Silence / Signification Degree Zero: Walter Benjamin’s Anti-Aesthetic of the Body
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In: Arcadia - International Journal of Literary Culture, Vol. 53, No. 2, 27.11.2018, p. 308-342.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Silence / Signification Degree Zero: Walter Benjamin’s Anti-Aesthetic of the Body
AU - Rauch, Malte Fabian
PY - 2018/11/27
Y1 - 2018/11/27
N2 - This essay examines Walter Benjamin’s opposition against traditional aesthetics and his development of an alternative, a decidedly anti-aesthetic approach. More specifically, it focuses on how Benjamin launches a frontal attack on Idealist aesthetics in the theory of ancient tragedy expounded in the Trauerspiel book and how he develops his own alternative conception in critical delineation from it. Closely examining his engagement with Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Hegel, and Solger, the essay shows how Benjamin’s entire theory is construed as a pointed response to a long and complex discourse on tragedy. Through a reconstruction of these debates, it becomes evident that the core of Benjamin’s critique concerns the relation between universal and singular in Idealist aesthetics, spelled out in a theory of reconciliation that is directly tied to the themes of fate and sacrifice. Against this background, the essay then analyzes – drawing both on Benjamin’s reception of Franz Rosenzweig as well as the work of Giorgio Agamben – Benjamin’s notion of silence as a retreat from language and meaning, as an immersion into the body. Instead of offering an image of reconciliation, tragedy, for Benjamin, then appears as the site where bodily singularity and impotentiality fragments the totality of signification, where meaning is disrupted and reduced to degree zero.
AB - This essay examines Walter Benjamin’s opposition against traditional aesthetics and his development of an alternative, a decidedly anti-aesthetic approach. More specifically, it focuses on how Benjamin launches a frontal attack on Idealist aesthetics in the theory of ancient tragedy expounded in the Trauerspiel book and how he develops his own alternative conception in critical delineation from it. Closely examining his engagement with Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Hegel, and Solger, the essay shows how Benjamin’s entire theory is construed as a pointed response to a long and complex discourse on tragedy. Through a reconstruction of these debates, it becomes evident that the core of Benjamin’s critique concerns the relation between universal and singular in Idealist aesthetics, spelled out in a theory of reconciliation that is directly tied to the themes of fate and sacrifice. Against this background, the essay then analyzes – drawing both on Benjamin’s reception of Franz Rosenzweig as well as the work of Giorgio Agamben – Benjamin’s notion of silence as a retreat from language and meaning, as an immersion into the body. Instead of offering an image of reconciliation, tragedy, for Benjamin, then appears as the site where bodily singularity and impotentiality fragments the totality of signification, where meaning is disrupted and reduced to degree zero.
KW - Literature studies
KW - Cultural studies
KW - anti-aesthetics
KW - body
KW - creaturely
KW - fate
KW - Idealist aesthetics
KW - impotentiality
KW - silence
KW - sublime
KW - theory of tragedy
KW - tragic
KW - Walter Benjamin
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85056609045&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1515/arcadia-2018-0021
DO - 10.1515/arcadia-2018-0021
M3 - Journal articles
VL - 53
SP - 308
EP - 342
JO - Arcadia - International Journal of Literary Culture
JF - Arcadia - International Journal of Literary Culture
SN - 0003-7982
IS - 2
ER -