#kracauer

“Thus, in the end this writer rightly stands alone. A malcontent, not a leader. No pioneer, but a spoilsport. And if we wish to gain a clear picture of him in the isolation of his trade, what we will see is a ragpicker, at daybreak, picking up rags of speech and verbal scraps with his stick and tossing them, grumbling and growling, a little drunk, into his cart, not without letting one or another of those faded cotton remnants-“humanity, ” “inwardness,” or “absorption”-flutter derisively in the wind. A ragpicker, early on, at the dawn of the day of the revolution.”

Walter Benjamin, “An outsider makes his mark” , 1930.