Andrew Benjamin & Dimitris Vardoulakis 
Sparks Will Fly 
Benjamin and Heidegger

Despite being contemporaries, Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger never directly engaged with one another. Yet, Hannah Arendt, who knew both men, pointed out common ground between the two. Both were concerned with the destruction of metaphysics, the development of a new way of reading and understanding literature and art, and the formulation of radical theories about time and history. On the other hand, their life trajectories and political commitments were radically different. In a 1930 letter, Benjamin told a friend that he had been reading Heidegger and that if the two were to engage with one another, ‘sparks will fly.’ Acknowledging both their affinities and points of conflict, this volume stages that confrontation, focusing in particular on temporality, Romanticism, and politics in their work.

Table of Content

Abbreviations



Introduction: “Sparks Will Fly”


Andrew Benjamin and Dimitris Vardoulakis




Part I. Knowledge



1. Entanglement–Of  Benjamin with Heidegger


Peter Fenves



2. Critique and the Thing: Benjamin and Heidegger


Gerhard Richter




Part II. Experience



3.
Stimmung: Heidegger and Benjamin


Ilit Ferber



4. Commodity Fetishism and the Gaze


A. Kiarina Kordela




Part III. Time



5. Monad and Time: Reading Leibniz with Heidegger and Benjamin


Paula Schwebel



6. Time and Task: Benjamin and Heidegger Showing the Present


Andrew Benjamin




Part IV: Hölderlin



7. Who Was Friedrich Hölderlin? Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, and the Poet


Antonia Engel



8. Sobriety, Intoxication, Hyperbology: Benjamin and Heidegger Reading Hölderlin


Joanna Hodge




Part V. Politics



9. Beyond Revolution: Benjamin and Heidegger on Violence and Power


Krzysztof Ziarek



10. A Matter of Immediacy: The Political Ontology of the Artwork in Benjamin and Heidegger


Dimitris Vardoulakis



11. Politics of the Useless: The Work of Art in Benjamin and Heidegger


David Ferris



Biographical Notes

Index

About the author

Andrew Benjamin is Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Thought at Monash University, Australia and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and the Humanities at Kingston University, London. He is the author of several books, including
Working with Walter Benjamin: Recovering a Political Philosophy.
Dimitris Vardoulakis is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He is the author of
Sovereignty and Its Other: Toward the Dejustification of Violence.