Uwe Steiner’s Walter Benjamin: An Introduction to His Work and Thought is a comprehensive and compelling account of Walter Benjamin’s life and work, which will satisfy both newcomers to Benjamin and those with an existing interest. In this review, I argue that Steiner’s account goes beyond similar encounters with Benjamin in two main ways: first, by focusing specifically on Benjamin’s personal and intellectual relationship with ‘modernity’ and, second, by presenting Benjamin’s enduring appeal as a result of the creative interpretation of his work according to changing times and tastes. Yet Steiner’s historicising account of Benjamin also somewhat neutralises his critical potential as a historical-materialist thinker. Drawing on the work of Benjamin’s erstwhile friend and contemporary Ernst Bloch, as well as on Peter Osborne’s concept of modernity as a specific consciousness of time, I argue that the act of interpretation itself requires a weakly teleological concept of history, such as we find with Bloch and, between the lines perhaps, also with Steiner’s Benjamin.
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Benjamin Walter Zohn Harry ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ Illuminations 1968 New York Pantheon
Bloch Ernst Plaice Neville, Plaice Stephen & Knight Paul The Principle of Hope 1995 Volume 1 Cambridge, MA. The MIT Press
Eagleton Terry Walter Benjamin: Or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism 2009 London Verso
Erlin Matt ‘Reluctant Modernism: Moses Mendelssohn’s Philosophy of History’ Journal of the History of Ideas 2002 63 1 83 104
Jacobson Eric Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem 2003 New York Columbia University Press
Koselleck Reinhart Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time 2003 New York Columbia University Press
Leslie Esther Walter Benjamin 2007 London Reaktion Books
Lessing Gotthold Ephraim Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts und andere Schriften 1994 Stuttgart Reclam Verlag
Mendelssohn Moses Arkush Allan Jerusalem: Or, On Religious Power and Judaism 1984 Lebanon, NH Brandeis University Press
Osborne Peter The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde 1995 London Verso
Siebers Johan Dietschy Beat, Zeilinger Doris & Zimmermann Rainer E. ‘Novum’ Bloch-Wörterbuch. Leitbegriffe der Philosophie Ernst Blochs 2012 Berlin Walter de Gruyter
Steiner Uwe Winkler Michael Walter Benjamin: An Introduction to His Work and Thought 2010 Chicago University of Chicago Press
Witte Bernd Rolleston James Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography 1991 Detroit Wayne State University Press
Witte 1991, p. 9.
Leslie 2007, p. 9.
Mendelssohn 1984.
Cf. Erlin 2002.
Benjamin 1968, p. 257.
Benjamin 1968, pp. 257–8.
Cf. Osborne 1995.
Cf. Koselleck 2003.
Osborne 1995, p. 12.
Osborne 1995, p. 14.
Eagleton 2009; Jacobson 2003.
Bloch 1995, p. 234.
Bloch 1995, p. 200.
Bloch 1995, pp. 202–3.
Bloch 1995, p. 200.
Siebers 2012, p. 413.
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Uwe Steiner’s Walter Benjamin: An Introduction to His Work and Thought is a comprehensive and compelling account of Walter Benjamin’s life and work, which will satisfy both newcomers to Benjamin and those with an existing interest. In this review, I argue that Steiner’s account goes beyond similar encounters with Benjamin in two main ways: first, by focusing specifically on Benjamin’s personal and intellectual relationship with ‘modernity’ and, second, by presenting Benjamin’s enduring appeal as a result of the creative interpretation of his work according to changing times and tastes. Yet Steiner’s historicising account of Benjamin also somewhat neutralises his critical potential as a historical-materialist thinker. Drawing on the work of Benjamin’s erstwhile friend and contemporary Ernst Bloch, as well as on Peter Osborne’s concept of modernity as a specific consciousness of time, I argue that the act of interpretation itself requires a weakly teleological concept of history, such as we find with Bloch and, between the lines perhaps, also with Steiner’s Benjamin.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 881 | 67 | 6 |
Full Text Views | 299 | 3 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 141 | 8 | 0 |