Handling Shocks: on the Representation of Experience in Walter Benjamin's Analogies

Abstract

The latter statement, Benjamin's rumination on the philosophy of history and historical materialism, contains the German locution ins Werk zu setzen; I have translated it as 'to put in play'.3 It can, of course, be rendered more literally as 'to set to work'. The present context with Groos's writing touching upon Benjamin's induces use of the somewhat figurative (but for English speakers, entirely proper) variant. While Benjamin alludes to the originality of each new present as it works upon or makes contact with history, Groos links the original experience of each new being to the infant's capacity for tactual play. Indeed, it is a truism that children's play is their work. Accordingly, in a vignette entitled 'Construction Site [Baustelle]', Benjamin wrote of children's playful engagement with the material discards of adult labour the remnants of 'build-

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