Catastrophe and Survival: Walter Benjamin and Psychoanalysis

Elizabeth Stewart is Associate Professor of English, Yeshiva University, New York, USA. She teaches courses in European modernism, post-colonial literature, literature and philosophy, and literary and cultural theory. She is the translator and editor of Lacan in the German-Speaking World (SUNY 2004).

"Elizabeth Stewart's profound and original study of Benjamin transcends everything previously available on his relationship to psychoanalysis. The dialectics of Benjamin's intricate transfiguration of Melanie Klein and of Bion are made radiantly clear. This book is particularly useful for establishing both Benjamin's vision of Kafka and his effect, through Bion, on Samuel Beckett." -- Harold Bloom

• PART I: PSYCHOANALYTIC BENJAMIN Ch. 1: Walter Benjamin and Martyrdom: Trauerspiel Ch. 2: The Saint and the Saint Homme (Sinthome): Benjamin and Lacan (Pt.1) Ch. 3: The Post-Catastrophic Subject: Benjamin and Lacan (Pt. 2) PART II: CULTURES OF MIMESIS Ch. 4: Transformative Mimesis Ch. 5: Mimesis and Catastrophe: Walter Benjamin and Psychoanalysis PART III: BENJAMINIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS Ch. 6: Survival: Walter Benjamin and Susan; Phantasmagoria and "Cocoon" Epilogue