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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Miriam Bratu Hansen, Cinema and Experience. Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno, University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 2012, pp. 378
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2012-10-01
2021-09-09
2012-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Luisella Farinotti
2012/10/01
Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM, Milano
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Miriam Bratu Hansen, Cinema and Experience. Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno, University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 2012, pp. 378
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16329/17196
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economy might provide this vivid discussion           1   Colin MacCabe,                            , in
                                             -            High Theory/Low Culture, edited by Colin Mac-
duction and broadcasting and cultural process-
                                                          in Id., The Eloquence of the Vulgar. Language,
                                                          Cinema and the Politics of Culture, British Film
                                                          Institute, London 1999, p. 76.
step, and further carry on the research.
                            [Francesco Pitassio,
                Università degli Studi di Udine]



Miriam Bratu Hansen,                                  her analysis of the developments of technolog-
Cinema and Experience. Siegfried Kracauer,            ical modernity, and of the new forms of experi-
Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno,
University of California Press,
                                                      of modernity, the scholar refers to the well-
                                                                                                        1
                                                                                                          ,
  A genuine testament of Hansen, who died             of the ‘public sphere’ “as a ‘social horizon of
                                                      experience’ grounded in the subjects’ ‘context
Cinema and Experience appears as the summa-           of living’, that is, the lived relationality of so-
                                                      cial and material, affective and imaginative re/
same time, a masterly confrontation with that         production.” The social and political role of
longstanding theoretical tradition (born in the
                                                      create a collective horizon of experience, in
                                                      which an ever more fragmented and alienated

antinomic way, upon modernity and the trans-
formations it had brought about, and upon the         Kluge, which has been for many years a recur-
                                            -         ring point of reference for her own research.
ry and tradition. Technological modernity is            In the preface, among various other autobi-
                                                                                                     -
fragmentation of sensory life, which is disinte-      rection of her research has overlapped with that
grated into its different parts in a sort of “apoc-                                                  -
alypse of the sensible.”                              versity, from 1967 to 1976, are contemporary
  It is “that great overhaul of the perceptu-         with the rise of the debate on cinema and media
al inventory that will modify again and in an
unpredictable way our image of the world,” as         than in France or the United States, but which
                                                      has been fundamental in identifying the cate-
contours of a new scopic regime and its huge
epistemological and social impact. As the sub-        theoretical scene in the following decades. As
                                                      a student of Theodor W. Adorno and Karsten
and Adorno are Hansen’s direct interlocutors,         Witte, who edited the writings of Benjamin
but Habermas, Negt and Kluge – the last expo-         and Kracauer respectively, Hansen began in
nents of Critical Theory – are fundamental in         those years that careful reading of these au-

                                                                                                       151
thors that would enable her – at various times      exile’ in 1960 and ignored at the time of its pub-
and with admirable accuracy and meticulous-
ness – to understand their postulates avoiding      point of reference for the Munich movement of
                                              -     ‘Sensibilismus’ ten years later. From the phe-
gans, through which these scholars (Benjamin        nomenology of the unapparent – the study of
in particular) have very often been read. The       the ‘surface manifestations’ in which one can
essays Hansen published over nearly twenty          see the fragmentation and the serialization of
                                              -     sensory life in modern industrial societies – to
tique» and «October», have been fundamental         the theory of the redemption of Physical Re-
not only in introducing in the United States a      ality, Hansen delineates a story of loss and re-
‘philological interpretation’ of the thought of     construction in which cinema plays an essential
                                                    role, not only as part and symptom of the crisis,
                                                    but also as a powerful matrix for modernity’s
new model of interpretation inspired by those       liberatory impulses. Kracauer considers cin-
               Cinema and Experience Han-           ema, literally, as “a self-representation of the
                                                    masses subject to the process of mechaniza-
considered a theoretical model: theory itself       tion,” and consequently as a form of education
allows a continuous revision of its own premis-     to the new regimes of experience and models
es, a correction and a reformulation of its own     of identity.
hypothesis, which are adjusted and adapted to          In the middle of this trajectory, in which cin-
an everchanging context or situation. In the
same way, Benjamin’s re-writings – the differ-
ent drafts of his essays, the continuous reversal                                                -
of his decisions, which has often been read as      ed. Hansen considers his analysis of the new
the antinomic character of Benjamin’s philoso-      forms of perception – in which contemplation
                                                    is replaced by a more general and complete
ongoing transformations: revision is ‘memory        sensorial stimulation – a fundamental and also
directed at the future,’ an ability to measure up   prophetic response to the increase of nervous
to his times. It’s the same effort to be contem-    stimulation in modern technological societies,

