Just Language: Walter Benjamin, German-Jewish Exile, and the Critique of Linguistic Violence

Just Language revisits the Weimar period and its representation in the postwar years to explore narratives of linguistic resistance in the works of Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan. How did this generation of exile writers grapple with their experiences of oppression and persecution? How did they create a language of resistance during the decades that prepared the Third Reich and the Shoah?

Facing the devastations of World War I, the book explores how Walte...