Plate, S. Brent. London: Routledge, 2005. xv + 171 pp., $24.95
(paper). ISBN: 0-415-96992-1.
[1] Having only a very basic,
minimal exposure to a small selection of the works of Walter Benjamin, I
approached this text with more than the slightest bit of trepidation. Still,
what I had read left me curious and craving more—on whom has he not had a
similar effect? Plate’s work has gone to great lengths to feed my hunger for a
better understanding of this master theorist’s work.
[2] Plate examines Benjamin’s work
“looking for tools with which to articulate a religious aesthetics and an
aesthetic religion” (x), intentionally avoiding Benjamin’s overtly religious
writings in the process. In so doing Plate writes a book that, while often
touching on religion in passing, only explicitly deals with religious studies a
few times. Besides a brief discussion to compare “the desire for closeness or
proximity” that arises in both “the bhakti ‘movement’ in South Asia and the
Protestant Reformation in Europe” (115) and another section examining “the idea
of Jewish memory” (133), the only section to really deal heavily with religious
studies is an explanation of the role of Kabbalistic shevira and tikkun “in
relation to Benjamin’s destructive-creation” (29), a particularly and
eye-opening comparison. Other than these isolated examples, Plate’s religious
working is implicit at best—except at times when he very self-reflexively
interrupts the flow of the writing to, as he puts it, “take a step back and
bring to the foreground the distinctiveness of Benjamin’s approach to the arts
for a religious aesthetics” (106).
[3] Because of this, Walter
Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics is not a
text that would greatly benefit readers interested in religion and popular
culture, but would certainly interest any Benjaminian scholar. In fact, it
would obviously behoove the reader to have an extensive working knowledge of
the many, many writings of Benjamin, but more especially “The Work of Art in
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (to which Plate almost exclusively devotes
his third chapter) and The Arcades Project, described here as “around a thousand pages of fragments made up of
quotations from architects, poets, critics, philosophers, politicians, and
others, grouped together into thematic sections that, when read through, form
something of an argument” (129). In addition to demonstrating his own wide
breadth of knowledge on Benjamin’s writings, Plate makes extensive use of a
great number of additional sources (as the bibliography attests). This almost
works against the author, though, for unless the reader is equally an expert on
these writings, much of this scholarship is unknown, its context foreign, and its
impact not felt. In short, Plate’s scholarship belies the book’s seemingly
unobtrusive mass market paperback publication.
[4] Plate does a great job in the
first chapter in making his “plea for a materially and sensually based
aesthetics” (11), and follows it up in the second by developing a Benjaminian
theory of allegory. In so doing he reaches broadly “to point toward a plural
structuring of culture that is open to multiple religions” (12). Plate’s
attempts to clarify the concept “allegorical aesthetics,” while thorough, are
disparate and hard to follow, though I did appreciate the example from an
episode of Seinfeld to distinguish
between a “twitch” and a “wink” (39). The third chapter very effectively
clarifies what is undoubtedly Benjamin’s most popular writing, and Plate works
to distinguish between the three existing versions. The final chapter serves
(in part) as conclusion, further elaborating many points (primarily from The
Arcades Project).
[5] All things considered, this is
not an easy read, and may be a text intended primarily for Benjaminian
authorities. Even so, Plate writes with such an unobtrusive, almost casual
style that anyone with even the slightest interest in Benjamin should gain
something from his book. Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics is not for the novice, but could be a worthy read
for anyone who cannot fully grasp the writings of Benjamin.
Timothy A.
Shorkey
Wayne State University
aw9629@wayne.edu