                                               -
ological reconstruction, but is able to see the     idea is still valid and useful to understand the
anticipatory qualities of those theories and the    way in which new media are assimilated today.
resurgence of old issues in new forms.                                                          inner-
                                               -    vation as a way to adapt to technology and to
icated to a single author and a particular phase    incorporate it, a sort of imitative faculty which
of his production, which also corresponds to        allows a new perceptual experience that does
                                               -    not oppose human and machine, subject and
gories and models of interpretation. Not only       technique. “In Benjamin’s dictionary, innerva-
for chronological reasons, Kracauer opens and       tion broadly refers to a neurophysiological pro-
                                                    cess that mediates between internal and exter-
to his writings in the twenties, whereas the last   nal, psychic and motoric, human and machinic
is about Theory of Film, which was written ‘in      registers.” Also the ‘optical unconscious’ – a

152
                                                       pretive hazard of the American school, Hansen
by Hansen “as a form of mimetic innervation            leaves us illuminating philological interpreta-
                                                       tions and unexpected questions. Not only does
   If Cinema and Experience’s interpretation           she confront Adorno’s writings on musical aes-
of Benjamin and Kracauer is not altogether a           thetics and propose a sort of ‘implicit theory
novelty in Hansen’s oeuvre, the interpretation                                                            -
of Adorno is undoubtedly new and surprising            opher, but she also builds an unexpected and
if compared with his stereotypical image as a          fruitful bridge between past and present: she
                                                       never reduces history to a relic but releases the
is almost a counter-interpretation of Adorno,          new and the unexpressed that the past brings to
depending less on classic references to his Cul-       us and that still belongs to us. It is ‘the heritage
ture Industry in Dialectics of Enlightenment,                                                             -
and more on his essays on theory of music. In          er, exiled in America, had understood.     1


Adorno’s analysis of the changes brought about                                       [Luisella Farinotti,
in musical listening by the new technologies                                 Università IULM, Milano]
of sound reproduction and diffusion, Hansen
                                                       1   Negt and Kluge’s Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung
the opportunities imposed by all technological             (1972) is the continuation of (and the an-
media. The author challenges Adorno with the
same weapons and uses his categories to inter-                                       Strukturwandel der
pret in an emancipatory way the new sensory                Öffentlichkeit, 1962 (The Structural Transfor-
                                                           mation of the Public Sphere). Miriam Hansen
culture created by technological modernity.                wrote the foreword to the American edition:
  By combining the speculative accuracy of the             Public Sphere and Experience, University of
                                             -             Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1993.




                                                       time, about the constant elements of its tech-
Que reste-t-il du cinéma?,                             nological, experiential and cultural identity,
Vrin, Paris 2012, pp. 120                              elements that have proved to be necessary and
                                                       urgent in some ways. And France has undoubt-
  The digitalization of the media had the effect,      edly been the center of this renewed specula-
among others, of having renewed an ontological         tion, as evidenced by, among others, Horizon
speculation. Or, at least, that was the case of cin-   cinéma                                Virtuel?
ema, an ‘old’ medium apparently overwhelmed            by Angel Quintana (2008), Cinémas contempo-
                                                       raines by Luc Vancheri (2009) and La querelle
the emergence – in the name of plurality and           des dispositifs by Raymond Bellour (2012).
                                                       The publication of Que reste-t-il du cinéma?
a movie’ and ‘going to the movies,’ and crossed
by unusual phenomena, in nature and intensi-
ty, of displacement and evasion from itself.           this scenario, but it is also an attempt to pro-
                                              -
ema in contemporary society and, at the same

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