Benjamin Walter - Walter Benjamins concept of the image

Rosss argument is original and refreshing. It is masterful in its conceptual program, exegetical details, and argumentative force, and its polemical verve is gripping. By introducing the image (dialectical or otherwise) as the pivot of her investigation, she demonstrates a greater thematic continuity to Benjamins thought than is usually imagineda continuity that forcefully underscores the dramatic fault-lines fissuring the entire corpus. Particularly notable is Rosss reading of Benjamins early essay on Goethes Elective Affinitiesa generally admired but oddly under-commented work. She brings out the fundamental importance of this essay to Benjamins entire project, and offers the most sustained reading in English that Im aware of.

Rebecca Comay, University of Toronto, Canada

In this book, Alison Ross engages in a detailed study of Walter Benjamins concept of the image, exploring the significant shifts in Benjamins approach to the topic over the course of his career. Using Kants treatment of the topic of sensuous form in his aesthetics as a comparative reference, Ross argues that Benjamins thinking on the image undergoes a major shift between his 1924 essay on Goethes Elective Affinities, and his work on The Arcades Project from 1927 up until his death in 1940 . The two periods of Benjamins writing share a conception of the image as a potent sensuous force able to provide a frame of existential meaning. In the earlier period this function attracts Benjamins critical attention, whereas in the later he mobilises it for revolutionary outcomes. The book gives a critical treatment of the shifting assumptions in Benjamins writing about the image that warrant this altered view. It draws on hermeneutic studies of meaning, scholarship in the history of religions, and key texts from the modern history of aesthetics to track the reversals and contradictions in the meaning functions that Benjamin attaches to the image in the different periods of his thinking. Above all, it shows the relevance of a critical consideration of Benjamins writing on the image for scholarship in visual culture, critical theory, aesthetics, and philosophy more broadly.

Alison Ross is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in Philosophy, Monash University, Australia. She has research interests in aesthetics, the history of modern philosophy, and critical theory. She is the author of The Aesthetic Paths of Philosophy: Presentation in Kant, Heidegger, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy.

Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

6 Naturalism
A Critical Analysis
Edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland

7 Grammar in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy
Edited by Richard Gaskin

8 Rules, Magic and Instrumental Reason
A Critical Interpretation of Peter Winchs Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Berel Dov Lerner

9 Gaston Bachelard
Critic of Science and the Imagination
Cristina Chimisso

10 Hilary Putnam
Pragmatism and Realism
Edited by James Conant and Urszula M. Zeglen

11 Karl Jaspers
Politics and Metaphysics
Chris Thornhill

12 From Kant to Davidson
Philosophy and the Idea of the Transcendental
Edited by Jeff Malpas

13 Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience
A Reinterpretation
Giuseppina DOro

14 The Logic of Liberal Rights
A Study in the Formal Analysis of Legal Discourse
Eric Heinze

15 Real Metaphysics
Edited by Hallvard Lillehammer and Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra

16 Philosophy After Postmodernism
Civilized Values and the Scope of Knowledge
Paul Crowther

17 Phenomenology and Imagination in Husserl and Heidegger
Brian Elliott

18 Laws in Nature
Stephen Mumford

19 Trust and Toleration
Richard H. Dees

20 The Metaphysics of Perception
Wilfrid Sellars, Perceptual Consciousness and Critical Realism
Paul Coates

21 Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action
Praxeological Investigations
Roderick T. Long

22 Ineffability and Philosophy
Andr Kukla

23 Metaphor and Continental Philosophy
From Kant to Derrida
Clive Cazeaux

24 Wittgenstein and Levinas
Ethical and Religious Thought
Bob Plant

25 The Philosophy of Time
Time before Times
Roger McLure

26 The Russellian Origins of Analytical Philosophy
Bertrand Russell and the Unity of the Proposition
Graham Stevens

27 Analytic Philosophy Without Naturalism
Edited by Antonella Corradini, Sergio Galvan and E. Jonathan Lowe

28 Modernism and the Language of Philosophy
Anat Matar

29 Wittgenstein and Other Minds
Rethinking Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity with Wittgenstein, Levinas, and Husserl
Soren Overgaard

30 Russell vs. Meinong
The Legacy of On Denoting
Edited by Nicholas Griffin and Dale Jacquette

31 Philosophy and the Vision of Language
Paul M. Livingston

32 The Analytic Turn
Analysis in Early Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology
Edited by Michael Beaney

33 The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre
Jonathan Webber

34 Heidegger and the Romantics
The Literary Invention of Meaning
Pol Vandevelde

35 Wittgenstein and Heidegger
Pathways and Provocations
Edited by David Egan, Stephen Reynolds, and Aaron James Wendland

36 The Textual Genesis of Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations
Edited by Nuno Venturinha

37 The Early Wittgenstein on Metaphysics, Natural Science, Language and Value
Chon Tejedor

38 Walter Benjamins Concept of the Image
Alison Ross

Alison Ross

First published 2015
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2015 Taylor & Francis

The right of Alison Ross to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now Known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ross, Alison, 1968

Walter Benjamin's concept of the image / by Alison Ross.

pages cm. (Routledge studies in twentieth-century philosophy ; 38)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Benjamin, Walter, 18921940. 2. Image (Philosophy) I. Title.

B3209.B584R67 2014
193dc23
2014022056

ISBN: 978-1-138-81148-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74925-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC