Benjamin, Barthes, and the singularity of photography

Author(s)

    • Yacavone, Kathrin

Bibliographic Information

Benjamin, Barthes, and the singularity of photography

Kathrin Yacavone

Continuum, c2012

  • : HB

Available at  / 5 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [227]-240) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This is a comparative study of Benjamin's and Barthes' writings on photography in the context of twentieth-century critical theory. "Benjamin, Barthes and the Singularity of Photography" presents two of the most important literary and cultural critics of the twentieth century from a new comparative perspective. Pursuing unexplored aspects of Benjamin's and Barthes' engagement with photography, it sheds new light on familiar texts and analyzes works which have only recently become available. It argues that despite the different historical, philosophical, and cultural contexts of their work, Benjamin and Barthes engage with similar questions and problems that photography uniquely poses: including the complex interrelationship between the photograph and its beholder as a confrontation between self and other, and the relation between time, subjectivity and memory. Benjamin and Barthes each emphasize the singular event of the photograph's creation and apprehension as key to understanding the power and poignancy of photographic images. Mapping the complex conceptual and historical relationship between the photographic image and writing about it, this book will be of considerable interest not only to historians and theorists of photography but also to scholars working in literary and cultural studies.

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgments
  • List of Abbreviations
  • List of Illustrations
  • Introduction
  • Benjamin and Barthes: The Question of Influence
  • Part One. The Birth of the Viewer
  • 1. The History of the Photographic Image
  • 2. Alter-ego: The Kafka-as-child Portrait
  • 3. Time, Memory and the Influence of Proust
  • Part Two. Photography and Subjectivity
  • 4. Changing Perspectives: From Semiology to Phenomenology
  • 5. Lost and Found: The Winter Garden Photograph
  • 6. Photography and Memory with and against Proust
  • Epilogue: Singularity and Photography in the Age of Digitisation
  • Bibliography
  • Index.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top