Topography of Imagination

What kind of understanding of art and society is possible, how can our power of imagination be defined and developed in the present, after the reality of Auschwitz as an unbridgeable abyss determines thinking as well as culture? At the center of the following work is the questioning of the category of imagination. Its subject is epistemological and aesthetic argumentation in the context of remembrance. In the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno discuss epistemological as well as societal aporia, conceptually understood as a result of such a figure of dialectic referring to a specific lack of power of imagination. On the one hand, their thesis will be the initial point of the following critical analysis but will, on the other hand, itself, be reviewed. As the category of power of imagination represents a constitutive term within Horkheimers and Adornos aesthetic concept, Immanuel Kants critiques form a constitutive point of reference, being one of the most significant sources in the discourse of Enlightenment themselves. As for Adorno and Horkheimer, Kants critiques become a constitutive point of reference as well for Hannah Arendt, Jean-Franois Lyotard, Sarah Kofman, dedicated to their epistemological fundament as well as to Kants epistemological and reflexive concept of critique. They establish specific concepts and new appraisals of Kants critiques and therein fundamental assumptions. A look at a specific excerpt of the material on the Eichmann trial made publicly available by the Yad Vashem memorial on YoutTube adds to the perspective. In France 2002, George Didi-Hubermans book Images malgré tout (Images in Spite of All), rekindled a debate on the possibility of (re-)presentation after Auschwitz. It causes a renewed controversial discussion of the dual nature of the power of imagination as a transcendental productive power and its diversified valuation in relation to the transcendental capability of intellectual power, rationality and reason. At the same time, two diverging horizons are brought into categorical discussion: the thesis of an absolute cultural rupture after Auschwitz opposes the assumption of an ambivalent but continuing tradition of imagination in the genesis of the discourse of reason and rationality. A closing view of Ruth Klügers memories Unterwegs verloren. Erinnerungen tries to perceive a moment of a recent narrative in which Auschwitz is no longer the sole perspective in present day life.