Skip to main content Skip to Search Box

Benjamin, Walter

From Encyclopedia of Urban Studies
The German-Jewish writer Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is now widely regarded as one of the most original and insightful cultural theorists of the twentieth century. An associate of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research (the Frankfurt School), and close friend of the critical theorist Theodor Adorno, the Judaic scholar Gershom Scholem, and the playwright Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin developed a highly idiosyncratic critical and redemptive theoretical approach to cultural phenomena drawn from, and interweaving in complex and enigmatic ways, Marxism, Judaic mysticism and messianism, and modernism (in particular, surrealism). Principally a literary theorist, his attention was nevertheless drawn to an extremely diverse range of cultural forms, media, and practices: film and photography; architecture, monuments, and urban space; commodities and fashions; and children's toys and fairytales. The significance of his characteristically fragmentary and disparate writings on the theme of the city…
240 results

Full text Article Walter Benjamin

From Great Thinkers A-Z
On 27 September 1940, Walter Benjamin, Jew, Marxist, his flight from the Gestapo blocked at Port Bou on the Franco-Spanish border, took a lethal dose of morphine. Five years earlier he had published the essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. Forty-two years after his death, …
| 858 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Benjamin, Walter (1892-1940)

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
Although not a sociologist and initially recognized more as literary critic and philosopher, the German theorist Walter Benjamin has had a significant impact upon aspects of sociology in recent decades. Perhaps most widespread has been the debate upon and extension of his reflections on “the work of…
| 390 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Benjamin, Walter

From The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology
A social theorist and philosopher born in Germany, Benjamin is usually associated with the FRANKFURT SCHOOL and particularly with ADORNO . Although his work is diverse (and largely published in essay form), much of it is concerned with the analysis of culture. It is heavily influenced by Marxism in…
| 108 words
Key concepts:
German philosopher and cultural critic, a member of the circle of philosophers, social scientists and cultural critics known as the Frankfurt School . While his various texts do not coalesce into a consistent theoretical approach, Benjamin's unique body of work has had an important effect on…
| 204 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article BED

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
Books and bimbos can be taken to bed. BENJAMIN, Walter One-way street , 1928. Early to bed and early to rise,Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. FRANKLIN, Benjamin Poor Richard’s Almanac (1758). …
| 249 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
| 78 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article HAPPINESS

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
Smile, it confuses people. ADAMS, Scott The Dilbert Principle . One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy. ARISTOTLE Nicomachean Ethics . …
| 741 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article THE FUTURE

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
Always remember that the future comes one day at a time. ACHESON, Dean Sketches From Life . The future is ... black. BALDWIN, James The Observer , 1963. He who asks fortune-tellers the future unw... …
| 633 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article AESTHETIC MATERIALISM

From Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms
The idea that all hitherto existing materialisms have been fundamentally ‘aesthetic’ in conception and inspiration, determined by the videological categories of Western epistemology (thus the disembodied and ‘anemic’ character of philosophical materialism from the Enlightenment philosophes to the…
| 361 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Avant-Garde

From Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice
The phrase avant-garde derives from the French “advance guard,” “vanguard,” or, literally, “fore-guard,” and is intended to refer to experimental and innovative people or works, such as works of art, and people involved in culture production, the arts, and political theory. There are avant-garde…
| 632 words
Key concepts:
Mind Map

Stack overflow
More Library Resources