Walter Benjamins The Task of the Translator:

Theory after the End of Theory

Christian Kohlross

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Mannheim University

There are at least two very substantial problems that currently concern literary studies. The first emerges from the widely held impression that the
position of literary theory has recently undergone a fundamental change,
whose nature no one seems to be able to specify exactly.1 At best, a vague
impression can be identified namely, that the perennial game of replacing an old paradigm with a new one that surpasses it has somehow
come to an end.2 One senses that peculiar, even strangely apocalyptical
questions have become prevalent in the realm of literary theory: who is
ready to turn off the lights and finally close the door now? Or is there
another round to be played after this one, a theory after the end of theory?
Is it possible that the very nature of theory has itself changed?
The other problem that concerns literary studies lies in the following question: what does it mean to do justice to the poetic dimension of
literature? And more specifically, what does it mean to do these things
justice within the framework of a scholarly discipline or a theory? If we
are primarily interested in the poetic dimension of literature, then what
is the place of this poetic element within scholarship or within public
discourse about literature? The lack of a satisfying answer to this question has earned literary studies a scathing accusation that they are a
secondary undertaking when compared with the primary one represented
by the phenomena themselves. Why should anyone consult the critics to
see what Goethe said if the answers can be found in Goethes own texts,
The term literary theory will be used in order to name a genre which was invented by
the Russian Formalists in the early twentieth century and which tries to justify the conviction
that literary studies, while dealing with textual fictions, are able to produce (the academically
valuable currency of) knowledge. Cf. Christian Kohlross, Literaturtheorie und Pragmatismus oder die Frage nach den Grnden des philologischen Wissens (2007: 119).
2
Twenty years after Paul de Mans The Resistance to Theory (1986 [1982]) a number of books have been published dealing with the aftermath or even the end of theory, for
instance: Herman Rapaports The Theory Mess (2001), Jean Michel Rabats The Future of
Theory (2002), Terry Eagletons After Theory (2003), Ivan Callus and Stefan Herbrechters
Post-Theory, Culture, Criticism (2004).
1

Partial Answers 7/1: 97108 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Christian Kohlross

98

texts that are more beautiful, elegant, moving, and indeed simply better
than those of the scholars?3 Walter Benjamins essay The Task of the
Translator (1996 [1923]) and this is my main point here provides
some strategies that allow us to take up both problems.
Benjamins essay claims to discuss translation, yet certainly not translation in the generally accepted meaning of the word. It is exceedingly
difficult to imagine what gain a professional translator even one of
literary texts might secure from Benjamins theses about the meaning
and goal of translation. No translators would ever be well-served if they
were told that the idea that directs and controls their actions was that of a
pure language which no longer means or expresses anything (Benjamin 1996 [1923]: 261). And I shudder to imagine what Benjamins
translations of Baudelaire would look like, how incomprehensible they
would be, if he had held to his own theory while making them, a theory
that so brusquely releases translations from the obligation of any reproduction of the sense (Benjamin 1996 [1923]: 259) of the original text.

***
If The Task of the Translator does not discuss translation, then what
does it discuss? My answer is that it discusses the faculty of understanding, and more precisely: the understanding of an other of another
person, of another text, and/or of cultural phenomena as translations.
Translation is and Benjamin says this very explicitly a form
(1996 [1923]: 254); and I would add that it is the faculty of understanding that is contained within this form.
What does it mean for the understanding to exist in the form of a
translation? I believe that the two of them together are a theory; more
precisely, they are a theory of translation. And if one were to ask about
the main subject of The Task of the Translator, I would answer: it is a

Within the scholarly world, the usual reply to this question is: because the answers cannot be found so easily in Goethe, or in Proust or Joyce, for that matter; these writers keep
what they have to say carefully hidden within their texts, so that critics are needed to bring the
deeply buried meanings back to light. Yet whoever reads works by Kittler, Agamben or Peter
Szondi, whoever reads Walter Benjamin or Jacques Derrida, notices one thing rather quickly:
their texts are hardly any easier to understand than the more literary ones mentioned above.
On the contrary, their texts are just as much in need of interpretation as the texts and objects
that they themselves discuss. In other words, and contrary to what they claim to be, literary
studies can hardly be said to fulfill the function of deciphering and demystifying texts.
3

Walter Benjamins The Task of the Translator

99

general theory of understanding in the form of a theory of translation.4

Yet I should use the plural here for the sake of precision, and say rather:
in the form of theories of translation.
Thus, when Benjamin writes, Not only does the intention of a translation address or differ from that of a literary work [Dichtung5] namely
a language as a whole, taking an individual work in an alien language as
a point of departure (1996 [1923]: 259), it is quite acceptable to replace
the concept of translation with that of the theory of translation; this substitution allows us to follow the intention behind Benjamins doctrine of
translation somewhat more easily, an intention that (in my opinion) is not
focused on communication but rather on supplementing language. Such
a substitution makes it evident that Benjamins text not only allows one
to think of the work of art as being composed in an original language
(Objektsprache, i.e., the language which is to be translated), but also allows one to think of the work of arts theory as being composed in a
secondary language (Subjektsprache, i.e., the language into which the
original is to be translated). Theory and object are thus juxtaposed like
two foreign languages, languages that can, however, be translated into
each other. And when one reads further on in the same paragraph that
translation lies midway between poetry and theory (ibid.), then this assertion can, in my view, be translated as follows: a general theory of the
understanding qua translation theory lies between poetry and doctrine
between a realm of fictions and a system of convictions.

***
I have spoken of a general theory of understanding in the form of a theory of translation. I shall, in a moment, discuss what exactly this form
looks like in Benjamin. First, however, one question must be attended
to: to what extent can Benjamins theory illuminate the present uprising
against the secondary world of literary studies (an uprising, incidentally,
that is taking place under a more than merely economic sign)? To what
extent can it shed light on the peculiar agonies concerning theory that
have befallen this secondary world?
By contrast, in the aftermath of Derridas Des tours de Babel (1998 [1985]), Paul
de Mans Conclusions: Walter Benjamins The Task of the Translator (1986), and Bettine Menkes Sprachfiguren: Name, Allegorie, Bild nach Benjamin (1991), Benjamins The
Task of the Translator has been interpreted as if it repudiated or even overcame the need
for understanding.
5
Benjamin 1992: 58.
4

100 Christian Kohlross

My first suspicion here is that such a general theory of understanding in the form of a theory of translation is in fact based upon a certain
need.6 For its part, this need may have resulted from a realization of the
recurrence of the unvarying theory dynamics and is therefore directed at
a theory that does not let itself be filed away under such a dynamics, a
theory that achieves something different, something more than the mere
introduction of yet another new observational paradigm. When this need
articulates itself that is, when it does so in Benjamins writing, it can
be stated as follows: no new understanding of the original is necessary
(or, such an understanding is always necessary), but rather a new understanding of theory.
This new understanding of theory provides us with a general theory
of understanding not in the form of a translation but rather in the form of
a translation theory that (in contrast to a simple translation) specifies the
conditions that must be fulfilled in order for the utterances of ones own
language to be seen as synonymous with those of a foreign language.
Thus, like Donald Davidson after him,7 Benjamin had come to the
conclusion that translation must be fused with the interpretational theory
of translation in order to avoid infinite regresses, and that the language
into which one translates and the metalanguage that specifies how this
translation is to be interpreted must in fact be one and the same language.
Yet what Benjamin considers a metalanguage is different from his own
language: it is not a single, particularly distinctive metalanguage (and
least of all a particularly distinctive theory-language), but rather all those
other languages that bind together in what Benjamin calls the way
of meaning (1996 [1923]: 257)8 both the original language that is
to be translated and the secondary language into which one translates.
Benjamin thus attributes the function of a metalanguage that is always
already understood to a language that is purified of all content.9 And this
6
And this need is quite different from the need for translation which became crucial in
the aftermath of Babel and has been discussed in Emmanuel Lvinas, Totalit et Infini:
Essai sur lExteriorit (1971 [1961]: 38), Derrida, Des tours de Babel (1998: 219), and
Hans Jost Freys Die Sprache und die Sprachen in Benjamins bersetzungstheorie (2001:
156).
7
Cf. Davidsons essay Radical Interpretation (1973).
8
The German expression is die Art des Meinens (1992: 56).
9
A language purified of content is, for example, (instrumental) music. It can be understood even if there is no specific content to be pinpointed and even if it is impossible to
clarify what exactly has been understood or what it means to understand: not words or actions, but music. Another example is the idea of logic, where not a specific content but the
abstract form determines our understanding. The transition Benjamin has had in mind, from
a plurality of languages into one pure language, is thus a process of purification.

