Selected Writings on Media, Propaganda, and Political Communication by Siegfried Kracauer

Author:Siegfried Kracauer [Kracauer, Siegfried]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Movements, Critical Theory, Political, Deconstruction
ISBN: 9780231555661
Google: ndouEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: ColumbiaUP
Published: 2022-05-17T20:43:41+00:00

OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE FACTORS IN NATIONAL IMAGES

In the cases of individuals and peoples alike, knowledge of each other may progress from a state of ignorance to fair understanding. It is, for instance, a far cry from what the average American knows about the Japanese to Ruth Benedict’s recent disclosure of the set of motives that determine Japanese attitudes and actions. Her study, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, marks progress in objectivity; it challenges us to dispose of the familiar notions and common prejudices which help fashion our standard images of that people. Generally speaking, any such increase of knowledge is identical with a closer approach to the object we seek to penetrate.

This approach, however, is bound to remain asymptotic for two reasons, one of which lies in the object itself. An individual or a people is not so much a fixed entity as a living organism that develops along unforeseeable lines. Hence the difficulty of self-identification. It is true that the successive images a people create of its own character are as a rule more reliable than those it forms of a foreign people’s; but they are not complete and definite either.

The other obstacle to perfect knowledge, alone important in this context, lies in ourselves. We perceive all objects in a perspective imposed upon us by our environment as well as by certain inalienable traditions. Our concepts of a foreigner necessarily reflect native habits of thought. Much as we try to curtail this subjective factor, as we are indeed forced to do in the interest of increased objectivity, we still view the other individual from a position which is once and for all ours. It is just as impossible for us to settle down in a vacuum as it would be to fuse with him.

Any image we draw up of an individual or a people is the resultant of an objective and a subjective factor. The former cannot grow indefinitely; nor can the latter be completely eliminated. What counts is the ratio between these two factors. Whether our image of a foreign people comes close to true likeness or merely serves as a vehicle of self-expression—that is, whether it is more of a portrait or more of a projection—depends upon the degree to which our urge for objectivity gets the better of naive subjectivity.

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