Benjamin’s criticism redeemed flawed works by treating them as fragments of truth

Evidence

Reducing the false, mistaken totality' of the work to the status of an unfinished piece, absolutization could rescue it, in its incomparability and uniqueness, as a fragment of the true world’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 354

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Benjamin’s oeuvre is fundamentally a collection of allegorical objects; Benjamin’s 1919 dissertation made art criticism a model of higher experience — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 345; Failed or refuted works often stay canonized through sustained critique (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Failed or refuted works often stay canonized through sustained critique #corroborates (0.85)
• Dialectical criticism judges a work by how its strengths structurally require its weaknesses #expands (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 682