Constellations of Reading: Walter Benjamin in Figures of Actuality

193 Pages·2016·1.33 MB·English

by  Carlo Salzani

Contents
List of Abbreviations 7
Foreword 9
1. Figures: On Reading 13
2. The Flâneur: On Modernity 37
2.1 The Art of Straying: Walter Benjamin and the
Dialectics of Flânerie 40
2.2 Flânerie after the Battle: Juan Goytisolo and the
Return of the Flâneur 62
3. The Detective: On Traces 89
3.1 The City as Crime Scene: Walter Benjamin and the
Traces of the Detective 92
3.2 Spectres of Detection: Paul Auster and the
Metaphysical Detective 112
4. The Prostitute: On the Commodity 135
4.1 The Decay of Love: Walter Benjamin and the
Silent Whore 138
4.2 Paradoxes of the Unruly Commodity: Daci Maraini
and the Talking Whore 161
5. The Ragpicker: On History 187
5.1 The Trash of History: Walter Benjamin and the
Dialectical Ragpicker 190
5.2 The Past as Future: Mudrooroo and the
Indigenous Ragpicker 214
6. Constellations: On Dialectic 239 List of Abbreviations
Notes 263
Bibliography 337
All references to Benjamin’s work are made parenthetically in the text, fol-
Index 383
lowing the abbreviating conventions below. All references to the Arcades
Project are to the convolute number, for example (M5,9). For the other
works, references both to the German text and the English transla-
tion are provided, for example (GS 1.1:69/SW 1:153–4) or (GS 1.1:216/
OT 36). Where no English translation is available, I will use my own. For
the other primary texts analysed, I provide both the original in French,
Spanish and Italian and my own translation.
GS Gesammelte Schriften, eds Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann
Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974 ff.).
SW Selected Writings, ed. Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap, 1997–2003).
OT The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London:
Verso, 1998).
AP The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999).
GB Gesammelte Briefe, ed. Christoph GÖdde and Henri Lonitz
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995–2000).
C The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1910–1940, ed. Gershom
Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, trans. Manfred R. Jakobson
and Evelyn M. Jakobson (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press, 1994).
CC Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, The Complete
Correspondence 1928–1940, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Nicholas
Walker (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999).
AB Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Briefwechsel 1928–1940,
ed. Henri Lonitz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994).
Foreword
In January 1930, Walter Benjamin wrote to Gershom Scholem that the goal
he had set himself was to be considered the “foremost critic of German
literature.” Since literary criticism was “no longer considered a serious
genre in Germany,” he set out to “recreate criticism as a genre” (GB 3:502/
CC 359). His work abounds in essays, articles, reviews and sketches about
literary works, figures and movements, from Baudelaire to Brecht, Goethe
to Kafka, Hölderlin to Kraus, from Romanticism to Surrealism, from
children’s books to detective fiction. The list would be very long and
embrace both major “canonical” figures and works and minor “forgotten”
books, as well as popular fiction and cinema. A prominent part of his
work is also devoted to the theoretical definition of what criticism should
be. Here, his approach to reading and the interpretive act is perhaps the
central issue – and the more “actual,” in the sense defined below – in his
multivocal and diversified writings. Throughout his career, he elaborated
and remained true to a notion of the interpretive act the roots of which lie
in his doctoral thesis, The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,
and the final outcome of which would be the historiographical “method”
for the unfinished Arcades Project. In the 1930s, Benjamin became more
aware of the need to define a critical methodology, but the coherence of
the way he theorized interpretation – interpretation of any text, from
Goethe’s Elective Affinities to the prehistory of modernity – allows for
the identification and definition of a peculiarly Benjaminian method of
reading: not a theory, which would set a priori the agenda and goals of
interpretation, but a method, which establishes an open-ended approach
to the text. This method revolves around two fundamental notions: an
imagistic or figural approach, where images are to be intended as constel-
lations; and actuality as the fundamental motor of the reading.
