Authors: Gerhard Fischer
ISBN-13: 9781859730447, ISBN-10: 1859730442
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Berg Publishers
Date Published: April 1996
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Gerhard Fischer is Senior Lecturer and Head of the School of German and Russian Studies, University of New South Wales.
Walter Benjamin holds a unique fascination for students and scholars interested in the question of modernity. The most original thinker of Weimar Germany, Benjamin has become something of a cultural icon and his works are often regarded with awe rather than critical scrutiny. This book offers surprising new insights from a number of perspectives -- sociology, history, women’s studies, literary and cultural studies -- and investigates unexplored areas of Benjamin scholarship to arrive at a critically balanced perception of his work.
There are four main sections:
· a critical re-evaluation of Benjamin’s concepts of history and modernity in light of postmodernist discourses;
· a discussion of aspects of Benjamin’s literary scholarship;
· a re-evaluation of Benjamin’s writings on media and performance theories; and
· an investigation of Benjamin’s peculiar ‘utopianism’ which includes a critical consideration of sexual/gender politics.
Introduction: Benjamin the Centenarian | 1 | |
1 | Walter Benjamin's Prehistory of Modernity as Anticipation of Postmodernity? Some Methodological Reflections | 15 |
2 | Walter Benjamin's Imaginary Landscape | 33 |
3 | On Aura and an Ecological Aesthetics of Nature | 55 |
4 | A 'Hermaphroditic Position': Benjamin, Postmodernism and the Frenzy of Gender | 67 |
5 | Reading/Writing the Feminine City: Calvino, Hessel, Benjamin | 85 |
6 | Sirens of Gaslight and Odalisques of the Oil Lamp: The Language of Desire in the Arcades Project | 99 |
7 | Benjamin, Fourier, Barthes | 113 |
8 | The Messiah Complex: The Angel of History Looks Back at Walter Benjamin from its Perch on the Ruins of 'Socialism as it Existed in Reality' | 129 |
9 | Walter Benjamin as Literary Critic | 139 |
10 | The Essential Vulgarity of Benjamin's Essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities | 149 |
11 | A Man of Letters: Walter Benjamin as Correspondent, Editor of Letters and Theorist of Epistolography | 161 |
12 | Walter Benjamin and Children's Literature | 169 |
13 | An Interrupted Performance: On Walter Benjamin's Idea of Children's Theatre | 179 |
14 | Benjamin's Utopia of Education as Theatrum Mundi et Vitae: On the Programme of a Proletarian Children's Theatre | 201 |
15 | Beyond Benjamin: Performative Artwork and its Resistance to Reproduction | 219 |
Notes on Contributors | 225 | |
Index | 227 |