Cracking the cultural code Methodological reflections on Kracauer’s ‘The Mass Ornament’

Steve Giles

Since the mid-1980s there has been a major revival of between the biological and the historical, and the interest in the work of Siegfried Kracauer, focusing on metaphysical and the social. This discussion of ʻThe the essays he wrote during the for Mass Ornamentʼ is therefore particularly concerned the .1 As a result of this renewed to establish the nature of Kracauerʼs materialism. interest in Kracauerʼs early writings, a revisionist Although commentators on Kracauerʼs Weimar essays school of Kracauer criticism has emerged, particularly concede the part played by Marxism in establishing in the USA.2 Where he had once been dismissed as a Kracauerʼs materialist credentials, they also tend to peddler of naively realist or simplistically psychologi- draw attention to the ways in which Kracauer trans- cal film criticism, Kracauer is now accorded a privi- cends the supposed limitations of Marxist cultural leged position in the pantheon of post-structuralism analysis. Levin, for example, observes that Kracauer and post-modernism, as the putative saviour of cultural ʻdoes not simply reduce the mass ornament to a studies from its own tendentious reflexivity.3 superstructural reflection of the prevailing mode of At the epicentre of this reconfiguration of Kracau- production, as would a traditional Marxist analysis of erʼs work lies the essay ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ, with its ideologyʼ.7 Moreover, Levin argues – again fairly typi- beguilingly lucid opening paragraph.4 ʻThe Mass Orna- cally – that Kracauer escapes the pitfalls of Marxist mentʼ is usually seen as playing a crucial role in the reductionism by adopting a mode of cultural inquiry articulation of the new direction taken by Kracauerʼs which is premissed on the notion of deciphering or writings from the mid-1920s onwards. Like Brecht and decoding. He even suggests that Kracauerʼs method- Benjamin, Kracauer shifts from a metaphysical to a ology is redolent of Freudʼs ʻlogic of the parapraxisʼ.8 materialist conception of modernity, and engages in a The Freudian dimension to Kracauerʼs approach seems series of methodological reflections on the theoretical to be confirmed by Kracauerʼs adherence to a symp- foundations of a materialist cultural analysis.5 The tomatic mode of reading modelled on dream analysis opening sentences of ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ are often which seeks to access a historical unconscious,9 and construed as a statement of Kracauerʼs new methodo- the stage might appear to be set for Kracauer to logical credo: grounding his interest in phenomena abandon his Marxist predilections entirely. otherwise ignored by sociologists and cultural critics, Yet even when Kracauerʼs writing seems to be at involving a genre of theoretical writing embodied in its most manifestly psychoanalytic, a more activist the essayistic miniature, and establishing a mode of Marxism is also in evidence, as Kracauer engages in cultural inquiry that appears to blend the insights of a critique of ideology by exposing the socio-political Marx, Freud and Weber in such a way as to inaugurate contradictions of contemporary capitalism in order to what Levin refers to as a ʻmaterialist phenomenology facilitate intervention in social reality.10 It is far from of daily lifeʼ.6 clear that Kracauerʼs own practice of dream analysis It may well be that ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ signifies or symptomatic reading has any firm basis in psycho- a key stage in the articulation of Kracauerʼs material- analytic theory, rather than the allegorizing modes of ism, but it does so in a contradictory manner, in that reading propounded by Simmel and Benjamin.11 Not it leaves unresolved the potential theoretical conflicts only that, it has also been argued that Kracauerʼs idi-

