Here Eduardo Cadava demonstrates that Walter Benjamin articulates his
conception of history through the language of photography. Focusing on
Benjamin's discussions of the flashes and images of history, he argues
that the questions raised by this link between photography and history
touch on issues that belong to the entire trajectory of his writings:
the historical and political consequences of technology, the relation
between reproduction and mimesis, images and history, remembering and
forgetting, allegory and mourning, and visual and linguistic
representation. The book establishes the photographic constellation of
motifs and themes around which Benjamin organizes his texts and thereby
becomes a lens through which we can begin to view his analysis of the
convergence between the new technological media and a revolutionary
concept of historical action and understanding.Written in the form of
theses--what Cadava calls "snapshots in prose"-- the book memorializes
Benjamin's own thetic method of writing. It enacts a mode of conceiving
history that is neither linear nor successive, but rather
discontinuous--constructed from what Benjamin calls "dialectical
images." In this way, it not only suggests the essential rapport between
the fragmentary form of Benjamin's writing and his effort to write a
history of modernity but it also skillfully clarifies the relation
between Benjamin and his contemporaries, the relation between fascism
and aesthetic ideology. It gives us the most complete picture to date of
Benjamin's reflections on history.
