Walter Benjamin : overpowering conformism / Esther Leslie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leslie, Esther.

Series:

Modern European thinkers.

Modern European thinkers

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940--Political and social views.

Benjamin, Walter.

German prose literature--20th century--History and criticism.

German prose literature.

Political scientists--Germany.

Political scientists.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 298 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London ; Sterling, Va. : Pluto Press, 2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Esther Leslie's path-breaking study of Walter Benjamin is unlike any other book presently available in English on Benjamin, in seeking to make a case for a more politicised reading of Benjamin's oeuvre. In looking at the entirety of Benjamin's work - rather than the four or five essays available in English which tend to form the Benjamin 'canon' - Leslie offers powerful new insights into a key twentieth-century political thinker, correcting the post-structuralist bias that has characterised so much Benjamin scholarship, and repositioning Benjamin's work in its historical and political context. In her examination of Benjamin's commentary on the politics and aesthetics of technology - from Benjamin's work on nineteenth-century industrial culture to his analyses of the Nazi deployment of the bomber - Esther Leslie recontextualises Benjamin's writings in a lucid and cogently argued new study.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface: An Accumulation of Technological Themes

On 'overpowering conformism'

1. Explosion of a Landscape

'Zum Planetarium': on a betrayed elective affinity

Surreal Experiences in Moscow and Paris

Fascist Warriors

Reality/ Experience

2. Benjamin's Objectives

Technology and Forms

Photographic Technologies

Technological Decline, Decline of Aura

Photographic Mimesis and the Construction of Deep Realities

3. Berlin Chthonic, Photos and Trains and Films and Cars

Technical Aids

Berliner Chronik, 1932: Technology, Memory, Experience

A Descriptive History of Technik

Remembering Berliner Chronik: An Interpretive Projection of Technological Potential

Experience and Poverty

4. Dream Whirled: Technik and Mirroring

'Logically Consistent Developments'

Fetishism and Realism

Mimesis

Class, Technik, Dreams

5. Murmurs from Darkest Europe

1934-38: Benjamin and the Unpopular Front

Eavesdropping in Brecht's House

6. The Work of Art in the Age of Unbearable Capitulation

The 'Artwork Essay': Three Different Versions

Actual Potential

First Nature, 'Second Nature', 'First Technik', 'Second Technik'

Epilogue: Aesthetics and Politics

7. Time for an Unnatural Death

Puppets of History

The Failure to Progress

Repeats: Bourgeois Thought

Flâneurs, Class-fighters, Conspirators

Consumers: Empathy and Fetishism

Anti-sympathy, Pro-modernist

Techniques of History Writing

Benjamin's Finale: Excavating and Remembering

Photography and Book Jackets

Melancholy, Personality and Monuments

A Short History of Benjamin Studies

Berlin, the Fall of the Wall and Anti- Marxism

Benjamin and Trotsky, Old Man, Hunched Man: Some Elective Affinities

A Final Assemblage

Hanging On

Notes.

Preface: An Accumulation of Technological Themes

1 Explosion of a Landscape

2 Benjamin 's Objectives

3 Berlin Chthonic,Photos and Trains and Films and Cars

4 Dream Whirled:Technik and Mirroring

5 Murmurs from Darkest Europe

6 The Work of Art in the Age of Unbearable Capitulation

7 Time for an Unnatural Death

8 Benjamin 's Finale:Excavating and Remembering

Bibliography

Index

Adorno, Theodor

47

66

75

103

116

119

121-2

132

150

171

193

203

212

217

226-7

analysis of Little Nell, 10-11

Benjamin, view of, 73

compares Benjamin to Lenin, 166

advertisments

115

182-3

191

alchemy

108

109

alienation 86

allegory 199

Angelus Novus

7

202-3

209

Anti-Nazism

96

123-4

169-71

Arago, François 49

Aragon, Louis

24

102

174

186

architecture 112

Arendt, Hannah

219

221-2

armaments

1

5

28-31

52

146

Arnheim, Rudolph 132

Arnoux, Alexandre 132

Arp, Hans 22

art

95

118

autonomy threatened by the market, 138

critique of, 99

degenerate, 44-5

end of, 143

art for art's sake [l'art pour l'art ]

20-1

29

91

138

184

189

Art Nouveau 108-112

artists

97

technology and, 87

Arvatov, Boris 90

Atget, Eugène

55

59

augury 48-9

aura

31

50-2

55-6

114

136

145-6

149

181

208-9

author, role of 94

autobiography

78

critique of, 71

avant-garde 188

Balzac, Honoré de 120

base and superstructure

104-5

120

Battleship Potemkin 46

Baudelaire, Charles

27

111-13

178

180

183

189-90

192

200

Bauman, Zygmunt

214-15

216-18

225

Becher, Johannes

101

129

Benjamin, Dora

28

208

Benjamin, Walter.

