from the classical one of the workers is, in

Krac auer s analysis, their he ing spiritually hom eless . Unlike the averag e

worker whose life as a class-conscious prolet aria n is roofed over with vulgar-

Marxist concep ts that do at least tell him what his inte nd ed role is ,^ salaried

employees are torn hetween the economic reality of their existence - whichis proletarian at best - and their ideological positioning as the middle class

of the newest Ger m any , as the o riginal suhtitle to The Salaried Masses had

it. Since their ideology does not match their reality, they find themselves

strande d in a world they cannot c om preh end , within which they cannot find

their proper place.

The condition of spiritual homelessness which Kracauer ascribes to

the new proletariat of the salaried employees represents his adaptation of

Lukács s coinage o f transc end enta l homelessness in Theory of the Novel, a

book to which Kraca uer s gen era tion looked as thei r manifesto.^ W rittenin the winter of 1914-15 and puhlished in book form in 1920, Theory of the

Novel reflected, hy Lukács s own admission , his sense of mo un tin g des pa ir

at the historical situation of World War I, a despair which clearly coloured

his vision of Western civilisation as a fall from grace since the age of

Ho m er s epic heroes. Eor Lukács transcende ntal hom elessness den oted the

condition of art forms in what he calls problematic civilisations, where the

fundamental immanence of meaning to life has been lost, so that art must

create its forms ex-novo rather than fmding them in the world. Although

Krac auer was later to rem on strat e with Bloch abo ut L ukács s disregard forma terialist analysis,^ nevertheless his conce ption of pho togr aph y in the

1927 essay and heyon d resona tes very strongly with Lukács s theory of loss

of inherent meaning in the world of modernity. When Lukács wrote that

in the in teg rate d civilisation of archaic Greece the m ind s attitud e within

such a home is a passive visionary acceptance of ready-made, ever-present

m ean ing ,^ or that totality of bein g is possible only ... whe re beauty is the

m ea nin g of the w orld m ad e visible ,^^ he was writing a bou t th e world from

which Kracauer s mu te natu re had been expelled. But Kracauer in his turn

bro ug ht to Lukács s Rom antic world-view of seamless fit between external

and internal reality an insistence on the historical specificity and material

23 . H e i d e

Sch l i ip man n s

reading of Theory of

Film has also shown

how K racatier s

u n d er s tan d in g o fphysical reality

as camera-mad e

implies the notion

of the mass as the

absence of tlie

h u m an ; see h er Th e

Stibject of Survival:

On Kracauer s

Theory of Film in Netii

Geniian Critique 5 4

(1991): 125-26.

24 . Kracatier, Th eSalaried Masses, o p .

cit. , p88.

25 . In As I

R ememb er F r ied e l

Leo Lowenthal notes

that Lukács s Theory

of the Novel was a

cult book for us all,

which we practically

knew by hear t Ne^it

Centuin Critique 5 4(1991): 8.)

26. Th e ex ch an g e

with Bloch on

Luk.1cs is an alyse d

in detail both in

Frisby, Fragments of

Modernity, op. cit. ,

pp 122-23 and in

Dagmar Barnotiw,

Critical Realism:

History, Photography,

and the Work ofSiegfried Kracauer,

B al t imo re , Jo h n s

Hopkins UP, 1994,

p p 3 7 - 4 l .

27. Geoi-g Luk.ics,

The Theoiy of the

Novel: A H istórico-

Philosophical Fssay

on the Foniwi of Créai

Epic Literature, An n a

Bostock (trans),

London, Merlin ,1971, p 3 2 .



29 . Kracauer,Salaried Masses o p .

cit., p88.

30 . SiegfriedKracauer, Theory ofFilm: The Redemption

of Physical Reality

introduction byMiriam BratuHansen, Princeton,Princeton UP, 1997,p299.

31 . Marcel Proust,Remembrance of

Things Past C.K.

