Steffen Andrae

Curriculum Vitae

Higher Education

• 01/2022-12/2022: Visiting Scholar at the Department of Philosophy, Columbia University in the City of New York
• Since 10/2019: PhD Candidate at the Max Weber Centre, University of Erfurt
• 2015-2018: Master of Arts in Political Theory, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
• 08/2016-12/2016: Semester Abroad, The New School for Social Research, New York City
• 2014-2015: Master of Arts in Sociology, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (abandoned)
• 2009-2014 Joint Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy/Sociology, Technical University of Darmstadt

Academic Employments

• 2015-2019: Student Assistant, Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
• 2011-2014: Student Assistant (Head of Tutorials), Institut for Sociology, Technical University of Darmstadt

CV (PDF)

ABSTRACT
REALISM AND EXPERIENCE: ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POETICS AND SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN SIEGFRIED KRACAUER AND ALEXANDER KLUGE
BY STEFFEN ANDRAE

The goal of my research project is to reconstruct thoroughly the œuvre of Kracauer and Kluge as a nonconformist strand of a theoretical and artistic realism. In order to reinterpret systematically these authors I understand their realism as a specifc confguration of poetics and social critique. Due to its intertwinement of aesthetic and conceptual elements, the work of Kracauer and Kluge seems to hold an exceptional position within both Critical Theory and literary realism. The gravitational center of their genuinely original form of dealing with historical, social and political conditions is, I argue, the concept of experience, which is situated at the intersection of social philosophy, epistemology, and aesthetic theory. Like the protagonists of the frst and second generation of Critical Theory, Kracauer and Kluge assume that the modern way of existence is based on fundamentally defcient modes of experience and relationships, theoretically as well as practically.

However, in contrast to Adorno and his peers, Kluge and Kracauer react to the disastrous history of modernity with a variety of realism whose obstinate arrangement of theoretical and aesthetic procedures facilitates innovative forms of critique. These forms can be located between a poetically enriched branch of science and a kind of art that focuses particularly on social reality. I want to trace the specifcs of Kracauer's and Kluge's methods of production and writing in their mediation of documentary and lifeworld oriented elements with those of (historical) philosophical cartography, in the narrative trait of their realism, in their sensually enriched concept of rationality, and their specifc methods of depicting and representing reality. I will thus analyze the poetical and theoretical models induced by Kluge and Kracauer regarding both their critical and alternative meaning for human forms of experience and relationship. Furthermore, I want to refect on the practical interweaving of their works with social reality. I consider Kracauer's and Kluge's critical practice of realism as an intervening mode of production that addresses forms of human experience and relationship while it is also, paradoxically, always part of the concrete social, historical and political context that it aims to scrutinize.

• “Erfahrung | Fahren | Gefahr. The Role of Precarious Subjectivity in Kracauer’s World Encounter”, in: Leonie Hunter/Felix Trautmann (ed.), Im Sinne der Materialität. Film und Gesellschaft nach Siegfried Kracauer, IfS - Aus der Reihe Bd. 1, 2022, p. 170-184.
• “‘Mich wird die Spitze meines Bleistifts überlisten. Steffen Andrae im Gespräch mit Alexander Kluge’”, Multi Media Edition of the already published interview in cooperation with praeposition.com and dctp, 2021.
  online here
• “Der Hofregisseur der Frankfurter Schule? Alexander Kluge, Adorno und der Film”, in: Mittelweg 36, Heft 3/2021: Metamorphosen der Kritischen Theorie, Hamburger Editionen HIS, Hamburg 2021 (co-authored with Jörg Später), p. 65-87.
• “Mikrophysik des Widerstandp. Alexander Kluges politische Philosophie der Gefühle”, in: diskurs, Ausgabe 6: Gefühle des Widerstands, 2021, p. 1-22.
  online here
  • republished in: Rainer Stollmann et al. (Hg), Trauerarbeit / Maulwurf Krieg. Alexander Kluge Jahrbuch, Bd. 8, V&R unipress, Göttingen 2022, p. 165-187.
• “‘Und so kommen lauter Lebendigkeiten zusammen’ - Ein Interview mit Alexander Kluge über Realismus und Realität”, in: Josef Früchtl/Philipp Theisohn (ed.), Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, Heft 65/2, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 2020, p. 127-134.
• “Durchs Material der Welt hindurchgetrieben. Ein Interview mit Jörg Später über Siegfried Kracauers wunderlichen Marxismus”, in: Platypus Review #12, 2020.
• “Gegenstand, Darstellung, Kritik. Versuch über einige Berührungspunkte zwischen den Realismus-Konzeptionen von Siegfried Kracauer und Alexander Kluge”, in: Richard Langston et al. (ed.), Alexander Kluge Jahrbuch, V&R unipress, Göttingen 2019, p. 387-404.
• “Kracauer trifft Kluge. Über Adorno als Lehrer und als Schüler und über das Verhältnis von Erfahrung, Realismus, Poetik und Kritik”, in: Dennis Göttel/Christina Wessely (ed.), Im Vorraum. Lebenswelten Kritischer Theorie um 1969, Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2019 (co-authored with Jörg Später), p. 13-32.

• “Erfahrung, Fahren, Gefahr. Aesthetic World Encounter and Precarious Subjectivity in Siegfried Kracauer“, Presentation @Annual Conference of the American Society for Aesthetics, Portland, Oregon, 11/18/2022.
• “‘The fairy tales are not miracle stories‘. Siegfried Kracauer and the Reason of Fairy Tales“, Presentation @Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes, Université de Montréal, 11/10/2022.
• Booklaunch “Vielheit. Jüdische Geschichte und die Ambivalenzen des Universalismus“, Panel Discussion with Till van Rahden and Barbara Thériault @Goethe Institut Montréal, 11/8/2022.
• “Between Fact and Fiction. Alexander Kluge’s Thought on History, Subjectivity, and Literature“, Presentation @Grad Workshop Columbia University Department of Philosophy, New York City, 10/7/2022.