academia, views on, 218-19

adolescence and, 78

as unsplit theoretically, 234

Berliner Chronik, 66-9

Berliner Chronik, 72-3

Berliner Chronik, 75

Berliner Chronik, 77

Berliner Chronik, 79-83

Berliner Chronik, 87

Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert, 65

Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert, 68

Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert, 76

Betting Shop, 64

British reception of, 220

childhood and, 52-3

childhood and, 68-9

childhood and, 72

childhood and, 73-4

childhood and, 80

childhood and, 87

Communist Party and, 14-16

Communist Party and, 23

Communist Party and, 43

Communist Party and, 96

Communist Party and, 98

Communist Party and, 123-9

Communist Party and, 167

Communist Party and, 212-13

Communist Party and, 227

Communist Party and, 230

conflicting interpretations of, 213

Daguerre oder die Panoramen, 102

Das bucklichte Männlein, 82

Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, 130-167

Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, 168

Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, 208

Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, 220

Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, 257

Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire, 178

Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire, 193

Der Autor als Produzent, 92-100

Der Autor als Produzent, 120

Der Autor als Produzent, 123

Der Autor als Produzent, 204

Der Autor als Produzent, 220

Der destruktive Charakter, 22

Der destruktive Charakter, 43

Der Sürrealismus, 13-14

Der Sürrealismus, 20-6

Der Sürrealismus, 29

Der Sürrealismus, 36-7

Der Sürrealismus, 49

Der Sürrealismus, 71

Detlef Holz pseudonym, 41.

Deutsche Menschen, 41

Dreizehn Thesen wider Snobisten, 28

Eduard Fuchs, der Sammler und der Historiker, xiv, 134

Eduard Fuchs, der Sammler und der Historiker, xiv, 174

Eduard Fuchs, der Sammler und der Historiker, xiv, 176-7

Einbahnstraße, 2-9

Einbahnstraße, 11

Einbahnstraße, 44

Einbahnstraße, 64-6

Einbahnstraße, 210

Erfahrung und Armut, 38

Erfahrung und Armut, 43

Erfahrung und Armut, 84

Erwiderung an Oscar A.H. Schmitz, 57

Erwiderung an Oscar A.H. Schmitz, 83

Friedensware, 28

historical materialism, viii, 172-3

historical materialism, viii, 227

imitating Marx, 75

Imperial Panorama, 65

James Ensor wird 36

James Ensor wird 70 Jahre

Karl Kraus, 23

Karl Kraus, 27

Karl Kraus, 33

Karl Kraus, 69-70

Kommentare zu Gedichten von Brecht, 169

Marxism and, xiv, 3

Marxism and, xiv, 7

Marxism and, xiv, 24-5

Marxism and, xiv, 33

Marxism and, xiv, 44

Marxism and, xiv, 64

Marxism and, xiv, 74

Marxism and, xiv, 104-5

Marxism and, xiv, 121

Marxism and, xiv, 133

Marxism and, xiv, 136

Marxism and, xiv, 150

Marxism and, xiv, 153

Marxism and, xiv, 155

Marxism and, xiv, 167

Marxism and, xiv, 171-6

Marxism and, xiv, 179-

Mirror File, 103

Moscow visit, 14

Moskauer Tagebuch, 14

Neue Dichtung in Ruáland, 16

New Poetry in Russia, 229

Optician, 65

Pariser Brief II, 138

Passagenwerk, 2

Passagenwerk, 10

Passagenwerk, 23

Passagenwerk, 37

Passagenwerk, 40

Passagenwerk, 42

Passagenwerk, 63

Passagenwerk, 70-1

Passagenwerk, 73-5

Passagenwerk, 78

Passagenwerk, 81-2

Passagenwerk, 83-4

Passagenwerk, 90-2

Passagenwerk, 102

Passagenwerk, 107-8

Passagenwerk, 113

Passagenwerk, 115-16

pessimism of, 24

phie, 46-62.

phie, 70

phie, 80-1

phie, 86-8

phie, 117

phie, 145

phie, 152-3

phie, 209-210

philosophy, views on, 223

Stereoscope, 65-6

studies of, 219-25

suicide and, 215

suicide and, 216-7

suicide and, 248

suicide and, 272

Trotsky and, 228-234

Die vielen Soldaten, 32

Die vielen Soldaten, 36

Bensaïd, Daniel 228

Berger, John 220

Berman, Marshall 245

Bernstein, Henry 192

Blanqui, Auguste

131

180-1

Bloch, Ernst

82

121

213

216

Bloßfeldt, Carl 58

Blum, Leon

124

126

Borchardt, Rudolf 63

Brecht, Bertolt

3

11

47-8

85-7

97-8

127-9

147-8

199

207

215-

Breitscheid, Rudolf 229

Brentano, Bernard von 51

Breton, André

21

147

Brik, Osip 19

Brill, Hans Klaus 130

Bukharin, Nikolai 13

Büchner, Georg 13

Chaplin, Charlie 137

chemical weapons

chignon

107

childhood

71-2

76

cinema

46

54

61

63

67

83-4

85-8

94

106

118-19

136-45

151-7

162

class, as concept denied by Hitler and Stalin 126

Claudel, Paul 191-2

Cliff, Tony 255

clutter

ix

72

148

Cocteau, Jean 192

Cohn, Alfred 147-8

Colette 192

collective unconscious

Comintern

100

170

commodity fetishism

9

106-7

115-6

192-5

Communist Manifesto 37

Communist Party

14-16

23

43

98

123-9

167

212-13

227

230

conformism, vii-viii 212

Congress for the Defence of Culture 147

conscience-communism 96

critics, role of 94

Croisset, Francis de 192

Cubism

12-3

154

Cunow, Heinrich 89

Cézanne, Paul 138

Dada

22

117-18

137

140-2.

Dante, Alighieri 63.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 276-291) and index.

ISBN:

9781783719617

1783719613

9781849645249

1849645248

9780585425993

058542599X

OCLC:

51002809