Anthropology & Materialism A Journal of Social Research

Special Issue | I | 2017 Discontinuous Infinities Walter Benjamin and Philosophy

Jan Sieber et Sebastian Truskolaski (dir.)

Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/am/524 DOI : 10.4000/am.524 ISSN : 2364-0480

Éditeur : CETCOPRA, CRASSH - Center for Research in the Arts Social Sciences and Humanities, Fakultät Gestaltung - Universität der Künste Berlin

Référence électronique Jan Sieber et Sebastian Truskolaski (dir.), Anthropology & Materialism, Special Issue | I | 2017, « Discontinuous Infnities » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 07 mars 2017, consulté le 06 mars 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/am/524 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/am.524

Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 6 mars 2020.

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This special issue of Anthropology & Materialism is dedicated to the philosophy of Walter Benjamin. On the one hand, the pieces collected here explore Benjamin’s relation to a range of canonical figures, whose work significantly influenced his own thinking (Kant, Fichte, Marx, Cohen, Husserl, Freud etc.); on the other hand, they put his philosophy into relation with a range of more recent thinkers (Saussure, Blanchot, Lacan, Derrida, Esposito, Hardt and Negri etc.). All the while, the volume seeks to cast into relief an image of Benjamin’s own philosophical programme, its limits and its possibilities, to probe the actuality of his thinking, and to assert his philosophy’s enduring significance at a time of renewed political crisis.

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SOMMAIRE

Articles

The Task of the Philosopher In Place of an Introduction Sebastian Truskolaski et Jan Sieber

The Pure Act of Recollection Walter Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot Reading Proust Yanik Avila

Eccentric Bodies From Phenomenology to Marxism – Walter Benjamin's Reflections on Embodiment Léa Barbisan

The World of Striving Walter Benjamin’s ‘Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice’ Andrew Benjamin

Critique is a Philosophy of the Spirit Comparing Benjamin and Fichte’s Programmes for the Coming Philosophy Elise Derroitte

Towards a Benjaminian Critique of Hermann Cohen’s Logical Idealism Phillip Homburg

Where the Past Was, There History Shall Be Benjamin, Marx, and the “Tradition of the Oppressed” Sami Khatib

A Crystal of Time (Political) Reflections towards a History of the Now: Benjamin and Derrida Nassima Sahraoui

Benjamin, Negativity, and De-vitalized Life Jonathan Short

Die Willkür der Zeichen Zu einem sprachphilosophischen Grundmotiv Walter Benjamins Irving Wohlfarth

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Articles

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The Task of the Philosopher In Place of an Introduction

Sebastian Truskolaski and Jan Sieber

1 Whenever the concept of a task appears in Benjamin’s writings, readers can be sure that the author is referring to a particular task – a task which, we will find, determines his project in a fundamental way. The most prominent elucidation hereof can be found in “The Task of the Translator” (1921-23), Benjamin’s famous preface to his translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens. There he argues that “[i]t is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is exiled among alien tongues.”1 As so often, Benjamin’s enigmatic phrasing echoes his own earlier formulations: “the task of students”,2 in his early reflections on “The Life of Students” (1914-15); “the poetic task”,3 in a piece from the same year, titled “Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin” (1914-15); “the task […] of naming things”,4 in his celebrated language-philosophical tract, “On Language as such and the Language of Man” (1916); “the task of the coming philosophy”,5 in his essay “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy” (1918); “the task of the criticism of art”,6 in his doctoral dissertation on The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism (1919); and “the task of a critique of violence”,7 in his work on the “Critique of Violence” (1921). The concept of the task thus appears to be of central importance in Benjamin’s early, theological-metaphysical writings – a set of works that is often seen as culminating with the publication of his ill- fated Habilitationsschrift, Origin of the German Mourning Play (1924-25/1928).8 Later on, the task comes to be replaced by other concepts and motifs, such as the destructive character’s labour of demolition.9 It returns eventually, and with considerable prominence, in Benjamin’s final work, the theses “On the Concept of History” (1940), which describe the “task to brush history against the grain”,10 the “task to bring about a real state of emergency”,11 and “the task of liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden”.12 Despite the varied contexts in which the concept of the task appears, and despite the numerous agents, acts, and themes to which it is linked, the general, conceptual function that Benjamin attributes to this figure is surprisingly consistent. It signals the demand for a new “language-philosophical foundation for the metaphysics of experience”, as Werner Hamacher has put it;13 a philosophy of history that tacitly emerges from a confrontation between Kant and Neo-Kantianism,

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Classicism and Romanticism, a theologically inflected Anarchism and a radically recast vision of historical materialism.

2 It is for this reason that the concept of the task appears as an ideal starting point for the subsequent remarks, which aim to frame a collection of essays on Benjamin’s philosophy – a philosophy that is often hidden between the lines of his diverse, seemingly un- or even anti-systematic writings. As editors we take it that this publication marks a timely intervention into the current state of Benjamin-reception. After all, attempts to foreground Benjamin’s philosophy have remained relatively few and far between, especially when compared with the steadily growing number of publications concerned to cast him in a variety of other roles: from Weimar broadcaster to “Marxist Rabbi”, as Andrew Benjamin has put it.14 It is our conceit, however, that it is – above all – the philosophical character of Benjamin’s work, which holds together its seemingly disparate strands. One way in which extant studies have sought to highlight this ostensible coherence has been by comparing different concepts from Benjamin’s philosophical household on the basis of their general function, outlining a meta- theoretical schema for philosophical thought as it develops between his early writings and his later works. On this basis, it became possible to scrutinize the many references to the history of philosophy that run through Benjamin’s work – from Plato to Leibniz, Kant, Nietzsche, Cohen and Husserl (to name only a few central players). However, whilst the immeasurable philological and intellectual-historical merit of such works is beyond dispute, the aim of this introduction (and the collection it serves to frame) is a different one: to begin to define what, for Benjamin, was not simply a task of philosophy, but the task of the philosopher. 3 To this end, it is worth highlighting that Benjamin makes several references to the “ task of the philosopher” in the so-called “Epistemo-Critical Prologue” to his study on the Origin of the German Mourning Play.15 Insofar as the “Prologue” has long been viewed as a transitional point between the early theological-metaphysical writings, and the later, more self-consciously materialist works, Benjamin’s formulation is consequential because it invites speculation as to the overall character of his philosophical programme. From this perspective, the following reflections – written in lieu of a conventional foreword – focus largely on the “Prologue”, beginning with the question what relation to philosophy is being proposed in this dense and cryptic text. More pointedly: if the “Prologue” sets out to define ‘the task of the philosopher’, does it – in fact – perform the task that it describes? 4 There are at least two ways of answering the question regarding the relation to philosophy laid out in the “Prologue” to Benjamin’s study on the Baroque mourning play. On the one hand, it might be argued that the text has a merely propaedeutic function. From this viewpoint the “Prologue” does not perform ‘the task of the philosopher’, so much as it explains it from the outside by setting the epistemo-criticial stage for Benjamin’s interpretation of the German Trauerspiel. ‘The task of the philosopher’ would thus appear as a theory of philosophical thought. However, such a reading surely misses Benjamin’s extraordinary sensitivity to the ways in which traditional philosophical propaedeutics, such as Kant’s, unduly restricted the parameters of experience – a problem with which the young Benjamin had extensively concerned himself. On the other hand, then, a more productive and interesting solution presents itself. On this reading, the “Prologue” does not merely present a theory of philosophical thought, but rather stages, performs and enacts ‘the task of the

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philosopher’. From this viewpoint, the “Prologue” has to be read as positing the existence of an idea of philosophy, whose presentation – Darstellung16 – must become ‘the task of the philosopher’. In this case, the presentation of philosophy’s idea comes to determine its form and method, its relation to science and art, its account of the relation between knowledge and truth, being and thought, phenomena and ideas, and – significantly – its concept of history, all as it pertains to philosophy’s own historical now. 5 In light of this short gloss, it remains to explore Benjamin’s philosophical ‘task’ under five central aspects: i.) His account of the annihilation of the subject; ii.) His account of the task’s two-fold character; iii.) His account of the role of language in the task’s formulation; iv.) His account of the significance of origins and the world of phenomena; v.) And, finally, his account of the link between the theory of ideas and the figure of the monad. 6 i.) Who is ‘the’ philosopher? The idiom of a task might lead one to assume that there must be a subject of philosophical thought. However, as is well known, Benjamin – from his earliest writings – engaged in a fierce critique of the concept of a self-conscious, knowing subject. As he argues, the problem with such a conception of subjecthood arises from a perceived deficiency of Kantian philosophy, namely its limited concept of experience.17 In his essay “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”, for instance, Benjamin argues that Kant accounted for the timeless validity of knowledge, but not for the certainty of a singularly temporal experience – an experience that encompasses what, for Kant himself, was nothing less than the Enlightenment itself. Instead, Benjamin charges, Kant uncritically adopted an older view, which associates experience with pure or empirical consciousness, thus putting it in the service of mere knowledge. The task of the coming philosophy, therefore, “is, according to the typology of Kantian thought, to undertake the epistemological foundation of a higher concept of experience”18 – an experience which, in turn, is the condition for what the “Prologue” describes as “truth”.19 The formulation of such a higher concept of experience depends on the revision of the Kantian concept of knowledge – as distinct from a re-valorised conception of truth – and the annihilation of its metaphysical elements. The most important of these elements are “first, Kant’s conception of knowledge as a relation between some sort of subjects and objects or subject and object […]; and, second, the relation of knowledge and experience to human empirical consciousness”.20 For Benjamin the concept of the subject as cognising consciousness, in opposition to an object of knowledge – a notion formed in analogy to empirical consciousness – is the mythological substrate of Kantian and pre-Kantian epistemology. This “subject nature” 21 has to be annihilated by philosophy in order to arrive at a de-subjectified concept of a pure epistemological (transcendental) consciousness22; in his earlier essay, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”, Benjamin assigns this role to language, a point to which we will return in due course. Without presuming to adequately summarise this point here, it suffices to note that Benjamin’s critique of Kant questions the traditional opposition between subject and object, and hence the subject’s claim to knowledge and consciousness, as well as its intentionality, i.e. its possessive character. Benjamin’s subject, if it were possible to speak of one, would be a voided subject, dispossessed, stripped of the a priori conditions of experience assigned to it by Kant. It would be a decentralised subject: the effect of an experience, rather than the condition of its possibility. It would be an operation in the weakest sense, albeit one with

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profound consequences, insofar as it would become the bearer of a truth that it does not possess, a truth that it does not know. 7 Nevertheless, the question remains: who is the philosopher whose task Benjamin describes? This philosopher, as we have seen, cannot assume a position outside of history, from which she could give an objective account of the supra-temporal legitimacy of some self-same subject’s thoughts or actions. On the contrary, the philosopher is subjected to historical experience, an experience whose truth it is her task to present. Accordingly, Benjamin’s philosopher is one who is in search of truth, a truth that does not belong to any subject or any object, but rather resides in a constellation of being whose legibility depends on the ‘now’ of a temporal, historical experience.23 To bring forth this truth is a central facet of ‘the task of the philosopher’. 8 ii.) Having thus given some indication as to how one might figure the ostensible subject of Benjamin’s task, let us explore the task’s double character. If, as Benjamin suggests in the “Prologue”, truth resides in a constellation of being, rather than, say, in the seamless correspondence of subject and predicate, then it follows that this truth is, above all, relational. If we concede this point, then the philosopher’s task appears as a constructive one: to establish this relation between the world of ideas and the empirical world. The ‘task of the philosopher’ would thus have to be twofold: on the one hand, to present – darstellen – the world of ideas; on the other hand, to engage with the empirical world in such a way that it would enter and dissolve into the former – a process that Benjamin describes as Rettung (rescue). It is worth emphasising that the double nature of Benjamin’s task lets the philosopher occupy an elevated position between that of the scientist and the artist. The latter sketches a restricted image of the world of ideas, which, because it is conceived as a metaphor, is at all times definitive. The scientist arranges the world with a view to its dispersal in the realm of ideas, by dividing it from within into concepts. He shares the philosopher's interest in the elimination of the merely empirical; while the artist shares with the philosopher the task of presentation.24 9 By positioning the philosopher between the scientist and the artist, this passage recalls the entire history of rivalries, alliances, and struggles between philosophy, science, and art. In Benjamin’s account of their relation, it is not philosophy’s task to legitimate the objectivity of scientific knowledge, as Kant would have had it; nor is art the organon of philosophy, as it had been for the Jena Romantics; nor, finally, is philosophy the sublation of art as a lower form of spirit, as Hegel had argued. For Benjamin, philosophy does not relate to science and art as distinct objects of philosophical inquiry. Philosophy itself has both a scientific and an aesthetic dimension. ‘The scientist’ and ‘the artist’ are not mere metaphors; rather, they stand in for two correlative methodological aspects of ‘the task of the philosopher’: to engage the empirical world in the manner of the scientist, and – at the same time – to present the world of ideas in the manner of the artist.

10 The scientific dimension of this task concerns the compilation of the empirical world by means of the concept. As Benjamin argues, Phenomena do not […] enter into the realm of ideas whole, in their crude empirical state, adulterated by appearances, but only in their basic elements, redeemed. They are divested of their false unity so that, thus divided, they might partake of the genuine unity of truth. In this their division, phenomena are subordinate to concepts, for it is the latter which effect the resolution of objects into their constituent elements.25

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11 Contrary to Kant’s epistemology, the concept’s function is not to establish logical unity. Truth, for Benjamin, does not reside in a systematically completed, scientific knowledge of the empirical world. Rather, such knowledge is portrayed as an illusion common to many modern scientific theories, which attempt to unify the field of scientific disciplines. Instead, Benjamin suggests, the irreconcilability of disciplines in fact resembles the “discontinuous structure of the world of ideas”.26 Such irreconcilability could help in the presentation of ideas, if it were not for science’s hubristic desire to grasp truth as an encyclopaedic accumulation of data points. In opposition to the scientific demand for systematic coherence, the function of the concept in Benjamin’s outline of the philosopher’s task is to divide the empirical world – to dissolve it into its elements. Only in its dividing function does the concept take on the mediating role through which phenomena partake in the existence of ideas. Accordingly, Benjamin writes: As the salvation of phenomena by means of ideas takes place, so too does the presentation of ideas through the medium of empirical reality. For ideas are not presented in themselves, but solely and exclusively in an arrangement of concrete elements in the concept: as the configuration of these elements.27 12 These elements manifest themselves most clearly in extremes, and, therefore, the concept takes the extreme as its starting point for a more thorough penetration of the empirical. Nevertheless, such a division of the empirical world in the concept is never merely a destructive act. Rather, it is a gathering of elements that is directed towards presenting the idea and, hence, truth. From the standpoint of science, ‘the task of the philosopher’, then, lies in dividing and dispersing the empirical world in the concept as the condition of the possibility for its correlation with the world of ideas. The philosopher, by means of the concept, destructs the false unity of the world, thus liberating it from its imaginary totality. Accordingly, the world – dissolved into its elements – may partake in the presentation of ideas.

13 Such a presentation of ideas constitutes the other side of philosopher’s task, namely the side that it shares with art. The question of presentation, here, is itself twofold: on the one hand, it concerns the form of presentation; on the other hand, it concerns that which is to be presented. The problem of form is never resolved once and for all; time and again it must be at the heart of the philosopher’s task. By the same token, philosophical form can neither be mathematically constructed, nor can it concern didactic intentions. It is neither identical with the classical view of philosophical systems, nor with the idea of an instructive guide for understanding. Philosophy can neither anticipate its form, nor its means of communicating with others. In other words, presentation is not merely a means for the purposes of systematic, comprehensible exposition. Accordingly, Benjamin suggests, the question of presentation is best addressed when philosophy assumes the form a treatise. As he writes, the method of the treatise is essentially presentation. Method is a digression. Presentation as such is the methodological nature of the treatise. The absence of an uninterrupted purposeful structure is its primary characteristic. Tirelessly the process of thinking makes new beginnings, returning in a roundabout way to its original object. This continual pausing for breath is the mode most proper to the process of contemplation. For by pursuing different levels of meaning in its examination of one single object it receives both the incentive to begin again and the justification for its irregular rhythm.28

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14 Discontinuity and repetition are the two main characteristics of philosophical form. Thought assumes these traits if it truly immerses itself in its subject matter. Such philosophical writing has a particular prosaic rhythm. At times it comes to a standstill, begins anew, or jumps between disparate elements.

15 While this aspect of form correlates with the divisive task of the scientist, the concern with that which is to be presented puts philosophy into the orbit of the artist. Like the artist, the philosopher envisions an image of the world of ideas – an image which ‘is at all times definitive’. This philosophical image does not intend validity beyond its own time, but rather yields temporal, historical truth. It presents the world of ideas in the medium of the empirical. However, this does not mean that the empirical world, divided into its elements by the concept, is mere material for the philosophical image. What is at stake in the task of presentation is, firstly, Benjamin’s differentiation between knowledge and truth, and, secondly, his peculiar view of the relation between ideas and phenomena. With regards to the former, knowledge and truth differ in their respective relations to their objects. Knowledge treats its objects as property, as Benjamin puts it. Knowledge is possession. Its very object is determined by the fact that it must be taken possession of – even if in a transcendental sense – in the consciousness. The quality of possession remains. For the thing possessed, presentation is secondary; it does not have prior existence as something presenting itself.29 16 Once again, Benjamin formulates his critique of scientific knowledge in opposition to Kantian epistemology. Producing knowledge in a Kantian sense is, for Benjamin, a form of appropriation that captures its object as property. Whatever can be registered and made coherent according to the a priori categories of understanding, and the corresponding forms of intuition, is seized by consciousness. ‘Method’, then, is a mere means of appropriation. Objects are never taken on their own terms; they are subordinated to the rule of reason. For truth, however, presentation is a primary concern. In contrast to knowledge, truth is self-presentation; not the product of a logical appropriation of an external object, but immanent to the method of the object’s elaboration. As Benjamin states with reference to Plato’s theory of ideas: “[t]he object of knowledge is not identical with the truth”.30 With regards to the question of unity, this pertains to both knowledge and truth, albeit in very different ways. The unity of knowledge means the conceptual coherence of individual insights constituted through the application of its formal method. Put differently, the unity of knowledge is not determined by the individual phenomena that it appropriates, but by the method of their appropriation in consciousness. By contrast, the unity of truth is derived from being. It is unmediated/immediate: a unity in being, not a unity in the concept. As such, it is not a unity of being, which has been forgotten in the course of history, or hidden behind the false appearance of an alienated world, as it had been for Heidegger.31

17 The philosopher’s double task, then, is to dissolve the empirical into its elements, albeit not in order to unveil or reveal some underlying reality. Truth’s unity is in being. It means a unity integral to truth, which cannot be turned into an external object for thought. As Benjamin highlights, the unity of truth “is not open to question”.32 For if truth had an answer to the question of its own unity, then this answer would already imply a unity of a different sort – a unity other than the one contained in the answer given. Every such answer would therefore necessarily lead to the repetition of the question that produced it. Truth, in this regard, is unity as being, as Benjamin goes on

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to suggest. However, as remains to be seen, this being is not essential; rather, it is historical. 18 The second aspect of the ‘task’, noted above, is to do with Benjamin’s characterisation of the being of ideas. As in the case of truth, ideas are said to exist; however, unlike truth, they are given. “ldeas are pre-existent”,33 Benjamin argues, they are ein Vorgegebenes. Herein resides Benjamin’s peculiar Platonism, which he deploys to correct certain perceived failings of Kant’s epistemology. However, Benjamin’s ontology of ideas is eccentrically coloured by his own theologico-metaphysical philosophy of language, as well as motifs borrowed from Leibniz’s Monadology. (A brief discussion of Benjamin’s relation to Leibniz will follow in due course.) For the time being, it suffices to note the following: if truth, as Plato argues in the Symposium, guarantees the being of beauty, i.e. if truth is the content of beauty, then, Benjamin argues, the same holds true for the being of ideas. Truth neither discloses a content, nor does it expose a secret. Just as truth is inextricably linked to beauty qua semblance, so it is immanent to the presentation of ideas – and here Benjamin departs from Plato – that it appears as a configuration of conceptually mediated, phenomenal elements. But how do phenomena and ideas relate to each other in the first place? Phenomena are not, as Benjamin stresses, contained in ideas. Ideas are rather their “objective interpretation”.34 This, however, does not mean that they act as their concepts or laws. Ideas neither serve the knowledge of phenomena, nor do phenomena simply attest to the existence of the ideas. Phenomena and ideas belong to fundamentally different realms. Just as phenomena are not contained in ideas, ideas are not given in the world of phenomena. Therefore they cannot be made into the objects of intellectual vision, intellectual intuition. Ideas elude any kind of intentional grasp. Thus Benjamin argues, “[t]ruth does not enter into relationships, particularly intentional ones.”35 Rather than entering into a relation – e.g. when a subject intends to tell the truth – truth is the relation between phenomena and ideas. If ideas are ‘objective interpretations’, insofar as they put phenomena (or rather their elements) in relation to each other, i.e. if they construct constellations, then truth means a particular correlation between the empirical world, and the world of ideas – a correlation through which the empirical divests itself of its mere phenomenality, thus exposing an image of the idea. If Benjamin’s view suggests a kind of correlationism, then this does not mean a coincidence of thought and objects. (After all, as we have seen, Benjamin blurs the boundaries between conventional accounts of subject-object dialectics.) The inessential correlation between phenomena and ideas appears in what Benjamin describes elsewhere as a ‘now’. “Truth resides in the “now of knowability.”36 This correlation of phenomena and ideas in a ‘now’, in turn, is mediated through language. Language and history thus appear as the media of philosophical thought. 19 In sum: it is the double ‘task of the philosopher’ to engage the empirical world in the manner of the scientist, and – at the same time – to present the world of ideas in the manner of the artist. The philosopher destructs the false unity of the empirical world and dissolves it into its elements by means of the concept, so that an image of the world of ideas may appear as a constellation of these elements. The possibility of such an interpretation of the world in the order of ideas, however, is grounded in language and history. 20 iii.) Benjamin’s reflections on the correlation between phenomena and ideas stem from another important aspect of his philosophy, namely: his philosophy of language.

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Philosophical thought is, for Benjamin, fundamentally dependent on language. Accordingly he argues that It is the task of the philosopher to restore, by presentation, the primacy of the symbolic character of the word, in which the idea is given self-consciousness, and that is the opposite of all outwardly-directed communication. Since philosophy may not presume to speak in the tones of revelation, this can only be achieved by recalling in memory the primordial form of perception.37 21 Once again, Benjamin draws on ideas first articulated in earlier works – chiefly his essays “The Task of the Translator”, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”, as well as several posthumously published fragments on perception. The task of presenting ideas is thus framed in terms of his philosophy of language: the restoration of ‘the symbolic character of the word’, through ‘presentation’ – Darstellung – elevates the idea to ‘self-consciousness’ in a manner that is diametrically opposed to ‘all outwardly-directed communication’ – an undertaking that, in turn, relates to ‘memory’ and, moreover, to a ‘primordial form of perception’, albeit in ways that Benjamin does not fully elaborate here.38

22 It is worth emphasising the following: since his earliest writings, Benjamin sharply criticised an understanding of language in terms of ‘outwardly-directed’ communication. What is more, he equates the dictate of communication with a “bourgeois” paradigm that tends to instrumentalise language as a means to an end.39 By contrast, he suggests, language ‘communicates’ nothing but itself: “all language communicates itself in itself”, not through itself; “it is in the purest sense the ‘medium’ of communication.”40 At the same time, though, Benjamin distances himself from an esoteric view of language as an end in itself, by criticising an unspecified “mystical theory”, according to which “the word is simply the essence of the thing.”41 Along these axes, Benjamin sketches a theory of “pure language”, set against the backdrop of the biblical story of genesis.42 To this effect, in his 1916 essay “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”, he portrays Adam as the first philosopher – the recipient of the creative “gift of language”,43 which names creation into being. After the expulsion from Paradise, however, the creative power of Adamitic language is compromised. This is why the ideational dimension of language remains inaccessible, and ‘philosophy may not presume to speak in tones of revelation’. Echoing Johann Georg Hamann’s account of creation as a trace of God’s divine word, Benjamin describes a mute language of nature, which demands ‘translation’: “the translation of the language of things into that of man”.44 Such a translation, however, does not mean the mere transposition of one post-lapsarian tongue into another, as Benjamin elaborates in “The Task of the Translator”; nor does it mean a direct articulation of the word’s ‘symbolic character’, as though it simply spoke through things themselves. The question thus arises as to how Benjamin proposes to relate to ‘the symbolic character of the word’, the realm of ideas, from this Babel-esque standpoint? 23 In terms of the “Prologue” one might argue as follows: if, in his 1916 essay, Benjamin portrays Adam rather than, say, Socrates, as the ‘first’ philosopher, because Adam receives the ‘gift of language’ from God; if, in turn, he argues that a mute language speaks through nature as the residue of God’s creative word, and that this language – for its part – demands ‘translation’, albeit in a highly qualified sense, then the relation between language, the ‘task’ of presenting ideas, and an expanded concept of experience begins to come into focus. As Samuel Weber observes, “‘[t]he task of philosophy’ – since it cannot claim to reveal directly – consists in a certain kind of

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originary listening […] that in turn entails remembrance. Through such remembering”, Weber continues, “words are ‘once again’ given the ability to ‘reassert their rights to name.’ This is why”, he argues, “neologisms – which also entail a certain naming – are to be avoided: for by introducing new words, they ignore the historical memory of language.” 45 Put another way, ‘it is the task of the philosopher to restore […] the primacy of the symbolic character of the word’ qua name, because only in the name is the idea raised to the level of ‘self-consciousness’ through the process of presentation. However, since, following the expulsion from Paradise, ‘philosophy may not presume to speak in the tones of revelation’, this can only be achieved negatively: by circumscribing a ‘primordial form of perception’, which once partook in the realm of ideas. Benjamin, in other words, does not simply purport to name ideas into being; rather, he outlines a language-philosophical model for constructing constellations of objects through which ideas may yet be experienced at the level of language. For Benjamin, then, language serves as the privileged model of experience because it disrupts the tidy distinctions of the Kantian system, including those that differentiate between ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’ of sensation. “Language”, in other words, “serves as a medium of experience”, the quasi-transcendental mediator between phenomena and ideas, which “binds the ostensible ‘subject’ and ‘object’ in a more profound […] relationship of underlying kinship.”46 24 iv.) If language is the mediating instance between the world of ideas and the world of phenomena, then history is the site upon which this mediation manifests itself as origin. As is well known, Benjamin’s concept of origin rejects any facile historicism, which conceives of history as a linear progression through time. Writing history, on this model, amounts to nothing more than the projection of distinctions and similarities between historical ‘facts’ into a pseudo-logical continuum. True historiography, for Benjamin, begins where the deductive method is abandoned and thought becomes absorbed in the singular phenomenon wherein it unfolds its truth-content. The same holds true for ‘the task of the philosopher’. “The world of philosophical thought does not […] evolve out of the continuum of conceptual deductions, but in a description of the world of ideas. To execute this description it is necessary to treat every idea as an original one.”47 It’s the task of philosophical contemplation to immerse itself in the empirical so as to rediscover it as the origin of the idea. Hence the concept of origin is, as Benjamin stresses, a historical category. It does not, however, designate the origin of a development. ‘Origin’ does not describe the first moment from which something takes its course. Accordingly, discovering an origin in history does not mean tracing a historical development backwards to where it is supposed to have begun. Rather, origin is where the historical continuum is interrupted. It is in the moment of a ‘now’, which is not logically deducible from historical facts, but rather changes its own past and subsequent history (Vor- und Nachgeschichte). As the twofold nature of ‘the task of the philosopher’ suggests, things only reveal themselves as origins under a dual kind of scrutiny. To present an idea requires the immersion into the singular. At the same time as the philosopher-qua-scientist destructs the false unity of the empirical world, and dissolves it into its elements by means of the concept, she destructs the false continuum of history and immerses herself in the singular fact. Accordingly, Benjamin writes: Indeed this is where the task of the investigator begins, for he cannot regard such a fact as certain until its innermost structure appears to be so essential as to reveal it as an origin. The authentic – the hallmark of origin in phenomena – is the object of

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discovery, a discovery which is connected in a unique way with the process of recognition.48 25 The authenticity of historical facts, once more, does not consist in their logical connection. Rather, it derives from their innermost structure. Something appears as authentic inasmuch as it is governed by a dialectics of uniqueness and repetition. Origin is where a unique singularity escapes the historical continuum and reveals itself as the site of remembrance of the idea.

26 For Benjamin, true history – beyond the superimposition of a pseudo-logical continuum – is discontinuous. But it is not the universal, the idea, that gathers and sublates the discontinuous elements of history. On the contrary, only in the discontinuities that appear in the ideological unity of historical progression the idea presents itself. Therefore, philosophical history has to become a “science of the origin”,49 which reveals the configuration of the idea in the discontinuous, the singular, the extreme. It is ‘the task of the philosopher’, as a historian of origins, to blast open the false continuum of history in order to rediscover the idea in the singular occurrence. 27 v.) Finally, in the latter part of the ‘Prologue’, Benjamin likens ideas to monads: And so the real world could well constitute a task, in the sense that it would be a question of penetrating so deeply into everything real as to reveal thereby an objective interpretation of the world. In the light of such a task of penetration it is not surprising that the philosopher of the Monadology was also the founder of infinitesimal calculus. The idea is a monad – that means briefly: every idea contains the image of the world. The purpose of the presentation of the idea is nothing less than an abbreviated outline of this image of the world.50 28 Benjamin’s formulation is striking because it gives some important clues as to the provenance of his theory of ideas. Accordingly, it is worth emphasising that, in addition to the broadly Platonic issues debated in the “Prologue”, Benjamin’s description of the world as a ‘task’, and his references to both the Monadology and to infinitesimal calculus, situates him squarely in the midst of early 20th-century Leibniz reception – particularly as advanced by Hermann Cohen, Heinz Heimsoeth, and other figures from the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism.51 In this regard, Benjamin’s suggestion that the ‘task’ of ‘penetrating so deeply into everything real as to reveal thereby an objective interpretation of the world’ gives cause for pause. What is meant by objectivity in the context of a discussion of ideas, how does interpretative depth ensure such objectivity, and how does this relate to Leibniz?

29 The former question concerns Benjamin’s attempt, in the “Prologue”, to elaborate an ontology of ideas, that is, to ascribe to ideas a particular mode of being. As we have alluded to, this follows from his essay on “The Program of the Coming Philosophy”, which sought to collapse the distinction between categories and ideas in order to extend the purportedly limited Kantian concept of experience to infinity. As we have seen, the unconditioned objects of ideas were thus to become possible objects of experience, at least indirectly so; but to forge such access to the world of ideas, and hence to truth, Benjamin has to elaborate on the mode of their existence – their ‘objectivity’. Nevertheless, insofar as Benjamin – like Kant, but unlike the Jena Romantics – denies that there can be any intellectual intuition of the unconditioned content of ideas, this relation must be mediated in some sense through knowledge, i.e. through the very relation of possession that obtains in conventional subject-object dialectics, and which Benjamin so vehemently criticised. But how is one to conceive of an ‘objective’ relation to the unconditioned from the standpoint of the post-lapsarian

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world of the Baroque mourning play? In other words, how is one to conceive of the infinite from the standpoint of profane finitude? Or, put another way, how is one to conceive of a new form of totality that is not merely the sum of truncated singularities which have been more or less violently subsumed under larger conceptual headings? 30 It has already been suggested that the “Prologue” articulates two possible models for thinking this relation: one in terms of the dual operation of construction and interpretation (ideas are expressed through configurations of objects, which are raised to the level of experience through a process of interpretation, so that their elements are ‘rescued’, albeit in slightly mysterious ways); the other in terms of language (the paradoxical remembrance of a condition in which the ideational content of the word may yet be raised to the level of experience, although – again – in highly qualified ways). In a sense, then, the allusion to Leibniz can be seen to bridge these two ‘models’, insofar as Benjamin appears to view the monad as expressing an “immanent infinity”.52 As Paula Schwebel argues, Benjamin reads Leibniz’s contraction of infinity within finite beings as the consequence of a historical tendency, which he places under the heading of secularisation. Accordingly, the monad is supposed to express “an unfulfilled yearning for transcendence” in a fallen world, which is “forcibly redirected toward contingent nature.”53 Infinity thus endures in the world through what Schwebel describes as Benjamin’s “inverted metaphysics”.54 In spite of the fact that “reason is denied access to the transcendence of the heavens”, as Schwebel puts it, “in its pursuit of a fundamental grounding for contingent experience, thinking is drawn into an abyss of infinite analysis”.55 This translates into the terms of our exposition as follows: for Benjamin the unity of an individual constellation, which is constructed through a process of interpretation, mirrors the unity of an idea, which is – in turn – an abbreviated expression of infinity ‘within finite beings’. This is all the more striking since, as Schwebel suggests, Benjamin maps Leibniz’s foremost mathematical innovation – infinitesimal calculus – onto his account of the secularisation of history in the period following the 30 Years War. As she argues, Benjamin seeks to explain this development in terms of a “transformation of the meaning of creation, from a temporal stage on the way to salvation, to the immanent totality of what is.”56 In this respect, Benjamin views the breakthrough of infinitesimal calculus as residing “in its transformation of infinity, from endless succession (a temporal notion) to an infinity of detail within (spatial) presence.”57 This is to say, by establishing a connection between the ‘task’ of presenting ideas in the guise of monads, on the one hand, and reading their abridged infinities in terms of a historical shift apparently facilitated by Leibnizian calculus, on the other, Benjamin is able to articulate one of the his central philosophical concerns: that history, far from being a mere aggregate of infinitely proliferating points, is ‘an infinity of detail within (spatial) presence’ – an infinity that demands a labour of interpretation to actualise its hidden correspondences in the eruptive ‘now’ articulated in his mature writings. 31 We have seen, then, some aspects of how Benjamin proposes to raise ideas (not least, the idea of history) to the level of experience through the philosophical task of presentation. By way of summarising the above, let us return to the general question posed at the outset: how are we to understand the ‘task of the philosopher’ as it appears in the “Epistemo-Critical Prologue” to Benjamin’s study on the Origin of the German Mourning Play – the pivotal point between his early writings, and his later works? If, as has been suggested, Benjamin’s “Prologue” seeks to perform the task of presenting the idea of philosophy, then this task must be read as an attempt to rescue

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philosophical thought under the historical conditions of modernity; to rescue it from the hubris of a self-transparent subject, the impoverishment of experience, the degradation of language to a mere instrument of communication, the reduction of truth to a system of knowledge and knowledge to a matter of possession, the abolition of history as a disposable accumulation of historical data points, and the distortion of the world through its subsumption under the value-form. Under these conditions, a systematic idea of philosophy (with strong, stable concepts of subject and object, reason, totality, and so on) can no longer be uncritically affirmed. Philosophy has to take upon itself the task to disempower the self-transparent subject, to wrest truth from knowledge, to discover the non-instrumental, non-signifying dimension of language, and to introduce breaks and fissures into the seemingly continuous connectedness of the world, and of history. Moreover, in order to perform this task, it must renounce all aspirations to systematic completeness, and take on the form of a treatise (Traktat) – an essayistic form that yields truth by destroying the false unity of the empirical world, and by presenting the idea within a constellation of profane elements. If philosophical thought is to be rescued, it has to perform a paradoxical task – a paradox that is captured by the double meaning of the German word Aufgabe, which, as Paul De Man has pointed out, means both ‘task’ and ‘abandonment’ or ‘giving up’.58 Accordingly, we might say – following Benjamin – that ‘the task of philosophy’ is (self-)abandonment: die Aufgabe der Philosophie ist es sich aufzugeben. Benjamin’s “Prologue” thus performs the task of presenting the idea of philosophy as the paradoxical task of the philosopher. Philosophy thus rescues philosophical thought, albeit in a different form, namely as Critical Theory. 32 With our special edition of Anthropology & Materialism we want to contribute to the on- going efforts to read Benjamin’s Critical Theory philosophically. This does not mean retreating behind Benjamin’s ‘rescue’ of philosophy by simply inscribing him into the history of ideas. On the contrary! We are convinced that Benjamin’s philosophy holds important lessons for philosophy today at a time of continuing intellectual, cultural, and political crisis. In our view, Benjamin’s reflections on the philosophical problems of subjectivity, experience, language, knowledge, truth, history and politics must be re- translated into the language of current struggles. The enduring fascination with Benjamin as a tragic hero of modernity has, for many years, caused both a ‘bad’ academisation of his work and a glib commercialization – even fetishisation – of his biography. Whereas the former consigns him to the formalised, institutional realms that he resisted (or that resisted him) during his lifetime, the latter tends to see in him little more than feuilletonistic fodder – a whimsical rebel of yesteryear. In each case what is forgotten is the imperative character of Benjamin’s task. As Sami Khatib puts it in his contribution to the present volume, “instead of assimilating Benjamin to our times and reading our present into Benjamin’s own historical present, our task is rather to read a Benjaminian text that was never written in the first place. Here, our historical distance to Benjamin’s time appears as a connection through disconnection. It is only this truly historical discontinuity that we ‘share’ with Benjamin and the ‘tradition of the oppressed’.”59 With this in mind, we hope that the contributions collected in the present volume will prove to be illuminating.

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ENDNOTES

1. Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 261. 2. Walter Benjamin, “The Life of Students”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 43. 3. Walter Benjamin, “Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 18. 4. Walter Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 70. 5. Walter Benjamin, “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 100. 6. Walter Benjamin, “The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 151. 7. Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 236. 8. Benjamin’s most important sources for his formulation of the ‘task’ include Kant’s concept of task, the Neo-Kantian conception of knowledge as an infinite task, Schlegel’s dictum of the task of universal poetry, and the mystical, Jewish figure of tikkun olam – a motif from the Lurrianic Kabbalah that describes the task of restoring a shattered totality. 9. Cf. Walter Benjamin, “The Destructive Character”, in: Selected Writings 2.2, 1931-1934 , eds. Howard Eiland, Michael Jennings & Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press od Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 541-542. 10. Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”, in: Selected Writings 4, 1938-1940, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 392. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid, p. 394. 13. Werner Hamacher, “Intensive Languages”, trans. Ira Allen & Steve Tester, MLN 127 (2012): p. 506. 14. Andrew Benjamin, Working with Walter Benjamin: Recovering a Political Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), p. 1. 15. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998), p. 32 & 36. [Emphasis added.] 16. The standard, English translation of the “‘Prologue” notoriously mis-renders Darstellung as ‘representation’. To the extent that Benjamin is working with a Kantian vocabulary, however, Osborne’s confusion of Darstellung (‘presentation’) and Vorstellung (‘representation’) obfuscates the way the text positions itself vis-à-vis the German philosophical tradition. 17. Cf. Howard Caygill, The Colour of Experience (London: Routledge, 1998). 18. Benjamin, “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”, p. 102 19. Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.24. 20. Benjamin, “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”, p. 103. 21. Ibid.

