Thought-images : Frankfurt School writers' reflections from damaged life / Gerhard Richter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Richter, Gerhard, 1967-

Series:

Cultural memory in the present

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bloch, Ernst, 1885-1977.

Kracauer, Siegfried, 1889-1966.

Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940.

Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969.

German literature--20th century--History and criticism.

German literature.

Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969--Criticism and interpretation.

Adorno, Theodor W.

Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940--Criticism and interpretation.

Benjamin, Walter.

Kracauer, Siegfried, 1889-1966--Criticism and interpretation.

Kracauer, Siegfried.

Bloch, Ernst, 1885-1977--Criticism and interpretation.

Bloch, Ernst.

Frankfurt school of sociology.

Literature and society.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xiv, 233 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

In this book, Gerhard Richter explores the aesthetic and political ramifications of the literary genre of the Denkbild, or thought-image, as it was employed by four major German-Jewish writers and philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, and Siegfried Kracauer. The Denkbild is a poetic mode of writing, a brief snapshot-in-prose that stages the interrelation of literary, philosophical, political, and cultural insights. Richter's careful analysis of the linguistic characteristics of this mode of writing sheds new light on pivotal concerns of modernity, including the fractured cityscape, philosophical problems of modern music, the experience of exiled homelessness, and the disaster of Auschwitz. Thought-Images not only reorients our understanding of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory in important ways but also establishes significant links between these writers and such contemporary French thinkers as Jacques Derrida.

Contents:

Paleonomies of the Thought-Image: An Introduction 1

1 A Matter of Distance: Benjamin's One-Way Street through the Arcades 43

2 Bloch's Dream, Music's Traces 72

3 Homeless Images: Kracauer's Extraterritoriality, Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other 107

4 Nazism and Negative Dialectics: Adorno's Hitler in Minima Moralia 147.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [193]-227) and index.

ISBN:

9780804756167

0804756163

9780804756174

0804756171

OCLC:

78072107