In this study, I will apply this Benjaminian method to Benjamin
himself. The goal will be to read Benjamin in a way true to his intellectual
10 Foreword Foreword 11
and political project, avoiding both his enshrinement as a canonical, the reading through the present, and thus condemns any reading to con-
“untouchable” author and his cooptation into contemporary theories genital contingency and impermanence. Always new readings are required
and practices, which twist and distort the sense of his writings in order by an ever-changing present, always new approaches that spell the neces-
to “adapt” them to their own agenda. This means neither to imitate nor sity of perpetual vigilance and infinite renewal. Thus new interpretations
ape his style, nor to reproduce and adopt his ideas and concepts in an of Benjamin and new constellations of reading will eventually push aside
unchallenging fashion, but rather to engage with his work in the way it these present experiments. By reading Benjamin against the grain of our
asks to be read, acknowledging its importance to contemporary debate, time, however, my hope is to remain true to his project and to give way
but also being respectful of its own politics and intentions. This study does to further, attentive and actualizing Benjaminian readings.
not offer a comprehensive account of the totality of Benjamin’s work, but This book is the re-elaboration of a doctoral thesis submitted in
rather proposes four readings, four experiments in “Benjaminian reading the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash
of Benjamin.” Chapter One sets up the theoretical apparatus used in the University in 2007. The study would not have been possible without the
four readings: by exposing and analysing Benjamin’s method of interpre- fortunate concurrence of many factors, the most important being the help
tation, it construes a genealogy of his figural style and defines figure as and support of a number of persons whom I want to thank. First and
a constellation of the past with the present. Chapters Two, Three, Four foremost, Andrew Milner and Andrew Benjamin, my two supervisors,
and Five constitute the readings: each chapter consists of two parts, the wisely guided me through all the stages of this project. Axel Fliethmann
first assembling a Benjaminian figure from quotations and fragments, the oriented me toward a strong definition of Benjamin’s figures, thereby help-
second juxtaposing to it a contemporary text in a constellation of read- ing shape my theoretical approach. Dimitris Vardoulakis read part of the
ing. Chapter Two proposes to read the Flâneur as a representation of the manuscript and, in many conversations and discussions, provided invalu-
contradictions of modernity and postmodernity, and thus construes a able help and support. Kate Rigby, Alison Ross and Robert Savage offered
parallel between them. Chapter Three reads the Detective as a figure for important comments and bibliographical advice. Adriana Cavarero not
intellectual pursuit and sets Benjamin’s modernist project against a certain only offered me friendship and support all these years, but also inspired,
postmodernist self-referentiality. Chapter Four analyses the Prostitute as with her writings, my “figural” readings. Finally, David Ferries and John
a paradigm for Western erotic culture, focusing on commodity fetishism Frow reviewed the thesis and provided important remarks for its re-
and reification, and simultaneously counterposing Benjamin’s own patri- elaboration. I also want to thank, in open order, Gail Ward, Susanna
archal image to feminist reading. Chapter Five reads in the Ragpicker Scarparo, Raffaele Lampugnani, Stewart King, Ramon Lopez Castellano,
the figure of Benjamin’s historiographical revolution and “actualizes” it Olivia Guaraldo, Sabina Sestigiani, Grazia Sumeli-Weinberg, Ali Edgar,
through the practice of contemporary indigenous history-telling. Finally, all the co-editors of the journal Colloquy: Text Theory Critique, and, last
Chapter Six concludes the study by comparing Benjamin’s method to but not least, Barbara dalle Pezze.
more recent theories of interpretation, especially to contemporary ways Early versions of the following chapters have already been published:
of reading Benjamin himself, thereby attempting to position his politics Chapter 2.2, “Flânerie after the Battle: Juan Goytisolo and the Return of
and ethics of reading in the current intellectual landscape. the Flâneur,” in JILAS: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, Vol.
The experimental readings proposed here are not only limited to four 13.1 (July 2007): 59–85; Chapter 3.1, “The City as Crime Scene: Walter
figures, and therefore to only a few aspects of Benjamin’s important and Benjamin and the Traces of the Detective,” in New German Critique 100,
vast corpus; they are also constitutively temporary and provisional. The Vol. 34, No. 1 (Winter 2007): 165–87.
Benjaminian method, as Chapter One will explain, consists in polarizing
chapter 1
Figures: On Reading
Les images, ma grande, ma primitive passion.
— Baudelaire
… vielleicht auch in einem Bilde zu erklären ist.
— “Über die Wahrnehmung” (GS 6:36/SW 1:95)
Reading Figures
To read Walter Benjamin today means to approach a work overdetermined
by a large and growing body of secondary literature and appropriated
by the most diverse and heterogeneous disciplines. The ramifications of
Benjamin’s posthumous influence reach out to philosophy, sociology,
literary theory, film theory, visual culture, linguistics, postmodernism,
architecture and urban studies. His fragmentary and ultimately unclas-
sifiable writings have great appeal to the uncertainty of our postmodern
age. Benjamin is read as strikingly actual, an illuminating precursor, an
anticipator, even a prophet for our time. Many contemporary readings
thus appropriate his writings in search of a sort of usefulness for problems
of current concern, a workability of his theories and concepts outside
their actual context. Dismembered, consumed and digested, his literary
corpus thus runs the risk of becoming a monument. In a celebration of
Benjamin’s centenary in 1992, Irving Wohlfarth wrote that “the task facing
today’s students of Benjamin is to find ways through his work; to renew
his efforts to ‘blot out’ (GS 1.3:1235) the theology in which it was steeped.”1
The least “digestible” part of Benjamin’s writings for our contemporaneity
14 chapter 1 Figures: On Reading 15
is, in fact, his insistence on using theological and messianic language and therefore to dwell on this point. We can begin with a quotation from
categories, which, for Wohlfarth, are useless and unworkable today. Sigrid “Central Park,” where Benjamin writes on Baudelaire:
Weigel argued strongly against Wohlfarth – and also similar discourses
on Benjamin’s actuality, which derive from another commemorative The magnetic attraction which a few basic situations continually exerted in
the poet is one of the symptoms of his melancholy. Baudelaire’s imagination is
address by Habermas twenty years before2 – by drawing attention to the
occupied by stereotyped images [stereotype Bilder]. He seems to have been sub-
inappropriateness of this operation. Not only is “the attempt to fit past
ject to a very general compulsion [Zwang] to return at least once to each of his
theories to current conditions and discourses” a questionable recuperation,
motifs. This is doubtless comparable to the compulsion which repeatedly draws
she wrote, but it “misses the point of Benjamin’s concept of Aktualität.” the felon back to the scene of his crime. Baudelaire’s allegories are sites where he
Such appropriation is, for Weigel, a combination of “commemoration” atoned for his destructive drive. This may explain the unique correspondence
and “historicisation” in the search for contemporary relevance and it between so many of his prose pieces and particular poems from Les fleurs du mal.
leads to a consequent relativization and modification for the uses of the (GS 1.2:669/SW 4:172)
present. The question of “the actuality of Walter Benjamin” is thus mal-
With very little modification, the same words could be referred to
posed, and his work misread, whenever the issue at stake is confined to
Benjamin himself: his writings are populated by recurring figures and
the historical appropriateness of his analysis or its compatibility with cur-
images, to which he returns compulsively, like the “felon to the scene of
rent trends; in a word, to his “contemporary relevance.” “The issue,” she
his crime.” Theoretical problems are handled through the use of, and
writes, “is the more fundamental one of the manner of philosophizing,
crystallize around, imagery rather then concepts or analysis, they are
thinking, analysing, of the attitude adopted towards ideas and constel-
“staged” in a quasi-performative act. These figures and images crowd his
lations encountered, of the modes of approaching and working with the
later work, especially the Arcades Project, where entire convolutes are
signs and the material of history and culture – in short, of the ‘work of
devoted to the flâneur, the gambler, the prostitute, the sales clerk, the
presence of mind incarnate’ (GS 4.1:142).”3
collector, the doll etc., and where the concept of “dialectical image” is
The present study will attempt a recognition and representation
central. However, figures and images are fundamental to his entire work
of Benjamin’s actuality that will hold to Weigel’s important remarks. It
and gain centrality at least from the brooder and the allegorist of the
will do so by identifying four figures – the Flâneur, the Detective, the
Trauerspiel book. Benjamin’s figures are nevertheless not Baudelaire’s
Prostitute and the Ragpicker – among the many that populate Benjamin’s
stereotype Bilder, not stereotypes, personifications, allegories, metaphors.
writings and by juxtaposing them to five contemporary texts in new con-
What, then, are they?
