Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History - by Michael P Steinberg (Paperback)

About the Book

This book is the first to consider the presence of history and the question of historical practice in Walter Benjamin's work.

Book Synopsis

This book is the first to consider the presence of history and the question of historical practice in Walter Benjamin's work. Benjamin, the critic and philosopher of history, was also the practitioner, the authors contend, and it is in the practice of historical writing that the materialist aspect of his thought is most evident.

Some of the essays analyze Benjamin's writings in cultural history and the philosophy of history. Others connect his historical and theoretical practices to issues in contemporary feminism and post-colonial studies, and to cultural contexts including the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong. In different ways, the authors all find in Benjamin's specific notion of historical materialism a dialectic between textual and cultural analysis which can reinvigorate the relation between literary and historical studies.

From the Back Cover

This book is the first to consider the presence of history and the question of historical practice in Walter Benjamin's work.Some of the essays analyze Benjamin's writings in cultural history and the philosophy of history. Others connect his historical and theoretical practices to issues in contemporary feminism and post-colonial studies, and to cultural contexts including the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong. In different ways, the authors all find in Benjamin's specific notion of historical materialism a dialectic between textual and cultural analysis which can reinvigorate the relation between literary and historical studies.

Review Quotes

"The focus on Benjamin and the question of history is extremely welcome. Because Benjamin has been and remains so influential in a variety of academic disciplines, this important scholarly counterweight to the outpouring of more specialized monographic studies is a highly useful contribution."--Richard Wolin, Rice University

"The essays offer an important range of views from an international array of historians and literary and cultural critics. These essays investigate Benjamin's engagement with the 'materiality of the past and the epistemology and ethics of its recuperation' the world made available 'in language but also beyond language.'"--Len Findlay, The Structuralist, 1997/1998