Preface

Summary

To present the work of Walter Benjamin in the form of an introduction requires a willingness to face the challenge posed by a body of work recognized for its range and the difficulty of its concepts, as well as this critic's recursive and frequently elliptical writing style. But these are not the only reasons that an introduction to Benjamin is challenging. Another, potentially more important reason is given by Benjamin in a note he writes for himself in 1930–31:

Examine the sense in which “Outlines,” “Guides” and so on are touchstones for the state of a discipline. Show that they are the most demanding of all, and how clearly their phrasing betrays every half-measure.

In many respects, any introduction to Benjamin will now be a reflection of the state of the discipline since his work has found its way into so many corners of the humanities and social sciences. At the same time, an introduction makes demands that the professionalization of critical writing happily ignores. These demands increase greatly when the subject is Walter Benjamin. Faced with a critic who had the clear-sightedness to see his own work as “a contradictory and mobile whole,” the task of grasping the nature of that whole, its contradictions, its mobility, almost ensures that every phrase betrays a measure not yet achieved. Yet, there is some justice – of a Benjaminian kind – in such a betrayal. If an introduction has a story to tell, it should be such a story.