Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
The Passionate Critic
Snapshots of A Berlin Childhood
The Peripatetic Philosophy Student
Kant and Neo-Kantianism
Apriorism
Phenomenology
Pro- Or Anti-zionism?
“What were you doing on 4 August 1914?”
Betrayal and Revolution
How to Avoid Conscription
Friendship with Gershom Scholem
Greek Tragedy
Trauerspiel or Mourning Play
On Language
The Experience of Freedom
The Experience of Colour
German Romantic Art Criticism
The Concept of Ruination
Parental Strife
The Failed Editor
Conflict with the George Circle
The Story of Elective Affinities
Benjamin’s Affinities
The Task of the Critic
The Task of the Translator
The Bookman
... And the Media Man
Riegl Versus Wölfflin
The Transition from Haptic to Optic
The Aesthetics of Disintegration
Riegl’s Structuralism
The Task of the Art Critic
Children’s Books
Line or Colour?
The Optic of Technology
The Collector
Benjamin the Nomad
Introduction to Marxism
Mediation
Reification
The Bolshevik Verdict
The Porosity of Naples
Spatial and Temporal Porosity
A Dictator’s Visit
Introducing the Arcade
Looking Ahead …
Past, Present and Future
Moscow Diary
Sovereign Violence
The Religion of Capitalism
The Origin of German Tragic Drama
What is “Baroque”?
Political Theologies
A Nihilistic Toy-box
Symbol, Allegory and Ruination
A University Scandal
A Fairytale for Academics
One-way Street
Scenes from One-way Street: Writing
... And Technology
Benjamin, the Surrealist
Teddy and Bert
The Frankfurt Institute
Dissimilar Similarities
“The Hard Thing Gives Way”
“The Presence of the past, Now”
The Art of Montage
The Dark Age Begins
The Great Dictator …
… Seen as Charlie Chaplin
The Author as Producer
The Age of Reproduction
The Painter and the Camera-man
Mass Reproduction
History of the Aura
The Decay of the Aura
Uncertainties and Ambiguities
Criticisms of Benjamin’s Position
Kafka and Benjamin’s Mysticism
The Kabbala
Which Benjamin?
Origins of the Arcades Project
A Central Architectural Motif
A Marathon Project
Materialist Ventriloquism
The Maverick Historian
Phantasmagoria and Dialectical Images
Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century
1. Fourier, or the Arcades
2. Daguerre, or the Panoramas
3. Grandville, or the World Exhibitions
4. Louis Philippe, or the Interior
5. Baudelaire, or the Streets of Paris
6. Haussmann, or the Barricades
Troubles with the Institute
The Exile in Danger
Last Exit …
Theology and History
Samples From the “Theses”
Time Runs Out …
In Transit
The Last Day
Further Reading
Biographies of Walter Benjamin
Acknowledgements
The Authors