Radio Benjamin

Walter Benjamin was fascinated by the impact of new technology on culture, an interest that extended beyond his renowned critical essays. From 1927 to ’33, he wrote and presented something in the region of eighty broadcasts using the new medium of radio. Radio Benjamin gathers the surviving transcripts, which appear here for the first time in English. This eclectic collection demonstrates the range of Benjamin’s thinking and his enthusiasm for popular sensibilities. His celebrated “Enlightenment for Children” youth programs, his plays, readings, book reviews, and fiction reveal Benjamin in a creative, rather than critical, mode. They flesh out ideas elucidated in his essays, some of which are also represented here, where they cover topics as varied as getting a raise and the history of natural disasters, subjects chosen for broad appeal and examined with passion and acuity. Delightful and incisive, this is Walter Benjamin channeling his sophisticated thinking to a wide audience, allowing us to benefit from a new voice for one of the twentieth century’s most respected thinkers.

Walter Benjamin was fascinated by the impact of new technology on culture, an interest that extended beyond his renowned critical essays. From 1927 to ’33, he wrote and presented something in the region of eighty broadcasts using the new medium of radio. Radio Benjamin gathers the surviving transcripts, which appear here for the first time in English. This eclectic collection demonstrates the range of Benjamin’s thinking and his enthusiasm for popular sensibilities. His celebrated “Enlightenment for Children” youth programs, his plays, readings, book reviews, and fiction reveal Benjamin in a creative, rather than critical, mode. They flesh out ideas elucidated in his essays, some of which are also represented here, where they cover topics as varied as getting a raise and the history of natural disasters, subjects chosen for broad appeal and examined with passion and acuity. Delightful and incisive, this is Walter Benjamin channeling his sophisticated thinking to a wide audience, allowing us to benefit from a new voice for one of the twentieth century’s most respected thinkers.

In Walter Benjamin for Children, readers will encounter a host of intertextual surprises: an evocation of the flooding of the Mississippi informed by the argument of "The Task of the Translator"; a discussion of scams in stamp-collecting that turns into "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"; a tale of bootlegging in the American South that converges with the best of Benjamin's forays into fiction. Mehlman superimposes a dual series of texts dealing with catastrophe, on the one hand, and fraud, on the other, and allows it to resonate with the false-messianic theology of Sabbatianism as it came to focus the attention and enthusiasm of Benjamin's friend Gershom Scholem during the same years. The radio scripts for children offer an unexpected byway, on the eve of apocalypse, into Benjamin's messianic preoccupations.

Mime Radio was performed and written orally by French artist Benjamin Seror at a series of events over a two-year period, then transcribed and edited into a novel. The story revolves around a cast of eccentric characters, who meet at the Tiki Coco, a bar in Los Angeles that holds "Challenging Reality Open Mic" nights for amateur inventors and performers. Eventually, the protagonists get caught up in trying to help Marsyas, a character from ancient Greek mythology that lost his body after being defeated in a music contest against the god Apollo, to recover his voice, his very ancient voice. Unbeknownst to them, this recovery unleashes a disaster... Mime Radio is a novel about how language and perception can be one and the same. Copublished with Bat, Adéra, CRAC Alsace, Kunstverein

A comprehensive study of education in the writings of Walter Benjamin. Walter Benjamin’s Antifascist Education is the first comprehensive analysis of educational themes across the entirety of the critical theorist’s diverse writings. Starting with Benjamin’s early reflections on teaching and learning, Tyson E. Lewis argues that the aesthetic and cultural forms to which Benjamin so often turned—namely, radio broadcasts, children’s theatrical productions, collections, cityscapes, public cinemas, and word games—swell with educational potentialities. What emerges from Lewis’s reading is a constellational curriculum composed of minor practices such as poor teaching, absentminded learning, and nondurational studying. This curriculum carries political significance, offering an antidote to past and present forms of fascist manipulation, hardness, and coldness. Walter Benjamin’s Antifascist Education is a testimony to Benjamin’s belief that “everyone is an educator and everyone needs to be educated and everything is education.” “Taking up the multifaceted Benjaminian conception of educational life—a life of studious straying and self-reflection at once critical and mimetic—and following its untoward trajectory in object areas as diverse as slapstick film, riddles, cityscapes, and children’s theater, this subtle, imaginative, and comprehensive analysis speaks directly to the moral and spiritual crisis of the present.” — Howard Eiland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), one of the most original and perceptive thinkers of the twentieth century, offered a unique insight into the profound impact of the media on modern society. Jaeho Kang’s book offers a lucid introduction to Benjamin’s theory of the media and its continuing relevance today. The book provides a systematic and close reading of Benjamin’s critical and provocative writings on the intersection between media - from print to electronic - and modern experience, with reference to the information industry, the urban spectacle, and the aesthetic politics. Bringing Benjamin’s thought into a critical constellation with contemporary media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard, the book helps students understand the implications of Benjamin’s work for media studies today and how they can apply his distinctive ideas to contemporary media culture. Kang’s book leads to a fresh appreciation of Benjamin’s work and new insight into critical theoretical approaches to media. The book will be of particular interest to students and researchers not only in media and communication studies but also in cultural studies, film studies and social theory, who are seeking a readable overview of Benjamin’s rich yet complex writings.

The publication presents the first historical analysis of the tension between the city and architectural form. It introduces 20th century theories to construct a historical context from which a new architecture-city relationship emerged. The book provides a conceptual framework to understand this relationship and comes to the conclusion that urbanization may be filled with potential, i.e. be a Good Metropolis.

The works of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) are widely acclaimed as being among the most original and provocative writings of twentieth-century critical thought, and have become required reading for scholars and students in a range of academic disciplines. This book provides a lucid introduction to Benjamin's oeuvre through a close and sensitive reading not only of his major studies, but also of some of his less familiar essays and fragments. Gilloch offers an original interpretation of, and fresh insights into, the continuities between Benjamin's always demanding and seemingly disparate texts. Gilloch's book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in social theory, literary theory, cultural and media studies and urban studies who are seeking a sophisticated yet readable overview of Benjamin's work. It will also prove rewarding reading for those already well-versed in Benjaminian thought.