Autore
Barbisan, Léa

Titolo
"The most forgotten source of strangeness". Internal Nature and the Politics of Estrangement in Walter Benjamin
Periodico
Politica & società
Anno: 2025 - Volume: 41 - Fascicolo: 3 - Pagina iniziale: 307 - Pagina finale: 325

This article explores Benjamin’s concept of internal nature, highlighting its fundamental divergence from Habermas’s notion of subjective nature. While Habermas perceives the lived body as something the subject must appropriate to achieve responsible authorship, Benjamin exposes the problematic origins of this appropriation. Through his examination of body ownership, Benjamin demonstrates that subjective nature arises not from autonomous self-reference but from the internalization of social constraints. His interpretation of Kafka illustrates why, in these circumstances, the body can manifest as a "source of strangeness". Rather than overcoming this strangeness through individual appropriation, Benjamin argues for understanding how it emerges from and potentially disrupts alienating social relations. In Kafka’s "Nature Theater", Benjamin identifies a utopian model where performance facilitates a productive experience of self-estrangement. This model underpins his analysis of the "nature of the second degree" created by avant-garde cinema and epic theater as a "laboratory" where internal nature is revealed not as subjective nature, but as a space where social relations and their inherent conflicts are articulated.



SICI: 2240-7901(2025)41:3<307:"MFSOS>2.0.ZU;2-1
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.4476/118739
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.4476/118739

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