Crisis and Astonishment

Contributions by Eugenia Roldan Contributions by Juan-Jacques Aupiais Contributions by Torsten Musial Contributions by Rob Ryder Contributions by Ricardo Samaniego de la Fuente Contributions by James Hellings Contributions by Ben Baer Contributions by Rainer Stollmann Edited by Richard Langston Edited by Irina Simova

Book cover: Crisis and Astonishment

Extent: 353 pages

Publisher: V&R unipress

Subjects: Art & Art History, German Studies

Series: Alexander Kluge - Jahrbuch

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(November 2024)

ISBN: 9783847116646

6.1 x 9.13 inches

Price: $57.00

In stock

According to Walter Benjamin, the amazement that the things we experience are ‘still’ possible in the 21st century is not a philosophical one. For Alexander Kluge, critical insights only begin when this anti-realistic amazement unfolds beyond human desires.


Romantic picture books. Stage designs inspired by Spinoza. A.I. imagined scenes from the early modern period. What the narrative perspective cannot achieve, Alexander Kluge has recently displaced on to the peculiar logic of the images. Volume 9 of the Alexander Kluge-Jahrbuch begins with a compilation of his most recent works, the images of which express astonishment at the public crises of the 21st century. Kluge’s astonishment–whether in the form of animals photographed in war zones, the clash of physical opposites on screens and stages, or machine-generated invisibility on screens–is a constant challenge to our capacity for differentiation. In addition to dialogues with painter Katharina Grosse and poet Ben Lerner, the volume includes a cluster of essays on decolonialism as well as other scholarly contributions on related topics such as technology, iconoclasm, the political and the labor of theory.

  • Contributions by Eugenia Roldan
  • Contributions by Juan-Jacques Aupiais
  • Contributions by Torsten Musial
  • Contributions by Rob Ryder
  • Contributions by Ricardo Samaniego de la Fuente
  • Contributions by James Hellings
  • Contributions by Ben Baer
  • Contributions by Rainer Stollmann
  • Edited by Richard Langston
  • Edited by Irina Simova