Category Books

Body and Image Space: Re-Reading Walter Benjamin »

Authors: Sigrid Weigel, Weigel Sigrid, Weigel Sigrid
ISBN-13: 9780415109567, ISBN-10: 0415109566
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Routledge
Date Published: October 1996
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Sigrid Weigel

Book Synopsis

The last decade has seen a new wave of interest in philosophical and theoretical circles in the writings of Walter Benjamin. In Body-and Image-Space Sigrid Weigel, one of Germany's leading feminist theorists and a renowned commentator on the work of Walter Benjamin, argues that the reception of his work has so far overlooked a crucial aspect of his thought - his use of images. Weigel shows that it is precisely his practice of thinking in images that holds the key to understanding the full complexity, richness and topicality of Benjamin's theory.

	Translator's note
	Introduction: Distorted similitude - Benjamin as theorist
1	Benjamin's 'world of universal and integral actuality'	3
2	'Body- and image-space': Traces through Benjamin's writings	16
3	Communicating tubes: Michel Foucault and Walter Benjamin	30
4	Thought-images: A re-reading of the 'angel of history'	49
5	Towards a female dialectic of enlightenment: Julia Kristeva and Walter Benjamin	63
6	From images to dialectical images: The significance of gender difference in Benjamin's writings	80
7	The 'other' in allegory: A prehistory of the allegory of modernity in the Baroque	95
8	From topography to writing: Benjamin's concept of memory	109
9	The reading that takes the place of translation: The psychoanalytical reformulation of the theory of language magic	128
10	Readability: Benjamin's place in contemporary theoretical approaches to pictorial and corporeal memory	146
11	Non-philosophical amazement - writing in amazement: Benjamin's position in the aftermath of the holocaust	158
	Notes	175
	Bibliography	191
	Index	199