Inheriting Walter Benjamin [Hardcover]

Gerhard Richter examines, in the work of Walter Benjamin, one of the central problems of modernity: the question of how to receive an intellectual inheritance.

Covering aspects of Benjamin's complex relationship to the legacies of such writers as Kant, Nietzsche, Kafka, Heidegger, and Derrida, each chapter attends to a key concern in Benjamin's writing, while reflecting on the challenges that this issue presents for the question of inheritability and transmissibility. Both reading Benjamin and watching himself reading Benjamin, Richter participates in the act of inheriting while also inquiring into the conditions of possibility for inheriting Benjamin's corpus today.

Engaging and lucidly written,Inheriting Walter Benjaminoffers new insights into some of Benjamins most important theoretical concerns. From inheritance to critique, from the work of art to the critical, dangerous moment of reading, Richters rhetorical close readings of key passages are one of the great strengths of this work. MLN

Perhaps the greatest contribution of this new book to Benjamin studies is the discovery that Benjamins reflections on the question of inheritance traverse his entire corpus and that inheritance may function as a key concept. German Studies Review

Gerhard Richter brings meaning to the event of inheritance, which affects us in every walk--and failure--of life. The work explores with exquisite integrity what has motivated or tripped us as we are traversed by the experience that Benjamin names and crucially disarticulates. The extent to which Benjamin's text remote controls modern trials of transmissibility and consciousneslÃ7