Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of ModernityWalter Benjamin is universally recognised as one of the key thinkers of modernity: his writings on politics, language, literature, media, theology and law have had an incalculable influence on contemporary thought. Yet the problem of architecture in and for Benjamin's work remains relatively underexamined. Does Benjamin's project have an architecture and, if so, how does this architecture affect the explicit propositions that he offers us? In what ways are Benjamin's writings centrally caught up with architectural concerns, from the redevelopment of major urban centres to the movements that individuals can make within the new spaces of modern cities? How can Benjamin's theses help us to understand the secret architectures of the present? This volume takes up the architectural challenge in a number of innovative ways, collecting essays by both well-known and emerging scholars on time in cinema, the problem of kitsch, the design of graves and tombs, the orders of road-signs, childhood experience in modern cities, and much more. Engaged, interdisciplinary, bristling with insights, the essays in this collection will constitute an indispensable supplement to the work of Walter Benjamin, as well as providing a guide to some of the obscurities of our own present. |
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Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of Modernity Andrew E. Benjamin,Charles Rice No preview available - 2009 |
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adult aesthetic affect Agamben analysis Arcades Project architecture argues art’s artwork aura Bai Ling baroque Baudelaire become Benjamin says Benjamin writes Benjamin’s Critique Berlin bourgeois bourgeois interior Carl Schmitt child childhood Children’s Books Chow collective colour concept configuration conflict context criticism Critique of Violence cultural deconstruction defined definition Derrida dialectical different distinction dream effect Empfindung epic theatre Erfahrung essay experience figure film find first German Goethe Goethe’s GS II·2 GS IV·1 Hamlet human infinite intriguer jamin Kafka’s kitsch Kracauer means messianic modernity mourning play mystical nature notion Novalis object offers painting past perception political prelapsarian present profane proletarian proletarian general strike Proust pure violence question radical reading redemption reflection relation relationship revolutionary Riegl’s rience romantic romanticism Schmitt sense significance social space specific Spinoza’s teleology temporal theology things tion tradition transformation Trauerspiel Walter Benjamin Werner Hamacher Wong Wong Kar-wai Wong’s