The Actuality of Walter Benjamin

Although it is true that Benjamin?s place in the canon of 20th century critical theorists is now established, the boundaries of his work still resist classification and demarcation. His writings, including the best known collection, Illuminations, remain an uneasy but thrilling combination of the actual and the mystical, of Marxism and messianic utopianism.

This collection shows how extraordinarily substantial were the theoretical footholds which Walter Benjamin supplied: Irving Wohlfarth takes up the vexed question of historical understanding versus historicism in his essay The Actuality Of Walter Benjamin. Also included are essays on Benjamin and the sources of Judaism; feminism and cultural analysis; images in Benjamin?s novels and other writings