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 31 osyncratic analyses of cultural modernity owe at least view of the fact that seemingly neutral methodological as much theoretically to Weber as they do to Freud precepts are grounded in specific epistemological and or Marx; Weber was, after all, the key proponent of ontological assumptions – not least those articulating the view that should involve the systematic the relationship between self and society – it is hardly investigation of culture through the method of inter- surprising that, as Mülder notes, Kracauerʼs own meth- pretative understanding.12 odological practices should be so firmly rooted in his My consideration of these issues will proceed as historical construction of the crisis of modernity.14 follows. Concentrating on ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ, as an exemplary instance of Kracauerʼs analysis of mod- That notorious opening paragraph ernity, I shall seek to establish the precise configuration Let us begin with the text in question, the opening of Kracauerʼs method of cultural inquiry, in both paragraph of ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ: theory and practice, by addressing a series of ques- The position that an epoch occupies in the historical tions: What does the notorious opening paragraph of process can be determined more strikingly from an ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ actually mean in the context analysis of its inconspicuous surface-level expres- of Kracauerʼs supposed synthesis of Marx, Freud and sions than from that epochʼs judgements about Weber? Is Kracauerʼs approach to the ʻinterpreta- itself. Since the latter are expressions of the tenden- cies of a particular era, they do not offer conclusive tive understandingʼ of social and cultural phenomena testimony about that eraʼs overall constitution. By Freudian, Weberian, or neither? If it is the case that virtue of their unconscious nature, the former grant Kracauer moves towards a Marxist position from unmediated access to the fundamental substance of the mid-1920s onwards, which particular variant of the state of things. Conversely, knowledge of the Marxist theory does he adopt? Is Kracauerʼs model of latter depends on their interpretation. The fundamen- historical development dualistic or dialectical? Does tal substance of an epoch and its unheeded impulses illuminate each other reciprocally. Kracauer provide a coherent theoretical basis for the pursuit of cultural studies today, given the paradox At first sight, these few short sentences could be of the combination of the emergent hegemony of that construed as an indirect response to Marxʼs account of discipline with its own self-confessed methodological social structure and historical change in, for example, fragility? What, ultimately, are the specific terms of the 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique reference of Kracauerʼs ostensibly historical and mat- of Political Economy. Like Kracauer, Marx takes the erialist model of modernity? view that when explaining social life, the investigator In engaging with such questions one is inevitably should be somewhat sceptical regarding an epochʼs drawn back to the initial conundrum posed by Krac- judgements about itself. As far as Marx is concerned, auerʼs yoking together of the potentially incompatible an epochʼs self-understanding must itself be accounted theoretical positions of Marx, Freud and Weber, and for as a product of the contradictions of material life, in particular to the issue of the general structure of so that valid explanations of social phenomena can Kracauerʼs method of explanation in the context of his cut through ideological obfuscation and identify the philosophy of history. In this respect, I should perhaps real causes of historical change located at the level note that my own approach to such issues is based on of conditions of production. It is here, though, that the account of explanation and method propounded by Marx and Kracauer part company. Instead of arguing Martin Hollis in Models of Man.13 Hollis argues that that the investigator must don the theoretical garb of all modes of sociological explanation are grounded in the natural scientist and plumb the economic depths an interlinking series of theoretical assumptions that of society, Kracauer proposes that attention should be are not methodologically neutral. Any explanatory focused on inconspicuous surface phenomena.15 paradigm necessarily involves the following distinctive Kracauerʼs advocacy of the superficial here is no features: (i) a method of inquiry that entails specific less striking than his rationale for doing so. He con- criteria of explanation; (ii) a set of sociological con- tends that surface phenomena make it possible to cepts which circumscribe the sorts of explanations reach through to a more fundamental level of social that will satisfy those methodological criteria; (iii) a life – they give direct, unmediated access to the set of ontological propositions specifying the nature of basic content or substance of what exists. Moreover, human beings and society; (iv) a theory of knowledge they do so not by virtue of a of base and which justifies the method of inquiry; and (v) a set superstructure, but because they are unconscious. It of general ontological or cosmological propositions follows that if the basic content of what exists is to implied or presupposed by that theory of knowledge. In be an object of knowledge, then these inconsequential

32 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) surface phenomena must be interpreted. Kracauerʼs siders the status of cultural phenomena, he asserts appropriation of Freudian terminology suggests that initially that forms of consciousness correspond to we have moved from political economy to psycho- the economic base, which comprises the entirety of analysis. The epistemic primacy of the inconsequential a societyʼs relations of production. He then argues and the superficial could no doubt be legitimized on that the mode of production – which includes both the basis of the Freudian trope of displacement, just forces and relations of production – conditions the as the investigative focus on interpretation could be cultural realm, and concludes that social being deter- justified with reference to the hermeneutic dimensions mines consciousness. When Marx turns to the issue of psychoanalysis. There is, though, a difficulty with of historical change, he implies that the relationship this line of argument. In the Freudian model of interpre- between transformations in the economy and those tation, the latent meaning of a subjectʼs manifest words in the superstructure is one of parallelism rather and behaviour is disclosed after a tortuous hermeneutic than causal necessity, as he observes that with the rigmarole which aims to specify the unconscious wish alteration of the economic foundation of society the that underlies manifest behaviour and would otherwise superstructure is revolutionized either more slowly remain hidden. Kracauer, on the other hand, indicates or more rapidly. Nevertheless, Marx also insists that that inconsequential surface phenomena are themselves changes in consciousness must ultimately be explained unconscious (rather than being highly mediated mani- with reference to contradictions in material life – in festations of the unconscious), and he even proposes other words, in terms of the contradiction between that they provide direct access to the basic content forces of production and relations of production which of what is. constitutes the fundamental dynamic of the historical In view of this significant divergence, it is far from process. clear how a Freudian model of interpretation could Kracauerʼs account of the relationship between be mobilized to identify the mutually illuminating culture and socio-economic factors reproduces and connections between the deep and surface layers of intensifies the ambiguities present in Marx. We are a historical epoch. It is also unclear whether the informed that the structure of the mass ornament interpretative linkage between surface phenomena and reflects the structure of the entire contemporary situ- the fundamentals of existence presupposes a causal ation.18 What Kracauer appears to mean by this is relationship between these different layers of reality, that the same organizational principle informs the as is the case in Marx and Freud. In fact, notwith- structures of specifically cultural and broadly societal standing Kracauerʼs gestures in their direction, neither phenomena. He then suggests that like the mass orna- Marxian nor Freudian models of explanation appear ment, the capitalist production process is autotelic. to supply the theoretical presuppositions of Kracauerʼs Again, the implication seems to be that the same basic ʻmethodological manifestoʼ at the outset of ʻThe Mass principle applies to both culture and the economy, Ornamentʼ. At this stage in the essay, it is difficult to though we should note that in Kracauerʼs formulation ascertain what particular model of cultural inquiry it is the economic that parallels the cultural, rather Kracauer endorses.16 At the same time, the opening than vice-versa as in Marx. Explanation by analogy section is not the only place in ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ also informs Kracauerʼs account of the individualʼs where Kracauer reflects on such matters, as his sub- position in relation to the production process and the sequent engagement with Marxist theory shows. participantsʼ position in relation to the mass ornament: ʻLike the pattern in the stadium, the organization Historical materialism: Marx or Weber? stands above the masses.ʼ This structural point is Kracauerʼs implicit dialogue with Marxist theory reinforced when Kracauer asserts that the hands in in ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ centres on two theoreti- the factory correspond to the legs of the Tiller girls, cal controversies: the nature of the linkage between and here too it is as if economic organization is mod- cultural phenomena and socio-economic structures elled on cultural principles. Then, almost immediately, (in aesthetic terms, the problem of mediation), and Kracauer reverses tack, and states quite bluntly that the the precise specification of the forces generating his- mass ornament is the aesthetic reflex of the economic torical change.17 Whereas ʻorthodoxʼ Marxism is often system, appearing at first sight to revert to orthodox accused of dealing with such issues in a simplistic and Marxism at its most reductionist. Crucially, however, reductive fashion, Marxʼs own position even in the Kracauer does not construe the economic system in Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Marxist terms at this point, for the mass ornament is Economy is decidedly ambiguous. When Marx con- the reflex not of the contradictions of material life, but

