Abstract
Christian Kracht’s aesthetic is hardly ever associated with the keyword “documentary.” Yet the novel Imperium demonstrates that Kracht incorporates references to documentary media, such as photography or film, but in the process reduces their documentary character to absurdity. In doing so, he calls into question any possibility of reference to the world, while also addressing the specific characteristics of literature. This article uses the concept of the documentary as contrast material that illuminates how the novel negates any extra-literary reference. The essay first explores photography and the way in which historical documents – a photograph of the historical August Engelhardt serves as an example – are literarized in Imperium. In a second step, the essay analyzes Imperium’s reflections on the medium of film that the text offers at various points. As both cases make clear, Imperium advances an anti-documentary aesthetic by recontextualizing photography and film in the novel’s notoriously unreliable prose narrative showing that a simple reference to reality in both media is only fiction.
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Notes
- 1.
Christian Kracht: Imperium. A Fiction of the South Seas. Transl. Daniel Bowles. New York 2015, 18 (hereafter referred to as “I” with page number in the main text).
- 2.
Isabelle Stauffer/Björn Weyand: “Zum Figureninventar von Krachts Romanen”. In: Text + Kritik 216: Christian Kracht. Ed. by Christoph Kleinschmidt. München 2017, 54–66, here 57. All translations of quotes from German sources by DeepL, edited by the author. “Antiheld[ ], der Elemente des Tragischen und des Komischen vereint.”
- 3.
Cf. also the words of the colonial official Hahl who, shortly before this scene, breaks off a political-philosophical conversation with the remark “now could they [Engelhardt and his comrade-in-arms Lützow – C.S.] put their minds together, please” (I, 125).
- 4.
Johannes Birgfeld: “Südseephantasien. Christian Krachts Imperium und sein Beitrag zur Poetik des deutschsprachigen Romans der Gegenwart”. In: Wirkendes Wort 62/3 (2012), 457–77, here 477. “‘seriously ironic parody’, komisches Pastiche und moralische Geschichtsreflexion in einem”.
- 5.
Nicole Weber: “Kein Außen mehr. Krachts Imperium (2012), die Ästhetik des Verschwindens und Hardts und Negris Empire (2000)”. In: Matthias N. Lorenz/Christine Riniker (ed.): Christian Kracht revisited: Irritation und Rezeption. Berlin 2018, 471–503, here 488. Weber adopts the concept of the “irony spiral” from the discussion protocols in the collection Tristesse Royale, which Kracht co-edited. Cf. Part 3 in Joachim Bessing/Christian Kracht/Eckhardt Nickel u. a.: Tristesse Royale. Das popkulturelle Quintett. Berlin 1999. “Ironiespirale”.
- 6.
Eckhard Schumacher: “Differenz und Wiederholung. Christian Krachts Imperium”. In: Hubert Winkels (ed.): Christian Kracht trifft Wilhelm Raabe. Die Diskussion um „Imperium“ und der Wilhelm Raabe-Literaturpreis. Berlin 2013, 129–146, hier 146. “Prinzip des vielfachen Überschreibens”; “[n]icht nur die vermeintliche Vergangenheit, sondern auch das, was wir als Gegenwart wahrnehmen, […] verblüffend präzise”; “zugleich als fragwürdige Projektion”.
- 7.
Georg Diez: “Die Methode Kracht”. In: Der Spiegel 7/2012, 100–103.
- 8.
Ibid., 103. “Türsteher der rechten Gedanken”.
- 9.
Thomas Assheuer: “Ironie? Lachhaft”. In: Die Zeit 9/2012. “Totaldenunziation der Moderne”.
- 10.
Schumacher: “Differenz und Wiederholung” (as note 6), 146. “geschärften Blick auf historische, reale Begebenheiten”.
- 11.
For example, as part of an article on Spiegel Online: Manuel Opitz: “Der Herr der Kokosnüsse”. In: Spiegel Online (05.03.2018): http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/aussteiger-august-engelhardt-der-herr-der-kokosnuesse-a-1195030.html (25.01.2019).
- 12.
Cf. Hubert Fichte: “My Friend Herodotus: New York, November 1980.” In: The Black City: Glosses. Transl. Adam Siegel with Max Bach. Berlin 2018, 305–330, here 330. I chose Fichte’s expression not only because Kracht mentioned him as an important influence in his Frankfurt Poetic Lectures [please check this translation], but also because of Fichte’s particular understanding of Herodotus’ project, which claims that the Greek historian attempts to write more “than an accumulation of examples for teaching history”, but rather also contains a “poetic dimension” (ibid., 318). It is precisely this interface between world and word that is at issue here. “Verwörterung”.
- 13.
Fiction because the real photograph was taken at a much earlier time than the text claims: the historical Max Lützow died in 1905, while the scene of the dislocation between Engelhardt and Lützow, which is followed by the description of the photograph, is set shortly before the First World War. Such fictional shifts of historical references have a system in the novel (cf. for example Birgfeld: “Südseephantasien” (as note 4), 69–70), and are thus precisely part of that writing process whose ultimate consequence is the “dissolution of meaning” (Weber: “Kein Außen mehr” (as note 5), 488).
- 14.
See Thomas von Steinaecker: Literarische Foto-Texte. Zur Funktion der Fotografien in den Texten Rolf Dieter Brinkmanns, Alexander Kluges und W.G. Sebalds. Bielefeld 2007. “Foto-Texte”.
- 15.
Peter Weiss: “Notizen zum dokumentarischen Theater”. In: Ibid. (ed.): Rapporte 2, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, 91–104, here 94. “gegen jene Gruppen […], denen an einer Politik der Verdunkelung und Verblindung gelegen ist”; “eine Reaktion dar auf gegenwärtige Zustände, mit der Forderung, diese zu klären.”
