Walter Benjamin, reimagined through the forgotten power of radio

Between 1927 and 1933, philosopher Walter Benjamin produced dozens of radio broadcasts that became a testing ground for his developing ideas and experimental pedagogy. Initially cast off as inconsequential, they are, as Dominic Smith reveals in Bridging Benjamin, a fruitful site for an original interpretation of Benjamin’s larger body of work. Here, Smith is in conversation with Esther Leslie.

Dominic Smith is senior lecturer of philosophy at the University of Dundee, Scotland. He is author of Bridging Benjamin: A Philosophy of Technology, Place, and Education; Exceptional Technologies: A Continental Philosophy of Technology; and coeditor of Contingency and Plasticity in Everyday Technologies.

Esther Leslie is professor of political aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her books include Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism; Hollywood Flatlands, Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde; Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry; Walter Benjamin; Derelicts: Thought Worms from the Wreckage; and Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

Tay Rail Bridge Disaster of 1879
Gilles Deleuze

Martin Heidegger

Derrida

Susan Buck-Morss

Adorno

Bertholt Brecht

Asja Lācis

Immanuel Kant

Berlin Childhood around 1900 / Walter Benjamin

Radio Benjamin / Walter Benjamin

“A Visit to the Brass Works,” radio segment / Walter Benjamin

Lichtenberg: A Cross Section, journal article / Walter Benjamin, Gerhard Schulte

Carl Schmitt

Georgio Agamben

Sam Weber

Fredric Jameson

Peter E. Gordon

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:
"A powerful case for Benjamin’s usefulness in discussions of our relationship with the challenge of technological thought, Bridging Benjamin is exemplary in its extensiveness, honesty, and immediacy."
—Gerhard Richter

Bridging Benjamin: A Philosophy of Technology, Place, and Education by Dominic Smith is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.