ABSTRACT
Portbou is most familiar to those who know the story of Walter Benjamin's history there, and for those who travel to pay tribute to the philosopher at his memorial place. On a promontory at the tip of the extended arms of the cove, as a prelude to the town's cemetery is where Passages, Homage to Walter Benjamin (1990-1994) by Dani Karavan begins. In a letter to Jean Selz, the philosopher and friend of Benjamin, Theodor Adorno wrote of what he was told about Benjamin's last hours. Karavan's Passages attempts to spatialize the conjunction of Benjamin's life and death. With Passages, Karavan diagnoses the complexities of commemoration in a culture that is preoccupied with memorials and sites of memory. Commemoration can only begin by working through shared, communal memory, but according to Jay Winter's definition, the group in question would be those residents of Portbou who were in some way connected with the French and Spanish border patrols.
