Book, One-Way Street - Berlin Childhood: 1900[LS]

Language: Brazilian Portuguese. A street-book, a city-bookA one-way street is a collection of aphorisms and fragments in which Benjamin departs from themes that are unconventional in a philosophy book, such as personal dreams, posters, monuments, squares, galleries, etc. Its objective is quite unique: to create a philosophy based on observations of the city's streets and the paths of memory and thought. A “philosophical bazaar”, as the philosopher and friend Ernst Bloch once pondered. Berlin Childhood: 1900 is Benjamin’s questioning of his own “concealing memories” (Freud). Benjamin transforms his childhood memories into an object of historical-social analysis, seeking to emphasize two things that are not typical in memoirs: the political framework of memory (in which “I” are “many”) and the construction of memories a posteriori (it is the act of remembering that gives meaning to the past, and not the other way around). The two texts represent a fundamental turn in the author's work. Without abandoning any of his previous themes (myth, language, allegory), Benjamin begins to look at them from the perspective of large modern cities, beginning the ambitious project of developing a philosophy of history centered on the critique of fetishes and myths specific to capitalist culture. (“progress”, “news”, “merchandise”, etc.).Romero Freitas