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Bastard Reasoning: A "Preposterous" History Of Walter Benjamin's Ideas, Vladimir Cristache

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation presents the theory of ideas developed by Walter Benjamin in the “Epistemo-Critical Prologue” of his Trauerspiel book and thereby seeks to fill an existing gap in English-language Benjamin literature. On the one hand, it performs its task by closely reading this thinker’s early, epistemo-linguistic writings up to and including the “Prologue”: most prominently, “On Language as Such,” “The Program of the Coming Philosophy,” “The Concept of Criticism,” and the theoretically inclined sections of “Goethe’s Elective Affinities.” On the other, it does so by positioning Benjamin’s theory of language within existentialist philosophy and by applying his theory of …