Volume 8, Issue 1, 2011
Simona Mitroiu
Pages 213-222
To Collect in Order to Survive
Benjamin and the Necessity of Collecting
Following the distinctions made by Susan Pearce between souvenir collections, fetishism collections and systematic collections, the present study will underline the idea that, for Walter Benjamin, collection was a way to reconnect with the past and to reconstruct an image of what was destroyed. Every object collected by Benjamin was for him a souvenir of the European cultural identity.