From: Andrew Putter <putter-AT-staff.rbhs.wcape.school.za>
Date:          Tue, 5 Oct 1999 07:17:04 +0200
Subject:       Re: starting the discussion


Hi! 

Great that this is up and running. Thanks for all the hard work.

I'm afraid I'm a bit of a low-level user of Benjamin. I don't have 
the intelligence to read the man without LOTs of help. I'm not an 
academic - just interested in a sloppy sort of way. I've read Buck-
Morss (recently), a wonderful doctoral thesis called "History and 
Experience" (I'll have to phone the university if anyone wants to 
know who wrote it), and various other essays, etc, including "On 
Walter Benjamin".

Bits of Benjamin lodge in my head and pop up unexpectedly. His 
complex idea of redemption is still a very powerful one for me. 
I've just been reading (about) Luce Irigary, and there's a possible 
link between her belief that women (and other's of 
course) are destitute in Occidental culture, and Benjamin's method 
of redeeming and recuperating (?) what is destitute in the past. 

I'm also amazed by Benjamin's recognition that modernity's mythology 
is lodged in the commodity, that the commodity has a utopian element, 
which it may be possible to liberate, despite the fact that the 
commodity constantly fails to deliver what it promises.

Am reading the collection of essays called "The Flaneur", edited by 
Keith Tester at the moment. The esay on the flaneur and social theory 
was okay. I've been looking at things differently since I read it. 
I've noticed "physiognomies" where I hadn't noticed them before.

That's it.

Regards, 

Putter
 
--
Andrew Putter

-------- from list seminar-11-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu -------