"Last Man" and Seismographic Critique: The Power of Satire and the Discourse of Cultural Critique

Abstract

One of the recurrent stereotypes of most critical work on Karl Kraus consists in stressing the absolute uniqueness of Krausian satire and the incomparable qualities of his satiric endeavour. A closer look, however, will not fail to discern striking parallels between the tenor of satirical discourse in Die Fackel and the contemporary discourse of cultural critique in the social sciences – e.g. the Weberian image of the "last man", inspired by Nietzsche, and the recurrent lamentations in Max Weber’s work over the loss of individuality and creativity in the "iron cage" of modernity. Accordingly, this paper aims to analyze the affinities, which until now have gone largely unnoticed, between Kraus’s satirical discourse and the discourse of Kulturwissenschaften at the beginning of the century. This comparative analysis will look in particular at Weber’s outline of a pathogenesis of modernity as well as at the microsociological method developed in the context of Georg Simmel’s "sociological impressionism".