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Benjamin and History
The Future of the Subject
SAIC ARTHI 4806-001 Fall 2004
Instructor: Chris Cutrone
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Course description:
Walter Benjamin's cultural criticism sought to grasp the nature of the dramatic social upheavals and transformations of his time (1892-1940). His work tried to discern emancipatory possibilities in contemporary social developments and the emergence of new cultural forms such as photography and cinema, but it was nonetheless preoccupied by problems of recovering past social and cultural history. His stated goal was to grasp the nature of modern forms of being and consciousness and their transformations of subjectivity and experience. In readings from Benjamin's major essays, this course seeks the critical intention of his cryptic utterances on problems of modern subjectivity in social history, which have provoked musings on presence, temporality, memory, and the sense of history in modern and present-day social and cultural criticism. Other readings include works from among Benjamin's sources in criticism, literature and philosophy: Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Bergson, Proust, Kafka, Brecht and Breton.
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Course books: [required]
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations [NY: Schocken, 1985]
Benjamin, Reflections [NY: Schocken, 1986]
Bertolt Brecht, Baal [Arcade Pub., 1998]
André Breton, Mad Love [Univ. Nebraska, 1988]
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life [Hackett Pub. Co., 1980] -also- [web resource]
[optional:]
Benjamin, The Arcades Project [Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1999]
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory [Dover, 2004]
Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories [NY: Shocken, 1995]
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, vol. 1 Remembrance of Things Past / In Search of Lost Time,
trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff [Modern Library, 1998]
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- Franz Kafka
- - "Before the Law" (1914), and "An Imperial Message" (1917) [introductory parables];
- "The Metamorphosis" (1912), and "Josephine the Singer, or, The Mouse Folk" (1924) [longer stories]; and
- "The Wish to be a Red Indian" (1912), "The Next Village" (1917?), "A Crossbreed (A Sport)" (1917), "Cares of a Family Man" (1917), "The Truth About Sancho Panza" (1917), "First Sorrow" (1922), and "On Parables" (1923?) [shorter stories]
The Complete Stories
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Week 1: Introduction, the 20th Century as crisis of history (9/3/04)
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I. Destruction of experience, consumption of time
Proust and Benjamin's autobiography
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Week 2: Melancholy experience (9/10/04)
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- Benjamin
- - "A Berlin Chronicle" (1933), Reflections, 3-60
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Week 3: Temporality and memory, the image (9/17/04)
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Week 4: Character of destruction (9/24/04)
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- Benjamin
- - "One-Way Street [selection]" (1928),
- "Karl Kraus" (1931), and
- "The Destructive Character" (1931)
Reflections, 61-94, 239-273, and 301-303
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II. Destruction of meaning
Kafka and Brecht
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- Kafka
- - "Before the Law" (1914), and "An Imperial Message" (1917) [introductory parables];
- "The Metamorphosis" (1912), and "Josephine the Singer, or, The Mouse Folk" (1924) [longer stories]; and
- "The Wish to be a Red Indian" (1912), "The Next Village" (1917?), "A Crossbreed (A Sport)" (1917), "Cares of a Family Man" (1917), "The Truth About Sancho Panza" (1917), "First Sorrow" (1922), and "On Parables" (1923?) [shorter stories]
The Complete Stories
- Benjamin
- - "Franz Kafka" (1934), and
- "Some Reflections on Kafka [from letter to Gershom Scholem of June 12, 1938]" (1938)
Illuminations, 111-140, and 141-145
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Week 7: Nihilism, language and gesture (10/15/04)
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- Benjamin
- - "The Task of the Translator [introduction to Benjamin's translation of Charles Baudelaire's Tableaux Parisiens]" (1921-23)
Illuminations, 69-82
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III. Aesthetics of destruction
Baudelaire
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Week 8: Baudelaire 1 (10/22/04)
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- Baudelaire
- - "3 Drafts of a Preface," "To the Reader," "Giantess," "The Sun," "Comes the Charming Evening," "Parisian Dream," "Abel and Cain," "Litany to Satan," "The Voyage," "A Madrigal of Sorrow," and "What a Pair of Eyes Can Promise,"
Flowers of Evil: a selection, various trans., eds. Marthiel and Jackson Matthews [NY: New Directions, 1955], xi-xvii, 2-5, 20-21, 76-79, 96-99, 102-107, 124-145, 156-159, and 160-161 -also- [web resource]
- Baudelaire
- - "To Arsene Houssaye," I. "The Stranger," II. "The Old Woman's Despair," III. "Artist's Confiteor," XLIX. "Beat Up the Poor," "Epilogue," and "Beauty,"
Paris Spleen (1855-67, pub. 1869), trans. Louise Varèse [New York: New Directions, 1947], ix-x, 1-3, 101-103, 108, and 118
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Week 9: Baudelaire 2 (10/29/04)
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- Benjamin
- - "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire" (1940)
Illuminations, 155-200
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Week 10: Baudelaire 3 (11/5/04)
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Week 11: Objects (11/12/04)
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- Benjamin
- - "On the Mimetic Faculty" (1933)
Reflections, 333-336
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Week 12: Subjectivity (11/19/04)
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- Benjamin
- - "Marsailles" (1929), "Hashish in Marseilles" (1932), and "Surrealism" (1929)
Reflections, 131-136, 137-145, and 177-192
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Week 13: [Thanksgiving break, no class session] (11/26/04)
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[Please read ahead for week 14]
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Week 14: Life in history (12/3/04)
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Week 15: [Critique week, no class session] (12/10/04)
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[Please read ahead for week 16]
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Week 16: Time of the now (12/17/04)
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- Benjamin
- - "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940)
Illuminations, 253-264
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