Benjamin approached materialist history through studies of allegorical art

Evidence

In his progress from the ideas of youth, of the Jews and of the `literati’ as representatives of the intellect, and through the idea of opening up symbolic works of art and intensifying allegorical works of art, Benjamin approached the threshold of a version of the materialist conception of history which was related to the one which Kracauer and Bloch, with whom Benjamin discussed these ideas, were coming to an understanding about during the same years. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 360

Categorization

• XREF: Places Benjamin’s Trauerspiel work on the same trajectory as Kracauer and Bloch’s contemporaneous materialism. — connects to: Benjamin’s oeuvre is fundamentally a collection of allegorical objects; Benjamin’s historical analyses of machinery are actually allegorical emblems for psychological states. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 162; Benjamin’s thought operates on parallel discontinuous levels of allegorical meditation — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 140

Broader Connections

• Benjamin’s thought operates on parallel discontinuous levels of allegorical meditation #expands (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 140