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22. In the fragment “Theory of Knowledge” (1920-21) Benjamin writes: “Two things must be overcome: 1. The false disjunction: knowledge is either in the consciousness of a knowing subject or else in the object (alternatively, identical with it). 2. The appearance of the knowing man (for example, Leibniz, Kant).” (Walter Benjamin, “Theory of Knowledge”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996], p. 276.) 23. Cf. Werner Hamacher, “Now: Walter Benjamin on Historical Time”, in: Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). 24. Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, p. 32. [Translation modified.] The German original reads as follows: “Ist Übung im beschreibenden Entwurfe der Ideenwelt, dergestalt, daß die empirische von selber in sie eingeht und in ihr sich lost, die Aufgabe des Philosophen, so gewinnt er die erhobne Mitte zwischen dem Forscher und dem Künstler. Der letztere entwirft ein Bildchen der Ideenwelt und eben darum, weil er es als Gleichnis entwirft, in jeder Gegenwart ein endgültiges. Der Forscher disponiert die Welt zu der Zerstreuung im Bereiche der Ideen, indem er sie von innen im Begriffe aufteilt. Ihn verbindet mit dem Philosophen Interesse am Verlöschen bloßer Empirie, den Künstler die Aufgabe der Darstellung.” (Walter Benjamin, “Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels”, in: Gesammelte Schriften I.1, eds. Rolf Tiedemann & Hermann Schweppenhäuser [Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974], p. 212.) 25. Ibid, p. 33. The German original reads as follows: “Die Phänomene gehen aber nicht integral in ihrem rohen empirischen Bestande, dem der Schein sich beimischt, sondern in ihren Elementen allein, gerettet, in das Reich der Ideen ein. Ihrer falschen Einheit entäußern sie sich, um aufgeteilt an der echten der Wahrheit teilzuhaben. In dieser Aufteilung unterstehen die Phänomene den Begriffen. Die sind es, welche an den Dingen die Lösung in die Elemente vollziehen.” (Benjamin, “Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels”, p. 213-14.) 26. Ibid, p. 33. [Translation modified.] 27. Ibid, p. 34. The German original reads as follows: “Indem die Rettung der Phänomene vermittels der Ideen sich vollzieht, vollzieht sich die Darstellung der Ideen im Mittel der Empirie. Denn nicht an sich selbst, sondern einzig und allein in einer Zuordnung dinglicher Elemente im Begriff stellen die Ideen sich dar. Und zwar tun sie es als deren Konfiguration.” (Benjamin, “Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels”, p.214.) 28. Ibid, p. [Translation modified.] 28. The German original reads as follows: “Darstellung ist der Inbegriff ihrer Methode. Methode ist Umweg. Darstellung als Umweg – das ist den der methodische Charakter des Traktats. Verzicht auf den unabgesetzten Lauf der Intentionen ist sein ersten Kennzeichen. Ausdauernd hebt das Denken stets von neuem an, umständlich geht es auf die Sache selbst zurück. Dies unablässige Atemholen ist die eigenste Daseinsform der Kontemplation. Denn indem sie den unterschiedlichen Sinnstufen bei der Betrachtung eines und desselben Gegenstandes folgt, empfängt sie den Antrieb ihres stets erneuten Einsetzens ebenso wie die Rechtfertigung ihrer intermittierenden Rhythmik.” (Benjamin, “Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels”, p. 208.) 29. Ibid, p. 29. [Translation modified.] The German original reads as follows: “Erkenntnis ist ein Haben. Ihr Gegenstand selbst bestimmt sich dadurch, daß e rim Bewußtsein – und sei es transzendental – innegehabt werden muss. Ihm bleibt der Besitzcharakter. Diesem Besitztum ist Darstellung sekundär. Es existiert nicht bereits als ein Sich-Darstellendes.”, (Benjamin, “Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels”, p. 209.) 30. Ibid, p. 30. 31. Cf. Andrew Benjamin & Dimitris Vardoulakis (eds.), Sparks Will Fly: Benjamin and Heidegger (Albany: SUNY Press, 2015). 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, p. 34.

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35. Ibid, p. 35. 36. Benjamin, “Theory of Knowledge”, p. 276. 37. Ibid, p. 36. The German original reads as follows: “Sache des Philosophen ist es, den symbolischen Charakter des Wortes, in welchem die Idee zur Selbstverständigung kommt, die das Gegenteil aller nach außen gerichteten Mitteilung ist, durch Darstellung in seinen Primat wieder einzusetzen. Dies kann, da die Philosophie offenbarend zu reden sich nicht anmaßen darf, durch ein aufs Urvernehmen allererst zurückgehendes Erinnern einzig geschehen.” (Benjamin, “Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels”, p.216-17.) 38. Cf. Peter Fenves, Arresting Language: From Leibniz to Benjamin (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). 39. Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”, p. 65. 40. Ibid, 64. [Translation modified.] 41. Ibid, p. 69. Cf. Winnfried Menninghaus, Walter Benjamins Theorie der Sprachmagie (Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 1980). 42. Ibid, p. 65 43. Ibid, p. 68. Cf. Alexander García Düttmann, The Gift of Language: Memory and Promise in Adorno, Benjamin, Heidegger, and Rosenzweig (London: The Athlone Press, 2000). 44. Ibid, p. 69. 45. Samuel Weber, Benjamin’s –abilities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 9. 46. Peter Osborne & Matthew Charles, “Walter Benjamin”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/ entries/benjamin. 47. Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, p. 43. The German original reads as follows: “Das philosophische Gedankenreich entspinnt sich nicht in der ununterbrochenen Linienführung begrifflicher Deduktionen, sondern in einer Beschreibung der Ideenwelt. Ihre Durchführung setzt mit jeder Idee von neuem als einer ursprünglichen an.” (Benjamin, “Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels”, p. 223.) 48. Ibid, p. 46. The German original reads as follows: “Vielmehr beginnt die Aufgabe des Forschers hier, der ein solches Faktum dann erst für gesichert zu halten hat, wenn seine innerste Struktur so wesenhaft erscheint, daß sie als einen Ursprung es verrät. Das Echte – jenes Ursprungsiegel in den Phnänomenen – ist Gegenstand der Entdeckung, einer Entdeckung, die in einzigartiger Weise sich mit dem Wiedererkennen verbindet.” (Benjamin, “Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels”, p. 226-27.) 49. Ibid, p. 47. 50. Ibid, p. 48. [Translation modified.] The German original reads as follows: “Und so könnte denn wohl die reale Welt in dem Sinne Aufgabe sein, daß es gelte, derart tief in alles Wirkliche zu dringen, daß eine objective Interpretation der Welt sich drin erschlösse. Von der Aufgabe einer derartigen Versenkung aus betrachtet erscheint es nicht rätselhaft, daß der Denken der Monadologie der Begründer der Infinitesimalrechnung war. Die Idee ist Monade – das heist in Kürze: jede Idee enthält das Bild der Welt. Ihrer Darstellung ist zur Aufgabe nicht Geringeres gesetzt, als dieses Bild der Welt in seiner Verkürzung zu zeichnen.” (Benjamin, “Urspung des Deutschen Trauerspiels”, p. 228) 51. Cf. Paula Schwebel, “Intensive Infinity: Walter Benjamin’s Reception of Leibniz and its Sources”, in: MLN 127 (2012): pp. 589-610. 52. Schwebel, “Intensive Infinity”, p. 591. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid, p. 601. 57. Ibid, p. 602.

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58. Paul De Man, “Conclusions: Walter Benjamin's ‘The Task of the Translator’”, Yale French Studies 69 (1985), pp. 25-46. 59. Sami Khatib, “Where the Past Was There History Shall Be: Benjamin, Marx, and the ‘Tradition of the Oppressed’”, Anthropology & Materialism [online], I (2017), URL: http://am.revues.org/789

INDEX

Keywords: Benjamin Walter, Kant Immanuel, Leibnitz Gottfried Wilhelm, philosophy, subjectivity, philosophy of language, epistemology, experience, truth, theory of ideas, philosophy of history, origin, monadology, critical theory

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The Pure Act of Recollection Walter Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot Reading Proust

Yanik Avila

1 For Walter Benjamin, as for Maurice Blanchot, the philosophical stakes linked to literature as a specific discourse or mode of language lie in the problematic status it assigns to subjectivity. In the context of his early literary studies, working on Goethe’s Elective Affinities, Benjamin postulates a “basic law of literature”, which states that within a literary work “truth content” [Wahrheitsgehalt] and “material content” [Sachgehalt] initially intertwine.1 According to Benjamin, it is the task of critique to aim at truth content, and thereby to extract the work from its embedding in a ‘real’ world. Moreover, the process of this extraction is the measure of the historical time encapsulated in the work, as Benjamin writes, using a Bergsonian term: its “duration”.2

2 As Michel Foucault suggests, for Blanchot, the utterly reduced, pure self-assertion of the literary discourse of modernity – its refusal to be limited by any meaning or communication that could be subtracted from its form – can be seen as the “breakthrough to a language from which the subject is excluded”.3 This event is manifest in the paradoxical ontological structure of the work of art, more particularly the literary work, as Blanchot approaches it. 3 However different they may appear, these two figures of thought are both organised around a fundamental separation that excludes the ‘work’, the literary work, from the world of realities, and hence from the course of history, of subjectivity qua historical action. Nevertheless, it is through this very exclusion that both Blanchot and Benjamin aim at another dimension of historicity, one in which the work refuses to relate to the subject, to a transcendental and thus a-historical subject, namely: the subject of the (Kantian) transcendental synthesis. The very structure of literary works implies a thorough resistance to history – understood here as the realm of subjective actions, of purposes and progression in time. By refusing to relate to productive subjectivity, literary works refuse to coincide with subjective purposes, and are therefore at odds with the very idea of a transcendental (and thus naturalised) subject of history – a privileged point of view that holds everything together.4 However, this refusal, for Benjamin as for Blanchot, takes place when the discourse of literature, bereft of its ties to a real, i.e. experienceable historical world, repeats the pure (and hence empty)

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gesture of transcendental synthesis. As the reduplication, or simulation of a synthetic activity without a subject, literature, thus at once transforms the inmost intimacy of consciousness into an extreme exteriority. 4 Marcel Proust’s work À la Recherche du temps perdu puts precisely this gesture to the test because it represents a comprehensive attempt at transforming pure consciousness into narration. As such it confronts the subject of reading with an experience that, in its immanence, is radically unapproachable. It is in deciphering this unapproachability of experience as part of the predicament of subjectivity in modernity that Benjamin and Blanchot, in their readings of Proust, propose notions of historical cognition that hinge on the instant where the subject of historical action is inverted into its image, into the utter passivity that is ascribed to nature.

Benjamin (I): Body-Space

5 One of Benjamin’s main claims in his 1929 essay, “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia”, refers to an instant of “bodily collective innervation” that emerges from the coinciding of a “sphere of images” and a “sphere of bodies”.5 It seems that this juxtaposition implies a trope, a metaphorical operation. Benjamin outlines this metaphorical nexus more explicitly elsewhere, in a note contained in “Convolute K” of the Arcades-Project, in which he considers a transformation of a particular realm that could be described as ‘second nature’ into history proper. Invoking a basic assumption of psychoanalysis, he spells out its implications in terms of the opposition of sleeping and waking: It is one of the tacit suppositions of psychoanalysis that the clear-cut antithesis of sleeping and waking has no value for determining the empirical form of consciousness of the human being, but instead yields before an unending variety of concrete states of consciousness conditioned by every conceivable level of wakefulness within all possible centers.6 6 While the metaphorical operation in the essay on Surrealism modifies the meaning of the term ‘body’ – “The collective is a body, too”7 – the decisive term here is ‘consciousness’. But it is not the account of a transcendental consciousness, as defined by the Cartesian tradition of a philosophy of mind in terms of a res cogitans without extension; rather, the ‘form’ of consciousness, which is at stake here, is one that Benjamin refers to as ‘empirical’.8 The aim is thus to undo the separation between body and consciousness, to see it as a result rather than an essential factor. This view links Benjamin’s account of consciousness to one of the main insights of psychoanalysis: the idea of an immanent consciousness, i.e. a consciousness that is not separable from its alleged other, the body, and therefore endowed with extension. In the terminology of Freudian metapsychology this supposition finds a rather concise formulation: it is the assumption that “mental life is the function of an apparatus to which we ascribe the characteristics of being extended in space and of being made up of several portions […].”9 However, by avoiding a transcendental account of consciousness – an account in which the unity of consciousness is secured by a sphere of pure noumena, which govern the (individual) body from a sovereign place external to it10 – Benjamin (as well as Freud) challenge the very notion of an individual body and its unity.

7 As a corollary of this conception of consciousness, we find an idea, or rather an image of the individual body, which is already a fiction: an internal space or landscape – the

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result of a process of extension, inflation and magnification of the space of the body. Viewed against this background, the operation that Benjamin performs is by no means altogether exterior to the psychoanalytic premise. Even if he goes on to formulate it in the vocabulary of an established “situation”,11 the transfer here is by no means a mere metaphor, since such a metaphor would rely on an already constituted individual mind occupying a sovereign position. Moreover it would presuppose a body that constitutes itself as one, i.e. as a coherent entity that is attributable to the mind and is, at least in principle, at its command. Rather, spelling out the implications of psychoanalysis’ immanent conception of mental life, Benjamin seems to focus on the very movement – the shift of the boundary between mind and body – between consciousness and a corporeality that constitutes itself by evading the intentionality of consciousness in a manner that makes it appear as nature. It is here that Benjamin suggests a conception of the unconscious that is eminently historical, or, more appropriately perhaps: an idea of history that redefines the relation of consciousness to a sphere of being-in-itself, which Benjamin names ‘nature’, a relation that, for the time being, is given as a strict separation: Of course, much that is external to the former [the individual] is internal to the latter [the collective]: architecture, fashion – yes, even the weather – are, in the interior of the collective, what the sensoria of organs, the feeling of sickness or health, are inside the individual. And so long as they preserve this unconscious, amorphous dream configuration, they are as much natural processes as digestion, breathing, and the like. They stand in the cycle of the eternally selfsame, until the collective seizes upon them in politics and history emerges.12 8 ‘History’ therefore emerges as an event that takes place at the very juncture between consciousness and its outside. This outside is perhaps more internal than the traditional subject-object paradigm of the philosophy of mind suspects. If the mind is composed of several portions, of multiple extended elements that relate to, communicate with, confine and restrict each other, then this consciousness becomes a body-space that is essentially itself an exteriority, an outside. The direction of the interrogation might therefore also have to be reversed; one would no longer have to ask: how is a collective body conceivable? Instead one would have to ask: what is the nature of this fiction, that is, the fiction of the individual, self-contained body?

Blanchot (I): Imaginary Space

9 In his television interview, L’abécécaire,13 when prompted by Claire Parnet to comment on the letter ‘D’ (as in ‘desire’), Gilles Deleuze formulates a resolute objection to an abstract notion of desire, which, he claims, is maintained by psychoanalysis. Its abstractness lies in the idea that desire is and has to be directed at an object – something or somebody – that can be isolated. In contrast, Deleuze takes his cue from Proust when he says that desire, in fact, cannot but take place within an assembly, an aggregate [un agencement]. He reminds us of the way in which Proust’s objects of desire, be they persons or things, are always framed by the spaces in which they appear – objects that are tied to their background or, as it were, enveloped by landscapes, drawing all their affective substance from such framing. Here Deleuze’s description resonates with Benjamin’s account, referenced above, of the shift from the individual body to the collective, from nature to history. Like Deleuze, Georges Poulet, in his 1963 study on Proustian space, points out this locale-bound quality of Proust’s characters:

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Without the locales, the characters would be mere abstractions. The locales specify their image and provide us with the necessary support thanks to which we can assign them a place in our mental space, dream of them, and remember them.14 10 However, the philosopher Deleuze seems to go one step beyond Poulet’s philological observation when he makes a claim about the structure of desire tout court. While Poulet speaks of a ‘mental space’ that is extracted from the world of objects, reproducing them as ‘images’, Deleuze claims that what he calls ‘assembly’ is not the object of desire, since desire is not external to it, but indissolubly interwoven with it. The contrast becomes all the more visible when Poulet affirms a substantial difference between the exteriority of the characters in Proust’s narration and the interiority of the ‘central consciousness’, which is that of the narrator: “Oddly enough, this novelist of interiority relentlessly forces himself to present his personages (with the exception of one, the central consciousness) in terms of exteriority.”15 For Deleuze, it seems, desire works across the separation between the imaginary and the real, between reading and experiencing; but if the subject of desire is immanent to the text to begin with, if it is, ultimately, identical with the unfolding of the narration, it is because narration itself, for Deleuze, does not pose a problem. For Poulet, however, it does. But he sidesteps its consequences by granting the central consciousness – the subject of narration – the interiority that the objects are lacking, as if, in turn, it presented an immediate interior experience. But the intensification of this interiority through the immanence of narrative must lead to the point where it is no longer the interiority of a subject, but rather pure interiority; and as such it is inverted into an utter exteriority, into text. This inversion is the pivotal point for Maurice Blanchot’s reading of Proust.

11 For Proust, the production of experience through an unfolding of narration seems to be the aesthetic ambition at the heart of À la Recherche du temps perdu. In his essay on “The Experience of Proust”, Maurice Blanchot is concerned with the question of a “pure narrative”,16 as posed in Proust’s writing. What does ‘pure narrative’ mean? Blanchot seems to suggest that it can be understood when compared with the form of the novel. That is to say, Blanchot invests the novel as a literary form with a very specific ambition: that of presenting a world which is a consistent, albeit fictional whole; a world which appears capable of subsisting beyond its being-narrated. A ‘pure narrative’, by contrast, would be one that renounces this ambition. It might, however, be eclipsed by the material content of a given narrative, its “novelistic density”.17 While every novel, incidentally, relies on this narrative gesture so that it can come into being, the very consistency and self-sufficiency of the narrated world conceals its origin in this gesture. At first sight, what could be called the ‘autobiographical illusion’ in Proust’s novelistic undertaking is what removes him furthest from the realisation of precisely this goal: “While the imaginary journey of narrative leads other writers into the unreality of a scintillating space, for Marcel Proust everything happens as if it were fortunately superimposed onto the journey of his actual life.”18 In other words, what appears to be Proust’s ‘actual life’ provides the subject matter, an elusive place exterior to narration, where the reality of things ensures the consistency of the narrated events. However, the space of Proust’s narration (which Blanchot goes on to characterise as “imaginary space”19) is anything but real if reality implies homogeneity and continuity. The narration is unleashed (again and again) by events that constitute a veritable short-circuiting of a homogenous and continuous, objective and objectifiable timeline. The material of narration is composed of what Proust terms ‘sensations’, which essentially consist of a synthesis that, as it were, “abolishes time”.20

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12 Blanchot cites the instance in which the narrator stumbles over the irregular cobbles that line the Guermantes’ courtyard. He points out that the memory of the stumbling in the Baptistery of San Marco is by no means a duplication of the original event, but the actual, original event itself: Yes, he [the narrator] asserts, time is abolished, since, at once, in a real act of capturing […] I hold the Venice instant and the Guermantes instant, not a past and a present, but one single presence that causes incompatible moments, separated by the entire course of lived life, to coincide in a palpable simultaneity.21 13 This ‘palpable simultaneity’ introduces an irreducibly metaphorical structure into time, or, more precisely, into the time defined by ‘the entire course of lived life’. ‘Lived life’ thus becomes conceivable as the essence of a separation that fuses two unrelated objects into one sensation. ‘Sensation’ is nothing but the positive substance of this absence. To be sure, as a ‘sensation’, this “event” is itself a psychological event, as Blanchot remarks in a footnote.22 But whose psyche is envisaged here? Who if not the narrator, defined as the very subject to whom these sensations can be attributed? Transforming these sensations into narration thus means emptying the space between the instants of recollection – of involuntary memory – to empty it of everything that entrenches them in the reality of a conscious subject in the domain of voluntary memory and intelligence. Rather than being events ‘within’ time, narration transforms those ‘psychological’ entities into fields that have an extension of their own, an extension in time, but in a transformed time, an imaginary time, manifesting what Blanchot calls “the incomparable, unique ecstasy of time.”23

14 Blanchot arranges his argument around a comparison between the style of À la Recherche du temps perdu, on the one hand, especially the decisive final experience narrated in Le temps retrouvé, and, on the other hand, a similar event narrated in the posthumously published novel Jean Santeuil, which could be seen as a precursor or, as Blanchot calls it, a rejected “draft.”24. For Proust, as Blanchot reads him, Jean Santeuil fails to produce the experience at which it aims precisely because it preserves a much greater proximity to the “actual Proust”.25 By contrast, the experience that is at stake for Proust necessitates the complete metamorphosis of the narrator, through which he not only enters a space of radical exteriority but also the domain of the whole, which is at once the space of the image, and accordingly the transformation of time into an imaginary space.26 If the Kantian notions of time and space as forms of inner and outer intuition define, in their clear-cut distinctness, the ability to experience individual, empirical subjectivity, then it is the merit of Proust’s writing to reflect the becoming- image, the pure exteriority of time as the essence of writing: “the transformation of time into an imaginary space (the space unique to images) […]: that remoteness and distance that make up the milieu and the principle of metamorphoses and of what Proust calls metaphors.”27 Proust’s experience is thus hermetically enclosed in the psyche of the narrator. But the narrator’s (fictional) interiority is, in turn, congealed in the radical exteriority of writing, of the narrative and its temporality. [T]he time of the narrative, when, although he says ‘I,’ it is no longer the real Proust or the writer Proust who has the ability to speak, but their metamorphosis into that shadow that is the narrator turned into a ‘character’ of the book, the one who in the story writes a story that is the work itself.28 15 What Proust calls ‘sensation’ is no longer the sensation as it pertains to a self-contained subject. Rather, its artificiality – part of an “almost sacred reality”29 – reveals its allegorical structure, its structure as writing.30 Adapting Deleuze’s thought on desire,

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‘pure narrative’ thus seems to mean a narrative that narrates only narrating, i.e. the continuous detachment of both the world as subject matter and the self as subject (qua internal relation to the world, qua representation etc.) from themselves. This metamorphosis of the narrator for Blanchot constitutes the “movement of the book toward the work”31 – the œuvre – which is at once, one must add, the manifestation of an utter désœuvrement. Constituting every single thing as a whole, as being one, the imaginary seems to be at once the power of the synthesising subject, and the basis of its utter powerlessness. It is a power, the power to act as a historical, empirical subject so long as the assembly that governs its desire has not condensed into an appearance, so long as it is not, strictly speaking, one; but where this power of the subject (the imaginary) appears as being integrated into one, i.e. wherever it – and with it a whole, empirical, lived life – becomes the material of a narration, this subjectivity, whilst it is still presented as historical, owes its being to its utter passivity, its utter separation from history. For what turns into an image is not this or that object, which would thereby constitute a mere representation; rather it is the object-relation itself, that intimate space of the empirical subject, which congeals into an image of itself – one that can only take the shape of pure narration.

16 The twist by which, for Blanchot, Proust transforms the separation from the world into a positive experience – the experience of pure narrative – echoes the way in which Benjamin locates the original problem of Proust at the junction of psychological concerns and narration. How so?

Benjamin (II): Involuntary memory and “the issueless private character of Man’s inner concerns”

17 In his study “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, Benjamin introduces Proust as an heir to Henri Bergson, linking his novelistic project to the latter’s notion of duration – ‘durée’ – as developed in Matière et Mémoire. As Bergson’s title indicates, the concept of duration as experienced time is closely intertwined with a theory of memory. However, Benjamin reads Bergson’s attempt to establish a theoretical account of experience against the background of a historical situation that is marked by the progressive and irretrievable loss of experience. Situating him within the context of the nineteenth century tradition of a philosophy of life [Lebensphilosophie] which stretches from Dilthey to Klages and Jung, Benjamin points out that Bergson’s own attempt to restore an authentic experience, which is fundamentally different from its current forms in the “standardized, denaturated life of the civilized masses”,32 nonetheless disavows the very particularity of the social situation out of which, and against which it was deployed. Indeed, according to Benjamin, Bergson’s philosophy has to be regarded as the “afterimage”, which appears to the eye when it shuts out the experience of the “age of big-scale industrialism”.33 Benjamin’s formulations here suggest that the very structure of duration as a form of experience requires one to think about the nexus between poetic fiction and the structure of subjectivity that it implies: “Matière et mémoire defines the nature of experience in the durée in such a way that the reader is bound to conclude that only a poet can be the adequate subject of such an experience.” 34

18 Unlike Blanchot, Benjamin does not explicitly differentiate between the poet as a (historical) subject and poetic subjectivity, nor does he explicitly name the problem of

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the narrator, and of narrative, as being crucial to the argument. But it is the same space that Benjamin envisages, one in which narrative is detached from any related object or event, from a self-contained experience beyond narration, where, therefore, it affects every narrated object in its very objecthood. Reformulating Benjamin’s assertion, it is thus the desœuvrement for which poetic subjectivity provides the model, which defines the structure of Bergson’s concept of experience. However, while Proust’s project shares the social and historical determinants of Bergson’s philosophy, Bergson’s merely theoretical approach treats an (ultimately unavailable) experience as if it was immediately available. By contrast, it is Proust’s fundamental ambition to produce the experience in question artificially or, as Benjamin writes, synthetically: “Proust’s work À la Recherche du temps perdu may be regarded as an attempt to produce experience synthetically, as Bergson imagines it, under today’s conditions, for there is less and less hope that it will come into being naturally.”35 19 Benjamin repeatedly suggests that Proust’s work should be considered as beginning with the utter artificiality of the narrative situation which it presupposes. If this production of synthetic experience takes the shape of a comprehensive attempt “to restore the figure of the storyteller to the present generation,”36 then it is because for Benjamin the practice of storytelling is the epitome of that synthetizing activity that constitutes the notion of experience as embedded in a life: “[i]t is not the object of the story to convey a happening per se, which is the purpose of information; rather, it embeds it in the life of the storyteller in order to pass it on as experience to those listening.”37 Here, the storyteller’s life as an organic whole composed of meaningful elements is what brings forth the story as a meaningful, coherent experience, i.e. as narration: “It [the story] bears the marks of the storyteller much as the earthen vessel bears the marks of the potter’s hand.”38 However, the marks of the storyteller’s life in Benjamin’s analogy would be an element that precisely hinders the completion of what Blanchot called the ‘metamorphosis of the narrator’. The ‘restoration’ of the storyteller that Benjamin emphasises has to take into account the fundamental transformation that he, the storyteller, undergoes in this process: as a “figure”, where the “resurrection of the past” takes the shape of the “imaginary past of an already entirely imaginary being.”39 The fact that, according to Benjamin, it is a restoration “to the present generation” highlights the historical index that determines the specific experience at stake, experience “under today’s conditions.”40 20 In Benjamin, this problem shines through; for there is a peculiar equivocation in the concept of synthesis as Benjamin applies it, one that scintillates in his use of the notion of synthetic experience. On the one hand, there is the synthesis that constitutes the unity of the related event by embedding it in the storyteller’s life, making him, as it were, the transcendental subject of the narrative, where what is narrated – what is related – is precisely the relation to the subject. In this sense, which comes close to the concept of Kantian transcendental synthesis, experience can only be synthetic, i.e. the result of a synthesis. Proust’s narrative, on the other hand, works differently, as we have seen, following Blanchot. By reducing narration to ‘pure narrative’, where every residue of voluntary memory vanishes in favour of that “outpouring of the imagination in which a field is established between [past and present]”41 – as it characterises the essence of involuntary memory – distant points “separated by the entire course of lived life”42 come to constitute a life, ultimately life as a whole, but a life entirely immanent to

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narration, in an imaginary space entirely disconnected from the storyteller’s, i.e. the (empirical) writers’ life. 21 Storytelling is thus a kind of synthesis. It brings about the cohesion of past and present generations. But the synthetic reduplication of this gesture of storytelling – the transformation of the life of the storyteller into the figure of the storyteller – seems to produce a very specific conception of what, for Proust, ‘the present generation’ was. For Benjamin, it is the perceived unavailability of a primordial mode of narration which encapsulates the experience of technological progress. The separation of generations from each other – which ensues from the ever increasing speed at which any knowledge linked to living environments seems to make the very essence of the story obsolete. This essence lies in the quality of speaking to the listener by virtue of the marks of the storyteller’s life that the story makes on its fabric. Viewed against this backdrop, art mobilises its resources precisely as a consequence of the unavailability of such exteriority.43 The relations of subject and world, of past events and the listener’s experience, thus need to be reproduced artificially. The structure of Proust’s “autobiographical work” as an “unconstruable synthesis”44 has the same status for Benjamin as for Blanchot: the status of a synthetic life – a life detached from every particular life. As a work it materialises this very detachment, and where it takes the form of pure narrative, it (re)produces life as absolute interiority, as completely contained within the work. In this way, the idea of involuntary memory, epitomising this reduction to pure narrative by excluding every element of command from a subject, carries the index of the historic situation, which is that of the loss of the subjective ability to narrate: It is by no means evident to be dependent on chance in this matter [of taking hold of one’s experience through recollection]. Man’s inner concerns do not have their issueless private character by nature. They do so only when he is increasingly unable to assimilate the data of the world around him by way of experience.45 22 Here, what Blanchot characterised as ‘novelistic density’ amounts to the striving for a complete self-subsistence of life within the work. Benjamin’s formulation is therefore deceptive. There can be no simple restoration of storytelling and of the storyteller; instead, their historical relevance lies in the fact that, for Benjamin, ‘restoration’ is at once a fundamental transformation, a metamorphosis of the very essence of storytelling. Blanchot, for his part, argues that Proust’s work should be read as the “metamorphosis of the narrator turned into a ‘character’ of the book, the one who in the story writes a story that is the work itself”.46 The storyteller as a ‘figure’ can no longer leave his life’s marks on the story; rather, this life re-emerges within the narration, as a token of a natural history collection, as the narrated life of a narrator that is inseparable from narration. But narration, in turn, has retreated to, or rather constituted a space that, by virtue of its pure inanimate exteriority, acquires an utterly unreal and inaccessible dimension: an image of life.47 Viewed in this way, immanence amounts to pure exteriority.

23 In his 1929 essay on “The Image of Proust”, Benjamin characterises Proust’s writing as a “Penelope work of recollection” that is really a “Penelope work of forgetting”, where “the day unravels what the night” has “woven.”48 It is not only Benjamin and Blanchot’s common reference to the myth of Ulysses,49 which highlights the affinity between their respective readings of Proust. While Blanchot sets out to tackle the question of a ‘pure narrative’, Benjamin shifts his attention from the subject matter of this or that narrated memory to the “actus purus of recollection itself”.50 Only this pure

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act of recollection, “not the author of the plot”, as Benjamin explicitly points out, is what “constitutes the unity of the text.”51 Here, the synthesis in question – as we have seen, Benjamin describes Proust’s work as an ‘unconstruable synthesis’ – appears to be formulated in the vocabulary of textual metaphors: the “tapestry of lived life”,52 which is woven by recollecting and forgetting, derives its figurative persuasiveness from the Latin word textum (web), as Benjamin reminds us. What he observes in Proust is the dissolution of the subject of recollection into textuality. But what exactly does this mean?

Blanchot (II): Empty Totality

24 Following Blanchot, we have seen that the exteriority entailed by writing53 creates an ‘almost sacred reality’, one that could be thought of in terms of the structure that Benjamin assigns to allegory. The internal space defined by what Proust calls ‘sensation’ appears to be the object of narration. But in its artificiality, at least as Benjamin presents it, this allegedly internal space reveals itself as the shadow, or rather, the peculiarly motionless image of real sensation – provided that such realness is understood as a sensation’s belonging to an individual self. Presenting itself as the image of a psyche, this pure recollection becomes legible as the materialisation of the very absence of any individual self. Pure recollection is not recollection of a self but rather recollection in spite of a self. The involuntary memory, of which Proust’s narrator seems to be the subject, is in fact realised as the continuous (self-)abdication of a subjecthood that is transformed into narration. What appears as the immanence of pure recollection thus poses a boundary value (a property of the image, as Blanchot conceives it) that marks the point where the reader’s desire for immersion into the fictional world as well as identification with fictional characters must necessarily be disappointed.54 Memory, as far as Proust is concerned, has to do with the text’s resistance to empathy with the narrator and his characters.55 Consequently, Proust’s project, as Benjamin understands it, cannot be seen as addressing the realm of (psychological) interiority and hence of subjectivity as such. Rather, “man’s inner concerns”,56 by dint of their construction as pure narration, are turned inside out; the psyche is inverted into physis. Benjamin emphasises Proust’s striving to “design the entire inner structure of society as a physiology of chatter.”57 Society, when congealed into an image – a totality – presents itself as nature, as a “petrefied, primordial landscape.”58 And it is this imaginary dimension of society as a totality, which reveals the nexus of fate and writing. For wherever the writing of fate is supposed to be situated, the idea is always that of a codification that ultimately encompasses a totality, which, by its sheer density, immobilises every element. This applies to Proust’s characters: Proust’s characters, which are planted so firmly in their social habitat, influenced by the position of the sun of aristocratic favour, stirred by the wind that blows from Guermantes or Méséglise, and inextricably intertwined in the thicket of their fate.59 25 It is a “vegetative existence”60 that pertains to these characters, while the narrator, rather than presenting a subjective interiority, can be thought of as the ferment by which this nexus is transformed into an image. Physis, nature, is therefore what things turn into when viewed in their totality, or as totality, and absolute narrative thus meets at least one demand that Adorno formulates when he writes about “The Idea of Natural History”, namely to “comprehend historical being in its most extreme historical determinacy,

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where it is most historical, as natural”.61 Conversely, the appearance of intentionality, and therefore of action, spontaneity, and subjectivity qua praxis, can be understood as the result of a subtraction, the not-all that would characterise actual, i.e. lived, unformed life.

26 Benjamin and Blanchot both suggest that fiction in modernity constitutes the medium of totality. For Benjamin, once again, it is the integrating quality of what was once experience, which Proust’s novelistic project seeks to achieve artificially. Blanchot, in turn, focuses on the instant of separation, in which experience, thus conceived as fiction, cuts itself off from a world in which experiencing, acting beings could subsist and which, by virtue of its very unavailability, can be termed real and historical. For Blanchot, the totality that fiction constitutes qua pure narrative is therefore never a totality of something but rather a pure totality, even if its manifestations may be fragmentary. It is a universal negation, severed from the realm of determinate negation, which would constitute subjectivity and thus action. A ‘vegetative existence’, such as the mode of being that Benjamin ascribes to Proust’s characters – one that entails the inability to act as a subject – derives from the peculiar inactivity, which, according to Blanchot, defines the writer as “master of the imaginary.”62 In a much more general sense, Blanchot makes the point that the world as a whole – and, when mediated by the experience of a narrator, life as a whole – is at the same time less than the world, less than life: The truth is that he [the writer] ruins action, not because he deals with what is unreal but because he makes all of reality available to us. Unreality begins with the whole. The realm of the imaginary is not a strange region situated beyond the world, it is the world itself, but as entire, manifold, the world as a whole. That is why it is not in the world, because it is the world, grasped and realized in its entirety by the global negation of all the individual realities contained in it, by their disqualification, their absence, by the realization of that absence itself, which is how literary creation begins […].63 27 The writer is thus the model of an inability to act precisely because the global negation by which every fictional sentence negates the world as a whole through language, whilst also negating language as a whole by making it an image of language, leaves no room for action. It is this sudden transformation that Blanchot repeatedly describes as “désœuvrement”,64 an inability that ultimately characterises every notion of individual selfhood in modernity, because such selfhood cannot persist without becoming entangled in the medium of the imaginary.65 But perhaps the very materialisation of this entanglement may bear the promise of breaking this spell? If, for Benjamin, Proust’s mémoire involontaire constitutes a time outside of history [geschichtslos], then it is Blanchot who focuses on literary creation – the ‘space of literature’ – as an interstice between the realms of nature and history. His theory of the “two versions of the imaginary”66 concerns this very nexus.

28 Proust attempts “to produce experience synthetically […] under today’s conditions, for there is less and less hope that it will come into being naturally.”67 But by making all of it available, what becomes available is, in a certain sense, its very unavailability: the empty totality of a world and a life that is completely self-sufficient. ‘Under today’s conditions’ means, at once, that he produces the psychology of experience as an image of experience that exposes the mythic fabric of the psyche itself. Such an image simultaneously exposes the passivity of the individual self as it emerges from people’s separation from economic production, while the dissimulation of this very separation

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makes for the appearance of spontaneity and individual selfhood. When considered against the backdrop of the complete unavailability of primordial, unmediated experience, which Benjamin describes, what appeared at first sight as the image of a psyche, reveals the psyche as image. To say, as Benjamin does, that Proust’s work produces experience synthetically therefore means that it produces an absolute experience, and therefore an immanent experience – one that refuses to be the experience of a subject which transcends the work. Such a claim is in accordance with Benjamin’s critical intention, developed early on in his essay “On The Program of the Coming Philosophy”, which contains a reading of Kant’s concept of experience under the aspect of eliminating “the subject nature of the cognizing consciousness”68 as one of the “primitive elements of an unproductive metaphysics.”69 Contrary to Deleuze’s view of desire, which is informed by Proust’s theory of memory, it has to be said that if desire does in fact occur within an assembly, an agencement, which – in Proust’s case – takes the shape of pure narrative, then one (i.e. a conscious subject) can only experience one’s exclusion from desire, one’s separation from it. Reading (as a subject) therefore means to experience this limitation of experience, to experience this withdrawal and refusal; and if subjective experience operates via synthesis, then it is the experience of a moment of “nonsynthesis”70 that comes into focus here. The synthetic experience brought about in Proust’s work is therefore nothing less than the realisation of what Benjamin elsewhere describes as “profane illumination”,71 one that reveals the effects of “that most terrible drug – ourselves – which we take in solitude.”72

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADORNO, Theodor W., “The Idea of Natural History”, in: Robert Hullot-Kentor, Things Beyond Resemblance. Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 252-269.

ADORNO, Theodor W., Kierkegaard. Construction of the Aesthetic, trans. Robert Hullot Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

BENJAMIN, Walter, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland, Kevin MacLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999).

BENJAMIN, Walter, Selected Writings 2.1, 1927-1930, eds. Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings & Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999).

BENJAMIN, Walter, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998).

BENJAMIN, Walter, Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

BENJAMIN, Walter, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968).

BLANCHOT, Maurice, The Book to Come, trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).

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BLANCHOT, Maurice, The Work of Fire, trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).

BLANCHOT, Maurice, The Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982).

DELEUZE, Gilles, Proust and Signs, trans. Richard Howard (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

FOUCAULT, Michel, “The Thought from Outside”, in: Foucault/ Blanchot, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman & Brian Massumi (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), pp. 7-58.

FREUD, Sigmund, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969).

POULET, Georges, L’éspace proustien (Paris: Gallimard, 1983).

WEBER, Samuel, Benjamin’s -abilities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).

ŽIŽEK, Slavoj, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso, 2012).

