The Walter Benjamin Experience: Inquiry for Changing Reality

Abstract

This article introduces a way of inquiry explored by Walter Benjamin in an effort to renew civilization by first investigating it and then re-writing it toward a better future. Recovering from the damage of World War I, and facing a coming World War II and Third Reich, Benjamin calls for mankind to declare bankruptcy with the present. Benjamin’s 1933 essay, “Experience and Poverty,” suggested taking civilization back to the drawing board, in the service of “changing reality rather than describing it” (p. 733), an uncanny desire to some present-day scholars who see our world as marked by gloomy prospects.