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 33 of the rationality that the prevailing economic system But it is unclear whether calculability is a cause or is striving for. So what the mass ornament really an effect of capitalismʼs drive for profit. Similarly, ʻreflectsʼ is the basic principle that also structures Kracauer refers later to the type of thought charac- the capitalist production process. Here too, though, teristic of the contemporary economic system, which Kracauerʼs argument is fraught with difficulties. Ini- enables the latter to dominate and exploit nature, but tially, he had indicated that the mass ornament and the he conceives this thought in Weberian fashion in a capitalist production process were analogous in that general process of disenchantment of which capitalism both were autotelic. Now he observes that both are represents merely one phase. imbued with the principle of rationality, despite the Kracauer describes the historical process as a fact that when he had previously discussed the telos process of demythologization, but whereas in the of the capitalist production process he had drawn our Introduction to the Grundrisse Marx explains demyth- attention to its limitless striving for profitability, rather ologization with reference to industrial capitalismʼs than Taylorism or rationalization. domination of nature, Kracauer construes demytholo- On the one hand, Kracauer under- scores the parallelism between cultural and economic realities, on the basis of a shared underlying rationale. On the other hand, he gestures towards the primacy of economic factors in a manner reminiscent not only of Marxʼs Preface but also of his Theses on Feuerbach. Kracauer suggests that the mode of abstract thought associ- ated with contemporary cap-italism can only be transcended if the eco- nomic system is fundamentally trans- formed. This reassertion of Marxian precepts leads us to the second key aspect of Kracauerʼs conceptualization of base and superstructure: the nature and identity of the forces that generate historical change. Kracauerʼs explanation of the development and hegemony of abstract thought conforms to a Marxian model, and his observation that the structure of mythological thinking changes in different epochs could also be easily accommodated by historical materi- alism. At the same time, there are other passages in ʻThe Mass Orna- mentʼ which imply a theoretical commitment to Weber rather than Marx. We have already noted an equivocation in gization primarily in ideological terms by referring us Kracauerʼs specification of the capitalist production to the demystificatory critiques of religion and politics process – untrammelled profitability versus radical in the French Enlightenment. Moreover, Kracauer goes rationalization – and a similar ambiguity informs his on to suggest that the bourgeois revolutions of the general approach to historical explanation. In his dis- previous 150 years – including the French Revolution cussion of the capitalist production process, Kracauer – had taken place thanks to the principle of rationality, observes that calculability destroys entities such as which had enabled them to settle accounts with the community and personality, entailing a reduction of natural forces of church, monarchy and feudalism. In human beings to mass particles on a global scale. the enigmatic final sentences of ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ,

