A constellational disposition of heterodoxies: on the constitution of Walter Benjamin's materialism

• Grant number: 17/05560-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: November 01, 2017
• End date: August 21, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Ricardo Ribeiro Terra
• Grantee: Fernando Araujo Del Lama
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 14/11611-3 - Public sphere and reconstruction: on the constitution of a reconstructive paradigm within Critical Theory, AP.TEM
• Associated scholarship(s): 19/03048-0 - On non-structuring aspects of Walter Benjamin's materialism: heterodox reception of surrealism, psychoanalysis and German classical metaphysics, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

We intend to reconstitute the central features of Walter Benjamin's materialism. It is known that both reading of Georg Lukács' History and Class Consciousness, which he begun during a trip to Capri in 1924, as well as the approximation of the communist praxis made possible by the friendship with the Latvian militant Asja Lacis on this same trip, were decisive for Benjamin's materialist yaw. However, one aspect that does not usually receive proper attention is that Marxism was a kind of propulsive spring for Benjamin's thought, but did not raise it alone into materialist configuration. Several themes have their own places in this theoretical construction, such as the romantic-inspired critique of civilization (Zivilisation) and capitalist society, a peculiar appropriation of Jewish messianism, markedly surrealistic developments, an intense dialogue with the emerging Psychoanalysis and even with the classics of the German philosophical tradition and, of course, original contributions. Benjamin's materialism thus draws on all these disparate and irreconcilable elements, reworking and articulating them into a conceptual constellation that gives them a cohesive sense. It is, therefore, in order to pursue this conceptual constellation by means of a double attitude that the present research intends to orient itself: similarly to a flâneur, we desire to pass through Benjamin's work adrift, without any pre-established track; and, incorporating the ragpieker (Lumpensammler), to look for such references, dispersed especially by his late writings - notably in the theses, some essays of the 1930s and in the theoretical framework of the Arcades complex -, aiming to recompose them in the constellation given by Benjamin's materialistic thought. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

LAMA, Fernando Araujo Del. A constellating disposition of heterodoxies: on the constitution of materialism in Walter Benjamin. 2024. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.