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University of Warwick Institutional Repository: a Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Phd at The University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/4334 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. The Concept of Remembrancein Walter Benjamin Adrian Wilding Ph. D. Thesis Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick June 1996 Summary This thesis argues that the role played by the concept of remembrance (Eingedenken) in Walter Benjamin's 'theory of the knowledge of history' and in his engagementwith Enlightenment universal history, is a crucial one. The implications of Benjamin's contention that history's 'original vocation' is 'remembrance' have hitherto gone largely unnoticed. The following thesis explores the meaning of the concept of remembrance and assessesthe significance of this proposed link between history and memory, looking at both the mnemonic aspect of history and the historical facets of memory. It argues that by mobilising the simultaneously destructive and constructive capacities of remembrance, Benjamin sought to develop a critical historiography which would enable a radical encounter with a previously suppressedpast. In so doing he takes up a stance (explicit and implicit) towards existing philosophical conceptions of history, in particular the idea of universal history found in German Idealism. Benjamin reveals an intention to retain the epistemological aspirations of universal history *whilst ridding that approach of its apologetic moment. He criticises existing conceptions of history on the basis that each assumeshomogeneous time to be the framework in which historical events occur. Insight into the distinctive temporality of remembrance proves to be the touchstone for this critique, and provides a paradigm for a very different conception of time. The thesis goes on to determine what is valid and what is problematic both in this concept of remembrance and in the theory of hi§torical knowledge which it informs, by subjecting both to the most cogent criticisms which can be levelled at them. What emerges is not only the importance of this concept for an understanding of Benjamin's philosophy but the pertinence of this concept for any philosophical account of memory. 2 Contents Acknowledgments Pate- Introduction I Opening the Past rate- 1-7 11 The Construction of Imperfection p. It( III From Moral Task Historical Task -Je- to pa-ýý 67 IV A Philosophy of Fragmentation rat e- 14" V Melancholy Memory po-oe-IZ3 VI Beyond Commemoration pa,5re IS I Conclusion Fa-eip- 180 Bibliography r--8-In 3 AcknowIedgements I would like to thank my supervisor Andrew Benjamin for his advice, criticism, and encouragement,and for allowing me the space in which my ideas could be tried and tested. Recognition is also due to the 'critical agencies' who, in spirit, watched over this thesis, and I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to both Richard Gunn and Gillian Rose for their vicarious philosophical guidance. Countless symposia provided an opportunity for me to discuss my ideas in attentive, incisive, and always generous company; their participants, in particular Philip Walsh, Nick Midgley, and Daniel Cardinal, are each to be thanked. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Mark Greenaway whose friendship fostered the will to undertake this project and sustained it through difficult times; our disagreement over the 'elegiac' and the 'hymnic' is preserved in the pages that follow. Finally I would like to thank my parents who have supported and encouragedme throughout in many ways. I dedicate this thesis to them. 4 Introduction 'The Problem of Memory (and of Forgetting)' In April 1940, five months before his death whilst fleeing Nazi-occupied France, the German philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin wrote in a letter to his friend Gretel Karplus of a series of 'reflections' he had been composing, eighteen 'theses' which had been set down, some on old newspaperwrappers, and which he did not yet want published: The war andthe constellationit brings with it haveled me to put down somethoughts of which I can saythat I havekept them in safekeeping, Even I yes, safekeeping,with me for some twenty years.... today am handing them over to you more as a bunch of whispering grass They gatheredon pensivewalks, than as a collection of theses.... make me suspectthat the problem of memory (and of forgetting) which appearsin them on different levels, will occupy me for a long time yet.' The tragic irony of this 'long time yet' is brought into relief when we bear in mind a phrase of Balzac's quoted approvingly by Benjamin: 'memory has value only as foresight'. But what