34 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) Kracauer suggests that the historical process can only torical process, it seems appropriate to ask whether advance if thought restricts nature and constitutes his model of history is in any sense dialectical. We humanity through Reason – for then society will saw earlier that Kracauer did not seem to be com- change. It is almost as if Kracauerʼs own thinking mitted to a standard Marxian dialectic grounded in has mapped out a similar trajectory, as he shifts the conflict between forces and relations of produc- from Marxian materialism, via Weberian rationalism, tion, and his hostility to Hegelian thought is well to an Enlightened idealism that ultimately leaves us known.21 Nevertheless, Kracauerʼs model of cultural none the wiser as to how, precisely, his utopia is to development can be usefully compared to the dialecti- be made real. cal schema proposed by the Czech structuralist Jan At a more fundamental level, Kracauerʼs approach Mukarovsky.22 The central category in Mukarovskyʼs to history and modernity is characterized by a series account of cultural change is the dialectical antinomy: of binary oppositions, such that the structure of his the contradictory dynamic of opposing factors (such analyses is intrinsically dualistic. In fact, Kracauerʼs as the presence or absence of the aesthetic function, account of historical development works with two or the relative priority of the communicative and the distinct but related models, one vitalistic and the aesthetic function) sustains the continual evolution of other rationalistic, each of which is organized along culture. Similarly, in Kracauerʼs account of modernity dualistic lines. the motor of historical change is the antinomy of In his initial specification of the cultural significance Reason and Nature. The difficulty with Mukarovskyʼs of the mass ornament, Kracauer establishes a series deployment of the dialectical antinomy is that he of oppositions: community or people (Volk) versus does not explain how this dialectic can be made his- mass, organic life versus abstraction, magic versus torically real with reference to the actual beliefs and mathematical systematization, meaningful ritual versus practices of social agents – it is as if the dialectical autotelic rationalization, charisma versus geometry. At antinomy has an autonomous power of its own – and this stage, Kracauerʼs argumentation is reminiscent of a similar charge could be laid at Kracauerʼs door, in the vitalistic aesthetics of Viktor Shklovskyʼs early that the dialectic implicit in his own model of cultural work,19 and the tenor of his discussion mediates that development operates at a similarly highly abstract profound disaffection with modernity characteristic and generalized level. In his 1928 review essay on of his own earlier essays.20 Elsewhere in ʻThe Mass , Kracauer had criticized Benjamin Ornamentʼ, however, Kracauer evinces a much more on the grounds that he had failed to develop the ʻreal positive attitude to the expansion of rationality. In dialecticʼ between elements of things and their figures, this framework, the historical process is viewed as a between the meaning or significance of a shape and struggle between Reason and Nature, where Nature the shape itself.23 Yet there, too, Kracauer does not is glossed as those natural powers that controlled specify what this real dialectic might be, so that we are heaven and earth in myth. The advance of Reason ultimately at a loss as to how the process of cultural thus involves a fundamental conflict with mythological decoding is supposed to function, and as to the nature thought, a major exemplar of that conflict being the of its theoretical presuppositions.24 French Enlightenment of the late eighteenth century. The dualistic dimension to Kracauerʼs comprehen- Trivial pursuits or critique of ideology? sion of modernity is also reflected in the way he The enormous importance Kracauer attaches to the specifies the ambiguity of contemporary abstraction investigation of the superficial and the ephemeral in and the mass ornament. In both cases, Kracauer ana- ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ can be gauged from the struc- lyses this ambiguity by counterposing two reciprocal ture of the essayʼs opening page: a quotation from viewpoints. Viewed from the perspective of Mythology, Hölderlin is followed by a philosophical meditation on the abstractions of natural science constitute a gain in historical inquiry – only for Kracauerʼs first exemplary rationality; whereas from the perspective of Reason, instance to be the Tiller girls. Kracauer explicitly that same rationality degenerates into an empty formal- rejects the dismissive attitude of the educated elite and ism. What this dual perspective on abstraction signifies intelligentsia to mass cultural phenomena, insisting is that the process of demythologization has not yet that aesthetic pleasure in mass ornaments is entirely been brought to a conclusion, which for Kracauer can legitimate. At the same time, Kracauerʼs justification only be attained through the victory of Reason. for his stance is not based on some modish egalitar- Given that Kracauer resorts to multiple and ian populism. He employs a criterion of aesthetic embedded dualisms in order to characterize the his- value according to which an aesthetic representation

