Lichtbilder der Ideologie: Von Marx zu Fontane

Abstract

Abstract The article investigates the role metaphors of optical media and projection have played within the conceptual and literary history of ideology. Starting with the figure of the camera obscura in Marx, Fontane, and other contemporaries, it is shown that the ambiguous concept of Lichtbild (slide, photography) gains significance in social thought and literature as a metaphor for false perception. Subsequently, the analysis of Theodor Fontane’s novel Effi Briest (1895) shows how optical media are turned into figures of narration that generate a critical perspective on bourgeois ideology and its affect structure.