Walter Benjamin and the Methodology of Anthropological Materialism: Striking Dialectical Sparks from Ernst Thälmann’s Bronze Head

• Main Author: Joanna Kusiak
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Adam Mickiewicz University 2013-01-01
• Series: Praktyka Teoretyczna
• Subjects: Walter Benjamin; materializm antropologiczny; obraz dialektyczny; miasto; pomnik; pamięć; dialektyka; Ernst Thälmann; mesjanizm
• Online Access: http://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/prt/article/view/2932

<p>In his methodology as well as his political thought Benjamin remains<br />faithful to the principle to proceed “always radically, never consistently”. Therefore,<br />the greatest challenge for a contemporary city researcher inspired by Benjamin is to<br />operationalise his materialist methodology. Benjamin’s anthropological materialism<br />cannot be reached within the fixed limits of any discipline, but rather places itself<br />“on the crossroads of magic and positivism” (Adorno); the dialectical image is not<br />a tool of his methodology but its culminating point where positivism turns to magic.<br />To reach this point, Benjamin conducts perceptive and analytical experiments that<br />can be treated as dialectical études, exercises in seeing. The paper examines some of<br />these techniques, exploring their philosophical context and testing them on a contemporary<br />example: the Ernst-Thälmann-Monument in Berlin.</p>