After Images: Photography, Archaeology, and Psychoanalysis and the Tradition of Bildung

Explores the intersections of the “technologies” of photography, archaeology, and psychoanalysis and their effect on conceptions of the subject and his formation in the literature and theory of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In his book, Downing examines works from Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, and Walter Benjamin to find evidence of the reconceiving and dismantling of the tradition of Bildung in literature of this historical period.