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 35 is more real the less it dispenses with extra-aesthetic explicit theoretical grounding would seem to support realities, and he contends that contemporary mass the notion that exactly the same criteria and procedures ornaments achieve a higher level of reality than do should apply in the investigation of mass, ʻlowʼ or artistic productions that imitatively cultivate obsolete ʻpopularʼ culture as have traditionally been adopted feelings in past forms. in the process of understanding elite or ʻhighʼ culture. In so arguing, Kracauer implies that the socio- It is, ultimately, this methodological rationale that logical truth of an aesthetic object is a criterion of provides a basis for attending to the inconsequential its artistic value, and he thereby tacitly intervenes in surfaces of social life, rather than any intrinsic value the long-standing debate on the political Left about these might possess. the appropriate attitude to adopt to the cultural herit- The latter point is well illustrated in Kracauerʼs jux- age, particularly in its classical or idealist guise. He taposition of Chinese landscape paintings and the mass attacks contemporary intellectuals who prefer to edify ornament. He argues that in both cases nature is desub- themselves through artistic occasions untouched by the stantialized, so that the principle of formal structure is mundane reality present in mass ornaments, and thus no longer organic: the centripetal tendency of organic dismisses obeisance to the cultural heritage with its form gives way to the centrifugal dynamic of abstract concomitant valorization of ʻhighʼ culture. A similar artefacts. The principles of composition that operate in position is in evidence a year earlier in ʻCult of abstract aesthetic media represent Reason more purely Distractionʼ,25 where Kracauer had observed that the than those that seek to preserve humanity as an organic cultural heritage is historically specific, and embedded unity. At the same time, though, Kracauer indicates – like contemporary mass culture – in particular socio- Reasonʼs destructive and explosive force when it comes economic realities. He concluded that the attempt to into confrontation with natural structures. Kracauerʼs reassert obsolete standards of cultural value, including account of the shift to abstraction in the aesthetic ʻpersonalityʼ, ʻinwardnessʼ and ʻtragedyʼ, whose social sphere is thus embedded in his overarching dialectic of basis has disappeared, diverts attention away from Reason, ratio and Nature; it also forcefully historicizes societyʼs external shortcomings and the trials and modes of artistic representation, instead of advocating tribulations of the contemporary world. the universal or transcendent value of either organicist Kracauerʼs theses on distraction bring into view or abstractionist aesthetics. the overall purpose of his cultural inquiry: ideologi- Similar assumptions inform Kracauerʼs explanation cal critique from the vantage point of Reason. He of the move to aesthetic autonomy embodied in the unmasks the mass ornament as a mythological cult autotelic structures of the mass ornament. Just as the concealing itself in abstract garb, an illusion perpe- abstract system of lines constituted by the physical trated in part thanks to the dissociation of capitalist motion of the Tiller girls has been de-eroticized, so too ratio from Reason, and capitalist ratioʼs consequent the pseudo-military shapes associated with star images tendency to enter the void of abstraction. The ideo- produced in stadia neither mean nor intend anything logically critical and activist dimension of ʻThe Mass beyond themselves. These visual formations are no Ornamentʼ is underlined when Kracauer attacks the longer grounded in an ethical or political substance, contemporary fad of body culture, arguing that the but located in an empty silence: ʻThe end result is the energies invested in producing and consuming mass ornament, whose taciturnity is secured by emptying ornaments divert the participants in them away from out the substantial constructs.ʼ Once again, Kracauerʼs changing the prevailing order, rather like the circuses consideration of what might otherwise appear to be an of ancient Rome. entirely frivolous manifestation of mass culture draws The upshot of Kracauerʼs various considerations of its coherence from a theoretical template that enables the mass ornament would seem to be that it cannot him to address questions of aesthetic representation be evaluated or interpreted in a single, uniform or whether they occur in the Weimar Republicʼs answer undifferentiated manner; it should therefore be the to synchronic swimming or in classical Chinese art. object neither of non-judgemental, populist venera- Furthermore, his analyses in ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ of tion, nor of highbrow, elitist scorn. Although Kracauer the complexities inherent in the aesthetic object throw emphasizes the compromised ideological function of into question Adornoʼs critique of his methodology: the mass ornament and related cultural phenomena, to paraphrase Adorno, ʻThe need for strict mediation he also insists on its epistemological and aesthetic in the entity itself, after demonstrating the presence value. Moreover, Kracauerʼs various approaches to the of the essential in the midst of the innermost cell of analysis of the mass ornament and their implicit or particularity, was indeed his.ʼ26

