Culture in the Anteroom: The Legacies of Siegfried Kracauer

Culture in the Anteroom: The Legacies of Siegfried Kracauer. Edited by Gerd Gemünden and Johannes von Moltke. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. Pp. 324. Paper $35.00. ISBN 978-0472051670.

As the first collected volume in English on the noted Weimar-era theorist Siegfried Kracauer, Culture in the Anteroom convincingly argues for both the historical impor- tance and contemporary relevance of his work. Examining Kracauer from his first book (Die Entwicklung der Schmiedekunst in Berlin, 1915) to his last (History: The Last Things Before the Last, posthumously published in 1969), the sixteen essays cover some topics familiar to the secondary literature on Kracauer, such as his contribu- tions to film and media theory, his paths of exile, and his relationships with friends and contemporaries. They also break new ground in documenting Kracauer's early writings in American exile and pointing to the proximity of his thinking to feminist perspectives, the field of sound studies, and the work of the New York Intellectuals, in particular the editor of the magazine Commentary, Robert Warshow.

The main contribution that Culture in the Anteroom makes, however, lies in its mobilization of Kracauer's own unique interdisciplinary methodology as a productive hermeneutic and critical principle. Editors Gerd Gemünden and Johannes von Moltke cite Kracauer in their outstanding introduction, presenting the volume as an attempt to examine "many small factors" to reveal a cohesive and comprehensive image of Kracauer amidst "history's moving forces in full action," such as the institutionaliza- tion of film studies (2). In taking this perspective on Kracauer's legacy, many of his texts gain new life as the authors explicate often-overlooked features of his far-ranging work while contextualizing them within contemporary debates in numerous fields and the crisis in the humanities as a whole.

Two essays in particular demonstrate how the collection seeks to renegotiate Kracauer's standing and relevance. Noah Isenberg's "This Pen for...