Book:
Anachronismen: Historiografie und Kino

Author(s): Wendler, André

Abstract

The study “Anachronisms: Historiography and Cinema” uses a rather simple observation as its starting point: almost always when historians are dealing with history films they keep complaining about their numerous and avoidable anachronisms which render them worthless for any serious discussion of history. The study pursues a threefold project from here on: it first tries to develop some hints concerning the status of anachronisms for modern western historiography by a close reading of texts on the theory of history. Second it asks about the role of anachronisms in history films. And it thirdly investigates the epistemic potential of anachronistic history films. One of the study’s main theses is that anachronisms are the crucial points of historiographies at which their media can be observed. This observation is here done with the help of some key concepts of Actor Network Theory (ANT). The study is structured into four chapters that each discuss one of the ANT concepts and analyse one film in depth. The following films are discussed here: Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010), Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach (Jean-Marie Straub/Danièle Huillet, 1968), Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963) und Caravaggio (Derek Jarman, 1986). Theoretical positions on historiography and anachronisms by the following scholars are assesed: Walter Benjamin, Leo Bersani, Georges Didi-Huberman, Siegfried Kracauer, Friedrich Meinecke, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Rancière, Leopold Ranke, Paul Ricœur, Georg Simmel, Hayden White etc.

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BibTex
Wendler, André: Anachronismen: Historiografie und Kino. Weimar: Bauhaus-Universität Weimar 2012. DOI: 10.25969/mediarep/4153.
@PHDTHESIS{Wendler2012,
 author = {Wendler, André},
 title = {Anachronismen: Historiografie und Kino},
 year = 2012,
 doi = {10.25969/mediarep/4153},
 address = {Weimar},
 publisher = {Bauhaus-Universität Weimar},
}
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