Benjamin's -abilities

by Samuel Weber, Walter Benjamin

Overview

In this book, Weber, a leading theorist on literature and media, reveals a new and productive aspect of Benjamin's thought by focusing the critical suffix "-ability" that Benjamin so tellingly deploys in his work. The result is an illuminating perspective on Benjamin's thought by way of his language - and one of the most penetrating and comprehensive accounts of Benjamin's work ever written.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674033955
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	376
File size:	557 KB

About the Author

Samuel Weber is Avalon Foundation Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University.

Table of Contents

Contents List of Abbreviations vii I. Benjamin's -abilities 1. Introduction 1 2. Prehistory: Kant, Holderlin-et cetera 3. Criticizability-Calculability 4. Impart-ability: Language as Medium 5. Translatability I: Following (Nachfolge) 6. Translatability II: Afterlife 7. Citability-of Gesture 8. Ability and Style 9. An Afterlife of -abilities: Derrida II. Legibilities 10. Genealogy of Modernity: History, Myth, and Allegory in Benjamin's Origin of the German Mourning Play 11. Awakening 12. Taking Exception to Decision: Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt 13. Violence and Gesture: Agamben Reading Benjamin Reading Kafka Reading Cervantes .o.o. 14. Song and Glance: Walter Benjamin's Secret Names (zugewandt- unverwandt) 15. "Streets, Squares, Theaters": A City on the Move-Walter Benjamin's Paris 16. God and the Devil-in Detail 17. Closing the Net: "Capitalism as Religion" (Benjamin) 18. The Ring as Trauerspiel: Reading Wagner with Benjamin and Derrida 19. Reading Benjamin 20. "Seagulls" Appendix. Walter Benjamin's "Seagulls": A Translation Notes Acknowledgments Index

Editorial Reviews

Not only the best read of 2008 but, with a shelf full of works on Walter Benjamin, the best book on him I've ever read.

Artforum - Rosalind Krauss

In Benjamin's –abilities, Samuel Weber takes an innovative approach to Walter Benjamin's work. In contrast to the burgeoning secondary literature on Benjamin devoted to broad themes (his "messianism," his "Marxism," etc.), Weber, who has achieved academic prominence with scholarship on the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, deconstruction and media culture, opens up a fertile avenue of interpretation by paying close attention to a stylistic idiosyncrasy running through Benjamin's oeuvre...[Weber] deftly navigates this labyrinth of interpretations, exhibiting a keen sense of Benjamin's singularly elusive style of thinking and writing.

Times Literary Supplement - Ross Benjamin

Because no single methodology could account for all the textual maneuvers and figurations with which Benjamin saturates his variegated writings, a new book on Benjamin must also offer an entirely new way of seeing and reading-- a tall order. Benjamin's -abilities is just such a book.
Sam Weber has long been one of the most significant and original thinkers on the international scene. This book, perhaps Weber's magnum opus, will be of great interest not only to scholars of Benjamin but also to a wide community of readers in the humanities and beyond.

Gerhard Richter

Benjamin's -abilities is a landmark work in the study of Walter Benjamin and in all of the many fields in which Benjamin's work has become indispensable. This book marks the culmination of the work of one of the most influential and admired critics writing today, whose work has been profoundly involved in and shaped by an innovative engagement with Benjamin.

Kevin McLaughlin

Not only the best read of 2008 but, with a shelf full of works on Walter Benjamin, the best book on him I've ever read.
— Rosalind Krauss

Artforum

In Benjamin's –abilities, Samuel Weber takes an innovative approach to Walter Benjamin's work. In contrast to the burgeoning secondary literature on Benjamin devoted to broad themes (his "messianism," his "Marxism," etc.), Weber, who has achieved academic prominence with scholarship on the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, deconstruction and media culture, opens up a fertile avenue of interpretation by paying close attention to a stylistic idiosyncrasy running through Benjamin's oeuvre...[Weber] deftly navigates this labyrinth of interpretations, exhibiting a keen sense of Benjamin's singularly elusive style of thinking and writing.
— Ross Benjamin

Times Literary Supplement