Constellations of Reading

How to read Walter Benjamin today? This book argues that the proper way is through an approach which recognizes and respects his own peculiar theorization of the act of reading and the politics of interpretation that this entails. The approach must be figural, that is, focused on images, and driven by the notion of actualization. Figural reading, in the very sui generis Benjaminian way, understands figures as constellations, whereby an image of the past juxtaposes them with an image of the present and is thus actualized. To apply this method to Benjamins own work means first to identify some figures. The book singles out the Flneur, the Detective, the Prostitute and the Ragpicker, and then sets them alongside a contemporary account of the same figure: the Flneur in Juan Goytisolos Landscapes after the Battle (1982), the Detective in Paul Austers New York Trilogy (1987), the Prostitute in Dacia Marainis Dialogue between a Prostitute and her Client (1973), and the Ragpicker in Mudrooroos The Mudrooroo/Mller Project (1993). The book thereby, on the one hand, analyses the politics of reading Benjamin today and, on the other, sets his work against a variety of contemporary aesthetics and politics of interpretation.