Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is the first book-length study of Werner Herzog’s American (in the hemispheric sense) work. It is also the first sustained, book-length study on the question of the political in Herzog’s work. Finally, as part of a series on contemporary directors, it introduces Herzog’s films through the arc of his long career, about 60 films (and counting) over nearly 60 years. The approach is materialist and postcolonial, with systematic attention paid to the historical impulses surrounding the films, both in terms of their history of representation (the stories that the films tell) and their history of production. Special attention is paid to how Herzog upsets our conventional expectations concerning categories such as capital, race, social class, and gender, and to what end. The specific aesthetic grammar of Herzog is essential, especially insofar as it confronts the viewer with political questions of world-historical significance. Although the book deals with dozens of films from across five decades (roughly 1968-2016), its heart is the 1970s and 1980s, and each chapter revolves around a single masterpiece: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972), Stroszek (1977), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and Cobra Verde (1987). Through these films, Herzog challenges the viewer to rethink the foundational traumas of our liberal capitalist modernity, including discovery and conquest; migration and exploitation; resource extraction; and slavery. The book represents both an introduction to Herzog’s work at large, and a new argument about the significance of his films.