Revitalizes Alexander Kluge's classic 1979 film, showing it to be not just great storytelling but also an exploration of the poetic force of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. Alexander Kluge achieved his breakthrough at the 1966 Venice Biennale with his first feature, Yesterday Girl (Abschied von gestern), but it is arguably his 1979 film The Patriot (Die Patriotin) that first embodied the great heights his storytelling could reach. Titled after its heroine, the history teacher Gabi Teichert, The Patriot is, however, much more than just a curious story about a headstrong pedagogue intent on teaching kids a version of German history that does not end in war and death: it is one of the finest examples of Kluge's exploration of the poetic force of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. This book pursues The Patriot's conception as a cinematic extension of the theoretical agenda that Kluge and social philosopher Oskar Negt began developing just as the Frankfurt School's first generation was ending. It will guide twenty-first-century English-language readers past superficial interpretations of the film's engagement with German history. By asking how and why The Patriot brings the twin concepts of history and obstinacy - the human propensity to resist capitalism's forces of expropriation and alienation - to the screen, this book revitalizes Kluge's film for the new millennium.

A highly readable and lighthearted, yet intellectual-stimulating exploration of the modern human condition.   This volume concerns itself with the question of time, from the description of a brief fragment passing by in a matter of minutes to stories of the unexpected stock-market crash of 1929, a once-in-a-century event that Europeans call ‘Black Friday’ because Wall Street’s collapse reached the Old World one day later. Through this exploration of time, Kluge ponders some fundamental questions not altered by the passing of time: What can I trust? How can I protect myself? What should I be afraid of? Our age today has achieved a new kind of obscurity. We’ve encountered a pandemic. We’ve witnessed the Capitol riots. We see before us inflation, war, and a burning planet. We gaze at the world with suspense. What we need in our lives is orientation—just like ships that navigate the high seas. We might just find that in Kluge’s vignettes and stories.  

Collaborators for more than four decades, lawyer, author, filmmaker, and multimedia artist Alexander Kluge and social philosopher Oskar Negt are an exceptional duo in the history of Critical Theory precisely because their respective disciplines operate so differently. Dark Matter argues that what makes their contributions to the Frankfurt School so remarkable is how they think together in spite of these differences. Kluge and Negt's "gravitational thinking" balances not only the abstractions of theory with the concreteness of the aesthetic, but also their allegiances to Frankfurt School mentors with their fascination for other German, French, and Anglo-American thinkers distinctly outside the Frankfurt tradition. At the core of all their adventures in gravitational thinking is a profound sense that the catastrophic conditions of modern life are not humankind's unalterable fate. In opposition to modernity's disastrous state of affairs, Kluge and Negt regard the huge mass of dark matter throughout the universe as the lodestar for thinking together with others, for dark matter is that absolute guarantee that happier alternatives to our calamitous world are possible. As illustrated throughout Langston's study, dark matter's promise-its critical orientation out of catastrophic modernity-finds its expression, above all, in Kluge's multimedia aesthetic.

An epochal archaeology of the labor power that has been cultivated in the human body over the last two thousand years. If Marx's opus Capital provided the foundational account of the forces of production in all of their objective, machine formats, what happens when the concepts of political economy are applied not to dead labor, but to its living counterpart, the human subject? The result is Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt's History and Obstinacy, a groundbreaking archaeology of the labor power that has been cultivated in the human body over the last two thousand years. Supplementing classical political economy with the insights of fields ranging from psychoanalysis and phenomenology to evolutionary anthropology and systems theory, History and Obstinacy reaches down into the deepest strata of unconscious thought, genetic memory, and cellular life to examine the complex ecology of expropriation and resistance. First published in German 1981, and never before translated into English, this epochal collaboration between Kluge and Negt has now been edited, expanded, and updated by the authors in response to global developments of the last decade to create an entirely new analysis of "the capitalism within us."

