EAN: 9783039118601

CONSTELLATIONS OF READING CULTURAL HISTORY AN...

How to read Walter Benjamin today? This book argues that the proper way is through an approach
which recognizes and respects his own peculiar theorization of the act of reading and the
politics of interpretation that this entails. The approach must be figural  that is  focused on
images  and driven by the notion of actualization. Figural reading  in the very sui generis
Benjaminian way  understands figures as constellations  whereby an image of the past juxtaposes
them with an image of the present and is thus actualized. To apply this method to Benjamin's
own work means first to identify some figures. The book singles out the Flâneur  the Detective
the Prostitute and the Ragpicker  and then sets them alongside a contemporary account of the
same figure: the Flâneur in Juan Goytisolo's Landscapes after the Battle (1982)  the Detective
in Paul Auster's New York Trilogy (1987)  the Prostitute in Dacia Maraini's Dialogue between a
Prostitute and her Client (1973)  and the Ragpicker in Mudrooroo's The Mudrooroo Müller Project
(1993). The book thereby  on the one hand  analyses the politics of reading Benjamin today and
on the other  sets his work against a variety of contemporary aesthetics and politics of
interpretation.

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