Walter Benjamin's Collector
The Fate of Modern Experience
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4854412 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ackbar Abbas (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1988 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 217 |
| Publication date | 1988-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Literary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0028-6087 • E-ISSN: 1080-661X |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/469329 |
| OpenAlex | W2331449758 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 1 |
S IT POSSIBLE that the largely dated figure of the collector has anything to tell us about the experience of modernity? Walter Benjamin, himself a passionate collector, has this to say about the collector: figure of the collector, more attractive the longer one observes it, has not been given its due attention so far. One would imagine no figure more tempting to the romantic storytellers. The type is motivated by dangerous though domesticated passions.i This is a provocative characterization of the collector, which places him in a paradoxical social space: one that is dangerous and domesticated at the same time. It is, as we shall see, the social space of modernity. For if the romantic storytellers have neglected the collector, modern writers have not. From Flaubert onwards, a number of literary, philosophical, anthropological, and art historical texts-not least of which are Benjamin's own writings-focus attention on the collector figure, specifically in its relation to modernity. It is as if collector and modernist, two social metaphors, were tied together, back to back, all the more strongly for the ties being negative ones
Art · Art history · Art, Politics, and Modernism · History · Philosophy · Public Spaces through Art · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation
| Citations per year | 0.29 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2005 - 2021 (17) |
| Highly cited | No |