"This is a sophisticated and fascinating argument written in a
very enjoyably entertaining style. It is hard for me to see how
readers initially interested in these texts will not be 'swept off
their feet' by the core assertions of this author, and the
devastatingly comprehensive way in which he demonstrates those
arguments."
--Brent Steele, University of Kansas
In "Textual Conspiracies, " James R. Martel applies the
literary, theological, and philosophical insights of Walter
Benjamin to the question of politics and the predicament of the
contemporary left. Through the lens of Benjamin's theories, as
influenced by Kafka, of the fetishization of political symbols and
signs, Martel looks at the ways in which various political and
literary texts "speak" to each other across the gulf of time and
space, thereby creating a "textual conspiracy" that destabilizes
grand narratives of power and authority and makes the narratives of
alternative political communities more apparent.
However, in keeping with Benjamin's insistence that even he is
complicit with the fetishism that he battles, Martel decentralizes
Benjamin's position as the key theorist for this conspiracy and
contextualizes Benjamin in what he calls a "constellation" of pairs
of thinkers and writers throughout history, including Alexis de
Tocqueville and Edgar Allen Poe, Hannah Arendt and Federico Garcia
Lorca, and Frantz Fanon and Assia Djebar.
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