The following Design Studies Forum-Sponsored Special Session has been
added to the CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles. It does not appear
in the printed version of the 2009 Call for Participation.

BENJAMIN'S OBJECTS
Design Studies Forum-Sponsored Special Session
College Art Association
Los Angeles, February 25-28, 2009
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

The objects found in Walter Benjamin’s writing constitute a
significant part of his material and intellectual world. Benjamin's
careful textual descriptions of objects gird his broader critical
insight into the status of objects and their significance. In
reflecting upon his childhood, objects became a means through which to
access a bygone era; taking possession of things was posited as a way
to divest them of their commodity character. Activities such as
collecting, assembling the archive, or unpacking the library were
necessarily material-filled. In a seemingly straightforward manner,
Benjamin celebrates the material qualities of objects such as letters,
books, or old toys, but he also less directly employs objects to
address subjects such as kitsch, modern life, and capitalism. In
Benjamin's formulation, antimacassars, cases and containers, in their
use, allowed the dweller to leave traces; it is notably through
objects that the dweller imprints himself upon the interior.

This session proposes a reappraisal of Benjamin's objects, with
considerations of what objecthood meant to Benjamin and how the
particular set of objects highlighted in his writing can be understood
both within his body of work and the broader period in which he wrote.
Benjamin's theory can also be used to inform the examination of
objects in other areas of design history. This panel invites
investigations of objects as a means of soliciting critical insight
into Benjamin's larger questions, such as those surrounding the aura,
habits, taste, the bourgeoisie, or authenticity. Seeking not just to
excavate and explicate previously underexamined Benjaminian objects,
this session asks how we might interrogate them as discursive entities
or agents. Papers might address the myriad relationships between art
and objects, object-laden activities (collecting, for example), or
between subjects and objects. How might objects mediate between the
concrete realm of the commodity and the dream world, both equally
populated with things in Benjamin’s work? How might objects give
insight, according to Benjamin, into broader categories of knowledge?
How do the perceptions or representations of things relate to their
general existence or to a specific time and place? How might objects
be seen in relation to the work of art or the production of images?
And finally, how might the material culture of Benjamin give insight
into the material of culture?

Please submit an abstract not to exceed 500 words with a c.v. via
email to Robin Schuldenfrei ([log in to unmask]) by Friday, May 23, 2008.


Robin Schuldenfrei
Assistant Professor
Department of Art History
University of Illinois at Chicago
935 W. Harrison St., MC 201
Chicago, IL 60607-7039

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