ENDNOTES

1. Cf. Walter Benjamin, “Goethe’s Elective Affinities”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 297. 2. Cf. ibid. 3. Michel Foucault, “The Thought From Outside”, in: Foucault/Blanchot, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman & Brian Massumi (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), p. 15. 4. It is worth noting that Slavoj Žižek proposes a reading of Hegel’s ‘Absolute Knowing’ [absolutes Wissen] that hinges on precisely this thought. Far from being “the magical ability of Spirit to generate all content”, it is rather “Spirit’s thorough passivity” that is reached in Absolute Knowing: “The stance of ‘Absolute Knowing’ thus fully coincides with thorough (absolute) historicism: there is no transcendental ‘big Other,’ there are no criteria that we can apply to historical phenomena to judge them; all such criteria must be immanent to the phenomena themselves.” (Slavoj Žižek, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism [London: Verso, 2012], p. 387.) 5. Cf. Walter Benjamin, “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia”, in: Selected Writings 2.1, 1927-1930, eds. Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings & Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 217. 6. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Howard Eiland & Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 389. 7. Benjamin, “Surrealism”, p. 217. 8. Perhaps this specification should be seen in the light of an earlier account of historical knowledge given in “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”, one that strives to formulate the counterpart to Kantian philosophy in that it is directed towards “the integrity of an experience that is ephemeral”, rather than a “certainty of knowledge that is lasting”. (Walter Benjamin, “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996], p. 100.) 9. Sigmund Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969), p. 13.

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10. Cf. Samuel Weber, Benjamin’s -abilities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 171. 11. “The situation of consciousness as patterned and checkered by sleep and waking need only be transferred from the individual to the collective.” (Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 389.) The German word Zustand perhaps implies even more immobility than the English situation. 12. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 389. 13. Cf. L’abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, directed by Pierre-André Boutang (Paris: Montparnasse, 2004), DVD. 14. George Poulet, L’Espace proustiens (Paris: Gallimard), p. 40. [My translation.] 15. Ibid, p. 38. [My translation.] 16. Cf. Maurice Blanchot, “The Experience of Proust”, in: The Book to Come, trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 11. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Cf. ibid, p. 13. 20. Cf. ibid, p. 12. 21. Ibid. 22. Cf. ibid, p. 253. 23. Ibid, p. 13. 24. Cf. ibid, p. 19. 25. Ibid. 26. Cf. ibid, p. 14. 27. Ibid, p. 14. Deleuze also comments on the function of style, metaphor and metamorphosis in Proust: “style is essentially metaphor. But metaphor is essentially metamorphosis and indicates how the two objects exchange their determinations, exchange even the names that designate them, in the new medium that confers the common quality upon them.” (Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs, trans. Richard Howard [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000], p. 48.) 28. Blanchot, “The Experience of Proust”, p. 15. 29. Cf. ibid, p. 12. It is significant that Blanchot terms this fictional reality “almost sacred”. As a purely poetic reality, i.e. one that has no other manifestation than the combination of written words, it corresponds with the nature of sacred texts as Benjamin characterises them: “It is possible, without contradiction, to conceive of a more vital, freer use of the revealed spoken language, in which it would lose none of its dignity. This is not true of its written form, which allegory laid claim to being. The sanctity of what is written is inextricably bound up with the idea of the strict codification. For sacred script always takes the form of certain complexes of words which ultimately constitute, or aspire to become, one single and inalterable complex.” (Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne [London: Verso, 1998], p. 175.) 30. The “transformation of time into an imaginary space (the space unique to images)” is what Blanchot highlights in the concept of metaphor that is crucial for Proust, where “it is no longer a matter of applying psychology; on the contrary, there is no more interiority, for everything that is interior is deployed outwardly, takes the form of an image.” (Blanchot, “The Experience of Proust”, p. 14.) 31. Ibid, p. 16. 32. Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, in: Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), p. 157. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid, p. 159. 37. Ibid. [Emphasis added]

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38. Ibid. 39. Blanchot, “The Experience of Proust”, p. 17. 40. Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, p. 157. 41. Blanchot, “The Experience of Proust”, p. 18. 42. Ibid, p. 12. 43. Cf. Foucault, “The Thought From Outside”, p. 7 44. Cf. Walter Benjamin, “The Image of Proust”, in: Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), p. 201. 45. Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, p. 158. 46. Blanchot, “The Experience of Proust”, p. 15. 47. One might even think of the allegorical character that life acquires through immobilisation, inverting it into its opposite – a point that is manifested in the pictorial tradition of the still life or nature morte. Elsewhere in his essay on Baudelaire, Benjamin explicitly states that the time of the mémoire involontaire is “outside history” [ geschichtslos]. (Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, p. 184). The retreat that is embodied by life, conceived of as an image, thus indicates a space of nature, according to Benjamin’s definition of beauty: “Beauty in its relationship to nature can be defined as that which ‘remains true to its essential nature [wesenhaft sich selbst gleich] only when veiled.’” (ibid, p. 199). 48. Cf. Walter Benjamin, “The Image of Proust”, p. 202. 49. Blanchot treats the myth of Ulysses in the essay preceding “The Experience of Proust”, where he discusses the motif of the song of the Sirens to which, incidentally, Proust’s narrator relates his crucial experience as a writer-to-be in the final volume of the Recherche. (Cf. Maurice Blanchot, “Encountering the Imaginary”, in: The Book to Come, trans. Charlotte Mandell [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003], pp. 3-10.) 50. Benjamin, “The Image of Proust”, p. 203. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid, p. 202. 53. For a further examination of this notion of exteriority, see: Foucault, “The Thought From Outside”. 54. Under these circumstances, every kind of moral or psychological evaluation of literary characters (and, indeed, of the narrator as a character) is unthinkable. Benjamin refutes precisely this approach to literary criticism in his study on the German Trauerspiel, where he insists that “fictional characters exist only in literature. They are woven as tightly into the totality of the literary work [ins Ganze ihrer Dichtung] as are the subjects of Gobelins into their canvas, so that they cannot be removed from it as individuals.” (Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, p. 105.) 55. For the same reason, Benjamin insists on the fact that the dialectical image is an “image that is read”, where this moment of reading coincides with the “now of recognisability”. (Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 463.) 56. Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, p. 158. 57. Benjamin, “The Image of Proust”, p. 206. 58. Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, p. 166. 59. Ibid, 208. 60. Ibid. 61. Theodor W. Adorno, “The Idea of Natural History”, in: Robert Hullot-Kentor, Things Beyond Resemblance. Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), p. 260. 62. Maurice Blanchot, “Literature and the Right to Death”, in: The Work of Fire, trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 316. 63. Ibid.

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64. Blanchot describes the structure of the work – the literary work – as consisting of the pure declaration of being and thus emerging from the rupture with all ‘actual’ being. It thereby exposes the being of language as a “region anterior to the beginning where nothing is made of being, and in which nothing is accomplished. It is the depth of being’s inertia [désœuvrement].” (Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982], p. 46.) 65. Here, Benjamin’s thesis on the “issueless private character of Man’s inner concerns” can be related to Adorno’s study on Kierkegaard, Construction of the Aesthetic, which Benjamin reviewed. (Cf. Walter Benjamin, “Kierkegaard: The End of Philosophical Idealism”, in: Selected Writings 3, 1935-1938, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings, [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press], pp. 703-705.) One can recognize an anticipation of Blanchot’s take on the imaginary in Adorno’s interconnection of the “semblance of things” with the dimension of “isolated privacy”: “He who looks into the window mirror, however, is the private person, solitary, inactive, and separated from the economic process of production. The window mirror testifies to objectlessness – it casts into the apartment only the semblance of things – and isolated privacy.” (Theodor W. Adorno, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989], p. 42.) 66. Cf. Blanchot, “The Space of Literature”, p. 254. 67. Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, p. 157. 68. Benjamin, “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”, p. 103. 69. Ibid, p. 102. 70. Ibid. 71. Cf. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 216. 72. Ibid.

ABSTRACTS

The article seeks to delineate a correspondence between Walter Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot’s accounts of subjectivity through the prism of their respective readings of Marcel Proust. While Benjamin focuses on the peculiar artificiality of experience produced in Proust’s Recherche, Blanchot gives an account of the transformation of the narrator, which produces a ‘pure narrative’ and thus turns subjective interiority outward into writing. By relating their approaches to the problem of totality, Benjamin and Blanchot both indicate a concept of history, and of historical cognition, which is linked to the problem of writing, of fiction or narration and to a specific understanding of the literary work.

INDEX

Keywords: Benjamin Walter, Blanchot Maurice, Proust Marcel, image, recollection

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Eccentric Bodies From Phenomenology to Marxism – Walter Benjamin's Reflections on Embodiment

Léa Barbisan

Introduction

“On considère sa main sur la table, et il en résulte toujours une stupeur philosophique. Je suis dans cette main et je n’y suis pas” Paul Valéry 1 In the epistolary debate between Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin about the latter's essay “The Storyteller” (first published in 1936), Adorno warns his friend against what he considers to be a dangerous tendency pervading the essay – an “undialectical ontology of the body”. Significantly, he writes: For all those points in which, despite our most fundamental and concrete agreement in other matters, I differ from you could be summed up and characterized as an anthropological materialism that I cannot accept. It is as if for you the human body represents the measure of all concreteness.1 2 He directly links Benjamin's lack of ‘dialectics’ with his faith in the human body's ability to function as the matrix of revolutionary forces. Adorno's evaluation of his friend's method (or lack thereof) is debatable, but, notably, he points out the importance of corporeality in Benjamin's political theory. More recently, studies by Uwe Steiner, Irving Wohlfarth, Gerhard Richter and Sigrid Weigel contributed to an appreciation of this aspect of Benjamin's thought.2 Although Benjamin does not dedicate any complete text to this theme, the human body and its representations play a pivotal role in his work – a guiding thread connecting his fragments on anthropology, written in the late 1910s, and his essays addressing processes of alienation in capitalist modernity, written in the 1930s. The purpose of this paper is to show how Benjamin's later utopia of a revolutionary “collective physis”,3 which bears witness to his distinctive reception of Marxist theory, unfolds a line of thought initiated approximately ten years earlier, in a group of fragments wherein Benjamin sketches a

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peculiar phenomenology of embodiment. These early reflections on bodily awareness, clearly distinct from the analyses proposed by Max Scheler and Edmund Husserl, enable Benjamin to progressively develop a theory of political emancipation grounded on a critical examination of collective forms of embodiment.

I. Leib and Körper. Walter Benjamin's Phenomenology of the Body

I.1. Elusive Identity

3 In the second half of the 19th century, first with Arthur Schopenhauer, then with Friedrich Nietzsche, the body makes a decisive entrance on the German philosophical scene.4 Though their approach is different, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche describe the human being as fundamentally embodied and question the traditional dualistic conception which exiled the body in the sphere of objects. As a philosophy student, Walter Benjamin is soon confronted with the questions raised by the redefinition of the problem of embodiment. As Uwe Steiner points out, during his time in Bern, Benjamin followed a seminar taught by the philosopher and psychologist Paul Häberlin, entitled “The Problem of Body and Soul”.5 Häberlin's view on the matter did not make a lasting impression on Benjamin, yet the problem itself certainly triggered his interest. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, Benjamin writes a number of fragments addressing the experience the human being makes of her own body (“Perception and Body”, “Death”, “On Love and Related Matters”, “On Horror”, “Outline of the Psychophysical Problem”). When Benjamin writes these short texts, the question of the “lived body” (Leib), i.e. the body experienced as pertaining to the ego, as belonging to the sphere of subjectivity, becomes relevant.

4 The first philosophical movement which rigorously deals with bodily awareness is phenomenology, notably through the distinction it establishes between ‘lived body’ (Leib) and physical body or ‘thing-body’ (Körper). The split of the body impacts the reflection on identity, as the emergence of the ‘lived body’ on the fault line between the ego and the world, directly questions the traditional division between thought and matter, subject and object. Within the phenomenological movement itself, the first evaluations of this shift in perspective were not unequivocal. In his major work published in 1916, Formalism in Ethics and Non-formal Ethics of Value, Max Scheler stresses the importance of making “a sharp distinction between "lived body" and "thing-body" [der "Leib" und der "Körper"]”.6 We can indeed perceive our body from the outside, as a thing belonging to the world – the body is then given as Körper. By contrast, the body given to us in “inner perception”, the body “independent of, and, in order of givenness, prior to […] any special kinds of outer perception”, is called “Leib”.7 Our body appears to us both as Leib and as Körper, both as the matrix of our life and as a thing. And yet this rift in perception does not entail a cognitive rift, because there exists a strict and immediate unity of identity between the inner consciousness which everyone has ‘of’ the existence and the hereness [Befinden] of the lived body […] and the outer perception of one's lived body (as the body-thing).8 5 Although ‘body-thing’ (Körper) and ‘lived body’ (Leib) do not share the same mode of appearance, the undubitable fact of their identity prevails and safeguards the integrity of the individual. According to Scheler, the body can thus never appear as alien to

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ourselves, even when its mode of appearance is that of an object (Körper). It is immediately given as an inalienable part of our identity.

6 In the second book of Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, written between 1912 and 1928 and first published after his death, Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological school, explores more profoundly the duality of the body, this “material thing of a certain nature which […] makes up a fundamental component of the real givenness of the soul and the Ego”.9 He remarks that our body perceived as physical body or thing (Körper) never appears to us as an object among objects, but as a “remarkably imperfectly constituted thing”, since “certain of my corporeal parts can be seen by me only in a peculiar perspectival foreshortening and others (e.g., the head) are altogether invisible to me”.10 Husserl, more than Scheler, accounts for the specific mode of appearance of the body as Körper. As an incomplete, misshapen object, it remains fundamentally unknowable to the ego whose intentions it performs. Our inability to visually cognise and recognise our own body is nevertheless compensated by the sense of touch, through which we can simultaneously feel the deepness of our body and the reliability of its epidermic surface. The “touch-sensings” compensate for the deficiency of sight, so that the monstrous entity “manifests itself immediately as my Body (Leib)”.11 Husserl, like Scheler, though in a more reflected manner, bridges the gap between Körper and Leib, between thing and “soul”, in order to ensure the ego's grip on its organ of perception and movement. 7 Although he could not have read Husserl's text as it was not published at that time, Benjamin's initial observation in “Perception and Body”, a fragment written in 1918, is very similar to Husserl's note on the monstrous appearance of the lived body: It is highly significant that our own body is in many ways inaccessible to us. We can see neither our face, nor our back, nor our entire head, the primary part of our body […]. We rise up into the world of perception with our feet, but not our head.12 8 Benjamin however, in contrast to Scheler and Husserl, does not try to recenter the ‘lived body’ on the ego: he lets it disrupt the barrier between inside and outside, self and world, subject and object. In a longer text, “Outline of the Psychophysical Problem”, Benjamin emphasizes the tensions running through the body, notably the one between the centripetal and centrifugal senses: while touch, as a centripetal sense, makes us aware of our body's limits, the centrifugal sense of sight literally opens us to our environment. Indeed, the center of our center of perception, our face, is blind to itself: it is a hole through which the world “breaks over us”,13 filling us with its invasive presence, catching us in the ebb and flow of sensory stimuli. Benjamin insists on the “body's eccentricity”:14 as soon as our own body intrudes into our perceptual field, we are confronted with the centrelessness of what we are accustomed to regard as our centre of perception. The headless, anamorphic figure we suddenly see radically questions the hierarchies between self and world by offering resistance to its assignation to the sphere of things (physical body/Körper) as well as to the sphere of the ego (lived body/ Leib). Scheler and Husserl do not sufficiently question the coincidence between the body perceived as a thing (through ‘outer perception’ for Scheler, through sight for Husserl) and the body felt as a part of ourselves (through ‘inner perception’ for Scheler, through touch for Husserl): in the end, there is no doubt that physical body and lived body are one and the same entity, given to us through different modes of appearance. Benjamin, on the contrary, stretches the relation between Körper and Leib until it breaks: the body becomes the place where alienness

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(the object, the world, the outside) penetrates the sphere of the self and deeply disturbs its structure. The fragment “On Horror”, written at the beginning of the 1920s, revolves around the idea of a split in the body, experienceable in states of profound absent- mindedness in which the spirit is pulled out of the body. What is left behind once the lived body (Leib) is taken away with the spirit it belongs to, is the Körper – a body the ego can neither recognize as a part of itself, nor dismiss as a mere thing. The Körper appears indeed as a “double”15 – a ghostly reduplication of myself which undermines the foundation of identity, because it is neither me nor alien to me. In this hallucinatory state, subjectivity is being haunted in its own territory by a presence that challenges its autonomy – a presence it represses but can never fully expel. In Benjamin's peculiar phenomenology, the body rooting the ego in the world is an unreliable, dual entity that the subject can never completely appropriate.

I.2. Personal and Collective Body. Defining Ethical and Political Categories

9 The fragment “Outline of the Psychophysical Problem”, written around 1922, is principally devoted to the distinction between Leib and Körper. In this long fragment, Benjamin decisively leaves behind the phenomenological concepts of ‘lived body’ and ‘thing-body’ and offers a new assessment of corporeality. Although he seems to begin unsurprisingly with the polarity between the spiritual and the material (Geist and Leib), Benjamin does not resort to, either, a dualistic, or a unitarian interpretation of the relationship between body and mind, but postulates instead their radical identity. This perspective makes the question of the link between body and mind – be it understood as an antagonism or as a symbiosis – irrelevant: Geist and Leib are indeed one and the same object. The distinction between the two modes of embodiment – Körper and Leib – is soon revealed as the relevant one. The Leib has got its own temporality (the instant) and locality (shape). Both are marked by limitations. Yet the Leib is not to be confused with the personal body, since it is not a “substratum”.16 It materializes at the intersection between individual life and historical process, thus determining the human being's experience in historical time and bearing witness to the entanglement of individual life with the collective process of history. The Körper, on the other hand, is described as the “substance of [ourselves]”:17 it is absolutely ours and, at the same time, exceeds our perceptual faculty. Pain and pleasure, affects that are both diffuse and highly personal, make us aware of our Körper as a singular but limitless entity. Through the Körper, the human being is linked to a transcendent order, which Benjamin defines in the “Theological-Political Fragment” – thought to have been written around the same time – as the “messianic order”, in opposition to the “profane order” of history.18 The distinction that Benjamin institutes between Leib and Körper is grounded in the distinction established in the “Theological-Political Fragment” between history and theology, profane and transcendent order, politics and ethics. Ethics concerns the bond each human being forms with transcendence; its specific domain must therefore be distinguished from the sphere of politics, constituted by the immanent, collective process of history. Since history is a matter of politics, not of eschatology, ethics or religion cannot function as the basis for the political community. What, then, can bind human beings together and enable them to act collectively?

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10 The clear line of demarcation drawn between the profane, shared Leib and the transcendent, personal Körper allows Benjamin to develop an original theory of political emancipation. In “Outline of the Psychophysical Problem”, Benjamin speaks indeed of the dissolution of the individual Leib, making way for the constitution of the “body [Leib] of mankind”.19 Politics thus does not address individuals, communities, nations or classes; it concerns ‘mankind’ as a whole. This collective doesn’t arise from the organisation of a coherent super-individuality binding together disparate individuals, but materializes as the overcoming of the boundaries on which the traditional concept of individuality is based: “In addition to the totality of all its living members, humanity is able partly to draw nature, the nonliving, plant and animal, into this life of the body of mankind, and thereby into this annihilation and fulfilment”.20 The collective “happiness”, which politics must strive to achieve, is not a state of balance and harmony, but a paradoxical process of decay and of blossoming. The “annihilation”, interpreted by Benjamin as a “fulfilment”, is the “downfall” of the self-sufficient individual.21 It is necessary for human beings, as individuals and as a species, to let go of the autarkic position they assume. The ‘Leib of mankind’ thus integrates non-human species as well as the inorganic elements of technology. Instead of conceiving of its body as the ideal of beauty and proportion and as an immutable biological substrate, mankind should become aware of the plasticity of its Leib. This collective body is indeed a constantly mutating whole, an expanding structure without a centre of command: its anarchic growth does not imply an increase of power. In the “Theological-Political Fragment”, Benjamin argues that political emancipation is not about the constitution of a collective identity: it concerns a collective – a totality – that emerges from the progressive disintegration of identity. Politics is not a process through which order is created and boundaries are delineated: it is a movement that disrupts structures and challenges hierarchies. 11 Benjamin’s daring phenomenology of the body announces the political writings of the late 1920s and the 1930s. The phenomenological approach enables Benjamin to concentrate on the peculiar experience of embodiment and to radically break with the natural-scientific conception of the body as organism. Benjamin audaciously draws attention to the body's elusiveness: he does not seek to overcome the body's ‘eccentricity’, but instead exploits the rift that the splitting of the body as Leib and Körper opens in the individual. His utopia of a collective Leib is built on the duplicitous nature of a body that we cannot regard as the substratum of our identity, because it never fully belongs to us. Thereby, Benjamin radically defies the reactionary organicism, which, facing the frail Weimar Republic, tries to present itself as the only viable proposition for a coherent political community.

II. The Masses. Politicising the Body

II.1. The Anatomy of Modernity. Bodies without Egos

12 The mutations of experience in capitalist modernity become a privileged object of interest for Benjamin in the late 1920s and in the 1930s – a consequence of what he calls his “conversion to political theory”22 – more precisely: to Marxism. Combining his lasting interest in perception with a political analysis of economic exploitation, Benjamin develops a dialectical theory of alienation and emancipation closely tied to

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his early phenomenology of embodiment. Benjamin daringly wagers that the processes of depersonalization grounded on coerced forms of alienation from the body can contribute to a productive form of “self-alienation”,23 paving the way for the constitution of collective bodies and, thus, possibly leading to a radical movement of emancipation.

13 One of the leitmotivs in his essay “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire” is the “shock experience”24 which structures the everyday perception of the human being immersed in the “big-city crowd”.25 Submitted to a ceaseless flood of stimuli and forced to adapt to a constantly changing environment, human beings flowing through the crowd mobilize their peripheral mimetic faculties to the detriment of their cognitive capacities: Moving through [the traffic of a big city] involves the individual in a series of shocks and collisions. At dangerous intersections, nervous impulses flow through him in rapid succession, like the energy from a battery.26 14 Edgar Allan Poe's short-story The Man of the Crowd, to which Benjamin devotes a chapter of his essay on Baudelaire, describes from an overhanging standpoint the gesticulations of anonymous passers-by, who seem to behave like semi-defective automata, mechanically repeating the same gestures. “Technology has subjected the human sensorium to a complex kind of training”27 – a training aiming at developing reflexes rather than reflexivity. Capitalism knows how to profit from this ability to react immediately to stimuli: In working with machines, workers learn to coordinate ‘their own movements with the uniformly constant movements of an automaton’.28 15 Economy of movements, of time, of space is the key to efficiency, so that every superfluous mediation, slowing down the process of incorporation, has to be eliminated. Indeed, efficiency does not rely on rational thinking, based on the understanding of the whole system, but on the human being's ability to mimic gestures and to perform them accurately without the mediation of consciousness. The human physis is trained to resemble the infallible body of the robot, animated by no specific fears or desires, yet always ready to react. Here also the primary eccentricity of the human body is reactivated: its ability to quickly adapt to new tasks relies on the splitting of the organic unity into a series of functioning entities. When labour is segmented into a layout of extremely simple and limited tasks, the best worker is the one who is able to master one single gesture to perfection. This mastering can be achieved only through the dislocation of the individual's body – privileging in each worker one body part and its resources to the detriment of the body as a functioning whole. The trained body parts are then reassembled around the assembly line, which secures the coherence of this supra-individual body. The intangible totality of the organism thus gives way to a strategically constructed mechanism generating profit. The social and economical ‘training’ is complete when the self and its biological substrate – the organism – are transcended into the highly functional collective ‘body’ of factory workers. The structure of this body is given by the planned segmentation of work, relayed by the means of production, each machine making out of each gesture a specific step in the production process – the conveyor belt serving as the spinal column. If each worker, as an isolated limb, cannot grasp the shape of this new body, the engineers governing labour segmentation can.

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16 The cross-reading of Georg Simmel's writings on the alterations of perception in late modernity and of Karl Marx's analysis of the process of hybridisation between humans and machines in factories allows Benjamin to develop a critical, historically situated reflection on the constitution of collective bodies in late modernity. Life in a capital – life under capitalism – results in the creation of collective bodies; not, however, in the creation of collective egos. Exploitation is indeed based on the destruction of the workers' physical integrity and on the splitting of their psychophysical unity: the body of the workers is organised, activated and controlled – possessed – by an extrinsic ego. Hence, in History and Class-Consciousness (1923), Georg Lukács insists on the necessity for the workers to build a class-consciousness establishing them as a collective subject – the proletariat – a proposition widely accepted in the Marxist tradition. Benjamin makes concessions to this interpretation,29 yet he also explores a different path. He does not look, primarily, for the means to restore the psychophysical unity on a collective level, but rather seeks to disclose the revolutionary potential of a collective body freed from its allegiance to the ego – of a radically ‘eccentric’ body. In order to loosen the theoretical bond linking collective bodies to collective subjectivities, he takes up his early thoughts on the fundamental heterogeneity between the self and the body and focuses on the self-less collective bodies born in capitalist modernity. 17 These anonymous bodies are designated by Benjamin as the masses. By resorting to the equivocal, seemingly a-political notion of mass, Benjamin attempts to overcome the representation of collective agents as collective subjects. Adorno praises this strategic shift in a letter written a few months before the one containing the harsh criticism of his friend's ‘undialectical ontology of the body’: I find your few sentences concerning the disintegration of the proletariat into 'masses' through the revolution to be amongst the most profound and most powerful statements of political theory I have encountered since I read State and Revolution.30 18 What Adorno seems to miss is the link between Benjamin's theory of the revolutionary masses and his reflection on corporeality, notably the link to his early observation of the body's fundamental ‘eccentricity’. The masses Benjamin describes in The Arcades- Project, in “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility”, and in his essay on Baudelaire are not bound together by the awareness of sharing similar features and pursuing the same goals. Yet they share a common environment, the capitalist metropolis, where they incorporated a series of reactions, enabling them to fluidly match their movements without communicating and to fuse as a body without an ego. Peter Fenves remarkably sums up Benjamin’s conception of the masses as agents without strategies: [they] solve [...] the tasks at hand without knowing what [they are] doing, indeed without realizing that there are tasks in the first place, and above all, without recognizing [themselves] as such: as ‘the masses’.31 19 Because they have no centre of command, an affect can suddenly spread in their bodies through peripheral contagion and determine the course of collective action. In the short text “Beautiful Dismay” (“Schönes Entsetzen”), describing the celebration of the 14th of July in Paris, Benjamin portrays the passive crowd of onlookers as a dormant monster. The contradictory affects of panic and delight that run through the gathered mass, threaten to wake the monster and to trigger a revolutionary outburst.32 The masses indeed appear as “compact”, monolithic formations “only from the outside, in

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the minds of its oppressors”, 33 but from the inside of their bodies, they turn out to be formless, highly unstable entities, loaded with energy and hypersensitive.

II.2. Freeing the Body from its Image. Emancipation through Distraction

20 Mapping the territory of the mass – giving an anatomy to this unpredictable, monstrous body – becomes the key concern of the ones standing outside it. Benjamin analyses two ways of giving a structure to the body of the mass, without ever explicitly linking them: firstly, representing it as an allegory, i.e. as a collection of meaningful fragments, and, secondly, portraying it as a closed organism. Allegorising the masses is the task of the flâneur – a ‘type’ incarnated, in the eyes of Benjamin, by Charles Baudelaire. The flâneur stands on the threshold of his class: a member of the bourgeoisie, he willingly gives up the cosiness of his private home and dives into the masses. Yet he never fuses with them, but, rather, tries to decipher them like a mysterious rebus. As a physiognomist he attempts to construct a symbolical anatomy of the mass by identifying, through a dialectic of diversity and uniformity, several significant fragments in its body. When the flâneur “goes botanizing on the asphalt”, 34 he is driven by both aesthetical pleasure and epistemological interest. August Sander’s portrait-atlas of the society of the Weimar Republic, which Benjamin praises in his “ Little History of Photography” (1931), can be considered as a striking example of this fragmentation of the social body into a series of visual archetypes, aiming at being both aesthetically pleasurable and sociologically relevant. However, the flâneur’s relationship to his object is deeply ambivalent: his distanced attitude is mingled with strong affects of fascination and repulsion. The masses indeed do not only appear to him as an object of knowledge and of contemplation, but also as a sexual fetish: the constantly exposed and yet elusive body of the masses mirrors the way in which the commodity fuels the desire of the consumer. Because the mass-produced commodity is multiplied to infinity, it can be bought by anyone but possessed by no one: its inaccessibility is paradoxically based on its absolute availability. In this respect, the body of the masses, like the commodity, constantly escapes the flâneur's scrutinizing gaze – so that he “goes away empty-handed”,35 as did the baroque allegorist.

21 The flâneur’s objectifying gaze – be it pseudo-scientific, aesthetical or erotic – never perceives the mass as a political agent. He does not interpret his ambiguous relationship to the mass as the reflection of socio-economical antagonisms and is therefore fundamentally unable to understand it. According to Benjamin, this is not the case, however, for the fascist leader, who, like the flâneur, tries to shape the body of the masses, but with a decisively political purpose: Fascism attempts to organize the newly proletarianized masses while leaving intact the property relations which they strive to abolish.36 22 The fascist method for subduing the masses rests on the transfiguration of their shapeless, uncontrollable body into a closed whole, i.e. into a recognizable, strictly outlined form endowed with an unalterable identity. The fascist propaganda does not content itself with projecting the body of the dictator on every street-corner, in every cinema, and in every household, it also enables the masses to “come face to face with themselves” – to gain access to an image of themselves. “In great ceremonial processions, giant rallies and mass sporting events”,37 fascism shapes the body of the

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masses as a photogenic face and then offers this very mass its own image as an object of contemplation. Originally a shapeless entity, it becomes a structured, autarkic totality under the fascist camera-eye. Fascinated and paralysed by its own image as by a caput medusae, the “compact mass”38 is drained of its revolutionary energy.

23 Is the collective body of the masses destined to fall prey to the normative images produced by fascist propaganda? Is the plastic body of mankind, which knows of no self and no other, a dream made obsolete by the reality of the racist masses, keen on defining themselves as biological organisms for which the other is always a parasite? Or can the body's ‘eccentricity’ be won for the revolution, as Benjamin hopes? In his essay “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia” (1929), Benjamin sketches – in quite an enigmatic way – the political utopia of an ‘image space’ (Bildraum) becoming a ‘body space’ (Leibraum). This transformation of a representational space into an immanent lived space is meant to lead to the “bodily innervation” of the revolutionary masses, which is defined by Benjamin as the space, in a word, in which political materialism and physical creatureliness share the inner man, the psyche, the individual, or whatever else we wish to throw to them, with dialectical justice, so that no limb remains untorn.39 24 Benjamin describes here a symbolical dismemberment through which the human being's own body abolishes its centre and overthrows the established hierarchies between psyche and body, inside and outside, self and other. The only images able to activate the body's ‘eccentricity’ are haptic images mobilising the tension between the senses of touch and sight. The human being’s environment must become a paradoxically tactile ‘image space’ delivering intoxicating visual shocks. Benjamin's passionate interest in photomontage and film editing has to be understood in this context: these processes create images which do not rely on a passive and concentrated reception, but on a distracted one.

25 “Reception in distraction”40 is a keyword in Benjamin's theory of a political aisthesis. It has to be understood according to the polysemy of the German word Zerstreuung, meaning both a lack of concentration and a spatial scattering: the sensations of physical dislocation and of psychical distraction condition one another. In this respect, Walt Disney's or Charlie Chaplin's films produce the opposite effect of the fascist propaganda. Instead of giving the collective body of moviegoers a ‘face’ – a recognisable identity – these films produce collective reactions – typically laughter – which bind the public together on an affective level without resorting to a normative schema. What is narrated on screen is of little importance, it is actually the formal principle of montage which produces images full of internal tensions. Overcoming the visual, i.e. representative, paradigm, these haptic images contribute to the ‘bodily innervation’ of the collective by creating shared physical reactions that disrupt the organic shell of the individual. A distracted mass is not a set of scattered individuals, but an anarchic, shapeless body without an ego. Neither subject nor object, this body can, in Benjamin's mind, be the matrix of a truly revolutionary movement, because, escaping every attempt at artistic and political representation, it is able to emancipate itself without even intending to do so.

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Conclusion

26 The core of Walter Benjamin's theory of emancipation resides in his attempt to think of self-alienation – of alienation from the self – as potentially productive. The disintegration of the ego's organic substrate, induced by capitalist conditions of production and modern living conditions, makes way for the constitution of ‘eccentric’ collective bodies, irreconcilable with the organicist model of the individual defined by a precise structure and stable identity. Because he conceives of emancipation not as a process of individual enlightenment, but as a sudden, collective movement, Benjamin abandons the key concepts of the philosophies of consciousness, whose centre of gravity is the subject. The ‘anthropological materialism’, which Adorno feels so uncomfortable with, does not rely on a blind faith in the agency of the body, but on the critical phenomenology of embodiment that Benjamin first sketched in the late 1910s. Unlike Scheler and Husserl, however, Benjamin stresses the fundamental ‘eccentricity’ of the human being's body, which undermines every attempt to conceive of the body as a closed entity centred on the ‘self’. The body, split between the ‘lived body’ (Leib) and the ‘thing-body’ (Körper), torn between the ego and the world, disrupts the boundaries of the supposedly autonomous individual. Benjamin conceives of the revolutionary collective according to this unpresentable model: not as a collective subject but as a collective body – as a plastic entity whose political agency relies on its ability to virtually incorporate everyone and everything.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADORNO, Theodor W. & BENJAMIN, Walter, The Complete Correspondence, 1928-1940, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

BENJAMIN, Walter, Gesammelte Schriften IV, ed. Tillman Rexroth (Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 1991).

BENJAMIN, Walter, Gesammelte Schriften VI, eds. Rold Tiedemann & Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt/ Main: 1991).

BENJAMIN, Walter, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910-1940, eds. Theodor W. Adorno & Gershom Scholem, trans. Manfred R. Jacobson & Evelyn M. Jacobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

BENJAMIN, Walter, Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

BENJAMIN, Walter, Selected Writings 2.1, 1927-1930, eds. Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings & Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999).

BENJAMIN, Walter, Selected Writings 3, 1935-1938, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006).

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BENJAMIN, Walter, Selected Writings 4, 1938-1940, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003).

BENJAMIN, Walter, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998).

BENJAMIN, Walter, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Birgid Doherty & Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).

FENVES, Peter, “Is there an Answer to the Aestheticizing of the Political?”, in: Walter Benjamin and Art, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London/New York: Continumm, 2005).

GREIERT, Andreas, Erlösung der Geschichte vom Darstellenden: Grundlagen des Geschichtsdenkens bei Walter Benjamin 1915-1925 (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2011).

HUSSERL, Edmund, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, trans. Fred Kersten (Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer, 1989).

RICHTER, Gerhard, Walter Benjamin and the Corpus of Autobiography (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000).

SCHELER, Max, Formalism in Ethics and Non-formal Ethics of Value, trans. Manfred Frings & Robert Funk (Evaston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).

SCHMITZ, Hermann, Der Leib (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2011).

STEINER, Uwe, “The True Politician: Walter Benjamin's Concept of the Political”, in: New German Critique, No. 83 (Spring-Summer 2001), pp. 43-88.

WEIGEL, Sigrid (ed.), Body- and Image-Space (London: Routledge, 1996).

WOHLFARTH, Irving, “Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros: A tentative reading of ‘Zum Planetarium’”, in: Perception and Experience in Modernity, ed. Helga Geyer-Ryan (Amsterdam/New-York: Rodopi, 2002).

WOHLFARTH, Irving, “Les noces de Physis et de Techne. Walter Benjamin et l’idée d’un matérialisme anthropologique”, in: Cahiers Charles Fourier, No. 21 (2011), pp. 121-130.

WOHLFARTH, Irving, “‘Spielraum’. Jeu et enjeu de la ‘seconde technique’ chez Walter Benjamin”, in: Anthropologischer Materialismus und Materialismus der Begegnung. Vermessungen der Gegenwart im Ausgang von Walter Benjamin und Louis Althusser, eds. Marc Berdet & Thomas Ebke (Berlin: Xenomoi Verlag, 2014), pp. 75-141.

ENDNOTES

1. Theodor W. Adorno & Walter Benjamin, The Complete Correspondence, 1928-1940, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001) p. 146-147. 2. Although no systematic study has been dedicated to this theme, the following texts have looked into some important aspects of it: Irving Wohlfarth, “‘Spielraum’. Jeu et enjeu de la ‘seconde technique’ chez Walter Benjamin”, in: Anthropologischer Materialismus und Materialismus der Begegnung. Vermessungen der Gegenwart im Ausgang von Walter Benjamin und Louis Althusser, eds. Marc Berdet & Thomas Ebke (Berlin: Xenomoi Verlag, 2014), pp. 75-141; Irving Wohlfarth, “Les noces de Physis et de Techne. Walter Benjamin et l’idée d’un matérialisme anthropologique”, in: Cahiers Charles Fourier, No. 21 (2011), pp. 121-130; Irving Wohlfarth, “Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros: A tentative reading of ‘Zum Planetarium’”, in: Perception and Experience in Modernity, ed. Helga Geyer-Ryan (Amsterdam/New-York: Rodopi, 2002), pp. 65-109;

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Uwe Steiner, “The True Politician: Walter Benjamin's Concept of the Political”, in: New German Critique, No. 83 (Spring-Summer 2001), pp. 43-88; Gerhard Richter, Walter Benjamin and the Corpus of Autobiography (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000); Sigrid Weigel (ed.), Body- and Image-Space, (London: Routledge, 1996). 3. Walter Benjamin, “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia”, in: Selected Writings 2.1, 1927-1930, eds. Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings & Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 217. 4. For a sketch of this evolution, see: Hermann Schmitz, Der Leib (Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter, 2011), pp. 147-173. 5. Uwe Steiner, “The True Politician: Walter Benjamin's Concept of the Political”, in: New German Critique, No. 83 (Spring-Summer 2001), p. 57. 6. Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-formal Ethics of Value, trans. Manfred Frings & Robert Funk (Evaston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 399. 7. Ibid., p. 400. 8. Ibid. 9. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, trans. Fred Kersten (Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer, 1989), p. 165. 10. Ibid., p. 167. 11. Ibid., p. 157. 12. Walter Benjamin, “Wahrnehmung und Leib”, in: Gesammelte Schriften VI, eds. Rold Tiedemann & Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt/Main: 1991), p. 67. I rely here on Gerhard Richter's translation. (Cf. Gerhard Richter, Walter Benjamin and the Corpus of Autobiography [Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000], p. 61.) 13. Walter Benjamin, “Über das Grauen”, in: Gesammelte Schriften VI, eds. Rold Tiedemann & Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt/Main: 1991), p. 76. [Richter’s translation] 14. Benjamin, “Wahrnehmung und Leib”, p. 67. [Richter’s translation] 15. Ibid., p. 76. [Richter’s translation] 16. Walter Benjamin, “Outline of the Psychophysical Problem”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 393. 17. Ibid., p. 394. 18. Walter Benjamin, “Theological-Political Fragment”, in: Selected Writings 3, 1935-1938 , eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belkanp Press of Harvard University Press), p. 305. 19. Benjamin, “Outline of the Psychophysical Problem”, p. 393. 20. Ibid., p. 395. 21. Benjamin, “Theological-Political Fragment”, p. 306 22. Walter Benjamin, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910-1940, eds. Theodor W. Adorno & Gershom Scholem, trans. Manfred R. Jacobson & Evelyn M. Jacobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 276. 23. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Birgid Doherty & Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 32. 24. Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, in: Selected Writings 4, 1938-1940, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 319. 25. Ibid., p. 326. 26. Ibid., p. 328. 27. Ibid., p. 326.

