Everyone seems to love Walter Benjamin. Why do so few people emulate him? Is there simply nowhere to write that kind of essay anymore? Why is he so few people's precursor?
I don't know, the part of him that wrote half-assed meanderings that plugged whatever shapes happened into his mind into a narrow and frustratingly vague cultural Marxist perspective seems plenty evident! It's whatever parts of him that were good that are nowhere visible.
(Analogously, no one is emulating Derrida's good philosophical writings either.)
The rest of the Frankfurt school outlived him, so everyone who reads him for a living does it through Adorno and Horkheimer. Negative dialectics, anyone? You get fries with that OH NO THE FRIES WERE A REIFICATION OF AN UNCOGNIZABLE PROCESS
Comments
(Analogously, no one is emulating Derrida's good philosophical writings either.)