Top

Published in:

2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

17. What Does It Mean To Be Critical? On Literary and Social Critique in Walter Benjamin

Author : Nathan Ross

Published in: The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

If critical theory is to claim its place in philosophy as not merely an attitude or a set of alliances, but also as a coherent philosophy, then what is necessary most of all is to specify the nature of what it means to be critical in a manner that is both methodically concrete and original to this movement. This chapter proposes turning to the early and middle writings of Walter Benjamin in order to give such a formulation. The concept of critique or criticism (Kritik) points toward the inner core of early critical theory’s development because it cuts across two of the central concerns of the first generation of critical theory: art criticism and social critique. Walter Benjamin’s work has an especially strong significance in helping us understand the entwinement between these two dimensions of the concept of critique. This is because, the author argues, critique is ultimately for Benjamin an epistemological category that cuts across both the reception of art and the participation in political life.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

previous chapter Aesthetics as the Precondition for Revolution

next chapter Theory and Class Consciousness

In German, there is merely one word that can be translated as either critique or criticism: Kritik. In light of this, I employ these two terms as synonyms. The term Kritik gains much of its meaning in German philosophy from the way in which successive generations of philosophers redefine the same term in order to combine older resonances with new ones.

I am indebted to the work of Lijster (2012). The present chapter represents, in some sense, an effort to combine my own prior approach to this problem with some insights gained from Lijster. For my prior approach, see Ross (2015b). Specifically, I combine reading of critique as directed against mythology with my own prior argument that the concept of critique is inherently set up in opposition to instrumental and capitalist modes of thought.

Benjamin introduces the notion of monad in his arguably most important methodological text, the ‘Epistemo-critical Prologue’ to Benjamin (2009). The term is also adopted by Adorno in Aesthetic Theory as a way to examine the relation between artwork and social whole. See Adorno (2003a; 15).

As Rebecca Comay writes, Benjamin sees a connection between the modern concept of criticism and the commodification of objects of experience: ‘The Enlightenment project of evaluative critique had drawn its secret energy from the field of commodity exchange.’ (Comay 2004; 140) Benjamin thus understands the Romantic concept of critique as a pushback against this kind of commodification.

This logic of dissolution, progression and sublation between art forms in the Romantic theory places them in a kind of unacknowledged proximity to the aesthetic philosophy of Hegel, who also thought of all other arts as ‘sublated’ into poetry, and poetry as sublated into prose (Comay 2004; 142).

For a discussion of how this dissertation shaped Benjamin’s subsequent work, see Eiland and Jennings (2014; 108). In addition, I go into more depth on this in Ross (2015b). See also Comay (2004; 140).

He also makes a similar formulation in a letter to Christian Range from around the same time: ‘My definition is: criticism is the mortification of the works. Not the intensification of consciousness in them (that is Romantic!), but their colonization by knowledge’ (Benjamin 2004; 389).

A work might be seen as ‘uncriticizable’ in the sense of the cliché phrase: poetry is what cannot be translated. That is, art is construed as the abyss of critical insight, in which any attempt to interpret results in detracting from the ineffable richness of the work. Benjamin associates this view of art and the art critic with Goethe, whom he contrasts to the Romantics view that works exist for the sake of criticism (Benjamin 2004; 179).

As Eiland and Jennings write: ‘The task of criticism is the differentiation of truth from myth, or rather the purging and clarification of the mythic element so as to purge the true’ (Eiland and Jennings 2014; 166).

For a classic study of this relationship, see Buck-Morss (1977). And for a series of essays on aspects of this relationship, see Ross (2015c).

Adorno, Theodor W. 2003a. Ästhetische Theorie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

———. 2003b. Noten zur Literatur. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Baeza, Natalia. 2015. Adorno’s critical theory at the crossroads of Hegel and Benjamin. In The aesthetic ground of critical theory, ed. Nathan Ross. Latham: Rowman and Littlefield.

Benjamin, Walter. 2003. Selected writings volume 4, 1938–1940. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

———. 2004. Selected writings volume 1, 1913–1926. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

———. 2005. Selected writings volume 2, 1931–1934. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

———. 2006. Selected writings volume 3, 1935–1938. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

———. 2009. The Origin of German tragic drama. London: Verso.

Buck-Morss, Susan. 1977. The origin of negative dialectics. New York: The Free Press.

Comay, Rebecca. 2004. Benjamin and the ambiguities of romanticism. In The Cambridge companion to Walter Benjamin, ed. David Ferris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eiland, Howard, and Michael Jennings. 2014. Walter Benjamin: A critical life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Hanssen, Beatrice. 2000. Critique of violence: Between post-structuralism and critical theory. New York: Continuum.

Lijster, Thijs. 2012. The interruption of myth: Walter Benjamin’s concept of critique. In Conceptions of critique in modern and contemporary philosophy, ed. Karin de Boer, and Ruth Sonderberger. London: Palgrave.

Mendietta, Eduardo. 2015. The jargon of ontology and the critique of language: Benjamin, Adorno and philosophy’s motherless tongue. In The Aesthetic Ground of Critical Theory, ed. Nathan Ross. Latham: Rowman and Littlefield.

Ross, Allison. 2015a. Walter Benjamin’s critique of the category of aesthetic form. In The aesthetic ground of critical theory, ed. Nathan Ross. Latham: Rowman and Littlefield.

Ross, Nathan. 2015b. On the concept of critique and the critique of capitalism in Walter Benjamin. Epoché 20(1): 233–253.CrossRef

——— (ed). 2015c. The aesthetic ground of critical theory. Latham: Rowman and Littlefield.

Weber, Samuel. 2010. Benjamin’s –Abilities. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Title: What Does It Mean To Be Critical? On Literary and Social Critique in Walter Benjamin
Author: Nathan Ross
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US
Book: The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55800-8

Electronic ISBN: 978-1-137-55801-5

Copyright Year: 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_17