HASHTI (ANTEROOM)

Let me begin by quoting a passage from Siegfried Kracauer's posthumously published book fragment, History: The Last Things Before the Last (1969), a text in which he tackles the problem of subjectivity and the restriction to a single perspective in historical interpretation. For the author, the tiniest facts of history can be made accessible only through what he calls a ‘micro history’ of ‘close-ups’ (Kracauer 1995, 105), an approach he undoubtedly favours over the distortions of macro histories and their panoramic views, which oversee the details following a synthesising, subsumptive logic.

This is not tantamount to an immersion in details until complete (self-) extinction. Rather, for Kracauer, this breaking down of macro entities into their smallest elements through close-ups entails a ‘minimum distance that must be upheld between the researcher and his material’ (Kracauer 1995, 86). The observer has to re-introduce the macrocosm into the microcosm:

‘This allegedly smallest historical unit itself is an inexhaustible macrocosm’ (Kracauer 1995, 116). But how is it possible for the stalker of close-ups to keep this minimal distance? According to Kracauer, he should penetrate the façade and materials of history with the eyes of an exile who resides in a ‘no-man's land’: that is, as a silent, emotionally detached observer, similar in this respect to the photographer who is excluded from the field of vision.