An Instance of Internet Telephony over the Himalayas

Abstract

This chapter assesses Alexander Kluge's Skype conversation with renowned Chinese literary scholar Wang Hui, recorded in the spring of 2012. The interview was held following a public screening of Kluge's documentary News from Ideological Antiquity (2008) subtitled in Chinese. A testimony to Kluge's desire to think beyond Europe's geographic and intellectual boundaries, the interview engages the viability of Marxist thinking in the age of globalization and testifies to the centrality of cooperation and collaboration in the form of dialogue for Kluge's essayism. Kluge also discusses fragmentary storytelling, which is already present in Tacitus, in his Roman historical writing. The fragmentary, he says, is what Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno teach people: people should use it. Kluge and Hui then further explores film. Kluge claims that the reality of film is not sealed off. This means that new possibilities remain open for film.