Salvaging images

Abstract

According to Walter Benjamin, we find in the images of recollection and dreams access to a potential of not yet actualized meaning. The images of recollection and dreams are images of the unfulfilled in history, both general and personal. The past has left traces which primarily are the traces of absence. They are traces of something unrecognized in their own time, overseen and forgotten by the course of history. In the sudden moment of recollection, this course can be brought to a standstill, and the images can reveal their salvaging value.

Notes

1. William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. In: Poems selected by Seamus Heaney, pp. 103–104.

2. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 476.

3. Ibid., p. 389.

4. Ibid.

5. Walter Benjamin/Gershom Scholem, Briefwechsel, p. 28.

6. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 3, p. 344.

7. Ibid., Volume 2, p. 634–635.

8. Peter Szondi, Satz und Gegensatz, p. 89.

9. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2, p. 633.

10. Ibid., p. 244–245.

11. Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, II,1, p. 313. Translated by D.T.A.

12. Jeanne-Marie Gagnebin, Geschichte und Erzählung bei Walter Benjamin, p. 294.

13. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2, p. 246.

14. See Jeanne-Marie Gagnebin, op.cit., p. 294.

15. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2, p. 237.

16. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 458.

17. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2, p. 576.

18. Ibid., p. 613.

19. Ibid., p. 722.

20. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 844.

21. Theodor W. Adorno/Walter Benjamin, Briefwechsel 1928–1940, p. 132.

22. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2, p. 238.

23. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 464.

24. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, p. 223–224.

25. Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, V,2, p. 1081.

26. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 3, pp. 32–49.

27. Ibid., Volume 2, p. 808.

28. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 388.

29. Ibid., p. 390.

30. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 4, p. 182.

31. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, p. 28.

32. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 456.

33. Ibid., p. 473.

34. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 4, p. 391.

35. Ibid., Volume 3, p. 146.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid., p. 143.

38. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 4, p. 316.

39. Jeanne-Marie Gagnebin, op.cit., p. 67.

40. Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, V, p. 147. See also The Arcades Project, p. 93.

41. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 3, p. 354.

42. Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis & other stories, p. 211.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., p. 212.

45. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2, p. 813.

46. Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, I, 3, p. 1243. Translated by D.T.A.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, II,3, p. 1064. Translated by D.T.A.

50. Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, p. 1628.

51. Giorgio Agamben, Kindheit und Geschichte, p. 78.