Scott MoncriefF(trans), vol. I,pp814-15, quotedin Kracauer, Theoryof Film p 14. Th eepisode quoted

by Kracauer badbeen recognised asfundamental to tbeProustian discourseon perception fromvery early on, seefor instance SamuelBeckett's 1931essay in Proust and

Three Dialogues witb

Georges D uthuit,

London, Calder,1999, pp44-5.The episode alsofigures prominentlyin Brassai's 1998study of Proust'sdeploymentof tbe motif ofphotography in theRecherche {translatedinto English byRicbard Howardas Proust Under the

Power o f Photography

Cbicago, Universityof Cbicago Press,2001). For ananalysis of tbeepisode in relationto Proust's treatmentof temporalitysee also my 'T beGrammar of Time:Pbotograpby,Modernism, History'in Literature and

Visual Technologies:

Writing after Cinema

Julian Murphetand Lydia Rainford(eds),

the 'newest Germany' lack a transcendental home not because their live

find no correspondence in the natural world around them, but becaus

tbe objective reality of their proletarian existence has not modified tbe

ideological identification witb tbe bourgeoisie: 'tbe house of bourgeo

ideas and feelings in wbicb tbey used to live bas collapsed, its foundation

eroded by economic development'.^

But by tbe time Kracauer came to write tbe epilogue of Theory of iltbe late 1950s being 'ideologically sbelterless' became generalised from tb

socio-economic condition of a specific sector of society into tbe existenti

position of bumanity in tbe modern age. Tbis generalisation appears t

renounce Kracauer's earlier insistence on m aterial and bistorical specificit

and to recover instead tbe aestbetic and cognitive bent of Lukács's neo

Hegelianism. Ratber tban being rooted in tbe divergence between socia

reality and ideological representation specific to tbe salaried employee

of Weimar Germany, transcendental bomelessness is now seen to be tb

effect of tbe development of scientific tbougbt wbicb emerged from tb

Enligbtenment. For tbe Kracauer oí Theory of ilm our alienation fr

material reality is not produced by tbe capitalist mode of production bu

by its superstructural manifestation, tbe intellectual babit of abstractio

associated witb tbe predom inance of science and tecbnology. Abstractio

prevents us from actually seeing tbe physical reality tbat surrounds u

'altbo ugb streets, faces, railway stations, etc. be before our eyes, tbey hav

remained largely invisible so far'.^ Wbile it is religious or ideologica

beliefs tbat are often invoked as remedies against intellectual abstraction

Kracauer points out tbese bave also been fatally undermined by tb

development of science, leaving bumanity stranded witbout spiritua

guidance in a world it cannot perceive, let alone understand.

Tbis sbift in Kracauer's understanding of transcendental bomelessnes

from class-bound to existential condition signals also a profound cbang

in bis tbinking about pbotograpby. Wbile in tbe work of tbe 1920s an

1930s pbotograpby bad been conceptualised as tbe tecbnology tbat give

material substance to the new social reality of tbe mass, in Theory of ilm

social reality in fact m etamorpboses into a pbysical reality wbicb abstractioprevents us from perceiving. Tbis radical re-writing of pbotograpby is base

on i acauer's reading of tbe episode from Proust's In Search of Lost

wbicb bad already been implied in bis discussion of tbe pbotograpb of tb

grandmotber in 'Pbotograpby'. In Theory of ilm tbe reaction of Prou

narrator to seeing bis grandm other stripped of tbe veil of bis loving m emori

is taken to encapsulate wbat is distinctive about tbe pbotograpbic medium

its ability to present tbe world tbat surrounds us as if seen by 'tbe witness, tb

observer witb a ba t and travelling coat, tbe stranger wbo does not belong t

tbe bouse, tbe pbotograpber wbo bas called to take a pbotograpb of placewbicb one will never see again'.̂ ' Tbe estranging, de-familiarising power o



