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Why Walter Benjamin was all things to all people

JL;DR SUMMARY Walter Benjamin, a seminal 20th-century thinker, remains difficult to categorize due to his interdisciplinary approach and refusal to fully conform to any ideological framework. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

PhilosophyMarxismLegacyWalter BenjaminVichy FranceJewish Lives SeriesCultural StudiesPeter E. GordonInterdisciplinary

Places mentioned

Berlin, Germany
"He marveled at his mothers jewelry, the cut-glass champagne glasses and carafe stoppers in the shape of animals and gnomes in their Berlin home."
Paris, France
"Walter Benjamins life, to use the kind of metaphor he was so fond of, was not unlike the Parisian arcades, those covered retail passages that he loved so much."
Spain
"As Benjamin navigated the Pyrenees, escaping from Vichy France and into Spain, he took a lethal dose of morphine."
Corsica, France
"As Benjamin navigated the Pyrenees, escaping from Vichy France and into Spain, he took a lethal dose of morphine."
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
"said Peter E. Gordon, the Amabel B. James Professor of History at Harvard."
New York, United States
"I saw your recent piece in the New York Review of Books, writing about historical analogies and how its an imperative to invoke the memory of Jewish persecution when discussing ICE raids or Gaza."

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Cairo Item ID 76066
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Retrieved 2026-02-24 05:30:53 UTC
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