Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This paper addresses the relation between the social and the temporal. Its goal is to investigate the ways in which collective embeddedness interferes with the experience of time. To address this relation, I engage the concept of actuality in the work of Walter Benjamin. On the one hand, Benjamin's work offers a wealth of inspiring, intriguing, and elaborated reflections on the relation between actuality and temporality; on the other hand, as I will argue, it is flawed by decisive and illustrative mistakes and ambivalences. Consequently, the article has a double aim: By pointing toward fundamental theoretical problems and ambivalences at the basis of Benjamin's work, it hopes to say something new about the relation between the social and the temporal.

Keywords

actuality Benjamin critical theory Durkheim imitation synchronization time

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adorno

(1990) Über Walter Benjamin, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Benjamin

(1991) Gesammelte Schriften, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

Benjamin

(1999) The Arcades Project, Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Benjamin

(1996, 1999, 2002, 2003) Selected Writings, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.

Blumer

(1969) From class differentiation to collective selection. The Sociological Quarterly 10(3): 275–291.

Buck-Morss

(1989) The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, Cambridge, London: MIT Press.

Buck-Morss

(1995) The city as dreamworld and catastrophe. October 73: 3–26.

Collins

(2004) Interaction Ritual Chains, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Durkheim

(1998) Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Paris: Quadrige/Presses Universitaires de France.

10.

Foucault

(1994) Qu'est-ce que les lumières? In: Dits et Écrits (IV), Paris: Gallimard, pp. 679–688.

11.

Frisby

(1996) Walter Benjamin's prehistory of modernity as anticipation of postmodernity. Some methodological reflections. In: Fischer

(ed.) ‘With the Sharpened Axe of Reason’: Approaches to Walter Benjamin, Oxford, Washington: Berg, pp. 15–32.

12.

Garfinkel

(2006) Seeing Sociologically: The Routine Grounds of Social Action, Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.

13.

Habermas

(1981) Walter Benjamin: Bewusstmachende oder rettende Kritik. In: Politisch-Philosophische Profile, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 336–376.

14.

Habermas

(1990) Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

15.

Isenberg

(2001) The work of Walter Benjamin in the age of information. New German Critique 83: 119–150.

16.

Koepnick

(1999) Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

17.

Lindner

(1992) Benjamin's aura: Anthropologie und Technik, Bild und Text. In: Steiner

(ed.) Walter Benjamin 1892–1940: zum 100. Geburtstag, Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Paris, Wien: Peter Lang, pp. 217–249.

18.

Schutz

(1971) Collected Papers Vol II. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

19.

Weigel

(1997) Entstellte Ähnlichkeit. Walter Benjamins theoretische Schreibweise, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.

20.

Wohlfarth

(1999) ‘einige wenige schwere Gewichte’? Zur ‘Aktualität’ Walter Benjamins. In: Garber

Rehm

(eds) Global Benjamin: Internationaler Walter-Benjamin-Kongress 1992, München: Fink, pp. 31–55.

The (in)actuality of Walter Benjamin: On the relation between the temporal and the social in Benjamin's work

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References