36 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) Alienation, abstraction and apocalypse without content are empty, percepts without concepts 30 One of the more puzzling propositions advanced in are blindʼ, or, in the case of the mass ornament, mute. ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ is Kracauerʼs claim that progres- Yet an epistemological critique of the shortcomings of sing towards the realm of Reason entails going through capitalist ratio can hardly provide a sufficient basis for the middle of the mass ornament, thereby acknowl- Kracauerʼs attack on capitalism as a system of eco- edging and accepting the latterʼs reality instead of nomic production and social organization. Kracauer trying to evade it. Kracauerʼs argument turns on himself observes that the activities which enter into the the positive aspect of the process of disenchantment production process have been emptied of substance, embodied in the rise of capitalist ratio, which has that the activities of individual workers are meaning- undermined the legitimacy and validity of world-views less because they carry out partial functions without rooted in mythological notions of the essential oneness having any sense of the whole to which they are con- and organic unity of humanity and Nature.27 At the tributing. At no stage, however, is this insight placed same time, Kracauer contends that capitalist ratio is in the context of, for example, a Marxian exploration at best a truncated variant of authentic Reason. A of the division of labour. Similarly, Kracauerʼs account major factor in Kracauerʼs critique of capitalist ratio of the human ground as transfigured by Reason seems is that it fails to incorporate humanity. No account to entail a denial that we are natural beings at all. At is taken of humanity in the regulation of the capi- the end of the day, the vitalistic critique of abstraction talist production process, nor in the construction of and capitalist ratio that marked Kracauerʼs discussion capitalist forms of economic and social organization. at the beginning of ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ has been Crucially, the fundaments of the capitalist system supplanted by a bloodless and disembodied rationalism ignore what Kracauer refers to ʻthe human groundʼ, whose panegyric to Reason is so radically utopian as and at this point Kracauerʼs argument could be read to render vacuous Kracauerʼs purported sociological as yet another piece of Romantic anti-capitalism, or and political critique. even as a variant of radical Expressionist critiques of There is, however, a final dimension to ʻThe Mass modernity.28 Kracauer immediately dispels this mis- Ornamentʼ which undermines the essayʼs avowedly apprehension, however, by indicating that it is not a utopian dynamic. Although at one level capitalist ratio question of leaving the notion of the human personality is a necessary stage in the actualization of Reason, at uncontested, nor of grounding a more benevolent social another its constrictions and blockages seem to presage 31 order in our naturally given needs so as to remedy a veritably modernist apocalypse. The more powerful the human violations of capitalist rationalism.29 The and impregnable abstraction becomes, the more human problem with capitalism, Kracauer contends, is that it beings may be subjected once again to the power of rationalizes not too much but too little. What Kracauer natural forces. One consequence of the unrestrained means by this startling assertion is that capitalist ratio expansion of capitalism is that ʻdark Natureʼ rebels resists the trajectory of perfection towards Reason against abstract ratio in an increasingly threatening that speaks out of the fundaments of humanity. This manner, a threat underlined when Kracauer suggests resistance is encapsulated in the fact that capitalist that ratioʼs flight from Reason into abstraction makes ratio remains at the level of abstraction; but whereas it possible for uncontrolled Nature to expand violently Kracauer emphasizes that abstraction must ultimately under cover of rational modes of expression. But if be transcended, he also insists that abstraction must Kracauer is right, and capitalist ratio is more and not be abandoned in favour of a regression to those more drastically dissociated from Reason, it can only mythological patterns of thought that capitalist ratio be a matter of time before humanity is overwhelmed had rightly attacked. by the catastrophic eruption or irruption of those dark It must be said that Kracauerʼs critique of capitalism forces he warns against. Perhaps that is why the ʻreal is somewhat perplexing. The meaning of an authen- dialecticʼ said to be lacking in Benjamin can never tic humanity grounded in Reason is obscure, and is speak its name in ʻThe Ornament of the Massesʼ. only partly clarified in his further comments on the Notes limitations of abstraction, which suggest that abstract 1. See, in particular, David Frisby, Fragments of Mod- generalizations are inadequate from the point of view ernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, of Reason because they ignore the empirical and are Kracauer and Benjamin, Polity Press, Cambridge, essentially content-free. His argument seems to be 1985, pp. 109–86; and Inka Mülder, Siegfried Kracauer based on the Kantian need for a synthesis of categorial – Grenzgänger zwischen Theorie und Literatur: Seine frühen Schriften 1913–1933, Metzler, Stuttgart, 1985. frameworks and the evidence of the senses – ʻthoughts The spate of publications since 1990 was initiated by

