Walter Benjamin, the urban drunkenness and the political awakening of the masses

Abstract

Starting from the conceptual tensions between the early and mature works of Walter Benjamin, the present work proposes to address his reflections on the modern crisis of political experience in the framework of mass society from two perspectives that involve the notion of image, namely: the corporal-perceptual present in his references to urban life and referred to psychophysical affections such as forgetfulness, shock and reverie, and the historical-memory developed from the late notion of dialectical image intimately related to the ideas of awakening and political action in the key of remembrance. From here, an attempt will be made to show the importance that the category of image and the pair forgetfulness (reverie) - memory (awakening) acquire in benjaminian thought when it comes to addressing the modern problem around the degradation of political experience.