This chapter examines the life of a prominent figure in late 1920s Paris, focusing on their intrigue with the city's arcades, which symbolize a past era and industrial capitalism. It discusses the flâneur's experiences with consumer culture and the transformation of urban spaces, alongside insights into Walter Benjamin's theories on art and reproduction. The narrative reflects on the shifting relationship between art, its authenticity, and the impact of modern technologies, revealing a complex view of culture in the context of political and social change.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and he worked in Paris in dread of what was to come; when his escape from France in 1940 was blocked at the Spanish border, he took his own life.
With
Esther Leslie
Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London
Kevin McLaughlin
Dean of the Faculty and Professor of English, Comparative Literature and German Studies at Brown University
And
Carolin Duttlinger
Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production