The Politics of Imagination: Benjamin, Kracauer, Kluge

This book explores Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, and Alexander Kluge’s analyses of the role that a rejuvenation in the capacity for imagination can play in encouraging us to reconceive the possibilities of the past, the present, and the future outside of the parameters of the status quo. Through a detailed analysis of their engagements with subjects that span a broad range of historical and thematic contexts, this book charts the extent to which the concept of imagination plays a central role in the writers’ explorations of a mode of perception and experience which could serve as a catalyst for the creation and sustenance of a desire for a different kind of future.

Tara Forrest lectures in Film and Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney.