INDEX to Esther Leslie, Walter Benjamin; Overpowering Conformism, Pluto Press, London 2000

 

Get You Back Home

 

Adorno, Gretel – see Karplus, Gretel

Adorno, Theodor, 47, 66, 75, 103, 116, 119, 121–2, 132, 150, 171, 193, 203, 212, 217, 226–7

---analysis of Little Nell, 10–11

---Benjamin, view of, 73

---compares Benjamin to Lenin, 166

---Composing for the Films, xii–xiii

advertisments, 115, 182–3, 191

alchemy, 108, 109

alienation, 86

allegory, 199

Angelus Novus, 7, 202–3, 209

Anti-Nazism, 96, 123–4, 169–71

Arago, François, 49

Aragon, Louis, 24, 102, 116, 174, 186

architecture, 112

Arendt, Hannah, 219, 221–2

armaments, 1, 5, 28–31, 52, 146

Arnheim, Rudolph, 132

Arnoux, Alexandre, 132

Arp, Hans, 22

art, 95, 118

---autonomy threatened by the market, 138

---critique of, 99

---degenerate, 44–5

---end of, 143

art for art’s sake (l’art pour l’art), 20–1, 29, 91, 138, 184, 189

Art Nouveau, 108–112

artists, 97

---technology and, 87

Arvatov, Boris, 90

Atget, Eugène, 55, 59, 146

augury, 48–9

aura, 31, 50–2, 55–6, 114, 136, 145–6, 149, 181, 208–9

author, role of, 94

autobiography, 78

---critique of, 71

avant-garde, 188

 

Balzac, Honoré de, 120

base and superstructure, 104–5, 120

Battleship Potemkin, 46

Baudelaire, Charles, 27, 111–13, 178, 180, 183, 184, 189–90, 192, 200

Bauman, Zygmunt, 214–15, 216–18, 225

Becher, Johannes, 101, 129

Benjamin, Dora, 28, 208

Benjamin, Walter

---academia, views on, 218–19

---adolescence and, 78

---Aktualität, ix–x

---anti-Stalinism, viii

---as unsplit theoretically, 234

---British reception of, 220

---childhood and, 52–3, 68–9, 72, 73–4, 80, 87

---Communist Party and, 14–16, 23, 43, 96, 98, 123–9, 167, 212–13, 227, 230

---conflicting interpretations of, 213

---Detlef Holz pseudonym, 41

---historical materialism, viii, 172–3, 227

---imitating Marx, 75

---Marxism and, xiv, 3, 7, 24–5, 33, 44, 64, 74, 104–5, 121, 133, 136, 150, 153, 155, 167, 171–6, 179–182, 196–7, 205–6, 216, 222–3, 226–8

---Moscow visit, 14,

---pessimism of, 24

---philosophy, views on, 223

---studies of, 219–25

---suicide and, 215, 216–7, 248, 272

---Trotsky and, 228–234

---‘A Tour of German Inflation’, 9

---Berliner Chronik, 66–9, 72–3, 75, 77, 79–83, 87

---Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert, 65, 68, 76

---‘Betting Shop’, 64

---Collected Writings, vi

---‘Daguerre oder die Panoramen’, 102

---'Das bucklichte Männlein', 82

---‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’, 130–167, 168, 208, 220, 257

---‘Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire’, 178, 193

---‘Der Autor als Produzent’, 92–100, 120, 123, 204, 220

---‘Der destruktive Charakter’, 22, 43

---‘Der Sürrealismus’, 13–14, 20–6, 29, 36–7, 49, 71-

---Deutsche Menschen, 41

---‘Die Waffen von morgen’, 1

---‘Dreizehn Thesen wider Snobisten’, 28

---‘Eduard Fuchs, der Sammler und der Historiker’, xiv, 134, 174, 176–7

---Einbahnstraße, 2–9, 11, 44, 64–6, 210

---‘Erfahrung und Armut’, 38, 43, 84

---‘Erwiderung an Oscar A.H. Schmitz’, 57, 83

---‘Feuermelder’, 4

---'Friedensware', 28

---Gesammelte Schriften, vi

---‘Imperial Panorama’, 65

---‘James Ensor wird 70 Jahre’, 36

---‘Karl Kraus’, 23, 27, 33, 69–70

---‘Kleine Geschichte der Photographie’, 46–62, 70, 80–1, 86–8, 117, 145, 152–3, 209–210

---‘Kommentare zu Gedichten von Brecht’, 169

---‘Mirror File’, 103

---Moskauer Tagebuch, 14

---‘Neue Dichtung in Ruáland’, 16

---‘New Poetry in Russia’, 229

---‘Nochmals: Die vielen Soldaten’, 32, 36

---‘Optician’, 65

---‘Pariser Brief II’, 138---Passagenwerk, 2, 10, 23, 37, 40, 42, 63, 70–1, 73–5, 78, 81–2, 83–4, 90–2, 102, 107–8, 113, 115–16, 119–22, 123, 140, 150, 154, 161, --164, 168, 176, 178, 181, 185, 204, 214

---‘Stereoscope’, 65–6

---‘Strenge Kunstwissenschaft’, 98

---‘Tankstelle’, 3–4, 25, 41

---‘The ring of Saturn or something on ironwork’, 112

---‘Theater und Rundfunk’, 85

---‘Theorien des deutschen Faschismus’, 29, 34, 36, 134, 164

---‘Traumkitsch’, 8, 11–12, 75

---‘Über das mimetische Vermögen’, 154

---‘Über den Begriff der Geschichte’, vii, 168–207, 211–12

---‘Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire’, 131, 168, 180

---Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, 2

---‘Zentralpark’, 183, 199

---‘Zum Bilde Prousts’, 21

---‘Zum gegenwärtigen gesellschaftlichen Standort des französischen Schriftstellers’, 131

---‘Zum Planetarium’, 5, 8, 26, 29, 35, 36, 64, 182

---‘Zur Kritik der Gewalt’, 171, 223

---‘Zur Lage der russischen Filmkunst’, 83

Bensaïd, Daniel, 228

Berger, John, 220

Berman, Marshall, 245

Bernstein, Henry, 192

Blanqui, Auguste, 131, 180–1

Bloch, Ernst, 29, 82, 213, 216, 121

Bloßfeldt, Carl, 58

Blum, Leon, 124, 126

Borchardt, Rudolf, 63

Brecht, Bertolt, 3, 11, 47–8, 85–7, 97–8, 116, 127–9, 132, 147–8, 171, 199, 203, 207, 209, 213, 215–18, 226, 226–7, 232, 234–5

Breitscheid, Rudolf, 229

Brentano, Bernard von, 51

Breton, André, 21, 147

Brik, Osip, 19

Brill, Hans Klaus, 130

Büchner, Georg, 13

Bukharin, Nikolai, 13

 

Cézanne, Paul, 138

Chaplin, Charlie, 137

chemical weapons, 1, 5, 28

chignon, 107, 180

childhood, 71–2, 76

cinema, 46, 54, 61, 63, 67, 82, 83–4, 85–8, 91, 94, 102, 106, 118–19, 136–45, 149, 151–7, 162

class, as concept denied by Hitler and Stalin, 126

class struggle, viii

Claudel, Paul, 191–2

Cliff, Tony, 255

clutter, ix, 11, 55, 72, 75, 148

Cocteau, Jean, 192

Cohn, Alfred, 147–8

Colette, 192

collective unconscious, 72, 120

Comintern, 94, 96, 100, 123–4, 170

commodity fetishism, 9, 66, 106–7, 115–6, 183, 192–5

Communist Manifesto, 37

Communist Party, 14–16, 23, 43, 96, 98, 123–9, 167, 212–13, 227, 230

conformism, vii–viii, 212

Congress for the Defence of Culture, 147

conscience-communism, 96

critics, role of, 94

Croisset, Francis de, 192

Cubism, 12–3, 138, 154

Cunow, Heinrich, 89

cyber theory, x

 