stellations of reading. The theoretical foundation for this exercise is in the
Benjamin’s “thinking in images” is generally acknowledged to be
assumption that the act of reading Benjamin entails a figural approach,
the most peculiar characteristic of his writings, but usually considered a
and that this is inextricable from his concept of Aktualität. Reading, fig-
supplement to his work, an additional quality. Seldom do critics dwell
ures and actuality, it will be shown, are not merely related notions; rather,
on this peculiarity, but rather privilege the more actual traits, thereby
they coincide, are unthinkable without each other, are the indivisible
misreading its centrality and the fact that in it Benjamin’s Aktualität
facets of the same prism. Benjamin’s Aktualität, Weigel argues, is to be
must be sought. Seldom is it recognized that his images and figures are
encountered in his thinking-in-images (or figures), which is inextricable
absolutely sui generis and cannot be reduced to sociological, historical or
from his theory of reading. The three notions are usually misrecognized
psychoanalytical operative tools. Even as careful and acute a critic as Susan
and their interrelatedness passes generally unperceived. It is important
Buck-Morss misreads Benjamin’s figures as “emblems” or “allegories.”4
16 chapter 1 Figures: On Reading 17
Weigel’s work has the merit that it puts great emphasis on this point in its contraposition they try to erase.8 The exasperation of the poststructuralist
re-readings of Benjamin: figures and images (or figures as images) are the stance recreates this contraposition by shifting the whole emphasis to the
way Benjamin’s philosophizing works, a “third thing,” it will be shown, form, as in the postmodernist “liberation” of the signifier, the twin com-
that is neither a concept nor a metaphor, neither mere signification nor panions of which are Debord’s “autonomous image, where deceit deceives
pure aesthesis. What distinguishes Benjamin’s images from stereotypes, itself,”9 and Baudrillard’s simulacrum. The emphasis here is on vision, but
archetypes or ideal types is that they are constellations: not recurring tropes, only as passive contemplation that becomes spectacle. Considering the
immutable in time, but rather ever-changing “force fields,” configurations enormous power of the image in our world, “undreamt of by the ancient
saturated with tension, which combine representation with what is not idolaters,”10 it is important to stress Benjamin’s own difference. Image as
representable and put into dialectical relationship things and history, Schein, appearance, which locks understanding away from the world,
thought and desire. They are thus constructions, montages, bound to the was already for Benjamin the modern phantasmagoria that must be shat-
present, to their Aktualität, and always changing. tered. His “thinking in images” is radically different: the image as figure
“Thinking in images” is therefore also different from “figurative” and construction goes beyond this dualistic opposition, its content and
thinking or writing as understood in linguistic or literary studies. It is not form, meaning and sensibility, grammar and rhetoric, coming together
a “poetic style,”5 in which figures and images are used as embellishments or in a “third thing,” a heterogeneous constellation of similitude.
substitutes for thoughts, which could otherwise be conceptually formu- This “third thing” also goes beyond the dichotomy of rigour and
lated. It is not, as Weigel puts it, “the ‘encoding’ of meanings in images,” pleasure inherent to the contraposition of philosophy and literature.
but rather the articulation of ideas and praxis in images, a “politics of Benjamin’s work is pervaded with, but also absorbed and “captured” by, his
images, not a figurative or metaphorical politics.”6 This is no minor issue “thinking in images,” in a “mode” of critical reflection Weigel and Akbar
for philosophy or literary studies, but a long-standing dispute, which can Abbas call “fascination.”11 As he himself wrote of Baudelaire, Benjamin
be traced back at least to Plato: the contraposition of thought and image, seems “to have been subject to a very general compulsion [Zwang] to
content and form, inside and outside. Conventionally, literary writing is return at least once to each of his motifs” (GS 1.2:669/SW 4:172, empha-
considered “imagistic” or metaphorical, philosophical writing concep- sis added). Images and figures coalesce in his writing, only to disappear
tual or denotative. A corollary to this, since Plato, is the predominance and re-emerge, distorted or modified, in different constellations. They
of language over vision and, thus, of the symbolic over the imaginary, of are compulsively sought and desired, in a way that grounds thought, in
semiotics over aesthetics. The image as “appearance” – what Benjamin Weigel’s words, “in processes of excitation whose omission from theoreti-
called Schein – is a spectral eidolon, emotive, “nebulous and obfuscat- cal consideration deprives reflection of its own matrix.”12 The fascination
ing,” as Paul de Man writes, lacking the rigour, and therefore the truth of the image is itself a critical tool for historical understanding. This is not
claim, of the concept. This contraposition has been challenged repeatedly delusion, spectacle, “will-less affect,” but, as Abbas argues, “a willingness
until poststructuralism cut the Gordian knot, by erasing the difference to be drawn to phenomena that attract our attention yet do not submit
between philosophical and aesthetic writing and claiming that language entirely to our understanding. Benjamin works out a method which in
is figural – metaphysically, as it were. Therefore, de Man writes, “all phi- practice consists of patiently entrusting thought to the folds of the image.
