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| critique of violence walter benjamin: Toward the Critique of Violence Walter Benjamin, 2021-06-22 Marking the centenary of Walter Benjamin's immensely influential essay, Toward the Critique of Violence, this critical edition presents readers with an altogether new, fully annotated translation of a work that is widely recognized as a classic of modern political theory. The volume includes twenty-one notes and fragments by Benjamin along with passages from all of the contemporaneous texts to which his essay refers. Readers thus encounter for the first time in English provocative arguments about law and violence advanced by Hermann Cohen, Kurt Hiller, Erich Unger, and Emil Lederer. A new translation of selections from Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence further illuminates Benjamin's critical program. The volume also includes, for the first time in any language, a bibliography Benjamin drafted for the expansion of the essay and the development of a corresponding philosophy of law. An extensive introduction and afterword provide additional context. With its challenging argument concerning violence, law, and justice—which addresses such topical matters as police violence, the death penalty, and the ambiguous force of religion—Benjamin's work is as important today as it was upon its publication in Weimar Germany a century ago. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Toward the Critique of Violence Walter Benjamin, 2021-06-15 |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Toward the Critique of Violence Walter Benjamin, 2021-06-15 Marking the centenary of Walter Benjamin's immensely influential essay, Toward the Critique of Violence, this critical edition presents readers with an altogether new, fully annotated translation of a work that is widely recognized as a classic of modern political theory. The volume includes twenty-one notes and fragments by Benjamin along with passages from all of the contemporaneous texts to which his essay refers. Readers thus encounter for the first time in English provocative arguments about law and violence advanced by Hermann Cohen, Kurt Hiller, Erich Unger, and Emil Lederer. A new translation of selections from Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence further illuminates Benjamin's critical program. The volume also includes, for the first time in any language, a bibliography Benjamin drafted for the expansion of the essay and the development of a corresponding philosophy of law. An extensive introduction and afterword provide additional context. With its challenging argument concerning violence, law, and justice--which addresses such topical matters as police violence, the death penalty, and the ambiguous force of religion--Benjamin's work is as important today as it was upon its publication in Weimar Germany a century ago. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Walter Benjamin and the Actuality of Critique Carlo Salzani, 2021-07-28 The striking actuality of Walter Benjamin’s work does not rest on a supposed “usefulness” of his philosophy for current concerns, but rather on the high “legibility” to which his oeuvre has come in the present. Indeed, this legibility is a function of critique, which unearths the truth-content of a work in a constellation of reading with the present, and assures thereby that the work lives on. Following this methodological tenet, this book approaches Benjamin’s work with two foci: the actuality of his critique of violence, a central and unavoidable topic in the contemporary political-philosophical debate, and the actuality of his critique of experience, which perhaps is not as conspicuous as that of his critique of violence but constitutes, nonetheless, the bedrock upon which his whole philosophy rests. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: The One and Only Law James Martel, 2014-09-19 A radical critique of contemporary legal practices and understandings based on a new consideration of Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Towards the Critique of Violence Brendan Moran, Carlo Salzani, 2015-08-27 In the past two and a half decades, Walter Benjamin's early essay 'Towards the Critique of Violence' (1921) has taken a central place in politico-philosophic debates. The complexity and perhaps even the occasional obscurity of Benjamin's text have undoubtedly contributed to the diversity, conflict, and richness of contemporary readings. Interest has heightened following the attention that philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben have devoted to it. Agamben's own interest started early in his career with his 1970 essay, 'On the Limits of Violence', and Benjamin's essay continues to be a fundamental reference in Agamben's work. Written by internationally recognized scholars, Towards the Critique of Violence is the first book to explore politico-philosophic implications of Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence' and correlative implications of Benjamin's resonance in Agamben's writings. Topics of this collection include mythic violence, the techniques of non-violent conflict resolution, ambiguity, destiny or fate, decision and nature, and the relation between justice and thinking. The volume explores Agamben's usage of certain Benjaminian themes, such as Judaism and law, bare life, sacrifice, and Kantian experience, culminating with the English translation of Agamben's 'On the Limits of Violence'. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Divine Violence James R. Martel, 2013-03-01 Divine Violence looks at the question of political theology and its connection to sovereignty. It argues that the practice of sovereignty reflects a Christian eschatology, one that proves very hard to overcome even by left thinkers, such as Arendt and Derrida, who are very critical of it. These authors fall into a trap described by Carl Schmitt whereby one is given a (false) choice between anarchy and sovereignty, both of which are bound within—and return us to—the same eschatological envelope. In Divine Violence, the author argues that Benjamin supplies the correct political theology to help these thinkers. He shows how to avoid trying to get rid of sovereignty (the anarchist move that Schmitt tells us forces us to decide against the decision) and instead to seek to de-center and dislocate sovereignty so that it’s mythological function is disturbed. He does this with the aid of divine violence, a messianic force that comes into the world to undo its own mythology, leaving nothing in its wake. Such a move clears the myths of sovereignty away, turning us to our own responsibility in the process. In that way, the author argues,Benjamin succeeds in producing an anarchism that is not bound by Schmitt’s trap but which is sustained even while we remain dazzled by the myths of sovereignty that structure our world. Divine Violence will be of interest to students of political theory, to those with an interest in political theology, philosophy and deconstruction, and to those who are interested in thinking about some of the dilemmas that the ‘left’ finds itself in today. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Critique of Violence Beatrice Hanssen, 2014-02-25 Critique of Violence is a highly original and lucid investigation of the heated controversy between poststructuralism and critical theory. Leading theorist Beatrice Hanssen uses Walter Benjamin's essay 'Critique of Violence' as a guide to analyse the contentious debate, shifting the emphasis from struggle to dialogue between the two parties. Regarding the questions of critique and violence as the major meeting points between both traditions, Hanssen positions herself between the two in an effort to investigate what critical theory and poststructuralism have to offer each other. In the course of doing so, she assembles imaginative new readings of Benjamin, Arendt, Fanon and Foucault, and incisively explores the politics of recognition, the violence of language, and the future of feminist theory. This groundbreaking book will be essential reading for all students of continental philosophy, political theory, social studies and comparative literature. Also available in this series: Essays on Otherness Hb: 0-415-13107-3: £50.00 Pb: 0-415-13108-1: £15.99 Hegel After Derrida Hb: 0-415-17104-4: £50.00 Pb: 0-415-17105-9: £15.99 The Hypocritical Imagination Hb: 0-415-21361-4: £47.50 Pb: 0-415-21362-2: £15.99 Philosophy and Tragedy Hb: 0-415-19141-6: £45.00 Pb: 0-415-19142-4: £14.99 Textures of Light Hb: 0-415-14273-3: £42.50 Pb: 0-415-14274-1: £13.99 Very Little ... Almost Nothing Pb: 0-415-12821-8: £47.50 Pb: 0-415-12822-6: £15.99 |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Walter Benjamin and Theology Colby Dickinson, Stéphane Symons, 2016-05-19 In the Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin writes that his work is “related to theology as blotting pad is related to ink. It is saturated with it.” For a thinker so decisive to critical literary, cultural, political, and aesthetic writings over the past half-century, Benjamin’s relationship to theological matters has been less observed than it should, even despite a variety of attempts over the last four decades to illuminate the theological elements latent within his eclectic and occasional writings. Such attempts, though undeniably crucial to comprehending his thought, remain in need of deepened systematic analysis. In bringing together some of the most renowned experts from both sides of the Atlantic, Walter Benjamin and Theology seeks to establish a new site from which to address both the issue of Benjamin’s relationship with theology and all the crucial aspects that Benjamin himself grappled with when addressing the field and operations of theological inquiry. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Towards the Critique of Violence Brendan Moran, Carlo Salzani, 2015-08-27 In the past two and a half decades, Walter Benjamin's early essay 'Towards the Critique of Violence' (1921) has taken a central place in politico-philosophic debates. The complexity and perhaps even the occasional obscurity of Benjamin's text have undoubtedly contributed to the diversity, conflict, and richness of contemporary readings. Interest has heightened following the attention that philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben have devoted to it. Agamben's own interest started early in his career with his 1970 essay, 'On the Limits of Violence', and Benjamin's essay continues to be a fundamental reference in Agamben's work. Written by internationally recognized scholars, Towards the Critique of Violence is the first book to explore politico-philosophic implications of Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence' and correlative implications of Benjamin's resonance in Agamben's writings. Topics of this collection include mythic violence, the techniques of non-violent conflict resolution, ambiguity, destiny or fate, decision and nature, and the relation between justice and thinking. The volume explores Agamben's usage of certain Benjaminian themes, such as Judaism and law, bare life, sacrifice, and Kantian experience, culminating with the English translation of Agamben's 'On the Limits of Violence'. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: On Violence Bruce B. Lawrence, Aisha Karim, 2007-12-06 This anthology brings together classic perspectives on violence, putting into productive conversation the thought of well-known theorists and activists, including Hannah Arendt, Karl Marx, G. W. F. Hegel, Osama bin Laden, Sigmund Freud, Frantz Fanon, Thomas Hobbes, and Pierre Bourdieu. The volume proceeds from the editors’ contention that violence is always historically contingent; it must be contextualized to be understood. They argue that violence is a process rather than a discrete product. It is intrinsic to the human condition, an inescapable fact of life that can be channeled and reckoned with but never completely suppressed. Above all, they seek to illuminate the relationship between action and knowledge about violence, and to examine how one might speak about violence without replicating or perpetuating it. On Violence is divided into five sections. Underscoring the connection between violence and economic world orders, the first section explores the dialectical relationship between domination and subordination. The second section brings together pieces by political actors who spoke about the tension between violence and nonviolence—Gandhi, Hitler, and Malcolm X—and by critics who have commented on that tension. The third grouping examines institutional faces of violence—familial, legal, and religious—while the fourth reflects on state violence. With a focus on issues of representation, the final section includes pieces on the relationship between violence and art, stories, and the media. The editors’ introduction to each section highlights the significant theoretical points raised and the interconnections between the essays. Brief introductions to individual selections provide information about the authors and their particular contributions to theories of violence. With selections by: Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Osama bin Laden, Pierre Bourdieu, André Breton, James Cone, Robert M. Cover, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Engels, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Mohandas Gandhi, René Girard, Linda Gordon, Antonio Gramsci, Félix Guattari, G. W. F. Hegel, Adolf Hitler, Thomas Hobbes, Bruce B. Lawrence, Elliott Leyton, Catharine MacKinnon, Malcolm X, Dorothy Martin, Karl Marx, Chandra Muzaffar, James C. Scott, Kristine Stiles, Michael Taussig, Leon Trotsky, Simone Weil, Sharon Welch, Raymond Williams |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Histories of Violence Brad Evans, Terrell Carver, 2017-01-15 While there is a tacit appreciation that freedom from violence will lead to more prosperous relations among peoples, violence continues to be deployed for various political and social ends. Yet the problem of violence still defies neat description, subject to many competing interpretations. Histories of Violence offers an accessible yet compelling examination of the problem of violence as it appears in the corpus of canonical figures – from Hannah Arendt to Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault to Slavoj Žižek – who continue to influence and inform contemporary political, philosophical, sociological, cultural, and anthropological study. Written by a team of internationally renowned experts, this is an essential interrogation of post-war critical thought as it relates to violence. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Violence Richard J. Bernstein, 2018-03-08 We live in a time when we are overwhelmed with talk and images of violence. Whether on television, the internet, films or the video screen, we can’t escape representations of actual or fictional violence - another murder, another killing spree in a high school or movie theatre, another action movie filled with images of violence. Our age could well be called “The Age of Violence” because representations of real or imagined violence, sometimes fused together, are pervasive. But what do we mean by violence? What can violence achieve? Are there limits to violence and, if so, what are they? In this new book Richard Bernstein seeks to answer these questions by examining the work of five figures who have thought deeply about violence - Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Frantz Fanon, and Jan Assmann. He shows that we have much to learn from their work about the meaning of violence in our times. Through the critical examination of their writings he also brings out the limits of violence. There are compelling reasons to commit ourselves to non-violence, and yet at the same time we have to acknowledge that there are exceptional circumstances in which violence can be justified. Bernstein argues that there can be no general criteria for determining when violence is justified. The only plausible way of dealing with this issue is to cultivate publics in which there is free and open discussion and in which individuals are committed to listen to one other: when public debate withers, there is nothing to prevent the triumph of murderous violence. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Reflections Walter Benjamin, 2019-02-26 The towering twentieth century thinker delve into literature, philosophy, and his own life experience in this “extraordinary collection” (Publishers Weekly). A companion volume to Illuminations, the first collection of Walter Benjamin’s writings, Reflections presents a further sampling of his wide-ranging work. Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin. Benjamin moves seamlessly from literary criticism to autobiography to philosophical-theological speculations, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest and most versatile writers of the twentieth century. “This book is just that: reflections of a highly polished mind that uncannily approximate the century’s fragments of shattered traditions.” —Time |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Working with Walter Benjamin Andrew Benjamin, 2013-11-18 This book provides a highly original approach to the writings of the twentieth-century German philosopher Walter Benjamin by one of his most distinguished readers. It develops the idea of 'working with' Benjamin, seeking both to read his corpus and to put it to work - to show how a reading of Benjamin can open up issues that may not themselves be immediately at stake in his texts. The defining elements in Benjamin's writings that Andrew Benjamin isolates - history, experience, translation, technical reproducibility and politics - are put to work; that is, their utility is established in engaging the works of others. The question is how utility is understood. As Andrew Benjamin argues, utility involves demonstrating the different ways in which Benjamin is a central thinker within the project of understanding the nature of modernity. This is best achieved by noting connections and points of differentiation between his work and the writings of Adorno and Heidegger. However, the more demanding project is that 'working with' Benjamin necessitates deploying the implicit assumptions within his writings as well as demanding of his formulations more than is provided by their initial presentation. What is at stake is not the application of Benjamin's thought. Rather what counts is its use.Working with Benjamin engages with the themes central to Benjamin's work with deftness, daring and critical insight while at the same time situating those themes within current academic and cultural debates. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Selected Writings: 1913-1926 Walter Benjamin, 1996 Even as a young man Benjamin possessed astonishing intellectual range and depth. His topics here include poetry and fiction, drama, philosophy, history, religion, love, violence, morality, mythology, painting and much more. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Walter Benjamin David S. Ferris, 1996 This collection of nine essays focuses on those writings of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) on literature and language that have a direct relevance to contemporary literary theory, notably his analyses of myth, violence, history, criticism, literature, and mass media. In an introductory essay, David S. Ferris discusses the problem of history, aura, and resistance in Benjamins later work and in its reception. Samuel Weber, in a reading of Benjamins most influential essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, analyzes the status of the image and technology in Benjamins own terms and in the shadow of Heidegger. Rodolphe Gasché devotes himself to an analysis of Benjamins dissertation on the German Romantics, providing a valuable guide to a major text that has yet to appear in English translation. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Illuminations Walter Benjamin, 1986 Walter Benjamin was one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century. Illuminations includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and Benjamin's theses on the philosophy of history. Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin's life in dark times. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin's continued relevance for our times. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: The Messianic Reduction Peter Fenves, 2011 The Messianic Reduction is the first study of Benjamin's early philosophy that takes into consideration the full range of his work, with particular emphasis on its complex relation to phenomenology, Kant and neo-Kantianism, and certain developments in mathematics. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of Modernity Andrew Benjamin, Charles Rice, 2009 Walter Benjamin is universally recognised as one of the key thinkers of modernity: his writings on politics, language, literature, media, theology and law have had an incalculable influence on contemporary thought. Yet the problem of architecture in and for Benjamin's work remains relatively underexamined. Does Benjamin's project have an architecture and, if so, how does this architecture affect the explicit propositions that he offers us? In what ways are Benjamin's writings centrally caught up with architectural concerns, from the redevelopment of major urban centres to the movements that individuals can make within the new spaces of modern cities? How can Benjamin's theses help us to understand the secret architectures of the present? This volume takes up the architectural challenge in a number of innovative ways, collecting essays by both well-known and emerging scholars on time in cinema, the problem of kitsch, the design of graves and tombs, the orders of road-signs, childhood experience in modern cities, and much more. Engaged, interdisciplinary, bristling with insights, the essays in this collection will constitute an indispensable supplement to the work of Walter Benjamin, as well as providing a guide to some of the obscurities of our own present. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: The Origin of German Tragic Drama Walter Benjamin, 2020-05-05 The Origin of German Tragic Drama is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Benjamin also comments on the engravings of Durer and the theatre of Calderon and Shakespeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history. Georg Lukacs, an opponent of Benjamin's aesthetics, singled out The Origin of German Tragic Drama as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: The Concept of Violence Mark Vorobej, 2016-02-26 This study focuses on conceptual questions that arise when we explore the fundamental aspects of violence. Mark Vorobej teases apart what is meant by the term ‘violence,’ showing that it is a surprisingly complex, unwieldy and highly contested concept. Rather than attempting to develop a fixed definition of violence, Vorobej explores the varied dimensions of the phenomenon of violence and the questions they raise, addressing the criteria of harm, agency, victimhood, instrumentality, and normativity. Vorobej uses this multifaceted understanding of violence to engage with and complicate existing approaches to the essential nature of violence: first, Vorobej explores the liberal tradition that ties violence to the intentional infliction of harm, and that grows out of a concern for protecting individual liberty or autonomy. He goes on to explore a more progressive tradition – one that is usually associated with the political left – that ties violence to the bare occurrence of harm, and that is more concerned with an equitable promotion of human welfare than with the protection of individual liberty. Finally, the book turns to a tradition that operates with a more robust normative characterization of violence as a morally flawed (or forbidden) response to the ontological fact of (human) vulnerability. This nuanced and in-depth study of the nature of violence will be especially relevant to researchers in applied ethics, peace studies and political philosophy. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Walter Benjamin's Other History Beatrice Hanssen, 2000-12-04 In this study, Beatrice Hanssen unlocks the philosophical and ethical dimensions of the Trauerspiel study, showing how its thematics persisted well into the later writings of the thirties. For by introducing the materialistic category of natural history in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Benjamin not only criticized idealistic conceptions of history writing but also expressed an ethico-theological call for another kind of history, one no longer anthropocentric in nature. This profound critique of historical thinking, Hanssen shows, went hand in hand with a radical de-limitation of the human subject, informed by his interest in questions about ethics, the law, and justice. Through an analysis of the seemingly innocuous figures of stones, animals, and angels that are scattered throughout his writings, Hanssen reconstructs the often neglected ethical dimension of his historical thought. In the course of doing so, she not only places Benjamin's work in the context of contemporaries such as Adorno, Cohen, Lukacs, Kafka, Kraus, and Heidegger but also demonstrates the persistence of Benjaminian themes in contemporary philosophy and critical theory. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Foucault, Politics, and Violence Johanna Oksala, 2012 The politicization of ontology -- Foundational violence -- Dangerous animals -- The politics of gendered violence -- Political life -- The management of state violence -- The political ontology of neoliberalism -- Violence and neoliberal governmentality -- Terror and political spirituality. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Aspects of Violence W. Schinkel, 2010-02-03 This book provides a novel approach to the social scientific study of violence. It argues for an 'extended' definition of violence in order to avoid subscribing to commonsensical or state propagated definitions of violence, and pays specific attention to 'autotelic violence' (violence for the sake of itself), as well as to terrorism. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Walter Benjamin Howard Caygill, 2020-10-07 This book analyzes the development of Walter Benjamin's concept of experience in his early writings showing that it emerges from an engagement with visual experience, and in particular the experience of colour. It represents Benjamin as primarily a thinker of the visual field. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: The Value of Violence Benjamin Ginsberg, 2013-09-17 This provocative thesis calls violence the driving force not just of war, but of politics and even social stability. Though violence is commonly deplored, political scientist Ginsberg argues that in many ways it is indispensable, unavoidable, and valuable. Ginsberg sees violence manifested in society in many ways. Law-preserving violence (using Walter Benjamin's phrase) is the chief means by which society preserves social order. Behind the security of a stable society are the blunt instruments of the police, prisons, and the power of the bureaucratic state to coerce and manipulate. Ginsberg also discusses violence as a tool of social change, whether used in outright revolution or as a means of reform in public protests or the threat of insurrection. He notes that even groups committed to nonviolent tactics rely on the violent reactions of their opponents to achieve their ends. And to avoid the threat of unrest, modern states resort to social welfare systems (a prudent use of the carrot instead of the stick). Emphasizing the unavoidability of violence to create major change, Ginsberg points out that few today would trade our current situation for the alternative had our forefathers not resorted to the violence of the American Revolution and the Civil War. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Walter Benjamin Terry Eagleton, 2024-11-26 From our finest radical literary analyst, a classic study of the great philosopher and cultural theorist. