The Politics of Translation: The Discovery of Walter Benjamin in China

Walter Benjamin was discovered by the Chinese knowledge class in the 1980s, and since then his main works have been regularly translated and retranslated. Today, Benjamin’s works have not only been adopted in almost all areas of the social sciences and humanities in China, his critical ideas on cultural modernity in terms of bohème, flâneur or Aura have also reached a broader readership beyond the ivory tower of the knowledge elite. This presentation will examine the introduction of Benjamin’s work Charles Baudelaire.