JMB Book Club on Walter Benjamin’s One-Way Street

“The technique of the one-way street is akin to that of the player. This is one of the reasons why the book is so shocking,” writes Theodor W. Adorno about his friend Walter Benjamin’s genre-transcending collection of thoughts. As one of the sources of inspiration for Daniel Libeskind’s design of the Jewish Museum Berlin (JMB), we are now taking a fresh look at Benjamin’s 1928 work.

With titles such as Gas Station, Breakfast Room, Civil Engineering Works, Hairdresser for Meticulous Ladies, or Stamp Shop, Benjamin creates a philosophical landscape in pictorial fragments through his fragments, sketches, and aphorisms.

In conversation with media scholar Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky and Monika Sommerer, director of the JMB Library, they will jointly explore Walter Benjamin’s fragmentary visual world in this key text of literary modernism.

Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky

Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky is Professor Emerita of Media Public Sphere and Media Actors with a special focus on gender at the Institute for Media Studies at Ruhr University Bochum. Her research focuses on Critical Theory, Feminist Theory, and Queer Theory; Media Philosophy and Epistemology; Media Anthropology and Game Theory; and Jewish Philosophy.

IN GERMAN