Mauro Ponzi

La Critica e Pavese

la forza del passato

Pasolini e Fassbinder

This book reconstructs the lines of nihilism that Walter Benjamin took from Friedrich Nietzsche that define both his theory of art and the avant-garde, and his approach to political action. It retraces the eccentric route of Benjamin's philosophical discourse in the representation of the modern as a place of “permanent catastrophe”, where he attempts to overcome the Nietzschean nihilism through messianic hope. Using conventions from literary criticism this book explores the many sources of Benjamin's thought, demonstrating that behind the materialism which Benjamin incorporates into his Theses on the Concept of History is hidden Nietzsche's nihilism. Mauro Ponzi analyses how Benjamin’s Arcades Project uses figures such as Baudelaire, Marx, Aragon, Proust and Blanqui as allegories to explain many aspects of modernity. The author argues that Benjamin uses Baudelaire as a paradigm to emphasize the dark side of the modern era, offering us a key to the interpretation of communicative and cultural trends of today.

Nietzsche’s Nihilism in Walter Benjamin

Hermann Hesse

Fabio Vighi

Alexis Nuselovici

The term “threshold” captures the overlapping of inside and outside—well beyond the logic of inclusion and exclusion that still prevails in Western civilization—that can be decisive for the way we understand the relationship between Self and Other. This book discusses the cultural and social “border areas” of modernity, which are to be understood not so much as “zones” in a territorial sense, but rather as “spaces in between,” where different languages and cultures operate.

Threshold Experiences

Between Urban Topographies and Political Spaces

Mauro Ponzi

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