Information stored in digital media literally and metaphorically loses its historical dimensions but gains spatial relations and burgeoning cross-references. Thus, all of culture, and by extension, its products too, are losing their historical dimension in the age of digital, networked technologies in favor of a constant, real-time information flow, produced by exchange and morphing.

Walter Benjamin's critical and historical method addresses the problem of conceptualizing a discontinuous history. In The Origin of German Tragic Drama he proposes allegory as an appropriate form for the representation of the past because it drains images of life so that they may be re-presented with the meaning endowed by the allegorist. In a similar way, literary criticism and historical materialism are involved in the process of mortification so that, from the distance of time, truth may be glimpsed. Benjamin privileges the fragmentary form of representation in allegory over the false unity of the artistic symbol. Whereas truth may be fleetingly revealed by the symbol, allegory forces the extended contemplation of history. Benjamin's method is always negative, looking back rather than forward, and his two main preoccupations, Messianism and Marxism, reflect this desire to reclaim the past. Over and above these interests, however, is his profound sense of nihilism in his study of the ruins of human history.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1922. / Vita. Published also without thesis note. Bibliography: p. 78-82.

Thesis (M.A.)--McGill University, 1999. / Written for the Dept. of German Studies. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--University of Chicago, 1931. / "Private edition, distributes by the University of Chicago libraries." Lithographed.

[pt] Esta tese aborda o território de uma arte épica na filosofia de Walter Benjamin e no teatro de Bertolt Brecht. O épico é visto aqui em um contexto de politização da arte do século XX, que atingiria uma de suas expressões mais significativas e experimentais no teatro de Brecht. Benjamin irá figurar não só como um importante leitor de Brecht, mas como um pensador do épico. Suas leituras da década de 1930 sobre uma arte política e sobre o narrador terão um papel importante. O narrador será pensado como narrador de situações políticas, e em conexão com um teatro que, como apontou Brecht, adquire novas possibilidades de narrar. Trataremos também das concepções de um teatro épico, ou proletário, do encenador Erwin Piscator, e das leituras do escritor e crítico Alfred Doblin sobre uma obra épica. / [en] This thesis focus on the territory of an epic art in the philosophy of Walter Benjamin and in the theater of Bertolt Brecht. The epic is seen here in the context of politicization of twentieth-century art, which would achieve one of its most significant and experimental expressions in the Brecht theater. Benjamin will figure not only as an important reader of Brecht, but as a thinker of the epic. His readings of the 1930s on political art and on the narrator will have an important role. The narrator will be thought of as a narrator of political situations, and in connection with a theater which, as Brecht pointed out, acquires new possibilities to narrate. We will also deal with the conceptions of an epic theater, or proletarian, of the director Erwin Piscator, and the readings of the writer and critic Alfred Doblin on an epic work.

[pt] Walter Benjamin, ao longo de sua obra, preocupou-se em compreender a forma própria da contemplação filosófica e sua expressão. Ele atribuiu extrema importância ao exercício dessa forma na linguagem da filosofia, mais especificamente em sua escrita. O pensamento, segundo Benjamin, volta ao princípio e, assim, regressa com minúcia à própria coisa. O ímpeto da linguagem filosófica advém desse constante retorno ao micrológico. Então, em sua renúncia à intenção e à disposição ao desvio, essa linguagem pode ter acesso à verdade. Esta dissertação estuda parte do desdobramento deste problema em Benjamin: qual a forma de expressão própria à filosofia, ou qual a relação entre a forma e o conteúdo na linguagem filosófica. Para tanto, tentamos expor os fundamentos de sua concepção de linguagem, sua valorização da compreensão da forma nos primeiros românticos a partir do estudo sobre o conceito de crítica destes e, por fim, chegamos à questão da relação entre a verdade e a história tendo como base os conceitos de mônada e de origem. / [en] Throughout his work, Walter Benjamin was concerned with understanding the proper form of philosophical thought and its expression. Thus, he attributed extreme importance to the exercise of this form in the language of philosophy, more specifically in its writing. Thought, according to Benjamin, returns to the beginning and, thus comes back with minutiae to the thing itself. The motivation of philosophical language starts from the constant return to micrologic. This language can find access to truth by renouncing its intention and being willing to detour. This dissertation studies part of the unfolding of this problem in Benjamin: what is the form of expression proper to philosophy, or what is the relationship between form and content in philosophical language. With this purpose, we try to expose the foundations of Benjamin's conception of language; his emphasis on the comprehension of form in the first romantics from the perspective of his study on their concept of criticism; finally, we arrive at the question of the relationship between truth and history based on the concepts of monad and origin.

