The Art of Survival: The Translation of Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin is experiencing a startling new life. The translation project at Harvard University Press intends to make Benjamin’s writings more accessible to English-speaking readers, while many scholars know Benjamin already. At least, they know his name, which seems to be everywhere. “The name Walter Benjamin resounds through contemporary literary and cultural criticism,” as a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education states. Benjamin has come to be identified with erudition and sophistication, but also with obscurity. It remains unclear to what purpose his name is invoked, or what his writings can be said to achieve. Among some theorists, it has become almost standard practice to mention Walter Benjamin, to show that one is thoroughly informed, and has left no stone unturned. Thus we hear a theorist referring to “the Benjaminian ear” in a paper for the general public on Freud, as though confident that everyone would (or perhaps would not) be familiar with the allusion. For Benjamin is known as an obscure writer, in at least two senses of the word: his works cannot be assimilated easily into the academy (as Freud’s are) and they are difficult to read. Some fifty years after his death, Benjamin’s literary figure comes to life. Is the indeterminacy of Benjamin’s literary identity the key to his survival?