BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//Grails iCalendar plugin//NONSGML Grails iCalendar plugin//EN VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260930T135039Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20140319T120000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20140319T140000 SUMMARY:Walter Benjamin's Concept of the Image UID:20261003T210330Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@fe80:0:0:0:10f5:e0ff:fe86:30ee%3 TZID:Australia/Sydney LOCATION:Bundoora\, Australia DESCRIPTION:

This paper defends the thesis that there are major shifts across Benjamin&rsquo\;s writing in his treatment of the topic of the image. There is a loose consensus in major scholarly works on Benjamin that he had always been committed to the project of &lsquo\;thinking in images&rsquo\; (e.g.\, Missac). This vague project is often articulated in terms of the &lsquo\;influence&rsquo\; on him of the Goethean notion of the Ur-phenomenon in which a diagnostic value is identified in small things in respect of the larger constellations to which they belong (e.g.\, Arendt). I argue that such positions are not sufficiently attentive to the shifts across Benjamin&rsquo\;s writing on this topic\, nor to the import of his polemical remarks on the notion of the Ur-phenomenon. Using Kant&rsquo\;s treatment of the topic of sensuous form as a comparative reference\, I argue that Benjamin&rsquo\;s thinking on the image undergoes a major shift between his 1924 essay on &lsquo\;Goethe&rsquo\;s Elective Affinities&rsquo\; and the work he was doing from 1927 up until his death in 1940 on The Arcades Project. The two periods of Benjamin&rsquo\;s writing share a conception of the image as a potent force able to provide a frame of existential meaning. In the earlier period this function attracts Benjamin&rsquo\;s critical attention\, whereas in the later he mobilises it for revolutionary outcomes. The paper gives a critical treatment of the shifting assumptions in Benjamin&rsquo\;s writing about the image that warrant this altered view.

ORGANIZER: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR