and provided me with a steady research fund; it has also nurtured this book in more immaterial ways.
Since joining the Chicago faculty in 1990, I have been fortunate to find extraordinary interlocutors among my colleagues and friends, both within the Departments of English and of Cinema and Media Studies and across the disciplines. For useful comments and challenges, conversations and expert advice, I am grateful to Lauren Berlant, Dipesh Chakrabarty, James Chandler, Bradin Cormack, Tom Gunning, Elizabeth Helsinger, Berthold Hoeckner, James Lastra, David Levin, W. J. T. Mitchell, Richard Neer, Robert Pippin, Eric Santner, and Yuri Tsivian. My thanks also go to the superb students, both graduate and undergraduate, whom I have taught here over the years: whether in seminars or advising situations, I have continually enjoyed the chance to learn from them. In particular, I would like to single out the Graduate Workshop on Mass Culture (where I presented parts of the book), which—together with the New Media Workshop—has provided an energetic, tough though congenial forum for discussions about cinema and media among doctoral students, faculty, and visitors.
Beyond Chicago, I am indebted to numerous friends and colleagues who have been instrumental in the genesis and shaping of this book. My longest-standing debt is to the friends whose names have already appeared in the preface: Alexander Kluge, Gertrud Koch, Heide Schlüpmann, and Karsten Witte, whose memory I wish to honor with this book. I owe thanks to Albrecht Wellmer, who acted as my mentor for the Humboldt-Stift ung when I first embarked on the project, for, among other things, urging me to approach the question of Adorno’s significance for film theory from the perspective of his aesthetics of music. Andreas Huyssen shared with me his interest in theories of mass culture and modernity, his insights into contemporary art, and his expertise in German literature and visual culture. I am grateful to him and to Martin Jay for acute and useful readings for the University of California Press. For comments on all or parts of the manuscript at various stages and for encouragement and support in various forms, I wish to thank Paula Amad, Ingrid Belke, Harold Bloom, Horst Bredekamp, Susan Buck-Morss, Victoria de Grazia, Frances Ferguson, Heiner Goebbels, Lydia Goehr, Michael Jennings, Rob Kaufman, Roberta Malagoli, Reinhart Meyer-Kalkus, Klaus Michael, Laura Mulvey, Alexander Nagel, Gary Smith, and Lesley Stern.
It has been a pleasure working with Mary Francis at the University of California Press; her patience and persistence were essential to the completion of the book. Eric Schmidt steered the book through the editorial and production process with great efficiency. Christina Petersen and James Hodge, my Chicago research assistants, did their best to tame and check the multitude of endnotes and played an important part in the preparation of the manuscript.
My special thanks go to Bill Brown, whose work on “play” and “things” in modernity has been an inspiration to me for many years and who commented on many draft s with deft and elegant suggestions; to Edward Dimendberg, who believed in this book almost before I did, closely read every chapter, and brainstormed with me on the conception of the preface; and to Daniel Morgan, who made me think simultaneously harder and with greater ease about particular arguments and the book as a whole. The strongest impulse to make me clarify and raise the stakes of what I was doing came from Michael Geyer, dearest friend and husband, whom I cannot thank enough. He cast the historian’s long gaze on the project and challenged assumptions I had taken for granted. He has also been keeping me alive, in every sense of the word, through difficult times.
ABBREVIATIONS
Unless an English source is cited, translations are my own. An additional reference to the German source indicates that the translation has been modified.
SIEGFRIED KRACAUER
| BN | Berliner Nebeneinander: Ausgewählte Feuilletons, 1930–33. Ed. Andreas Volk. Zurich: Edition Epoca, 1996. |
| FT | Frankfurter Turmhäuser: Ausgewählte Feuilletons, 1906–30. Ed. Andreas Volk. Zurich: Edition Epoca, 1997. |
| FZ | Frankfurter Zeitung |
| H | History: The Last Things Before the Last. Ed. Paul Oskar Kristeller. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969. |
| MO | The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Trans., ed., and with an intr. by Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995. |
| S | Schrift en. Vols. 1, 2, 7, 8, ed. Karsten Witte. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1978, 1984, 1973, 1976; vol. 5.1–3, ed. Inka Mülder-Bach. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1990. |
| SM | The Salaried Masses: Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany. Trans. Quintin Hoare. With an intr. by Inka Mülder-Bach. London and New York: Verso, 1998. |
| T | Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. 1960. Repr., with an intr. by Miriam Hansen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. |
| W | Werke. Vols. 1, 3, 4, 6–9. Inka Mülder-Bach and Ingrid Belke, general eds., with Sabine Biebl and Mirjam Wenzel. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2004–2009. |
WALTER BENJAMIN
| AP | The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Prepared on the basis of the German volume, ed. Rolf Tiedemann [1982]. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. |
| CWB | The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940. Ed. and annot. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno. Trans. Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. |
| GB | Gesammelte Briefe. 6 vols. Ed. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1995–2000. |
| GS | Gesammelte Schrift en. 7 vols. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann, Hermann Schweppenhäuser, et al. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1972–1989. |
| SW | Selected Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Michael W. Jennings et al. Trans. Rodney Livingstone, Edmund Jephcott, H. Eiland, et al. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996–2003. |
THEODOR W. ADORNO
| ABB | Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin. Briefwechsel, 1928–1940. Ed. Henri Lonitz. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1994. |
| AGS | Gesammelte Schrift en. Vols. 1–20. Rolf Tiedemann, general ed., with Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss, Klaus Schultz. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1970–86. |
| AKB | Theodor W. Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer. Briefwechsel, 1923–1966. Ed. Wolfgang Schopf. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2008. |
| AT | Theodor W. Adorno. Aesthetic Theory (1970). Ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann. Newly trans., ed., and with an intr. by Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. |
| ÄT | Theodor W. Adorno. Ästhetische Theorie. 1970. Repr., Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1996. |
| CC | Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Complete Correspondence, 1928–1940. Ed. Henri Lonitz. Trans. Nicholas Walker. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. |
| CF | Theodor [W.] Adorno and Hanns Eisler. Composing for the Films. Intr. Graham McCann. London and Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Athlone Press, 1994. |
| CI | Theodor W. Adorno. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. Trans. Nicholas Walker. Ed. with and intr. by J. M. Bernstein. London: Routledge, 1991. |
| DE | Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. |
| FT | “Filmtransparente.” Partially published in Die Zeit, 18 November 1966. In Ohne Leitbild (1967), in AGS 10.1:353–61. |
| TF | “Transparencies on Film” (1966). Trans. Thomas Y. Levin. New German Critique 24–25 (Fall–Winter 1981–82): 199–205. |
PART I
Kracauer
1
Film, Medium of a Disintegrating World
No pacifism, no communism, but an aesthetic defense of the dissociated world in the awareness of death. Roughly like that.
— KRACAUER ON THE LAST CHAPTER OF HIS NOVEL GINSTER, LETTER TO ERNST BLOCH, 5 JANUARY 1928.
Among the first generation of Critical Theorists, Siegfried