"Waste and constellations"

Utopia of the in-between and eschatological pointillism in Siegfried Kracauer

Abstract

This essay aims to address Kracauer's concept of interstitial or intermediate space (Zwischenräum, then In- between). Since his early conviction that superficial phenomena allowed an exclusive and immediate access to the fundamental substance of reality, the categories of in-between and surface (Oberfläche) will provide indeed the main framework of Kracauer's wide-ranging thought. Reflecting upon these, he foresaw, as Benjamin later did, that the increase in rationality and the dissolution of traditional values did not correspond to the dissolution of myth and the emancipation from superstition but, rather, to their re-production and re- enforcement: which justifies the persistence and resurgence, in a hyper-rationalized society, of several anti- scientific and magical beliefs. Forms that Kracauer unmasked as essentially reactionary, as are the current and growing ones which deny the most elementary and established scientific truths. Kracauer's lesson, thus, could be very topical as it reminds us that the excesses and distortions of rationality cannot be fought and defeated by irrationality.