Dada, 22, 117–18, 137, 140–2

Dante, Alighieri, 63

Darwinism, x, 177, 179

David, Jacques Louis, 102

Dawes Plan, 39

Debord, Guy, 155–6

Derrida, Jacques, 223–5

Dickens, Charles, 10–11

Die literarische Welt, 46, 50

Dietzgen, Josef, 176–7

Dimitrov, Georgi, 124

Disdéri, André Adolphe Eugène, 191

Disney, Walt, 86, 155

Döblin, Alfred, 43, 58, 95

Doriot movement, 125

Dorziat, Gabrielle, 192

dreams, 21, 58, 64, 71, 82, 105, 121–2, 141

Du Camp, Maxine, 174, 180

Duhamel, Georges, 14, 132

Duncker, Hermann, 178

 

Eagleton, Terry, 228, 241

Eisenstein, Sergei, 46, 65–6

Eisler, Hanns, xii–xiii

Engels, Friedrich, 37, 89, 174, 178, 187, 204, 206

Enlightenment, 6, 108, 178

Ensor, James, 36

Erfahrung, 21, 38, 43, 182–3

Erlebnis, 38, 183

everyday life, 187–90

Expressionism, 60

 

false consciousness, 33

fascism, 25–6, 36–8, 96, 102, 119, 123, 131, 132–3, 136–7, 161, 162–7

---proto-fascism, 31

Ernest Mandel on, 230–1

fashion, 82, 95, 106–108, 113, 119, 180

---intellectual, 219, 221–2

Faure, Elie, 101

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 6

Filonov, Pavel Nikolaevich, 97

Fischer, Hugo, 40, 200

flâneur, 22, 71–2, 79, 104, 106, 183–5, 190, 194, 219

Flaubert, Gustave, 188

Fomin, Ivan A., 196

forces and relations of production, xi–xiii, 53–4, 97

Ford, Henry, 39

Fourier, Charles, 35, 161, 176–7

fractal, 98–9

Franco, General, 170

Frank, Waldo, 147

Frankfurt School, 217, 220

---its suppression of revolutionary Marxist terms, 130–2, 200

French Revolution (1789), 186, 203

Freud, Sigmund, 70, 81, 121, 183

---Benjamin and Trotsky both interested in, 233

Freund, Gisèle, 110, 208

Fuchs, Eduard, xiv, 134, 174, 176–7

Futurism, 112

 

Gabor, Andor, 128

gambling, 106, 113

Gasché, Rodolphe, 223, 273

gas warfare, 1, 5, 28–31, 146

George, Stefan, 26

German Revolution (1919), 6, 36, 44

Geschichtsphilosophie, 177

Glück, Gustav, 38

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 6, 17, 65, 108–9

gramophone, 85–7

Gramsci, Antonio, 39–40

graphology, 64

Great Exhibition, 125–6

Greenaway, Kate, 12

Greenberg, Clement, 186

Grosz, Georg, 19

 

Habermas, Jürgen, 225

Hague Convention, 1

Hamann, Johann Georg, 221

Hasenclever, Walter, 229

hate, 200, 234

Haussmann, Baron, 120

Heartfield, John, 199

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 13, 91, 143, 158, 186, 203–4

Heidegger, Martin, 129, 219, 221–2, 224

Heine, Heinrich, 143

Heinle, Fritz, 76–8

Heraclitus, 235

Hessel, Franz, 68, 71–2, 116, 217

hieroglyphics, 49

Hilferding, Rudolf, 229

Hiller, Kurt, 96

historical materialism, 172

historicism, 195–7

history films, 146

history, 83

Hitler, Adolf, viii, 125, 165, 169, 217, 226, 231

Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, ix, 28, 62, 217

Hölderlin, Friedrich, 222

Holz, Detlef - see Benjamin, Walter

Honneth, Axel, 225

Horkheimer, Max, 116, 185, 130–1, 133, 169, 191, 192, 201, 212, 218, 226

Hugenberg, Alfred, 165

Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 221

 