into consciousness: 'We literally redeem this world

om its dorm an t state, its state of virtual nonexistence by end eav ourin g to

Th rou gh Proust, then, the condition of transcende ntal hom elessness finds

as the Vabanque Spiel of capitalism, as ma terialisation oft he new

me ans of rede m ption from the m od ern condition of alienation

wh ethe r from physical or from social reality - wbich in its turn also imp lies

ion ofth e me aning of alienation itself. Still unders tood as

Theory of Film aliena tion will in fact becom e in

History: the Last Things Before the Last marks the last step in Kracauer's

Theory of Film

History K racauer offered a third interpre tation of it which emphasises the

o perceive a physical reality from which we are alienated through the habit

adical discontinuity witb one's own past which for Kracauer is embodied in

be con dition of tbe exile. T he exile has lived throu gh a drastic inter rup tion

n the continuity of his existence which cannot simply be remedied by a

rocess of integration into bis new life, his new territory: 'since the self he

identity is bound to be in a state of fiux; and tbe odds are that he will never

ully be lon g to the com m unity to which h e now in a way belongs'.' ' In History

the alienating powers of pho togra phy are re-conceptualised as exile from the

iow of time th at gua rant ees the continuity of one 's identity. To this cond ition

of temporal disjunction Kracauer gives the name of ' the near-vacuum of

extra-territoriality, the very no-man's land which Marcel entered when he

first caught sight of his grandmother'.^*

I t has o f ten been a rgued tha t History rep resen t s an es sen t ia l ly

auto bio grap bica l text,^ tho ug h its form is m ore akin to tha t of the self-

po rtra it th an to a narra tive accou nt of Krac auer's life. It is with the aid of

the camera he borrows from Proust that Kracauer crafts for himself the

final image which summarises his life-history. If Eckart 's monogram is

fidelity, as 'Ph oto gra ph y' had suggested , Krac auer's is extra-territoriality,

the conc ept-imag e that has come to identify him in his posthum ous life. In1966 Adorno had already used it in his obituary to describe Kracauer's face,

32 . Kracauer, Theoryof Film op. cit.,p300.

33 . On the roleof Proust iuKracauer's processof detachment fromhis W eimar-yearposition see alsoHeide Schlüpmann,'The Subject ofSui vival', in Ne^oGerman Critique o p .

cit., ppl 14-15.

34 . Siegfried

Kracauer History: theLast Things Before tlie

Last completed byPaul Oskar Kristeller,Princeton, MarkusWiener, 1995, p83.

35 . Ibid..

36. On History asautobiographysee Gertmd Koch,Siegfried Kracauer: an

Introduction Jeremy

Gaines (trans),Princeton, PrincetonUP, 2000, p pl 14-17and Inka Mülder-Bach, 'History asAutobiography: TheLast Things Beforethe Last', NewGerman Gritique 54

(1991), 139-57.

37. Theodor W.

Adorno, 'SiegfriedKracauer Tot,'Frankfurter Allgemeine

Zeitung (December1, 1966), quotedin Martin Jay, 'llieExtraterritorialLife' in Pennanent

Exiles: Essays on the

Intellectual Migration

from Germany to

America ColumbiaUniversity Press,

1985, p l53 .



a l ready an t i c ipa ted i ts po s th um ou s fo r tun e , a s if h i s l a s t boo k ha d in fac t b e

w r i t t e n fr o m b e y o n d t h e g r a v e . A s K r a c a u e r ' s m o n o g r a m , e x t r a - t e r r i to r i a l

b r idges the d i s t ance be tween au tob iog raphy and h i s sea rch fo r a p l ace w i th

t h e i n t e l l e c t u a l p a n o r a m a o f t h e t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y . I n t h e i n t r o d u c t i

to History, th i s sea rch is exp l ic i t ly mo de l l ed o n the h i s to r i ca l exa m ple

E r a s m u s o f R o t t e r d a m , w h o s e e q u i v o c a t i o n s b e t w e e n C a t h o l i c C h u r c h a

