Faszination des Gestischen. Walter Benjamin und das poröse Straßengeschehen in Neapel
When Walter Benjamin explores the city of Naples with Asja Lacis in the summer of 1924, he keeps at a conscious distance from the conventional images and clichés that are attached to the reputation of the city in its «wild and barbaric beauty». The educated middle-class perspective of the German Baedeker, in which the classicist trained cult of the “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” of Winckelmannean provenance is reflected, is also unfamiliar to him. He rather turns his attention to the socio-anthropological physiognomy of the city, whose porous dynamics require different models of interpretation than those implemented, at the turn of the century, for the intellectual life interpretation in modern metropolises. His focus is on the street theatricality and the language of the body. This study examines the significances and implication of gesture in its threshold nature – and this, on the one hand, in conjunction with both categories of Kinder and Volk, which represent, as such, an important focus of the productive exchange with Asja Lacis, on the other hand in connection with Benjamin’s later reflections on Kafka’s art of gesture and his passionate interest in Yiddish theatre.