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Body-And Image-Space: Re-Reading Walter Benjamin

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Body-And Image-Space: Re-Reading Walter Benjamin Body-and image-space The last decade has seen renewed interest among philosophers and theorists in the writings of Walter Benjamin. In Body-and Image-Space Sigrid Weigel, one of Germany's leading feminist theorists and a renowned commentator on the work of Walter Benjamin, argues that the reception of his work has so far overlooked a crucial aspect of his thought Ðhis use of images. Weigel argues that it is precisely his practice of thinking in images that holds the key to understanding the full complexity and topicality of Benjamin's theory. Bilddenken, or thinking in images, and its relation to the body are central to Benjamin's work. Weigel illuminates points of contact between this approach and psychoanalytical modes of observation and suggests that there also are affinities between Benjamin's thought and contemporary French theory, notably the work of Foucault and Kristeva. Focusing on those parallels, the author demonstrates the productivity of Benjamin's theoretical approach for contemporary gender studies, cultural theory and philosophy. At the same time, her reading reestablishes the buried links between early Critical Theory and post- structuralism, between German high modernism and French post- modernist theory. Body- and Image-Space will be invaluable to anyone interested in gender theory, post-structuralism, cultural anthropology and philosophy. Sigrid Weigel is Professor of German Literature at the University of Zurich. Warwick Studies in European Philosophy Edited by Andrew Benjamin Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Warwick This series presents the best and most original work being done within the European philosophical tradition. The books included in the series seek not merely to reflect what is taking place within European philosophy, rather they will contribute to the growth and development of that plural tradition. Work written in the English language as well as translations into English are to be included, engaging the tradition at all levelsÐ whether by introductions that show the contemporary philosophical force of certain works, or in collections that explore an important thinker or topic, as well as in significant contributions that call for their own critical evaluation. Body-and image-space Re-reading Walter Benjamin Sigrid Weigel Translated by Georgina Paul with Rachel McNicholl and Jeremy Gaines London and New York First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. ªTo purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.º Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1996 Routledge for the English translation All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Weigel, Sigrid. Body- and image-space: re-reading Walter Benjamin p. cm.Ð(Warwick studies in European philosophy) 1. Benjamin, Walter, 1892±1940 I. Series. B3209. B58W45 1996 193±dc20 95±26618 CIP ISBN 0-203-45074-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-45671-8 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-10955-8 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-10956-6 (pbk) Contents Translator's note vii Introduction: Distorted similitudeÐBenjamin as theorist viii Politics of images and body 1 Benjamin's `world of universal and integral actuality' 2 2 `Body- and image-space': Traces through Benjamin's 14 writings 3 Communicating tubes: Michel Foucault and Walter 28 Benjamin 4 Thought-images: A re-reading of the `angel of history' 46 OtherÐgenderÐreadings 5 Towards a female dialectic of enlightenment: Julia Kristeva 58 and Walter Benjamin 6 From images to dialectical images: The significance of 74 gender difference in Benjamin's writings 7 The `other' in allegory: A prehistory of the allegory of 88 modernity in the Baroque Memory and writing 8 From topography to writing: Benjamin's concept of memory 99 9 The reading that takes the place of translation: The 117 psychoanalytical reformulation of the theory of language magic 10 Readability: Benjamin's place in contemporary theoretical 134 approaches to pictorial and corporeal memory 11 Non-philosophical amazementÐwriting in amazement: 146 Benjamin's position in the aftermath of the holocaust vi Notes 162 Bibliography 179 Index 187 Translator's note The source of all quotations from Walter Benjamin's Gesammelte Schriften (ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980±9) is indicated in the text by the short reference GS followed by volume (roman numeral), part (arabic) and page number. Where a published English translation has been quoted, the source is indicated alongside the German reference (see the bibliography for a list of abbreviations used). Occasionally such translations have been modified, in which case this is noted. The translations of all passages with a reference to the German source alone are the translator's own. Introduction Distorted similitudeÐBenjamin as theorist The subject of this book is Walter Benjamin as theoristÐnot as philosopher of history or art, not as historian or critic of literature. The central focus of the study is the specific way in which Benjamin thinks and the figurations in which that thinking takes on form. For in his writings, as in those of no other theorist, the manner of thinking and the manner of writing cannot be seen as separate since theyÐbeyond the dualistic opposition of content and formÐcome together in a third: namely, in the image, which Benjamin himself referred to as a `third' (ein Drittes) (GS II.1, 314; Ill 207). In an image, however, that in Benjamin's thought does not have the status of a reproduction (Abbild), a `mental picture', or the like, but rather that of a constellation, a heteronomous and heterogeneous similitude, in which figures of thought correlate with those of history or of experience and reality (Chapter 4). The fact that the reception of Benjamin has taken place within a kind of division of labour between different disciplines has led to the separation of his writings between the discourses of philosophy and literary history, and to the siting of his theorems within these disciplines' respective traditions, categories, and paradigms.1 The result has been that precisely that field in which Benjamin was first and foremost operativeÐhis thinking-in-images (Bilddenken)Ðhas, like a blind spot, been passed over or circumscribed. Yet this thinking-in-images should not be regarded as a supplement to his work, as a particular, additional, or even aesthetic quality to his theorizing which can without consequence be overlooked in the philosophical or sociological reception of his writingsÐas overlooked it has been. Nor should it be seen as an archive of metaphorology or rhetoric: this is to divert attention away from the epistemological or historico-theoretical status of his thought-images (Denkbilder) in favour of a repeated reading of them as metaphorical images, or illustrations, or even as translations of problems that could otherwise be conceptually formulated. Rather it is this thinking-in-images, the reference to those figurations in which the idea of reality is formed and the images of history are handed down, above all, however, the theoretical and linguistic work on these ix figurations, the observation of their origins and conditions of possibility, their implications, exclusions, and reverse sides, which constitutes the specificity of Benjaminian theory. As a result, the traditional oppositions within established epistemesÐabove all that between content and form, but also that between theory and practice, politics and art, context and text, individual and collective, and so onÐare not treated discursively by him, but, in his thought-images and figurations, cease to obtain altogether, are not integrated or sublated, but quite literally cease to obtain, in that they are represented in that third, the image. Thus his writings are concentrated on the conceptualization and representation of the phenomena that interest him, on the search for and the work on the readability and representability of a dialectic residing within things and within existence. The images of our perceptions and ideas, and the metaphors with which we are surrounded, are seen by Benjamin as `body- and image-space' (Leib- und Bildraum) in which our reality is engendered (GS II.1, 309±10; OWS 239; Chapter 2), a body- and image- space which, transformed into the writing-space of a profane illumination, he traverses in his thinking and writing. It is precisely in the encounter with the image-space of our thought and action, in the entry into Benjamin's thinking-in-images and the thought- images of his theory that the contemporaneity and latent meaning of this theory is to be found. Here is the real Aktualität2 of Benjamin, here, where the `world of universal and integral actuality' is opened up (GS II.1, 309; OWS 239)Ðwhereas in commemorative lectures on `Benjamin's Aktualität' this genuinely Benjaminian concept of actuality is regularly misrecognized (Chapter 1), a symptom of the more general misrecognition of the central significance of images for his theory. For Benjamin, images are not the object, but rather the matrix and medium of his theoretical work. If Benjamin is to be considered here as a theorist, it is not in the sense that a theoretical system is to be reconstructed. Rather, the concern of this study is a genesis of his thought-figures and -images, the consideration of the origins and traces of his work on particular theorems and their convergence in specific constellations.
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