{"id":372,"date":"2026-02-10T21:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T21:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/?p=372"},"modified":"2026-03-30T12:29:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T12:29:11","slug":"the-impertinent-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/the-impertinent-self\/","title":{"rendered":"The Impertinent Self"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Heroic History of Modernity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

translated by Sarah L. Kirkby
Stanford University Press 2009<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The \u201cimpertinent self\u201d is one with which we are quite familiar: it is the self of talk shows that air its dirty laundry, the puffed up and shameless braggart of billboards and reality TV. The book takes on this self in order to elaborate a philosophical and cultural theory of modernity as the battle of the ego against itself. Only a return to the Romantic discourse of subjectivity will allow us to address this self, identified here as modernity\u2019s ambivalent (male) hero. Positing that modernity is a stratified phenomenon, this book tells its hero\u2019s tale according to three philosophical layers: the classical (Hegel, Luk\u00e1cs, Horkheimer\/Adorno, Habermas), the agonal (Taylor and Rorty), and the hybrid (Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze\/Guattari).  In cultural terms, these layers correspond in turn to the hero of three cinematic genres \u2013 the Western, the gangster movie, and the science-fiction film \u2013 that provide us with an analysis and critique of both modernity and popular culture as exemplified by the dominant mass medium of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00dcber die Moderne nachdenken hei\u00dft \u00fcber das Ich nachdenken. \u00dcber das Ich nachdenken hei\u00dft, seine Geschichte zu rekonstruieren. Sie verl\u00e4uft, so die Generalthese des Buches, auf drei sich \u00fcberlagernden Ebenen und macht das Ich zum hoch ambivalenten, m\u00e4nnlich gepr\u00e4gten Helden der Moderne. Dies nahzuweisen, ist allerdings nicht nur ein philosophisches, sondern auch ein kulturhistorisches Unternehmen. F\u00fcr letzteres bietet sich der Bereich des Films an. Der Bogen der Betrachtung zieht sich dementsprechend philosophisch zun\u00e4chst von Hegel \u00fcber Luk\u00e1cs und Horkheimer\/Adorno zu Habermas – die klassische, sich selbst begr\u00fcndende Moderne; von der Romantik zu Ch. Taylor und Rorty – die agonale Moderne in ihren zwei Varianten, der tragischen und der ironischen; schlie\u00dflich von Nietzsche zu Foucault und Deleuze\/Guattari – die hybride Moderne. Kulturell am signifikantesten gespiegelt finden sich diese drei Traditionsstr\u00e4nge in den Filmgenres des Western, des Verbrecherfilms und des Science fiction-Films. Die Moderne erweist sich, so gesehen, als Kampf des (m\u00e4nnlichen) Ich mit und gegen sich selbst, und der Diskurs der Moderne erh\u00e4lt eine essentiell romantische Dimension.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Heroic History of Modernity<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buecher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377,"href":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josef-fruechtl.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}