Benjamin Walter - Textual Conspiracies Walter Benjamin, Idolatry, and Political Theory

I want to express thanks to many people who helped me to write this book. Two people in particular merit great thanks for this book's publication. Joyce Seltzer has been an invaluable friend, advisor, and mentor in facing the publishing world and conceptualizing my projects, this one very much included. Melody Herr has been a phenomenal editor; her advice, enthusiasm, and advocacy have made getting this book to press a truly enjoyable experience. Susan Cronin, Kevin Rennells, and Mike Kehoe have also been very helpful at University of Michigan Press. I also want to thank my university, San Francisco State University, and especially my dean, Joel Kassiola, for giving me a sabbatical to help finish this project and for his support in general. Jodi Dean was instrumental in starting this project; she got me thinking about conspiracy in the first place and has been an astute and generous reader. Karen Feldman has also been a great reader and was present at the first incarnations of my work on Kafka.

In October 2010, I was fortunate to be able to present the principal arguments for this text at a conference entitled Dangerous Crossings: Politics at the Limits of the Human, held at Johns Hopkins University. Thank you to the conference organizers: Drew Walker, Nathan Gies, Katherine Goktepe, and Tim Hanafin. Thanks also to Jennifer Culbert, Jane Bennett, Willam Connolly, and Bonnie Honig for their excellent comments and contributions to my project as well as their friendship. Other readers, colleagues, allies, and friends include, as always, Nasser Hussain and Mark Andrejevic, and many other people whose support and wisdom are invaluable to me: Marianne Constable, Ruth Sonderegger, Jackie Stevens, Martha Umphrey, Paul Passavant, Angelika von Wahl, Melissa Ptacek, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, Sara Kendall, Wendy Lochner, Jeanne Scheper, Zhivka Valiavicharska, Jimmy Casas Klausen, Alex Dubilet, Ramona Naddaff, Lisa Disch, Stephanie Sommerfeld, Adam Thurschwell, Kennan Ferguson, David Bates, Shalini Satkunanandan, Stuart Murray, Anatole Anton, Sandra Luft, Anatoli Ignatov, Miguel Vatter, Libby Anker, Alex Hirsch, Vicky Kahn, Keally McBride, Dean Mathiowetz, Brian Weiner, Ron Sundstrom, Kate Gordy, Wendy Brown, Kyong-Min Son, William Sokoloff, Vanessa Lemm, Tom Dumm, Peter Fitzpatrick, Colin Perrin, Austin Sarat, Linda Ross Meyer, and many others. I want to thank my many students in my two (to date) Walter Benjamin graduate seminars at SFSU including Loren Lewis, Evan Stern, Rion Roberts, Steven Swarbrick, Sharise Edwards, Tyler Nelson, Dieyana Ruzgani, Loren Stewart, Katrina Lappin, Veronica Roberts, Kenny Loui, Joshua Hurni, Cecily Gonzalez, Rebecca Stillman, Randall Cohn, Brooks Kirchgassner, and quite a few others. Finally I want to thank my wonderful family: my husband, Carlos, my children, Jacques and Rocio, and Nina, Kathryn, Elic and Mark, Ralph, Huguette, Django, and Shalini.

I give thanks to my mother, Huguette Martel, for her painting that is used on the book cover. Thanks also go to Alice Martin at Service IMEC Images (which holds the Gisle Freund archives) and to Julie Galant at Fotofolio (the company that made the postcard that the image came from). I also thank Rich Stim, who did the research figuring out how to obtain permission, and Javier Machado Leyva, who photographed the painting and prepared the electronic file for use here.

An earlier version of appeared as Machiavelli's Public Conspiracies, in Media Tropes 2, no. 1 (2009): 6083.