Philosophy & Rhetoric Dec 2011 OA PDF

Married Life, Gay Life as a Work of Art, and Eternal Life:

Miguel Vatter Diego Portales University

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines the motif of eternal life in Walter Benjamin’s work. Whereas myth understands natality and sexuality as characterized by guilt and deserving of death, this article argues that Benjamin seeks to develop an alternative conception of life that is no longer caught up in guilt and thus no longer fated to die—this is the idea of eternal life. By offering a reading of Benjamin’s essay on Goethe’s Elective Affinities, the article maintains that for Benjamin the possibility of eternal life was always linked to a sexual politics that turns around the problematization of heterosexual, patriarchal conceptions of married life. The outlines of this sexual politics are then further traced in his later work on Baudelaire and compared with Foucault’s reading of Baudelaire in the context of working out an idea of life as a work of art.

Journal
Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published
2011-12-01
DOI
10.5325/philrhet.44.4.0309
CompPile
Open Access
OA PDF Bronze
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (24)

  1. Baudelaire, Charles . 1992. Critique d'art. Edited by Claude Pichois. Paris: Gallimard.
  2. Benjamin, Walter . 1991. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 1, pts. 1–3. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäus…
  3. Benjamin, Walter . 1999. Selected Writings. Vol. 2. Ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith. T…
  4. Benjamin, Walter . 2006. The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire. Edited by Michael W. Jennin…
  5. Boswell, John . 1996. The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe. New York: Fontana.
Show all 24 →
  1. Cavell, Stanley . 1999. “Benjamin and Wittgenstein: Signals and Affinities.”Critical Inquiry25 (2): 235–46.
     ↗
  2. Fenves, Peter . 2005. “Marital, Martial, Maritime Law: Toward Some Controversial Passages in Kant's ‘Doctrine…
     ↗
  3. Foucault, Michel . 1990. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage.
  4. Foucault, Michel . 1997a. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Vol. 1 of The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–198…
  5. Foucault, Michel . 1997b. “Il faut défendre la société”: Cours au Collège de France, 1976. Paris: Gallimard/Seuil.
  6. Gasché, Rodolphe . 2005. “Sublimely Clueless: On the Foundation of Marriage in Statutory Law.”Cardozo Law Rev…
  7. Gossman, Lionel . 1983. “Orpheus Philologus: Bachofen versus Mommsen on the Study of Antiquity,”Transactions …
     ↗
  8. Hatab, Lawrence J. 2005. Nietzsche's Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence. New York: Routledge.
  9. Koch, Getrud . 2003. “Man liebt sich, man liebt sich nicht, man liebt sich: Stanley Cavells Lob der Wiederver…
  10. Lemm, Vanessa . 2009. Nietzsche's Animal Philosophy: Culture, Politics, and the Animality of the Human Being.…
     ↗
  11. Marx, Karl . 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert C. Tucker. New York: Norton.
  12. Nietzsche, Friedrich . 1966. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin.
  13. Nietzsche, Friedrich . 1993. The Birth of Tragedy. Ed. Michael Tanner. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. New York: Penguin.
  14. Novak, David . 2005. The Jewish Social Contract: An Essay in Political Theology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni…
  15. Rapoport-Albert, Ada . 2010. “On the Position of Women in Sabbatianism.” In The Sabbatian Movement and Its Af…
  16. Scholem, Gershom . 1971. The Messianic Idea in Judaism. New York: Schocken.
  17. Weber, Samuel . 2008. Benjamin's-abilities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
     ↗
  18. Weber, Samuel . 2010. “Drawing—The Single Trait: Toward a Politics of Singularity.” In Crediting God: Soverei…
     ↗
  19. Weigel, Sigrid . 2008. Walter Benjamin: Die Kreatur, das Heilige, die Bilder.Frankfurt: Fischer.
CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network → Build reading path →