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: The Force of Nonviolence Judith Butler, 2020-02-04 Judith Butler’s new book shows how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality. Further, it argues that nonviolence is often misunderstood as a passive practice that emanates from a calm region of the soul, or as an individualist ethical relation to existing forms of power. But, in fact, nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field. An aggressive form of nonviolence accepts that hostility is part of our psychic constitution, but values ambivalence as a way of checking the conversion of aggression into violence. One contemporary challenge to a politics of nonviolence points out that there is a difference of opinion on what counts as violence and nonviolence. The distinction between them can be mobilised in the service of ratifying the state’s monopoly on violence. Considering nonviolence as an ethical problem within a political philosophy requires a critique of individualism as well as an understanding of the psychosocial dimensions of violence. Butler draws upon Foucault, Fanon, Freud, and Benjamin to consider how the interdiction against violence fails to include lives regarded as ungrievable. By considering how ‘racial phantasms’ inform justifications of state and administrative violence, Butler tracks how violence is often attributed to those who are most severely exposed to its lethal effects. The struggle for nonviolence is found in movements for social transformation that reframe the grievability of lives in light of social equality and whose ethical claims follow from an insight into the interdependency of life as the basis of social and political equality. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Logics of Genocide Anne O'Byrne, Martin Shuster, 2020-05-27 This book is concerned with the connection between the formal structure of agency and the formal structure of genocide. The contributors employ philosophical approaches to explore the idea of genocidal violence as a structural element in the world. Do mechanisms or structures in nation-states produce types of national citizens that are more susceptible to genocidal projects? There are powerful arguments within philosophy that in order to be the subjects of our own lives, we must constitute ourselves specifically as national subjects and organize ourselves into nation states. Additionally, there are other genocidal structures of human society that spill beyond historically limited episodes. The chapters in this volume address the significance—moral, ethical, political—of the fact that our very form of agency suggests or requires these structures. The contributors touch on topics including birthright citizenship, contemporary mass incarceration, anti-black racism, and late capitalism. Logics of Genocide will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy, critical theory, genocide studies, Holocaust and Jewish studies, history, and anthropology. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Walter Benjamin Bernd Witte, 1997 Expanded and revised, as well as translated, from the 1985 German edition, details the thought of Benjamin (1892-1940), an all-around European intellectual most active between the wars. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: The Fall of Language Alexander Stern, 2019-04-08 In the most comprehensive account to date of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of language, Alexander Stern explores the nature of meaning by putting Benjamin in dialogue with Wittgenstein. Known largely for his essays on culture, aesthetics, and literature, Walter Benjamin also wrote on the philosophy of language. This early work is famously obscure and considered hopelessly mystical by some. But for Alexander Stern, it contains important insights and anticipates—in some respects surpasses—the later thought of a central figure in the philosophy of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein. As described in The Fall of Language, Benjamin argues that “language as such” is not a means for communicating an extra-linguistic reality but an all-encompassing medium of expression in which everything shares. Borrowing from Johann Georg Hamann’s understanding of God’s creation as communication to humankind, Benjamin writes that all things express meanings, and that human language does not impose meaning on the objective world but translates meanings already extant in it. He describes the transformations that language as such undergoes while making its way into human language as the “fall of language.” This is a fall from “names”—language that responds mimetically to reality—to signs that designate reality arbitrarily. While Benjamin’s approach initially seems alien to Wittgenstein’s, both reject a designative understanding of language; both are preoccupied with Russell’s paradox; and both try to treat what Wittgenstein calls “the bewitchment of our understanding by means of language.” Putting Wittgenstein’s work in dialogue with Benjamin’s sheds light on its historical provenance and on the turn in Wittgenstein’s thought. Although the two philosophies diverge in crucial ways, in their comparison Stern finds paths for understanding what language is and what it does. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Walter Benjamin Walter Benjamin, 2013 A collection of fabricated essays, lectures and interviews, supposedly by Walter Benjamin. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Walter Benjamin Sigrid Weigel, 2013 Arguing that the importance of painting and other visual art for Benjamin's epistemology has yet to be appreciated, Weigel undertakes the first systematic analysis of their significance to his thought. She does so by exploring Benjamin's dialectics of secularization, an approach that allows Benjamin to explore the simultaneous distance from and orientation towards revelation and to deal with the difference and tensions between religious and profane ideas. In the process, Weigel identifies the double reference of 'life' to both nature and to a 'supernatural' sphere as a guiding concept of Benjamin's writings. Sensitive to the notorious difficulty of translating his language, she underscores just how much is lost in translation, particularly with regard to religious connotations. The book thus positions Benjamin with respect to the other European thinkers at the heart of current discussions of sovereignty and martyrdom, of holy and creaturely life. It corrects misreadings, including Agamben's staging of an affinity between Benjamin and Schmitt, and argues for the closeness of Benjamin's work to that of Aby Warburg, with whom Benjamin unsuccessfully attempted an intellectual exchange. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Benjamin’s Ghosts Gerhard Richter, 2002 This book explores the implications for today's critical concerns of the work of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), one of the most powerful and influential thinkers of the 20th century. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism Todd May, 1994-07-22 The political writings of the French poststructuralists have eluded articulation in the broader framework of general political philosophy primarily because of the pervasive tendency to define politics along a single parameter: the balance between state power and individual rights in liberalism and the focus on economic justice as a goal in Marxism. What poststructuralists like Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard offer instead is a political philosophy that can be called tactical: it emphasizes that power emerges from many different sources and operates along many different registers. This approach has roots in traditional anarchist thought, which sees the social and political field as a network of intertwined practices with overlapping political effects. The poststructuralist approach, however, eschews two questionable assumptions of anarchism, that human beings have an (essentially benign) essence and that power is always repressive, never productive. After positioning poststructuralist political thought against the background of Marxism and the traditional anarchism of Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Proudhon, Todd May shows what a tactical political philosophy like anarchism looks like shorn of its humanist commitments—namely, a poststructuralist anarchism. The book concludes with a defense, contra Habermas and Critical Theory, of poststructuralist political thought as having a metaethical structure allowing for positive ethical commitments. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: King Lear Jeffrey Kahan, 2008-04-18 Is King Lear an autonomous text, or a rewrite of the earlier and anonymous play King Leir? Should we refer to Shakespeare’s original quarto when discussing the play, the revised folio text, or the popular composite version, stitched together by Alexander Pope in 1725? What of its stage variations? When turning from page to stage, the critical view on King Lear is skewed by the fact that for almost half of the four hundred years the play has been performed, audiences preferred Naham Tate's optimistic adaptation, in which Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after. When discussing King Lear, the question of what comprises ‘the play’ is both complex and fragmentary. These issues of identity and authenticity across time and across mediums are outlined, debated, and considered critically by the contributors to this volume. Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the leading international contributors to King Lear: New Critical Essays offer major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of King Lear. This book is an up-to-date and comprehensive anthology of textual scholarship, performance research, and critical writing on one of Shakespeare's most important and perplexing tragedies. Contributors Include: R.A. Foakes, Richard Knowles, Tom Clayton, Cynthia Clegg, Edward L. Rocklin, Christy Desmet, Paul Cantor, Robert V. Young, Stanley Stewart and Jean R. Brink |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Walter Benjamin Uwe Steiner, 2012-08-15 Seven decades after his death, German Jewish writer, philosopher, and literary critic Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) continues to fascinate and influence. Here Uwe Steiner offers a comprehensive and sophisticated introduction to the oeuvre of this intriguing theorist. Acknowledged only by a small circle of intellectuals during his lifetime, Benjamin is now a major figure whose work is essential to an understanding of modernity. Steiner traces the development of Benjamin’s thought chronologically through his writings on philosophy, literature, history, politics, the media, art, photography, cinema, technology, and theology. Walter Benjamin reveals the essential coherence of its subject’s thinking while also analyzing the controversial or puzzling facets of Benjamin’s work. That coherence, Steiner contends, can best be appreciated by placing Benjamin in his proper context as a member of the German philosophical tradition and a participant in contemporary intellectual debates. As Benjamin’s writing attracts more and more readers in the English-speaking world, Walter Benjamin will be a valuable guide to this fascinating body of work. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: Futures Richard Rand, Jacques Derrida, 2001 Seven eminent authors, all known for their work in deconstruction, address the millennial issue of our futures, promises, prophecies, projects, and possibilitiesincluding the possibility that there may be no future at all. Speculative in every sense, these essays are marked by a common concern for the act of reading as it is practiced in the work of Jacques Derrida. The contributorsGeoffrey Bennington, Paul Davies, Peter Fenves, Werner Hamacher, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Elisabeth Weber, and Jacques Derrida himselfstudy a range of authors, including Pascal, Kant, Hegel, Leibniz, Marx, Benjamin, Koyré, Arendt, and Lacan. These readings are neither prescriptive, definitive, nor definitional. Each essay seeks out, in the work it studies, those moments that pronounce or propose futures that enable speculation, moments in which the speculator has to make promises. As Derrida says in his essay, Between lying and acting, acting in politics, manifesting one's own freedom through action, transforming facts, anticipating the future, there is something like an essential affinity. . . . The lie is the future. Or, in the words of Werner Hamacher, The futurity of language, its inherent promising capacity, is the groundbut a ground with no solidity whateverfor all present and past experiences, meanings, and figures which could communicate themselves in it. These essays, though arising from deconstruction, point out the ways in which deconstruction has yet to occur, and they do so by scanning the unattainable horizons marked off by thinkers at the forefront of our modern era. |
| critique of violence walter benjamin: On the Concept of History Walter Benjamin, 2016-08-21 On The Concept of History is a politics & social sciences essay written by German philosopher and social science critic Walter Benjamin. On The Concept of History is one of Walter Benjamin's best known, and most controversial works. The politics & social sciences essay is composed of twenty numbered paragraphs in which Benjamin uses poetic and scientific analogies to present a critique of historicism. Walter Benjamin wrote the brief essay shortly before attempting to escape from Vichy France, where French collaborationist government officials were handing over Jewish refugees like Walter Benjamin to the Nazi Gestapo. Walter Benjamin completed On The Concept of History before fleeing to Spain where he unfortunately committed suicide. Benjamin's work is often required textbook reading in various subjects such as humanities, philosophy, and politics & social sciences. |
The Creature Before the Law: Notes on Walter Benjamin’s Critique …
Benjamin begins his argument in Critique of Violence like a good Kantian: two opposing positions, axiomatically consistent in themselves, are shown to have constitutive blindspots, each of which …
and Divine Violence: Walter Benjamin's - JSTOR
In "Critique of Violence" Benjamin invokes the pejorative sense of. ambiguity first to criticize lawmaking violence, which, he argues, in the case of constitutional law, generates ambiguous …
A living constituent power and law as a guideline in Walter …
Walter Benjamin’s 1921 essay “Critique of Violence” (CV) [Zur Kritik der Gewalt (KG)] constitutes an inexhaustible source for reflections on violence and its relationship to law, politics and ethics.
