Duy Lap Nguyen

Duy Lap Nguyen, Associate Professor in World Cultures and Literatures at the University of Houston, reinterprets Walter Benjamin as a coherent thinker. He traces Benjamin’s historical materialism, contrasts it with Kantian progress, and explores critiques of capitalist timelessness. The conversation touches on phantasmagoria, honoring the anonymous, and the relevance of Benjamin’s ideas for today’s politics and technology.

Duy Lap Nguyen, Associate Professor of World Cultures and Literatures and author of books on Benjamin and Vietnamese studies, argues Walter Benjamin’s scattered writings form a coherent project. He explores Benjamin’s distinctive historical materialism, critiques of progress and Kantian history, influences from utopian socialists, the Arcades Project’s excavation of capitalist phantasmagoria, and the call for urgent political organization.

Duy Lap Nguyen, Associate Professor in World Cultures and Literatures, offers a concise reading of Walter Benjamin as a coherent historical materialist. He traces Benjamin’s move from Kantian and anarchist engagements to a heterodox Marxism. Conversations cover Benjamin’s critique of progress, his view of modernism and capitalism, and the role of desire, labor, and anonymous lives in his thought.