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The
Actuality of Walter Benjamin Laura Marcus & Lynda
Nead (eds)
Although it is true that Benjamin’s place in the canon of 20th century critical
theorists is now established, the boundaries of his work still resist classification
and demarcation. His writings, including the best known collection, Illuminations,
remain an uneasy but thrilling combination of the actual and the mystical,
of Marxism and messianic utopianism.
This collection shows how extraordinarily substantial were the theoretical
footholds which Walter Benjamin supplied: Irving Wohlfarth takes up the vexed
question of historical understanding versus historicism in his essay The Actuality
Of Walter Benjamin. Also included are essays on Benjamin and the sources of
Judaism; feminism and cultural analysis; images in Benjamin’s novels and other
writings.
Published in association with new formations