Research, Exchange and Visions

The International Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft is dedicated to studying and supporting the creative and visionary potential of Walter Benjamin’s works, as well as his unique perspective on the development of modern thought.

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Walter Benjamin

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Tidings

Walter Benjamins 'Treue' – true to Walter Benjamin?

International Conference of the International Walter Benjamin Association and the Internationale Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft in Antwerp from 14. to 17. September 2009

The afterlife of Benjamin’s writings is remarkable. His texts have kept their relevance even after the heated controversies about their meaning and ideological position have subsided. At this point it seems fair to ask whether the question of how to do justice to Benjamin is still, in some form, alive. Or has the time now come to describe the polarizing forces of his texts in terms of the divergent orientations resulting from them in previous decades? “Fidelity” – Treue - is undoubtedly an over-weighty and uncanny „German“ word, but that is precisely why it captures the paradoxes inherent in the process of transmitting a thought that resists being turned into a tradition. These paradoxes have given rise to indeterminacies that often preclude a clear distinction between fidelity and betrayal.

Benjamin was as familiar with the dialectics of these processes of transmission and reception as he was with the ironies of fidelity. His theory of criticism as well as his critical practice both hinge on the paradoxical impetus of preserving in order to destroy and vice versa. Benjamin remained true to his topics, his intellectual orientation and even his formulations while integrating them each time anew into the changing constellations of his thinking. His fidelity of literalness in translation, the „faithfulness to things that have crossed our lives – an afternoon, a tree, patches of sun on the wallpaper“ – his practice of collecting and preserving, but also his habit of contemplation and attentiveness and its „hopeless fidelity to creaturely life” (hoffnungslosen Treue zum Kreatürlichen) characterize his theoretical attitude no less than construction, destruction and mortification.

Given the continuing interest in Benjamin und the ever greater differentiation of the research on his work, his faithfulness to the material at hand is as worthy of scholarly attention as it is imperative to reflect on the relation one entertains to one’s own readings of his work. Does the priority today lie in preserving or popularizing Benjamin’s texts? Should one carry his thinking further, historicize it or project it onto the present and “apply” it? Exploring Benjamin’s fidelity and the fidelity to Benjamin implies more than the mere objective search for \the „appropriate“ reading of his work. It challenges the very emplacement and presence of the reader and forces one to reflect on the unique attraction and resistance of one’s own position towards Benjamin.

The sections are:

Section 1: Legends of Benjamin (Detlev Schöttker)

Section 2: Materiality of Writing (Davide Giuriato)

Section 3: Faithful to Baroque (Jane Newman)

Section 4: Knowlegde of Art (Sabine Flach)

Section 5: True to the Last Letter (Bettine Menke)

Section 6: Treacherous Faithfulness to Citation (Gerhard Richter)

Section 7 : Legacy and Writing (Burhardt Lindner)

Section 8 : Fidelity, Politics and Fetishism (Jeanne Marie Gagnebin)

Section9 : Popular Benjamin (Justus Fetscher)

Section 10 : Correspondences (Momme Brodersen)

Section11 : Perfidious History (Paul North)

Section 12 : Translations and Transformations (Karl Solibakke)

Section 13 : Religion, Theology and Commemeoration (Vivian Liska, Daniel Weidner)

For a detailed description see: http://benjamin-association.de/german/tagung.htm#english%20version

International Conference "Benjamin’s Frontiers" in Davis CA from 12 to 14 November 2008

conducted by a consortium comprised of the University of California at Davis, the Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp and the Goethe Institute (Los Angeles)

1. Benjamin Beyond Europe

Although Benjamin is considered to be a Eurocentric author, who resisted leaving the continent until it was too late, he has become a global figure with an international following. The conference intends to investigate Benjamin’s influence outside of Europe. Above all, we expect to explore and document the response to the author’s works in North and South America as well as in the Asian-Pacific area.

2. Transcriptions: Benjamin, the Media and Visual Culture

Since the 1970s Benjamin’s legacy has provided significant impulses for the development of media theory and the history of new media. While his views on the written word and literature form the central axis of his theoretical models, he also provides valuable perspectives on the development of the media and the implications they have for a global network. These perspectives should be reconsidered with regard to their relevance for media theory in the 21st century.

Similarly, Benjamin’s writings have been a source of inspiration for the visual arts during the latter third of the 20th century. The importance of his aesthetics of images and the significance his theoretical approach has for the visual arts assume a central role in the conference agenda.

3. Transforming the Present, Models for the 21st Century

The response to Benjamin’s works is often characterized by a number of divergent and contradictory paradigms: Benjamin … the Marxist, the Jewish mystic, the philosopher of language, the media theoretician, etc. The issues to be addressed here involve the frontiers of intellectual thought that can be traced back to Benjamin’s works and that confirm his influence on global cultural models at the outset of the 21st century.

Conference agenda Davis

For further information see the homepage from the University of California, Davis

http://langlit.ucdavis.edu/home/grichter/.

Who killed Walter Benjamin... David Mauas' documentary film about the last hours in the life of Walter Benjamin

Synopsis

In September 1940, after seven years of exile, Walter Benjamin crosses the Pyrenees in a desperate attempt to escape the Nazis.

According to the official version, Walter Benjamin did make it across the French-Spanish border successfully. But when he arrived in the Catalan town of Portbou, a sudden change in legislation impeded his entry into Spain and he was obliged to spend the night at a local hotel under the close vigilance of three guards, whose orders were to deport him the following morning.

In utter despair, Benjamin took his own life, swallowing and overdose of morphine. The local doctor, however, declared it a natural death and Benjamin was given a Catholic burial in the municipal cemetery, under a wrong name.

Did the doctor conceal some hidden cause of Benjamin’s death? Was there really a change of legislation? Was Walter Benjamin aware that Portbou was a pro-Franco town virtually occupied by the Nazis?

WHO KILLED WALTER BENJAMIN… reaches for answers among the suspicious circumstances of his death. Giving at the same time, a portrait of a frontier town anchored between two fronts, constant witness of evasion, persecution and false hopes.

www.whokilledwalterbenjamin.com