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28. Ibid., Benjamin quotes Marx. 29. Georg Lukács’ History and Class-Consciousness undeniably plays an important role in Benjamin’s reception of Marx. (Cf. Andreas Greiert, Erlösung der Geschichte vom Darstellenden: Grundlagen des Geschichtsdenkens bei Walter Benjamin 1915-1925 [München: Wilhelm Fink, 2011], pp. 451-466.) Nonetheless, Benjamin's ambivalence towards the concept of class consciousness comes to the fore in a footnote of the second version of “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility”. Benjamin resorts to the Marxist-Leninist topoi mobilised by “communist tacticians” – “enlightened form of class-consciousness”, “class-conscious cadres” etc. Yet in the same footnote where he praises the revolutionary strategies implemented by proletarian cadres in order to transform the mass into a class “obey[ing] a collective ratio”, he defines revolution as the “loosening” of a previously “compact” (i.e. manipulable) mass – an event occurring “within the space of seconds” inside the body of the mass itself. (Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”, p. 50-51.) 30. Adorno & Benjamin, “The Complete Correspondence”, p. 132-133. 31. Peter Fenves, “Is there an Answer to the Aestheticizing of the Political?”, in: Walter Benjamin and Art, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London/New York: Continumm, 2005), p. 69. 32. Walter Benjamin, “Schönes Entsetzten”, in: Gesammelte Schriften IV, ed. Tillman Rexroth (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), p. 434-435. 33. Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”, p. 50 [my emphasis.] 34. Walter Benjamin, “The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire”, in: Selected Writings 4, 1938-1940, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 19. 35. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998), p. 233. 36. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (Second Version)”, in: Selected Writings 3, 1935-1938, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 121. 37. Ibid., p. 132. 38. Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”, p. 51. 39. Benjamin, “Surrealism”, p. 217. 40. Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibiltiy (Second Version)”, p. 120.

ABSTRACTS

In the late 1910s and early 1920s, Walter Benjamin writes a set of fragments providing an original insight into bodily awareness and embodiment. Rejecting the natural-scientific conception of the body as organism, Benjamin implicitly resorts to the phenomenological method to grasp this elusive ‘object’, which pertains to the ego (as ‘lived body’ - Leib) and to the world (as ‘thing-body’ - Körper). Yet, contrary to Max Scheler and Edmund Husserl, Benjamin does not try to bridge the gap between the objective and subjective modes of appearance of the body. He instead exploits the rift that the philosophical splitting of the body opens in the individual in order to overcome the boundaries on which the concept of identity is grounded. This early phenomenology of embodiment sheds light on Benjamin's distinctive reception of Marxism, notably on the utopia of a revolutionary collective physis sketched in the late 1920s and in the 1930s.

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INDEX

Keywords: body, subjectivity, anthropology, phenomenology, emancipation, Benjamin Walter, Husserl Edmund

AUTHOR

LÉA BARBISAN

Université Paris-Sorbonne/ Centre Marc Bloch

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The World of Striving Walter Benjamin’s ‘Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice’

Andrew Benjamin

“Methode ist Umweg. Darstellung als Umweg – das ist denn der methodische Charakter des Traktats.” Walter Benjamin “V’shaf’tu et ha’am mishpat tzedek”. [They shall judge the people with righteous judgment.] Sefer Devarim, 16:18

I. Kant: Justice in the World

1 That Walter Benjamin’s short text – ‘Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice’ – is an engagement with Kant is clear.1 The language deployed within it, it might be argued, is for the most part derived from Kant (though the status of that derivation is yet to be clarified). And if philosophy, in terms of presentation, is constrained to think within its own self-presentation in language (as language) then this short text is an already present engagement with Kant. Interpretations by Eric Jacobson and Peter Fenves, for example, divide in terms of their identification of the place of Kant.2 For Fenves, at least as a beginning, his sustained and systematic engagement with this text seeks to locate it within an analysis of Kant’s Doctrine of Virtue (1797). The project here, while conceding the centrality of ‘virtue’ is slightly different. Kant endures. Nonetheless, it is another Kant, perhaps a Kant that delimits an opening beyond Kant, which would be the point where Kant’s own structure of thought would have slipped beyond Kant’s own hold. Precisely because the word (or term) ‘world’ [Welt] occurs in Benjamin’s text in a way that recalls Kant, the argument to be advanced here is that what is at stake in the encounter between Benjamin and Kant is to be found both in how the ‘world’ is thought and then in the differing sets of consequences to which their respective modes of thought gives rise. While there might be points of terminological association between Kant and Benjamin, the relation between them emerges from the way those

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associations are positioned by the radically different philosophical claims of which they are the expression.

2 As a consequence, rather than start with the evocation of virtue as though it were an end in itself, there is another way to begin. It goes without saying that Benjamin’s text is a sustained encounter with ‘justice’. And the question of justice pertains both to the presence of justice in the world and then with the nature of that presence and thus the quality of the world that is envisaged; i.e. the complexity inherent in any evocation of the world of justice, once the world is no longer accepted as merely given. To make the task more exact, what has to be addressed is the following: what counts as worldliness once the question of the world emerges from within the suspension of both empiricism and the stubborn insistence of naturalism? Once taken together, the world and then justice as occurring within the world, the term ‘world’ now as a concept whose force remains to be determined, determined nonetheless from within the purview of empiricism’s suspension, means that the project to be pursued concerns how the delineation of worldliness is to be made more exact. An intimation of how to proceed is already clear from Benjamin’s text. Benjamin writes that, “Justice appears not to be based upon the good will of the subject but forms the state of the world [einen Zustand der Welt].”3 What is staged here is a repositioning of the subject/world relation, and therefore a transformation of how the contents of that relation are themselves to be conceived. There will be a repositioning. The subject as worldly, as having become worldly, not only follows from this undoing of the subject’s centrality, it simultaneously allows for the world’s ineliminability. (A quality that obtains beyond forms of presentation that would have been linked to the merely posited.) More significantly, it is to start with a different philosophical anthropology, and thus with another subject, one which posses a different sense of worldliness. Hence there is a different demand: what is the subject and what is its world when justice pertains not to a subject’s will but to the world itself? (Possible worlds become conditions of the world – this world – and not a subject’s projective will.) Inherent within any answer is the recognition that the subject is only ever an effect of the world; an after-effect of the world. Posed within the question of justice as worldly, there within its fabric as a form of interrogation, is the proposition of the always possible non-presence of justice in the world other than as a potentiality. As a result there is an ever present even if unstated problem at work here, which concerns how justice’s actuality is to be understood. The contention of the overall argument to be presented here is that the proposition pertaining to justice’s yet-to-be quality, and the subsequent issue of how to think justice’s actualization, are at the heart of Benjamin’s text. 3 Part of the argument to be advanced in what follows concerns showing in what way a necessary split or severance within the conception of the world is equally present within the way justice is thought. The positing of the necessary worldliness of justice, in which justice is a quality of this world, thus not the world to come, thus as occurring ‘not in heaven’, demands a divide between the actuality of justice’s claims, which can be equated with forms of normativity in the first instance, and then, in the second, with the possibility of justice as that which awaits actualization.4 The move from one to the other demands both a rethinking of worldliness and thus of justice as worldly. What needs to be worked out is another conception of justice, which, while worldly, insofar as its force pertains to the world, is a conception of justice that has to be thought in terms of its sustained differentiation from normativity. The latter, that which would

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emerge from such a differentiation, would be a conception of justice that attends, and thus has to be thought in terms of, immanence.5 Moreover, it would be in terms of justice as a continually immanent possibility that a critique of the identification of justice with normativity could then be developed. Immanence here can be described as having the quality of the Kantian ‘unconditioned’. As such it would then be the unconditioned for any conditioned, to deploy a formulation that is close to Kant’s thinking of the unconditioned. The force of the term ‘immanence’ can be found in the nature of its link to the practical, and thus to worldliness. In addition, it would be its necessary separation from the domain of actuality that allows for an opening, and thus of what will emerge as the inscription of a spacing which can be rethought in terms of critique. Within this specific setting actuality pertains to the necessity of actualization within which there would have been an axiomatic identification of normativity with justice. In such a context normativity is the set of constraints in which moral and legal concerns become coincident with justice. It would be a sense of coincidence that was forced, and which demanded the continuity of its being reinforced. The undoing of this coincidence involves a reconfiguration of the way the concept of the world and the worldliness of its contents are present. The world, as a consequence of that undoing, would come to be incorporated into another philosophical formulation. 4 Once worldliness is taken as the point of orientation, the formulation from Benjamin’s text with which to begin is the following: Justice is the striving to make the world into the highest good. [Gerechtigkeit ist das Streben, die Welt zum höchsten Gut zu machen.]6 5 Precisely because of an initial affinity that allows for an ensuing severance, the severance of Kant and Benjamin, of the many elements that demand elaboration, a start will be made with a term that, while it appears and plays a fundamental role in Benjamin’s formulation of justice, is also central to Kant’s wider philosophical project. A term which, while it suggests an affinity, the affinity between Kant and Benjamin, it will be in the breakdown of that affinity that a relation, which had yielded a fluidity of connection, and which – in the end – will have become a relation of non-relation, is then the one that allows for the particularity of Benjamin’s text, and thus its philosophical project to emerge. It emerges, of course, in its differentiation from Kant. The term is ‘striving’. The line noted above from Benjamin’s text has, at the outset, an affiliation to a position announced in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788). The affiliation is complex. There is the already noted possible connection and a severance. The position which allows for the intimation of an affinity is presented by Kant in the following terms: What belongs to duty here is only the striving to produce and promote the highest good in the world, the possibility of which can therefore be postulated, while our reason finds this thinkable only on the presupposition of a supreme intelligence.7 6 What has to be noted from the start is the distinction between Benjamin’s formulation – ‘to make the world into the highest good’ – and Kant’s, which pertains to ‘the highest good in the world’. It will be essential to return to this distinction, and thus to these divergent conceptions of world, in order to discern what is at stake in their difference. The question is clear: how is the difference between these two presentations of the world to be thought?

7 ‘Striving’ is a term that continues to appear in Kant’s writings. In The Vienna Logic (c. 1780) “wisdom”, which is the “doctrine” of “true philosophy”, is described as that

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which “must be the highest good for our striving”.8 In The Critique of Practical Reason the ‘law’ is described as having an enjoined lived relation within which that ‘law’ is present as “the constant though unattainable goal of (his) striving”. 9 In the The Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Kant’s formulation once again brings an important division into play within which ‘striving’ forms a central component. Kant writes: It is readily seen that friendship is only an idea (though a practically necessary one) and unattainable in practice, although striving for friendship (as a maximum of a good disposition toward each other) is a duty set by reason, and no ordinary duty but an honorable one.10 8 Formally, what is fundamental here is the equation of the ‘idea’ with the ‘unattainable’. The ‘idea’ cannot be possessed. It is immanent. And as a result it cannot be the object of a ‘having’. (Here of course is a genuine point of affinity with Benjamin in terms of the latter’s critique of what he identifies in the “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice ” as the attribution of a ‘possessive character’ to the ‘good’). The question that continues to return with Kant, however, concerns the nature of this striving and its delimitation by the ‘unattainable’. In order to respond, the point of departure involves noting that ‘striving’ is present within the world (reciprocally, of course, the world is the place of striving). What this means is that that the real question to be addressed concerns what striving opens, or rather, perhaps more accurately, what it demands is a response to the question of what delimits the specificity of the world of Kantian striving. It is essential to stay with Kant in order that the nature of the relation between Benjamin’s reference to striving and Kant’s own references can emerge. As will become clear what is at stake is that to which allusion has already been made, namely two radically different ways the ‘world’ is construed.

9 At the outset, what complicates Kant’s conception of striving is that, for Kant, ‘striving’, as it takes place within the domain of duty, is only intelligible in relation to what he presents as ‘the presupposition of a supreme intelligence’. Such a formulation is, of course, similar to the one in which ‘friendship’ is present as an ‘idea’. There is a structural similarity. However, it is essential to proceed cautiously here since what matters is not the presence of a ‘supreme intelligence’, as though all that is being evoked is the epistemological register of a deity, but of that which is present in its irreducibility to the actual. (While this is of course the essence of a political theology, further clarification is still necessary.) To invert the position presented by Kant elsewhere in the Critique of Practical Reason, human virtue is not “a mere phantom”, hence neither the law nor the unconditioned are objects of superstition, and, as a result, to cite Kant, “striving toward it” cannot “be deprecated as vain affectation and delusive self-conceit”.11 Note, however, that virtue even though it is not a ‘phantom’ is still not actual. It is an insistent potentiality rather than an assumed necessity. At every moment virtue (and duty) endure as possibilities. The possibility of actuality is equally the possibility that there will not be an actualization. Potentiality and im-potentiality are always coterminous in their difference (this form of co-presence repeats the insight advanced by Aristotle in the Metaphysics, namely that potentiality – as a generality – is always co-present with a corresponding im-potentiality.12 When taken together they comprise the intersection of contingency, finitude and freedom. This intersection delimits how modes of actuality are to be understood. In this context, it refers to the actualization of a potentiality, which starts with the assumption of the non-necessity of actualization.

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10 Given the distinction between the potential and the actual and their ensuing relation, a relation in which the contingency of connection is central, the necessity that pertains to virtue or duty is then the non-necessity of their actualization. It is this non-necessity that locates and demands striving. To which it should be added that this non-necessity yields the space that both sanctions and envisages striving. In other words, what such a setup sustains is a spacing at the center of the relation that the potential and the actual constructs; a spacing that constitutes and sustains that relation. (The argument will be that it is a spacing whose transformed retention forms a fundamental element that allows for the move from Kant to Benjamin.) In the Kantian context what this setup entails is, in sum, that virtue is yet-to-be actualized, and thus it is this yet-to-be quality which occurs in the world, in the precise sense that it is yet-to-be actualized as such, even though striving towards it is an activity that is inherently worldly. Striving is linked therefore to the possible becoming worldly of virtue. And it should be noted that the world figures insofar as it is retained as the place in which virtue attains (or not) actuality. 11 There is however always a limit and thus the further delimiting of a space. The following formulation in The Critique of the Power of Judgment provides a clear instance of that limit: The feeling of the sublime is thus a feeling of displeasure from the inadequacy of the imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude for the estimation by means of reason, and a pleasure that is thereby aroused at the same time from the correspondence of this very judgment of the inadequacy of the greatest sensible faculty in comparison with ideas of reason, insofar as striving for them is nevertheless a law for us [sofern die Bestrebung zu denselben doch für uns Gesetz ist]. That is, it is a law (of reason) for us and part of our vocation to estimate everything great that nature contains as an object of the senses for us as small in comparison with ideas of reason; and whatever arouses the feeling of this supersensible vocation in us [dieser übersinnlichen Bestimmung in uns] is in agreement with that law. 13 12 To continue the adumbration of ‘striving’ as integral to understanding the way the ‘world’ is thought in Kant’s larger philosophical project, it should be underscored that what occurs in the above is a description of the subject who strives to live in relation to the ‘ideas of reason’ and who, even though the subject is let down by the ‘inadequacy of the imagination’, nonetheless still recognizes that at the heart of that relation there is a necessity to strive. A space appears. Striving cannot be differentiated from the law even though that striving will, in this instance, be linked to impossibility or unattainability. Subjects, as those who live in relation to the law, strive. Striving occasioned by the specificity of the human orientation, defined by Kant in terms of our ‘vocation’ [Bestimmung] is that which allows for the attempt, albeit the continual attempt, to live a life that is lived together with the law. The relation between potentiality and actuality, and thus the dynamic of striving, has as a result a doubled presence, always divided between the potential and the actual, the necessity for a form of apartness. Again there is the inscribed presence of what continues to be maintained as an effective spacing. The spacing is effective insofar as it allows for judgment and thus the actuality of the particular.

13 While the term ‘striving’ has a life beyond Kant, since it also appears in Benjamin’s text, at this stage it needs to be understood within the setting that Kant creates. Moreover, it is this understanding that allows for the particularity of Kant’s own position to emerge. As has been noted, there is a condition that defines and delimits Kant’s overall

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engagement with the dynamic of striving. As has been indicated, it constitutes and depends upon a spacing. This further condition pertains to the world. Specifically it pertains to Kant’s conception of the world. It is simply that, even though striving brings about a transformation in the subject, which itself can be understood as the actualization of a potentiality, as a result of arousing ‘the feeling of this supersensible vocation in us’, that transformation is itself orientated by the promotion of ‘the highest good in the world’. The project or task that arises in the context of Kant’s overall argumentation does not pertain to the actualization of the highest good as though that end set the measure. Rather, its necessary non-actualization allows duty to be delimited in terms of striving. Striving becomes a locus of possibility. The important consequence is that striving in the world repeats the world. It is repeated as the place of striving. As such the world remains the same. The world endures as the simply given. This is the precondition for defining striving in terms of actions that aim to promote ‘the highest good in the world’. The world, as the place of striving, endures. It continues as unchanged by this promotion. The retained reiteration of the world as the unchanging place of striving is the empiricism at the heart of Kant’s conception of ‘world’.

II. Benjamin: The Just World.

14 Turning to Benjamin’s text and thus to the conception of striving within it, is not just to turn from one text to another. More emphatically, it is to turn to another possibility for thinking the world. The beginning of Benjamin’s texts has a specific concern. He writes: Every good, limited by structures of time and space, has a possessive character trait that is an expression of its ability to pass away. [Jedem Gute, als in der Zeit- und Raumordnung eingeschränktem, kommt Besitzcharakter als Ausdruck seiner Vergänglichkeit zu.]14 15 There are difficulties with this formulation that are clear from the start. What is at stake is a form of oscillation between the ‘good’ understood as a moral term and another sense that equates goods and thus the good with that which can be possessed (the latter in an almost material sense, thus almost literally as goods). In regards to the latter good, as a commodity it is articulated within a logic of needs and satisfaction, and thus a logic of utility. Indeed, it is possible to go further and argue that Benjamin is moving between these two different though related senses of the good (and of goods). Moreover, given this oscillation what is then at stake is the evaluation of the moral (or the ethical) within terms set by a sense of the good that is possessed, acquired, perhaps even bought. This would be the good as located within the logic of utility already noted. What has to be undone is this specific twofold sense of goods/good. Within the setup to be undone not only is there utility, there is a necessary dependence within this position on the primacy of a subject. One logic incorporates the other. Possession and the primacy of the subject’s will are present as inter-articulated. An undoing of one therefore becomes the undoing of the other.

16 A good that is a finite entity, hence one which is delimited spatially and temporally and attributed the quality of being possessed – i.e. a good as possessable, and, in being possessed, knowable, since knowing is a possessing – for Benjamin cannot ‘lead to justice’ [zur Gerechtigkeit führen].15 Benjamin’s text begins with this claim. Once any good

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(i.e. any conception of the good/goods) is thought as that which can be possessed, and therefore would be an object of a form of having, is as a result ‘always unjust’ [immer ungerecht].16 Despite the link between knowing and possessing this other good, the other possibility for the good/goods, the one that undoes the interconnection between good and possession, cannot be approached as if it were unknowable. It is neither ineffable nor mystical. The significant point is that it cannot be possessed. The good to be present must be a form of presentation. The strategy has to be changed. There needs to be another structure of thought. The move is clear. Once it can be argued that the good cannot be possessed then it takes on the quality of an ‘idea’. This limit, and thus that which has to be overcome, is the attribution to the good of what Benjamin calls ‘a possessive character’ [Besitzcharakter]. 17 The term Besitzcharakter is not generally prevalent in Benjamin’s writings. However, it does occur in the opening of The Origin of German Tragic Drama. It figures in what might be more generally understood as a stand against knowledge. Benjamin, in a passage that can be located just after the celebrated identification of method with ‘digression’ [Umweg], writes that: If presentation is to stake its claim as the genuine methodology of the philosophical treatise, [Wenn Darstellung als eigentliche Methode des philosophischen Traktates sich behaupten will] then it must be the presentation of ideas [so muß sie Darstellung der Ideen sein.] Truth, bodied forth in the dance of presented ideas [der dargestellten Ideen], resists being projected, by whatever means into the realm of knowledge. Knowledge is a having. [Erkenntnis ist ein Haben.] Its very object is determined by the fact that it may be taken possession of – even if in a transcendental sense – in the consciousness. The quality of possession remains. [Ihm bleibt der Besitzcharakter.] For the thing possessed, presentation is secondary [Diesem Besitztum ist Darstellung sekundär]; it does not have prior existence as something presenting itself. But the opposite holds good for truth. For knowledge method is a way [ein Weg] of acquiring its object – even by creating it in the consciousness; for truth it is self-presentation and is therefore immanent in it as form.17 18 The ‘good’ like the ‘idea’ must show itself. The link to Plato becomes clear. Once it can be argued that the ‘good’ is not there to be possessed, and were that to be attempted it would then be dissipated and lost, a different, if nonetheless still direct task is at hand. In this regard Benjamin is precise. The ‘good’ must be able to ‘sublate’ [aufhebt] what has been attributed to it, namely ‘its possessive character’ [seinen Besitzcharakter]. Knowledge is displaced for the precise reason that it is ‘a having’ [ein Haben]. What needs to be overcome is the identification of a good, in both senses of the term good, with an individual need (thus the need of an individual). There is another way. What is counter-posed to that which centers on the individual, in which ‘the good’ becomes no more than a good, and which, furthermore, in being possessed (thus known), is then lost, contains a specific conception of abstraction. The formulation while complex is nonetheless still exact. He writes: There is, namely, the entirely abstract claim of the subject to every good in principle, a claim that is not based on needs but rather on justice [ein Anspruch, der keineswegs auf Bedürfnisse, sondern auf Gerechtigkeit sich zurückführt] and whose last inclination will not possibly concern the right to possession [ein Besitzrecht] of the individual but a right to goods of the good [sondern auf ein Guts-Recht des Gutes geht]. 18

19 Here, once again, is the movement beyond the individual. It is as though there is a preceding right, and yet were that to be the case it would be a right that fell beyond the hold of possession, and as such could not be defined in the terms set either by different

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modalities of possession or as delimited by a subject’s will. It would become a right whose position is similar to the setting of the idea, i.e. an enduring immanence, thus a pervading presence. What is at work within the repositioning is the presence of right that exists on the level of the idea and thus a right, the presentation of which becomes the issue. Presentation cannot be thought in terms that are purely re-presentational. Again for Benjamin this is the prolongation of the idea. What then of its presentation? Questions clearly proliferate. A lot more needs to be added here concerning what would amount to a counter-measure to a setup that is constructed by the individual, the individual’s possession of the good and thus, and of fundamental importance, the construction of the good as that which can be possessed. And, if only to labour the point, it is essential to note the inherent reciprocity between all these elements.

20 At it most straightforward what is at work here is the move away from the individual and thus a repositioning of the ‘good’ beyond an economy structured by possession. (The ‘good’ will re-emerge as the analysis unfolds as the ‘propertyless’ [besitzlos].)19 The full force of attributing centrality to possession is that, to the extent that it continues, it would have been governed by the subject. Present therefore within such a setting is a structure of governance in which the individual is sovereign, a structure the maintenance of which may give rise to violence precisely because of the impossibility of a self-sustaining form of continuity. Governance would be constrained to maintain a form of continuity whose prolongation would become increasingly tenuous. The inscription of insecurity and violence occasions the entry of ‘justice’. This is not just a shift in register. With that entry the ‘good’ occurs again. The ‘good’ now is there, not as that which is to be possessed or ‘had’, but as that which emerges with the possible prevailing of justice. And it should be added that it is this possibility, and, therefore, justice as a potentiality, that underscores what is essential here. Hence, to the extent the individual is located within an economy of possession, the world is maintained. Maintaining it however will give rise to repeated acts of violence. Violence is the province of individuals and violence individualizes. As Hannah Arendt argues, this is the nature of the distinction between violence and power.20 Benjamin can be read, after the event, as alluding to such a position when he claims that: Justice is the power of virtue and virtue of power’. [Gerechtigkeit ist die Macht der Tugend und die Tugend der Macht.]21 21 Power, not violence, is an essential element of justice. What is equally the case is that the undoing of that setup, the counter-measure as effective, necessitates another world. This is not the positioning of a utopia. That other world is one that is to be made. Following the argument of the “The Destructive Character”, a text published fifteen years after the writing of the short text on justice, it is a world for which there cannot be an accompanying image.22 The prevailing of justice however is only ever a possibility and thus is only ever present as a potentiality to be actualized. The next lines of Benjamin’s text make this abundantly clear. Within them, not only does Benjamin’s sense of striving make its appearance, more importantly striving becomes a project of world making. It is the reconfigured connection between justice and world-making that makes the former “a new ethical category” [eine neue ethische Kategorie].23 The full formulation is the following: Justice is the striving to turn the world into the highest good. [Gerechtigkeit ist das Streben, die Welt zum höchsten Gut zu machen]. These thoughts lead to the supposition that justice is not a virtue like other virtues (humility, neighborly love, loyalty, courage), but rather constitutes a new ethical category [eine neue ethische Kategorie],

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one that should probably no longer be called a category of virtue but a category of virtue in relationship to other categories. Justice appears not to be based upon the good will of the subject but forms the state of the world. [Gerechtigkeit scheint sich nicht auf den guten Willen des Subjekts zu beziehen, sondern macht einen Zustand der Welt aus] … While virtue can be demanded, justice, in the end, can only be the state of the world or the state of God. In God all virtues take the form of justice [Tugend kann gefordert werden, Gerechtigkeit letzten Endes nur sein, als Zustand der Welt oder als Zustand Gottes. In Gott haben alle Tugenden die Form der Gerechtigkeit]24 22 While this passage will always have demanded a more detailed elaboration than can be provided here, what will be noted in this instance is the claim that defines what is essential to a political theology, namely the assertion that: ‘justice, in the end, can only be the state of the world or the state of God.’ If there is a stand that needs to be made in regards to the way ‘virtue’ emerges, then it has to be taken in relation to God. This position is advanced on the premise that justice is not to be defined in relation to a subject’s will. Theology appears. God comes in the wake of the subject. Consistent with what has already been argued, it is essential to note that the term ‘God’ no longer names an entity within any form of epistemology. On the contrary. What God names is a conception of justice where the latter is imbued with power. Hence in God ‘all virtues take the form of justice’. As a result virtue is stripped of its incorporation into a logic of possession; a logic defined by the interplay of having, knowing and representing. It will have finally become ‘propertyless’ [besitzlos]. The question that presses on this setup, and it is a question that allows for an affinity with Kant, even though it is an affinity that, at the same time, can be brought into question, concerns the possible actualization of justice as a state of the world. The premise is of course that the state of the world is such that it is not just. It is not that subjects do not act justly and ought so to do. The subject/world relation within such a setting is misconstrued. Subjects are effects of a world that is not just. Hence the critique of having and possession, while it may lead to a shift in a subject’s orientation, is not delimited by that change. To recall what has already been suggested, it involves a reconfiguration of the subject/world relation, and thus the emergence of another philosophical anthropology. Justice endures as a possibility whose actualization is the same – structurally the same – as God’s actualization in the world. This is the messianic impulse. (Its force shown ‘weakly’ within any one singular just act.) Once thought within the structure of a political theology, it is the refusal of religion. Religion’s focus maintains the world, allowing only for goods to be possessed (or not) by individuals. What is at work here is fundamentally different, namely that potentiality for the world to be just and not to be merely the place of apparently just acts.

III. The World's Othering.

23 The two positions and conceptions of the world are now clear. For Kant there is the striving to produce what he has identified as ‘the highest good in the world’. Within such a setting, ‘striving’ is there as that which delimits and enacts what he describes as ‘the observance of duty’. Being dutiful is located in the worldly process of striving. To which it has to be added that the contingency of ethical action cannot be separated from the necessity that prompts action. What this entails is not just that the unconditioned is effective insofar as it is itself the condition for acting; equally it is part of the world. It endures as an immanent presence whose force is located in the

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necessity of its non-actualizability. The counter involves the introduction of another conception of the relationship between action and world, and thus the inflection of the spacing that constitutes the relation between immanence and actuality in Kant. (And note that it is an inflecting and precisely not an abandoning.) The counter-measure located in Benjamin’s text is to make the world ‘the highest good’. Hence there is a demand for the transformation of the world. Again, there is the assumption that the world is transformable. If there is a further reference to be made that underscores this possibility then it is to Thesis XI of Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”. Marx wrote that: “ The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”25 It is the last part of the thesis, ‘the point is to change it’ [es kömmt drauf an, sie zu verändern], which is significant since what it affirms is the possibility that the world can be other than it is. And not just that there may be other activities occurring within it, where their occurrence perpetuates the world. The possible othering of the world is the world as transformable. The world loses, therefore, the empiricist quality that it had within Kant’s argumentation. Nonetheless, this still assumes Kant’s starting point, namely the presence of justice defined in terms of its yet-to-be actualized quality. The constitutive spacing endures. It endures as the condition allowing for the unconditioned to function as a regulative possibility. And yet what it also holds open is the possibility of the world’s transformation. The further point is that the world’s transformability is that which allows for the unconditioned to function as the ground of critique.

24 To move back to the question of critique, it is now possible to identify two modes. They will be outlined in lieu of a more programmatic conclusion. The first conception of critique has to assume the necessary non-actualization of any modality of a justice to come. Kant’s sense of the ‘unconditioned’, Derrida’s ‘unconditional hospitality’, or ‘unconditional forgiveness’, etc., provide a way of understanding what is at stake within this conception of critique.26 Hence, in always remaining there as the to come, the to come is absorbed into the structure of the everyday. The absorption is, however, specific. It creates a world that holds the to come in place but refuses, at the same time, a conception of the world as subject to its own self-overcoming. Here that holds potentiality and actuality apart, a spacing endures and yet it is given an ineliminable positivity. 25 The second sense of critique, while assuming the non-actualization of the unconditioned/idea (or that which has a similar structure) as the setup that allows for critique, inscribes a fundamental difference within it. What remains open, open as opposed to circumvented from the start, is the possibility of the world’s transformation. Hence while critique is still grounded – as had been suggested – in the non-actualization of the unconditioned within which the possibility of judgment and critique stands in a similar relation to the unconditioned (or the ‘unconditional’), nonetheless what such states of affairs have to leave open, or rather sustain, is a conception of the world that is no longer retained as the same. (Again this is retention as repetition.) Here is the limit of Kant’s conception of the world. The move therefore is from a Kantian conception of history, one which is articulated within the project of gradual enlightenment, to what amounts to the history of another world. 26 Benjamin addresses the intricacy of historical time in this text in a way that is consistent with the approach he takes to that question in subsequent texts. He writes that:

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The problem of historical time is already presented in the original form of the historical counting of time. Years are countable but in contrast to most countable things, cannot be numbered [nicht numerierbar].27 27 Time is now that which, while bearing dates and thus being countable, cannot be understood in the terms set by the simple passing of time. The truth of historical time resists both calculation and numbering. What is present, therefore, the world that demands this other conception of historical time, is a world bounded by its own inscription, and thus reinscription, of the messianic, in which every moment contains the possibility that it will be interrupted (and thus of its being other). This is a moment constituted by a spacing, the spacing that holds potentiality and actuality apart. Now, however, it is no longer sustained by any form of positivity. It is a setup that is pressed on by the possibility of an interruption that can be called the caesura of allowing: in other words, an interruption that occasions, and, moreover, an occasioning delimited by justice.28 This need not give rise to an instrumentalization of politics. On the contrary; it is a philosophical thinking of revolution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AGAMBEN, Giorgio, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).

ARENDT, Hannah, On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1970).

ARISTOTLE, Metaphysics: Books I-IX, trans. Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).

BENJAMIN, Andrew, “Recovering Holiness and the Place of Others: Notes on Vayikra”, in: Parallax, Vol. 19, No. 4 (2013), pp.36-48.

BENJAMIN, Andrew, Virtue in Being: Towards an Ethics of the Unconditioned (Albany: SUNY Press, 2016).

BENJAMIN, Andrew, Working with Walter Benjamin: Recovering a Political Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013).

BENJAMIN, Walter, “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice”, trans. Eric Jacobson, in: Eric Jacobson, Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), pp.166-167.

BENJAMIN, Walter, “The Destructive Character”, in: Selected Writings 2.2, 1931-1934, eds. Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings & Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 541-543.

BENJAMIN, Walter, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998).

BERKOVITS, Eliezer, Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halakha (Jersey City: Ktav Publishing, 1983).

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FENVES, Peter, The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).

KANT, Immanuel, “Critique of Practical Reason”, in: Practical Philosophy, ed./ trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1999), pp.133-272

KANT, Immanuel, “Metaphysics of Morals”, in Practical Philosophy, ed./trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1999), pp.353-604.

KANT, Immanuel, “The Vienna Logic”, in: Lectures on Logic, ed./ trans. J. Michael Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.251-380.

KANT, Immanuel, Critique of the Power of Judgement, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

LESCH, C. H. T., “Against Politics: Walter Benjamin on Justice, Judaism, and the Possibility of Ethics”, in: American Political Science Review, 108, No. 1 (2014), pp.218-232.

MARX, Karl, “Theses on Feuerbach”, in: Selected Writings, ed. Lawrence H. Simon (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1994), pp. 98-102.

NOTES

1. This paper was initially given as a presentation at workshop organized by The Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Walter Benjamin London Research Network, held at Goldsmiths on 28th April 2016. The other participants were Julia Ng and Massimiliano Tomba. The workshop was on Benjamin’s text, “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice”. The text which was initially recorded in Gershom Scholem’s Tagebücher dates from 1916. Rather than engage with every aspect of the “Notes”, the priority in this presentation was to establish the ways in which connections and disassociations with Kant provided a framework within which to approach it. (Cf. Walter Benjamin, “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice”, trans. Eric Jacobson, in: Eric Jacobson, Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem [New York: Columbia University Press, 2003], pp. 166-167.) All future references are to the text as cited below. 2. In addition to Jacobson’s Metaphysics of the Profane, see: Peter Fenves, The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). For an approach to Benjamin’s text that emphasizes its link to Judaism as far more significant than Kant, see: C. H. T. Lesch, “Against Politics: Walter Benjamin on Justice, Judaism, and the Possibility of Ethics”, in: American Political Science Review, 108, no. 1 (2014), pp. 218-232. 3. Benjamin, “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice”, p. 166. 4. In the Hebrew Bible, specifically Sefer Devarim 30:12, the place of the world is given an initially negative determination. The world’s worldliness takes on the designation of “not in heaven”. What is “not in heaven” is the place of law’s actuality. That place is equally the location of the actualization of holiness. On the formulation from Sefer Devarim, see: Eliezer Berkovits, Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halakha (Jersey City: Ktav Publishing, 1983). On the question of the place of holiness see: Andrew Benjamin, “Recovering Holiness and the Place of Others: Notes on Vayikra”, in: Parallax, Vol. 19, No. 4 (2013), pp. 36-48. 5. A great deal of argumentation would need to be added at this precise point. In sum, however, the use of the term ‘immanence’ needs to be understood in relation to the distinction drawn by Kant both in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) between ‘immanence’ and ‘transcendence’. In the latter Kant argues that: “the reality of the intelligible world is given to us, and indeed as determined from a practical perspective, and this

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determination, which for theoretical purposes would be transcendent (extravagant), is for practical purposes immanent”. (Immanuel Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason”, in: Practical Philosophy, ed./trans. Mary J. Gregor [Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1999], p. 224.) 6. Benjamin, “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice”, p.166 [Emphasis added] 7. Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason”, p.241 [Emphasis added]. 8. Immanuel Kant, “The Vienna Logic”, in: Lectures on Logic, ed./ trans. J. Michael Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 259 [Emphasis added]. 9. Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason”, p.208 [Emphasis added]. 10. Immanuel Kant, “Metaphysics of Morals”, in: Practical Philosophy, ed./trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1999), p.585. [Emphasis added]. 11. Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason”, p. 263. 12. This passage from Aristotle is central to the argument developed here. Aristotle’s claim does not privilege incapacity. On the contrary, the argument brings to the fore the problem of how a potentiality is actualized. In Aristotle this is a gradual process. It is precisely this possibility that is no longer available within modernity, once the latter is understood as a setting whose temporality has been naturalized such that it coincides with chronological time. The full passage from the Metaphysics is the following: “Incapacity and the incapable [ἡ ἀδυναμία καὶ τὸ ἀδύνατον] is the privation contrary to capacity [δυνάμει] in this sense; so that every ‘capacity’ has a contrary incapacity [τὸ αὐτὸ πᾶσα δύναμις ἀδυναμίᾳ] for producing the same result in respect of the same subject.” (Aristotle, Metaphysics: Books I-IX, trans. Hugh Tredennick [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989], p. 433.) 13. Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgement, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 141 [Emphasis added]. 14. Benjamin, “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice”, p. 166. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid [Translation altered]. 17. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998) p. 29-30. [Translation modified.] 18. Benjamin, “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice”, p. 166. 19. Ibid. 20. See Arendt’s formulation of the distinction between power and violence. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1970). 21. Benjamin, “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice”, p. 167. 22. Cf. Walter Benjamin, “The Destructive Character”, in: Selected Writings 2.2, 1931-1934, eds. Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings & Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 541-543. 23. Benjamin, “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice”, p. 166. 24. Ibid. 25. Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”, in: Selected Writings, ed. Lawrence H. Simon (Indianapolis : Hackett Publishing, 1994), p. 101. 26. I have discussed areas of possible affinity between Derrida’s formulation of the ‘unconditional’ and Kant’s thinking of the ‘unconditioned’ in my Virtue in Being. (Cf. Andrew Benjamin, Virtue in Being: Towards an Ethics of the Unconditioned [Albany: SUNY Press, 2016.]) 27. Benjamin, “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice”, p. 167. 28. I have developed in much greater detail this conception of the caesura, which, it can be argued, forms a fundamental part of Walter Benjamin’s thinking, in my Working with Walter Benjamin. (Cf. Andrew Benjamin, Working with Walter Benjamin: Recovering a Political Philosophy [Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.])

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ABSTRACTS

There are clear affinities between the project that can be identified in Walter Benjamin’s short text “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice” and the philosophy of Kant. The aim of this paper is to show that despite possible affinities there is a fundamental divide concerning how the ‘world’ is thought. Both link justice to the world and yet the world as it appears in each instance is radically distinct. It is in terms of this distinction that the specific philosophical force of Benjamin's work emerges.

