The Curious Humanist: Siegfried Kracauer in America"Siegfried Kracauer is today considered one of the key thinkers of the twentieth century. During the Weimar Republic, he established himself as a trenchant theorist of film, culture, and modernity, now often ranked alongside his friends Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno. When he arrived in Manhattan aboard a crowded refugee ship in 1941, however, he was virtually unknown in the United States and had yet to write his best-known books, From Caligari to Hitler and Theory of Film. In this study, Johannes von Moltke details the intricate ways in which the American intellectual and political context shaped Kracauer's seminal contributions to film studies and shows how Kracauer's American writings helped shape the emergent discipline in turn. Through archival sources and detailed readings of Kracauer's work, von Moltke reconstructs what it means to consider Siegfried Kracauer as the New York Intellectual he became when he settled in Manhattan for the last quarter century of his life. Here, he found an institutional home at the MoMA film library, contributed to communications and propaganda research under the aegis of the Rockefeller Foundation, and published in the influential "little magazines" of the New York Intellectuals. Adopting a transatlantic perspective on Kracauer's work, von Moltke demonstrates how he pursued questions that animated contemporary critics from Adorno to Hannah Arendt, from Clement Greenberg to Robert Warshow: questions about the origins of totalitarianism and the authoritarian personality, about high and low culture, about liberalism, democracy, and what it means to be human. From these wide-flung conversations and debates, Kracauer's own voice emerges as that of an incisive cultural critic invested in a humanist understanding of the cinema."--Provided by publisher. |
Contents
SIEGFRIED KRACAUER | 1 |
KRACAUER | 26 |
TOTALITARIAN PROPAGANDA | 44 |
NAZI CINEMA | 63 |
FREEDOM FROM FEAR? | 79 |
SPACES OF WEIMAR CINEMA | 93 |
AUTHORITARIAN TOTALITARIAN | 109 |
THE POLITICS OF CINEMA | 132 |
THEORY OF FILM AND THE SUBJECT OF EXPERIENCE | 148 |
THE CURIOUS HUMANIST | 169 |
HISTORY AND HUMANIST SUBJECTIVITY | 186 |
Notes | 221 |
| 283 | |
| 303 | |
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Adorno aesthetic analysis antisemitism appears argue argument Authoritarian Personality Bazin becomes Benjamin Caligari to Hitler central chapter claim Commentary contemporary context democracy Dialectic Dwight Macdonald émigré Erwin Panofsky essays explicitly fascist fear figure film critic film library film noir film studies film theory film's Frankfurt School freedom German Film Gessner Hannah Arendt Hansen Heimkehr Hollywood Hollywood's Terror Films Horkheimer human humanist Ibid ideological Immediate Experience Jewish Journal Kracauer's American Writings Leo Löwenthal Letter liberal Löwenthal mass culture Mass Ornament medium MoMA motifs Museum of Modern narrative Nazi propaganda Nazi War Film notes notion Origins of Totalitarianism Panofsky Partisan Review photography Polan political postwar precisely Princeton published Quaresima reality Rodowick Schapiro screen sense Sieg im Westen Siegfried Kracauer Siegfried Kracauer's American Society of Cinematologists spatial spectator spectatorship Theory of Film tion totalitarian propaganda trace University Press Weimar cinema Weimar Republic York Intellectuals