Collaborators for more than four decades, lawyer, author, filmmaker, and multimedia artist Alexander Kluge and social philosopher Oskar Negt are an exceptional duo in the history of Critical Theory precisely because their respective disciplines operate so differently. Dark Matter argues that what makes their contributions to the Frankfurt School so remarkable is how they think together in spite of these differences. Kluge and Negt's "gravitational thinking" balances not only the abstractions of theory with the concreteness of the aesthetic, but also their allegiances to Frankfurt School mentors with their fascination for other German, French, and Anglo-American thinkers distinctly outside the Frankfurt tradition. At the core of all their adventures in gravitational thinking is a profound sense that the catastrophic conditions of modern life are not humankind's unalterable fate. In opposition to modernity's disastrous state of affairs, Kluge and Negt regard the huge mass of dark matter throughout the universe as the lodestar for thinking together with others, for dark matter is that absolute guarantee that happier alternatives to our calamitous world are possible. As illustrated throughout Langston's study, dark matter's promise-its critical orientation out of catastrophic modernity-finds its expression, above all, in Kluge's multimedia aesthetic.

Cherokee Teardrops 1985 By James Richard Langston Cherokee teardrops, Soft, dark and deep, Shed by Cherokee women, Every time they weep. The tears of Cherokee women, Rolled down their cheeks, They cried for their nation, Their braves lay at their feet. Their homes all in ashes, Their children standing bare, They wiped Cherokee teardrops, With their long raven hair. A defeated Cherokee nation, Submitting to their fate, Were moved to Oklahoma, In the winter of thirty eight. Proud Cherokee teardrops, Shed on every hand, All because the white man, Found gold on Cherokee land. Cherokee teardrops, From southern mountains grand, Spread across this nation, To a wasted, dusty land. Cherokee teardrops, Falling on two stones, Left a trail of sadness, From their southern mountain homes.

Cherokee Teardrops 1985 By James Richard Langston Cherokee teardrops, Soft, dark and deep, Shed by Cherokee women, Every time they weep. The tears of Cherokee women, Rolled down their cheeks, They cried for their nation, Their braves lay at their feet. Their homes all in ashes, Their children standing bare, They wiped Cherokee teardrops, With their long raven hair. A defeated Cherokee nation, Submitting to their fate, Were moved to Oklahoma, In the winter of thirty eight. Proud Cherokee teardrops, Shed on every hand, All because the white man, Found gold on Cherokee land. Cherokee teardrops, From southern mountains grand, Spread across this nation, To a wasted, dusty land. Cherokee teardrops, Falling on two stones, Left a trail of sadness, From their southern mountain homes.

The whistle of the train sounded, bringing his thoughts back to the present. He turned to see if the sound of the whistle had disturbed any of the other passengers. The only one that seemed to be awake was the woman with PC sown on her luggage. He still didn't know what the initials stood for. "Are you restless too?" she asked. A polite smile was written on her lips. Jim tried to warm up a smile and send it back, but he only managed to put one kink in the corner of his mouth. It wasn't that he was not attracted to her; just the sight of her burned him to the core. It was just not the time and, mainly the, place to vent the heat. "If a man wasn't restless every now and then," he said, "he would never get anything done, that is, anything worth doing." "Well said, I've always heard that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well," she said, again with that fantastic smile that penetrated Jim's very soul. "Is that your aim, to do what you do well, I mean?" "If it gets done at all, I intend to do it the best that I can," he said. This time, he managed to stretch a smile all the way across his lean face. She smiled again, very small, then turned away to continue her fruitless effort to sleep. She turned once more to glance the man. He looked tight and strangely savage in a gentle way. Pamela Cross was confused. Something about this man disturbed her as if they were destined to meet again. She watched as he went to the door, rubbed the fog from the glass and peered out into the darkness. Then he returned to his seat for a time and sat with his saddlebags and .44-.40 Winchester lying across his lap. The train was in an easy run to the springs. He listened to the chugging sound of the engine as it did its work; looked at the woman and felt a strong stirring in his loins.

