Walter Benjamin In Naples
“Naples is a paradise inhabited by devils”
This work explores the ways in which otherness is construed through travel literature that explores the Mediterranean region. The narration is made up of excerpts from the essays Hashish in Marseille (Benjamin 1928) and Naples (Walter Benjamin and Asja Lãcis 1924). Hashish in Marseille conveys Benjamin’s observations of his own sensorial experimentation while under the influence of hashish. After Benjamin’s casual encounter with Lãcis in Capri, they had a romantic affair and co-authored the essay Naples. The video inquires into the accuracy of the authors’ urbanist critique as well as their critical observations of Neapolitan life in the 1920’s compared to the contemporary cultural and urban landscape of the city.
The very idea of the South is predicated on how that concept is construed by gazes from the North. Thus, Benjamin and Lãcis mount a sharp critique of the urban chaos of Naples and contrast it with the safe and orderly lifestyle of Northern Europe. The viewer faces an ambiguous scenario in which sharp criticism of the Other asserts the authority of the self while paradoxically paired with admiration and awe for the Other's unrestricted liberty and wellbeing. Are these contradictions inherent to the encounter between cultures? Or are those contradictions particularly exacerbated through the North/South axis?
Exploring porosity as a concept, Naples interweaves interpretations of architecture, life, religion, politics and beauty. The authors interpret the city as porous as volcanic stone; a place where private and public spaces are permeated by streams of communal life with no fixed time to eat or sleep. Naples is portrayed as an exotic and primitive city in endless metamorphosis where people’s gestures are “impenetrable to the foreigner” and yet their lives resemble “the most radiant freedom of thought.” A city that resembles a theater in which the authority of northern European rationality vanishes as the narrator is driven by the sensorial spectacle of the streets and its people, seduced by the liberating charms of the South.
Benjamin spent five months in the bay of Naples writing his second doctoral dissertation. After his return to the North, Naples became a destination for other philosophers from the Frankfurt School that went on to spend time there.
