Walter Benjamin: Self-Reference and Religiosity (New Perspectives in German Political Studies)

Walter Benjamin's work represents one of the most radical and controversial responses to the problems of twentieth-century culture and society. This new interpretation analyzes some of the central enigmatic features of his writing, arguing that they result from the co-presence of religious scepticism and the desire for a religious foundation of social life. Margarete Kohlenbach focuses on the structure of self-reference as an expression of Benjamin's sceptical religiosity and examines its significance in his writing on language, literature and the cinema, as well as history, politics and modern technology.

MARGARETE KOHLENBACH is Lecturer in German and European Studies at the University of Sussex. As an author, her work has been published in German and English.