Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801482577 ISBN 13: 9780801482571

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1996

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.

About this title

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.

About the Author:

Michael P. Steinberg is Director of the Cogut Center for the Humanities and Professor of History and Music at Brown University. He is the author of Austria as Theater and Ideology: The Meaning of the Salzburg Festival; Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History (both from Cornell); and Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-Century Music.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0801482577
• ISBN 13: 9780801482571
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Steinberg Michael P.