Marx as a Model and Question: Alexander Kluge’s Critical Inquiries

Abstract Alexander Kluge’s oeuvre features aesthetic commentary as a process of problematization and investigation. With exemplary case studies of Kluge’s films, his literary collections of short stories, his television interviews, and his theory volumes composed with Oskar Negt, this article analyzes not only various forms of questions posed in these genres but also the epistemological dimension of questioning. This perspective reveals how a Marxian model of writing becomes the point of departure for Kluge’s work on artistic method. It demonstrates that his questioning concerns the disclosure of subtexts, contexts, and peripheral texts that otherwise remain unseen. As a form of dual documentation—both scientific and artistic, objective and subjective—aesthetic commentary can be read against contemporary claims that the fictionality of a “postfactual age” replaces reality after the end of the “critical age.”