[pt] Esta dissertação reflete sobre uma concepção de imagem associada à dimensão do tempo, tendo como elementos condutores as noções de lampejo e de constelação, utilizadas na definição de imagem dialética de Walter Benjamin. O trabalho é dividido em duas partes, na primeira os termos metafóricos lampejo e constelação são desdobrados em algumas das suas acepções na obra benjaminiana e, na segunda, se estabelece um diálogo com os elementos teóricos, anteriormente desenvolvidos, a partir de um pequeno conjunto de objetos singulares: um poema, uma imagem conceitual e algumas imagens plásticas. / [en] This essay reflects a conceptual image associated with the dimension of time and has as conducting elements the notions of Flash and Constellation used in the definition of the dialectical image by Walter Benjamin. This paper is divided in two parts: in the first, the metaphorical terms Flash and Constellation are deployed in some of their meanings in the Benjaminian work and, in the second, establishing a dialogue with the theoretical elements, previously developed from a small set of unique objects: a poem, a conceptual image and some plastic images.

Dans cette recherche doctorale, nous analysons le traitement de la violence dans la production dramatique de Juan Mayorga et tentons de montrer en quoi la violence est non seulement un thème fondamental de son théâtre mais également un des piliers de sa dramaturgie. Notre travail repose sur une étude de la violence à travers la formation intellectuelle et théorique de Juan Mayorga, docteur en philosophie, spécialiste du penseur judéo-allemand Walter Benjamin et fin connaisseur de la pensée philosophique post-Auschwitz (entre autres Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Paul Ricœur, Emmanuel Levinas). Nous procédons ensuite à des analyses dramaturgiques sur un corpus de pièces choisies afin de délimiter les lignes de force de son théâtre et d’étudier la manière dont la violence modélise l’architecture d’ensemble de son œuvre. À travers ces analyses, nous réussissons à déterminer les procédés dramaturgiques qui font de ce théâtre de la violence un théâtre paradoxalement non violent, où la fascination cède la place à la raison et à la critique. / In this doctoral research, we analyse the treatment of violence in the dramatic production of Juan Mayorga and we try to show at what point violence is not only an essential aspect of his theatre but also one of the foundations of his dramaturgy. Our work is based, first, on a study of violence through the intellectual and theoretical formation of Juan Mayorga, Doctor of philosophy, specialist in the Jewish-German thinker Walter Benjamin and a great expert on post-Auschwitz philosophical thought (among whom the philosophers Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas can be found). Subsequently, we analyse several of his plays in order to delineate the lines of force of his theatre and study how the violence models the overall architecture of his work. Through these analyses, we manage to determine the dramaturgical procedures that make this theatre of violence a paradoxically non-violent theatre, in which fascination is replaced by reason and criticism.

[pt] Tendo como ponto de partida a passagem da narrativa tradicional para o romance no advento da modernidade, tal como analisado por Walter Benjamin em especial no ensaio O narrador, este texto pretende investigar expressões literárias do processo de queda da experiência coletiva, que se deu com o surgimento da burguesia e das sociedades industrializadas no final do século XIX. Para tanto, será trabalhado o conceito benjaminiano de experiência (Erfahrung) e seu declínio na modernidade, bem como sua substituição pela vivência (Erlebnis), uma vez que o sentido da vida deixou de ser dado imediatamente na coletividade. No âmbito das formas artísticas, o romance teria se fixado, então, como um meio para a busca do sentido perdido a partir de uma perspectiva individual. Fazem parte desta trajetória as análises que Benjamin fez sobre a poesia lírica de Baudelaire, sobre o romance Em busca do tempo perdido de Proust e, ainda, sobre as noções de alegoria, memória, lembrança e morte. Os fragmentos de Infância em Berlim por volta de 1900 vêm compor, junto à Recherche proustiana, uma oportunidade de pensar o problema do tempo e discutir a possibilidade de uma construção da experiência na escrita. / [en] Taking as a starting point the shift from traditional narrative to the novel at the beginning of modernity, as understood by Walter Benjamin, particularly in his essay The Storyteller, this text will investigate the literary expressions of the process of decline in collective experience that came about with the emergence of the bourgeoisie and industrial societies at the end of the 19th century. To do so, this work will examine Benjamin’s concept of experience (Erfahrung) and it’s decline in modernity, as well as its replacement by isolated experience (Erlebnis), since the meaning of life was no longer given immediately in collectivity. In the realm of artistic forms, the novel has been seen, therefore, as a way of finding the lost meaning from an individual perspective. The analyses that Benjamin makes of the lyric poetry of Baudelaire and the Proust novel In Search of Lost Time are part of this trajectory, as well as the notions of allegory, memory, remembrance and death. The fragments of Berlin Childhood around 1900, together with Proustian Recherche, offer an opportunity to reflect on the problem of time and discuss the possibility of the construction of experience in writing.