From Critique of Violence to Autotelic Violence: Rereading Walter …
How does Benjamin come to a 'critique of violence', and does he even really come to it? He defines what a critique of violence amounts to right at the beginning of his text: its task is to come to a …
'And yet': Derrida on Benjamin's Divine Violence - JSTOR
Near the end of Benjamin's essay, however, something seems to go awry. To avoid the founding/preserving tautology of violence, Benjamin introduces a supplementary form of force he …
The Interruption of Myth: Walter Benjamin’s Concept of Critique
In ‘Critique of Violence’ he equally searches for ways to break away from the mythical cycle of lawmaking and law- preserving violence. This rupture needs to be of a different order than …
Walter Benjamin and the Actuality of Critique
Walter Benjamin and the Actuality of Critique: Essays on Violence and Experience. By Carlo Salzani. This book first published 2021 . Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Lady Stephenson Library, …
Resistance and social transformation in Walter Benjamin’s “On the ...
Critique of Violence.” From Schmitt’s early admiration to Derrida’s and Agamben’s more recent discussions, the work has consistently served as a philosophical well-spring. 2. With its …
Introduction: Violence and Critique - Monash University
Benjamin offers this as an alternative model for a space of non-violence and justice, making the study of it a counterpoint to his ongo-ing critique of violence in the real world, as exemplified in …
Undoing Legal Violence: Walter Benjamin's and Giorgio Agamben's …
Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence' produces its theory of a 'sphere of pure means' through an attempt to respond to a familiar question: what criteria can we use to decide whether or not violence is …
Theorizing Early Modern History : University of Minnesota
Created Date: 11/2/2012 3:52:28 PM
PO201, 22nd Jan. 2016, Miroslav Imbrisevic Lecture Notes: Walter ...
Lecture Notes: Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) - Critique of Violence (1921) - PO201, 22nd Jan. 2016, Miroslav Imbrisevic THE MEANING OF THE TITLE: The German title of the essay is: "Zur Kritik der …
Evans, B. (2016). angels of history. Theory and Event, 19(1). http ...
To do these questions justice there is a need to begin with Benjamin’s Critique, which identifies two very distinct forms of violence, and whose literal interpretation appears to set them in strategic …
Benjamin, Walter. Critique of Violence, in Reflections: Essays ...
Benjamin wrote Critique of Violence in 1921. Benjamin died by suicide to avoid falling into Nazi hands after the Germans seized France in World War II. He fled as far south as Catalonia before …
Manifest Reason: Walter Benjamin on Violence and Collective Agency
This paper offers a historical and philosophical reconstruction of Walter Benjamin’s account of political reason and direct political action. It shows that Benjamin’s 1921 essay “On the Critique of …
Affirming educative violence: Walter Benjamin on divine violence …
In his ‘Towards the Critique of Violence’, Walter Benjamin introduces the concept of ‘educative violence’ as a contem-porary manifestation of ‘divine violence’. In this paper, we aim to interpret …
Walter Benjamin’s Critique of Violence - nasjournal.org
Using Walter Benjamin’s 1921 essay “Critique of Violence,” the article then describes the obfuscation of an underlying truth: that, far from being a neutral arbiter between its citizens, the …
A Psychoanalytic Critique of Violence
This thesis is a commentary on Walter Benjamin’s 1921 essay “Critique of Violence” through a psychoanalytic lens. I use Freudian theory to expound on Benjamin’s analysis of the structural …
In his “Critique of Violence,” Walter Benjamin raises the quest
In his “Critique of Violence,” Walter Benjamin raises the question: “Is any non-violent resolution of conflict possible?”(2431) His answer is that such a non-violent resolution of conflict is indeed …
Critique of Violence - Arts
The second issue of Colloquy: text theory critique for 2008 includes a themed section dedicated to reflections upon Walter Benjamin™s fiCritique of Violencefl and Jacques Derrida™s fiForce of Lawfl and comes accompanied by its own substantial introduction, which deals with the ideas and authors included in it.
The Creature Before the Law: Notes on Walter Benjamin’s Critique of ...
