Title
Benjamin's Passages : Dreaming, Awakening / Alexander Gelley.
ISBN
9780823262595
Published
New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2014]
Copyright
©2014
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (232 p.)
Item Number
10.1515/9780823262595 doi
Call Number
PT2603.E455 Z6732 2015eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
838/.91209
Summary
In transposing the Freudian dream work from the individual subject to the collective, Walter Benjamin projected a "macroscosmic journey" of the individual sleeper to "the dreaming collective, which, through the arcades, communes with its own insides." Benjamin's effort to transpose the dream phenomenon to the history of a collective remained fragmentary, though it underlies the principle of retrograde temporality, which, it is argued, is central to his idea of history.The "passages" are not just the Paris arcades: They refer also to Benjamin's effort to negotiate the labyrinth of his work and thought. Gelley works through many of Benjamin's later works and examines important critical questions: the interplay of aesthetics and politics, the genre of The Arcades Project, citation, language, messianism, aura, and the motifs of memory, the crowd, and awakening.For Benjamin, memory is not only antiquarian; it functions as a solicitation, a call to a collectivity to come. Gelley reads this call in the motif of awakening, which conveys a qualified but crucial performative intention of Benjamin's undertaking.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
Available in Other Form
print 9780823262571
Frontmatter
Contents
Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
One. Contexts of the Aesthetic
Two. Epigones in the House of Language: Benjamin and Kraus
Three. Benjamin on Atget: Empty Streets and the Fading of Aura
Four. Entering the Passagen
Five. Citation as Incitation: The Political Agenda of the Passagenarbeit
Six. Messianism, "Weak" and Otherwise
Seven. Forgetting, Dreaming, Awakening
Works cited
Index
