“Redeeming Kracauer’s Theory of Film: An Examination of the Importance of Material Aesthetics”

By way of an analysis of his Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (1960), and a comparison with Martin Heidegger’s “What Are Poets For?” (1946), this paper argues that Siegfried Kracauer conceives of film as a representation of the external world in its purity – an image of physical existence free of the abstractions of science and ideology - and that this redemption of physical reality also effectuates the redemption of humanity by revealing another mode of existence. As such, Kracauer’s film theory is anchored not by indexicality, but by the metaphysical and socio-political implications of the medium