Walter Benjamin on Writing

Abstract

Walter Benjamin generally is considered as a "difficult" author, given that he does not work with previously defined and universally valid concepts, but lends a specific sense to existing concepts, such as Erlebnis, the individual, "modern" experience, and Erfahrung, the collective, pre-modern one. This, however, is only possible by the insertion of these "individual concepts" in certain contexts. The repetition of these concepts on the surface of the text, considered strange to each other, enter in an unexpected relationship, coming together, like in his theory of history, in a "dialectic image".