losophy is condemned, to the extent that it is dependent on figuration, It never disdains to look again at what critique too hastily dismisses.”13
to be literary and, as the depository of this very problem, all literature is Ambiguity, but also a certain degree of hermeticism, it will be argued,
to some extent philosophical.”7 However, de Man’s own figural readings, are constitutive qualities of the image. It is not “garrulous,” Abbas writes,
focused on rhetorical devices, remain locked within the inversion of the
18 chapter 1 Figures: On Reading 19
“it closes itself off from explanation,”14 but as such is able to disrupt the experience” [absolute Erfharung] (GS 6:38/SW 1:96). “Perception is read-
self-satisfactory and “garrulous” phantasmagoria of culture. ing” [Wahrnehmung ist Lesen], reads a 1917 fragment: “readable [Lesbar]
In order to understand these figures, and what “thinking in images” is only in the facet of what appears” [in der Fläche Erscheinendes], and
entails and implies, it is necessary to examine their genealogy, which leads this facet is “the configuration – absolute Zusammenhang,” which can be
us back to Benjamin’s early writings on language, then through his major translated as “absolute being-in-connection” (GS 6:32), or what Benjamin
publications, and on to the esoteric dialectical image from the notes for would later name “constellation.” The explicit context of these statements
the Arcades Project. This genealogical route will, on the one hand, throw is an engagement with Kant’s transcendental aesthetics: the task of the
light on the interrelatedness of images, reading and actuality, and, on the “coming philosophy,” for the early Benjamin, is to go beyond the Kantian
other, show how “thinking in images” constituted Benjamin’s peculiar dichotomy of “experience” [Erfahrung] and “knowledge of experience”
“mode” throughout his work. [Erkenntnis der Erfahrung] (GS 6:37/SW 1:96), in order to establish a
new concept of knowledge and a new conception of the world. These
can be attained only by “relating knowledge to language”: “a concept of
knowledge gained from reflection on the linguistic nature of knowledge
Reading and Representation will create a corresponding concept of experience which will also encom-
pass realms that Kant failed to truly systematize” (GS 2.1:168/SW 1:108).
Many fragments from these early years revolve around the problem of
A thematic line runs through Benjamin’s early writings and fragments, representation in painting, graphic arts, signs, marks, imagination, sem-
which almost unifies their heterogeneity: an interest and preoccupation blance. Here the “linguistic word” is that invisible quality which reveals
that focuses on name, perception and representation. This thematic unity, itself “only in the composition” (GS 2.2:607/SW 1:86). The 1914–15 essay
which is ultimately a focus on language, establishes the foundation for on Hölderlin puts forward a notion that will persist into the later writings:
Benjamin’s subsequent work, and will continue to flow, as a sort of sub- in artistic representation, das Gedichtete, or “that which has been poeti-
terranean current, in the methodological catacombs of his later literary, cally formed,” the “poetized,” “differs decisively from the form-content
historical and political constructions. The name, reads Benjamin’s famous model by preserving within itself the fundamental aesthetic unity of
definition in “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,” is “that form and content. Instead of separating them, it distinctively stamps in
through which, and in which, language itself communicates itself abso- itself their immanent, necessary connection” (GS 2.1:106/SW 1:19). Das
lutely.” Only as name is the mental being communicable, “only through Gedichtete brings together into functional unity the “perceptual” [das
the linguistic being of things [das sprachliche Wesen der Dinge] can [man] Anschauliche] and the “intellectual” [das Geistige] and this unity, which
get beyond himself and attain knowledge of them – in the name” (GS is a limit-concept, is the “idea” (GS 2.1:106–7/SW 1:19). This unity is
2.1:144/SW 1:65). Benjamin opposes what he calls the “bourgeois view called “connection” or “connectedness” [Verbundenheit] (GS 2.1:122/
of language,” that “the word has an accidental relation to its object, that it SW 1:32).
