Thought-Images: Frankfurt School Writers' Reflections from Damaged Life

by Gerhard Richter

In this book, Gerhard Richter explores the aesthetic and political ramifications of the literary genre of the Denkbild , or thought-image, as it was employed by four major German-Jewish writers and philosophers of the first half of the twentieth Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, and Siegfried Kracauer. The Denkbild is a poetic mode of writing, a brief snapshot-in-prose that stages the interrelation of literary, philosophical, political, and cultural insights. Richter's careful analysis of the linguistic characteristics of this mode of writing sheds new light on pivotal concerns of modernity, including the fractured cityscape, philosophical problems of modern music, the experience of exiled homelessness, and the disaster of Auschwitz. Thought-Images not only reorients our understanding of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory in important ways but also establishes significant links between these writers and contemporary French thinkers such as Jacques Derrida.

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 8, 2007

About the author

German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German artists and several of his works have set record prices at auction.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worthy appreciation and analysis of the short literary-philosophical meditations called "Denkbild" written by Benjamin, Bloch, Kracauer, and Adorno. Richter develops and connects each writer's efforts, tracing their influences on each other and also forward to other figures (Derrida, Deleuze, etc).

Much to savor here, even if you haven't read the works by the four members of the Frankfurt School, but one of the real benefits of this book is also how it spins you back into those writers' orbit(s). I've already read One Way Street And Other Writings and Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life, but now I've got Traces on my list too. (And the chapter on Kracauer sent me off to watch the documentary _From Caligari to HItler_ last night, which is also well worth a watch.)

Don't fall asleep on the Frankfurt School. They went through some collapse, and they recognized some troubling things that a lot of people have spent the intervening 40 or 50 or 60 years trying to obfuscate and/or forget. But they have light to shine on our moment.

[Aaron Cockle]

Done reading this for now. Read the Benjamin/One-way Street essay, skipped the Bloch/music piece, read half the Kracauer/Derrida piece (the Kracauer half), and the Adorno/Hitler essay (but I skipped the parts referencing Freud). Coda is about the friendship they all shared, and the losses. It's all about the friendship.