Abstract

Gerhard Richter's Thought-Images: Frankfurt School Writers' Reflections from Damaged Life approaches the work of Benjamin, Kracauer, Adorno and Bloch through the genre of the "thought-image" (Denkbild), whose ambiguous situation between philosophical argument and aesthetic production makes it a privileged site for the performance of anti-totalizing critique. This review analyzes Richter's reading of the thought-image as a form of resistance to the premature closure of meaning, and presents the book as an illuminating close reading of the Frankfurt School archive with sometimes problematic debts to Derridean deconstruction.

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