INDEX

Keywords: Benjamin Walter, Kant Immanuel, justice, world

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Critique is a Philosophy of the Spirit Comparing Benjamin and Fichte’s Programmes for the Coming Philosophy

Elise Derroitte

Introduction

Even though Benjamin had chosen to dedicate his doctoral dissertation, The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism (1919), to the relationship between Schlegel and Fichte’s conceptions of reflection,1 one has to admit that his scholars have very often assimilated this Fichtean heritage to a passage-obligé between Kant and the Romantics, with too little attention being paid to the importance of this figure in Benjamin’s later works.2 It is true that the references to Fichte gradually disappear in Benjamin’s later writings. Nonetheless, Fichte’s influence on Benjamin’s philosophy of experience has been excessively downplayed in the reception of his work.3 Despite his imprecision and the idiosyncratic use that Benjamin makes of Fichte’s legacy,4 his conception of critique remains deeply influenced by Fichte’s conception of the process of the construction of knowledge, as developed in his Science of Knowledge (1794). In fact, Benjamin’s obsession with history and experience has roots in a transcendental philosophy, the aim of which is to construct the conditions of possibility of experience within a concrete history. Therefore, this article has made the heuristic choice to compare these two essays on the purpose of philosophy, in order to show that the theoretical affinities between Fichte and Benjamin enable a deeper understanding of the role played by the operation of critique in Benjamin's later political philosophy. Why an inquiry into Benjamin’s concept of critique does more than elucidate a question specific to literary criticism, by leading to the question of the political commitment of critical philosophy, is understandable from the similarities between Benjamin’s opposition between ‘critique’ and ‘commentary’, outlined in “Goethe’s Elective Affinities” (1924), and Fichte’s opposition between philosophers of the letter and philosophers of the spirit in On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy, A Series of Letters, 1795.5 This comparison shows that Benjamin and Fichte’s views concerning the affective relation that the philosopher

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entertains with his object of study are remarkably close. In fact, Benjamin’s conception of commentary as the study of the material content of a text has important affinities with Fichte’s conception of the philosopher of the letter who only considers the content [Inhalt] of a text. Conversely, both authors develop an alternative posture – that of the critic (Benjamin) and that of the philosopher of the spirit (Fichte) – which focuses on the relation to the truth content [Gehalt] of the works. This truth content implies a relation of intimacy between the subject and the object that it targets.

I. Critique as Self-Education

This paper aims to underline the relationship between the practice of philosophy and the intensification of common experience [Erlebnis]. As such, it concerns what we can call a process of self-education. What is at stake here is to show that the dynamic conception of both the critic and the philosopher implies a transformation of the subject. This transformation occurs when the subject appropriates the experience she has of an object. Thereby, I hope to demonstrate that the distinction, which Benjamin and Fichte make between the different ways to approach a text, is not based on its immediate content [Inhalt]. Rather, it concerns its inner form as content [Gehalt]. Such content is extracted during the subjective and active reception of the book. Therefore, the notions of critique and of spirit are both associated with the ideas of transformation and self-transformation.6 However, how to understand critique as an auto-pedagogical activity has not yet been made obvious here. This interpretation requires three operations inherent in the activity of critique, which lead to self- learning. The first operation concerns the reason that a text is read, the second concerns the involvement of the reader, and the last one concerns the intimacy between the subject and the object, which is – as we shall see in the second part of this article – what Fichte calls the aesthetic drive.

I.1. Commentator and Critic

The first similarity between Fichte and Benjamin concerns the way a reader approaches a text. Both authors distinguish between two different forms of reception of a text, namely the reception of the letter and the spirit for Fichte, and the commentary and the critique for Benjamin. The first mode of reception for each author – namely, the philosophy of the letter and the commentary – is directed towards the immediate content [Inhalt] of the text. It pays attention to the text’s material aspects. The second method of reading – namely, the philosophy of the spirit and the critique – focuses on the forthcoming reception of the text. It is prospective. Therefore, these two divergent views of the activity of reading imply two different conceptions of philosophy, and philosophy-of-literature, respectively. In “Goethe’s Elective Affinities”, Benjamin clearly defends his critical methodology in opposition to a philological tradition: The writings we have on works of literature suggest that the minuteness of detail in such studies be reckoned more to the account of the interests of philology than of critique. The following exposition of Elective Affinities, which also goes into detail, could therefore easily prove misleading about the intention with which it is being presented. It could appear to be commentary; in fact, it is meant as critique. Critique seeks the truth content of a work of art; commentary, its material content.7

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Why is Benjamin so specific about his intentions? What are those two different contents [Gehalte] of a text? The main distinction between those two forms of reception, and by way of consequence, between these two forms of content, concern the motive, the drive that directs the reader when she experiences the text. A commentator tries to determine the correct interpretation of a text. She studies the grammatical structures in detail, as well as paying attention to the etymology of the terms employed or the grammatical use and history of the expressions; she may draw a genealogy of the concepts in the poet’s oeuvre. By contrast, the critique is based on the experience of the text by the reader herself, the reading is completed with the historical reception of the text inside the subject’s affectivity. Benjamin defined this methodology in his doctoral thesis, where he explains his own heuristic choices in the following terms: The present work is conceived as a contribution to an investigation into the history of a problem, and will endeavour to demonstrate the concept of criticism in the transformations through which it has passed. It is undeniable that such an investigation of the history of the concept of criticism is something quite different from a history of criticism itself; it addresses a philosophical or, more precisely, a problem-historical task.8 The language used in this passage, namely the idea of a problem-historical task [problemgeschichtliche Aufgabe], relates immediately to the question of the history of the object, as well as the subject who historicizes it. The notion of a task implies a form of porosity between the subject and the object. Consequently, the difference between commentary and critique is not related to the quality of the object of analysis, but to the way the subject addresses his questions and finds answers in his readings. This distinction between an archaeological reading of texts and a prospective one consists in the fact that critique is more focused on the task devoted to the reader (of constructing his own questions), rather than on the definite resolution of an abstract problem. As Benjamin explains when he criticizes scientific verism in the “Epistemo- Critical Prologue” to his study on the German Trauerspiel (1928): Such a verism must then, in its treatment of the individual problem, necessarily be confronted by the genuine questions of methodology which are ignored in its scientific credo. The solution of these problems will generally lead to the reformulation of the whole mode of questioning along the following lines: how is the question, ‘what was it really like?’ susceptible, not just of being scientifically answered, but of actually being put.9 Critique becomes a process of historical auto-critique whereas commentary ultimately tends to a solution of a problem. When Benjamin defines his work as a task, he assumes that the result of his work will not be solely the explanation of a text but also the conception of a philosophical question. This opposition is central in Fichte’s analysis of the philosophy of the spirit.

II. The Spirit and the Letter

Before exploring the elective affinities between Benjamin and Fichte’s visions of the role of the philosopher, a brief clarification needs to be added about Fichte’s On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy, A Series of Letters, 1795. These letters consist of a fictional dialogue between a philosopher and an amateur of philosophy. 10 They are not written for experts but, rather, for any lay reader of philosophical writings. The

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immediate consequence of this vulgarisation of the philosophical method is that it requires a deconstruction of the (conceptual, institutional, social) habits of philosophical thought. Therefore, its conditions of legitimacy and comprehension cannot be found in the simple perpetuation of traditional questions and ways of asking them. The attention that Fichte pays to the reception of philosophical discourse changes the method of the creation of thought itself. As Fichte puts it: “As far as instructing your neighbour is concerned – well, the experience you will gain will be informative at least for yourself”.11 This conception coincides with Benjamin’s view that any critical analysis, first, leads to a process of auto-critique. Once this framework is set, Fichte articulates the question that directs his reflection: “what is meant by the spirit of philosophy, and the spirit in philosophy”, and how does it differ “from the letter as such and from the merely literal?”12 This question echoes in Benjamin’s theory of critique, where it is translated as follows: what is meant by the critique of a text that concerns the truth content [Wahrheitsgehalt] and how does it differ from the commentary that concerns the material content [Sachgehalt]? According to both authors,13 the question of spirit determines the meaning of a philosophy for the subject’s spiritual life, i.e. one that targets her intellectual and material problems, not the abstract verism of scientific self-perpetuation.

II.1 Philosophy of the Letter

Fichte precisely describes the two attitudes towards texts he wants to oppose. The first one is exposed in the following passage: You remember the complaints you made when you were reading a certain book, highly acclaimed by some. You could not read yourself into it. You had it in front of you, and your eyes were firmly fixed on it, but you found that every time you began to think about yourself you were miles away from the book. Each of your attempts to get to grips with the content and the action failed, and every time you thought you had neared grasping the unyielding spirit of the text, it slipped out of your hand.14 This citation underlines the distance between subject and object when her interrogations are not met. This distance, then, needs to be compensated by an injunction, an external obligation that forces the subject to read.15 Here, we are witnessing a process of externalization of the motive to read that renders its experience impossible. Such impossibility is not an ontological determination of the reader; rather, it is premised on two conditions: firstly, that the subject is not attracted by the book and, secondly, that she transforms her lack of interest into a duty. It is this injunction, which comes from outside, which separates the means and the ends that makes the subject feel guilty. You had to remind yourself continually that you wanted to study this book, indeed that you had to (…) in order to put up with the constant feeling of resistance. (…) Did the fault rest solely with you, with your lack of attention and your own inability to relate to the depth and profundity of that book?16 This citation repeats the aforementioned double determination that leads to culpability: on the one hand the external imposition of a mode of relationship to the object and, on the other hand, the sense of the subject of her incapacity to realise this form of experience imposed from outside.17 This implies first a transformation of the absence of desire into a duty, and, second, an internalization of this duty into guilt. Since

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the subject cannot find in her feelings a motive to continue reading or acting, she searches for reasons of absolute necessity elsewhere: ‘You had to remind yourself continually that you wanted to study this book, indeed that you had to (…) in order to put up with the constant feeling of resistance’, writes Fichte.18 And, simultaneously she experiences her lack of desire as a failure. This process of the subject’s alienation and self-alienation from the authority of tradition is part of the reason that she fails at reading, understanding, committing. It is because the subject denies herself the right to choose that she is ultimately defeated.19

II.2. Philosophy of the Spirit

This first description of a failed and constrained study allows us to deduce how Fichte explains a more affective and self-realizing way of reading. The second form in which to experience a book involves spirit and is not led by obligation and culpability: The mood you found yourself in when reading the work of other no less profound writers allowed you to form a more favourable opinion of yourself. You felt drawn to and captivated by them. You did not need to remember your resolve to study, or the advantages you hoped to gain. When your mind was totally engrossed by what you were reading you had no need to look for any reason beyond reading it for its own sake, and the only thing that troubled you was tearing yourself from it when other duties called you away.20 In this second form of experience, the subject is not forced to read through the creation of an external constraint. Instead, it is the text that attracts and calls the reader. Fichte’s philosophy of spirit considers the potential relationship to the book. It is neither an assessment of the ability of the reader, nor of the intrinsic value of the object; rather, it considers the way in which the subject is affected by the object, i.e. the way in which she accepts being transformed by it. To summarize, Fichte sketches two possible types of experience of the object: Thus this is with books, and thus with other works of art (…). One thing leaves us cold and disinterested, or even repels us; another attracts us, invites us to linger awhile in contemplation and lose ourselves in it.21 The difference between the two attitudes is not related to the material content – both texts are good – it is related to the truth content, i.e. the questions that the text allows the reader to ask. It thus concerns the desire, the drive that the subject experiences as emanating from the object. In this sense, the differentiation between Buchstabenphilosophie [philosophy of the letter/character] and Geistesphilosophie [philosophy of the spirit] ought to be understood, above all, as a difference between practices of reading. Do I read a text to ‘lose myself in it’, to intensify my relation to myself and to the world, or do I read it because I want to gain knowledge? Likewise, the difference between commentary and critique in Benjamin’s text on Goethe’s Elective Affinities is also based on the attitude of the reader. As we have shown, Benjamin’s critique is always based on the attraction of the subject who criticises, and her availability to be transformed by this experience. In the following quotation, he distinguishes the attitudes of the commentator and of the critic. If, to use a simile, one views the growing work as a burning funeral pyre, then the commentator stands before it like a chemist, the critic like an alchemist. Whereas, for the former, wood and ash remain the sole objects of his analysis, for the latter only the flame itself preserves an enigma: that of what is alive. Thus the critic

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inquiries into the truth, whose living flame continues to burn over the heavy logs of what is past and the light ashes of what has been experienced.22 Benjamin follows the path inaugurated by Fichte: the distinction he makes between commentary and critique is related to the way in which the subject is involved in the experience of the object. The commentator understands experience as the objective heritage of tradition that has no connection to the reader’s life. The critic concerns herself with the relation between the intellectual experience of the subject and the materiality of the object that produces it. Only the latter form of experience allows for critique because it introduces something that was not present in the first form of reading: a dialogue between the reader and the text. In the previous quote from Benjamin, we saw that the commentator remains before the pyre, in much the same way as the reader of the letter is unable to forget himself in the book. By contrast, the critic and the philosopher of the spirit try to deepen their experiences with respect to what they read; they integrate themselves in their task. As we can see, both philosophers put the question of attraction at the heart of the activity of philosophy. The purpose of studying is not to impose a definite interpretation of a work for future readers. It is to make the work grow in the future, to ensure its afterlife.23 By experiencing the text and actualising its interpretation, the critic emancipates herself from the injunctions of tradition (the common interpretation of a text or the quasi-religious respect for the fullness of a work of art). She commits, instead, to relate to the text from her own experience. However, this form of interest is not the simple expression of the idiosyncrasies of the subject. Such an attitude would finally be similar to the philosophy of the letter or of the commentary in the sense that there would be a perpetuation of already existing experience [Erfahrung] that leaves no place for self-education. If this were the case, then the purpose of the experience would be lost. In fact, the issue here is not to determine a universal form of aesthetic experience but to understand how the subject constructs her own Erfahrung through her lived experiences. Such a historical interpretation of the diachronic constitution of subjectivity avoids the fixity of the Kantian conception of experience that is unable to integrate affectivity and creation of new forms of knowledge and self-knowledge in relation to objects in general, and works of art in particular. Benjamin considers this conception in Kant to be a form of blindness with respect to the notion of experience; Fichte calls it ‘the scandal of the thing-in-itself’. In reaction to this ‘scandal’, Fichte develops a dynamic theory of aesthetic experience. This much is clear: that a work [which draws us to it so powerfully] may excite, stimulate, and strengthen our appreciation of and capacity to appreciate its subject matter; that such a work is not simply the object of our intellectual engagement, for it gives us at the same time the ability to engage ourselves with it, so that we receive not just the gift but the hand with which we must grasp it. Such a work creates the spectacle and the audience at one and the same time.24 This quotation unveils Fichte’s concerns for the historical reception of a work of art. If the work were totally finished, it would not be able to support the subject’s interpretations and reflections. The notion of experience that Fichte constructs is, in this sense, similar to the notion of critique that Benjamin will develop throughout his early writings, and which will remain prevalent in his later productions. The desire that Fichte mentions (and that Benjamin also considers) does not only produce the object but also the ability to apprehend it. The work of art appears as an

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object and as a space of experimentation, where the spectacle and the audience are created simultaneously [zugleich]. Fichte describes the new experimentation that emerges from the involvement of the subject when he says that the subject loses herself in her reading. In this new experience, he develops a novel understanding of himself and of the object. Benjamin also emphasizes the fact that it is precisely the interest of the subject for the object she experiences, which qualifies the nature of the experience, and not the qualities of either the individual subject or the individual object. We find a similar definition in the “Epistemo-Critical Prologue” to The Origin of German Tragic Drama, where – invoking Plato’s Symposium – Benjamin writes: [The Symposium] declares truth to be beautiful. (…) If truth is described as beautiful, this must be understood in the context of the Symposium with the stages of erotic desires. Eros (…) does not betray his basic impulse [Bestreben] by directing his longings towards the truth; for truth is beautiful: not so much in itself, as for Eros. And so it is with human love; a person is beautiful in the eyes of his lover, but not in himself (…). Likewise truth; it is not so much beautiful in itself, as for whomsoever seeks it.25 This echoes the author’s analysis of Hölderlin’s poetry. As he argues: [Life] is not the precondition but the object of a movement accomplished with a mighty freedom: the poet enters into life; he does not wander forth in it.26 In this passage Benjamin tries to articulate the relation between the subjective experience of life and freedom. The poet is not submitted to the life that precedes him; he constructs, from the moment of his experience, his life with the object. Critique, in this text, as well as in Fichte’s conception of spirit, is an act of subjective construction. Furthermore, Fichte’s theory of the drives aims to locate this original subjective activity [Thathandlung] in self-education.27 The creative relationship to the object, previously described by the notion of the erotic relation to truth, is what Fichte calls the aesthetic drive [Ästhetische Trieb]:28 The one thing in man which is independent and utterly incapable of being determined from outside, we call “drive” [Trieb]. This and this alone is the single and highest principle governing self-activity [Selbsthätigkeit] in us. This alone makes us independent, observing and acting beings. (…) We need self-activity in order unceasingly to intensify and extend our cognitive knowledge of objects.29 This notion of drive, according to Jean-Christophe Goddard, determines the way in which the activity of the I appears when taken objectively: it has no reality in itself.30 This allows Fichte to bypass the question of the ‘assessment’ of experience from the outside. As Fichte puts it in his second letter: [The aesthetic drive] is not directed at anything outside man, but toward something which is only to be found within him.31 Fichte distinguishes three different drives32 – theoretical, practical and aesthetic – that initiate the different activities of the subject (knowing, acting, and feeling). The purpose of the aesthetic drive is pure representation [Vorstellung] with no relation to an object. When it becomes knowledge, it is called the knowledge-drive, and when it produces an action, it is called the practical drive. Fichte qualifies the task of the aesthetic drive as creating “the image in the soul”.33 As Fichte puts it: “As far as [the aesthetic] drive is concerned, the representation is an end in itself. It does not derive its value from harmonizing with the object (…) but has value in itself. It is not the replication of reality but a free unrestrained form of the image which is sought”.34

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These activities are the result of the self-activity of the subject. Such an absolute activity of the self can be tracked down through the traces it leaves. For example, the practical drive is only visible through the tendency that the drive took. This tendency can take the form of a desire, in case the solution does not depend on the subject’s power. It can be volition when the subject has the power to realise his practical drive. The aesthetic drive itself can only be exteriorized through a feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Here, the idea that it is the free drives of the subjects that determine the quality of the experience is quite revolutionary, especially as far as learning is concerned. According to both authors, the question of subjective freedom has priority over every other question. The controversy between Fichte and Schiller, concerning the place of volition in the commitment of the subject in aesthetic education, is in the background of the former’s text. It remains crucial because it paves the way for their subsequent debates about the role of practical philosophy.35 Is reification the responsibility of the subject? Is it a sign of her lack of volition? Or, on the contrary, is it the result of a struggle inside the subject between her drive and the resistance of the object?

Conclusion

The question of the opposition between commentary and critique is not a technical question proper to philology. On the contrary, it addresses the political question of the role of philosophy in enhancing subjective abilities to learn and to emancipate herself from a system of oppression. The interest in developing Fichte’s contribution to this Benjaminian question lies in the fact that it clarifies how to articulate the practice of philosophy through the notions of auto-critique and self-determination. This articulation is present as a framework in Benjamin’s notion of critique even though it is not explicitly developed. What can be gained from this comparison is that the notion of critique in Benjamin’s early works can be extended thanks to Fichte’s research into the drives. Fichte provides a strong background through which he enables Benjamin to overcome two obstacles: on the one hand, the absence – in Kant – of a systematic philosophy of history; and, on the other hand, the Hegelian conception of history as perpetual improvement. Fichte allows Benjamin to understand history as the result of the process of critique that constructs it. These theories of critique and of the philosophy of spirit are two reflections on the practice of philosophy for the reader herself. They do not target the explanation of content; rather, they interrogate the role of the philosopher as the producer of her own method. The legacy of these reflections is to consider all knowledge as part of a process of self-knowledge. According to both authors, knowledge and self-knowledge are part of the same movement of education. While focusing on the production of knowledge rather than on its absolute legitimacy, Benjamin transforms the transcendental question of freedom into the practical question of production. Benjamin’s reflections on critique, its affinities with Fichte’s early aesthetic, are the canvas of his later political philosophy. Consequently, the particularity of such a critical theory resides in its collective and historical aspect. The intensification of the life of spirit (a work’s truth content) participates in a broader movement towards the education of society. According to both authors, the work of art awakens desire and skills on the part of the reader. Therefore, this programme for the coming philosophy requires an

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understanding of thinking as a process of recursive potentialization where the objects and the subjects reinvent themselves repeatedly.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BENJAMIN, Walter, Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

BREAZEALE, Daniel, Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes from Fichte's Early Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

CESA, Claudio, J. G. Fichte e l’idealismo transcendantale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992).

CESA, Claudio, Introduzione a Fichte (Bari-Rome: Editori Laterza, 1994).

D’ALFONZO, Matteo Vincenzo, “Der Trieb des Seins in der Wissenschaftslehre 1804”, in: L’Être et le phénomène, Sein und Erscheinung, eds. J.C. Goddard & A. Schnell (Paris: Vrin, 2009), pp. 185-192.

FICHTE, Johann Gottlieb, “On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy in a series of Letters, 1795”, in: German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, ed. David Simpson, trans. E. Rubenstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 75-93.

GASCHÉ, Rodolphe, “The Sober Absolute, Walter Benjamin and the Early Romantics”, in: Walter Benjamin and Romanticism, eds. Andrew Benjamin & Beatrice Hannsen (New York/London: Continuum, 2002), pp. 51-68.

GODDARD, Jean-Christophe, “Pulsion et réflexion chez Fichte: Une éthique pulsionnelle”, in: La pulsion, ed. Jean-Christophe Goddard (Paris: Vrin, 2006), pp. 37-55.

GÖRNER, Rüdiger, “Poetik des Wissens: Zur Bedeutung der Kontroverse zwischen Schiller und Fichte über Geist und Buchstab sowie die Grenzen beim Gebrauch schöner Formen”, in: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, Vol. 51, No. 4 (1999), pp. 342-360.

HARDER, Yves-Jean, “De la lettre à l’esprit”, in: Fichte, le moi et la liberté, ed. J.C. Goddard (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2000), pp. 18-36.

IVALDO, Marco, Libertà e ragione: L’Etica di Fichte (Milan: Mursia, 1992), pp. 96-98.

KOHLENBACH, Margerete, Walter Benjamin: Self-Reference and Religiosity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

LA VOPA, Anthony, Fichte, The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762-1799 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

LACAN, Jacques, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960, ed. J.A. Miller, trans. D. Porter (London/ New York: Routledge, 1992).

MENNINGHAUS, Winfried, “Walter Benjamin’s Exposition of the Romantic Theory of Reflection”, in: Walter Benjamin and Romanticism, eds. Andrew Benjamin & Beatrice Hannsen (New York/ London: Continuum), pp. 19-50.

PAREYSON, Luigi, L’Estetica di Fichte (Milan: Angelo Guerini, 1997).

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RADRIZZANI, Ives, “Genèse de l’esthétique romantique. De la pensée transcendantale de Fichte à la poésie transcendantale de Schlegel”, in: Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, Vol. 101, No. 4 (1996), pp. 471-498.

ROCHLITZ, Rainer, Le désenchantement de l'art, La philosophie de Walter Benjamin (Paris: Gallimard, 1992).

STIENING, Gideon, “Entre Fichte et Schiller: La notion de Trieb dans le Hyperion de Hölderlin”, in: Revue Germanique internationale, Vol. 18 (2002), pp. 87-103.

ENDNOTES

1. Cf. Walter Benjamin, “The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), especially pp. 116-148. 2. On the question of Benjamin’s reception of Fichte see, among others: Margerete Kohlenbach, Walter Benjamin: Self-Reference and Religiosity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), especially pp. 110-117; Rainer Rochlitz, Le désenchantement de l'art, La philosophie de Walter Benjamin (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), epecially p. 67. Given the specific focus of our analysis of Benjamin’s concept of critique, we will not extensively discuss why Benjamin abandons the study of Fichte’s early writings. Put succinctly, Benjamin reads Fichte for his doctoral dissertation with a very precise objective in mind: to overcome the lack of theory of historical transformability in Kant’s Critique, a theme he had considered as a subject for his dissertation. Benjamin’s understanding of Fichte is profoundly influenced by the influence the latter had exerted on the Circle of Jena, especially Schlegel. Therefore, from a strictly philological point of view, Benjamin’s own commentary on the Science of Knowledge in his The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism is neither the most interesting, nor the most accurate. On this point see: Winfried Menninghaus, “Walter Benjamin’s Exposition of the Romantic Theory of Reflection”, in: Walter Benjamin and Romanticism, eds. Andrew Benjamin & Beatrice Hannsen (New York/London: Continuum), pp. 19-50. Nevertheless, from a critical perspective, Fichte’s influence remains striking if one compares Benjamin’s view on critique, and Fichte’s view on the spirit of philosophy. Both transform what appears initially as a merely methodological question into a pedagogical-political investigation. 3. Cf. Menninghaus, “Walter Benjamin’s Exposition of the Romantic Theory of Reflection”, especially pp. 19-28. 4. Cf. Rodolphe Gasché, “The Sober Absolute, Walter Benjamin and the Early Romantics”, in: Walter Benjamin and Romanticism, eds. Andrew Benjamin & Beatrice Hannsen (New York/ London: Continuum), p. 51. 5. On the question of an aesthetic philosophy in Fichte and its importance in his early writings, see among others: Luigi Paryeson, L’Estetica di Fichte (Milan: Angelo Guerini, 1997); Ives Radrizzani, “Genèse de l’esthétique romantique. De la pensée transcendantale de Fichte à la poésie transcendantale de Schlegel”, in: Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, Vol. 101, No. 4 (1996), pp. 471-498; Rüdiger Görner, “Poetik des Wissens: Zur Bedeutung der Kontroverse zwischen Schiller und Fichte über Geist und Buchstab sowie die Grenzen beim Gebrauch schöner Formen”, in: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, Vol. 51, No. 4 (1999), pp. 342-360; Yves-Jean Harder, “De la lettre à l’esprit”, in: Fichte, le moi et la liberté, ed. J.C. Goddard (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2000), pp. 18-36. 6. In this respect, the notion of critique is also similar to Schlegel’s notion of irony, which Benjamin will analyse in his doctoral disseration. (Cf. Benjamin, “The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism”, p. 163)

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7. Walter Benjamin, “Goethe’s Elective Affinities”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 297. 8. Benjamin, “The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism”, p. 116. 9. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998) p. 41-42. 10. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy in a series of Letters, 1795”, in: German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, ed. David Simpson, trans. E. Rubenstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 75. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Cf. Fichte, “On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy”, p. 75; Walter Benjamin, “Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 19. 14. Fichte, “On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy”, p. 76. [Emphasis added] 15. This pre-empts the Freudian notion of the super-ego. It is the process of internalization of authority that leads to culpability and self-monitoring. 16. Ibid. 17. By comparison, Benjamin translates this feeling of resistance towards acting into the notion of melancholia. The melancholic creature in The Origin of German Tragic Drama is totally paralyzed so that she lets herself depend on fate. According to the author, this is precisely what characterizes the Trauerspiel: its relation to fatality which implies that “Human actions [are] deprived of all value” because they are already determined from outside by the notion of fate which is “the entelechy of events within the field of guilt”. (Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, p. 138/p.129) Benjamin thus points to a combined process of subordination of the subject to the logic of the object, when he says: “Every feeling is bound to an a priori object, and the presentation of this object is its phenomenology. (…) If the laws which govern the Trauerspiel are to be found (…) at the heart of the mourning, the representation of these laws does (…) concern itself (…) with a feeling which is released from any empirical subject and is intimately bound to the fullness of an object” (Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.139) [Translation altered]. This first process is completed by the devaluation of the subject by herself through the feeling of guilt. 18. In this regard, I take it that Anthony La Vopa is mistaken when he argues that there might be an opposition between attraction and self-determination in this text. Attraction, in this sense, is not the submission to the law of the object, but rather the subjective experience of a creative relation to it. (Cf. Anthony La Vopa, Fichte, The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762-1799 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001] p. 292) 19. This conception of the transformation of a lack of interest into a failure can be translated into Lacan’s vocabulary of desire. In the seventh book of his seminar we read: “the only thing one can be guilty of is giving ground relative to one’s desire.” (Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960, ed. J.A. Miller, trans. D. Porter [London/ New York: Routledge, 1992], p. 319) 20. Fichte, “On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy”, p.75 21. Ibid, p.76. 22. Benjamin, “Goethe’s Elective Affinities”, p.298. [Emphasis added] 23. Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 254. 24. Fichte, “On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy”, p. 77. [Emphasis added] 25. Benjamin, The Origin of German Targic Drama, p. 30-31.

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26. Benjamin, “Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin”, p. 28. 27. For a discussion of Fichte’s anthropological schema, see: Daniel Breazeale, Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes from Fichte's Early Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), especially pp. 75-79. 28. Cf. Fichte, “On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy”, p. 82. 29. Ibid, p. 79-80. 30. Cf. Jean-Christophe Goddard, “Pulsion et réflexion chez Fichte: Une éthique pulsionnelle”, in: La pulsion, ed. Jean-Christophe Goddard (Paris: Vrin, 2006), pp. 37-55. 31. Fichte, “On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy”, p.82. 32. On the Trieblehre, see: Claudio Cesa, J. G. Fichte e l’idealismo transcendantale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), especially p. 103, 115, and 119; Claudio Cesa, Introduzione a Fichte (Bari-Rome: Editori Laterza, 1994), p. 152; Marco Ivaldo, Libertà e ragione: L’Etica di Fichte (Milan: Mursia, 1992), pp. 96-98; Matteo Vincenzo D’Alfonzo, “Der Trieb des Seins in der Wissenschaftslehre 1804”, in: L’Être et le phénomène, Sein und Erscheinung, eds. J.C. Goddard & A. Schnell (Paris: Vrin, 2009), pp. 185-192. 33. Fichte, “On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy”, p. 81. 34. Ibid. 35. To sketch the opposition between Fichte and Schiller briefly, we must recall that both authors disagreed about the sensible aspect of their philosophies. That is, Schiller – for his part – accused Fichte of producing a purely rational philosophy. In response to this charge, Fichte develops his Trieb-theory in which he explains the role of sensibility in the construction of knowledge. However, Fichte and Schiller’s understandings of the role of an ‘aesthetic drive’ are ultimately different because, according to Fichte, such a drive is a condition of possibility, whilst for Schiller it is the practical activity of creation; it has a plastic effectivity. On this point, see: Luigi Pareyson, L’Estetica di Fichte (Milan: Angelo Guerini, 1997), p. 94-95. On the difference between Schiller and Fichte, see: La Vopa, Fichte, The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, p. 283; Gideon Stiening, “Entre Fichte et Schiller: La notion de Trieb dans le Hyperion de Hölderlin”, in: Revue Germanique internationale, vol. 18 (2002), pp. 87-103.

ABSTRACTS

This article is primarily concerned with the question of critique in Benjamin’s philosophy with reference to his theory of experience. I seek to show that Benjamin’s theories of literary criticism and aesthetic critique exceed the boundaries of commentary and contain the seeds of a political programme. I argue that Benjamin’s conception of critique is deeply influenced by Fichte’s conception of self-activity (Tathandlung) developed in his On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy, A Series of Letters, 1795. In fact, Benjamin’s obsession with history and experience has roots in German Idealist philosophy, the aim of which is to construct the conditions of possibility of experience within a concrete history. Benjamin inherits this view of the political function of philosophy, which he appropriates and modifies in his writings on the notion of critique. I aim to demonstrate that Benjamin and Fichte’s views concerning the affective relation that the philosopher entertains with her object of study are remarkably close. Both are convinced that political emancipation has to be rooted in the critical skills of the readers, rather than being suggested by external discourses, even the most persuasive ones.

INDEX

Keywords: Fichte Johann Gottlieb, Benjamin Walter, critique, drive, experience

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Towards a Benjaminian Critique of Hermann Cohen’s Logical Idealism

Phillip Homburg

Introduction

1 In the text, “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy” (1918), Walter Benjamin frames his investigation into the philosophies of Kant and neo-Kantianism in a two-fold manner: “First of all, there was the question of the certainty of knowledge that is lasting, and, second, there was the question of the dignity [Dignität] of an experience that is ephemeral”.1 In this article I will take this as the problem of neo-Kantianism, for Benjamin. This is the problem of the establishment of continuity between objective knowledge and so-called ephemeral experience, i.e. a form of experience that is fragmentary and subjective. As I will show, for Benjamin, Kant was only able to give an answer to the first problem since his aim was to secure the timeless validity and certainty of cognition. In regards to neo-Kantianism, in order to secure the integrity of cognition from the ephemeral nature of experience, their concepts had to be purified of any content taken from sensible perception. The price neo-Kantianism paid for the dignity and integrity of its epistemological standpoint was the subordination of empirical experience to a transcendent conception of pure thought and a strictly logical method. Accordingly, the aim of this article is to clarify Benjamin’s relationship to neo-Kantianism and to provide the grounds for a Benjaminian critique of neo- Kantianism.

2 This piece will be divided into two parts. First, I will examine the neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen. I will focus on Cohen’s logical and scientific form of idealism, in particular its critique of Lange’s subjective idealism, on the one hand, and empiricism, on the other. Finally, I will look at Benjamin’s engagement with neo-Kantianism, specifically in “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy” and the short fragment “On Perception” (1917) that precedes it.

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I. Hermann Cohen’s Logical Idealism

3 Hermann Cohen’s neo-Kantianism exists in a relationship to the form of neo- Kantianism that preceded it, specifically the early neo-Kantianism of Hermann von Helmholtz and Friedrich Albert Lange. Helmholtz and Lange defended Kantianism against the philosophical standpoint known as scientific materialism. Put very briefly, scientific materialism held, against Kant, that the senses were the only instruments capable of objective knowledge of reality: There is no visible reason whatever why nature should deceive man … We may take a photograph of an object, a rose, for instance. It would be impossible for this photograph to evoke the same presentation in our brain as the original, if the presentation was not a fairly correct interpreter of reality.2 4 Helmholtz took issue with the empiricism characteristic of scientific materialism and held that sensation produced “signs [Zeichen] of the objects of the external world, and correspond[s] to them only in some such way as written characters or articulate words to the things they denote”.3 Helmholtz takes the precise opposite position to that of the scientific materialists: the image of an object is analogous to the original. Sensation offers a representation (or Abbild) of an object, but does not provide a direct copy (or Bild) of it.

5 For his part, Lange deepens Helmholtz’ critique of empiricism in his distinction between reality and the ideal. For Lange, as for Helmholtz, the sense organs are organs of abstraction, not truth. They can only lead to what is relatively true.4 For Lange, materialism points to what the idealist already knows: that knowledge, even sense knowledge, is a product of human organisation. Materialism, the lowest and firmest stage in philosophy, should be restricted to the empirical, while idealism should deal with the loftier aspects of human reason. Ideas are products of human organisation that are “grounded in the natural disposition of mankind and possess a practical purpose”.5 Lange offers what he refers to as the standpoint of the ideal, which is creative and aesthetic in character. The danger of the ideal is that materialism can destroy it as long as it is inexorably entwined with religious thought. Only by removing the core of religion in the process of elevating the soul above reality can idealism ensure its safety from materialist criticism.6 Lange claims that we must separate the idea “from any correspondence with historical and scientific knowledge, but also without falsification of them, let us accustom ourselves to regard the world of ideas as figurative representation of the entire truth, as just as indispensable to human progress as the knowledge of the understanding”.7 The strict separation between reality and the ideal is central to Lange’s standpoint in order to maintain the integrity of the ideal from the mechanistic worldview of the scientific materialists. At the same time, in viewing the ideal as purely figurative and external to reality, Lange inserts an ontological gap between the objectivity of the empirical world – governed by the mechanistic forces described by scientific materialism – and a free, spontaneous ideal that can only exist in contradistinction to reality. I will now move onto Cohen, beginning with his critique of Lange’s standpoint of the ideal. 6 For Cohen, Lange’s distinction between materialism and idealism was superficial. In renouncing idealism’s claim to knowledge of reality, Lange is forced to accept an empiricist theory of knowledge: knowledge must be restricted to what can be verified in experience. By reading Kant’s deduction of the categories psycho-physically, Lange

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believed that he could legitimately claim to have overcome the gap between the transcendental and empirical in Kant’s thought. For Cohen, this led to an inability on Lange’s part to locate his practical philosophy within the theoretical. This not only raises a problem for practical philosophy, but for theoretical philosophy as well. Lange, Cohen claims, treats the idea as “an inner emotional concept” rather than as an “epistemological emblem”.8 As a result of his naturalisation of the idea and his abandonment of ethics to the transcendent realm of the idea, Lange fundamentally misunderstood the nature of idealism. In contrast to Lange, Cohen aimed to assign ethics a status that raises it to the same level of dignity as the concepts of logic or mathematics. In doing so, he goes further than Lange in conceiving of the ethical idea as something that totally exceeds experience yet, at the same time, forms its fundamental basis. In Cohen’s words: “If all reality of experience, if all sensible existence were destroyed, its boundaries in the noumenon would have to remain. If all nature were to perish, the Idea of freedom would remain. If all experience should cease, ethical reality would remain”.9 7 Against Lange’s subjective ideal, as I will show, Cohen understands the ethical idea as a hypothesis that underlies empirical reality in pure thought. For Cohen, pure thought or reason cannot merely be a product of sensation. In turn, reality cannot be reduced to what can be sensibly intuited. As Cohen states in the Religion of Reason (1919): “The senses are in direct opposition to reason; basically they are common to animals and men”.10 In his logical and systematic approach, Cohen places his emphasis on critical idealism’s role in providing an epistemological foundation not only for ethics but also for all domains of inquiry into the nature of reality. Central to this project is a conception of the idea as hypothesis. Cohen places his conception of pure thought – thought that produces content by itself – against notions of representational thinking. According to Cohen’s reading of Kant, the factual validity of mathematical principles is presupposed and these principles are seen as pure because they are self-evident and non-derivable from empirical experience.11 For Cohen, mathematics is a model for pure thought insofar as it is non-representational; real knowledge is pure thought free from sensuous representation. Ideas as hypotheses both precede and ground being. As hypotheses, ideas provide the objective grounding for forms of representational thinking which follow. 8 The result of this conception of the relationship between conceptual science and reality is, for Cohen, the re-establishment of the link between both theoretical and practical philosophy, on the one hand, and speculative philosophical thought and scientific inquiry into the empirical world, on the other. However, by rejecting the subjectivist reading of Kant, Cohen subtly shifts the ground of Kant’s critique. In order to become scientifically valid, experience comes to be identified with scientific cognition. For Cohen, philosophy does not take science’s place, but as a form of critique it takes the ‘fact’ of science as its starting point. The aim of critical idealism differs from science in that it is the transcendental investigation into the possibility of nature as an object of scientific inquiry as such. Cohen is able to assert that the progress of critical philosophy plays a foundational role in principles that underlie natural science. Cohen, therefore, follows Lange’s privileging of thought over reality: “pure thought as the method for the foundation of reality”.12 As such, critical philosophy is best placed to investigate the grounds of science’s claim to knowledge of reality. This is the meaning of the neo-Kantian program of epistemological critique: that philosophy provides a

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critical theory of knowledge that is able to reflect on both its own and science’s methodological presuppositions. 9 For Cohen, any theory of the subject must wrestle with the fact that an empirical or psychological subject is not the subject of valid knowledge, but of error. The objectivity and validity of knowledge must, therefore, be posited at the level of a transcendental logic that exceeds the empirical psychological subject. Cohen marks a distinction between an empirical subject who is the subject of error, and the form of transcendental logic that exceeds both the empirical subject and reality itself. Critical idealism asserts a logical-transcendental subject that acts as the normative principle and grounds for a form of judgement that is free from error. With this, Cohen is able to overcome the distinction between materialism and idealism that Lange could only achieve by assigning the two standpoints to their respective theoretical corners. Against Lange’s dualism, Cohen is able to reconcile the two standpoints immanently in pure thought. Materialism’s absolute – whether it is matter, the atom, or nature – only gains its objective reality as a product of pure thought. The application of a concept of pure thought to empirical reality and the objective knowledge that this application provides can only be justified critically in reference to the concept’s origin. It is this notion of origin that is central to Cohen’s critical idealism. Through his concept of origin, Cohen is able to posit a transcendental unity of consciousness that exists in pure thought prior to any distinction between subject and object. For Cohen, there is a logical origin [Ursprung] prior to any form of judgement based on the distinction between thought and being. 10 Inherent in Cohen’s conception of rational origin, therefore, is a rejection of the Kantian separation of the spontaneous faculty of the understanding and a receptive faculty of sensibility. Cohen remains within the Kantian problematic in relation to the limits of possible experience, in particular the limit of empirical or sense experience. However, he separates his logic of origin from any form of philosophy that begins from a logic of being, a standpoint that Cohen claims characterized romanticism.13 In Cohen’s logic of origin, being or existence is subordinated to pure thought. Cohen’s claim is that the logic of origin is the foundation of modern science and, therefore, his form of idealism. Origin is a principle for Cohen in two senses of the word: first, it is the supreme principle of pure knowledge from which every content originates and is grounded; second, pure thought as the thought of origin produces both the object of knowledge and grounds that object in thought. 11 For Cohen, “[o]nly thought itself can produce what can count as being”.14 In terms of the first point, the aim of knowledge is a process of verification by which it can verify objects of knowledge as products of pure thought.15 In terms of the second, Cohen’s conception of pure thought requires that nothing be given to thought prior to its determinations. In other words, to the extent that it is productive, pure thought must be able to situate its object of knowledge within itself prior to any a posteriori determinations. Pure thought does not presuppose a given reality or object which presents itself to thought externally through the forms of sensible intuition. Kant’s “Anticipations of Perception” demonstrates how appearance manifests itself in sensible intuition. There is, for Kant, a sense in which the object must have a substantial reality in order for it to appear as object for determination by the understanding. For Cohen, by contrast, the givenness of the object is not an issue; the determination of reality is consigned solely to the spontaneous and productive understanding. Empirical reality,

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as an apparently independent object of knowledge standing over and against pure thought, is conceived as an incomplete object to which the epistemological method of the mathematical sciences is successively and continually applied. The object of scientific knowledge, given to thought through the forms of sensible intuition, can be said to exist merely as a ‘not yet’ conceptualized point on which the methods of mathematical and natural science are progressively converging. 12 Cohen, then, conceives of the forms of Kant’s “Transcendental Aesthetic” as a mere moment in the process of the progressive methodological development of the natural sciences. While Cohen acknowledges the importance of the forms of intuition for Kant, he is also, at the same time, able to undermine their centrality within the Kantian system. In other words, for Cohen, Kant quite correctly began from the highest point of scientific development available to him, but that moment has since been subordinated in the movement of scientific progress. The validity of the forms of intuition as principles of science must be acknowledged, but they were not Kant’s central contribution to philosophy. Rather, for Cohen, Kant’s significance is found in his general methodological starting point: the basic ‘fact’ of pure mathematical science, rather than the application of any particular scientific principles. For Cohen, the reality intuited through Kant’s forms is not something that exists over and against the concepts of natural science as a ‘thing’ to be deciphered. Rather, reality is only constituted as an object of knowledge through its subordination to pure, meta- empirical scientific concepts.16 Therefore, for Cohen, the manifold of sensation existing independently of pure thought is substituted for the methodological progression of science and a genetic theory of knowledge. 13 The principles of this form of thought are non-representational, mathematical, and independent of empirical consciousness. In contrast to the ephemeral nature of sense- experience, Cohen claims that philosophy “requires the presupposition of the eternal as opposed to the transitoriness of the earthly institutions and human ideas”.17 In light of this, it can be said that Cohen subordinates being and existence to thought in order to safeguard the certainty and continuity of knowledge against the transitory nature of sensibility and experience. For Cohen being is primarily the being of thinking and this is what distinguishes his form of logical idealism from what he understood as the logic of being characteristic of subject-oriented forms of idealism that include both Helmholtz and Lange. 14 Cohen’s most significant break with Kant is his conception of pure thought, which is based on the rejection of Kant’s dualistic claim that knowledge has its origin in both the active faculty of the understanding, on one side, and the passive faculty of sensibility that exists independently of the understanding, on the other. Cohen, therefore, rejects the independent mediating faculty of pure intuition. He is able to overcome the problems that this rejection introduces by incorporating what he calls the ‘fact’ of the pure mathematical science. By incorporating this ‘fact’ of pure mathematic science into his logical method, Cohen is able to subordinate sensibility to the understanding through an extension of the transcendental logic to the forms of sensible intuition. For Cohen, this is possible since space and time are conceived of merely as principles derived from the fact of science. Cohen’s pure logical thought, then, becomes the basis for scientific experience in contradistinction to Kant’s ultimately empiricist concept of experience, which is based upon the faculties of sensible intuition. While Kant was forced to posit a separation between experience and knowledge, Cohen is able to posit

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the continuity of knowledge and scientific experience. For Cohen the continuity occurs within pure thought itself through the dissolution of the Kantian distinction between sensibility and the understanding. The continuity that Cohen asserts, however, is only established through the purification of empirical experience, i.e. within scientific experience and the 15 subordination of a posteriori experience to the logical structures of pure mathematical science.

