The specialist literature has investigated extensively the link between Benjamin and German Romanticism and, less frequently, his relation to Kant. However, these contributions tend to take up these links separately, and therefore do not analyse in detail the process which begins with the theoretical sketches on Kant and concludes with the writing of the doctoral thesis on the Frühromantik. This paper argues that there is a marked continuity between the objectives which led Benjamin to plan, in the first place, his (...) doctoral investigation on Kant and those which were finally realized. I try to demonstrate that such continuity consists in a displacement of the problem of the justification of knowledge, from the field of the criticism of knowledge in general to a particular sphere: that of art criticism. In this shift the purpose of linking the justification of knowledge with a messianic philosophy of time and history is also preserved. (shrink)

Examines the role of experience within Adorno’s philosophy of language and epistemology.

‘Tragedy’ is one of those curiously elastic words reserved for life's saddest spheres and events, irrespective of the forms in which they appear. Even though a vast body of genre studies has emerged, however, only a handful of studies have drawn cross-historical comparisons between tragic forms. This essay demonstrates how Walter Benjamin’s reflections on Attic tragedy may contribute to such a line of thought, focusing both on tragedies’ subversive potential and on the social-historical constellations in which they first emerged. In (...) the first part, Benjamin’s conception of the Attic tragedies is explored by focusing on his The Origin of German Tragic Drama and the theoretical roots of his earlier work. According to Benjamin, Attic tragedies offered a messianic, dialectical critique on the social-historical constellation in which they appeared. The second part of the article discusses the relevance of these reflections for the analysis of contemporary tragic forms, thereby identifying the heirs of Attic tragedy outside the strict boundaries of ‘drama’. (shrink)

This article examines the turn to the aesthetic dimension in early 20th century critical theory, particularly in the work of Lukács, Benjamin and Adorno. It focuses on the concept of play, which garnered particular attention as a possible form of aesthetic resistance to the reification of reason in modern society. The article traces the concept of play from the work of Lukács, who engaged with Schiller’s notion of the play-drive but ultimately viewed it to be an inadequate form of aesthetic (...) resistance, to the work of Benjamin, who optimistically embraced the revolutionary possibility of play. In contrast, the article argues that Adorno’s work tacitly advances a critical concept of dark play that offers a third perspective between Lukács’s pessimism and Benjamin’s optimism, thus avoiding both the retreat into an apolitical aesthetic dimension and the uncritical embrace of play’s revolutionary potential. (shrink)

Why does Walter Benjamin claim “indirection” to be the proper method for philosophical contemplation and writing? Why is this method—embodied, according to Benjamin, in the convoluted form of scholastic treatises and in their use of citations—fundamental for understanding his Origin of German Trauerspiel as suggesting an alternative to most strands of modern philosophy? The explicit and well-studied function of this method is for the presentation of what cannot be represented in language, of what cannot be intended or approached in thinking. (...) Namely, of what Benjamin understands as “truth.” Indeed, as Adorno implied, providing a method for presenting an intentionless reality, rather than for re-presenting the world as corresponding to the mind, is revolutionary. However, I claim that beyond its presentational function, the method of indirection has a further, pedagogical function. Benjamin’s concept of truth requires thinking in a manner that does not impose any exterior form, any conceptual or intuitive intention on truth and the materials in which it might be exhibited. The methodological adoption of digressive and intermittent writing is supposed to transform the way we think, or more accurately, the position from which thinking occurs. By examining Benjamin’s use of pedagogical terms against the backdrop of scholastic history and the Urfigure of modern method, that of Descartes, I show that writing and reading in the form of the tractatus serves as exercise in receding from the subject-position—a position of a subject intending an object—and thus conditions the presentation of intentionless truth. (shrink)

This essay argues for the philosophical standing of Walter Benjamin’s early work and posits a deeper continuity between this early work as a philosopher and the subsequent development of his work as a writer. When these fragments are read in proper relation to each other, they reveal for the first time many of the key innovations of Benjamin as a philosopher, as well as his points of influence on Horkheimer and Adorno. His early ‘Program’ critiques the Enlightenment conception of experience (...) as a means for gaining empirical knowledge, and announces the need for a new concept of experience. Benjamin follows through on this program with a method of philosophical enquiry that is by turns fragmentary and constellational, developing a series of provisional notions of experience, which form a constellation with one another: perception, mimesis, language as a medium of experience, observation and memory. (shrink)

Focusing on Walter Benjamin's earliest pieces dedicated to school reform and the student movement, this article traces the basic critical approaches informing his mature thought back to his struggle to critically implement and transform the theory of concept formation and value presentation developed by his Freiburg teacher, Heinrich Rickert. It begins with an account of Rickert's work, specifically of the concept of Darstellung (presentation) and its central role in Rickert's postmetaphysical theory of historical research (which he characterizes as exclusively concerned (...) with the Kantian quid juris). It shows that Rickert develops a speculative but practical theory of value recognition, which nevertheless leaves the status of value itself undetermined. Contra Rickert, Benjamin returns to the ignored quid facti, or origin of value, and shows that a metacritical, postmetaphysical approach such as Rickert's ultimately limits possible experience rather than grounding it. This basic insight, it is argued, is the cornerstone of Benjamin's concept of critique. (shrink)

