Syllabus_Walter Benjamin as a Constellation_Graduate Seminar_CAU (Spring 2014) (original) (raw)

2014

[*Note: As my dissertation title () amply suggests, this course was not only a way to acknowledge my debt to him, but also an attempt to forge my own pathway out of Benjaminian labyrinth. Namley, if I get to teach another class on him, I will perhaps revamp it anew from start to end. Till then, this will suffice to show one of my trajectories] “[T]he unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be.” This (in)famous definition of the notion of 'aura', perhaps, couldn't be more applicable to Walter Benjamin himself. Perpetually referenced, and still easily cited, arguably more than any figures in any field, he often seems inaccessible to the point where it is difficult, if not impossible to answer the question, 'Who is Benjamin?' This difficulty, however, may have less to do with his proximity to the impenetrable 'Castle' than to do with our waiting for him way too long as if 'Before the Law.' By carefully re(re)ading innumerable 'constellations' he crafts with Kafka, Brecht, Kracauer, Schmitt, and Baudelaire, or, on a different register, cinema, art history, politics, theology and history, we will strive to give names to those portals and pathways, some of which he could not manage to give proper names, whenever necessary. At the end of this journey, Benjamin as a constellation may shine in close proximity or in proportion to the darkness of these desolate times.