is the 'problem of memory (Erinnerung] (and of forgetting)' which was to detain Benjamin's time had he lived longer? The following thesis sets I Walter Benjamin,Gesammelte Schriften (7 vols.) ed. Rolf Tiedemann& HermannSchweppenh5user (Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp,1974-85), vol. 1, pp. 1226-7.Hereafter all referencesto this work are abbreviatedas GS followed by volume and page number. Where available, a reference to the appropriateEnglish translationis given. Existing translationshave been modified or amendedwhere necessary.In the case of quotations from authors other than Benjamin (for instance,Adorno or Nietzsche) language is a referenceto the original 41 work given only where the translationof particular wordsor passagesraises relevant issues. 5 out to answerthis question.Fortunately, in taking this problem as its subjectmatter this thesisis not destinedto speculationabout what might havebeen said or written had Benjamin not taken his own life. A preoccupationwith the problematic of memory and forgetting runs throughoutBenjamin's writing; indeed if there is one themewhich could be said to crystallizehis diverseconcerns and influencesit would be this. Where then to,X begin studying this problem?Benjamin's intimation of a collection of 'theses'which deal with the problemof memoryand forgettingsuggests that it is therethat the natureof this problematicwill becomeclearer. The referenceis to what is arguablyhis most important and yet most enigmatic work, the eighteen theses 'On the Concept of History' ('Ober den Begriff der Geschichte'), and appropriatelyit is this brief but richly allusive set of aphorismswhich will be the recurringfocus of what follows. There,however, one finds a discoursenot so much on 'memory' (Erinnerung) as on 'remembrance'(Eingedenken), a particular form of memoryto which Benjaminascribes distinctive characteristics and significant powers. It is this particular conceptof memory which appearsto raise the many 'problems' that Benjaminplanned to address. The following thesisbegins not with 'On the Conceptof History' thoughbut with a text to which it refers back and which in important respectsprovides the key to understandingit: an exchangebetween Benjamin and Horkheimerfrom 1937over the completenessor incompletenessof the past,an exchangein which Benjamindevelops the conceptof remembrance(Eingedenken) as pivotal to his conceptionof historical time. The first two chaptersreconstruct this exchangeand highlight the stakes involved, proceedingto look at its implications both for Benjamin's philosophy at large and for any philosophicalaccount of history and temporality.The upshotof the exchangewith Horkheimer - that remembranceis for Benjamin 'redemptive' or 4messianic'- calls, however,for a clarification of Benjamin'sown messianismand an elucidationof the meaningof redemption.To this end the third chapterlooks at the way Benjamin'sconception of historicaltime developsout of a recurringengagement with the Kantian critique of Heilsgeschichteor 'redemptivehistory' and in particular with HermannCohen's restatement of this critique. It arguesthat Benjamin'sthinking emergesjust as much in oppositionto, as in indebtednessto, neo-Kantianism,a fact 6 which commentators have often downplayed with misleading results. This oversight will have important repercussions for the attempt to found an ethics - Kantian in is in final character - in Benjamin's name, an interpretation which assessed the chapter. The fourth and fifth chapters deal with the difficulties and problems raised by Benjamin's attempt to express his redemptive criticism in terms of an act of remembrance, the attempt to use Eingedenken to reinterpret and revitalize universal history and to develop a critical historiography. These two chapters assessesthe most persuasive criticisms which can be levelled at his project: Chapter Four evaluates Adorno's opposition to Benjamin's 'monadological' method and looks at how these criticisms impinge upon Benjamin's theories of memory and history; Chapter Five subjects Benjamin's privilege of memory to a genealogy and asks whether the element of forgetting in 'the problem of memory and forgetting' has in fact been neglected. Chapter Six draws together the preceding discussions, bringing them to bear up the legacy of Benjamin's philosophy of memory, its appropriation by contemporary theologians and critical theorists in the form of an ethic of commemoration and a model of Holocaust remembrance. Benjamin's Philosophy: a Preamble The difficulties as well as the stakes involved in writing philosophically on Benjamin are considerable. Benjamin's was, in Adomo's words, 'a philosophy directed against philosophy'. 2
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