II. Benjamin’s Critique of Cohen’s Logical Idealism

16 How does Walter Benjamin relate to the neo-Kantian tradition? In the two texts I examine at length in this section – his fragment “On Perception” and his essay “The Program of the Coming Philosophy” – Benjamin problematizes the Kantian and neo- Kantian epistemological standpoint. Kant, Benjamin claims, began from a very narrow concept of experience: As an experience of the world, it was of the lowest order. The very fact that Kant was able to commence his immense work under the constellation of the Enlightenment indicates that he undertook his work on the basis of an experience virtually reduced to a nadir, to a minimum of significance. Indeed, one can say that the very greatness of his work, his unique radicalism, presupposed an experience which had almost no intrinsic value and which could have attained its (we may say) sad significance only through its certainty.18 17 While it is true that, Kant, especially in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that will be able to come forward as Science (1783), derived the principles of experience from natural science, particularly mathematical physics, he did not aim to make experience identical to the ‘object realm’ of science. Nevertheless, Kant did restrict the possible objects of experience to those of Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics insofar as the experience that counted for Kant was a form of scientific experience. As I will show, the Kantian emphasis on an objective and certain form of scientific experience led to a separation between experience in the everyday sense of the word and pure knowledge.

18 In contrast to the Kantian non-identity of knowledge and experience, Benjamin locates a different trend amongst the neo-Kantians. Specifically he recognizes their attempt to provide a systematic unity of knowledge. Whether or not this is successful remains to be seen, but nevertheless it remains an important point of difference between Kant and neo-Kantianism. Neither the Marburg School, of which Cohen was a member, nor the South-West or Baden School were exclusively concerned with scientific knowledge, but were interested in aesthetics, religion and ethics – in the case of Cohen – and history and culture in the case of Heinrich Rickert. In light of this, it is essential to grasp the distinction between Kant and neo-Kantianism in Benjamin’s critique. Therefore, I propose to evaluate Benjamin’s critique of Kant and neo-Kantianism on the basis of the two-fold problem of experience he poses: “First of all, there was the question of the certainty of knowledge that is lasting, and, second, there was the question of the dignity [Dignität] of an experience that is ephemeral”.19 For Benjamin, Kant was only able to give an answer to the first question since his aim was to secure the timeless validity and certainty of cognition. In regards to neo-Kantianism, in order to secure the integrity of cognition from the ephemeral nature of experience, their concepts had to be purified of any content taken from sensible perception. Thus, the price that neo- Kantianism paid for the dignity and integrity of its epistemological standpoint was the

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subordination of empirical experience to a transcendent conception of pure thought and a strictly logical method. 19 Before moving onto Benjamin’s critique of neo-Kantianism, it is necessary to examine how his critique relates to Kant, and also how neo-Kantianism interprets Kantian philosophy. This will allow us to navigate Benjamin’s apparent conflation of Kant and neo-Kantianism in the aforementioned texts. It is useful, in this regard, to briefly examine Benjamin’s fragment “On Perception”, written in 1917, which precedes the 1918 “Program”. In this text, the conflation of the Kantian and neo-Kantian standpoints appears more pronounced. Benjamin appears to provide a justification for the necessity of the neo-Kantian approach to concept formation from within the standpoint of Kantian critical philosophy. In short, Benjamin appears to largely accept the neo- Kantian problematic in regards to conceptual realism, i.e. the view that concepts are mirror images or accurate reproductions of reality – a view that both Cohen and Rickert rejected. Thus, Benjamin accepts the necessity of a fundamental separation between empirical experience and pure knowledge. The necessity of this separation is found in Kant’s aim to avoid the collapse of his metaphysical concept of pure knowledge into the concept of experience. Benjamin locates a specific meaning of metaphysics in the context of Kant’s philosophy: “Kant produced a metaphysics of nature and in it described that part of the natural sciences which is pure – that which proceeds not from experience but simply from reason a priori”.20 This conception of knowledge faced potential problems from two sides. On one side, there is the empiricist problem of collapsing sensibility into the understanding. As a result, knowledge becomes subjective; it is conceived of as a product of experience. On the other hand, there is the rationalist problem of a discontinuity between knowledge and experience. In order to avoid this problematic, as Benjamin states, Kant posited “the so-called material of sensation to express the separation of the forms of intuition from the categories”.21 In doing so, Kant could ground the continuity of a posteriori experience and knowledge while retaining the necessary separation between pure knowledge and empirical experience. The separation was achieved through the forms of intuition in which, as Benjamin puts it, the material of sensation is “imperfectly absorbed”.22 20 For Benjamin, however, despite the scrutiny that Kant gives to metaphysics qua pure cognition, the concept of experience does not undergo the same critical treatment. In light of this, Benjamin makes a fundamental distinction between the concept of experience [der Begriff der Erfahrung] and the cognition of experience [die Erkenntnis der Erfahrung] which, he claims, have often been conflated in both Kantian and pre-Kantian philosophy. Due to this conflation, the differences between the immediate natural concept of experience and the cognition of experience have become confused. In order to secure the continuity and give it the quality of being a possible object of cognition, cognition of experience must be unified at a level that exceeds transitory sense experience. Thus, as Benjamin claims, at this point we are talking about two different conceptual realms – one empirical or experiential, and the other conceptual. 21 What Benjamin terms the cognition of experience, operates at the level of pure scientific knowledge, not concrete experience. As Benjamin states, for Kant “experience as an object of cognition is the unified and continuous manifold of cognition”.23 In other words, it is only in the form of abstract objective experience that experience as such can become a proper object of cognition in the Kantian sense. Thus, for Benjamin, the experience that counted for Kant was that which could be granted the status of

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objective validity, i.e. that form of experience that Benjamin terms scientific experience. Kant had to separate what he understands as pure experience from natural or empirical experience in order to secure it as a valid object of knowledge. Therefore, for Kant, cognition is, as Benjamin insisted above, the system of nature, but with the caveat that the system of nature is by no means merely what is intuited sensibly. 22 According to Benjamin, it is precisely on the discontinuity between cognition and experience that Kant distinguished himself from the pre-Enlightenment tradition. For Benjamin, the pre-Enlightenment or rationalist tradition had an exalted conception of experience, one that was close to God. As such, the possibility of a rationalist deduction of knowledge from a first principle, i.e. the absolute, or an empiricist deduction of knowledge from experience was deemed possible. For Benjamin, however, the concept of experience that characterized the Enlightenment had, by contrast, been “stripped of its proximity to God”.24 In conceiving of God as remote from both nature and existence, the concept of experience had been implicitly transformed. For Benjamin, what Kant provided was the methodological grounds by which such an impoverished form of experience can become a valid object of knowledge, i.e. one that is objective and universal. In order to guarantee the certainty and objectivity of knowledge, an appeal to principles beyond mere experience is necessary. Thus a discontinuity between experience and pure cognition is introduced, and the Newtonian and Euclidean conceptions of space and time become the valid forms of pure sensible intuition.25 23 Implicit within Kant’s theory of knowledge, therefore, is a restriction of the possible objects of experience to those presented through the forms of pure intuition, namely objects of Euclidean Geometry and Newtonian physics. Furthermore, the grounds upon which the knowledge of the object is established objectively prohibits the continuity between empirical consciousness and experience qua scientific experience. Genuine knowledge rests on transcendental consciousness, a pure epistemological consciousness stripped of any subjective character. Despite this separation between knowledge and experience, as Benjamin claims, Kant’s transcendental consciousness is formed through an analogy with empirical consciousness. Objectively certain knowledge is produced in relation to an empirical consciousness whose experience is characterized by the impoverished experience available to it. This is Benjamin’s crucial point: Kant objectifies the impoverished concept of experience – the only experience he sees as available to the empirical subject – in the transcendental subject. As such, the limited, impoverished concept of experience is hypostasized when it becomes the basis of the Kantian conception of pure knowledge. 24 In light of this, Benjamin appears to see some promise in the neo-Kantian dissolution of the distinction between intuition and the intellect, something he also mentions in the fragment “On Perception”. With this, Benjamin claims, there is a reconfiguration of the concept of experience itself. Within the elimination of the distinction between the independent faculty of sensible intuition and the spontaneous faculty of the understanding is a point at which the subject-object logic of Kant’s epistemology is undermined. The question is how far can Benjamin take this from within the standpoint of neo-Kantianism? In his critique, Benjamin makes clear that in the interest of establishing the continuity of experience, neo-Kantianism represented experience as the system of sciences. As Benjamin claims, the neo-Kantian “rectification” of Kant’s separation of sensibility and understanding ends “in the extreme extension of the mechanical aspect of the relatively empty Enlightenment

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concept of experience”.26 They remain within the Kantian conception of experience as scientific experience that could not absorb metaphysical experience any more than the material of sensation is absorbed by the forms of sensible intuition. Thus, at the precise point at which neo-Kantianism aims to move beyond the Kantian concept of experience, it remains tied to the Kantian theory of knowledge. Accordingly, for Benjamin, both Kant and neo-Kantianism remain tied to a concept of experience derived from an Enlightenment worldview that comes to occupy a mythical status in both philosophies. In their attempt to overcome the object nature of the thing-in-itself, both Kant and neo-Kantianism prioritize a concept of experience, and a subject of that experience, which is discontinuous with experience in the everyday sense of the word. 25 By beginning from the ‘fact of science’, reality is absorbed into pure thought as the object realm to which the methods of pure mathematical science are applied.27 Knowledge becomes objective through its subordination to a transcendental logic distinct from empirical reality and a posteriori experience. But while Kant was forced to posit a separation between experience and knowledge, Cohen is able to posit the continuity of knowledge and scientific experience. For Cohen the continuity occurs within pure thought itself through the dissolution of the Kantian distinction between sensibility and the understanding. Thus, Cohen achieves what Kant could not within his separation between the faculties of sensibility and understanding. The continuity Cohen establishes, however, is only established through the purification of empirical experience, i.e. within scientific experience and the subordination of a posteriori experience to the logical structures of pure mathematical science. 26 Therefore, the solution offered by the neo-Kantians to Kant’s separation of knowledge and experience exacerbates the problem for Benjamin. Neo-Kantianism extends the mechanical concept of experience that Benjamin found so problematic in the first place. Further, the mythical separation between subject and object that Kant presupposed becomes the foundation of neo-Kantian epistemology. The given reality of perception – the empirical world – is conceived as an object of knowledge upon which the methods of natural science are continually and progressively converging. The objects that constitute that world are meaningful only insofar as they are objects of, or perhaps better yet, objects for knowledge. As Peter Fenves claims, within this mechanical concept of experience “there is no object of experience, for objects mean nothing”.28 For Benjamin, neo-Kantianism had to reject sense experience in order to secure the continuity of pure scientific knowledge. Cohen’s neo-Kantianism pushes the Kantian scientific worldview to its limit by absorbing empirical reality into pure thought; the object of scientific knowledge is thus not a concrete phenomenal thing, but a purely conceptual idea that exists in total separation from the world of perception and experience. The systematic continuum of knowledge and experience is achieved at the level of scientific knowledge through the extension of a form of transcendental logic. Thus, neo-Kantianism is systematic in a way that Kantian philosophy could not be; but it only achieves its systematicity by subordinating all forms of experience to its pure logic based on the principles of mathematical and natural science. In opposition to the Kantian separation of knowledge and experience, Cohen provides the foundation of the systematic continuity and unity of knowledge through the absolutisation of a genetic conception of pure logical thought. 27 It is from this perspective that Benjamin claims experience has been reduced to something meaningless, insignificant and without value for neo-Kantianism.

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Experience only becomes significant when it is objectified and subordinated to meta- empirical scientific principles or, as Benjamin states, “through its certainty”.29 Science requires an object, an object moreover that is objective and certain. For experience to become such an object, its timeless validity must be secured. As objects of scientific inquiry, experience and the objects of experience are conceived of as meaningful and significant only insofar as they can be understood as valid objects of knowledge; experience itself is only continuous and certain insofar as it becomes objectified as scientific experience. Thus, while Benjamin concurs with the neo-Kantian demand for a continuity of experience and knowledge, he disputes the mathematical and scientific foundation of their epistemology that prioritizes abstract scientific experience and posits the unity of subject and object of experience within pure logical thought. Such a standpoint creates an unbridgeable gulf between the experiencing subject and the object of experience while, at the same time, stripping objects of their individual significance and meaning.

Conclusion

28 The twin aims of Benjamin’s text become quite clear when counter-posed with Cohen’s logical idealism: firstly, establishing the possibility of the continuity of knowledge and experience from the standpoint of concrete empirical experience; secondly, the overcoming of the mythic separation of subject and object that Benjamin views as present in both Kant’s philosophy and neo-Kantianism. As Benjamin states: The task of future epistemology is to find for knowledge a sphere of total neutrality in regard to the concepts of both subject and object; in other words to discover the autonomous, innate sphere of knowledge in which this concept no longer continues to designate the relation between two metaphysical entities.30 29 In order to overcome the mechanistic and abstract categories of neo-Kantianism, Benjamin proposes a revision of the Kantian categories founded upon or connected to what he refers to as primal concepts [Urbegriffe]. With its mathematical and logical ontology, neo-Kantianism had extended the Aristotelian categories of Kant’s transcendental logic that are, for Benjamin, “both arbitrarily posed and exploited in a very one-sided way by Kant in the light of mechanical experience”.31 With a new theory of orders, Benjamin claims to be able to expand the possible areas of experience to include those areas that Kant was unable to systematize.32 While systematic in his intent, the categories of Benjamin’s theory of knowledge would not be imposed externally onto experience from the standpoint of a timelessly valid scientific knowledge. Rather, the theory of knowledge itself must be expanded to include a form of experience that Benjamin calls “multiply gradated” and “nonmechanical”.33

30 Benjamin highlights a tension between the Kantian claim that the concepts must be connected to a form of subjective intuition and the neo-Kantian claim that non- representational concepts exists prior to reality in the form of transcendent logical structures. Benjamin’s new theory of orders must be able to overcome this tension by both providing a sphere of pure knowledge from which concepts can be derived while, at the same time, providing continuity between experience and the concepts that structure experience. Benjamin aims to provide the foundation for a theory of knowledge that remains within the spirit of Kantian philosophy without imposing the limitations of knowledge qua scientific experience. In revising the Kantian theory of

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knowledge and experience, Benjamin is able to expand the sphere of possible experiences without reducing the object of experience to an object for a specific type of experience. 31 Benjamin’s critique of neo-Kantianism is, perhaps, more satisfying than his proposed solution, which is underdeveloped in the two texts I examined here. However, perhaps it is not surprising that, in this context, Benjamin points to the figure of Johann Georg Hamann and, moreover, that after his engagement with neo-Kantianism he turned to the Romantic theory of reflection. (After all, the notion of an immanent absolute stands in stark contrast to Cohen’s philosophy.) While I have noted disagreements between Cohen and Lange, they share the notion that the ideal, the concept or the Absolute are in opposition to existing reality. As Cohen writes in his Religion of Reason: Messianism degrades and despises and destroys the present actuality, in order to put in the place of this sensible actuality a new kind of supersensible actuality, not supernatural, but of the future. The future creates a new earth and a new heaven and, consequently, a new actuality.34 32 In positing a gulf between a temporally specific experience of either past or present and a fulfilled experience deferred into the messianic future, Cohen forecloses any possibility of a metaphysically expanded concept of experience and denies the possibility of an immanent continuity between knowledge and existence. Cohen, therefore, juxtaposes two realms of experience – the eternal present of finite and immediate sensuous experience, and the paradoxical eternal novelty of an authentic experience posited in the messianic future. This, however, rests on the presupposition of the temporally specific conception of sense experience as something devoid of significance and meaning. The messianic future resides within the domain of universal history; the progressive universal development towards an eternal idea, an idea that remains absolutely discontinuous with the earthly sensuous actuality and activity of human beings. In its nihilistic rejection of reality, Cohen’s neo-Kantianism lacks any force on the present. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Benjamin turns to Romanticism and its notion of an immanent absolute for a potential alternative to the problem of modern experience, i.e. the absence of the Absolute, totality, and unity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BENJAMIN, Walter, “On Perception”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 93-96.

BENJAMIN, Walter, “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 100-110.

BENJAMIN, Walter, “Review of Richard Hönigswald’s Philosophie und Sprache”, in: Selected Writings 4, 1938-1940, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 139-144.

BÜCHNER, Ludwig, Last Words on Materialism and Kindred Subjects, trans. Joseph

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McCabe (London: Watts & Co., 1901).

COHEN, Hermann, Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode and seine Geschichte: Ein Kapitel zur Grundlegung der Erkenntniskritik (Berlin: Dümmler, 1883).

COHEN, Hermann, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

FENVES, Peter, The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).

VON HELMHOLTZ, Hermann, Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, trans. E. Atkinson (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1881).

KÖHNKNE, Klaus Christian, The Rise of neo-Kantianism, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

LANGE, Fredrich Albert, History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance: Volume 2, trans. Ernest Chester Thomas (London: Routledge, 2001).

POMA, Andrea, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, trans. John Denton (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997).

ROSE, Gillian, Hegel Contra Sociology (London: Verso, 2009).

WAHL, Reiner, “Identity and Correlation in Hermann Cohen’s System of Philosophy”, in: Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism, ed. Reiner W. Munk (Amsterdam: Springer, 2006).

ENDNOTES

1. Walter Benjamin, “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 101. 2. Ludwig Büchner, Last Words on Materialism and Kindred Subjects, trans. Joseph McCabe (London: Watts & Co., 1901), p. 279. 3. Hermann von Helmholtz, Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, trans. E. Atkinson (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1881), p. 45. 4. Cf. Fredrich Albert Lange, History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance: Volume 2, trans. Ernest Chester Thomas (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 218. 5. Cf. ibid, p. 165. 6. Cf. ibid. p. 344/345. 7. Ibid, p. 346. 8. Klaus Christian Köhnke, TheRrise of neo-Kantianism, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 190-91. 9. Ibid, p. 194. 10. Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 6. 11. For a discussion of this issue, see: Gillian Rose, Hegel Contra Sociology (London: Verso, 2009), p. 11; see also: Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, trans. John Denton (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), p. 36. For Poma, Cohen’s emphasis on the un-derivable nature of ideas reveals that Cohen’s idealism is more indebted to a Platonic theory of ideas than a Kantian notion of a priori synthesis. 12. Poma, “The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen”, p. 58.

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13. For example, in grounding his logic within ethics rather than the other way around, Cohen argues that Fichte commits an error typical of a logic of being. Crucially, for Cohen, ethics can only achieve an objective grounding if it recognizes and is subordinated to the primacy of logic qua pure thought. 14. Poma, “The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen”, p. 92. 15. Reiner Wahl puts this succinctly: “it is the movement of pure thought, which produces its thoughts from itself, to verify them as pure knowledge. The one and the other go together in this process of thought: the production of pure thought – not from pre-existing data, but from itself – and the verification of this thought as pure knowledge.” (Rainer Wahl, “Identity and Correlation in Hermann Cohen’s System of Philosophy”, in: Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism, ed. Reinier W. Munk [Amsterdam: Springer, 2006], p. 85-6.) 16. Cf. Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways (Chicago: Open Court, 2000), p. 31. 17. Cohen, “Religion of Reason”, p. 83. 18. Benjamin, “On the Programme of the Coming Philosophy”, p. 101. 19. Ibid. 20. Benjamin, “On Perception”, p. 93. 21. Ibid, p. 94. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid, p. 95. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid, p. 94. 26. Benjamin, “On the Programme of the Coming Philosophy”, p. 105. 27. Cf. Hermann Cohen, Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode and seine Geschichte: Ein Kapitel zur Grundlegung der Erkenntniskritik (Berlin: Dümmler, 1883), p. 119-20. 28. Peter Fenves, The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), p. 166. 29. A link between neo-Kantianism and positivism can be perceived in such a concept of knowledge. This is the claim Benjamin makes in a review of the neo-Kantian Richard Hönigswald’s Philosophie und Sprache, written between 1938 and 1939: “the weakness of neo- Kantianism lies in its unconscious complicity with positivism – a complicity which it has always denied.” The dominance of neo-Kantianism in Germany resulted in the loss of “critical and imaginative energies” which was echoed in the complicity and adaptation of neo-Kantian philosophy to the “established order”. For Benjamin, from Natorp through to Cassier and Hönigswald, the critical energy of the early neo-Kantianism had been replaced by a dogmatic belief in the progress of science, and “the transcendental questioning had gradually been transformed into a ceremony no longer animated by any real intellectual effort.” (Walter Benjamin, “Review of Richard Hönigswald’s Philosophie und Sprache”, in: Selected Writings 4, 1938-1940, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006], p. 140.) 30. Benjamin, “On the Programme of the Coming Philosophy”, p. 104. 31. Ibid, p. 106. 32. Benjamin names art, jurisprudence and history as forms of this experience, but also includes the scientific forms of experience, such as biology, that Kant ignored because, as forms of empirical science, they did not meet the Kantian standard of apodictic certainty and objective validity. 33. Benjamin, “On the Programme of the Coming Philosophy”, p. 107. 34. Cohen, Religion of Reason, p. 291.

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ABSTRACTS

This article aims to examine the relationship between Walter Benjamin and neo-Kantianism, particularly Herman Cohen’s logical idealism. I divide the article into two major sections: first, I examine the development of Cohen’s philosophy and its relationship to Hermann von Helmholtz and Friedrich Albert Lange’s early neo-Kantianism; second, I examine Benjamin’s critique of Cohen. I focus specifically on two of Benjamin’s early philosophical works — the fragment “On Perception” and the text “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”. Further, I aim to show how Benjamin attempts to disentangle neo-Kantianism from Kant’s own philosophy. In doing so, Benjamin points to an alternative from within the tradition of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy.

INDEX

Keywords: Benjamin Walter, Cohen Hermann, Kant Immanuel, neo-Kantianism, epistemology

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Where the Past Was, There History Shall Be Benjamin, Marx, and the “Tradition of the Oppressed”

Sami Khatib

“How to preserve the radical negativity of the revolutionary event? How to transmit the amnesiac rupture within history – to initiate a tradition of the impossibility of tradition? Our contemporary obsession with anti-monuments … begins right here. Failing to keep pace with the events, revolutionary artifacts became instantly obsolete, thus needing to be destroyed, and the destruction in turn to be commemorated, sacralized, and eternalized, the ruins carefully preserved in their desecrated condition.” Rebecca Comay1

I. Contra Tradition

1 In his influential essay ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific’ from 1880, Engels deemed tradition “a great retarding force,” “the vis inertiae of history.” 2 This negative view became the dominant version of historical materialism’s take on tradition. Already in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), Marx laid out the foundation of what later became the historical materialist concept of history: After the triumph of the bourgeoisie there was no longer any question of the good or the bad side of feudalism. The bourgeoisie took possession of the productive forces it had developed under feudalism. All the old economic forms, the corresponding civil relations, the political system which was the official expression of the old civil society, were smashed.3 2 This assertion is not simply descriptive but politically emphatic and affirmative. Consequently, Marx acknowledged the revolutionary function of the bourgeois class:

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“As the main thing is not to be deprived of the fruits of civilisation, of the acquired productive forces, the traditional forms in which they were produced must be smashed.”4 As the ‘fruits of civilisation’ are only employed yet not exceeded by (or identical with) bourgeois society, the proletarian revolution could still be envisaged as the heir, however revolutionary, of these fruits. In this vein, in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1847/48), Marx and Engels famously celebrated the task of the bourgeoisie as that of mercilessly liquefying the social relations of feudalism: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned”.5 The proletariat and its revolutionary mission takes its cue from the revolutionary thrust of the dawn of the early bourgeois age, radicalising the disintegrating dynamic of capitalism, rooting out both the remainders of feudal society and the newly established socio-political forms of bourgeois society.

3 If tradition is the compliance with communal customs, passed on from an undefined past, tradition can only become an integral element of capitalist society once it is relegated to the limited fields of culture and religion. Although capitalism and its new ruling class, the bourgeoisie, “cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society,”6 the compartmentalised domains of religion and culture allow for a conservative stance on ‘tradition’, which is, as it were, a bourgeois invention. Tradition as a bourgeois concept has its assigned place outside of the technological and social revolutions of the sphere of productive forces. That is to say, in the age of its bourgeois reproducibility, tradition is not per se ‘conservative’; rather, it lends its ‘retarding’ (Engels) force to a project that is both affirmative and negative. While creating cultural meaning and legitimacy, it promises not to change current relations of production which are constantly under pressure from the transformative field of productive forces. Tradition allows for the fantasy that, in a world in which ‘all that is solid melts into air’, a limited district of bourgeois life could be exempted from radical change, and harmonised with the existing capitalist relations of production. Consequently, the political project of changing the relations of production, allowing for the collective access to property beyond private property, appears counter-traditional. As Marx and Engels succinctly put it: “The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.”7 Nevertheless, as we shall see, it is precisely the history of class struggle and struggles against oppression that can become a source of emancipatory tradition. However, from a bourgeois ‘conservative’ perspective, the realm of tradition, traditional values and practices are defined as a reified, albeit limited zone of continuity capable of withstanding the revolutionising force of capitalist modernisation. Benjamin’s later critique of the bourgeois concept of Kulturgüter, “cultural treasures” (SW 4, 391) and “cultural history” (SW 3, 268), will engage with this fantasy and its socialist variants. If cultural history’s project is to “augment the weight of the treasure accumulating on the back of humanity,” a revolutionary stance has to rely on modernity’s destructive forces in order to gain “the strength to shake off this burden so as to take control of it” (ibid.).8 4 Marx and Engels’ attack on tradition chimes with Benjamin’s effort – one century later – to refute the bourgeois idea of cultural history and its so-called ‘cultural treasures’.9 A crucial difference, however, cannot be missed: Benjamin’s concept of history does not rely on the idea that the dialectics of the (‘retarding’) relations of production, and the

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(‘accelerating’) productive forces would inevitably lead to social revolution. Marx’s processual concept of historical materialism is not to be mistaken for economic automatism. However, his famous formulation from A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) seems to locate the communist project of overcoming capitalism on the winning side of world history. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.10 5 The outcome of this fight was not guaranteed in Marx’s time either. When Benjamin wrote his last text, the theses “On the Concept of History” (1940) this fight was lost – at least for Benjamin and his generation.

II. Dialectics of Tradition

6 Instead of revoking his Marxism, Benjamin proposes a different reading of historical materialism, resulting in a radical revision of vulgar Marxism and, to a lesser degree, Marx’s processual concept of history. From a non-defeatist position of defeat, Benjamin conceives of history not as a progressive flow of “homogeneous, empty time” (SW 4, 395), but as an anachronic constellation of past and present, shot through with sparks of messianic time. Benjamin calls these short-circuits of past and present Jetztzeit, “now-time” (SW 4, 395). According to this anti-evolutionary concept of history, the past is never simply gone; it can never be fully historicised unless it is recalled – cited in a revolutionary way. Only if politics has the capacity to anticipate the kairos, the ‘opportune moment’ for a “tiger’s leap into the past,” can “the dialectical leap” that “Marx understood as revolution” interrupt the catastrophic course of history (SW 4, 395). In this way, history, historiography, and revolutionary action are inextricably intertwined; an allegedly neutral perspective, detached from political struggles, only leads to “‘empathy with the victor’” (SW 4, 406). And “the rulers at any time,” as Benjamin reminds us, “are the heirs of all those who have been victorious throughout history” (SW 4, 406). Against this form of victors’ history, be it historicist, progressivist or evolutionist, Benjamin argues for a truly historical concept of history, aiming at the revolutionary encounter of past and present, accessible only for “the struggling, oppressed class” (SW 4, 394). In this sense, the task of the materialist historiographer is both radically partisan and universal: “The history-writing subject is, properly, that part of humanity whose solidarity embraces all the oppressed. It is the part which can take the greatest theoretical risks because, in practical terms, it has the least to lose” (SW 4, 404).11

7 The medium in which the present is connected to all lost causes and struggles of those who literally and metaphorically have lost their histories is called the ‘tradition of the oppressed’. Against common views of historical materialism, Benjamin proposes a

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dialectical understanding of the notion of tradition in his preparatory notes for the theses ‘On the Concept of History’. (Basic aporia: “Tradition as the discontinuum of the past in contradiction to history as the continuum of events.” – “It may be that the continuum of tradition is semblance [Schein]. But then precisely the persistence of this semblance of persistence provides it with continuity.”) (Basic aporia: “The history of the oppressed is a discontinuum.” – “The task of history is to get hold of the tradition of the oppressed.”) More on these aporias: “The continuum of history is the one of the oppressors. Whereas the idea [Vorstellung] of the continuum levels everything to the ground, the idea [Vorstellung] of the discontinuum is the foundation of real tradition.” [crossed out passage:] What characterizes revolutionary classes at the moment of their action is the consciousness of historical discontinuity. On the other hand, however, the class’s revolutionary action is most closely related to the class’s concept (not only of coming history but also) of past history. This is only an apparent contradiction: bridging the gap of two millennia the French Revolution drew on the Roman Republic. (GS I, 1236)12 8 What Benjamin addresses here in terms of aporias relates back to the contradictory meaning of tradition. As the proverb has it, ‘tradition is not to preserve the ashes but to pass on the flame.’ Its root, the Latin verb tradere, conveys a variety of meanings, the most common of which is to hand down, to transmit, to pass on. However, tradere also denotes surrender, giving away, betrayal. This last meaning could give us a first hint of how Benjamin conceives of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’. Tradition does not establish continuity through transmission but is a discontinuum fissured by lack, privation and betrayal. However, he claims that the fractured medium of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’ is not only negative, for history also transmits a redemptive messianic force. But how are we to detect this force, and who is ‘we’ in this case? In another note Benjamin writes: The historical materialist who investigates the structure of history performs, in his way, a sort of spectrum analysis. Just as a physicist determines the presence of ultraviolet light in the solar spectrum, so the historical materialist determines the presence of a messianic force in history. Whoever wishes to know what the situation of a “redeemed humanity” [erlöste Menschheit] might actually be, what conditions are required for the development of such a situation, and when this development can be expected to occur, poses questions to which there are no answers. He might just as well seek to know the color of ultraviolet rays. (SW 4, 402) 9 Such messianic spectral analysis may bring an invisible colour to the fore. If the light of history also transmits messianic rays, then the medium in which they are imparted and discontinuously passed on is the ‘tradition of the oppressed’. This medium is not continuous, transparent and neutral but discontinuous, opaque and politically partisan – its texture is woven out of struggles, empty-spots and disjointed elements, which cannot be represented in one transmittable image or inscribed into one multifaceted yet coherent world-history. In this sense, the metaphor of continuous rays might be misleading; it does not come as a surprise that in the final version of the ‘Theses’ Benjamin limits his messianic imagery to “splinters of messianic time” (SW 4, 397). Moreover, with the messianic force in history, the boundaries of natural science’s image-space are reached. For Benjamin’s historical materialist cannot count on scientific laws. Unlike a physicist, he or she has no measurement at hand to pursue a messianic spectral analysis of history. The only feature borrowed from natural science concerns its experimental character. Throughout the notes of the ‘Theses’, Benjamin

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acknowledges the tentative approach of his version of historical materialism. However, this experimental character has a politically firm guiding structure. For “[w]ithout some sort of assay [Prüfung] of the classless society, there is only a historical forgery [Geschichtsklitterung] of the past” (SW 4, 407).13 Benjamin’s experimental ‘Theses’ borrow their language and imagery from various fields of knowledge, be it Marxism, theology, surrealism, literary criticism or natural science. However, the fractured medium in which history will have been told is bound to a partisan experience and perspective. For only the ‘tradition of the oppressed’ imparts a genuinely historical image of the past. This is why Benjamin remains a fierce critic of the humanist idea of cultural heritage and commemoration; the latter always represents a reified image of the past, seen from the perspective of victor’s of history, aiming at neutralising the messianic force in history.

10 In this sense, Benjamin’s peculiar version of historical materialism is not limited to an alternative or ‘messianic’ historiography. Within the discontinuous medium of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’, struggles of the past are not diachronically strung together but synchronistically short-circuited. Therefore, past struggles cannot be narrated like a chronological story; they can only be cited in the present by conjuring fragments of history’s “weak messianic power” – a Kraft, force “on which the past has a claim” (SW 4, 389). This conjuring or channelling, however, cannot intentionally be enforced. It is only by way of a messianic openness beyond the dichotomies of activity and passivity, intentional acting and non-intentional meditation, that a radically partisan and politically involved collective – the ‘struggling, oppressed class’ – can account for this weak messianic force by taking up what the latter addresses. There is no guarantee that the past’s claim is taken up by its belated addressee.

III. The Modality of Affective Time

11 In the theses “On the Concept of History”, Benjamin demonstrates how political action retroactively intervenes in the modality of each present’s unfulfilled past. The site of this retroaction is class struggle. Class struggle, which for a historian schooled in Marx is always in evidence, is a fight for the crude and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could exist. But these latter things, which are present in class struggle, are not present as a vision of spoils that fall to the victor. They are alive in this struggle as confidence, courage, humor, cunning, and fortitude, and have effects that reach far back into the past. (SW 4, 390) 12 In other words, through virtues like ‘confidence, courage, humour, cunning, and fortitude’ the current class struggle can modify its relation to the past. Besides being a struggle for the ‘crude and material things’, class struggle also imparts a medium through which lost struggles of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’ are present in current struggles. And vice versa the retroactive effect that the present has on the past corresponds to a claim that the past has on the present. These anachronic modifications of the relation of past and present cannot be registered objectively but can only be collectively channelled in the uneven course of class struggle. Referring to the Spartakusbund of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, Benjamin affirms the collective affect of past failed revolutions in terms of “hatred” and the “spirit of sacrifice” “for both are nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than by the ideal of liberated grandchildren” (SW 4, 394). In this sense, only “the struggling, oppressed

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class” is “the avenger that completes the task of liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden” (SW 4, 395). These negative affects of the past, however powerless and defeated they may be, already had a transformative effect on their own past and still reverberate in our present. Their echoes are channelled through the affective medium of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’. Rather than fetishising the image of failed struggles, as “left-wing melancholy” (SW 2.2, 425) would do, this partisan tradition actualises a weak potentiality of past failures in order to change the modality of the present. It is not that the present historicises and changes the past according its own demands but, on the contrary, the past puts the present into perspective, relativises and deconstructs the image of the present as the necessary outcome of history.