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 37 the centenary of Kracauerʼs birth in 1989. On Kracauerʼs 213–23. recent reception, see Thomas Y. Levin, ʻIntroductionʼ, 13. See Martin Hollis, Models of Man: Philosophical in Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Es- Thoughts on Social Action, Cambridge University Press, says, ed. and trans. Thomas Y. Levin, Harvard University Cambridge, 1977, p. 158. Press, Cambridge MA, 1995, pp. 1–30. 14. See Mülder, Siegfried Kracauer, pp. 58–9; and Inka 2. See, for example, Levin, ʻIntroductionʼ, and the special Mülder-Bach, ʻDer Umschlag der Negativität. Zur Ver- issue of New German Critique, no. 54, Fall 1991. schränkung von Phänomenologie, Geschichtsphilosophie 3. On Kracauerʼs anticipation of and recuperation by con- und Filmästhetik in Siegfried Kracauers Metaphorik der temporary cultural theory, see Patrice Petro, ʻKracauerʼs “Oberfläche”ʼ, Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Liter- Epistemological Shiftʼ, New German Critique, 54, Fall aturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 61, no. 2, 1991, pp. 127–38; Levin, ʻIntroductionʼ, pp. 28–9; and 1987, pp. 359–73. Inka Mülder-Bach, ʻIntroductionʼ to Siegfried Kracauer, 15. Note also Mülder-Bachʼs point that Kracauer wishes to The Salaried Masses, Verso, London, 1998, pp. 1–22. question ʻthe “depth” which bourgeois culture identified The methodological disputes in British cultural stud- with genuineness, authenticity and truthʼ (ʻIntroductionʼ, ies are critically presented in Martin Barker and Anne p. 10). Beezer, eds, Reading into Cultural Studies, Routledge, 16. Despite the Freudian resonances of its opening, the London, 1992. On the issue of ethnographic reflexivity remainder of ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ makes only one in relation to the ʻnew paradigmʼ in cultural studies, see significant reference to dreams, when Kracauer asserts Barker and Beezerʼs ʻIntroduction: Whatʼs in a Text?ʼ, that Reasonʼs empire is anticipated in dream (rather than Reading into Cultural Studies, pp. 6–20. ʻintimatedʼ) in authentic fairy tales (p. 80). Not only is 4. Kracauer, ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ, in The Mass Ornament, this conception of dream pre-Freudian; Kracauerʼs per- pp. 75–86. One of the best-known examples of a ʻmass spective on fairy tales is also, arguably, anti-Freudian, ornamentʼ is the highly choreographed visual displays in that he sees fairy tales as a repository of Justice and Truth as opposed to encapsulating the longings of the in the films of Busby Berkeley, such as Gold Diggers id. Kracauerʼs concatenation of dreams, hieroglyphs, of 1933. sociological interpretation and cultural inquiry seems 5. See for example Levin, ʻIntroductionʼ, pp. 11–12; and to work at a metaphorical level rather than belonging Miriam Hansen, ʻDecentric Perspectives: Kracauerʼs to psychoanalytic theory. An excellent instance may be Early Writings on Film and Mass Cultureʼ, New Ger- found in a much-cited passage from his essay ʻÜber man Critique, 54, Fall 1991, pp. 47–76. Arbeitsnachweise. Konstruktion eines Raumesʼ (Schrif- 6. Levin, ʻIntroductionʼ, p. 28. ten, 5.2, pp. 185–92), written around 1930: ʻAny typical 7. Ibid., p. 18. On Kracauerʼs rejection of ʻvulgarʼ Marx- space is brought into being by typical societal relation- ism, see also Mülder, Siegfried Kracauer, p. 60, and ships that are expressed in it without being disturbed by Martin Jay, Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual the complications of consciousness. Everything denied Migration from Germany to America, Columbia Univer- by consciousness, everything which is otherwise de- sity Press, New York, 1986, pp. 158, 161. liberately overlooked, is implicated in its construction. 8. Levin, ʻIntroductionʼ, p. 15. On the themes of deci- Spatial images are the dreams of society. Wherever the phering and decoding see ibid., pp. 5–6; Frisby, Frag- hieroglyph of some spatial image has been deciphered, ments of Modernity, pp. 109, 110, 186; Mülder, Siegfried the ground of social reality is exposedʼ (p. 186). What Kracauer, pp. 87–8, 93; and Miriam Hansen, ʻMass seems to be happening here is that Kracauer starts out Culture as Hieroglyphic Writing: Adorno, Derrida, with a Marxian model of social reality, but, because he Kracauerʼ, New German Critique, 56, Spring/Summer does not subscribe to a Marxian hermeneutic based on 1992, pp. 43–73. either the 1859 Preface or the theory of commodity fet- 9. See Levin, ʻIntroductionʼ, pp. 10, 24; and Hansen, ʻDe- ishism, resorts to an undertheorized discourse of dream centric Perspectivesʼ, pp. 64–5. hieroglyphics in order to establish a significant linkage 10. See Levin, ʻIntroductionʼ, pp. 23–4; Mülder, Siegfried between the ground of social reality and spatial organiza- Kracauer, p. 87; Johanna Rosenberg, ʻNachwortʼ, in tion at the phenomenal level. Siegfried Kracauer, Der verbotene Blick: Beobachtungen 17. At the time when Kracauer was acquainting himself – Analysen – Kritiken, ed. Johanna Rosenberg, Reclam, with Marxʼs writings from the 1840s, he was fully aware Leipzig, 1992, p. 362. of the most important theoretical critiques of orthodox 11. On Kracauerʼs relationship to Georg Simmel, see Fris- Marxism from the early 1920s, namely Georg Lukácsʼs by, Fragments of Modernity, pp. 117–18, 148; Mülder, History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korschʼs Siegfried Kracauer, p. 86; and Kracauerʼs own essays, Marxism and Philosophy. See Frisby, Fragments of ʻGeorg Simmelʼ, in The Mass Ornament, pp. 225–57, Modernity, pp. 122–6; Mülder, Siegfried Kracauer, pp. and ʻGeorg Simmel: Zur Philosophie der Kunstʼ, in Sieg- 134–5; and Jay, Permanent Exiles, pp. 162–3, 221–2. fried Kracauer, Schriften, 5.1, ed. Inka Mülder-Bach, 18. ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ, p. 18. Suhrkamp, am Main, 1990, pp. 233–36. For 19. See Viktor Shklovsky, ʻThe Resurrection of the Wordʼ, Kracauerʼs views on Benjaminʼs theory of interpretation, in Russian Formalism, ed. Stephen Bann and John see Kracauer, ʻOn the Writings of Walter Benjaminʼ, in Bowlt, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh, 1973, pp. The Mass Ornament, pp. 259–64. 41–7. Kracauer was, of course, fully conversant with 12. On Kracauerʼs relationship to Weber, see Frisby, Frag- the vitalistic cultural theory of Georg Simmel, and with ments of Modernity, pp. 115–16, 133, 184; and Mülder, modernist and Expressionist aesthetics. See his early Siegfried Kracauer, pp. 31–5, 60, 64–5. Somewhat sur- essay ʻSchicksalswende der Kunstʼ, Schriften, 5.1, pp. prisingly, Kracauer seldom discusses Weberʼs work in 72–8. any detail. One notable exception is his cursory account 20. See, for example, Frisby, Fragments of Modernity, pp. of Weberʼs views on the philosophy of social science 111–33. in ʻThe Crisis of Scienceʼ, in The Mass Ornament, pp. 21. On Kracauerʼs antipathy to Hegelian thinking, see Adorno, ʻThe Curious Realist: On Siegfried Kracauerʼ,

38 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) in Theodor W. Adorno, Notes to Literature, Volume Two, words are ʻwas hardly hisʼ. trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, Columbia University 27. One difficulty with Levinʼs translation of ʻThe Mass Or- Press, New York, 1992, pp. 58–78. Kracauer was also namentʼ is that he translates the word ʻMenschʼ as ʻmanʼ critical of the Hegelian aspect of Lukácsʼs interpretation (ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ, p. 81), whereas for Kracauer of Marx, as noted by Jay, Permanent Exiles, pp. 162–3, – as for Marx – the term ʻMenschʼ designates humanity, 194. or even ʻbeing humanʼ. 22. See Jan Mukarovsky, Aesthetic Function, Norm and 28. On Expressionist – and vitalistic – critiques of mod- Value as Social Facts, University of Michigan Press, ernity, see Gunter Martens, Vitalismus und Expression- Ann Arbor, 1970 (first published in Czech in 1936); and ismus: Ein Beitrag zur Genese und Deutung expression- Steve Giles, ʻSociological Aesthetics as a Challenge to istischer Stilstrukturen und Motive, Kohlhammer, Stutt- Literary Theoryʼ, New Comparison, 19, Spring 1995, gart, 1971. pp. 89–106. 29. Kracauerʼs continued antipathy into the 1960s to Marx- 23. Kracauer, ʻOn the Writings of Walter Benjaminʼ, p. ist humanism and the concept of de-alienation is noted 264. by Jay, Permanent Exiles, pp. 194, 196–7. 24. A similar vagueness characterizes Kracauerʼs use of 30. If my interpretation of Kracauer is correct, then Adornoʼs semiotics in ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ. He refers to ab- critique of Kracauerʼs epistemological shortcomings is straction as the sign of the locus of capitalist thought; surely misplaced. Kracauerʼs extensive knowledge of suggests that the abstract signs of rationalized modernity Kant has been attested to by several commentators, not differ fundamentally from the symbolic representations least Adorno himself. of religious cults; and observes that the mass ornament is a sign of the ruling economic system. At no stage in 31. See Richard Sheppard, ʻThe Problematics of European ʻThe Mass Ornamentʼ, however, does Kracauer reflect Modernismʼ, in Steve Giles, ed., Theorising Modern- theoretically on his own semiological presuppositions, ism: Essays in , Routledge, London, so that the relationship between signifier/signified or 1993, pp. 1–51; the modernist theme that the excres- sign/referent is never properly clarified. Is the relation- cences of reason/modernity will transmute themselves ship based on resemblance? Is it causal, metaphorical or into their monstrous antithesis is discussed on pp. 8–11, magical? Or, to use the terminology of C.S. Peirce, does 26–33. Hansen also notes the apocalyptic aspect of Kracauer construe signs as icons, indices, or symbols? Kracauerʼs early writings, but locates it in the context 25. Kracauer, ʻCult of Distraction: On Berlinʼs Picture Pal- of Jewish messianism rather than European modernism acesʼ, in The Mass Ornament, pp. 323–8. (ʻDecentric Perspectivesʼ, p. 53). 26. See Adorno, ʻThe Curious Realistʼ. Adornoʼs actual

14:$)0"/"-:5*$ 14:$)05)&3"1: PSYCHOAN 53"*/*/(

5IF 4JUF offers a training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. This is characterised by its interest in developing critical readings of psychoanalysis that are informed by contem- porary European philosophy, feminist theory, and a recognition of the socio-cultural specifi- city of individuals’ experiences.

Faculty: Racheli Azgad, Mary Lynne Ellis, Chris Oakley, Haya Oakley, Noreen O’Connor, Ro- zsika Parker, Joanna Ryan, Fiona Sinclair, Paul Zeal

5IF4JUF is committed to equal opportunities and we welcome applicants from a diversity of backgrounds.

For details of our four-year training, public lectures and other activities, contact the Secre- tary, 37c Cromwell Avenue, Highgate, London N6 5HN 5FM'BY

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 39