Perception and experience in modernity / edited by Helga Geyer-Ryan.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Geyer-Ryan, Helga, editor.

Series:

Benjamin studies ; 1.

Benjamin studies ; 1

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940--Criticism and interpretation--Congresses.

Benjamin, Walter.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (225 pages)

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; New York, New York : Rodopi, [2002]

Language Note:

Text in German and English.

Summary:

The first volume of Benjamin Studies publishes the keynote lectures of the first Congress of the International Walter Benjamin Association, which took place in Amsterdam, July 1997. Its title bears witness to the most central concepts of Benjamin’s philosophy of culture. Strongly influenced as he was by Kant, Benjamin never lost his inclination to analyse the components of reality as fashioned by ourselves. Because he was also a materialist, for him the modes of fashioning were shaped in turn by the times and places we occupy in history. As a consequence, Benjamin’s theory assigns a pivotal role in the interaction between the world and its inhabitants to the media: language with its plethora of discourses, the arts, and the whole technology of reproduction. The historical and social development of the media is, translated, according to him, into our instruments of perception, and this perception constructs the elements of the world, the knowledge of this construction and the knowledge of the constructor. The self-knowledge of the constructor is what we call ‘experience’. Within this broad epistemological framework, the diversity and complexity of Benjamin’s project acquires a fundamental coherence and is therefore able to accommodate the temporal volatility of the phenomena of our world. It’s not surprising, therefore, that Perception andamp; Experience offers the most stimulating variety of topics, and that the keynote lectures reflect merely an intensification of interest in certain areas within a much larger field of investigation. The texts presented here pinpoint the central preoccupations of today’s debates amongst Benjamin scholars, preoccupations which are themselves responses to our own historical imperatives.

Contents:

Preliminary Material / Helga Geyer-Ryan

Perception and Experience in Modernity / Helga Geyer-Ryan

To Speak of Walter Benjamin / George Steiner

Between a Human Life and a Word. Walter Benjamin and the Citability of Gesture / Samuel Weber

Lost in Translation. Vom Verlust des Bilddenkens in Übersetzungen Benjaminischer Schriften / Sigrid Weigel

Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros. A tentative reading of Zum Planetarium / Irving Wohlfarth

A Talk with Mona Jean Benjamin, Kim Yvon Benjamin and Michael Benjamin / Martin Jay and Gary Smith

Zeit und Glück. Phantasmagorien des Spielraums / Burkhardt Lindner

‘Jetzt’. Benjamin zur historischen Zeit / Werner Hamacher

Walter Benjamin, Remembrance and the First World War / Martin Jay

Revolutionary Time: The Vanguard and the Avant-Garde / Susan Buck-Morss.

Notes:

" ... keynote lectures of the first Congress of the International Walter Benjamin Association, which took place in Amsterdam, July 1997"--Page 9.

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

90-04-33416-5

OCLC:

51886751

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004334168 DOI