Abstract

ENOQUE, Alessandro Gomes  and  SAID, Ana Maria. Fetishism and Phantasmagoria in the Work “Berliner Childhood: 1900”, by Walter Benjamin. Educação e Filosofia [online]. 2023, vol.37, n.79, pp.455-504.  Epub Apr 30, 2023. ISSN 1982-596X.  https://doi.org/10.14393/revedfil.v37n79a2023-64980.

Walter Benjamin's thought occupies a particular and, one might even say, special position in the history of modern critical thought. His work, fragmented, unfinished, hermetic, current, anachronistic and complex, allows a tour of a diversity of themes ranging from literature, through sociology, philosophy, art, history, among others. The main objective of this article is, therefore, to establish another look towards this thinker. It is, above all, to understand how the themes of commodity fetishism and phantasmagoria can be seen in one of his main semi-fictional works (“Berlin Childhood: 1900”). Eight excerpts were selected for the purposes of this work. They are: “The Telephone”, “Steglitz Street, Corner with Genthin Street”, “Market”, “Krumme Straβe”, “A Ghost”, “The Humpbacked Little Dwarf”, “Blumeshof 12” and “Misfortunes and Crimes”. After analyzing the excerpts, it was possible to observe that the concept of commodity fetishism, coined by Marx in Capital and expanded by Benjamin as an element of interpretation of the German bourgeois reality of his childhood (phantasmagoria), can be visualized in most excerpts written by the author in the work “Berlin Childhood: 1900”.

Keywords : Fetishism; Fantasmagoria; Berlin Childhood: 1900; Walter Benjamin.

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