Abstract

The dissertation provides close readings of Alexander Kluge's critical theory and film. Its central task is to explore Kluge's contributions as a critical theorist of culture. It is divided into three sections. In the first section, Kluge's critical theory is analyzed through a close reading of Geschichte und Eigensinn , which Kluge co-authored with Oskar Negt. In this work, Negt and Kluge revise and expand the central Marxian concepts of labor-power and primitive accumulation through an approach strongly influenced by Theodor Adorno's philosophy of negative dialectics. Also in this work, Negt and Kluge develop a theory of the public sphere based on a notion of production. ;Kluge's theories of montage and of "antagonistic realism" comprise the focus of the second section. Montage is shown to be a form which allows Kluge to make films while adhering to the "Bilderverbot" or ban on graven images, a legacy which Kluge inherited from Adorno and Walter Benjamin. Kluge's montage is shown to reconcile the divergent theories of Adorno, Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht. The theory of "antagonistic realism" is shown to be an extension of the analyses of the public sphere into the realm of the aesthetic. ;The final section explores the tension between mimesis and allegory which runs through all of Kluge's film work. Brutality in Stone is read as an attempt to criticize the persistence of fascist ideological structures into the present of the Federal Republic; at the same time the film is an attempt to evoke and "redeem" the utopian dimensions of fascism. Abschied von gestern is discussed in terms of the main protagonist's loss of history and of nation; the film is also an attempt to cultivate a new, powerful mimetic faculty. Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos is read as a lesson on Utopia: the film is at once a structural allegory about the impossibility of Utopia and an object-lesson in its necessity. ;A concluding chapter considers Kluge's late film, Der Angriff der Gegenwart auf die ubrige Zeit as a meditation on the passing of film as a viable political aesthetic medium. The film points the way toward Kluge's work in television