13 Benjamin’s take on revenge is not surprising, given his reading of Marx. In a speech from 1856, Marx understood non-reciprocal revenge as a counter-factual affect and integral force of the historical-materialist concept of history. I know the heroic struggles the English working class have gone through since the middle of the last century – struggles less glorious, because they are shrouded in obscurity, and burked by the middleclass historian. To revenge the misdeeds of the ruling class, there existed in the middle ages, in Germany, a secret tribunal, called the “Vehmgericht.” If a red cross was seen marked on a house, people knew that its owner was doomed by the “Vehm.” All the houses of Europe are now marked with the mysterious red cross.14 14 Such a secret tribunal has no formal or formalisable legal code, it does not comply with the rules of official world history – and neither does revolution which relies on hidden ‘irregular’ forces, elf- or kobold-like figures such as “Robin Goodfellow”, “the old mole” 15 who digs underground time-tunnels where the ruling classes’ history denies revolutionary justice. Structurally similar, the act of revolution and the collective affect of revenge can bridge hundreds of years, short-circuiting disparate and seemingly unrelated events. Nothing could be further from later vulgar Marxist and social democratic beliefs in revolution as the quasi-automatic mechanism of progressive world history. The temporal form of extra-legal historical justice cannot be mapped from the perspective of the law and modern state violence: the former is uneven and contracted, the latter proceeds in “homogeneous, empty time” (SW 4, 395). It is in this sense that Marx’s example of the medieval ‘Vehmgericht’ is not to be mistaken for a normative justification of non-normative acts. In advance, no universalisable guarantee can be given as to whether such acts are just or, as Benjamin’s earlier essay “Critique of Violence” (1921) put it, manifest “divine violence” as the “crowd’s divine judgment on a criminal” (SW 1, 252). Benjamin is thus careful not to not affirm all kinds of collective pathemata, passions, and affects. Rather, he demonstrates the difference of their images, modalities and temporalities.

15 The affective medium of past struggles imparts a non-linear temporality irreducible to the specific characteristics of its leaders or its historicisable events. In a radical sense, there is nothing to be learnt from past failures, no solace to be found, no instructive narrative to be told, no future utopia to be envisaged, no ideology to be distilled. Within the discontinuum of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’, the failed slave rebellion of ancient Spartacus, and the failed Spartacist uprising of 1919 have only one thing in common: their attempt to interrupt the course of oppressive history. The fractured medium that connects and separates these disparate struggles only transmits its own mediacy – not in order to museumise past failures, but to set them free – as history. Put differently, if the historical materialist’s task of “blast[ing] open the continuum of

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history” (SW 4, 396) only comes into perspective from within class struggle, then the disruptive “fight for the crude and material things” (SW 4, 390) is the affective medium that enables a properly historical perspective on the past (in contradistinction from historicist or historical-metaphysical concepts of history). But how can the past be changed in this medium? 16 Slavoj Žižek rightly points out that Benjamin’s anti-historicist stance relies on a “revolutionary Act that will […] retroactively realize the crushed longings of all past, failed revolutionary attempts.”16 Put differently, only a revolutionary act within class struggle can fully actualise and realise a past that has not yet existed. From a historical perspective, the past is still ‘ahead’ of us. What this means is that, in a properly historical perspective as opposed to evolutionist historicism, the past is not simply past, but bears within it its proper utopian promise of a future Redemption: in order to understand a past epoch properly, it is not sufficient to take into account the historical conditions out of which it grew – one has also to take into account the utopian hopes of a Future that were betrayed and crushed by it – that which was ‘negated’, that which did not happen – so that the past historical reality was the way it was.17 17 Understood in this way, messianic redemption is not about some apocalyptic intrusion from ‘outside’ (a divine intervention into human affairs) but about the restoring (or, in more theological terms, ‘restitutio in integrum’ or ‘tikkun’) of the past’s repressed potentialities. This restoration is not conservative but opening: it ex-poses the present as changeable. The task is not to rewrite history from the perspective of the present, but to destabilise the seemingly solid ground of the present as historical outcome of the past. To put it in even clearer terms: when we say the present redeems the past itself, that the past itself contained signs which pointed towards the present, we are not making a historicist-relativist statement about how there is no ‘objective’ history; how we always interpret the past from our present horizon of understanding; how, in defining past epochs, we always – consciously or not – imply our present point of view. What we are claiming [of Benjamin, S.K.] is something more radical: what the proper historical stance (as opposed to historicism) ‘relativizes’ is not the past (always distorted by our present point of view) but, paradoxically, the present itself – our present can be conceived only as the outcome (not only of what happened in the past, but also) of the crushed potentials for the future that were contained in the past.18 18 Žižek’s reading captures the radical kernel of Benjamin’s ‘Theses’. The latter’s inherently ‘theological’ or ‘messianic’ dimension does not contradict or compromise its Marxist impulse. Rather, the displaced language of theology functions here as a corrective of scientific Marxism to flesh out the revolutionary core of a genuinely historical-materialist concept of history vis-à-vis historicist, evolutionist or metaphysical philosophies of history, which either eternalise or de-historicise the past. The past is never ‘just out there’ – it is not a given, a fait accompli, since it is never ontologically fully constituted. Without its hidden, repressed, or crushed potentialities, the past never arrives at the point where it can become history in its full sense.

19 But how can the present and its current political struggles redeem the past and make it history? An ‘act’ is never a transparent, consciously and voluntarily performed action that can be appropriated by a certain subject. Rather, “in an authentic act, the highest freedom coincides with the utmost passivity, with a reduction to a lifeless automaton who blindly performs its gestures.”19 The act of retroactively changing the present’s

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relation to the past is such an act in which radical activity (class struggle) and utmost passivity (the weak messianic force) coincide. Paradoxically, the gestures of such passive-active acts are performed by subjects who cannot fully own or totalise their ‘own’ acts. The gestures that redeem the past are not at the disposal of some self- identical subject of history. Benjamin’s key term to theorise the gestures of such active- passive acts is ‘citation’: the texture of a particular past is cited/redeemed by a particular present. However, there is no author of history to sign the citation. We will later return to this point in the context of Benjamin’s reading of Marx. 20 For the moment let us concentrate on how Benjamin’s ‘Theses’ interweave the messianic citability of the past with its narratibility and transmittability. In the third thesis he writes: The chronicler who narrates events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accord with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost to history. Of course only a redeemed mankind is granted the fullness of its past-which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation a l’ordre du jour. And that day is Judgment Day. (SW 4, 390) 21 The messianic (universal and integral) citability of the past will have become possible only for a ‘redeemed mankind’. The future past of messianic citability, however, already changes the modality of citing the past in the unredeemed present. If ‘nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost to history’, as Benjamin sums up the task of the pre-modern chronicler, then the modern historian too cannot simply dispose of his or her past and treat it as completed. The past is incomplete, for only the present holds the key to complete (that is, to redeem) the past by citing it. For an unredeemed mankind this citation is not possible at any time but only at a very particular moment when the “true image of the past flits by” (SW 4, 390). In other words, an unredeemed mankind can miss the “secret agreement between past generations and the present one” (SW 4, 390), and lose its ability to quote the past in a redemptive way. The citability of the past is not subject to the voluntary demands and interests of the present. Rather, the secret agreement – the sympathy and synchronicity – of a particular present and a particular fragment of the past only happens in a zone of indistinction between activity and passivity, cognition and affection, collective dreaming and awaking, conscious and “not-yet-conscious knowledge of what has been” (AP, N 1,9). We will later see how Benjamin can theorise this peculiar short-circuit of (re)cognisability and redeemability, epistomology and ontology.

22 For the moment, let us follow the intertwinement of collective affects and the past’s redeemability. Werner Hamacher is right when he argues that Benjamin’s ‘Theses’ uncover “the temporal structure of the political affect.”20 The two types of political affect, the negative avenging and the positive encouraging one, have temporal effects connecting political struggles of the past and the present. The retroactive effects of present struggles and the after-history of past struggles intersect in what Benjamin calls ‘ weak messianic power (Kraft)’ – a counter-hegemonic undercurrent within the layers of dominant history, experienced only by those who recognise themselves as intended by it. This recognition, however, is not timeless-contemplative but temporal-affective; its discontinuous medium is connected to the ‘tradition of the oppressed’. The individual entry point to this collective medium, which could channel and register the ‘weak messianic power’ of the past, is to be found in moments of happiness. As Benjamin writes in the second thesis: “the image of happiness we cherish is thoroughly colored

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by the time to which the course of our own existence has assigned us” (SW 4, 389). The modality of how past and present relate to each other is not objective or factual but experienced and hence changed in an affective way, channelled through affective time. Cognition and affect, potentiality and actuality, historical time and political struggle intersect here in a peculiar way. As Hamacher comments: The thesis demonstrates that cognitive acts, determined by the micro-structure of the affective time, are political operations. The cognition at stake here, however, is the cognition of happiness. Happiness never is experienced in a present without this present relating to that which has been (Gewesenes). It is not, however, experienced on a past reality, but on the irrealis of its non-actualised possibility.21 23 The affective time of missed possibilities of the past cannot be mapped by a teleological understanding of the relation of actus and potentia. Happiness is not a goal – it is not grounded in the stable presence of an individual affect (the classic liberal ‘pursuit of happiness’), but presents the lucky embodiment of affective time. Benjamin’s German word for happiness, Glück, denotes both the conjuncture of happiness and the disjuncture of luck. Luck or fortune is not simply contingency, the lucky conjoining of disparate ‘touches’, but the happy interruption of what has been violently conjoined. It is the a-teleological opening for new conjunctures. And indeed, as Jonathan Lear comments on Aristotle and Freud, happiness is “not the ultimate goal of our teleologically organized strivings, but the ultimate ateleological moment: a chance event going well for us – quite literally, a lucky break.”22 It is in this profane and a- teleological sense that we should understand Benjamin’s idea of happiness: as a disruptive break (re)opening “possibilities for new possibilities”23 that were foreclosed in the past. As Hamacher reminds us, the German noun for redemption, Er-lösung, also connotes Lösung [release], which is part of the German word for the strictly prosaic meaning of redemption: Ein-lösung, “a redeeming […] of possibilities, which are opened with every life and are missed in every life.”24 This profane reading of messianic redemption as lucky break and modal change does not only lay bare the temporal structure of the political affect: it also alludes to the split between history and the past. Put differently, what affective time “bridges” or “mediates” is nothing other than this gap between an unhistoricisable past and history as ontologically incomplete.

IV. From Repression to Repetition

24 In 1954 Jacques Lacan wrote: “History is not the past. History is the past in so far as it is historicised in the present – historicised in the present because it was lived in the past.”25 This categorical distinction between past (le passé, Vergangenheit) and history (l’histoire, Geschichte) is also at stake in Marx’s famous article on the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte from 1852. Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.26 25 The psychoanalytical name of this nightmare might be trauma. In a historical- psychoanalytical sense, the past is not simply gone or dead but undead – and that is why it haunts the present like an Alp, as Marx writes in the German version. An Alp is an elf, a figure from Germanic mythology that was believed to cause nightmares, Alpträume (literally: elf-dreams), by sitting on the chest of the sleeping person. If we transpose

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this image to the scene of collective history and read it with Benjamin, we might add that the ‘tradition of all dead generations’ will keep on haunting the present like a nightmare, an Alptraum, as long as its dead mode of transmittability represses the ‘tradition of the oppressed’. Even if the experiences of all oppressed traditions are erased and flattened into the linear representation of ‘victor’s history’, history’s repressed will return in a displaced scene, in distorted shape – as specters.

26 Benjamin, however, does not affirm this kind of spectrality. In contrast to more recent accounts – one might think of Derrida’s Specters of Marx27 – he calls for a revolutionary- messianic cessation of the past’s undeadness. However, if modernity cannot bury its dead, then the ‘book of history’ can never be closed – unless the claims of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’ are settled and the past is historicised in the present. Following Hegel and the young Marx, the precondition for a real burial is a reconciled separation from the past and its undead specters. For only a “reconciled humanity will take leave of its past – and one form of reconciliation is cheerfulness”, as Benjamin paraphrases Marx in the Arcades Project (AP, N 5a,2).28 In order to “take leave of its past cheerfully,” (AP, N 5a, 2)29 humanity has to repeat the past in a comical way. In the same passage from his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843), Marx writes: “History is thorough, and passes through many stages when she carries a worn-out form to burial. The last stage of a world-historical form is its comedy. The gods of Greece, who had already been mortally wounded in the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, had to die yet again – this time a comic death – in the dialogues of Lucian.”30 Whereas Marx’s earlier text from 1843 still draws on a Hegelian sequence of original tragedy and comical repetition, the later text on the Brumaire from 1852, reflecting on the failed revolution of 1848, adds a non-cheerful form of farcical repetition. In this vein, Marx famously declared: The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped off all superstition in regard to the past. Earlier revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to drug themselves concerning their own content. In order to arrive at its own content, the revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead.31 27 However, as I will argue, the revolutionary task of burying the dead – while realising the real content of revolution – is also a form of repetition – a non-farcical repetition that recalls the past’s undeadness in order to let it go. This form of repetition is not about conjuring up a specter, the repetition of a certain content or the reenactment of past happenings, but repeats its own attempt to work through the past in order to take leave of it cheerfully. As we will see, what the younger Marx associated with comical cheerfulness, Heiterkeit, the later Marx calls proletarian revolution. It comes as no surprise that Benjamin too is well aware of the coupling of comical repetition and revolution. In a note written for his famous essay on “The Work of Art In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935/36), he proposes to counter the beastly severity of fascism with the cheerfulness, “Heiterkeit,” of communism (GS I, 1045). Revolutionary cheerfulness is not about specific affects of the political but about a retroactive intervention in the causal chain of historical events that lead to the farcical repetitions in the present. In other words, revolutionary repetition is cheerful only insofar as it breaks with the compulsion to repeat. As we will later see, this sort of cheerful repetition of history lays bare the temporal structure of the political affect that Hamacher detected in Benjamin’s theses “On the Concept of History”.

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28 With regard to Benjamin, it is the ‘tradition of the oppressed’ that presses for a repetition of a repressed (and in this sense undead) past in order to take leave of it. The comical dimension of this repetition, however, is not simply uplifting or entertaining. If repetition is “constitutive of the comic genre as such,”32 as Alenka Zupančič notes, we have to distinguish between two different forms of repetition. Relying on Marx’s Brumaire, Zupančič mentions repetition as farce and repetition as proletarian revolution. And indeed, Marx begins his argument with the famous dictum: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” 33 The farcical form of repetition is the formula of the failed revolution from 1848 whose revolutionary imagination came up with “nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789.”34 However, Marx does not categorically reject any form of quoting from the past. He mentions “epochs of revolutionary crisis” when its protagonists “anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time- honoured disguise and this borrowed language.”35 It is worth noting that the lack of tragic authenticity is not Marx’s concern. He concedes that “the awakening of the dead in those revolutions served the purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; of magnifying the given task in imagination, not of fleeing from its solution in reality; of finding once more the spirit of revolution, not of making its ghost walk about again.”36 29 Benjamin, who read Marx’s Brumaire in the summer of 1938, 37 radicalised this insight when formulating his famous 14th thesis “On the Concept of History” in 1940: History is the subject matter [Gegenstand] of a construction whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled full by now-time [Jetztzeit]. Thus, to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with now-time, a past which he blasted out of the continuum of history. The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome reincarnate. It cited ancient Rome exactly the way fashion cites a bygone mode of dress. Fashion has a nose for the topical [Aktuelle], no matter where it stirs in the thickets of long ago; it is the tiger's leap into the past. Such a leap, however, takes place in an arena where the ruling class gives the commands. The same leap in the open air of history is the dialectical leap Marx understood as revolution. (SW 4, 395) 30 Indeed, Benjamin’s concept of now-time, Jetztzeit, is not so far from Marx. The revolutionary citation of the past in the present is not to be mistaken for inauthentic imitations of past revolutions (‘parody’ or ‘farce’). Moreover, within the disruptive temporality of Jetztzeit the very distinction between historical authenticity and inauthenticity loses its linear evidence: what is copy, what is original – and what comes first? A citation, as Benjamin comments on Brecht, is never a mere repetition of a text; on the contrary, the quoted text interrupts the continuity of the present one and thereby discovers something new: a new insight, situation, context, or task.38 The citability of Brechtian gestures and, more generally, textual fragments also applies to the texture of history. “If one looks upon history as a text” (SW 4, 405) – a text that only future readers are capable of fully deciphering – it is only the particular citability of a certain fragment of the past at a certain moment that enables the legibility and recognisablity of historical textures. The true image of the Roman Republic flitted by in the moment of its revolutionary citation in the French Revolution of 1789 – the moment when the true image of the Roman Republic “attain[ed] to legibility” (AP, N 3,1). Moreover, following Benjamin’s historical-materialist hermeneutics of historical

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texts, we can state that the true image of a past happening only reveals itself as a proper historical event with a certain delay – after it will have been repeated (‘cited’) in a non- farcical way. The paradox, however, is that this historical repetition performs a kind of original repetition – ‘history’ only repeats itself at one certain moment in time (what Benjamin’s Arcades Project calls “now of recognizability”). In other words, we have to distinguish between a particular historical repetition and universal messianic repeatability in a manner that recalls what we noted earlier about messianic citability in the third thesis “On the Concept of History”. Against conventional logics, here we are not to abstract from particular historical repetitions in order to arrive at universal repeatability. And indeed, as Benjamin states in the Arcades Project, the historical- materialist task is “to break with vulgar historical naturalism” and “to discover in the analysis of the small individual moment the crystal of the total event [Totalgeschehens]” (AP, N 2,6). In order to grasp Benjamin’s counter-intuitive move fully, we have to presuppose the existence (however weak) of the total event. Although the messianic totality of all events is logically prior to the aforementioned congealed crystal, nothing can be deduced from the former. And vice versa, totality is a category that can never be deduced from empirical reality or metaphysical abstractions. The retroactive logic of messianic redemption can be summed up as follows: the universal messianic repeatability of the past is the structural condition of any particular historical repetition. It is in this sense that Benjamin’s concepts of Jetztzeit and citability bear witness to the possibility of non- farcical modes of repetition. These notions, however, only gain their full argumentative thrust when we read them vis-à-vis the Marxian text. Instead of limiting its critique to the farcical embodiment of the specter of past revolutions, Marx’s Brumaire provides us with a theory of how the realm of history is entered into through non-farcical repetition – by unevenly working through past failures.

V. History as Tragedy, Comedy and Farce

31 In Marx’s Brumaire, revolutionary repetition is the mode in which the proletarian revolution works through, and gets rids of the specters of the past. This working through is uneven, discontinuous, and repetitive. In contrast to bourgeois revolutions, proletarian revolutions […] criticize themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltrinesses of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more gigantic, before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until a situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves cry out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta! Here is the rose, here dance!39 32 Instead of reading this final exclamation in a teleological way, we cannot miss Marx’s emphasis on the repetitive structure of this kind of revolutionary working through of the past. The revolutionary leap, saltus, cannot count on historical-metaphysical guarantees. Rather than arriving at a final more perfect state like in social-democratic fantasies of socialism, the formula of the proletarian revolution seems much closer to Samuel Beckett: Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. The modal leap from failing once to failing better retroactively changes the parameters of the possible of

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preceding attempts. Repetition here is both stubbornly insisting and retroactively changing. As Zupančič argues: It is not an “empty repetition” as revolution in the service of perpetuating the given, but a stubborn attempt to do something against all odds, which, because of its repetitious character, leaves the realm of the heroic and enters a territory closer to the comic – not because it keeps failing, but because it keeps insisting.40 33 In order to actualise lost potentialities of failed revolutions of the past, we are to repeat history in this stubbornly insisting manner. Hence, a new failure is never a mere repetition of a past failure. By virtue of perpetual insistence the act of ‘failing again’ changes something in the very nature of trying. It all comes down to how we understand the ‘again’ in failing: if every new trying in the present draws on the present (im)perfect of ‘having failed’, every coming failure actualises the revolutionary impulse of its original failure and gives it a different twist. Moreover, it is only the act of ‘failing again’ that can lay bare the non-actualised potentialities of past failures. Here, the planes of epistemology (our historiographic image of the past as historia rerum gestarum) and ontology (the impossible real object of historiography as res gestae) intersect and allow for a concept of history that bypasses the conventional alternative of either pluralism of historical narratives or univocity of one hegemonic History with a capital H. Instead of compulsively repeating the past, the realm of transformative repetition is entered as soon as the comical repetition of the past gets hold of the true image of the past’s original tragedy. Seizing this true image does not mean to recognise the past ‘the way it really was’. Rather, “articulating the past historically,” as Benjamin reminds us, “means appropriating a memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger” (SW 4, 391). Setting aside what the subject matter of such memory could be,41 let me rephrase Benjamin’s insight with regard to Marx. Seizing the true image of the past as it “flashes up at the moment of its recognizability” (SW 4, 390) is nothing else than repeating the past in its full potentiality and actualising the scope of its failures and defeats in the here and now. In other words, the act of ‘failing again’ and the act of ‘seizing the true image of the past future’ are actually the same act of transformative repetition, yet seen from different perspectives. What from an epistemological viewpoint reveals itself as a truth about the past, realises itself in the actual present by changing the ontology of what has been, and the modality of what shall be. The impossible object of the past is never simply gone – it will have been recognised by a present yet to come. It is history’s peculiar temporality of future past, or futur antérieur, that provides the shifting ground of every new act of trying and failing. The “logical time” (SW 1, 276) of grasping the true image of what will have been intervenes in the modality of the present by changing the horizon of the possible.42

34 However, the logic of transformative repetition is uneven and disruptive. Despite its stubborn insistence, the act of ‘trying again’ carries no guarantee of failing better. The political danger of missing the true image of the past as it ‘flits by’ may lead to a change from bad to worse. As we noted earlier with Zupančič: in the case of political struggle and revolution as repetition, the comical cheerful aspect is reduced to its structural dimension of insistence. Moreover, with Benjamin we might add: the retroactive logic of transformative repetition can be transmitted only by the ‘tradition of the oppressed’. It is in this analytical-materialist sense that we may read the motto that Benjamin’s friend Ernst Bloch attributed to Thomas Münzer and the German Peasants’ War: Geschlagen ziehen wir nach Haus, unsere Enkel fechten's besser aus. (‘Beaten we are heading home, but our heirs in battle will fight on’.)43 The stubborn insistence on fighting-on

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does not simply repeat the failures of past battles: it even fails at repeating the failures of the past. Calling on its heirs in battle, the discontinuous tradition of Thomas Münzer and his beaten peasant army transmits “the image of enslaved ancestors rather than […] the ideal of liberated grandchildren” (SW 4, 394). However, even this image of defeat is unstable – it fails to be passed on as heritage, be it cheerful or vengeful. The medium of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’ only transmits its own broken mediacy, rendering it impossible to commemorate it in a linear conventional way. Regarding the Peasants’ War and the attempt to establish an artificial counter-tradition in writings such as Wilhelm Zimmermann’s History of the Peasants’ War, Benjamin succinctly notes: “this was not successful” (GS I, 1236). In more recent history, in the aftermath of the failed Spartacist Uprising of 1919, Weimar Germany’s Communist Party (KPD) faced precisely this paradox: how to commemorate a failure without fetishising the image of defeat?

Revolutionsdenkmal or “Monument to the November Revolution,” Berlin, built in 1926, demolished in 1935, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, commissioned for the KPD by Eduard Fuchs (Creative Commons license: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H29710 / CC-BY-SA 3.0).

VI. Where the Past Was, There History Shall Be

35 Benjamin’s reference to the failed Spartacus uprising, led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is itself written from a position of defeat. Insisting on the working class’s “hatred and its spirit of sacrifice” (SW 4, 394), thesis XII calls for political vengeance beyond the scope of symmetrical retribution. The revolutionary “image [Bild] of enslaved ancestors” (ibid.) is turned against the social democratic “ideal of liberated grandchildren” (ibid.). Such an image, Bild, presents only its political mediacy; it does not illustrate or represent anything beyond its presentation. It is itself an image of class struggle as “a fight for the crude and material things” (SW 4, 390). But how can such an raw, unrefined image be framed, represented, memorialised?

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36 After having initially favoured a more traditional proposal to erect a memorial for the murdered revolutionaries of 1918/19, the German Communist Party (KPD) commissioned the key member and later director of the Bauhaus, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, with the construction of a Revolutionsdenkmal at Berlin’s Friedrichsfelde cemetery, where Liebknecht and Luxemburg were buried. Without going into details of Mies van der Rohe’s daringly abstract proposal, its realisation, inauguration and subsequent demolition by the Nazi government in 1935,44 it is worth noting that Mies van der Rohe’s original plan for the Monument to the November Revolution from 1926 bore the inscription Ich bin, Ich war, Ich werde sein (I am, I was, I shall be) 45 – a motto taken from Rosa Luxemburg’s last article, “Die Ordnung herrscht in Berlin” (“Order Rules in Berlin”) published on January 14, 1919. Luxemburg, in turn, got this formulation from Ferdinand Freiligrath’s poem “Die Revolution”,46 written in 1851 in the aftermath of the failed 1848 revolution. Her article concludes with the following passage: “Order prevails in Berlin!” You foolish lackeys! Your “order” is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will “rise up again, clashing its weapons,” and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!47 37 This series of historical citations, repetitive invocations of failed revolutions, does not declare final defeat or victory but insists on the temporal loop that the formula ‘I was, I am, I shall be!’ introduces. What sounds like the linear succession of past, present, and future, is fissured by both the insistence of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’, and the traumatic pressure of history’s repressed. Besides its peculiar temporality, the threefold repetition of the pronoun ich, I, poses the question of who is speaking here. It is revolution itself that declares its structurally comical insistence. Moreover, Luxemburg’s prosopopoeia is the only way to make the revolution ‘speak’, since there is no preexisting speaker that could say ‘I, the revolution’. As we said before, the revolutionary/analytic act of restoring the past’s crushed potentialities cannot be appropriated by a sovereign subject of history, since the ich, ‘ego’, of the enunciation ‘I was, I am, I shall be’ is still caught in the spectral net of es, ‘id’ – the trauma of the past. Working through the unconscious non-symbolisable trauma of the past is a constructive and destructive act that cannot rely on already established subjects. The revolutionary ego of ‘I was’ – the collective subject of historical enunciation – has still to be constructed in order to allow for the modality of ‘I shall be’. In this sense, Luxemburg’s formula subverts any attempt to psychologise and individualise her revolutionary prosopopeia by attaching its unownable gesture to the clichéd image of a pure martyr who heroically sacrificed her life in a ‘pure’ act.

38 With regard to Freud and Luxemburg, the task of Benjamin’s historical materialist is thus to work through the collective unconscious of the present and transform it into the actuality of the collective ego of revolutionary politics. As is well known, Freud summarised the task of psychoanalysis according to this formula: “Where id was, there ego shall be. It is a work of culture”.48 With Benjamin and Marx we might add: where the crushed potentialities of the past were, there the history of the struggling, oppressed class shall be. It is a work of historical politics, Geschichtspolitik. If the non-linear medium of this work is the ‘tradition of the oppressed’, then we cannot fail to read the proper tense of Luxemburg’s wager Ich war, ich bin, ich werde sein as Wo Es war, werde Ich gewesen sein. The futur antérieur of ‘where id was, there ego will have been’ lays bare the temporal structure of the political affect that Benjamin discovered in his ‘Theses’. In this sense, we may also reread Marx’s call to let the dead bury the dead. The constructive work of replacing ‘id’ by ‘ego’ will have been completed in the moment

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when the struggling and oppressed class cheerfully destroys its ties to the past and historicises its specters as history. This moment, however, is not an empirical date in the future but lies hidden in the act of repeating the past in the present by changing their modal relation. 39 With these remarks we can understand how the epistemological task of seizing the past’s true image relates to the ontological incompleteness of history. Only by grasping this temporal loop, by constructively working through the specters of the past, can we bury history’s undead. This burial, however destructive it may be, does not serve the commemoration of dead generations but aims at changing the present in the moment of recognising the true image in the past – an image that suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, ‘speaks’ to the current oppressed in a situation of danger. Only this act of cognition, channelled through the political affect of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’, produces an authentically historical image (in contrast to historicism). Such a cognising act intervenes in the ontology of what has been and might even betray the memory of past generations of the downtrodden. After all, as we have seen, the Latin verb tradere (to pass on, hand over) also connotes surrender and betrayal. In this sense, Benjamin’s historical materialist concept of history does not serve the demands of history’s dead but articulates on a more fundamental level the past’s undeadness and turns its specters against each other. What is constructed in such a political/analytic act bears witness to a profane striving for ‘messianic’ redemption – a redemption that completes, fulfils, and repeats a past that has never happened in the first place. However, to take leave of one’s past cheerfully does not mean to aim at a happy end of history, a Hegelian Erinnerung, remembering and internalising of all of the spirits of the past. 49 Rather, it means to admit oneself to the danger of failure and failing again – not in order to fetishise the memory of defeat but to change the parameters of the possible and to leave the realm of compulsively repeating the past. In other words, only this modal change, while failing at repeating the content of past failures, enters the realm of a transformative, revolutionary repetition of history. This structure of transformative repetition also applies to Benjamin’s text. Repeating Benjamin today does not mean to repeat his criticism of vulgar Marxism once more in order to defeat an opponent that has long been defeated by the real history of capitalism. Such a repetition would truly be farcical. Rather, repeating Benjamin aims at taking leave of his past cheerfully by working through the undead specters of our past. Instead of assimilating Benjamin to our times and reading our present into Benjamin’s own historical present, our task is rather to read a Benjaminian text that was never written in the first place. Here, our historical distance to Benjamin’s time appears as a connection through disconnection. It is only this truly historical discontinuity that we ‘share’ with Benjamin and the ‘tradition of the oppressed’. Contrary to today’s culture industry of commemoration and its customized production of memory without history, Benjamin’s concept of the ‘tradition of the oppressed’ recalls the battleground of history as a site of repressed possibilities of the present. For only the present can do justice to the oppressed claims of history’s repressed. Such an act of justice, however, does not serve the demands of (un)official politics of commemoration and does not aim at the production of a ‘balanced’ representation of the past. Benjamin’s Geschichtspolitik does justice to the past by repeating history as a comical sequence of failed attempts to break with history’s compulsion to repeat. This sort of uneven double negation, however, remains negative:50 it even fails at producing the image of a proper failure: “‘no glory for the victor, no sympathy for the defeated’” (GS I, 1237).51

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

AP: BENJAMIN, Walter, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland, Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999).

GS: BENJAMIN, Walter, Gesammelte Schriften, eds. Hermann Schweppenhäuser & Rolf Tiedemann, 7 vols. (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1972ff.).

SW: BENJAMIN, Walter, Selected Writings, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1996ff.).

***

COMAY, Rebecca, Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).

DERRIDA, Jacques, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (London/New York: Routledge, 1994).

FREILIGRATH, Ferdinand, “Die Revolution”, in: Neuere politische und soziale Gedichte, 1849-51, stable URL: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/ferdinand-freiligrath-gedichte-5009/30.

FREUD, Sigmund, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 15 (London: Imago, 1940; Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1961).

HAMACHER, Werner, “‘Now’: Walter Benjamin on Historical Time”, in: Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005).

HEGEL, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, “Phänomenologie des Geistes”, in: Werke, vol. 3, eds. Eva Moldenhauer & Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 1986).

KHATIB, Sami, “Politics of ‘Pure Means’: Walter Benjamin on Divine Violence”, in: Black Box: A Record of the Catastrophe, vol. 1 (Dec 2015), pp. 87-103.

KHATIB, Sami, “Walter Benjamin and the Subject of Historical Cognition,” in: “Walter Benjamin Unbound”, Special Issue of Annals of Scholarship, eds. Alexander Gelley, Ilka Kressner & Michael G. Levine, vol. 21.1 (2015), pp. 23-42.

KHATIB, Sami, “A Non-Nullified Nothingness: Walter Benjamin and the Messianic,” in: Stasis. Journal in Social and Political Theory, “Politics of Negativity”, No. 1 (Fall 2013) pp. 82-108, stable URL: http://stasisjournal.net/images/khatib1_eng.pdf.

KHATIB, Sami, “The Messianic Without Messianism. Walter Benjamin's Materialist Theology,” in: Anthropology & Materialism. A Journal of Social Research, “Across the Fields”, No. 1 (2013), stable URL: http://am.revues.org/159.

LACAN, Jacques, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book 1: Freud's Papers on Technique 1953-1954, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. John Forrester (New York/ London: Norton, 1991).

LEAR, Jonathan, Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

LUXEMBURG, Rosa, “Die Ordnung herrscht in Berlin”, in: Die Rote Fahne, Nr. 14 (14. Januar 1919), stable URL: https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/luxemburg/1919/01/ordnung.htm.

LUXEMBURG, Rosa, “Order Prevails in Berlin”, stable URL: https://www.marxists.org/archive/ luxemburg/1919/01/14.htm.

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MARX, Karl and ENGELS, Frederick, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, 6: Marx and Engels 1845-48 (London/New York/Moscow: Lawrence & Wishart, International Publishers/Progress Publishers, 1976).

MARX, Karl, “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, 29: Karl Marx 1857-61 (London/New York/Moscow: Lawrence & Wishart, International Publishers/Progress Publishers, 1987).

MARX, Karl, “Speech at anniversary of the People’s Paper”, first published in: The People’s Paper (April 19, 1856), stable URL: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm.

Marx, Karl, “The Poverty of Philosophy”, in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, 6: Marx and Engels 1845-48 (London/New York/Moscow: Lawrence & Wishart, International Publishers/ Progress Publishers, 1976).

MARX, Karl, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, stable URL: https:// www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm.

MARX, Karl, “Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte”, in: Marx-Engels-Werke, vol. 8, ed. Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED (Berlin: Dietz, 1975).

MARX, Karl, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1963).

ŽIŽEK, Slavoj, The Fragile Absolute – or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting for (London/ New York: Verso, 2000).

ŽIŽEK, Slavoj, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London: Verso, 1999).

ZUPANČIČ, Alenka, The Odd One In. On Comedy (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press, 2008).

ENDNOTES

1. Rebecca Comay, Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 62. 2. Friedrich Engels, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”, 1892 English Edition Introduction, stable URL: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/int-hist.htm. This paper is a work in progress. Parts of section III and IV have been published in an earlier article under the title “The Messianic Without Messianism. Walter Benjamin's Materialist Theology”, in: Anthropology & Materialism. A Journal of Social Research, No. 1 (2013). Earlier versions have been presented in June 2015 at “The Tradition of the Oppressed” workshop at the Multimedia Institute klub MaMa Zagreb, in July 2015, at the “Memorial For(u)ms – Histories of Possibility” symposium at Hebbel am Ufer Theatre Berlin, in March 2016, at the “History as Tragedy, Comedy and Farce” workshop at the American University of Beirut, and in April 2016 at the American University in Cairo. I would like to thank Haytham El-Wardany, Jana Tsoneva, Tihana Pupovac, Emin Eminagic, Petar Milat, Rachel Aumiller, Gal Kirn, Boris Buden, Jodi Dean, Gerald Raunig, Antonia Majaca, Hakem Al-Rustom, Aaron Schuster, Jan Sieber, and Sebastian Truskolaski for their remarks and comments during these events and the editing process. 3. Karl Marx, “The Poverty of Philosophy”, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, 6: Marx and Engels 1845-48 (London/New York/Moscow: Lawrence & Wishart, International Publishers/ Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 175. 4. Ibid. 5. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, 6: Marx and Engels 1845-48 ( London/New York/Moscow: Lawrence & Wishart, International Publishers/Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 487.

