Toward a Benjaminian Theory of Dialectial Allegory

Abstract

Despite Benjamin's importance to contemporary allegory studies, his understanding of allegory has been widely misconstrued in ways that diminish its applicability to current problems in the field. I attribute this in large part to a failure to integrate his early writings on the subject in The Origin of German Tragic Drama with his later views, expressed in both his writings on Baudelaire and the recently-translated Arcades Project. An examination of this last text in light of the others yields a theory of allegory as a dialectical mode that responds to the destabilization of, or contradiction within, the historically-specific situation from which it emerges. This in turn accounts for the apparent contradictions between Benjamin's several treatments of the topic, each of which considers a unique moment of cultural production.