Contribution to Book
Revolution, History and Time in Benjamin and Sloterdijk
Critical Time in Modern German Literature and Culture
(2015)
Abstract
A comparative analysis on the thinking of Walter Benjamin and Peter Sloterdijk on the politics of social revolution and the nature of modern history and time. The cogency and relevancy of Benjamin's diagnosis of modern politics is defended against the arguments developed by Sloterdijk in such works as Rage and Time and In the World Interior of Capital.
Keywords
- Benjamin,
- Sloterdijk,
- Revolution,
- Capitalism,
- History,
- Time
Disciplines
Publication Date
2015
Editor
Dirk Goettsche
Publisher
Peter Lang
ISBN
9783034319423
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0810-5
Publisher Statement
The fleeting nature of time is a defining feature of modern and postmodern existence. Identified by Reinhart Koselleck as the temporalization («Verzeitlichung») of all areas of human knowledge and experience around 1800, the concept of critical time continues to intrigue researchers across the arts and humanities. This volume combines theoretical and critical approaches to temporality with case studies on the engagement with the modern sense of time in German literature, visual art and culture from the eighteenth century to the present. Contributions explore key areas in the cultural history of time: time in art and aesthetic theory, the intellectual history of time, the relationship between time and space in literature and visual art, the politics of time and memory, and the poetics of time. Essays question the focus on acceleration in recent critical discourse by also revealing the contrapuntal fascination with slowness and ecstatic moments, notions of polyphonous time and simultaneity, the dialectic of time and space, and complex aesthetic temporalities breaking with modern time-regimes.
Citation Information
Brian Elliott. "Revolution, History and Time in Benjamin and Sloterdijk" Bern, SwitzerlandCritical Time in Modern German Literature and Culture (2015) p. 101 - 125 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/brian-elliott/16/