Siegfried Kracauer is mostly known for the work on film theory he wrote during his post-war exile to North America. This thesis proposes to examine a lesser known and far more complex portion of his oeuvre, namely the vast body of essays and monographs he produced throughout the 20s and 30s as editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, which offer not only a cultural diary of the Weimar republic but also a critique of modernity and the many upheavals it engendered. Using both a detailed analysis of his own work as well as an examination of the various critical responses it elicited, this study aims at exposing the paradoxical complexity of Kracauer's stance towards modernity and its various mass cultural manifestations, a complexity which has unfortunately often been misjudged and reduced to a mere middling position. Indeed, because of his refusal to opt for a definite position, to either fully embrace or reject modernity, Kracauer has often been miscast as a mere seeker of compromise, a thinker who tried to make edges rounder and ease tensions. This thesis is an attempt to prove that far from trying to annihilate the tensions of the modern era, Kracauer in fact sought to cultivate them. He may have refused to opt for a definite stance---be it a "yes" or a "no"---towards modernity, yet his position is not to be reduced to a tepid "maybe", but ought to be seen, rather, as a truly Janusian simultaneous "yes" and "no" towards it. In our age of extreme relativism, where tension is to be avoided at all costs, there is some valuable insight to be gained from Kracauer's obstinate fight against comfortable compromises of any kind.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.21200 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Chahine, Joumane. |
| Contributors | Szanto, George (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Graduate Communications Program.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001658570, proquestno: MQ50503, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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