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Intro; Contents; Introduction; Part 1: Walter Benjamin; Chapter 1: Benjamin, Proust and the Rejuvenating Powers of Memory; 1.1 Benjamin's Childhood Reminiscences; 1.2 Children's Play and Proletarian Children's Theatre; 1.3 Creative Writing and Play; Chapter 2: The Politics of Aura and Imagination in Benjamin's Writings on Hashish; 2.1 Auratic Experience and Involuntary Memory; 2.2 Imagination and Mimesis; Chapter 3: "Reproducibility -- Distraction -- Politicization"; 3.1 The Aura, Contemplation, and Distraction; 3.2 Changing Film's Technical Standards; 3.3 Autonomy and Unity in Film.

3.4 Film and Epic TheatrePart 2: Siegfried Kracauer; Chapter 4: "Film as the Discoverer of the Marvels of Everyday Life": Kracauer and the Promise of Realist Cinema; 4.1 Photography, Proust, and the Task of a Realist Cinema; 4.2 The Child's Capacity for Perception and Imagination; Chapter 5: On the Task of a Realist Historiography in Kracauer's History: The Last Things Before the Last; 5.1 Photography, History, and Memory; 5.2 The Task of a Realist Historiography; Part 3: Alexander Kluge; Chapter 6: From History's Rubble: Kluge on Film, History, and Politics.

6.1 Autorenkino and Counter-histories6.2 The Construction Site of History; Chapter 7: Raw Materials for the Imagination: Kluge's Work for Television; 7.1 Information, Storytelling, and Experience; 7.2 Raw Materials for the Imagination; Conclusion; Bibliography; Other Works Cited; Acknowledgements.

This book explores Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer and Alexander Kluge's analyses of the role that a rejuvenation in the capacity for imagination can play in encouraging us to reconceive the possibilities of the past, the present, and the future outside of the parameters of the status quo. The concept of imagination to which the title of the book refers is not a strictly defined, stable concept, but rather a term which is employed to refer to a capacity that facilitates both an active, creative relationship to one's environment, and a process of mediation between the outside world and one's own experiences and memories. Through a detailed analysis of their engagements with subjects that span a broad range of historical and thematic contexts (including topics as diverse as literature, children's play, film, photography, history, and television) the book charts the extent to which the concept of imagination plays a central role in Benjamin, Kracauer, and Kluge's explorations of a mode of perception and experience which could serve as a catalyst for the creation and sustenance of a desire for a different kind of future.-- Provided by publisher.

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