Exile Boundary Crossing: Aesthetic Objects and Perception in the Works of Walter Benjamin and María Zambrano

In the late works of María Zambrano (1904–1991), the author presents exile as a particular kind of experience, by which the structure and arquitectonics of human existence become visible. Similarly, in his posthumously published Passagen-Werk Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) introduces the flanêur – which he repeatedly likens to the immigrant or exile – as the representation of a particular kind of gaze, disclosing the arquitectonics and structure of capitalist bourgeois society. In this article, I suggest that the notions of figura and dialektisches Bild from the authors’ respective works are connected to an exile mode of perception, centred on the problem of translatability across cultural and linguistic borders. I believe that the similarities between the two authors can be explained by a reading which contextualizes them as a political generation with a shared experience of exilic boundary-crossing.