Lindroos K. Now-Time/Image-Space. Temporalization of Politics in Walter Benjamin's Philosophy of History and Art

Jyväskylä: SoPhi Academic Press, 1998. — 303 p. — ISBN10: 9513903419; ISBN13: 978-9513903411 — (Sophi)Kia Lindroos's study is a philosophical reconstruction of Walter Benjamin's thinking, and it elaborates a cairologic perspective on political and aesthetic time. As Benjamin's thinking has become actualised, especially in the 20th fin de siecle, the book presents a detailed view of his thinking. Kia Lindroos constructs an alternative interpretation on history, time, politics and art, approached through the moment of the Now (Jetztzeit). In the first section, she elaborates the critique of chronologic-linear way of understanding history. Through a close reading of Benjamin's "Work of Art" essay, the second section examines the problems of origins, authenticity and traditions of art through the ideas of artistic avant-garde and politicization of aesthetics. The end of the book discusses the concept of image and the new images as an Image-space (Bildraum) of action. The historical examples of the interwar political and artistic scenes, as well as the analysis of Chris Marker's short film "La Jete", illustrate the ideas developed throughout the book, and show the images of time by opening the individual experience towards more collective temporal experiences, such as death, dreaming and memory.Benjamin's 'Copernican Change'
The Critique and the Creation of Concepts
On the Conceptual Method
Benjamin's Idea of Critique
Reading BenjaminTheses on the "Concept of I-ustory" in reading the political and timeChess between Master and Slave
The Glance of Fortuna
The Moment of Kairos
The Problem of Writing History
On Text and Quotation
Dangers in Transferring the Tradition
Conceptualising the Images of the Past
A Backward Prophesy
Culture and Barbary: History in Progress
The Limit Situation of History
Angelus Novus
Temporal'Tigersprung' as Revolution
Reversed Dialectics
Dialectics at a Standstill
The Construction of History
Cairo logy as the Time of PoliticsThe work of art in the time of changesOn Benjamin's Position in Aesthetic Theory
The Conceptual Question
The Shift in Tradition
Technical Reproducibility
The Original and the Copy· Temporal Similitude?
Cult and Ritual in Temporalizing Politics
Re-defining the Cult
The Politics of Avant-garde
Towards the Image-space
The Ambiguous Idea of the Mass
Politicising Cult and Ritual in Film
The Nazi Myth and Aesthetics
The Aestheticization of Politics
The Aesthetico-PoliticalSpielrau.m and Time
From Reproducibility towards the Politicization of ArtImages as passages to timeOn the Turn to ImagesFrom the Intensification to the Actualisation of Time
Benjamin's Mimesis
Dialectical Image
Image-Space
New Images and 'New Reality'Viewing Chris Marker's La ]etee"Orly, Sunday. Parents used to take their children there to watch the departing planes."
"Nothing sorts out memories fron ordinary moments"
"And sonetime after cane the destruction of Paris."
"If they were able to conceive or to dream another time..."
Crossing Time
"There was no way to escape time."
Images of Time