Benjamin begins his argument in Critique of Violence like a good Kantian: two opposing positions, axiomatically consistent in themselves, are shown to have constitutive blindspots, each of which corresponds to that of the other in a perfect, paradoxical symmetry.
and Divine Violence: Walter Benjamin's - JSTOR
In "Critique of Violence" Benjamin invokes the pejorative sense of. ambiguity first to criticize lawmaking violence, which, he argues, in the case of constitutional law, generates ambiguous frontiers, and second, to connect the ambiguity of law with mythic ambiguity.
A living constituent power and law as a guideline in Walter Benjamin…
Walter Benjamin’s 1921 essay “Critique of Violence” (CV) [Zur Kritik der Gewalt (KG)] constitutes an inexhaustible source for reflections on violence and its relationship to law, politics and ethics.
From Critique of Violence to Autotelic Violence: Rereading Walter Benjamin
How does Benjamin come to a 'critique of violence', and does he even really come to it? He defines what a critique of violence amounts to right at the beginning of his text: its task is to come to a representation of the rela tion between violence and law and justice. For, he …
'And yet': Derrida on Benjamin's Divine Violence - JSTOR
Near the end of Benjamin's essay, however, something seems to go awry. To avoid the founding/preserving tautology of violence, Benjamin introduces a supplementary form of force he calls "mythical violence," which, although he identifies it as a mani-festation of the gods' existence rather than a traditional ends-seeking use of force, he
The Interruption of Myth: Walter Benjamin’s Concept of Critique
In ‘Critique of Violence’ he equally searches for ways to break away from the mythical cycle of lawmaking and law- preserving violence. This rupture needs to be of a different order than lawmaking or law- preserving violence – not the means to an end, but, as Benjamin says, ‘pure means’ (SW 1, 245).
Walter Benjamin and the Actuality of Critique
Walter Benjamin and the Actuality of Critique: Essays on Violence and Experience. By Carlo Salzani. This book first published 2021 . Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Resistance and social transformation in Walter Benjamin’s “On …
Critique of Violence.” From Schmitt’s early admiration to Derrida’s and Agamben’s more recent discussions, the work has consistently served as a philosophical well-spring. 2. With its historically anchored but speculative account of violence, along with its rich, suggestive
Introduction: Violence and Critique - Monash University
Benjamin offers this as an alternative model for a space of non-violence and justice, making the study of it a counterpoint to his ongo-ing critique of violence in the real world, as exemplified in Critique of Vio-lence.
Undoing Legal Violence: Walter Benjamin's and Giorgio …
Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence' produces its theory of a 'sphere of pure means' through an attempt to respond to a familiar question: what criteria can we use to decide whether or not violence is justifiable?
Theorizing Early Modern History : University of Minnesota
Created Date: 11/2/2012 3:52:28 PM
PO201, 22nd Jan. 2016, Miroslav Imbrisevic Lecture Notes: Walter ...
Lecture Notes: Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) - Critique of Violence (1921) - PO201, 22nd Jan. 2016, Miroslav Imbrisevic THE MEANING OF THE TITLE: The German title of the essay is: "Zur Kritik der Gewalt" [Towards a Critique of Violence]. Note that the term "Gewalt" means all of this: state power, authorised power, justified coercion - and violence.
Evans, B. (2016). angels of history. Theory and Event, 19(1). http ...
To do these questions justice there is a need to begin with Benjamin’s Critique, which identifies two very distinct forms of violence, and whose literal interpretation appears to set them in strategic opposition. What Benjamin terms “Mythical Violence” relates
Benjamin, Walter. Critique of Violence, in Reflections: Essays ...
Benjamin wrote Critique of Violence in 1921. Benjamin died by suicide to avoid falling into Nazi hands after the Germans seized France in World War II. He fled as far south as Catalonia before being detained, where he ended his captivity with an …
Manifest Reason: Walter Benjamin on Violence and Collective …
This paper offers a historical and philosophical reconstruction of Walter Benjamin’s account of political reason and direct political action. It shows that Benjamin’s 1921 essay “On the Critique of Violence” critically responds to Max Weber’s account of politics and institutionally mediated political action (in Politics as a Vocation ...
Affirming educative violence: Walter Benjamin on divine violence …
In his ‘Towards the Critique of Violence’, Walter Benjamin introduces the concept of ‘educative violence’ as a contem-porary manifestation of ‘divine violence’. In this paper, we aim to interpret ‘educative violence’ by examining other instances where the young Benjamin addresses pedagogical issues.
Walter Benjamin’s Critique of Violence - nasjournal.org
Using Walter Benjamin’s 1921 essay “Critique of Violence,” the article then describes the obfuscation of an underlying truth: that, far from being a neutral arbiter between its citizens, the state is the primary inscription of violence in the body politic.
A Psychoanalytic Critique of Violence
This thesis is a commentary on Walter Benjamin’s 1921 essay “Critique of Violence” through a psychoanalytic lens. I use Freudian theory to expound on Benjamin’s analysis of the structural relation between violence, justice, and the law, uncovering the unconscious logic of enjoyment and transgression that sustains the law.
In his “Critique of Violence,” Walter Benjamin raises the quest
In his “Critique of Violence,” Walter Benjamin raises the question: “Is any non-violent resolution of conflict possible?”(2431) His answer is that such a non-violent resolution of conflict is indeed possible in what he calls “relationships among private persons,” in courtesy, sympathy and trust: “there is a sphere of human agreement that is non-...
