Bajo el signo de Saturno. Representación e historia en Walter Benjamin.

LUIS IGNACIO GARCÍA

Representaciones. Revista de Estudios sobre Representaciones en Arte, Ciencia y Filosofía

SIRCA Publicaciones Académicas

Lugar: Córdoba; Año: 2007 vol. 3 p. 65 - 93

1669-8401

This essay shows the way in which Walter Benjamin, in his early Ursprung des deutchen Trauerspiels (1925), develops a theory of “representation” shaped in his idea of “allegory”, which involves a radical critique to the tradicional conception of representation, inherited from its classical-romantic conception. For that, Benjamin appeals to the baroque aesthetics as a model of a non-classical (nor romantic) comprehension of allegory as “origin”, binding instrinsecally the problem of representation with the problem of historicity. Thus, Benjamin offers not only an innovatoring conception of Baroque (against the usual denigratory tradition of Baroque), but also a perturbing baroque vision of the reality itself. The latter is expressed, among Benjamin’s Trauerspielbuch, in a depriving (“melancholy”) subjectivity, in a dislocated (“allegorical”) representation, in a subtracting (“natural-historical”) historicity. Topics that persist up to his late works. Escaping paths in which clatters a stubborn baroque restless: how to give an account of history in its suffering materiality?