The process of allegorization in Walter Benjamin: limits and potentialities

Abstract

This paper examines Walter Benjamin’s conceptualization and development of allegory or allegoresis, understood not only as an aesthetic resource employed in different historical periods but also as a philosophical one. First, it considers the vicissitudes of the Trauerspiel in relation to the ancient concept of tragedy and the theoretical confusions that arose during German Classicism and Romanticism. It then analyses two specific moments: the process of allegorization in the German Trauerspiel during the Thirty Years’ War and the allegory found in Charles Baudelaire’s poems in nineteenth-century Paris. The philosophical problem is to determine how objects signify within Benjamin’s allegorical process, to what extent allegory can become a technique for doing philosophy, and what obstacles this intersection presents. The analysis draws on issues developed in Benjamin’s final major work, The Arcades Project.