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Constellations of Reading: Walter Benjamin in Figures of Actuality
Contributor(s): Emden, Christian (Other), Midgley, David Robin (Other), Salzani, Carlo (Author)

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 ISBN: 3039118609     ISBN-13: 9783039118601
Publisher: Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publis
OUR PRICE: $114.77  

Binding Type: Paperback
Published: December 2008
Qty:

Click for more in this series: Cultural History and Literary Imagination
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | European - German
- Philosophy | Aesthetics
- Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Dewey: 838.912
LCCN: 2008043785
Series: Cultural History and Literary Imagination
Physical Information: 0.81" H x 6" W x 9" L (1.15 lbs) 392 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - British Isles
- Cultural Region - French
Features: Bibliography, Index
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
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 Fl neur, the Detective, the Prostitute and the Ragpicker, and then sets them alongside a contemporary account of the same figure: the Fl neur 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/M ller 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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