R e fo rma t ion a re ce leb ra ted by Kracaue r a s r e f l ec t ing h i s own re j ec t ion the f ix i ty o f ideo log ica l pos i t ion ings . Whi le seen by h i s con tempora r i e s

ev idence o f Era sm us ' s t enden cy towards unp r inc ip le d comp rom ise , E ra smu

unw i l l ingness to a l ign h imse l f w i th e i th e r C hu rch o r R e fo rm rep re s en t s

Kracaue r a pos i t ive cho ice o f ' t he midd le way [a s ] the d i rec t road to U top

39. Kracauer, //¿story, - t h e Way o f the hum ane ' . ' ^ Era sm us ' s exa mp le p rov ides fo r Kracaue r e v iden

°^ '̂ •' ' ' ' of th e futi li ty of ideo log ical str ug gle s w hic h always inev itably miss w ha t

e ssen t i a l i n the cause a t st ake . Access to an d un de rs t an d i ng o f th e ' la s t i ssu

is only a t ta i ne d t hr ou gh ' a way of th i nk ing a nd l iv ing . . . wh ich for lack o

be t te r wo rd , or a wo rd a t a l l , may be ca l led hu m a n e ' . I t is th is re jec t ion

abso lu te t ru ths tha t Era sm us ' s u top ia sha re s w i th Kracau e r ' s un de rs t an d i ng

h i s to r i ca l kno wle dge a s a fo rm o f ex i l e f rom b o th t ime an d ce r t a in ty , uneas

40. Ibid., p8. loca ted be tw een pas t an d p re s en t , ' i n the in t e r s t i c e s ' be tw een them. ' '

Th i s a t t e n t io n to wh a t l ie s be tw een f irm ideo log ica l and ph i lo sop h ic

p o s i t i o n s c h i m e s i n w i t h t h e r e je c t i o n o f a b s o l u t e s w h i c b K r a c a u e r h

commended to Lowen tha l a l ready in the ea r ly 1920s : 'We have to rema

secre t , quie t i s t ic , inac t ive , a thorn in the s ide of o thers , preferr ing to dr i

th em (with us ) in to de s pa i r r a th e r tba n g ive th em h op e - tha t seem s to m

41. Lowenthal, As I the Only poss ib le po stu re ' . ' But i t is in tbe con tex t of the Co ld War an dRe m em be r Fried el', , ,. . . . . i , . , , •. . >

op. cit., p9. siarV division into ideological and geo-political territories tha t this rejec

of ideology takes on its historical significance. It would be easy to dism

Kracauer's celebrat ion of th e h um ane in History as a lapse and re t renc hm

into lib eralism , itself clearly a n ideology, tho ugh also the one tha t pre ten ds

be non-ideological. But som ething far m ore s ignificant is bein g attem pte d

History, wh ere the no-m an's land, the una ttr ibu ted space between ideologi

terrains and philosophical absolutes is being reclaime d not in the negati

m o d e of a renun ciation of ideologies but in the po sitive form of a uto piaTbis Utopia represen ts a return to K racauer 's preoccupations in the Weim

essays. It is predic ated on his rethinking of ph oto gra ph y as a form of ex

from temp oral cont inui ty ra ther th an of physical alien atio n. Th is shift in

conception of photography certainly jettison s the historical an d material

specificity of his earlier analysis, but it does so in order to recover tbo

Utopian possibilities that in 'Photography ' ha d been hidd en behind the thr

of the Vhbanque-Spiel. I have tried in tbe previous section to tease out th

possibilities in the identification of photography with the demo nic charac

of the mass as orn am ent , a mass that uncannily resembles Marx 's Com mun

spectre. I n History, thou gh, those possibil it ies are reactivated no t thro ug h



image for the Utopian promise of photography:

Without making any boast of it Sancho Panza succeeded in the course of

years, by dev ourin g a great num ber of rom ances of chivalry and adv enture

in the evening and night hours, in so diverting from him his demon,

whom he later called Don Quixote, that his demon thereupon set out in

perfect freedom on the maddest exploits, which, however, for the lack

of a preord aine d object, which should have been Sancho Panza bimself

ha rm ed nobody. A free m an, Sanc ho Panza philosophically followed Don

Qu ixote on his crusad es, per ha ps ou t of a sense of responsibility, and had

of them a great and edifying entertainment to the end.'*^

T he fmal imag e of Kracauer's 'Utopia o fthe in-between - a terra incognita in

the hollows between the land s we know *'̂ - is qu ite a pp ro pr ia te ly itself loca ted

in the interstices of Kafka's story, in that app osition of'free m an' to a SanchoPanza refashioned in the shape of Don Quixote's chronicler.

Like Proust's grandmother, Kafka's Sancho Panza is one of the images

to which Kracauer constantly returned in the course of his writing. As with

Proust, Kracau er's inte rpre tatio n of Kafka's shor t piece never fossilised itself

into a stable form, but underwent a series of significant transformations in

the course of his career. In Kracauer's 1931 review of Kafka's posthumous

works, 'The Truth about Sancho Panza' had been interpreted as offering a

complete reversal of the world of adventure stories, 'since here, instead of

the hero conquering the world, the world becomes completely unhinged inthe course of his wanderings'. '*' ' This world coming apart at the seams and

featuring labourers trapped within the buildings they have erected, silence

as the only adequate answer to interpellation, and a 'completely skewed'

relationship between objects and people, represented for Kracauer an implicit

com men tary on 'the years ofth e war the revolution, and the inflation' during

which Kafka's last pieces had been written. While recognising that Kafka's

posthumous writings still offered 'premonitions of state of freedom'' tha t

were Utopian in character, in 1931 Kracauer had sombrely observed that

these Utopias were normally located by Kafka not in the future, but in a pastto which we have lo ng since lost access.

The Utopian promise that seemed to be buried in Kafka's Sancho Panza

in 1931 was however reactivated a few years later un de r circum stances which

appeared to match in darkness those in which the piece had been written.

D urin g his forced stay in Marseille in f 940 waitin g for a safe pa ssage ou t of

Vichy France, Kracauer had started sketching out the first drafts of a study

of film aesthetics that was later to become Theory of Film.' ' Sancho Panza

resurfaced once m ore in these n otebook s, but no t jus t to signify the disjunction

ofth e world he had marke d in the 1931 review, but rath er as an intim ation ofwhat could be gained from the falling apart ofthe old order: 'Insofar as film,

42 . Franz Kaflca,'The Ti-uth AboutSancho Panza',quoted in History,op. cit., p217.

43 . Kracauer, Hutory,op . cit., p217.

44 . Kracauer, 'FranzKafka', in The assOrnament op. cit.,p273.

45 . Ibid., p269.

46 . For an accountof the Marseillenotebooks asan importanttransitional stage inKracauer's thoughtsee Miriam Hansen, 'With Skin and

Hair : Kracauer'sTheory of Film,Marseille 1940',



47. Kracauer,MarseilleNotebooks, 1:42,quoted in Miriam

Hansen , 'With Skinand Hair ', op. cit.,pp 450-51, n. 20.

48 . Kracauer, 'TheLittle Shopgirls Goto the Movies', in

The Mass Ornamentop . cit., p292.

intentional eonstructions' . This is an undoubtedly more positive reading

Sancho Panza's role than the on e Kracauer had originally pro pose d in 193

even with the addition of the warning that 'to which end [film] evokes a

takes into accou nt the m ateria l sph ere remain s to be seen'. But its optim i

is based effectively on a form of forgetting, whieh overlays Kafka's pie

with the original source in Cervantes, annihilating the reversal of roles th

is Kafka's devastating revelation. In the Marseille notebooks Sancho Pan

remains Don Quixote's side-kick, the dismantler of his master's anachronis

fantasies, rather than their creator.

