Problems of Origin

My paper is an analysis of Walter Benjamin’s possibly most important methodological piece of writing, the Epistemo-Critical Prologue of The Origin of German Tragic Drama. The aim of the analysis on the one hand is to find out the special, benjaminian meaning and effective origin of certain central terms (representation, idea, origin), and, on the other, to interpret with their help an important late fragment which can illuminate the methodological and thematic coherence of the early and late works of Benjamin. The paper’s method is basically close reading, supplemented by reference to some usually neglected sources. Among the results there appeared a completely unforeseen one, namely the possibly cohenian origin of the so important benjaminian term ‘detour’!