Walter Benjamins The Task of the Translator 101

is precisely why we are not dealing with conventional translation in Benjamin, i.e., the translation of a foreign language into ones own language,
but rather with translation into all possible languages. In other words, the
primary issue here is the act of understanding.
Why is this idea of a fusion of translation-theory with interpretationtheory so important? Nothing could answer this question better than a
brief look at literary theory, which is so often occupied with an incessant
changing of paradigms. For from the perspective of a general theory of
understanding in the form of a theory of translation, this changing of
paradigms emerges as a changing of languages, languages into which
the field of literary studies translates the phenomena with which it deals
though it carries out these translations without having an adequate
understanding of its very own language. For literary studies notorious
reference to a metalanguage (whether phenomenological, psychoanalytic, or something else entirely) says nothing about what we must do in
order to understand such a metalanguage or, more precisely, such a
language of translation. In other words, literary theorists now suddenly
find themselves in exactly the same foundational difficulty that once lead
to the end of metaphysics, because the search for an ever-changing metaobserver falls victim to the logic of self-consciousness. In other words,
it falls victim to the logic of an infinite regress. And a fusion of the language of translation with interpretational theory as recommended by
both Benjamin and Davidson seems to be a reliable remedy against
precisely this infinite regress of foundation (and hence of substantiation).
Yet how does one bring about such a fusion?
The strategy of both Benjamins and Davidsons theories of understanding theories that, at first glance, seem remarkably different from
one another is to assume that it is something objective that brings
about such a fusion. In the case of Benjamin, this objective element is the
totality of all languages, while in Davidson it is the objectiveness of the
empirical realm. What occurs in this fusion is a certain self-supplementing or even a synthesis of sorts, yet it is never a repetition or replication
Benjamin and Davidson both strongly stress this point.
Such a theory owes its explicative power not to the abstraction of a
metalanguage but rather to the linguistic or phenomenal world in which
translation takes place. This world specifies how the theory is to be understood. Yet since the original belongs to this world more than anything
else does, it is first and foremost the original that determines how the
translation is to be interpreted. And such a reversal of the usual direction

102 Christian Kohlross

of interpretation has two interesting consequences: on the one hand, literary theory indicates how literature is to be understood; yet on the other
hand, literature specifies how its own theory is to be understood. Benjamin provides the following citation by Rudolf Pannwitz: The basic error
of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language
happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected
by the foreign tongue. . . . He must expand and deepen his language by
means of the foreign language (1996 [1923]: 262). It is hard to imagine
what it would mean for the language of literary studies if it decided to
make the task of the translator as put forth by Pannwitz and Benjamin
its own. Yet I admit that this claim is slightly exaggerated and that
such a situation is, of course, conceivable. It would simply mean thinking
of literary studies own secondary actions (secondary because derived
from the phenomena that precede them) as originary ones, as a kind of
revolt against being relegated into a secondary world.
How exactly is it possible to bind ones own theoretical language not
to other theories (as has been the case up until now) but rather to the
world itself, to the world which this language of theory takes up, and
thus also to the objects of this world? This seems to be the fundamental
question here.

***
I would now like to take this thought process one step further by taking a
somewhat closer look at the form of Benjamins theory of translation.10
The first thing that catches the eye is that Benjamin speaks about a
theory that develops something that most theories usually have the greatest difficulties in taking up, namely: understanding the subjectivity of
perspectives, understanding the how behind the things of the world (in
one way or another). Benjamin manages to gain access to this subjective
element which is a part of the objective world through what he
names the way of meaning: In the words Brot and pain [the German
and the French for bread C. K.], what is meant is the same, but the
way of meaning it is not (1996 [1923]: 257). The situation here is exactly the same as that of Freges example of the morning star and evening star: the object to which the words refer is the same, yet the way in
which the objects are called out of the world (i.e., the mode of linguistic
This theory is, incidentally, no metatheory, and also no theory of meta-translation, but
rather a theory whose demands of other theories also apply to itself.
10

