Time Wears Away / Benjamin
Time Wears Away / Benjamin
This chapter examines Walter Benjamin's thoughts on the concept of distraction. It suggests that Benjamin's theory of distraction was based on Franz Kafka's insistence on a lack of transcendence and Martin Heidegger's insistence on the need for it. It also explains that while Kafka and Heidegger associated distraction with temporal problems, Benjamin ascribed to a specific historical movement. He believed that distraction is both dispersed and dissipating and that it appears only sporadically as a producer of and a response to historical turning points.
Keywords: distraction, Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Martin Heidegger, transcendence, historical movement
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