On Language
Mostly so I don't forget, a quote that jumped out in reading today:
Maybe this: Benjamin is insisting that the only way we can have access to the past is through our memories. All simple enough until we take stock of the problematically mediated nature of memory, its imperfect and imprecise status. That, I think, is the interesting link with Pamuk's work.
Language shows clearly that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. (Walter Benjamin, 'A Berlin Chronicle', p. 25-26)Do I know what this means? Not really, but it reminded me of something I'm trying to work through in (still!) writing about Orhan Pamuk's memoir Istanbul.
Maybe this: Benjamin is insisting that the only way we can have access to the past is through our memories. All simple enough until we take stock of the problematically mediated nature of memory, its imperfect and imprecise status. That, I think, is the interesting link with Pamuk's work.
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