Walter Benjamin

Howard Caygill is Professor of Cultural History at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

• Preface and acknowledgements -- References and abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1 The programme of the coming philosophy -- The concept of experience -- A transcendental but speculative philosophy -- Language and the infinities -- Philosophising beyond philosophy -- The experience of modernity -- 2 Speculative critique -- Experience and immanent critique -- The development of immanent critique -- Mourning and tragedy -- Modernism: ftom immanent to strategic critique -- The modern epic -- 3 The work of art -- Image and experience -- The speculative image -- The critique of art -- Technology and the work of art -- The work of art in the epoch of its technical reproducibility -- 4 The experience of the city -- Speculative cities -- Philosophy in the cities -- Urban poetics -- The image of the ciry -- Afterword: the colour of experience -- Notes -- Biliography -- Index.