Introduction

Many readers of Walter Benjamin will have the experience of discovering his work through some penetratingly original contribution to one particular area of their interest. One might come to his work out of an interest in how photography changed our view of art; or an interest in critiquing the power of state violence. Or one might first appreciate his work as a penetratingly original reader of Kafka or Proust; or as a historian of cities such as Paris and Berlin; or as a writer intent on bringing Jewish mysticism into an encounter with philosophical modernity and everyday modes of experience. Or one might discover Benjamin as a theorist who played a pivotal role in the early development of Frankfurt school; or as a writer of personal memoire who blends the Proustian mode of reminiscence with a sociological perspective on the fate of his generation.