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A review by a_novel_femme
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin
5.0
the two most widely read pieces from this collection are probably "the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" and "theses on the philosophy of history," both of which are, in my opinion, absolutely necessary works to scrutinize for any student of cultural studies, be it in the guise of film, literature, history, and whathaveyou.
benjamins prose is lean; as with many theorists, there are parts that will leave you scratching your head and reading over and over again to make sense of his crazy, confusing symbolisms. yet what never falters is his precise parsing out, at least in those two essays, of how modernity affects the production of a cultural memory and/or forgetting, and specifically how memories are made into histories on a collective, state level.
this is not a fun read, per se. it is not a book youll want to read on a lazy sunday afternoon after eating brunch with a group of friends and cackling about the stupidity that went down on the dancefloor the night before (and those brunches are always the most fun!). but it is a book to be read when writing papers, analyzing films, or simply thinking big thoughts.
benjamins prose is lean; as with many theorists, there are parts that will leave you scratching your head and reading over and over again to make sense of his crazy, confusing symbolisms. yet what never falters is his precise parsing out, at least in those two essays, of how modernity affects the production of a cultural memory and/or forgetting, and specifically how memories are made into histories on a collective, state level.
this is not a fun read, per se. it is not a book youll want to read on a lazy sunday afternoon after eating brunch with a group of friends and cackling about the stupidity that went down on the dancefloor the night before (and those brunches are always the most fun!). but it is a book to be read when writing papers, analyzing films, or simply thinking big thoughts.