ABSTRACT
In this chapter I am concerned with a ‘theory of the proletariat’ in relation to cinema and architecture. Before the ‘proletariat’ can enter our ‘consciousness’ it has to be seen. But it cannot be seen with the naked eye. To come to visibility it must be submitted to the technological apparatus of the camera. In the age of cinema, the proletariat has to be photographed in order to come into being, to become visible. It must therefore become an image first—read phenomenon. Yes, it is an image, but it reveals that it is more than an image. As such, it is not just given to sensible intuition, it is nowhere given to experience. I therefore name the ‘proletariat’, in Kantian terms, the thing-in-itself. In its otherness it is transcendental and must be conceived to be in the parallax relationship to the masses. It was Sergei Eisenstein who staged the ‘proletariat’ in his masterpiece Battleship Potemkin; this will be discussed in this chapter by coming back to the resources of critical philosophy to examine the class consciousness of the proletarian masses.
