Walter Benjamin's Berliner Kindheit um 1900: Longing, Enchantment and the Material Subject

The aim of this paper is to offer an interpretation of Walter Benjamin's Berliner Kindheit um 1900 (Berlin Childhood Around 1900). Exploring the style and the content of Benjamin's text, both of which portray the world of his childhood as a place of enchantment, I suggest that Benjamin cre...

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Published inLife writing Vol. 15; no. 3; pp. 369 - 383
Main Author Hamilton, Christopher
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 03.07.2018
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
agency
Agency theory
Autobiographical literature
Benjamin, Walter (1892-1940)
Children & youth
Enchantment
German literature
materiality
redemption
self
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Summary:The aim of this paper is to offer an interpretation of Walter Benjamin's Berliner Kindheit um 1900 (Berlin Childhood Around 1900). Exploring the style and the content of Benjamin's text, both of which portray the world of his childhood as a place of enchantment, I suggest that Benjamin creates in this text a conception of the self as displaced into the surrounding material world. I argue that, in doing this, Benjamin seeks to explore the materiality of the subject and erase its subjection to time, creating a self that is constituted only by space. I seek to show that this is part of Benjamin's strategy of exploring a decentred conception of agency. In all this, I suggest, Benjamin converts his own childhood into a work of art in which there is a longing for redemption that cannot finally be achieved but that expresses an important understanding of the truth of a human life.
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ISSN:1448-4528
1751-2964
DOI:10.1080/14484528.2018.1475012