Walter Benjamins The Task of the Translator 103

access) is different.11 And when Benjamin calls upon us to focus on the

way of meaning more than on what is meant in conducting our translations, he is simply saying that we should pay more attention to the way in
which something is linguistically understood, and from there proceed to
find an equivalent for this way of meaning in our own language this is
how I would translate Benjamins text, in any case. It does not follow that
we should simply repeat what a literary text (for example) says, except
in different and perhaps clearer words. In any case, such a restating of
the text would not be possible since the poetic nature of a literary text is
constituted by the fact that what is meant cannot be separated from the
way of meaning, since the content cannot be separated from the representation. Thus, it is our task not to decipher the text, but rather to cipher
it differently not entirely differently or in an utterly free manner, but
rather in such a way as to supplement the originals own mode of ciphering so that the echo of the original (1996 [1923]: 258) is produced.
What is here significant for the literary studys conception of itself is
the fact that the ways of meaning in which something appears as something are attributed by Benjamin to no specific language, whether the
language of nature or the language of the things of this world. For in a
certain sense, it is against our own backdrop as interpreters that things
and objects, including the things of nature, stand out. Indeed, what good
would it do to have a general theory of understanding that does not know
what to make of things, gestures, premonitions, and character traits, but
only knows how to deal with what dictionaries and grammar books have
already produced and thus established as language? To read what was
never written. Such reading, Benjamin tells us at the end of his short
piece entitled On the Mimetic Faculty, is the most ancient: reading
prior to all languages, from entrails, the stars, or dances (1999 [1933]:
722). Indeed, whoever follows these instructions is capable of reading
into faces long before he or she is capable of deciphering anything that is
actually written down. This something that can be read in faces, dances,
stars, and even in our entrails, these various modes in which reality appears, can be interpreted in the same way as a language or rather, they
themselves constitute a certain language, a language of nature, of things,
or even of being. Modern linguists make little of this language, as do
many contemporary philosophers of language (above all those who work
within the analytic tradition), yet disregarding it is a luxury that a general
theory of understanding simply cannot afford. Even a language such as
11

Frege 1892: 28ff.

104 Christian Kohlross

this must be capable of carrying out translations. Indeed, it is literature

that makes this necessity abundantly clear. For understanding literature
means more than merely understanding language; it means understanding the world in its manifold modes of appearance. And as the disciplines
of aesthetics and literary studies have demonstrated time and again, this
content of art cannot be analyzed via any positivistic method, but must
rather be considered in a speculative mode, always mediated through
the way of meaning in my opinion, this is exactly what the literary
critic Walter Benjamin teaches us, for he asserts that the way of meaning
supplements itself in each of the two languages from which the words
[Brot and pain] are derived; to be more specific, the way of meaning in
them is supplemented in relation to what is meant (1996 [1923]: 257).
Such a translation, which ultimately aims at an isomorphism between
meaning and what is meant, and for which Benjamin has invented the
conceptual symbol of pure language, obviously presupposes a conception of meaning that extends beyond what we generally understand under
the rubric of linguistic meaning. For this conception of meaning must
not only be able to contain linguistic ways of meaning, i.e. the linguistic
modes in which we experience reality, but also the ways in which reality
appears to us. Only when this extension of the concept of meaning has
been achieved (and it seems to me that this is one of the most culturally explosive theses of the language philosopher Benjamin) can literary
studies hope to explore hitherto uncharted realms of reality realms to
which, incidentally, poetry has long had access.
What might such a general concept of meaning look like? Benjamins
answer to this is entirely pragmatic: If translation is a form, translatability must be an essential feature of certain works (1996 [1923]: 254).
Benjamin continues his argument in the following paragraph: Translatability is an essential quality of certain works, which is not to say that
it is essential for the works themselves that they be translated; it means,
rather, that a specific significance [Bedeutung] inherent in the original
manifests itself in its translatability (ibidem). This, however, means that
a certain dimension of meaning or significance first manifests
itself within the translation. Something of what and how the original signifies is first revealed in the moment of translation and not a single moment before. That is to say: the original alone does not determine its own
meaning. It is the translation that first makes the original what it is. I cite
Benjamin once again: It is evident that no translation, however good it
may be, can have any significance with regards to the original (ibidem).
Indeed, it would be appropriate to add the following note here: every

