[OPE-L:8630] walter benjamin (graeme gilloch)

From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@stanford.edu)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2003 - 15:36:53 EST


Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations
Graeme Gilloch
Hardcover, February 2001

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: Benjamin as a Key Contemporary Thinker 1
1 Immanent Criticism and Exemplary Critique 27
2 Allegory and Melancholy 57
3 From Cityscape to Dreamworld 88
4 Paris and the Arcades 113
5 Culture and Critique in Crisis 140
6 Benjamin On-Air, Benjamin on Aura 163
7 Love at Last Sight 198
Conclusion: Towards a Contemporary Constellation 234
Notes 249
Bibliography 289
Index 298



Product Details:
ISBN: 0745610072
Format: Hardcover, 208pp
Pub. Date: February 2001 Publisher: Polity Press

ABOUT THE BOOK

  From the Publisher
The works of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) are widely acclaimed as 
among the most original and provocative writings of 20th-century 
critical thought, and have become required reading for scholars and 
students in a range of academic disciplines. This book provides a 
lucid introduction to Benjamin's oeuvre through a close and sensitive 
reading not only of his major studies, but also of some his less 
familiar essays and fragments. Gilloch offers an original 
interpretation of, and fresh insights into, the continuities between 
Benjamin's always demanding and seemingly disparate texts.

This book should be of particular interest to students and scholars 
in social theory, literary theory, cultural and media studies and 
urban studies who are seeking a sophisticated yet readable overview 
of Benjamin's work. It will also prove rewarding reading for those 
already well-versed in Benjaminian thought.

  From The Critics
Library Journal
Gilloch (Univ. of Salford, UK) offers an intellectual biography of 
the German aesthetician who worked at critiquing the diverse fields 
of literature, theater, photography, and children's radio. Benjamin 
(1892-1940) began his theorizing with the recognition that 
Romanticism simply extended the work of art under critical 
examination, while he wanted to bring that same art to a greater 
plane of realization. Criticism, in Benjamin's view, was "a mode of 
ceaseless becoming." From this point, Benjamin developed a Marxist 
dialectic, in which art carried both a material and a truth content. 
Still later, he moved beyond Marxism, undertaking an examination of 
contemporary theater as a new formulation that brought actor and 
audience together in understanding. Gilloch follows this development 
of the thinker closely, quoting cogently from published texts and 
letters. His own conclusion offers a Benjamin who was aware of the 
consumerism that touches modern aestheticism and yet pushed beyond 
simplified analysis of text or image to the relationships these 
products have with society. While this is a fine text to accompany a 
firsthand reading of Benjamin, such reading is necessary to 
understand the thinker critiqued here. Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley 
P.L., CA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.


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