is a sign for things (or knowledge of them) agreed by some convention.” These motifs are organized into a coherent vision in the epistemo-
He states that “language never gives mere signs,” but rather “the human critical prologue to the Trauerspiel book, which Benjamin described in a
word is the name of things” [der Name der Dinge] (GS 2.1:150/SW 1:69). letter to Scholem as “a kind of second stage of my early work on language
The implication for perception (Wahrnehmung) is that it becomes a “type […] dressed up as a theory of ideas” (GB 3:14/C 261). The first sentence
of language,” since language, “in the view of philosophy,” is “absolute of the prologue establishes the nexus: “it is characteristic of philosophical
20 chapter 1 Figures: On Reading 21
writing that it must continually confront the question of representation” Here Benjamin introduces the fundamental notion of idea as
[Darstellung] (GS 1.1:207/OT 27). Philosophy is here identified as the constellation:
Darstellung of truth and, as such, it cannot adopt the systematic form
of the doctrine [Lehre], but rather its methodology must be the trea- Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars. […] Ideas are timeless constella-
tions, and by virtue of the elements’ being seen as points in such constellations,
tise [Traktat]. Treatise as method is representation and representation is
phenomena are subdivided and at the same time redeemed […]. The idea is best
“digression,” “lack of conclusiveness,” “the absence of an uninterrupted
explained as the representation of the context within which the unique and extreme
purposeful structure,” where the process of thinking tirelessly “makes new
stands alongside its counterpart. (GS 1.1:214–5/OT 34–5)
beginnings, returning in a roundabout way to its original object” and
continuously pauses for breath (GS 1.1:208/OT 28). As Rainer Nägele At this point a very precise statement serves to illuminate Benjamin’s
argues, Darstellung as method means that philosophy stands [stellt] before subsequent theory of reading: “the being of ideas simply cannot be con-
[dar] the question, it halts at every turn in front of it, in the caesura.15 ceived of as the object of vision” [Anschauung]. Vision entails an “inten-
The image of the treatise is the mosaic, made up of “capricious particles,” tion” and is therefore a modality of knowledge, but truth is that which is
of the “distinct and the disparate” – the “authoritative quotation” – the devoid of all intention: “truth is the death of intention” (GS 1.1:215–16/
value of which is in inverse proportion to the relationship to the under- OT 35–6). Rather, “the idea is something linguistic,” the symbolic in the
lying idea. As Graeme Gilloch notes, “combination” and “arrangement,” essence of the word [im Wesen des Wortes], and the task of the philosopher
rather than accumulation, are its principles.16 Representation as method is to restore, through representation, this linguistic primacy. The ques-
is what relates phenomena to their idea. Truth is “made present [vergegen- tion is thus not the “actualization of images in visual terms; but rather,
wärtigt] in the dance of represented ideas,” thus resisting the acquisition in philosophical contemplation, the idea is released from the heart of
and possession of knowledge (GS 1.1:209/OT 29, translation modified). reality as the word, reclaiming its name-giving rights” (GS 1.1:216–17/
The actuality of the representation is, not the possession of the idea that OT 36–7). Darstellung is, thus, according to Frey, the “restitution of a
characterizes knowledge, but its making present of the truth. The concept language that is not the instrument of cognition and communication.”19
[Begriff] is what is grabbed, seized [gegriffen] by the intellect. Truth is not The Adamite act of naming must be continually renewed in philosophical
an object of knowledge and, as Hans-Jost Frey notes, what is presented contemplation, hence “philosophy is […] a struggle for the representa-
in Darstellung cannot be seized by the intellect, it is not communicable tion of ideas” (GS 1.1:217/OT 37) and representation the crystallization
except as itself: “presentation is not mediation.”17 As such, Darstellung of the idea in linguistic figurations. As such, the idea is a monad, which
does not make something accessible through language, but gives it unme- includes “its past and subsequent history”: the representation of phenom-
diated in language: it is an opening to what lies “outside the cognitively ena resides within it, as in their objective interpretation (GS 1.1:228/OT
accessible”18 through the renunciation of the uninterrupted course of 47). Therefore, “the purpose of the representation of the idea is nothing
intention. The concept as product of the intellect is counterposed to the less than an abbreviated outline of this image of the world” (GS 1.1:228/
idea as “simply given to be reflected upon,” pre-existing the concept and, OT 48). The problem of origin [Ursprung] lies at the heart of representa-
thus, “idea as essence” [Idee als Sein] in the Platonic sense (GS 1.1:210/ tion: unlike genesis [Entstehung], origin does not describe “the process by
OT 30). If the realm of knowledge and concept pertains to the scientist, which the existent came into being,” but rather “that which emerges from
then the philosopher shares with the artist “the task of representation” the process of becoming and disappearance.” In representation as original
(GS 1.1:212/OT 32). Representation redeems phenomena by putting them phenomenon, an idea constantly confronts the historical world, and thus
into configuration with ideas. entails a relationship to history and its development; it is a “process of
22 chapter 1 Figures: On Reading 23
restoration and re-establishment,” which as such is always “imperfect and does not destroy it,” and also reiterated the image of the chemical pro-
incomplete” (GS 1.1:226/OT 45–6). In it a constellation of phenomena cess (GB 1:349/C 84); to Florens Christian Rang in 1923 he wrote that,
comes into being, is perceived as such, and the idea is recognized. Origin as the mortification of works of art, “criticism […] is the representation
is the recognition of the truth in an “eddy in the stream of becoming,” [Darstellung] of an idea,” and as such the naming [benennen] of the idea
when in representation the idea is recognized and phenomena redeemed. (GB 2:393/C 224). Criticism is thus the completion of the work, the
The constellation is thus the condition of readability of ideas and phenom- completion of its Darstellung.
ena; as mosaic, it is the condition of the construction of an image, Bild as
Bildung, formation, architecture.20
The act of reading a constellation is criticism. In the Trauerspiel book,
Benjamin deploys a concept from his doctoral thesis, The Concept of Reading and Image
Criticism in German Romanticism. The original content – in this case of
the work of art – is revealed in a process he describes as “the burning up
of the husk as it enters the realm of ideas, that is to say a destruction of At the end of the 1920s Benjamin reshaped the problem of Darstellung
the work in which its external form achieves its most brilliant degree of into what can be called a “theory of the image.” Two essays, both published
illumination” (GS 1.1:211/OT 31). Criticism thus means the “mortifica- in Die literarische Welt in 1929, are pivotal to this operation: “Surrealism”
tion of the works,” that is, “to make historical content, such as provides and “On the Image of Proust”. Here he defined the image, das Bild, as the
the basis of every important work of art, into a philosophical truth,” the site where actualization becomes a critical and political act. The conclusion
transformation of “material content” [Sachgehalt] into “truth content” to the essay on Surrealism, published in February, sums up the political
[Wahrheitsgehalt] (GS 1.1:357–8/OT 182). This concept of criticism is fun- significance of this artistic movement: “to win the energies of intoxication
damental to the whole of Benjamin’s work: in his doctoral thesis he argues for the revolution.” Does this mean, Benjamin asks, a “poetic politics,” that
that criticism is not concerned with judging or evaluating the work, but is is, a politics based on poetic devices, rhetorical figures and imagery? The
rather the “the completion [Vollendung], consummation [Ergänzerung], answer is no, but, in order to explain this, he has to define a poetic politics
and systematization of the work and, on the other hand, its resolution in and its difference from a politics of images. The former is the program of
the absolute” (GS 1.1:78/SW 1:159). Through the destruction, in irony, the bourgeois parties, “a bad poem on springtime, filled to bursting with
of the historical form of the work – its “material content” – its original metaphors [Vergleichen],” but also the social-democratic program: “the
“truth content” is revealed and the individual work dissolved into the socialist sees that ‘finer future of our children and grandchildren’ in a
unity of art. For the Romantics, irony “assails” and dissolves the form, society in which all act ‘as if they were angels’ and everyone has as much
sacrificing its totality for the sake of “connection” [Zusammenhang] (GS ‘as if he were rich’ and everyone lives ‘as if he were free.’ Of angels, wealth,
1.1:86/SW 1:164). Criticism is thus the “Darstellung of the prosaic kernel freedom, not a trace – these are mere images [Alles nur Bilder].” “Filled to
in every work.” Darstellung must be intended, Benjamin continues, “in bursting” with cheap imagery, it is the ineffective, and ultimately counter-
the chemical sense, as the generation of a substance through a determi- revolutionary, organization of “optimism” (GS 2.1:308/SW 2:216). This
nate process to which other substances are submitted” (GS 1.1:109/SW is an important point: bourgeois and social-democratic imagery propose
1:178, translation modified). He insists on this point in his correspon- optimistic images of the future and are thus “utopic.” To create an image
dence over the years: to Herbert Belmore in 1916 he wrote that criticism, of the future means to seek, in “unprincipled, dilettantish optimism,” a
attacking its object and “decomposing it, […] exposes its inner nature, but “reconciliation” [Verständigung], which would reinstate and perpetuate