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Clean hands vs “Alternativ(e) Television”? Criticism and imitation in Adorno, Enzensberger, and vom Bruch
Hamers, Jérémy
2018The NECS 2018 Conference: Media Tactics and Engagement
 

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Keywords :
Adorno; Enzensberger; Klaus vom Bruch; television; video and militancy; terroism (RAF) and the media
Abstract :
[en] In the 1970’s, several German video groups develop a harsh criticism of the monopolistic position of public television, mainly drawing on two texts: Enzensberger’s “Constituents of a Theory of the Media” (1970), and Negt’s and Kluge’s Public Sphere and Experience (1972). Relying on these texts, those groups claim to go beyond the “resignation” of the Frankfurt School, to promote the resurgence of the “praxis”. This project highlights an indirect disagreement between Adorno and Enzensberger: Adorno claims the right to not “get his hands dirty” (1969) on contact with the praxis, whereas Enzensberger denounces “the fear of contact with the media”, a “fear of handling shit [which] is a luxury a sewerman cannot afford” (1970). I question this disagreement in three steps. First, I show that both authors agree on an observation which applies to the video groups: every critical praxis runs the risk of adopting the forms of expression of the criticized. However, for Negt, this imitation determines the militancy of politicized subjects who try “to catch reality” (Negt & Kluge, 1972). Second, I confront this opposition between Enzensberger/Adorno and Negt, with Klaus vom Bruch’s video Das Schleyer-Band to show that, by replaying/imitating the televisual “flow” or “liquidation of content” (Williams, 1974 ; Enzensberger, 1983/1988), vom Bruch supports a criticism which refuses both the aesthetical opposition to television and the imitation of it. In short, he explores a third way: getting engaged with the language of television. Finally, I demonstrate that vom Bruch realizes aesthetically a fundamental intuition in Negt that most video groups failed to consider: the setting-up of an oppositional public sphere presupposes the superposition of multiple public spheres. To that extend, vom Bruch’s formal work is a response to Adorno’s refusal of the praxis and to the fear of contact criticized by Enzensberger.
Disciplines :
Communication & mass media
Philosophy & ethics
Performing arts
Author, co-author :
Hamers, Jérémy ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Département médias, culture et communication > Cinéma et vidéo documentaires
Language :
English
Title :
Clean hands vs “Alternativ(e) Television”? Criticism and imitation in Adorno, Enzensberger, and vom Bruch
Publication date :
28 June 2018
Number of pages :
8
Event name :
The NECS 2018 Conference: Media Tactics and Engagement
Event organizer :
NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies)
Event place :
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Event date :
du 27 au 29 juin 2018
Audience :
International
Available on ORBi :
since 02 July 2018

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