The work of Walter Benjamin constitutes one of the most diverse, imaginative and idiosyncratic bodies of criticism of the twentieth century. As historian, philosopher and critic of culture, Benjamin covered an enormous intellectual range, from German baroque drama to photography and film, from Dürer to Klee, Baudelaire to Brecht, translation to mass culture, the Second Empire to Surrealism, culminating in his massive, unfinished project on nineteenth-century Paris and the origins of modernity, the Arcades Project. This seminar will consider the range of Benjamin’s thought and interests, identifying key concepts through a study of selected major works: allegory, symbol, myth, the ruin (The Origin of German Tragic Drama); technology, mass culture, the aura (The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility, A Small History of Photography); fantasmagoria, commodity fetishism, the culture of display, the flâneur and urban shock, the critique of capitalism (the Arcades Project, the essays on Baudelaire); the notion of a “catastrophic” history (On the Concept of History).
In particular, we will confront these theories with the texts and images which gave rise to them, the better to understand — and assess — Benjamin’s method. We will pay special attention to his peculiar brand of historical materialism — his concentration on concrete material forms in which historical truth can be glimpsed, from fashion to architecture, bibelots to advertising, gaslight to gambling —, and his fascination with the possibilities of art for both representing and exposing the ideological structures of history. We will also examine his own writing in the context of his theories.
The seminar will be conducted in English and all works discussed from English translations. However, since Benjamin wrote in French and German, and his sources were largely in those languages, students with a knowledge of them are strongly encouraged to read in the original.