Walter Benjamins The Task of the Translator 105

cultural phenomenon, every work of literature, manages well enough

without its theoretical translation. Nonetheless, writes Benjamin, the
translation does stand in the closest relationship to the original by virtue
of the originals translatability; in fact, this connection is all the closer
since it is no longer of importance to the original. We may call this connection a natural one, or, more specifically, a vital one. Just as the manifestations of life are intimately connected with the phenomenon of life
without being of importance to it, a translation issues from the original
(ibidem). This, however, means that just as an individual life, together
with everything that it brings forth, can manage well enough without the
concept of the phenomenon of life (which as a general concept actually
has an indifferent attitude towards an individual life), so too is individual
life dependent on that concept not with regard to the simple fact of
its existence, but rather very much with regard to its significance.12 What
it means to be an individual life can only be specified with regard to a
universal that pertains to it but that is nevertheless different from it. It is
in precisely this respect that the relationship between an individual life
and the phenomenon of life is analogous to that between the translation
and the original. And this ultimately means that the original becomes a
concrete signifier only through its translation (it may still have meaning or significance independent of its translation, but this would be of a
hermetic variety). The original is only the concept, the rule that specifies
how language is to be used. Understanding this original, however, means
being able to apply the concept, the rule. It is in this way that meaning
arises.
Thus, meanings are, as far as their recognizability is concerned,13 no
longer something given, and they are also no longer something that can
be tracked down and deciphered in an investigative fashion. Rather, it is
their application that first shows what they consist of. What the original
says first appears in the act of translation. The translation is thus not a derivative of the original, and certainly not a copy of the original in another
medium, language, or terminology; rather it is its realization or potentiation. Translations are, to use Benjamins words, manifestations of life.
And now the following pragmatic maxim is valid not with regard to
So what the original says will become explicit in the act of translation. Cf. Thomas
Drr, Kritik und bersetzung: Die Praxis der Reproduktion im Frhwerk Walter Benjamins
(1988: 120).
13
And this is the point where Benjamin moves beyond the first sentence of his essay on
translation, a sentence that is postulated as a problem that concerns all of the essays subsequent sentences.
12

106 Christian Kohlross

the genesis of the translation but certainly with regard to its semantic
content namely that the translation has precedence over its original.14

***
The far-reaching consequences that this view of translation has for contemporary literary studies have been anticipated by Benjamin himself.
The first consists of the fact that the afterlife of works of art in succeeding generations (1996 [1923]: 255) now appears as a history of their
reception, a history that takes place within the translations.15 According
to Benjamin, it is in these translations that the life of the original attains its latest, continually renewed, and most complete unfolding (1996
[1923]: 255).
If this is so and herein lies the second consequence then the
endlessness of arts progression towards perfection is documented in the
endless event of interpretation. Traditional hermeneutic theories considered the endless nature of interpretation to be a symptom of the imperfection of the methods of literary analysis. In Benjamins writings, by
contrast, it is rather a symptom of an infinite process of perfection, in
which an increasing amount of the works potential will be updated.
Some questions still remain: where does this lead us? And what lies
at the end of such a process of perfection? Benjamins answer to this
is: pure language. But what is pure language? What does it consist of?
My answer is that it consists of all the ways in which something can be
understood. This, however, does not amount to pure arbitrariness of perspectives. Translations show how something can be understood within
the medium of language. And a translation is, per se, bound to the language of the original. The original must confirm those aspects of its own
existence that the translation brings to light.
This confirmation can only be obtained within the many languages
that supplement and clarify each other. It cannot be obtained from outside
these languages or by means of an observer who is an adherent of a certain theory, and it certainly cannot be acquired through a so-called neuAlexander Gelley provides a further discussion of what he calls the primordial expressivity of which mans language (post-Babelic language) is only a weak reflection (2007:
26).
15
This historical dimension of any translation has been explored in Steinberg 1996. See
also Derridas use of translation as a word whose meaning is not far removed from that of
tradition in Edmund Husserls Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
14

