The Walter Benjamin's Concept of the Dialectical Image: a possibility for the interpretation of Critical Art.

Abstract

This paper is a reflection on the concept of dialectical image that Walter Benjamin developed throughout his career, which has had multiple interpretations and discussions in which it is possible to evidence possible contributions to read strategies in order to understand reality from an expanded concept of what is usually understood as image. In this opportunity we will emphasize the possible contributions to approach art with a critical character. In order to investigate the concept of dialectic image, it is important to elaborate, first, a semantic clarification, which will allow us to trace a direction of reading and interpretation of the way in which the concept operates. In a second moment, reference will be made to Benjamin's critique of historicism, where he found fundamental problems about the way of reading reality, which allowed him to trace the ideas that would give rise to the constitution of the dialectical image. Thirdly, it is important to address the political character of Benjamin's proposal, since therein lies its critical content, and, finally, it is essential to analyze how this concept can be a possibility of interpretation of the manifestations of critical art today.