The Historian in the Anteroom: Configurations of the Intellectual in the Late Discussions Between Siegfried Kracauer and Theodor W. Adorno

Abstract

The article examines, on the one hand, the role assumed by Adorno, from the 1960s, as the main mediator for the re-edition and re-evaluation of the works of some of the most important German Marxists of the Weimar Republic (E. Bloch, W Benjamin, S. Kracauer). As an intellectual influence in the academic, editorial and journalistic spheres, Adorno tried to consolidate a biased reception of these thinkers, making significant contributions, but also sparking intense controversy. This was particularly noticeable in the case of Kracauer: his friend and youth disciple contributed to the reissue of some of Kracauer’s works—The Employees—The Mass Ornament, Ginster—but he also contributed, with his essay “A Curious Realist”, to establish an intellectual vignette of Kracauer that does not coincide with the self-understanding of the Frankfurt essayist, nor with the fundamental purposes that guided his investigations. From this derives a discussion with Adorno whose main aspects can be extracted both from the correspondence between both authors and from History. The Last Things before the Last, in which the description of the divergent paths of the philosopher and the historian is partly the result of a confrontation between the perspectives of Adorno and Kracauer.