Sounding Allegory, Figuring the Word: Sound and Image Dissonance in Walter Benjamin’s Origin of the German Trauerspiel

In the Origin of the German Trauerspiel, Walter Benjamin recuperates allegory as a mode of expression that resists hegemonic meaning and symbolic identity—one that signals instead a non-identitarian, fragmented, and heterogeneous relation to…

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Version 1.0 - published on 31 Aug 2026 doi:10.5206/ch.2026.1.24962 - cite this

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In the Origin of the German Trauerspiel, Walter Benjamin recuperates allegory as a mode of expression that resists hegemonic meaning and symbolic identity—one that signals instead a non-identitarian, fragmented, and heterogeneous relation to knowledge and history instead. While Benjamin’s allegory has been received as a pre-eminently visual mode, Trauerspiel’s story of image is related to another story of sound. By beginning with the reference to Jonathan Sterne’s ‘audiovisual litany,’ this paper aims to interrupt the by now customary attention to Benjamin’s images, and to rediscover their sonorous accompaniment. The paper revisits the Trauerspielbuch’s central claim about allegory, namely that baroque allegory is philosophically grounded in the relationship between language and script, or more precisely, in the unfulfilled unity between sound and image. Focusing on the discussion of speech sound and image-script (Schriftbild) in Origin, this paper discusses how Benjamin contextualized Trauerspiel in early modern print culture and linguistic theory, claiming it as a form that is both mute and sonorous. Further, in the dissonance of image and sound, mourning emerges from the search for an absent voice. Complicating the traditional critique of allegory as a mute form that imprisons spirit, the paper traces its reconfiguration through the alterity of the Baroque Schriftbild, the romantic allegorization of sound, and the musical dimension of the Trauerspiel. In doing so, it explores the anti-phonocentric thrust of Benjamin’s valorization of script and reconsiders lament as, to borrow Mladen Dolar’s term, acousmatic ‘object voice,’ in order to propose new ways of envisioning the aesthetic and ethical potential of Benjamin’s allegorical Trauerspiel.

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Tags

  1. critical theory
  2. language philosophy
  3. sound studies
  4. theatre and performance studies
  5. Walter Benjamin

Notes

Original publication source: Chiasma: A Site For Thought (http://dx.doi.org/10.5206/ch.2026.1.24962)

Citation: Liu, Hong. 2026. “Sounding Allegory, Figuring the Word: Sound and Image Dissonance in Walter Benjamin’s Origin of the German Trauerspiel”. Chiasma: A Site For Thought 10 (1):105-18. https://doi.org/10.5206/ch.2026.1.24962.

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