Introducing Walter Benjamin: A Graphic Guide

261 Pages·2014·78.14 MB·English

by  Howard Caygill

Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road,
London N7 9DP
Email: [email protected]
www.introducingbooks.com

ISBN: 978-178578-019-6
Text copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd Illustrations copyright © 2012 Icon
Books Ltd The author and illustrator has asserted their moral rights Originating
editor: Richard Appignanesi No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
The Passionate Critic
Snapshots of A Berlin Childhood
The Peripatetic Philosophy Student
Kant and Neo-Kantianism
Apriorism
Phenomenology
Pro-Or Anti-zionism?
“What were you doing on 4 August 1914?”
Betrayal and Revolution
How to Avoid Conscription
Friendship with Gershom Scholem
Greek Tragedy
Trauerspiel or Mourning Play
On Language
The Experience of Freedom
The Experience of Colour
German Romantic Art Criticism
The Concept of Ruination
Parental Strife
The Failed Editor
Conflict with the George Circle
The Story of Elective Affinities
Benjamin’s Affinities
The Task of the Critic
The Task of the Translator
The Bookman
... And the Media Man
Riegl Versus Wölfflin
The Transition from Haptic to Optic
The Aesthetics of Disintegration
Riegl’s Structuralism
The Task of the Art Critic
Children’s Books
Line or Colour?
The Optic of Technology
The Collector
Benjamin the Nomad
Introduction to Marxism
Mediation
Reification
The Bolshevik Verdict
The Porosity of Naples
Spatial and Temporal Porosity
A Dictator’s Visit
Introducing the Arcade
Looking Ahead …
Past, Present and Future
Moscow Diary
Sovereign Violence
The Religion of Capitalism
The Origin of German Tragic Drama
What is “Baroque”?
Political Theologies
A Nihilistic Toy-box
Symbol, Allegory and Ruination
A University Scandal
A Fairytale for Academics
One-way Street
Scenes from One-way Street: Writing
... And Technology
Benjamin, the Surrealist
Teddy and Bert
The Frankfurt Institute
Dissimilar Similarities
“The Hard Thing Gives Way”
“The Presence of the past, Now”
The Art of Montage
The Dark Age Begins
The Great Dictator …
… Seen as Charlie Chaplin
The Author as Producer
The Age of Reproduction
The Painter and the Camera-man
Mass Reproduction
History of the Aura
The Decay of the Aura
Uncertainties and Ambiguities
Criticisms of Benjamin’s Position
Kafka and Benjamin’s Mysticism
The Kabbala
Which Benjamin?
Origins of the Arcades Project
A Central Architectural Motif
A Marathon Project
Materialist Ventriloquism
The Maverick Historian
Phantasmagoria and Dialectical Images
Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century
1. Fourier, or the Arcades
2. Daguerre, or the Panoramas
3. Grandville, or the World Exhibitions
4. Louis Philippe, or the Interior
5. Baudelaire, or the Streets of Paris
6. Haussmann, or the Barricades
Troubles with the Institute
The Exile in Danger
Last Exit …
Theology and History
Samples From the “Theses”
Time Runs Out …
In Transit
The Last Day
Further Reading
Biographies of Walter Benjamin
Acknowledgements
The Authors
THE PASSIONATE CRITIC
Walter Benjamin eludes classification. He seemed content with the name
“critic”. But an exceptional critic of such passion, erudition and virtuosity who
transforms the nature of what usually passes for criticism. His gaze is multiple:
philosophy, language, art, architecture, photography, history, Jewish mysticism,
Marxism. He does not merely glance at these but digs to their foundations.
If this book can help the reader through the dazzling maze of Benjamin’s work,
it will be at the end to find Benjamin the allegorist.
SNAPSHOTS OF A BERLIN CHILDHOOD
Walter Benjamin was born 15 July 1892 in Berlin. His parents were Emil, a
businessman, and his wife Pauline, née Schönflies. They were Jewish,
unassimilated to Christianity, but like many others not strictly observant.
He remembered his childhood experiences in a series of memoirs written when
he was contemplating suicide in 1932, “Berlin Chronicle” and “A Berlin
Childhood Around 1900”. The hybrid nature of these texts – at once cultural
Childhood Around 1900”. The hybrid nature of these texts – at once cultural
criticism and personal reflection – exemplifies the complexity of Benjamin’s
writings which transgress disciplinary borders and rules of genre.
Benjamin presents his memories in the form of snapshot mosaic images, a
practice which anticipates his later comments on the philosophy of history. He
remembered himself walking reluctantly half a step behind his mother while out
shopping.