ALTHUSSERS HÄNDE

(The Hands of Althusser) 

2015 / Verbrecher Verlag, Berlin

By Milo Rau / edited by Rolf Bossart

“The truth doesn’t enter our lives to wake us with kisses and tears, but all of us are restless, all of us are ready,” writes Milo Rau in his autobiographical essay “Nachmittag eines Linksfaschisten” (Afternoon of a left-wing fascist) of 2008. The present volume gathers Rau’s texts from ten years of his writing, showing all conceivable facets of this “theatre revolutionary” (Der Spiegel): as a pugnacious reporter and wry autobiographer, as a lover of both Euripides and Nicole Kidman. Whether in a review of a David Lynch film, an essay on Roland Barthes, or a dream journal, whether in an aesthetic manifesto or a sociological miniature, Rau is always very close to his subject and, at the same time, at eye level with world history. And even the most profound observation reaches out into political involvement, in keeping with Rau’s legendary weblog The Hands of Althusser: “I know full well how contradictory one has to be in order to be truly consistent.”