I seek to interpret the work of Walter Benjamin in light of the "system programme" of German Idealism, in order to confront an antinomy of contemporary radical thought. Benjamin has been regarded as an anti-Hegelian thinker of the exception. Reading him against the grain, I draw out a concept of counter-tradition that eschews the opposition of intra-historical progress and extra-historical exception. The philological inspiration is a book by Franz Joseph Molitor, student of Schelling and "teacher" of Benjamin: The Philosophy of (...) History, or, On Tradition. (shrink)

This article addresses the question of utopia through some reflections on the work of the Russian writer Andrei Platonov (1899-1951). Platonov's work represents an inspirational series of investigations into the circumstances of utopia: not so much utopia as fantasy, nor utopia as actualized in failure, nor even dystopia, but what is here termed `actually existing utopia'. As such his work captures aspects of utopianism that may have been largely opaque to the investigations of either literary versions of the utopian imagination (...) or utopian versions of social science. Platonov shows us an `anthropological' dimension inherent within the utopian impulse: that we are, so to speak, `utopological' beings. And to this dimension of ourselves he applies a critical style that is not straightforwardly anti-utopian or dystopian but what is called here `counter-utopian'. (shrink)

In an essay published in 1918, Walter Benjamin sets forth a task that will concern him for the rest of his life: The task of a future epistemology is to find for knowledge the sphere of total neutrality in regards to concepts of both subject and object; in other words, it is to discover the autonomous, innate sphere of knowledge in which this concept in no way continues to designate the relation between two metaphysical entities. (‘‘The Coming Philosophy’’ 104) Benjamin (...) seeks an ‘‘autonomous, innate sphere of knowledge’’ that bypasses the Kantian dualism of subject and object to ‘‘form a pure and systematic continuum of experience’’ (105). He wants to break down the relation between subject and object that has led to the ossification of experience in fixed modes of life, in order to develop a theoretical thinking that ‘‘grasps the world as such as an undivided whole’’. (shrink)

Following the distinctions made by Susan Pearce between souvenir collections, fetishism collections and systematic collections, the present study will underline the idea that, for Walter Benjamin, collection was a way to reconnect with the past and to reconstruct an image of what was destroyed. Every object collected by Benjamin was for him a souvenir of the European cultural identity.

In discussing the cultural history of the 19th century, Walter Benjamin diagnosed the emergence of the modern novel and its form of narration as the sign of a fracturing experience. The split in experience is related to the scattering of a homogeneous idea of space and time, constituted especially during the Enlightenment and in the German historicism. Benjamin's claim reflected the fracturing temporality of modern communities as well as the transformations in the understanding of the meaning of tradition. Here, I (...) begin by discussing Benjamin's conceptions of experience and memory in detail. Secondly, I consider his ideas on history in the framework of challenging the new forms of narration. In the end, I consider the loss of a unified community, especially by indicating ways in which the after-modern community reflects the relationship between aesthetics and politics in Jean-François Lyotard's thought. Key Words: Benjamin • community • experience • history • Lyotard • memory • narrative • remembrance • time. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the concept of the flâneur, deriving largely from the works of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin, and attempts to reveal its contemporary relevance for sociological practice. The flâneur is treated as an instructive metaphor for the sociologist's relationship with modernity and urban life, and therefore as providing insight into the social, historical and theoretical contexts for the analysis of the world today. More than this, the idea of the flâneur is treated as highly instructive of research strategies (...) confronting urban life, namely ethnography. The paper seeks to expose a critical space between ‘realist’ and ‘textual’ ethnographies and provide a locus for the discussion of associated methodological problems. A burgeoning literature and tradition of work in this area is examined which will also be of interest to the sociological theorist. (shrink)

This article seeks to lay out an analysis of Giorgio Agamben’s central claims with regard to the formation of a theory of citationality. By juxtaposing Walter Benjamin’s theory of citations alongside his more recent, critical engagements with the Western theological tradition, Agamben sets himself the goal of redefining ethics along Levinasian lines in order to arrive at a respect for the face of ‘whatever’ being before us, the true source towards which all citations point.

This study is an intervention in postcolonial theorising through a critique of technologies of representation. It examines the effects of technologically-mediated representation in a postcolonial condition that the Philippines has exemplified. New media technologies are mechanisms of representations that embody the logic of spectrality presented in Jacques Derrida’s later work. Spectrality, which brings doubts, ephemerality, and instability to dominant discourses and modes of representation, provides a chance for change.Spectres are effects of technologically-mediated representation that articulate the infinite demand for justice (...) under conditions of enduring inequality. As quasi-transcendental elements of deconstruction, spectres are not reducible to either human or technical intervention; they express the relation of humans to technologies, in which representation is central to the mediation of political authority. This technological representation is the condition of what Derrida calls “iteration,” or the transformation of hegemonic authority through the very repetition of its fundamental terms of identification. The examination of emancipatory new media technologies in a postcolonial condition is inspired by the work of Jacques Derrida, in his deconstructive reading of Marx’s spectres. However, the writings of Habermas and Adorno have offered an implicit appraisal of the ontology of spectres. Habermas’s theory of the public sphere and Adorno’s negative dialectics are discourses that unwittingly solicit spectres. The account of the postcolonial condition in the Philippines works through the questions of universality, subalternity, and the right to theory that are raised by the project of Western critical theory. (shrink)