[Introduction] A Contemporary
[Introduction] Eisenstein-Benjamin constellation

Part 1

Chapter 1.
The Cultural Genealogy of Glass Houses
: Film - Literature - Architecture
Chapter 2.
Eisenstein's Disney and Benjamin's Mickey Mouse
: Primordial archetype or posthuman archetype
Chapter 3.
Chaplin Connection
: Soviet Shadows and Signals from Another World

Part 2

Chapter 4.
Revolution and Sound
: Mr. Sound's Bizarre Adventures in the Land of the Bolsheviks
Chapter 5.
Eisenstein's Capital project
: Film essay, film object, film thought

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Glass House, Mickey Mouse (Disney), Charlie Chaplin

Part 1 consists of three chapters.
Chapter 1 focuses on the theme of ‘glass house/glass architecture,’ which occupies an important juncture in the evolution of Benjamin and Eisenstein’s thoughts and creations.
The Glass House is one of the most fascinating chapters in 20th-century European intellectual and artistic history.
The cultural myth of the glass house, which began with the 'Crystal Palace' built at the Great Exhibition in London's Hyde Park in 1851, has been transformed in various ways over the past 100 years, crossing over philosophy, ideology, and art, from Russian utopian/dyutopian literature, to German glass architecture represented by Paul Scherbart and Bruno Taut, to the functionalist architecture of the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier.


Through his unfulfilled film project, Glass House, Eisenstein attempted to concretize his imagination of people living in a house made entirely of glass, a world where everything is transparent.
He wanted to produce the film in the United States, and discussions with Paramount were at a fairly concrete level.
In fact, they even decided to build the glass building for the film in a factory in Pittsburgh.
However, for some reason, he was unable to concretize the idea, and the outline kept being revised, which led to endless delays until it eventually remained only a concept on paper.
It is presumed that what Eisenstein first had in mind when he conceived “The Glass House” was the Russian lineage of the glass house.

By delicately interweaving Benjamin's reflections on glass and transparency, the author demonstrates how the myth of the glass house, amidst the catastrophic circumstances of the turn of the century, has served as a powerful narrative that revives a utopian, primordial dream and seeks a blueprint for a new world beyond capitalist modernity and a new humanity to inhabit it.
It also analyzes how the ideals of total universality and transparency intertwined with the nightmare of totalitarian surveillance and spectacle, evolving into a dualistic vision of utopia and dystopia.
Considering the historical and ideological complexities of this glass architecture, particularly its subtle implications within the contemporary Soviet political context, may shed some light on the significance of the Glass House project's failure and Eisenstein's struggles.


Chapter 2 discusses Disney/Mickey Mouse, which both Benjamin and Eisenstein were fascinated by for different reasons.
Beyond being a representative icon of popular culture, Mickey Mouse has established himself as a powerful symbol of 20th-century culture. How did he leave his mark on the thoughts and practices of these two thinkers? It is well known that Eisenstein, while visiting the United States under the pretext of inspecting Western film sound technology, visited the Disney Studios and developed a close relationship with Walt Disney.
Eisenstein's interest in Disney was not limited to sound technology.
To him, Disney's cartoons were nothing less than an epic tale of paradise reclaimed.


Eisenstein captured the 'pre-human state' of being, represented by 'primordial protoplasm' in the polymorphism and plasticity of Mickey Mouse, a form in which he can become anything, a form in a state of permanent self-dissolution.
Meanwhile, for Benjamin, Mickey Mouse was a special symbol that revealed his aspirations for an alternative world linked to technology and the 'new species of humanity' that would live in it.
He read in the character of Mickey Mouse a 'prefiguration of a posthuman future' that would explode the hierarchical order of creatures centered around humans.
Although these two thinkers moved in different directions—the "primitive" and the "future"—their thinking intersects in the way they both question the prevailing conditions of the present.


Chapter 3 explores the intersection of Benjamin and Eisenstein's thinking through Charlie Chaplin.
Chaplin, a representative icon of popular culture in the early to mid-20th century, provided inspiration to the European avant-garde and early Soviet film aesthetics through his unique acting and directing skills.
The author adds the historical context of the "Chaplin cult" phenomenon in the Soviet avant-garde to existing studies that link Chaplin's idiosyncratic gestures to industrialization and mechanization.
After introducing the circumstances in which Benjamin and Adorno clashed head-on over the liberating potential of laughter offered by Chaplin's films, the book illuminates the theme of 'infantile cruelty' that runs from Adorno to Eisenstein.
Through this, we reexamine the significant position of ‘childhood’ in each of their thoughts, highlighting the ‘neurophysiological’ common denominator of children captured by Benjamin and Eisenstein.

Part 2, Chapter 4 deals with the topic of the introduction of sound in Soviet cinema.
The shift to sound is not only explicitly linked to the Soviet modernization project, but is also closely intertwined with other significant transformations, highlighting the profound implications of sound as a transitional symbol of post-revolutionary Soviet society.
Chapter 5 deals with Eisenstein's unprecedented idea to make a film of Marx's Capital, even following the style of James Joyce (Ulysses).
The author suggests that Eisenstein's bold search for a 'film of the future' be read particularly from the perspective of the 'theory of things.'

Midwifery: A Comparative Study of Benjamin and Eisenstein

Benjamin and Eisenstein shared a very distinctive way of thinking.
It was precisely the “way of looking back instead of looking forward,” that is, the tendency to reveal the present through the past rather than projecting the future based on the present.
In order to examine their thinking comparatively, the author introduces a method called ‘comparative midwifery’ inspired by Alexander Kluge.
This is an attempt to 'give birth' to an unexpected new idea by intentionally colliding two ideas, much like midwives in the past used a kind of 'violence (bad force)' to induce spontaneous movement of a fetus in a breech position during childbirth.
This attempt to transcend the limitations of philology offers an opportunity to view them together as the best possible counterparts and special contemporaries each could hope for, regardless of whether they actually met or interacted.

Benjamin once said that a good archaeological report “reports not only the provenance of the objects found, but also the previous strata from which they were discovered.”
“The true legacy of the dead is not the answers or solutions they left behind,” but “the journey of experimentation and reasoning they undertook to come up with them.”
“Not the concept of the result, but the initial problem awareness that was harbored in the process of creating it, the surrounding expectations and concerns, hopes and frustrations, the inevitable giving ups and a certain bet that was held on to despite all that… these are the true legacy that future generations should inherit.” By revisiting the paths taken by these two men, who are considered the greatest intellects of the 20th century, I hope that they will be able to reconstruct the past questions they wrestled with into new questions for thinking about our times.