Walter Benjamin has by now become an almost iconic thinker. This was not always the case. At the time of his death in 1940 in Portbou, on his flight from national-socialist Germany, his writings were almost unknown. What is it about Benjamin’s thinking that makes it so relevant for us today? What kind of relationship does his thinking have to established academic disciplines such as literary and media studies, philosophy or sociology? What does Benjamin understand by criticism? How do concepts such as experience, destruction, memory, life, happiness figure in his writings? This course is an introduction to the questions that arise when reading Benjamin’s works and an introduction to its most important themes and figures of thought.
- Teacher: בירג'יט ארדלה