Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life: [Book Review]

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Abstract

The authors' skill in creating such a powerful narrative does not fall prey to one of the major pitfalls of biography-it avoids being a mere sequence of events or a "kaleidoscopic" narrative that would smooth out Benjamin's nuances and contradictions into a reductively consistent account. eiland and Jennings emphasize Benjamin's unique intellectual constitution, which they describe as "a philosophizing fully attuned to the modernist imperative of experiment, that is, the recognition that [...] philosophy is always, so to speak, on the threshold and at stake" (7). the presentation of his conceptual improvisations, together with his psychological complexities and the depth of his intellectual work, has yielded a multifarious, striking portrait of Benjamin's fascinating life and work.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)250-252
Number of pages3
JournalThe German Quarterly
Volume89
Issue number2
StatePublished - 2016

Keywords

  • Linguistics
  • Philosophy
  • Critical
  • Walter Benjamin
  • Modernism
  • Narrative
  • Experiment
  • Biographies
  • Books
  • Personality
  • Narratives

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