Richard Langston – författare

Alexander Kluge is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, he has also cowritten three acclaimed volumes of critical theory, published countless essays and numerous works of fiction, and continues to make films even as he expands his video production to the internet. Despite Kluge's five decades of work in philosophy, literature, television, and media politics, his reputation outside of the German-speaking world still largely rests on his films of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. With the aim of introducing Kluge's heterogeneous mind to an Anglophone readership, Difference and Orientation assembles thirty of his essays, speeches, glossaries, and interviews, revolving around the capacity for differentiation and the need for orientation toward ways out of catastrophic modernity. This landmark volume brings together some of Kluge's most fundamental statements on literature, film, pre- and post-cinematic media, and social theory, nearly all for the first time in English translation. Together, these works highlight Kluge's career-spanning commitment to unorthodox, essayistic thinking.

Alexander Kluge is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, he has also cowritten three acclaimed volumes of critical theory, published countless essays and numerous works of fiction, and continues to make films even as he expands his video production to the internet. Despite Kluge's five decades of work in philosophy, literature, television, and media politics, his reputation outside of the German-speaking world still largely rests on his films of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. With the aim of introducing Kluge's heterogeneous mind to an Anglophone readership, Difference and Orientation assembles thirty of his essays, speeches, glossaries, and interviews, revolving around the capacity for differentiation and the need for orientation toward ways out of catastrophic modernity. This landmark volume brings together some of Kluge's most fundamental statements on literature, film, pre- and post-cinematic media, and social theory, nearly all for the first time in English translation. Together, these works highlight Kluge's career-spanning commitment to unorthodox, essayistic thinking.

Revitalizes Alexander Kluge's classic 1979 film, showing it to be not just great storytelling but also an exploration of the poetic force of Frankfurt School Critical Theory.Alexander Kluge achieved his breakthrough at the 1966 Venice Biennale with his first feature, Yesterday Girl (Abschied von gestern), but it is arguably his 1979 film The Patriot (Die Patriotin) that first embodied the great heights his storytelling could reach. Titled after its heroine, the history teacher Gabi Teichert, The Patriot is, however, much more than just a curious story about a headstrong pedagogue intent on teaching kids a version of German history that does not end in war and death: it is one of the finest examples of Kluge's exploration of the poetic force of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. This book pursues The Patriot's conception as a cinematic extension of the theoretical agenda that Kluge and social philosopher Oskar Negt began developing just as the Frankfurt School's first generation was ending. It will guide twenty-first-century English-language readers past superficial interpretations of the film's engagement with German history. By asking how and why The Patriot brings the twin concepts of history and obstinacy - the human propensity to resist capitalism's forces of expropriation and alienation - to the screen, this book revitalizes Kluge's film for the new millennium.

Collaborators for more than four decades, lawyer, author, filmmaker, and multimedia artist Alexander Kluge and social philosopher Oskar Negt are an exceptional duo in the history of Critical Theory precisely because their respective disciplines operate so differently. Dark Matter argues that what makes their contributions to the Frankfurt School so remarkable is how they think together in spite of these differences. Kluge and Negt's "gravitational thinking" balances not only the abstractions of theory with the concreteness of the aesthetic, but also their allegiances to Frankfurt School mentors with their fascination for other German, French, and Anglo-American thinkers distinctly outside the Frankfurt tradition.At the core of all their adventures in gravitational thinking is a profound sense that the catastrophic conditions of modern life are not humankind's unalterable fate. In opposition to modernity's disastrous state of affairs, Kluge and Negt regard the huge mass of dark matter throughout the universe as the lodestar for thinking together with others, for dark matter is that absolute guarantee that happier alternatives to our calamitous world are possible. As illustrated throughout Langston's study, dark matter's promise-its critical orientation out of catastrophic modernity-finds its expression, above all, in Kluge's multimedia aesthetic.

A highly readable and lighthearted, yet intellectual-stimulating exploration of the modern human condition.  This volume concerns itself with the question of time, from the description of a brief fragment passing by in a matter of minutes to stories of the unexpected stock-market crash of 1929, a once-in-a-century event that Europeans call ‘Black Friday’ because Wall Street’s collapse reached the Old World one day later. Through this exploration of time, Kluge ponders some fundamental questions not altered by the passing of time: What can I trust? How can I protect myself? What should I be afraid of? Our age today has achieved a new kind of obscurity. We’ve encountered a pandemic. We’ve witnessed the Capitol riots. We see before us inflation, war, and a burning planet. We gaze at the world with suspense. What we need in our lives is orientation—just like ships that navigate the high seas. We might just find that in Kluge’s vignettes and stories.