The possible that is not yet Walter Benjamin on the traces of childhood

Abstract

Seeking childhood itself: This is the guiding thread that drives Walter Benjamin in outlining a refined anthropology of childhood, exploring a world of things, images, and atmospheres, in a web of visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile references. He taps into children’s ability to play by transforming waste materials, and thus reveals a possibility of interrupting the continuity of the existing order. In this, children appear to possess an extraordinary creative and poetic power, capable of renewing the world and bringing forth the possible that is not yet.