The Center And Periphery The "One-Way Street" As A Walter Benjamin’s Thought Map

Walter Benjamin’s theory has used to been regarded as broken and unsystematic.The uniqueness of “One-Way Street”is that it shows a Walter Benjamin’s style,thus offering a possibility to catch a total Benjamin.In terms of the content,“One-Way Street” shows many aspects of Benjamin’s thought,revealing the shadows of Benjamin’s many other works.In terms of the form,the writing of “One-Way Street” is a concentrated reflection of Benjamin’s special way of expression,using montage style in the text,full of philosophy and metaphor.The uniqueness of the “One-Way Street” makes it an introduction to understand Benjamin.It is like Benjamin’s writing outline,many subsequent works can be seen as the in-depth development of a few words in “One-Way Street”.In "One-Way Street",Benjamin likened the collision and conflict of different ideas in his mind to a chaotic street,and the appearance of Rasis made the chaotic street in his mind clear,like a searchlight illuminating these crisscrossing roads.The writing of “One-Way Street” is based on the background of this ideological transformation.The emergence of this work indicates that Benjamin began to absorb Marxist ideas and detach himself from the pure spiritual world,paying attention to reality and politics.At this time,Benjamin basically formed the prototype of his thought map.Although Benjamin’s works is unfinished,we can still glimpse the general structure of his overall thinking through this completed outline.It can be said that “One-Way Street” provides a miniature map of Benjamin’s fragmented and atomic thought.Based on the special status of "One-Way Street",the overall Benjamin’s thought can be observed by constructing a thought map of the "One-Way Street".This provides some inspiration for thinking about Benjamin’s unique writing style and ambiguous identity.Chapters 2 to 5 are specific expansions of this idea.The second chapter mainly elucidates the relationship between "One-Way Street" and Benjamin’s overall thought,establishing a basic viewpoint that "One-Way Street" can be seen as a mini map for understanding Benjamin’s overall thought.The view of time-history is the center of Benjamin’s thought,and there is also a clue of time-history in the implicit and fragmented imagery group of "One-Way Street"."One-Way Street" metaphorically refers to the time and history that cannot be turned back or stopped.All of Benjamin’s tasks were only to stop this decadent historical disaster,thus he takes in Jewish theology,Marxist thought,and other theory that may provide an assistance for this redemption mission as his weapon.The view of time-history is not only the center of "One-Way Street",but also the center of Benjamin’s thought.Benjamin expands his thought based on the writing outline "One-Way Street",and formed his other works.The main problem to be solved in Chapters 3 and 4 is to construct the thought map of "One-Way Street".The framework of “One-Way Street” can be summarized as "center" and "periphery" : the center of the street is Benjamin’s view of time-history.He criticizes the idea of linear time and historicism which claims "history is always progressing".Benjamin believes that the development of history is a degenerate process,and its essence is a single disaster.History is constructed by the victors,and the way for historical redemption is to find the true subject in history,revealing the uniqueness and differences in homogeneous history.The core of Benjamin’s historical view is the consciousness of time,which has the characteristics of being non empty,heterogeneous,and traceable.The past can be saved,and Benjamin endowed the “present” with a sense of redemption.When people regain the experience which full of the true humanity at some point,and the meaning of the past is realized at the present.The periphery of the street contains criticism about social space,literary and art.The essence of criticizing social space is a concrete expression of decadent history.Benjamin used the image of space to analyze and express historical movements,with the aim of describing historical disasters.The idea of literature and art is a means of breaking linear time.“Aura”and “shock” both occur at the moment that linear time fractures.The two seemingly contradictory concept of art has achieved consistency in the dimension of historical redemption.Benjamin used the concept "aura" and "shock" to express how to stop historical disasters.In a word,the social space criticism and idea of literary and art,as a "peripheral" thought,uniformly point to the view of historical disasters.In the period of "One-Way Street",Benjamin’s historical materialism and materialism methodology have been formed.historical materialism expresses his view of the world,and materialism methodology expresses how he obtained this view.These two aspects are reflected in his writing style as a collection,and the unique style of "One-Way Street" is the specific presentation of Benjamin’s collection theory as a writing style.This writing style not only demonstrates Benjamin’s uniqueness,but also forms a tacit correspondence with the social critical theory of the Frankfurt School in terms of methodology.Benjamin spans many fields,but his identity of philosopher is the foundation of all his research and writing.