Es geht um den Antirealismus: Zu Alexander Kluges realistischer Methode und ihrer Poetik des Widerstands

Abstract

As a contribution to recent debates about the concept of realism, this essay reconstructs Alexander Kluge’s understanding of realism as theory and analyzes it as poetic practice. Although Kluge’s concept of anti-realism is mainly understood in the theoretical context of Lukács, Brecht, and Adorno, this essay demonstrates how Kluge’s concept marks an independent position that eludes expectations of social mimesis as well as constructivist demands. Instead, Kluge’s realism is based on a poetically constituted idea of experience that develops the categories of a possible social theory in a heightened and differentiated mode of self-reflection. Rather than realism as a reflection of already acknowledged social contradictions, Kluge’s model of realism connects theoretical conceptualization and its poetic self-reflection as a form of resistance against claims to reality. Thus, Kluge’s texts become self-reflecting models of reality that produce a counter-image of what they describe. (AF, in German)