Walter Benjamins The Task of the Translator 107

tral observer. Neither is speaking only one specific language or not

speaking any languages at all a good condition for the drawing up of
a translation handbook that would consist entirely of pure forms. Rather,
one must learn as many languages as possible. But since nobody can
speak all languages, the production of such an ideal translation handbook
remains a utopia, a utopia that is in fact the goal of all those translations
that constantly supplement each other.
This, however, ultimately means that theory is as pure or true language the virtual goal, and not the precondition of any cognition that
arises from the perspective of literary studies. This also means that the
question of what theory is can only be answered empirically. The answer
to this question is revealed in each and every act of interpretation where
the ways in which a foreign language conveys meaning are unfolded
within ones own language. Ones own language thus gives expression
to the conditions under which each foreign language is able to signify
something it does not give expression to what is generally considered
to be its meaning.
Yet at that point where the conditions of meaning and meaning itself
coincide, we are no longer dealing with a general theory of understanding as a theory of translation, but rather with a holy text (cf. Benjamin
1996 [1923]: 263) and such a text needs no mediation.
Theorys ideal only exists here, here in the holy text and thus at
the point where it ceases to be theory. Therefore, it is only where it falls
short of its ideal that theory remains what I believe it always already is in
Benjamin, namely: theory after the end of theory.

Works Cited
Benjamin, Walter. 1992 [1923]. Die Aufgabe des bersetzers. Sprache
und Geschichte: Philosophische Essays. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Stuttgart:
Reclam, pp. 5064.
. 1996 [1923]. The Task of the Translator. Trans. Harry Zohn. Selected
Writings. Ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, I: 25363.
. 1999 [1933]. On the Mimetic Faculty. Trans. Edmund Jephcott.
Selected Writings, Volume 2: 19271934. Ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael
W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 72022.
Callus, Ivan, and Stefan Herbrechter, eds. 2004. Post-Theory, Culture, Criticism.
Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Davidson, Donald. 1973. Radical Interpretation. Dialectica 27/34: 313
28.

108 Christian Kohlross

Derrida, Jacques. 1978 [1962]. Edmund Husserls Origin of Geometry:

An Introduction. Trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. New York: Hays; Hassocks:
Harvester.
. 1998. Des tours de Babel. Psych: Inventions de lautre. Nouv. ed.
Augmente. Paris: Galile, pp. 20335. English edition: Psyche: Inventions
of the Other. Ed. Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth G. Rottenberg. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 20072008.
Drr, Thomas. 1988. Kritik und bersetzung: Die Praxis der Reproduktion im
Frhwerk Walter Benjamins. Gieen: Focus.
Eagleton, Terry. 2003. After Theory. New York: Basic Books.
Frege, Gottlob. 1892. ber Sinn und Bedeutung. Zeitschrift fr Philosophie
und philosophische Kritik 100: 2550.
Frey, Hans Jost. 2001. Die Sprache und die Sprachen in Benjamins
bersetzungstheorie. In bersetzen: Walter Benjamin, ed. Christiaan L.
Hart Nibbrig. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 14758.
Gelley, Alexander. 2007. Epigones in the House of Language: Benjamin on
Kraus. Partial Answers 5/1: 1732.
Kohlross, Christian. 2007. Literaturtheorie und Pragmatismus oder die Frage
nach den Grnden philologischen Wissens. Tbingen: Niemeyer.
Lvinas, Emmanuel. 1971 [1961]. Totalit et infini: Essai sur lexteriorit. The
Hague: Nijhoff.
Man, Paul de. 1986 [1982]. The Resistance to Theory. The Resistance to
Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 320.
. 1986. Conclusions: Walter Benjamins The Task of the Translator.
The Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp.
73105.
Menke, Bettine. 1991. Sprachfiguren: Name, Allegorie, Bild nach Benjamin.
Munich: Wilhelm Fink.
Rabat, Jean-Michel. 2002. The Future of Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
Rapaport, Hermann. 2001. The Theory Mess: Deconstruction in Eclipse. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Steinberg, Michael P., ed. 1996. Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.