Walter Benjamin and the Media

Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introducing Dr Benjamin
1. There and Then, Here and Now
2. Figuring Benjamin
3. Configuring Benjamin
Chapter 2 The Crisis of Communication and the Information Industry
Introduction
1. Storytelling and the Crisis of the Novel
2. The Newspaper and the Information Industry
3. The Intellectuals in the Age of Mass Media
Conclusion
Chapter 3 Radio and Mediated Storytelling
Introduction
1. Toward a Critical Sociology of the Audience
2. Radio Model
3. Some Motifs for Media Pedagogy
Conclusion
Chapter 4 Art and Politics in the Age of their Technological Reproducibility
Introduction
1. Photographic Reproducibility
2. The Media Culture of Distraction
3. Media and Democracy
Conclusion
Chapter 5 The Media City: Reading The Arcades Project
Introduction
1. Phantasmagorias of Modernity
2. Media Spectacle and Urban Space
3. Tactility of Media Critic
Conclusion
Chapter 6 Conclusion: The Actuality of Benjamin's Media Critique

Jaeho Kang is Lecturer in Critical Media and Cultural Studies at the Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS, University of London

"In Walter Benjamin and the Media Jaeho Kang strikes a near perfect balance between biographical narrative and theoretical analysis. In doing so, Benjamin's media critique is fully contextualised removing any notion of obsolescence which may arise from a contemporary reading."
LSE Review of Books
For too long Walter Benjamin's lapidary texts have merely sparkled in the distance, unintegrated into everyday analyses of media and communications research. Jaeho Kang's fluent and energetic new reading of Benjamin's writings on radio, storytelling, media industries, and urban culture reinvigorates our connection with this great 20th century thinker of cultural change. Kang's beautifully organised book provides us with a welcome toolkit for grasping today's high-speed reconfiguration of our once familiar media landscapes.
Nick Couldry, London School of Economics
We know of Walter Benjamin in several guises: failed academic, brilliant journalist, messianic writer. But do we really know about Benjamin the media theorist, beyond 'Work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction'?
 
Jaeho Kang takes us across disciplines along the intensely original intellectual journey that led Benjamin to the media. Brilliant and grave, erudite and luminous, Kang's book invites us to share Benjamin's incandescent curiosity.
Daniel Dayan, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris