Figurations and Interlocutions: The Feminine Question in Walter Benjamin’s Oeuvre

Even though he was a philosopher, not a poet, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) thought poetically, says Hannah Arendt about his friend and life-long correspondent. In his oeuvre, the feminine appears through recurrent images whose meaning may vary according to the context, in different figurations and fictions. In agreement with these fictional figurations, one of his first essays presents the question of what a feminine culture or a feminine language would be (Metaphysik der Jugend, GS, II, I, 1977).