The Palgrave Walter Benjamin Handbook

Walter Benjamin is one of the most influential authors in contemporary humanities, exerting a deep fascination for students and garnering scholarly interest in a variety of fields, such as history of philosophy, literature, film and media studies, political science, religion, architecture, art and history. This Handbook provides students and scholars with a guide to Walter Benjamin's work that explores each of these areas in depth while also giving the reader a chance to discover connections to other areas of thought.

In order to do justice to the complexity of Benjamin's thinking, this volume includes international scholars from a variety of academic disciplines, and is organized such that a dialogue emerges between them. Each section presents an argument for the integration of its subject into the whole, demonstrating that what might seem specialized and esoteric actually intersects with the problems and questions of the other sections.

Provides a diverse view of how Walter Benjamin's thought is internationally meaningful Aids readers in discovering connections between different areas of scholarship Offers an interdisciplinary approach by combining strong, focused scholarship in key areas and themes

Auteur

Nathan Ross teaches interdisciplinary classes and philosophy at Adelphi University, USA. He has written and published on 19th and 20th century philosophy, with interests that span a variety of areas in critical theory, art, political philosophy and literature. His books include: The Philosophy and Politics of Aesthetic Experience (2017) and Walter Benjamin's First Philosophy (2021), as well as translations and edited volumes.

Contenu

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Section 1: Philosophical Starting Points.- Chapter 2: Walter Benjamin, Antifascism and Mimetic Education.- Chapter 3: On Redemptive Critique: The Metaphysics of Destruction and Experience in Walter Benjamin.- Chapter 4: Walter Benjamin and Romantic Critique.- Chapter 5: Presentation of Experience and Experience of Presentation: An Introductory Reading of the Epistemo-Critical Foreword to the Origin of the German Trauerspiel.- Chapter 6: Walter Benjamin on Concept Formation.- Chapter 7: Turns. On the Destruction of the Destruction of Philosophy.- Section 2: Literature.- Chapter 8: Extreme Life Revolts: Philosophical Refuge of Objectivity in the Trauerspiel-book.- Chapter 9: 'The Sole Reign of Relation': On Walter Benjamin and Friedrich Hölderlin.- Chapter 10: Baudelaire and Modernity.- Chapter 11: Allegory and the Commodity in Benjamin.- Chapter 12: Walter Benjamin and the Violence of Seal: Making History Legible by Interrupting Myth.- Section 3: States of Consciousness.- Chapter 13: The Phantasmagoria of Surrealism.- Chapter 14: 'This hand is the hand of all': Walter Benjamin on Drawing, On Walter Benjamin's Drawings.- Chapter 15: Benjamin on Pain and Storytelling.- Chapter 16: Figures of the Collective Dream. Utopia, Dream and Waking in Walter Benjamin.- Chapter 17: Flashback as Flashforward: The Idea of Eingedenken between Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin.- Section 4: Theology.- Chapter 18: Surrealism, Messianism and the Occult: Toward a Modern Materialist Theology in Benjamin.- Chapter 19: Dimensions of the Bilderverbot in Walter Benjamin: A Gravitational Reading of the Theological-Political Fragment.- Chapter 20: Divine Creativity in the Early Writings of Walter Benjamin.- Chapter 21: The Animal, The Creature, the Hunchback: Messianism and Distorted Life.- Chapter 22: Walter Benjamin's Dwarfed Hunchback.- Chapter 23: De-Centering Capitalism within Theravada Buddhism through a Benjaminian Ethics of Merit-Making.- Section 5: Politics.- Chapter 24: Why is Benjamin the right thinker for our political moment?.- Chapter 25: Temporalities of Power: Re-reading Walter Benjamin's essay Zur Kritik der Gewalt.- Chapter 26: From Myth to Life: Benjamin's Biopolitics.- Chapter 27: Of Which There is History: The Thought of Survival (Benjamin with Lifton and Lyotard).- Chapter 28: Between the Serpent and the Sovereign: On the Perception of Divine Violence.- Chapter 29: Benjamin's 'Angel of History' and the Critique of Progress.- Section 6: Materialism.- Chapter 30: Walter Benjamin's Utopia of the Body: Mystical Experience and Political Thought.- Chapter 31: Benjamin's Materialism: Anthropological, Historical or Dialectical?.- Section 7: Technology.- Chapter 32: The Question of Technology in Benjamin's Work.- Chapter 33: Walter Benjamin on Cinema: An Object of Human Innervation.- Chapter 34: On the Relation between the Collective and the Auratic in Benjamin's Artwork Essay: A Constructive Re-reading.- Chapter 35: On the rhythm of today, which determines this work or on Montage in Benjamin's Theory of Knowledge.- Chapter 36: The Phantasmagoria of the Techno-City: Walter Benjamin's Play-Space.- Chapter 37: Towards a Philosophy of Urban Life.