How to Do Things with Walter Benjamin

Abstract

Walter Benjamin is now a common reference point within cultural studies. But while a considerable secondary literature has emerged around his work, efforts to build upon his contributions by operationalizing the method they elaborate have remained relatively rare. Nevertheless, I maintain that it is solely through such operationalization that Benjamin’s intellectual project can truly be understood. In this article, I provide a sketch of Benjamin’s intellectual biography—with particular emphasis given to the purported tension between his metaphysics and his materialism—to highlight the overarching methodological coherence of his approach. In conclusion, I demonstrate how this method might be operationalized by cultural studies scholars today.

Keywords

• walter benjamin
• dialectical image
• methodology
• operationalization