- 16.
Alexander Kluge makes a similar point, emphasizing the “‘critical’ interest” of the documentary film. He understands it much more complexly, though, than some early documentary writers: “Die realistische Methode und das sogenannte ‘Filmische’” (1975). In: Ibid. (ed.): In Gefahr und größter Not bringt der Mittelweg den Tod. Texte zu Kino, Film, Politik. Berlin 1999, 114–122, here 116–117.
- 17.
Weiss: “Notizen” (as note 15), 97. “Fragment[ ] der Wirklichkeit”.
- 18.
Thus Lukács, paraphrased in Hans Christoph Buch: “Postscriptum. Über Dokumentarliteratur und sozialistischen Realismus”. In: Ibid. (ed.): Kritische Wälder: Essays, Kritiken Glossen. Reinbek bei Hamburg 1972, 85–88, here 85. “bloß Oberflächenphänomene fetischisiert dargestellt werden, […] das Wesen des Kapitalismus gleichgesetzt werde mit seiner Erscheinung, […] die Wirklichkeit an die Stelle der Wahrheit trete.”
- 19.
Hito Steyerl: Die Farbe der Wahrheit. Dokumentarismen im Kunstfeld. Wien 2008, 10. “die dokumentarische Form seit jeher genuine philosophische Probleme aufwirft.”
- 20.
Ibid., 7. “dokumentarische Unschärferelation”.
- 21.
The contributions by Christine Riniker and Ronald Röttel in this volume show that book design and image politics are immensely important for understanding the work.
- 22.
He is not depicted in any way on any of the German-language editions of the book; the photograph in question was, however, used for the cover of the Norwegian edition. See Christian Kracht: Official website: https://www.christiankracht.com (January 25, 2019).
- 23.
In the sense of Mikhail Bakhtin, Imperium can certainly be described as a novel that, through its numerous intertexts, represents a prime example of heteroglossia; and this applies not only to the speech of the characters, who belong to very different (sub)cultures, but also to the narrative voice of the novel. Tom Kindt has pointed out that one cannot speak of a narrator at all in Imperium; the term “narrative stream” captures the novel’s narrative technique much better, since its narrative voice is characterized by “a juxtaposition of voices, points of view, attitudes, and tones” that, however, “because of their disunity or even contradictoriness, cannot ultimately justify the notion of a narrator figure.” Tom Kindt: “Ein Zahnrad greift nicht mehr ins andere...”. In: Lorenz/Riniker (ed.): Christian Kracht revisited (wie Anm. 5), 455–470, here 467. Cf. Michail M. Bachtin: “Discourse in the Novel”. In: The Dialogical Imagination. Austin, TX 1984, 259–422. For reasons of readability, however, I continue to use the term “narrator” in the singular.
- 24.
An anthology of early German film theory and criticism is therefore appropriately titled The Promise of Cinema. Cf. Anton Kaes/Michael Cowan/Nicholas Baer (eds.): The Promise of Cinema. German Film Theory 1907–1933. Oakland 2016.
- 25.
Ludwig Brauner: “Kinematographische Archive”. In: Der Kinematograph. Organ für die gesamte Projektionskunst 97 (1908), 1–2, here 1. “[w]elch ein anschauliches Bild würden uns diese unretouchierten, wahrheitsgetreuen Dokumente einer vergangenen Zeit bieten!”.
- 26.
Ibid., 1–2. “[B]eim Kinematographen, dem Konservator des wirklichen Geschehnisses, [ist] die Phantasie vollkommen entbehrlich.”
- 27.
Cf. the contribution in this volume.
- 28.
Christian Kracht: Imperium. Köln 2012, 66.
- 29.
Axel Honneth: “Sozialphilosophie”. In: Hans Jörg Sandkühler (ed): Enzyklopädie Philosophie. Hamburg 1999, 1188. “Art permanente[r] Kategorienfehler gegenüber der Wirklichkeit”; “gar nicht mehr anders, als die Realität im ganzen nach dem Schema von dinglichen Entitäten wahrzunehmen.”
- 30.
Kluge: “Die realistische Methode” (as in note 16), 120–121. “Assoziationsstrom, Tagtraum, Erfahrung, Sinnlichkeit, Bewußtsein. Die technische Erfindung des Kinos hat dem lediglich reproduzierbare Gegenbilder hinzugefügt.”; “zehntausend Jahren […] in den menschlichen Köpfen”.
- 31.
Friedrich Kittler: Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Transl. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Michael Wutz. Stanford: 1999, 117. Kittler’s verdict that media are “always already beyond aesthetics” (ibid., 3) is, however, radically questioned by their literary subsumption in Imperium. “schon vom Prinzip her Schnitt […]: Zerhackung der kontinuierlichen Bewegung […]”.
- 32.
David Bordwell/Kristin Thompson: Film Art. An Introduction. New York 2010, 236–268.
- 33.
Immanuel Nover: “Diskurse des Extremen. Autorschaft als Skandal”. In: Text + Kritik 216 (as note 2), 26–33, here 27. “ironisch[e] Schlussvolte”.
- 34.
The latter possibility is played out above all by Birgfeld and, following on from his findings and extending them, by Weber in their contributions. Cf. Birgfeld: “Südseephantasien” (as note 4), 468–469, and Weber: “Kein Außen mehr” (as note 5), 485–487.
- 35.
For comments and constructive criticism I thank Heinz Drügh, Thomas Hecken, Susanne Komfort-Hein, Richard Langston and Niels Werber.
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Schmitz, C. (2023). Faded Photographs and Rattling Projectors: On the Anti-documentary Aesthetic in Christian Kracht’s Imperium. In: Komfort-Hein, S., Drügh, H. (eds) Christian Kracht‘s Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05958-1_12
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