Words of Light

Theses on the Photography of History

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by Eduardo Cadava

Princeton University Press

Due/Published September 1998, 204 pages, paper

ISBN 0691002681

Cadava demonstrates that Walter Benjamin articulates his conception of history through the language of photography. Focusing on Benjamin's discussions of the flashes and images of history, he argues that the questions raised by this link between photography and history touch on issues that belong to the entire trajectory of his writings, including the historical and political consequences of technology, images and history, remembering and forgetting, allegory and mourning.

Written in what Cadava calles "snapshot in prose"--the book memorializes Benjamin's own thetic method of writing, It enacts a mode of conceiving history that is neither linear nor successive, but rather discontinous--constructed form what Benjamin calls "dialectical images." In this way, it suggests the essential rapport between the fragmentary form of Benjamin's writing and his effort to write a history of modernity.

Sam Weber says, "Eduardo Cadava is one of the most exciting younger critics working today in literary and cultural studies. . . . If the future of literary studies depends in no small measure on the capacity of traditional disciplines to adapt and transform themselves, then the signigicance of Cadava's work can hardly be overestimated."

"Cadava presents a series of sensitive meditations on Benjamin's work, in which, like Benjamin himself, he explores the mass image and its role in the making of popular memory."--The Times Literary Supplement