The Poetic Power of Theory

"The poetic power of theory" has for Alexander Kluge less to do with pure "philosophy" or the solitary "pleasures in thinking" than with the ancient Greek practice of "theoria". Like the ancient theoretician called theoros, who returned home from foreign lands to tell of other peoples and cultures, Kluge's interest in the poetic force of theory seeks to fortify humankind's essential powers for expressing the subjective experience of difference at a time of crisis when the necessary tools for narration have become impoverished. The sixth volume of the yearbook queries Kluge's theory of narrative's potential in the stormy age of digitality governed by algorithms, flooded with information, and disrupted by social conflict.