ABSTRACT
The second chapter gives an interpretation of how Benjamin answers the questions and demands laid out in the first chapter throughout various phases. It seeks to read various moments in Benjamin’s thought as a constellational definition of experience, whereby the notion of constellation indicates a non-hierarchical, mutually defining relation between various ideas, as well as an emphasis on the form of how they are displayed in relation to one another. I argue that the first rich concept of experience that Benjamin takes up is perception. However, the notion of perception is always tied up with the linguistic interpretation of expressive objects. This leads Benjamin to positing experience as dependent on a rich notion of language. Rather than accounts that emphasize the ineffability of experience, I argue that experience is for Benjamin essentially a process of ‘reading,’ that is, an inherently linguistic process of interpretation. In order to distinguish his own insights into the nature of language from prevailing currents of early 20th-century thought, Benjamin develops the notion of mimesis. Finally, I trace the theme of experience into Benjamin’s later philosophy of memory, arguing that memory is not a faculty of knowing the past, but a medium of reflecting on experience so as to make experience infinitely connected and inherently valuable. The chapter emphasizes both the continuity that exists between these various conceptions of experience, as well the ways in which each might entail a misunderstanding that can be corrected through one of the other concepts.
