‘Reading Walter Benjamin’ explores the persistence of absolute in Benjamin’s work by sketching-out the relationship between philosphy and theology apparent in his diverse writings, from the early youth-movement essays to the later books, essays and fragments.
The book examines Benjamin from two main perspectives: a history-of-ideas approach situating Benjamin in relation to the new German-Jewish thinking at the turn of the twentieth-century, as well as the German youth movements, Surrealism and the ‘Georgekreis’; and a conceptual approach examining more critical issues in relation to Benjamin and Kant, modern aesthetics and narrative order.
Chapters cover: ‘Kulturpessimismus’ and the new thinking; metaphysics of youth: Wyneken and ‘Rausch’; history: surreal Messianism; Goethe and the ‘Georgekreis’; Kant’s experience; casting the work of art; disrupting textual order; and exile and the time of crisis. The book uses new translations of Benjamin’s essays, fragments and his ‘Arcades Project’, and makes substantial reference to previously untranslated material.
Lane’s text allows the non-specialist entry into complex areas of critical theory, simultaneously offering original readings of Benjamin and twentieth-century arts and literature.
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Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. ‘Kulturpessimisus’ & the new thinking
The decline of the West; Messianic new thinking
3. Metaphysics of youth: Wyneken & ‘Rausch’
Wyneken; Youth’s legacy; ‘Rausch’ – youth’s intoxication; The metaphysics of youth
4. History: Surreal messianism
Eternal return; Profane illumination; Surrealism; Messianic time
5. Goethe and the ‘Georgekreis’
The struggle with an angel; The essay form; Goethe as critical constellation; Death’s detour
6. Kant’s experience
Reduction & restriction; The despot of pure reason; The Kantian distance
7. Casting the work of art
Aesthetic judgement; ‘Space Under My Steel Chair’; The series; Fixed-explosive; Memorial aesthetics
8. Narrative order & modern fiction
Shuffle, or, order and de-formation; Just gaming; Benjamin, Johnson & Wittgenstein; Aphorism
9. Conclusion: Exile & the time of crisis
Reconfiguring repetition; Weapons of mass destruction; disrupting singularity; Postscript on crisis time
Glossary of German words and expressions
Bibliography
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Richard J. Lane is Professor of English at Malaspina University-College, Canada
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