I.G. Farben, 1, 24

image, 24–5, 82, 121–2, 171–5, 198–9, 201

imperialism, 7, 85, 32, 131, 135

individualism, 71

industrial labour, 182

intoxication (Rausch), 21–2, 25, 26, 29, 71, 109

Iofan, Boris, 125–6

 

James, C.L.R., 203–4

Jameson, Fredric, 226

Jaurès, Jean, 175

Jay, Martin, 225

Joel, Charlotte, 208

journalism, 69–70, 74, 94, 104

Joyce, James, 96, 102, 185

Judaism, xiii, 44, 220–1

Jung, Carl, 104

Jünger, Ernst, 26–9

 

Kafka, Franz, 53, 110–12

Kaiser Wilhelm, 203

Kant, Immanuel, 32, 117, 221, 223

Karavan, Dani, 215

Karplus, Gretel, 116, 129, 169, 198, 207, 217

Kautsky, Karl, 89, 177

kitsch, 8, 11–13, 21, 75

Klee, Paul, 86, 202–3, 209

Klossowski, Pierre, 130

Kolli, Nikolai, 196

Konersmann, Ralf, 213

Korsch, Karl, 40, 89, 97, 175–6, 215, 232

Kracauer, Siegfried, ix, 33, 48, 105, 138, 162, 165, 217

Kraft, Werner, 132, 133

Kraus, Karl, 23, 27, 33, 69–70

Kreatur, 18

Krivitsky, Walter, 229

Krull, Germaine, 59, 208

Krupps, 61, 87

Kurella, Alfred, 127–8

 

Lacis, Asja, 3, 14, 47, 66, 116, 217

Lautréamont, Isidore Ducasse Comte de, 186

Lavinskii, Anton, 90

League of Nations, 96

leap, the, 203–4

Lebensphilosophie, 26

Le Bon, Gustave, 166

Lef, 116

Lefebvre, Henri, 185

Léger, Ferdnand, 102

Lenin, Vladimir, 14, 166, 167, 175, 195–6, 203–4, 206, 210

---cult of, 18

Leyda, Jay, 130

Lhote, André, 138

Lieb, Fritz, 125, 217

Liebknecht, Karl, 169

Lissagaray, Hippolyte, 180

literary freedom, 128–9

litter, 21

Long, Emile, 107

Loos, Adolf, 86, 92, 229

Louvre, 191

Löwy, Michael, 228, 274

Lukács, Georg, 3, 9, 34, 42–3, 45, 75, 89, 91, 127–8, 147, 230

---denounced by Brecht as a Stalinist, 128

---rejection of photography, 103

Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 195–6

Lury, Celia, 262

Luxemburg, Rosa, 34, 169, 243

 

