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Walter Benjamin, Franz Borkenau, and the Story of the Alienated Individual

New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry

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Field Value
 
Title Walter Benjamin, Franz Borkenau, and the Story of the Alienated Individual
 
Creator Mackenzie, Graham
 
Subject Critical Theory
Individualism
Alienation
Frankfurt School
Cultural Studies
 
Description In this article I claim that Walter Benjamin’s work is important for thinking our way toward revolutionary politics from a linguistic-cultural perspective. I do so by bringing Franz Borkenau’s work on what he calls the ‘I-form’ of speech into contact with Benjamin’s figure of ‘the storeyteller’. I thus argue that Benjamin’s figure of the storeyteller is important for thinking through Franz Borkenau’s account of the emergence of the ‘I-form’ of speech. Moreover, if we read Borkenau’s linguistic account of the emergence of western individualism under the rubric of alienation, then via Benjamin we begin to see the outlines of a political return from the alienated political subject of Western modernity.
 
Publisher New Proposals Publishing Society
 
Date 2016-11-29
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
research-article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/newproposals/article/view/187647
 
Source New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry; Vol. 9 No. 1 (2016): Alienation; 15-27
1715-6718
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/newproposals/article/view/187647/186381
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2016 New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0