Walter Benjamin Politisches Denken

Until now Walter Benjamin’s work has not been read for its insights into statehood because it neither presents a theory of the state nor explicitly criticises such a theory. Although he hardly ever directly focused on the state as a genuine political category, he did address the idea of the state via other concepts such as sovereignty and violence or relations of production and commodity form, or via collective social terms such as class and the masses. All his life Benjamin dealt with problems related to modern statehood by focusing on culture, and his political thinking was inspired by both his scrutiny of everyday objects and consumer goods as well as by his analyses of new artistic techniques and technology. This book highlights the indirect nature of Benjamin’s political thinking and endeavours to illustrate which of the problem areas that Benjamin addresses in his political ideas do in fact relate to the state and statehood even though he does not directly refer to or elaborate on these concepts.