Walter Benjamin : Images, the Creaturely, and the Holy / Sigrid Weigel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weigel, Sigrid, Author.

Series:

Cultural Memory in the Present

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Benjamin, Walter.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (320 p.) : 17 illustrations

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Arguing that the importance of painting and other visual art for Benjamin's epistemology has yet to be appreciated, Weigel undertakes the first systematic analysis of their significance to his thought. She does so by exploring Benjamin's dialectics of secularization, an approach that allows Benjamin to explore the simultaneous distance from and orientation towards revelation and to deal with the difference and tensions between religious and profane ideas. In the process, Weigel identifies the double reference of 'life' to both nature and to a 'supernatural' sphere as a guiding concept of Benjamin's writings. Sensitive to the notorious difficulty of translating his language, she underscores just how much is lost in translation, particularly with regard to religious connotations. The book thus positions Benjamin with respect to the other European thinkers at the heart of current discussions of sovereignty and martyrdom, of holy and creaturely life. It corrects misreadings, including Agamben's staging of an affinity between Benjamin and Schmitt, and argues for the closeness of Benjamin's work to that of Aby Warburg, with whom Benjamin unsuccessfully attempted an intellectual exchange.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Table of Contents

Illustrations

Explanation of Translation and Citation

Abbreviations of Cited Works

Acknowledgments

Foreword

ON THE THRESHOLD BETWEEN CREATION AND LAST JUDGMENT

1. The Creaturely and the Holy: Benjamin's Engagement with Secularization

2 .The Sovereign and the Martyr: The Dilemma of Political Theology in Light of the Return of Religion

3. Disregard of the First Commandment in Monstrous Cases: The "Critique of Violence" Beyond Legal Theory and 'States of Exception

SOMETHING FROM BEYOND THE POET THAT BREAKS INTO POETIC LANGUAGE

4. The Artwork as a Breach of the Beyond: On the Dialectic of Divine and Human Order in "Goethe's Elective Affinities"

5. Biblical Pathos Formulas and Earthly Hell: Brecht as Antipode to Benjamin's Engagement with "Holy Scripture"

6. Jewish Thinking in a World Without God: Benjamin's Readings of Kafka as a Critique of Christian and Jewish Theologoumena

FROM THE MIDST OF HIS IMAGE WORLD

7. Translation as the Provisional Approach to the Foreignness of Language: On the Disappearance of Thought-Images in Translations of Benjamin's Writings

8. The Study of Images in the Spirit of True Philology: The Odyssey of The Origin of the German Mourning Play Through the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg

9. The Unknown Masterpieces in Benjamin's Picture Gallery: On the Relevance of Visual Art for Benjamin's Epistemology

10. Detail-Photographic and Cinematographic Images: On the Significance of the History of Media in Benjamin's Theory of Culture

Appendix. Documentation of the Correspondence on the Odyssey Taken by Benjamin's Trauerspiel Book in the KBW: Extracts from the Letters

Cultural Memory in the Present

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 31. Jan 2022)

ISBN:

0-8047-8481-7

OCLC:

1294425894