Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics

"Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics "is an innovative and creative attempt to unsettle and reconceive the key concepts of religious studies through a reading with, and against, Walter Benjamin. Constructing what he calls an 'allegorical aesthetics', S. Brent Plate sifts through Benjamin's writings showing how his concepts of art, allegory, and experience undo traditionally stabilizing religious concepts such as myth, symbol, memory, narrative, creation and redemption. Recasting religion as religious practice, as process and movement (creativity rather than creation, mythologizing rather than myth, etc.), Plate skilfully plumbs the materialist atheological aesthetics of Benjamin in order to uncover sources and establish a new locus for the study of religion. Placing the concept of an allegorical aesthetics into practice, the book is puncuated by two fascinating and incisive 'case studies', looking at Francisco Goya's "The Dog "and Daniel Liebeskind's Jewish Museum and World Trade Center design. "Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics "will be necessary reading for those interested in religion and the arts, aesthetics, and material culture.