Benjamin's Arcades: An Unguided Tour (Encounters) - Softcover

Buse, Professor Peter; Hirschkop, Ken; McCracken, Scott; Taithe, Bertrand

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719069890 ISBN 13: 9780719069895

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2006

Synopsis

This title looks for the method behind the madness, carefully reconstructing the intellectual and political context of the work and unpacking its numerous analogies, metaphors and conceptual gambits.

About this title

About the Authors

Peter Buse is Lecturer in English and a member of the European Studies Research Institute at the University of Salford

Ken Hirschkop is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Manchester

Scott McCracken is Lecturer in English at the University of Salford

Bertrand Taithe is Professor of Cultural History at The University of Manchester

From the Back Cover

The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin's unfinished masterpiece, is a brilliant but maddening book. Benjamin's Arcades: an unGuided Tour looks for the method behind the madness, carefully reconstructing the intellectual and political context of the work and unpacking its numerous analogies, metaphors and conceptual gambits. Written by three literary scholars and one historian, this text is both a reading companion and a vigorous interpretation of one of the most important humanistic texts of the twentieth century.

Benjamin's Arcades is composed of 16 entries and a specially designed 'convoluted' index. Some of the entries confront Benjamin with a different reading of his own historical sources (Blanqui, Marx, Giedion), others look intensively at key themes, obsessions, and images (the gambler, commodity fetishism, the Angel of History, magic). Throughout there is discussion of the relationship of Benjamin's work to current and past debate on topics such as modernity, Judaism, fascism, and psychoanalysis. Benjamin's Arcades opens up Benjamin's texts to a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives and will be an essential text for those seeking to better understand this extraordinary work.

From the Inside Flap

The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin s unfinished masterpiece, is a brilliant but maddening book. Benjamin s Arcades: an unGuided Tour looks for the method behind the madness, carefully reconstructing the intellectual and political context of the work and unpacking its numerous analogies, metaphors and conceptual gambits. Written by three literary scholars and one historian, this text is both a reading companion and a vigorous interpretation of one of the most important humanistic texts of the twentieth century.Benjamin s Arcades is composed of 16 entries and a specially designed 'convoluted' index. Some of the entries confront Benjamin with a different reading of his own historical sources (Blanqui, Marx, Giedion), others look intensively at key themes, obsessions, and images (the gambler, commodity fetishism, the Angel of History, magic). Throughout there is discussion of the relationship of Benjamin s work to current and past debate on topics such as modernity, Judaism, fascism, and psychoanalysis. Benjamin s Arcades opens up Benjamin s texts to a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives and will be an essential text for those seeking to better understand this extraordinary work.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719069890
• ISBN 13: 9780719069895
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224