MacOrlan, Pierre, 188

magic, xiii, 6, 76, 26, 108, 119, 136, 162, 246

Malraux, André, 147

Man, Paul de, 222

Mandel, Ernest, 230–1

marijuana, 219–20

Markner, Reinhard, 220

Marx, Karl, 33, 64, 150–1, 155, 184, 167, 186, 204, 206, 153, 178

---base and superstructure, 104–5

---bohemians, views on, 187–8

---childhood, views on, 73–4

---Derrida on, 224

---everyday life, views on, 187–8

---progress, views on, 178

---proletarian self-emancipation, views on, viii

---prostitution, views on, 114

---Communist Manifesto, 37, 45–6

---‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’, 175–6

---Das Kapital, 8, 40, 64, 106, 109, 115–16, 181, 187–8, 197

---Grundrisse, 197–8

---The German Ideology, 105

Marx-Steinschneider, Kitty, 216

mass media, 69–70, 74

materialism, ix, xiii, 24, 33, 64, 132, 161, 234

---anthropological, 13, 150, 161

---mechanistic, 13–14, 161, 173

Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 20

McRobbie, Angela, 220

Mehring, Franz, 214, 222, 230

melancholy, critique of, 213–14

memory, 71–3, 79–82

---of the nameless, 195

Michel, Louise, 180

Mickey Mouse, 38, 86

mimesis, 116–7, 154–5

mirrors, 103–4, 121

modernity, 46

Moholy-Nagy, László, 67, 70

montage, 60, 70, 98, 102, 117–9, 142, 171

Morlay, Gaby, 192

Mukhina, Vera, 126

music, 83

Muybridge, Eadweard, 140

mysticism, xiii, 48, 234

myth, 29, 74, 80, 114, 157, 181, 241

 

Napoleon III, 184, 189

nature, 91, 177

Naturphilosophie, 6, 50, 63

Naville, Pierre, 14, 24

Nazi-Soviet (Ribbentrop-Molotov) pact, 127, 169, 229

Nazism, 101, 125–6, 135, 157–8, 162–7, 223, 234

Mandel on, 230–1

NEP (New Economic Policy), 15, 18–19

new, the, 111–13

New Objectivity, 59–60, 95, 100

newspapers, 69–70, 74, 94–6

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 13, 110, 112, 117, 224

---eternal return, concept of, 180–81

Nizan, Paul, 185, 189, 191

Novalis, 6

novel, the, 42–3, 94, 97

 

objectivity, 75, 103, 140, 253

---as promise of photography, 47

optical-unconscious, 57, 62, 70, 156

Ottwald, Ernst, 147

 

pacifism, 96

Panofsky, Erwin, 46

panoramas, 102, 137

Papen, Franz von, 165

paper money, 109

Paris Commune, 180, 214, 232

Pasternak, Boris, 147

pastiche, 107

people, the, concept deployed by Hitler and Stalin, 126

pessimism, organisation of, 24

petit bourgeoisie, 166–7

Pfau, Ludwig, 174

phantasmagoria, 106, 115, 192–3

photography, 46–62, 76, 80–3, 87, 95, 102–3, 106, 117

Picasso, Pablo, 148–9

Pirandello, Luigi, 151–2

Plekhanov, Georgi, 230

police, 119

Popova, Lyubov, 90

Popular Front, 94, 124–6, 131, 147–8, 167, 233

positivism, 134

progress, viii, 45, 168–170, 177–9, 195, 204, 230–1

---Benjamin’s critique of, 174–7

---Marx and Engels on, 178

proletkult, 15–16

prostitution, 77, 78, 106, 114–15, 188

Marx on, 114

psychogeography, 70–71

 

Radek, Karl, 17, 101

radio, 54, 78, 85, 87, 93, 186

Rang, Florens Christian, 29, 217

Raphael, Max, 74, 136

rationalism, 96

Rausch, 21–2, 29

Ray, Man, 47, 59

redemption, vii–viii, 45, 200, 202–3

reflection theory, 104–6, 116

Reich, Bernd, 15

reification, 9–10, 115

revolution, vii–viii, 6, 44, 36–8, 122, 124–5, 151, 169, 174–5

Richter, Hans, 141

Riegl, Alois, 43

Rilke, Rainer Maria, 28

Rimbaud, Arthur, 13, 186

Rodchenko, Alexander, 90, 97, 210

Rolland, Romain, 148

Romanticism, 6, 97

Rose, Gillian, 225

Rosemont, Franklin, 239

Ruge, Alfred, 64, 121

Russian Revolution (1917), 233

Ruttmann, Walter, 67

Rychner, Max, 44, 221

 

