Walter Benjamin, the Radio and the Childhood

Walter Benjamin wrote on radio and for the radio. In the late 1920s, he worked for public radio in Berlin and Frankfurt. He loved the popular dimension of this new media with endless possibilities, including that of staging everyday life. In particular, he has produced a series of programs “for children”, which are equally aimed at adults. The radio was for Benjamin the place par excellence of practical application of his reflections on the means of technical reproducibility. He even sketched a theory of radio. We propose to revisit Benjamin's writings and radio plays to question the uses and potentials of radio today as part of our research group.