The Sancho Panza oi istory lies half-way between the 1931 review

the Marseille notebooks. On the surface an apparently more optimis

interpretation of tbe disjointed world created by Kafka, it is in fact mu

less sanguine about tbe potential for deflation in the Cold War era, wh

freedom from ideological fixities can only be imagin ed as an unknow n u top

This Utopia is not even projected in the past, as Kracauer bad observed

Kafka's a spiratio ns in 1 931 , but in a paralle l universe wb ere the origin

relationships of Cervantes 's epic are reversed. In making the knight erra

into Sancho Panza's inner demon, Kafka effectively turns inside out t

ideological value oí Do n Quixote. Rather tban being a satire on tbe outmo

ideological investments oft he dying aristocracy in seventeenth-c entury Spa

Kafka's Cervantes becomes a celebration of the downtrodden peasants, t

app ropr iation of a literary m ilestone for those whose labour m ade it possib

but who could never have claimed its authorship. 'The Trutb About Sanc

Panza' offers in fact an adaptation of Cervantes's founding realist epic f

the age of mass culture wbich un doe s th e relationship between class ideolo

and the subjects interpelled by it which Kracauer himself had oudined

'The Little Shopgirls Go To the Movies'. Back in 1927 Kracauer bad argu

that the ideological content of mass-produced movies reflected the dream

not of its audiences, but of tbose who controlled the means of productio

'doesn't every Rolls Royce owner dream that scullery maids dream of risi

to bis stature?' ** Kafka's Sa nch o Pa nza is, th ou gh , no sho pg irl, th e p assi

consumer of bis master's fantasies; he is in fact the producer of the drea

which bis master believes to be his world. Through this reversal in tauthorship of Don Quixote's fantastic world, Kafka operates precisely t

kind of demytbologisation which Kracauer bad attributed to Sancbo Pan

in the Marseille notebooks. 'The Truth About Sancho Panza' shows us t

ideological conditions under wbich Don Quixote got produc ed, conditio

that could only become visible after tbe book bad been written. It offers

a snapsbot of the birtb of capitalism seen from the point of view of tbo

whose labour has made capitalism possible, but wbo will never appear

prime actors in tbe representation of its bistory.

I use the word snapsbot advisedly here, botb because it captures tepigrammatic quality of Kafka's dry humour in rewriting the pondero



r K racauer ph otog raph y 's h is torical miss ion is

perfo rm a s imilar task in the realm of the v is ib le . By revers ing the relat ion

een San cho Panza and Don Q uixo te Kafka effectively expo sed th e shaky

y tbe t im e of History Kra cauer b ad co me to real ise

ucts of San cho Panza 's windm il ls , tba t wbat is v isib le may n ot be the

49. Kracauer, 'Franz

H avin g spent m ost of h is l ife ins is t ing upo n p ho tog rap hy 's aff in ity to the ^'^ ^ ̂ ' °'' ' '

ra l world , in History Kracauer the n tu rns pho tog rap hy in to a tecbno logy

s not a l ienat ion from consciousness , as i t used to be in 'Photography ' or ,

ater, in Theory of Film I t is ra the r al ienat ion from terr i tory , from belo ngin g,

roun d we walk on . Th is pho togr aph y does no t p res en t us wi th the phys ica l

eali ty wbich abstract thou gh t preve nts us from seeing. I ts funct ion is ra tbe r

that of shaking our bel ief in tbe v is ib le , and in tbe presumption that the

ib le exhau sts tbe real . Tb e terra incognita wbich K racaue r envisages as the

location of his utopia cannot be a physical entity, since i t only exists in the

in ters t ices between es tabl isbed t ru tbs or dogmas. This immaterial , invis ib lete r ra in is wbere ph o tog raph y be longs wi th in Kracauer ' s though t , it s p ro per

terr i tory .



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El territorio de la fotografía, entre la modernidad y la utopía en el pensamiento de Kracauer.pdf