Walter Benjamin, Religion and the Arts

Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics is an innovative and creative attempt to unsettle and reconceive the key concepts of religious studies through a reading with, and against, Walter Benjamin. Constructing what he calls an "allegorical aesthetics," Plate sifts through Benjamin's writings showing how his concepts of art, allegory, and experience undo traditionally stabilizing religious concepts such as myth, symbol, memory, narrative, creation, and redemption.

Walter Benjamin, Religion, and the Arts is an innovative and creative attempt to unsettle and reconceive the key concepts of religious studies through a reading with, and against, Walter Benjamin. Constructing what he calls an "allegorical aesthetics," Plate sifts through Benjamin's writings showing how his concepts of art, allegory, and experience undo traditionally stabilizing religious concepts such as myth, symbol, memory, narrative, creation, and redemption.

S. Brent Plate is Assistant Professor of Religion at Texas Christian University has published widely on religion and visual culture, film, and aesthetics. His edited collections include the forthcoming Religion and World Cinema: Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culture Making (2003) and Religion, Art, and Visual Culture: A Cross-Cultural Reader (2002).