Max Weber famously described politics as a “strong, slow drilling through hard boards with both passion and judgement”. Taking this as his inspiration, Alexander Kluge’s “Drilling through Hard Boards” is a kaleidoscopic meditation on the tools available to those who struggle for power. Weber’s metaphorical drill certainly embodies intelligent tenacity as a precondition for political change. But what is a hammer in the business of politics, Kluge wonders, and what is a subtle touch? The underlying question is always: what is political in the first place?
 
Kluge’s more than one hundred vignettes demonstrate how the political is – more often than not –personal. So, along with the stories of major political figures, we also find the small, mostly unknown ones: Chilean miners next to Napoleon, a three-month-old baby beside Alexander the Great.

Link to Onleihe

German original title