Gaining Sovereignty: On the Figure of the Child in Walter Benjamin’s Writing

Benjamin's well known interest in childhood corresponds to his interest in the so called "barbarian" and, even more so, in the so called "primitive". Taking Benjamin's reception of ethnological discourse into account, I argue that in his writing, the child plays a central role in a dialectic treatment of history and of otherness in view of children's "barbaric" and "primitive" tendencies, as laid out by Benjamin. Their destructive and mimetic potentials come together in the games children play, leading dialectically to an attainment of sovereignty in which intimacy with history, analytical destruction and constant creation mutually specify each other.