Saint-Simonians, 115, 119, 174

Sander, August, 58–9

Schapiro, Meyer, 101

Scheerbart, Paul, 86, 177

Schein/Spiel distinction, 143–4

Schelling, Friedrich, 50, 160

Scholem, Gerhard-Gershom, xiv, 3, 23–4, 40–41, 43–4, 81, 116, 123–4, 169, 171, 173, 216, 217, 220–2, 224, 226–7

Schwitters, Kurt, 146

second nature, 91

Sedlmayr, Hans, 98–9

Seidel, Alfred, 35

Seligson, Rika, 77–8

Serge, Victor, 126, 201, 229

Shklovsky, Viktor, 90

shock, 81, 183

show trials, 147

similes, 24

Simmel, Georg, 9, 113

Situationist International, 71, 155–6

Slaughter, Cliff, 228

snapshot, 210

social democracy, 200, 231

---its confused concept of progress, 177–9

---its inability to prevent fascism, 169–70

socialism or barbarism, 4

socialist realism, 101–2, 117, 138, 258

Sontag, Susan, 208

Sorel, Georges, 26, 171, 175

Sotnikov, Aleksei, 90

Soviet Union, viii, 14–20, 89–90, 100–1, 94, 127–9, 138, 147

Soviet-Nazi (Molotov-Ribbentrop) pact, 127, 169, 229

Spanish Civil War, 126, 170

Spartakus rebellion, viii, 169

Spartakusbund, 134

Speer, Albert, 125

Speyer, Wilhelm, 217

Stalin, Josef, viii, 14–16, 123, 125, 127, 169, 217

Stalinism, 101, 125–6, 127–9, 231

star cult, 136

state, the need to smash, 77

Steffin, Grete, 178

Stepanova, Varvara, 90

Stone, Sascha, 4, 210

Strindberg, August, 110, 169

subjectivity, as political issue, 70

Suetin, Nikolai, 90

surrealism, 13–14, 20–26, 29, 49, 59, 63–4, 120, 186, 191, 233

Szondi, Peter, 79

 

tactility, 150–1

Tatlin, Vladimir, 90

Taylorism, 39, 118–9, 154, 160, 185

Technik, passim

---a descriptive history, 73–9

---defined, xii

---techno-determinism, Benjamin not guilty of, 161–2

technology fetishism, x, 174

teeth, 71

telepathy, reading as, 64

theatre, 94, 139, 234–5

theology, 172–3, 201–2

Thieme, Karl, 126

Third International, 96

Third Period, 123, 170

throne rooms, 54

time, 198

Togliatti, Palmiro, 124

torture chambers, 54

tradition, 45

---communist debates about, 147

---Trotsky on, 232

Traverso, Enzo, 228

Tretyakov, Sergei, 90, 93–4, 99–100, 160

Trotsky, Leon, 14–17, 96, 123–5, 127

---Benjamin and, 228–234

---surrealism and, 233

---Literature and Revolution, 16–17, 19, 20, 232, 233

---The War and the International, 35

turban, decline of, 107

Tzara, Tristan, 22, 46–7

 

United Front, 123–4

unpalatable writing, as critique of power, 43–4

Unruh, Fritz von, 28

utopia, 121–2, 157–9

 

Valéry, Paul, 113, 132

Vertov, Dziga, 19, 61–2

Vogt, Karl, 13

 

war, 1–2, 4, 5–7, 26–38, 69, 76, 77–8, 84–5, 96, 111, 135, 157, 163

Watson, Ben, 257, 265

Weber, Thomas, 220

Weill, Kurt, 38

Western Marxism, 9–10

Wiertz, Antoine Joseph, 56

Wohlfahrt, Irving, 225

Wolff, Janet, 225

Wölfflin, Heinrich, 46

workers press, 95–6

 

Zalezhski, Vladimir, 206

Zhdanov, Andrei, 138

Zinoviev, Grigori, 15

Zuckmayer, Carl, 30