Discover this podcast and so much more

Podcasts are free to enjoy without a subscription. We also offer ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more for just $11.99/month.

Podcast for Social Research, Episode 77: Revolution and Counterrevolution — Klee's Angelus Novus and Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History

Podcast for Social Research, Episode 77: Revolution and Counterrevolution — Klee's Angelus Novus and Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History

FromThe Podcast for Social Research


Podcast for Social Research, Episode 77: Revolution and Counterrevolution — Klee's Angelus Novus and Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History

FromThe Podcast for Social Research

ratings:
Length:
45 minutes
Released:
Apr 25, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

In episode 77 of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live at Goethe-Institut Chicago, BISR faculty and Chicago Coordinator Audrey Nicolaïdes sat down with special guest, art historian Annie Bourneuf, to discuss revolution and counterrevolution, in text and dialectical image. Annie begins with a reexamination of Walter Benjamin’s aesthetic and philosophical project in light of a surprising discovery: Paul Klee’s famous Angelus Novus—a print in Benjamin’s own collection—is in fact a piece of collage; Klee’s image is glued atop a sixteenth-century engraving of a portrait of Martin Luther. What did such an image mean to Klee, in the context of counterrevolutionary Munich in the 1920s? And how does this citation bear on Benjamin’s attachment to the image and the inspiration he drew from it? Then, Audrey walks us through the schisms that put socialist movements in pre- and interwar Europe on their back foot—and the world-historical consequences these schisms entailed. What were the fundamental assumptions—fundamentally in error—about the progressive nature of historical processes that Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” is an attempt to redress? Along the way, the two touch on the centrality of concepts like ephemerality and contemporaneity in Benjamin’s work, parody and citation, the revolutionary potential of “hatred for the oppressor,” and more. This episode of the podcast was produced by Ryan Lentini.
Released:
Apr 25, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (99)

From Plato to quantum physics, Walter Benjamin to experimental poetry, Frantz Fanon to the history of political radicalism, The Podcast for Social Research is a crucial part of our mission to forge new, organic paths for intellectual work in the twenty-first century: an ongoing, interdisciplinary series featuring members of the Institute, and occasional guests, conversing about a wide variety of intellectual issues, some perennial, some newly pressing. Each episode centers on a different topic and is accompanied by a bibliography of annotations and citations that encourages further curiosity and underscores the conversation’s place in a larger web of cultural conversations.