The whistle of the train sounded, bringing his thoughts back to the present. He turned to see if the sound of the whistle had disturbed any of the other passengers. The only one that seemed to be awake was the woman with PC sown on her luggage. He still didn't know what the initials stood for. "Are you restless too?" she asked. A polite smile was written on her lips. Jim tried to warm up a smile and send it back, but he only managed to put one kink in the corner of his mouth. It wasn't that he was not attracted to her; just the sight of her burned him to the core. It was just not the time and, mainly the, place to vent the heat. "If a man wasn't restless every now and then," he said, "he would never get anything done, that is, anything worth doing." "Well said, I've always heard that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well," she said, again with that fantastic smile that penetrated Jim's very soul. "Is that your aim, to do what you do well, I mean?" "If it gets done at all, I intend to do it the best that I can," he said. This time, he managed to stretch a smile all the way across his lean face. She smiled again, very small, then turned away to continue her fruitless effort to sleep. She turned once more to glance the man. He looked tight and strangely savage in a gentle way. Pamela Cross was confused. Something about this man disturbed her as if they were destined to meet again. She watched as he went to the door, rubbed the fog from the glass and peered out into the darkness. Then he returned to his seat for a time and sat with his saddlebags and .44-.40 Winchester lying across his lap. The train was in an easy run to the springs. He listened to the chugging sound of the engine as it did its work; looked at the woman and felt a strong stirring in his loins.

"Hey, saddle tramp," said Vernon. "I don't think I like a bum like you coming in here to drink with us men." Matt turned to face Guthry, spread his feet shoulder wide with his gun hand thumb still hooked in his belt, still three fingers from his .44. The men that stood along the bar, drifted to one side, out of the line of fire. The room grew deadly quiet. "I've had just about all the crap I'm going to take from a local loudmouth like you," Matt said. There was a deadly chill to his voice and Vernon shivered slightly from the feel of it. All of a sudden, he realized that he might be biting off a little more than he could chew. Being the braggart that he was, he couldn't back down from the step he had taken. He crouched and went for his pistol. Realization that he didn't even have his gun half way out of leather, and was already looking into the black hole of a barrel, that looked three inches in diameter, he froze and in no time at all he felt the sting of salty sweat in his eyes from the large beads that had popped out on his forehead and trickled down. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple moved up and down but the lump in his throat was just about to choke him and he couldn't swallow it. He lost control of his bladder and pissed down his leg, the warm fluid trickling into his left boot. Dawning on him that he had just pissed in his own whiskey, he sucked in a mountain of air and said with a high pitched, fine toothed comb, squeak, "Ohooo, shit." .

"Hey, saddle tramp," said Vernon. "I don't think I like a bum like you coming in here to drink with us men." Matt turned to face Guthry, spread his feet shoulder wide with his gun hand thumb still hooked in his belt, still three fingers from his .44. The men that stood along the bar, drifted to one side, out of the line of fire. The room grew deadly quiet. "I've had just about all the crap I'm going to take from a local loudmouth like you," Matt said. There was a deadly chill to his voice and Vernon shivered slightly from the feel of it. All of a sudden, he realized that he might be biting off a little more than he could chew. Being the braggart that he was, he couldn't back down from the step he had taken. He crouched and went for his pistol. Realization that he didn't even have his gun half way out of leather, and was already looking into the black hole of a barrel, that looked three inches in diameter, he froze and in no time at all he felt the sting of salty sweat in his eyes from the large beads that had popped out on his forehead and trickled down. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple moved up and down but the lump in his throat was just about to choke him and he couldn't swallow it. He lost control of his bladder and pissed down his leg, the warm fluid trickling into his left boot. Dawning on him that he had just pissed in his own whiskey, he sucked in a mountain of air and said with a high pitched, fine toothed comb, squeak, "Ohooo, shit." .

Alexander Kluge is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, he has also cowritten three acclaimed volumes of critical theory, published countless essays and numerous works of fiction, and continues to make films even as he expands his video production to the internet. Despite Kluge's five decades of work in philosophy, literature, television, and media politics, his reputation outside of the German-speaking world still largely rests on his films of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. With the aim of introducing Kluge's heterogeneous mind to an Anglophone readership, Difference and Orientation assembles thirty of his essays, speeches, glossaries, and interviews, revolving around the capacity for differentiation and the need for orientation toward ways out of catastrophic modernity. This landmark volume brings together some of Kluge's most fundamental statements on literature, film, pre- and post-cinematic media, and social theory, nearly all for the first time in English translation. Together, these works highlight Kluge's career-spanning commitment to unorthodox, essayistic thinking.

JJ Byrider was taken by surprise when his cattle were rusteled and most of his crew killed in the process but he recovered and carried on but when Bert Haskins, an old enemy, beat and raped the woman JJ intended to marry, anger built up in him and exploded like steam bursting from a locomotive releaf valve. A vengence trail took him across the state of Texas to a showdown.

JJ Byrider was taken by surprise when his cattle were rusteled and most of his crew killed in the process but he recovered and carried on but when Bert Haskins, an old enemy, beat and raped the woman JJ intended to marry, anger built up in him and exploded like steam bursting from a locomotive releaf valve. A vengence trail took him across the state of Texas to a showdown.

Alexander Kluge is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, he has also cowritten three acclaimed volumes of critical theory, published countless essays and numerous works of fiction, and continues to make films even as he expands his video production to the internet. Despite Kluge's five decades of work in philosophy, literature, television, and media politics, his reputation outside of the German-speaking world still largely rests on his films of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. With the aim of introducing Kluge's heterogeneous mind to an Anglophone readership, Difference and Orientation assembles thirty of his essays, speeches, glossaries, and interviews, revolving around the capacity for differentiation and the need for orientation toward ways out of catastrophic modernity. This landmark volume brings together some of Kluge's most fundamental statements on literature, film, pre- and post-cinematic media, and social theory, nearly all for the first time in English translation. Together, these works highlight Kluge's career-spanning commitment to unorthodox, essayistic thinking.

From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, revolutions in theory, politics, and cultural experimentation swept around the world. These changes had as great a transformative impact on the right as on the left. A touchstone for activists, artists, and theorists of all stripes, the year 1968 has taken on new significance for the present moment, which bears certain uncanny resemblances to that time. The Long 1968 explores the wide-ranging impact of the year and its aftermath in politics, theory, the arts, and international relations and its uses today."

From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, revolutions in theory, politics, and cultural experimentation swept around the world. These changes had as great a transformative impact on the right as on the left. A touchstone for activists, artists, and theorists of all stripes, the year 1968 has taken on new significance for the present moment, which bears certain uncanny resemblances to that time. The Long 1968 explores the wide-ranging impact of the year and its aftermath in politics, theory, the arts, and international relations and its uses today."

Nazi Germany's book burnings, its campaign against ""degenerate art,"" and its persecution of experimental artists pushed the avant-garde to the brink of extinction. How the avant-garde came back, finding a new purpose in the wake of the war, is the subject of ""Visions of Violence"". An extreme faction of aesthetic modernity intent on bulldozing contemporary life, the avant-garde has regularly employed visions of violence in their push for societal and cultural renewal. But in the shadow of unparalleled war and genocide, such aesthetic violence lost its force. This book explores the reconfiguration of the avant-garde in response to the violent transformation of European reality. Citing the emergence of independent avant-garde practitioners in the place of the previous collective, Richard Langston considers six individual exemplars of Germany's post-fascist avant-garde - works that span the last six decades: painter, writer, and filmmaker Peter Weiss' appropriation of French surrealism in the fifties; writer Dieter Wellershoff's coterie of ""new realists""; artist WolfVostell's mediation and conflation of the experiences of the Auschwitz trials and the Vietnam War; poet and novelist Dieter Brinkmann's collages from the seventies; the multimedia displacements of Alexander Kluge; and the performative engagements of dramatists Christoph Schlingensief and Rene Pollesch. Taking stock of the evolution of Germany's post-fascist avant-gardes, Langston's book shows how the movement from Weiss to Pollesch exhibits the problems that both modernity and postmodernity pose for an aesthetic engagement of Germany's violent past.