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6. Ibid. 7. Ibid, p. 504. 8. References to the works of Walter Benjamin are abbreviated as follows: AP: Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland & Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999); GS: Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, eds. Hermann Schweppenhäuser & Rolf Tiedemann, 7 vols. (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1972ff.); SW: Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1996ff.). 9. Consider thesis VII “On the Concept of History” (1940): “According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried in the procession. They are called ‘cultural treasures’, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For in every case these treasures have a lineage which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great geniuses who created them, but also to the anonymous toil of others who lived in the same period. There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism” (Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”, in: Selected Writings 4, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003], p. 391.) 10. Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, 29: Karl Marx 1857-61 (London/New York/Moscow: Lawrence & Wishart, International Publishers/Progress Publishers, 1987), p. 263. 11. Italics mine. 12. English trans. mine, in collaboration with Jacob Bard-Rosenberg, stable URL: http:// anthropologicalmaterialism.hypotheses.org/2128. 13. Trans. changed. Cf. GS I, p. 1245. 14. Karl Marx, “Speech at anniversary of the People’s Paper”, first published in: “The People’s Paper”, (1856), stable URL: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm. Benjamin was familiar with this text and quoted the entire passage in The Arcades Project (AP a 17a,4). 15. Ibid. 16. Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute – or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting for (London/New York: Verso, 2000), p. 89. 17. Ibid, p. 89f. 18. Ibid, p. 90. 19. Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject. The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London: Verso, 1999), p. 375. 20. Werner Hamacher, “'Now': Walter Benjamin on Historical Time”, in: Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London/New York: Continuum, 2005), p. 38. 21. Ibid. 22. Jonathan Lear, Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 129. As Lear notes, in the English language the disruptive meaning of happiness as a “lucky break” can still be detected in the word “happenstance.” (Ibid.) And indeed, ‘happenstance’ is a compound word made of ‘happen’ and ‘circumstance’ – a lucky circumstance that unpredictably occurred. 23. Ibid. 24. Hamacher, “'Now': Walter Benjamin on Historical Time”, p. 150. 25. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book 1: Freud's Papers on Technique 1953-1954, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. John Forrester (New York/London: Norton, 1991), p. 12. 26. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1963), p. 15; Cf. Marx: “Die Menschen machen ihre eigene Geschichte, aber sie machen sie nicht aus freien Stücken, nicht unter selbstgewählten, sondern unter unmittelbar vorgefundenen,

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gegebenen und überlieferten Umständen. Die Tradition aller toten Geschlechter lastet wie ein Alp auf dem Gehirne der Lebenden” (Karl Marx, “Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte”, in: Marx-Engels-Werke, vol. 8, ed. Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED [Berlin: Dietz, 1975], p. 115.) 27. Jaques Derrida, Specters of Marx. The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (London/New York: Routledge, 1994). 28. The original passage appears in: Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right [Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie], stable URL: https://www.marxists.org/archive/ marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 18. 32. Alenka Zupančič, The Odd One In. On Comedy (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press, 2008), p. 149. 33. Marx, Karl, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 15. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid, p. 17. 37. Cf. GS VII, p. 474. 38. Cf. Benjamin’s remarks on Brecht’s epic theatre: “Einen Text zitieren, schließt ein: seinen Zusammenhang unterbrechen. Es ist daher wohl verständlich, daß das epische Theater, das auf die Unterbrechung gestellt ist, ein in spezifischem Sinne zitierbares ist” (GS II, p. 536). 39. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 19. 40. Zupančič, The Odd One In, p. 153. 41. In another thesis “On the Concept of History” Benjamin defines this memory with reference to a Proustian mémoire involontaire, the content of which he describes as the “dialectical image”: “Articulating the past historically means recognizing those elements of the past which come together in the constellation of a single moment. Historical cognition is possible only within the historical moment. But cognition within the historical moment is always cognition of a moment. In drawing itself together in the moment – in the dialectical image – the past becomes part of humanity's involuntary memory” (SW 4, p. 403, trans. changed). 42. A more detailed explication of this intricate logic can be found in section III of my article “Walter Benjamin and the Subject of Historical Cognition”, in: Walter Benjamin Unbound, Special Issue of Annals of Scholarship, eds. Alexander Gelley, Ilka Kressner, Michael G. Levine, vol. 21.1 (2015), pp. 23-42. 43. Translation mine, in collaboration with Urška Brodar. 44. For more information see the catalogue of the Memorial For(u)ms – Histories of Possibility symposium, curated by Antonia Majaca at Hebbel am Ufer Theatre, Berlin, July 3-4, 2014, as part of the project Monument to Revolution by Sanja Ivekovic, ‘Ich war, ich bin, ich werde sein!’, June 6 – August 1, 2015, DAAD Gallery, Berlin. 45. This inscription was also added to the completed monument, see http:// www.sozialistenfriedhof.de/revolutionsdenkmal.html, http://thecharnelhouse.org/2013/07/10/ mies-memorial-to-rosa-luxemburg-and-karl-liebknecht-1926 and http://www.moma.org/ collection/object.php?object_id=87517. 46. Ferdinand Freiligrath, “Die Revolution”, in: Neuere politische und soziale Gedichte, 1849-51, stable URL: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/ferdinand-freiligrath-gedichte-5009/30. 47. Rosa Luxemburg, “Order Prevails in Berlin”, stable URL: https://www.marxists.org/archive/ luxemburg/1919/01/14.htm; Cf. the German original text: “‘Ordnung herrscht in Berlin!’ Ihr stumpfen Schergen! Eure ‘Ordnung’ ist auf Sand gebaut. Die Revolution wird sich morgen schon ‘rasselnd wieder in die Höh' richten’ und zu eurem Schrecken mit Posaunenklang verkünden: Ich war, ich bin, ich werde sein!” (Rosa Luxemburg, “Die Ordnung herrscht in Berlin”, in: Die Rote

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Fahne, No. 14 (14. Januar 1919), stable URL: https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/ luxemburg/1919/01/ordnung.htm). 48. “Wo Es war, soll Ich werden. Es ist Kulturarbeit etwa wie die Trockenlegung der Zuydersee” (Sigmund Freud, “Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse”, in: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 15 [London: Imago, 1940; Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1961], p. 86.) 49. Cf. the last lines of Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes: “Das Ziel, das absolute Wissen, oder der sich als Geist wissende Geist hat zu seinem Wege die Erinnerung der Geister, wie sie an ihnen selbst sind und die Organisation ihres Reichs vollbringen. Ihre Aufbewahrung nach der Seite ihres freien, in der Form der Zufälligkeit erscheinenden Daseins ist die Geschichte, nach der Seite ihrer begriffenen Organisation aber die Wissenschaft des erscheinenden Wissens; beide zusammen, die begriffene Geschichte, bilden die Erinnerung und die Schädelstätte des absoluten Geistes, die Wirklichkeit, Wahrheit und Gewißheit seines Throns, ohne den er das leblose Einsame wäre; nur – aus dem Kelche dieses Geisterreiches/schäumt ihm seine Unendlichkeit.” (Georg W. F. Hegel, “ Phänomenologie des Geistes”, in: Werke, vol. 3, eds. Eva Moldenhauer & Karl Markus Michel [Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 1986], p. 591.) 50. Nonetheless, Benjamin’s term for negativity is not Hegelian; what I have called elsewhere Benjamin’s ‘messianic nihilism’ has a different philosophical and theological genealogy. However, in principle the translatability of Benjamin’s unstable (‘weak’) messianic agency of deforming, depositing, dismantling, and Hegel’s work of the negative is not to be ruled out. A more detailed discussion can be found in my articles “A Non-Nullified Nothingness: Walter Benjamin and the Messianic”, in : Stasis. Journal in Social and Political Theory, “Politics of Negativity”, No. 1 (Fall 2013), pp. 82-108, and in section II of “The Messianic Without Messianism. Walter Benjamin's Materialist Theology”, in: Anthropology & Materialism. A Journal of Social Research, No. 1 (2013), and “Politics of ‘Pure Means’: Walter Benjamin on Divine Violence”, in: Black Box: A Record of the Catastrophe, vol. 1 (Dec. 2015), pp. 97-103, sections 7 and 8. 51. English trans. mine, in collaboration with Jacob Bard-Rosenberg, stable URL http:// anthropologicalmaterialism.hypotheses.org/2128.

ABSTRACTS

As the proverb has it, ‘tradition is not to preserve the ashes but to pass on the flame’. Taking this image as a starting point, this paper is interested in non-conservative concepts of tradition and (dis)continuity. If the concept of tradition is normally associated with continuity, the concept of tradition poses the question of transmittability. Is there a continuous medium in which narrations, customs, rites or other material practices can be handed down from the past to the present? If the transmittability of tradition is not a given, a commodified object, but subject to historical change, the question of tradition and inheritance is inextricably linked to social and political struggles. The concept of tradition, however, has mostly been theorized by conservative thinkers. In this vein, traditional historical materialism viewed tradition as a counter- progressive retarding force. Walter Benjamin (1940), however, proposed a different concept of historical time and tradition. History is not based on a progressive flow of “homogeneous, empty time” but on disruptive constellations of the present and the past. The past is never fully gone; it can never be fully historicized. The medium in which the present is connected to all lost causes and struggles of those who literally and metaphorically lost their histories is called the “tradition of the oppressed.” Paradoxically, this medium is a discontinuum – its texture is woven out of struggles, empty-spots and disconnected elements which cannot be represented in one transmittable image or inscribed into one multifaceted yet coherent world-history. If the “tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living” (Marx), then the tradition of the oppressed will also haunt all attempts to repress it completely and erase

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its experience in the linear continuum of “victor’s history.” But how are we to pass on an oppressed tradition? How can the tradition of the oppressed be recalled, actualized and “worked through”?

INDEX

Keywords: Benjamin Walter, Marx Karl, Luxemburg Rosa, Freud Sigmund, historiography, philosophy, psychoanalysis

AUTHOR

SAMI KHATIB

American University of Beirut

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A Crystal of Time (Political) Reflections towards a History of the Now: Benjamin and Derrida

Nassima Sahraoui

Introduction

"[A]nd the crystal yielded to his pressure and expanded, ‘til the breast of the captive could move and heave. [...] Then horror and despair took hold of him: he gathered all his force, he dashed violently […] against the crystal." E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Golden Pot "But this order […] must rather be of the purest crystal. But this crystal does not appear as an abstraction, but as something concrete, indeed, as the most concrete." Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus 1 In Convolute N of The Arcades Project Walter Benjamin introduces the metaphor of a crystal to demonstrate how a specific understanding of historical events provides insights into the dynamics of history. Here, the possibility to reveal a totality of historico-political events is introduced by a precise analysis of the momentum, which leads to historical knowledge.

2 The following article1 deconstructs certain figures of Benjamin’s thoughts on history and on epistemology – such as image, trace, crystal, standstill, the ‘Now’, and the ‘subject of historical knowledge’ – and relates them to the political dimension of his “Critique of Violence” (1921), and to his remarks on the linguistic structure of political writing. Thereby it centres on the following questions: in what way could Benjamin’s characterisation of the singular moment, as well as his analysis of temporality, provide insights into historical dynamics? Furthermore, it aims at investigating if, and to what

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extent, historico-political action is related to a certain understanding of time and power: can such action be seen as a crystallised emanation of the ‘Now’, of Jetztzeit? 3 Referring to Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence”, I will furthermore point out that the ‘Now’ must be understood as a condensation of force within an unspecified area of possible political actions, through which the latter are initially realised and performed. Drawing on Derrida’s remarks, I attempt to show that the initiating force or power2 results from a de-constitutive act rather than out of constitution itself. Both, Derrida and Benjamin, introduce this de-constitutive act in referring to ‘silence’ as indispensable for any initial moment of historico-political action. In other words, the initiating linguistic force of silence is inseparable from an instantaneous moment of the ‘Now’, from which every possible action and event derive. 4 At the junction between the essential claims of both approaches, I will focus on the temporal moment where historical events take place – the ‘Now’ – and thus draw a picture of how the realms of time and history merge together with a certain understanding of political language, as Benjamin suggests. I finally conclude by stating that the specific relations between instantaneous historical events, political action, and language must, in the last instance, be understood as the initiating force for political and historical events. The ‘Now’ is thus, metaphorically speaking, a crystallised historical event, and this crystallised historical event – or force – already hints towards a certain ethical direction,3 as Derrida finally indicates.

I. Trace, Subject, and Image

"In the trace, we gain possession of the things [...] History decays into images, not into stories." Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project 5 In “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” (1935-36), Walter Benjamin defines the trace – against the philosophical tradition – not simply as a ‘place’ in which objects (things) are re-presented without being present. Accordingly, philosophy’s theoretical task does not only consist in dissolving the dialectical, paradoxical, and aporetic relation between presence and absence.4 Instead, the trace is related to, but different from, the concept that Benjamin has prominently elaborated: the aura. The concept of aura suggests the possibility that things can be perceived as they are in-themselves, that is to say, in their specific singularity. This being in-itself indicates the authentic state of things in a certain instant of time and at a certain place; any other essential reality remains unattainable. To the question: “What, then, is the aura?” Benjamin therefore answers: “A strange tissue of space and time: the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be.”5

6 In The Arcades Project, Benjamin relates the trace immediately to the aura. Whilst the aura shows worldly objects in their “here and now”,6 and hence in their socio-historical situatedness, the trace is analogously characterised through the objects’ non-presence. Hereby the auratic presence of things is not simply reversed, which means, they are not simply conceived as being absent. Rather, they are structured as being not-here and not- now. Every analysis of what a trace actually is must therefore proceed ex negativo. Hence, in the trace one can detect the objects in their non-presence, and in tracing these objects they are made present. In The Arcades Project, Benjamin amplifies his

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definition of the aura from the ‘Artwork’ essay, when he formulates the relation between trace and aura as follows: Trace and aura. The trace is appearance of a nearness, however far removed the thing that left behind may be. The aura is appearance of a distance, however close the thing that calls it forth. In the trace, we gain possession of the things; in the aura it takes possession of us.7 7 By definition, the trace always has a double and mutual reference to its exterior, and this referentiality is located between the present and the presence/non-presence of the objects. On the primary level, the trace refers to the problematic relation between reality and temporality. While the traditional paradigm is dominated by the idea that in the trace the objects are represented as a mere likeness (Abbild) of reality, where the ‘task’ of deciphering traces then would simply be to track the right and reasonable signs in order to recognise the true essence of the objects, Benjamin’s short remarks already indicate that this is an insufficient description, which does not do justice to the complexity of the phenomenon. Just as the aura is identical with the here and now of the objects, so the trace concerns not only how something appears, but also as what it appears. That is to say, the only reality of the thing in the trace therefore consists in the manifestation of that which it is not. For a thing to be present in the trace is tantamount to, both, its simultaneous appearance and to its negation. What the object is in ‘truth’ can be shown only by negating what it is not. But if the ‘truth’ of the things in truth consists in showing their negative attributes, and if the trace furthermore is structurally interlinked with the here and now, then the ‘truth’ of the things lies in their negativity. This negativity, then, is immediately related to socio-historical constellations of the ‘here and now’.8 The transformative dynamics of socio-historical constellations are transformations of the ‘truth’ – therefore the ‘truth’ must always be understood within the referential horizon of its respective epochs. In acknowledging this referential relation, any metaphysical notion of unity and originality must be destroyed.9

8 Whilst in metaphysics, the objects have an inherent perpetuating truth – be it essential, eternal, absolute, otherworldly or omnipresent – Benjamin’s trace absorbs the time- instances of past, present and future into the here and now.10 The trace can therefore be understood as the relational, intermediating instance within this trinomial time- structure. Through its absorbing and intermediate character, the trace opens the possibility to recognise the ‘trueness’ of things. It does so through the interfering movement between presence and non-presence, of presensation and presentation (Vergegenwärtigung), of representation and presentation (Darstellung). This movement manifests itself as a permanent deferment in the interior of the trace, and the detection of the trace flows together with an actualisation of time. Consequently, the trace is nothing but this contraction of nearness and distance. 9 On a secondary level, the trace is, therefore, the truth-establishing condition for the ‘subject’. Because the trace essentially consists in this aporetic movement between presence and non-presence, the notion of truth – and with it each and every other metaphysical attempt at unification, which undoubtedly contains the notion of the ‘subject’ itself – is structured though this immanent deferment. This means that these allegedly unified classical concepts are themselves already and inherently determined by this time-deferring movement. Tracing the future then finally means to bundle the past ex tempore in tempore.

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10 Benjamin’s historico-philosophical fragments and excerpts in Convolute N of The Arcades Project provide a key for understanding the specific possibilities of knowledge in traces. Here, he begins his fragmentary reflections on epistemology and on the theory of progress with the following words: “In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes in lightning flashes.”11 Knowledge, as Benjamin further explains, does not emerge out of a continuous process of self-consciousness, but rather occurs in the exact moment of awakening. What then, one must ask at this point, is happening in this exact moment of awakening? Is there even a ‘consciousness’ to be awakened? And is Benjamin referring to something happening to the subject or is it rather the subject itself who initiates the awakening through its own actions? What is the relationship between the perceptive acts of self-consciousness and the initiation and practice of historico-political actions? For Benjamin, these questions are intimately linked with the conditions of historical action. The experience of the decay of the social order, as he explains following the conception of historical materialism, transforms the ways in which we perceive the ruling social and political asymmetries. But in contrast to the conception of historical materialism – which is the ‘tradition’ Benjamin sees himself in line with12 – this perception has no systematic function. The perceptions of social and political asymmetries are not de-ideologising movements, in the sense that they would lead to a consciousness of continuous historical progress in which the immanent dialectical dynamics ultimately lead to a transformation of the social order.13 History, according to Benjamin, is not characterised in terms of continuity and progress, which would strive for completion or teleological process, but rather by unforeseeable events which suddenly, in lightning flashes, erupt into the present structures. The “fields with which we are concerned”14 can thus be identified as epistemology and history, and – as we will see later – politics as well. 11 Additionally, the paradoxical double referentiality in the trace not only denotes a transformation of the conditions of socio-political and historical knowledge; it also denotes a transformation – or, more precisely, a deferral – of the concept of the subject. If the trace operates as an interfering instance between the subject and its surrounding social, political, and thus historical reality, and if it is furthermore characterised by a paradoxical double referentiality in-between its temporal and spatial interior/exterior, then the notion of the ‘subject’ inevitably loses its unique position within the traditional philosophical paradigm of a binary coded world, consisting of linearly, transcendentally, or dialectically related subjects and objects. But what exactly does this deferral of the concept of ‘subject’ mean for its constitution? In other words, who is the “subject of historical knowledge”15 that Benjamin refers to? 12 The following short speculative excursus16 takes its point of departure from a primarily negative hypothesis: Benjamin does not provide a ‘concept’ of the subject in the classical sense. Nor is he thinking the world merely through a dualistic schema of subjects and objects, respectively. And yet his entire work can be read as an attempt towards a “theory of the modern subject”, as Gerhard Richter puts it.17 Throughout his work, Benjamin draws a multifaceted picture of the complex deferral of the concept of the ‘subject’ during the 19th century, whose unique position was hitherto seen as a sacrosanct philosophical fact, at least since Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. At the same time, he analyses the mobilization of the working class and although the cornerstones of this picture are multifarious they culminate in the antagonistic and dialectic struggle of the

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modern or ‘industrialized’ subject, which finds its theoretical pendant in historical materialism.18 13 As to the question ‘who is the subject of historical knowledge’, with Benjamin one would have to reply: “the struggling and oppressed class.”19 Although this assertion undoubtedly carries the initials of historical materialism, Benjamin is far from the theoretical assumptions of vulgar Marxism with its simplifying Basis-Überbau-structure. Instead of relying on a dual hierarchy between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, he departs from the ‘system’s’ intrinsic components – that is, its complexities, ideologies, hierarchies, and paradoxes – that together form the conditions of the capitalist dynamics. In The Arcades Project, this finally leads him to the transitional historical period of the Second Empire, and to the radical urban reorganization of its capital Paris, where these intrinsic components are condensed in a paradigmatic form. The intrinsic components of capitalism and the course of history, thus, are mutually dependent. Understood in terms of Benjamin’s rethinking of historical materialism, the modern subject then is located at the threshold of this immanent mutual dependency. It is exactly this threshold which must be taken as a point of departure for any understanding of the modern subject, and moreover, as a gateway for historiography itself. For it is only from the perspective of this in-between – the intersecting point of the formerly juxtaposed in- and outside – that an adequate description of the “changed ways of being-in-the-world [Daseinsweise] of the historical collectives” is possible, and, by extension, a changed perception of the world, as Benjamin puts it in his essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility”.20 14 This deferral of perspective towards the system’s intrinsic components is neither coming from the outside nor from beyond, in other words: it is neither a transcendental nor a metaphysical approach to history and knowledge, nor is it a judgment that would give preference to the oppressed or the oppressors. Instead, the task of the historian consists precisely in collecting and assembling these components; in Benjamin’s words, historiography’s task is to “carry over the principle of montage into history.”21 Set in a ‘right’ constellation, this montage intensifies history’s dialectic dynamics, rather than exposing it, as will be shown below. 15 Thus, the notion of the ‘subject’ in Benjamin cannot be fully grasped in either metaphysical or transcendental terms nor, indeed, in terms of historical materialism. Accordingly, in one of his notes towards the theses “On the Concept of History” (1940), Benjamin strongly rejects the notion of a transcendental subject: This subject is by no means a transcendental subject but the struggling, oppressed class in its most exposed situation. Historical knowledge exists only for them and for them solely in a historical moment.22 16 Hence, the subject of historical knowledge is nothing other than the oppressed class itself. We can assume that Benjamin uses the concept of the subject here in a double sense: it is the ‘subject’ as historico-political agent and the ‘subject’ as theme or topic of historiography. But while the latter hinges on the historian’s “sharpened awareness for the crisis in which the subject of history has respectively stepped in”,23 as Benjamin remarks in his notes, the first is ultimately grounded in historical experience. In other words, historical experience itself is the condition of the possibility of the subject’s (i.e. the oppressed class’s) very existence. With this claim, Benjamin inverts the Kantian idea that the transcendental subject is the condition of possibility of experience. To exist as a subject at all, however, means to be legible as such, and this, in turn, is

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indispensably entangled with the sudden moment of historical knowledge. Benjamin’s idiosyncratic reading of historical materialism provides a thought-figure: the a- chronological and a-linear dialectical movement between history and its subject, experience and knowledge, and finally between historiography and the historian. Now, the dialectic is not only restricted to perceive this movement as a whole, as a unique movement of subordinated components, but it is inherent in each of its components, and in each and every moment of alteration or turn from one to the other. The subject with its experience now stands at the threshold of this dialectic. In this Benjaminian metamorphosis of the concept of the modern subject, the subject itself is not merely a singular unity anymore, but rather a frame filled with potential experiences of the intersecting alterations of history’s components, along with all the rifts and ruptures that the capitalist system produces.

17 Remembering the aforementioned quote, “[i]n the field with which we are concerned, knowledge comes in lightning flashes”,24 we can now say that these rifts and ruptures in the present (industrialised, capitalistic) structures manifest themselves only through the experience of a subject who is instantaneously affected by social and political dialectics. Knowledge in this sense is empirical knowledge. It seems evident that the moment of ‘lightning’, in which knowledge is concealed, and the historical event coincide here. However, this conclusion loses its simplicity if we recall Benjamin’s explications on the correlation between the event, the historical process, and the subject. 18 The concept Benjamin repeatedly uses to define these moments of lightening, in which subjective experience, action, and historical knowledge are inseparably entangled is that of the image. The image is primarily defined by its inherent dialectical movement. The dialectical movement always takes place in the in-between before and after present historical moments: [E]very dialectically presented historical circumstance polarizes itself and becomes a force field in which the confrontation between its fore-history and after-history is played out. It becomes such a field insofar as the present instant interpenetrates it. 25

19 Within this tension between past and future, the dialectical moment creates its own possible interruptions, insofar as it overstretches the actual relation between subjective perceptibility in the modes of experience and the conception of an objective historical succession. But the dialectical movement neither departs from the past, nor does the historical process endeavour to attain a future programme. Rather, due to their mere existence, the actual moments themselves already challenge fore- and after- historical processes; hence the present contains the dialectic in itself. Referring back to the metaphor of the ‘flash’, we can conclude that there is no causal connection between what-has-been and what-is-now. Moreover, actuality fundamentally questions its own time-status by its own immanent dialectical movement. In doing so, it negates both the ideology of the “semblance of eternal sameness”26 and a teleological, idealistic concept of history. Hence, the recognisability of events is immediately connected to their actual manifestation – because in it, the present leaps forth into the past, it almost takes a leap out of itself. As Benjamin famously writes in his fourteenth and fifteenth theses ‘on the Concept of History’, “it is the tiger’s leap into the past”, which “make[s] the continuum of history explode”.27 Since there is no continuity between the past and the present, and since events only emerge in flashes, it is actuality itself that constitutes the dialectical movement. Moreover, this movement is only possible because of the

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discontinuity of history. If history were a continuous process, then there would be no present; hyperbolically speaking, there would be neither history, nor historical knowledge: [t]he dialectical image is an image that emerges suddenly, in a flash. What has been is to be held fast – as an image flashing up in the now of its recognisability.28 20 And, each “now” is the now of a particular recognisability. In it, truth is charged to the bursting point with time.29 21 Historical knowledge therefore is possible only in those moments of lightning flashes, in which the image – that is, the sudden emergence of an event – appears. And it is possible only through the mediation of a ‘materialist’ perception, namely the subjective experience of dialectics. And this experience is the trace.

II. Silence, Standstill – Now

"The historian is the herald […]." Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project "Silence is the perfectest herald of Joy." William Shakespeare, Macbeth 22 The previous section should have made clear that there is no historical continuity and that historical events are actualised in a sudden way. Furthermore, historical knowledge is immediately related to the spontaneity of the present moment. As these moments are related to history as such, on the one side, and to the experience of the subject, on the other, they operate as an interfering instance between totality and singularity. Herein we recognise the truth: [n]evertheless, truth is not […] a merely contingent function of knowing, but is bound to a nucleus of time lying hidden within the knower and the known alike.30 23 Benjamin limits the recognisability of historical events to singular ‘nuclei of time’ (Zeitkerne), because they depend on each image appearing in this singular moment. In opposition to a phenomenological approach to history – Benjamin is explicitly arguing against Heidegger31 – he shows that events not only belong to a specific time, but that they are only legible in a specific time. This legibility “constitutes a specific critical point in the movement of their interior.”32 Legibility therefore means interrupting the dialectical process of the event in itself. The only instant of time in which this interruptive act is possible at all is the moment of the ‘Now’. At this point the fundamental question arises: what exactly brings forth the legibility and, more importantly, the criticisability of events? Considering my previous observations, it now seems to be clear that a systematic, teleological model for the interpretation of historical events neither leads to historical knowledge, nor to historical transformation. Instead, Benjamin illustrates that the image must coincide, or as he puts it, must be ‘synchronic’ with the particular ‘Now’ of its recognisability: “image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation.”33

24 So what finally is to be recognised in the ‘Now’ of recognisability is the disruption of the historical process, the deconstruction of its very own dynamics. The image that flashes up in the ‘Now’ does construct anything but, rather, destroys. What happens in the moment of this particular formation is actually – nothing. Literally this means that

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the recognisability of history is bundled in a particular point of time. Herein it seems as if it is detached from its surrounding, as if the dialectic process is suspended. Therefore Benjamin writes: “[t]o thinking belongs the movement as well as the arrest of thoughts. Where thinking comes to a standstill in a constellation saturated with tension – there the dialectical image appears”;34 “image is dialectics at a standstill.” 35 The ‘Now’ is immediately linked to the image, and the sudden emergence of the image implements a standstill. But what exactly are the implications of this standstill, and what does happen in this specific moment of the ‘Now’? If the dialectic movement has been interrupted – if it has crystallized – this could suggest that the moment contains nothing. But history is not nothing. Rather, the standstill absorbs what-has-been in one particular point of time. This absorption creates an immense tension because it designates exactly the moment before a new event, before something must happen.36 The dialectical image and the object of materialistic historicism coincide within this ‘force field’ (Kraftfeld). This is why it is justified to ‘blast’ historical events out of the continual process of history in an act of violence. 25 Force and violence: both concepts refer to the connection between Benjamin’s epistemological and historico-philosophical statements on the one hand, and the sphere of politics on the other. Not least, they refer to the all-encompassing ethical- political realm, which is most obvious in his specific interpretation of justice. It is therefore indispensable at this point to turn to a passage from Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence”, and to Derrida’s interpretation thereof in “Force of Law” (1994).37 26 In his essay, Benjamin focuses on the relation between right and violence, and introduces the decisive distinction between ‘constituent violence’ (rechtsetzende Gewalt) and ‘constituted violence’ (rechterhaltende Gewalt). This is not the place to comment in detail on the complex structure of his argument; nevertheless, it is worth noting a few points about this distinction, accentuating especially the constituent act. Benjamin analyses the right-inherited violence and elucidates that every act of law, be it constituent or constituted, is an act of violence. Following a short genealogy of the traditional understanding of law, and taking into account the opposition between natural and positive law, he postulates another form of violence in order to overcome the circularity of law and violence: ‘pure violence’ (reine Gewalt) on the one hand, and the proletarian general strike on the other. In this framework, the only possibility for a transformation of the existing order lies in the identification and the affirmation of a quasi-apocalyptic notion of completing and finalising judgement. 27 According to Derrida, the distinction between constituent and constituted violence cannot be maintained. On the contrary: the inseparability between both forms of violence must be underlined in order to extract the possibility of political – and historical – transformation, without endangering basic normative rights. In line with Benjamin’s argument, Derrida further explains that the differentiation between performative and conservative acts is rendered obsolete. That is to say, it is necessary to enter into the de facto existing terminology in order to initiate right, yet – at the same time – the conservation of law permanently confirms its validity. The conservative and the performative act are intrinsically interrelated according to their mutual dispute along indistinct borders. Their reciprocal interdependence is characterised by the aporetic movement between two antagonistic poles, and it brings about a surplus which originates in the initiating side: the founding act always tends towards a domination of existing laws, thus endangering their authority. Derrida

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closely follows Benjamin in his reconstruction of this dynamic up to its founding origin. However, the violent original institution of the law happens within the law and without the law at the same time. This is why, according to Derrida, the original foundation of law cannot be sufficiently explained within a terminology of violence.38 28 The specificity of this founding violence stems from the problem of temporality. In the context of his elaborations on ‘pure violence’, Benjamin already remarks that it can only be ascertained retrospectively if ‘pure violence’ has in fact manifested itself. If this manifestation has actually lead to a transformation of the social, political, and historical order, then any decision whatsoever can only be taken from the perspective of a future anterior. Whereas Benjamin relates this insight to the possible realisation of an ulterior violence, Derrida emphasises that it affects the foundation of law as such. For the time-structure of the future anterior can certainly hint at the founding act, but it cannot give any information about events which take place presently, since it is at the innermost core of this initiating moment that it cannot be articulated completely in traditional categories of time or language. In these particular founding moments, there is no logical succession of cause and effect. Due to their indefinability and their inscrutability, the potentially constituent acts also contain a potential danger that makes one worry about the manner in which they manifest themselves here and now. Simultaneously, the performative character of the founding act indicates that what is unleashed here can be regarded as the condition of the possibility of each and every political act. In its potentiality, the foundation of this initiating moment, which lets all action begin, remains hidden in the moment of its initiation: it remains mystical. Any certainty and any secure knowledge as to whether this founding moment is a transforming act or not, can only be gained retrospectively. The original foundation remains necessarily undecidable, as Derrida writes: [h]ere, a silence is walled up in the violent structure of the founding act. Walled up and walled in because silence is not exterior to language. It is in that sense that I would be tempted to interpret [...] what Montaigne and Pascal call the mystical foundation of authority.39 29 Silence reigns in the founding moment – there is no hope of ever finding reasons for the originary, initiative act. No theory will ever be able to give answers about the origin of authority, because the origin of authority founds itself. This is why it is not even acceptable to talk about an ‘origin’. Instead, [i]ts very moment of foundation or institution [...] would consist of a coup de force, of a performative and therefore interpretative violence that in itself is neither just nor unjust and that no justice and no previous law with its founding anterior moment could guarantee or contradict or invalidate. No justificatory discourse could or should insure the role of metalanguage in relation to the performativity or institutive language or to its dominant interpretation.40 30 The categories of ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ are therefore not applicable, because this law- positing moment is beyond transcendence and immanence. Neither the reference to a higher reason nor the verification of inherent criteria is capable of affecting this event. In the moment of initiation, there is no movement, and yet everything is decided exactly here. It is the moment of standstill, in which the performative act exceeds its very own moment of silence and demands a decision. Benjamin’s ‘dialectics at a standstill’ therefore does not mean the suspension of dialectical movement, but its unfolding expansion, its potentialisation, beyond the chronological succession of past – present – future.41 This view is not comprehensible within the framework of a classical

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conception of time, because in fact nothing happens at this point. The initiating acts actually happen in between time(s), and since they are happening perpetually in these instants, they are elusive and deny any searching for reasons. From the perspective of the In-Between, the realm beyond transcendence and immanence does not have a peripheral character, but is inherent in itself. The transcendence of law only comes to pass insofar as it is installed as a coming law. In other words: it is only in its future institution that the law attains its transcendental status and returns to the level of action. Thus, the source of the law is always both immanent and transcendent. At the same time, it can never be completely traced back to these antagonistic poles. Hence, the interpretability of future events depends on the particular effective structure of law in the same measure as the outcome of the initiation remains necessarily open.

31 For Benjamin, it is the historian's responsibility to ultimately interpret the manifestations of divine violence as such, whereas Derrida states that even an interpretation in retrospect cannot take place outside of the axioms of the existing order. The interpretation of law thus always happens within the limits of the already existing frameworks of interpretation. The future interpretation of constituent acts therefore must refer to the semantic structure of what-has-been in order to attain both comprehensibility and comprehension of the outcome of the initiation. The necessity to actualise the already-existing models of interpretation results, not least, in fulfilling the requirement to establish and legitimate the instituting violence. The surplus, which originates from the relation between the possibilities of interpretation already inherent in the system’s matrix and the contingency of potentially realisable acts are the conditions for the realisation of constituent events per se. Their creative power results from this synchronising mutual dynamic of convention and actualisation, conservation and destruction. The event of the constituent action obtains its facticity only in the moment of its temporalisation, which brings it inevitably and immediately into a relation with the present and effective ethical order. This implies that this order has to be permanently cited. 32 This is why Benjamin’s dichotomic distinctions (constituent/constituted, proletarian/ political) become problematic for Derrida, as they ultimately do not come together, but are completely negated by an external violence. The negation that is meant here, however, has the paradoxical character of being both a founding and a preserving power. It is not similar to complete destruction, however messianic this completion may be; rather, it dislocates the two poles, which are not definitely distinguishable, taking into consideration the differentiating moment. Initiation and conservation of law are not self-contained antipodes in the historical process of a purposively rational eschatology – even Benjamin admits the impossibility of a total closure of these moments – but their characteristic feature is precisely the impossibility to abolish the symbiotic, aporetic movement of their immanent antagonisms, as Derrida writes: But this figure is also a contamination. It effaces or blurs the distinction, pure and simple, between foundation and conservation. It inscribes iterability in originarity, in unicity and singularity [...].42 33 The singularity, in which the iterability (citability and repeatability) is originally engraved, is the law, and – along with it – the idea of justice. Whereas Benjamin demands to finally arrest the possibility of a circular movement of law-positing and law-conserving violence through the instauration of a pure divine violence, Derrida, on the contrary, insists on the necessity to bear this aporia.43 For him, the surplus is a direct consequence of the undecidability of every political and legal decision, as it gives

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an outlook on the necessary claim of an infinite justice, and therefore points to the urgency to do justice to the singularity and the alterity of the Other.

34 The surplus opens up a third perspective, in which the non-positionality of the boundaries can possibly be established against the background of normative claims. If, following Benjamin’s argument, historical events are always regarded as something completely new, then the task of the historian is to identify and to scatter any thought of progress and any current of thought assuming that historical events could be repeated. For the repetition does not take place on the level of the events themselves but rather on the level of citation and iteration. Within this understanding of historical dynamics, ‘writing history’ means focussing on the singular events and assembling them into a greater scope. 35 Accordingly, Benjamin’s term for historiography is montage. In order to arrange a montage, the historian is supposed to “cite history”.44 The application of this ‘method’ of citation in materialist historiography means that the objects have to be extracted from their respective contexts. As Benjamin writes: “[i]t belongs to the concept of citation, however, that the historical object in each case is torn from its context.”45 In an earlier passage from this text, he expresses this thought even more pointedly, writing that “the object of history is to be blasted out of the continuum of historical succession”46 and, moreover, that materialist historiography not only takes hold of historical objects, but rather “springs them loose from the order of succession”.47 36 From a retrospective standpoint, then, the historian attains knowledge about the objects in order to detach them from the continuum of history. Everything now depends on the right interpretation of the relation between the past and the future. The correct exegesis of history shifts from a supposedly objective sequence of events to the level of the subject’s perception, or more precisely: to the subject’s relation to a concrete context. Benjamin’s ‘ideal historian’ arranges a montage of history – he cites historical events, which are essentially characterised by their “monadological structure”.48 The historian is the one who passes on tradition as discontinuity and he passes it on through destruction.49 The historian is the herald who follows the disruptive traces of history, who interprets them and puts them into writing. In line with this argument, the quote presented at the outset of this article – ‘In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in lightning flashes’ – concludes with the following sentence: “The text is the long roll of thunder that follows.”50 37 If it is true that ‘subjects’ are not subjected to the fate of the course of history, and if it is true that they are obliged to cross seemingly established and unchangeable boundaries, then historical knowledge is equivalent to the opening towards a world of potential possibilities of action.51 It is in this opening, in its destruction of pre- established successions, that Benjamin locates the premise for the realisation of happiness. The historian is the herald of this happiness.

III. Crystal Magic

"These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen. They show that, within the ruling classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the

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present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing." Karl Marx, Capital 38 If, as we have seen above, historical knowledge provides the basis for transcending established boundaries towards the realm of potential action, then this gives rise to the following questions: how exactly could this action be understood? Why is an initiating act necessary? And what is the role and function of the surplus? These questions rest on the assumption that a further distinction is the immanent basis of the moment of initiation: for not only does it contain the act itself; it also contains the moment before an action is actually performed. In this sense, the surplus provides a possible performative act as the possibility of a transforming political action par excellence.

39 This dialectic between pure possibility and manifestation is the point at which the force originates and, as such, it is the condition of possibility of political action because it enforces and empowers decisions. It must immerse itself in existing terminologies and yet it destroys them at the same time. This is why political action, as well as historical action, is primarily to be understood as de-constitutive action, which is always already connected to the singular event – the ‘Now’. 40 Departing from this dialectic between pure possibility and its manifestation, historico- political action is relieved from any chronological timescale, and hence directed inwards towards the core of its dialectical or aporetic movement. In his aforementioned discussion of Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence”, Derrida characterises precisely this core of the mythical founding act as necessarily undecidable, which is to say, as a moment of silence. Furthermore, as he reminds us, this fundamental silence “is not exterior to language”.52 This statement points us to the connection between language and the historico-political sphere, and, indeed, between Benjamin’s and Derrida’s writings. 41 In his illuminating early letter to Martin Buber, written in July 1916, Benjamin explicitly refers to the relation between politics and language.53 In this letter, he refuses Buber’s invitation to publish an article in his newly founded journal Der Jude. Benjamin justifies his refusal by arguing that, to him, the journal’s content is unbearable as it conforms to the general tone of political writing in Germany at that time: a terminological performance of war propaganda.54 Behind the idea of “politically effectual writing” (politisch wirksamem Schrifttum), Benjamin argues, lies a profound misunderstanding about how writing, or theory in general, may affect political action: language here is regarded as if it could deliver the “motives behind action”.55 Hence, as Benjamin writes, language and writing are “degraded” to a status of being only “mere means” to calculable instrumental actions.56 The relation between “word[s] and deed[s]” can thus only be understood as a chain of mediations, as “a mechanism for the actualisation [Verwirklichung] of the true absolute”.57 Directing political writing towards an absolute truth is equivalent to a “pitiful, weak action […] whose origin does not reside within itself, but in some kind of sayable and expressible motives.”58 In contrast to this view of language as a mere means-end-relation, Benjamin unfolds his concept of “objective writing”, in which language is not understood as “mediation of contents” but as immediateness.59 The relation between language and politics can therefore be understood as a relation between the unsayable and political action, in which the

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magical nature of language is preserved and destroyed at the same time. “I can understand writing as such”, Benjamin elucidates, as poetic, prophetic, objective in terms of its effect, but in any case only as magical, that is as un-mediated. […] And if I disregard other effective forms here – aside from poetry and prophecy – it repeatedly seems to me that the crystal-pure elimination of the unsayable in language is the most obvious form given to us to be effective within language and, to that extent, through it. This elimination of the unsayable seems to me to coincide precisely with what is actually the objective and dispassionate manner of writing […].60 42 Only a writing which includes the realm of the unsayable fulfils the criteria of being ‘politically effectual writing’, and can be equated with politically effectual action. But this inclusion not only contains the preservation of the unsayable, it is also its instantaneous negation. Thus, the magic of language61 as such is a necessary condition for what Benjamin calls ‘objective writing’: My concept of objective and, at the same time, highly political style and writing is this: to direct towards [hinzuführen] what was denied to the word; only where this sphere of speechlessness reveals itself in unutterably pure power can the magic spark leap between the word and the motivating deed, where the unity of these two equally real entities resides. Only the intensive direction [intensive Richtung] of words into the core of intrinsic silence is truly effective.62 43 Therefore, the ‘crystal-pure elimination’ of ‘what is denied to the word’ is neither only an “expansive tendency”63 – as popular political writing is for Benjamin – nor is it restrictive, in the sense of a mere reduction. Rather, it indicates a direction towards the centre of the dialectic between suspension and preservation. That is to say, it is an inverse effectuality. This inverse directedness into the inner core of the dialectical movement cannot be regarded as a geometrical line, but as an extension in the point, as an extension without extension – in other words, as an in-tension in the sense of an inner tension. The German expression hinführen (zu/auf) – which signifies a directing or leading towards – then is closely linked to the intensity of the introversive direction towards the ineffable. Its in-tense directedness not only rests on an approximation of ‘what was denied to the word’ but, at the same time, adds a supplement to the momentary point. Hence, within the dialectical movement, in which language and the political are entangled, something additional is exposed. This is the reason why Benjamin characterizes the moment of silence as a moment of tension or, as he writes, as a manifestation of ‘pure power’ (reiner Macht).64 In language, this supplementary power enforces an unveiling of its magical origin – that is its infinite potential – whereas in politics the role and function of this additive moment (or let us say the surplus) – can be regarded as an empowering, de-constitutive act, that is to say, as an initiating, but indeterminable and therefore mystical force. With regard to the realm of the unspeakable, one can thus draw a structural similarity between language and politics. Silence, the unspeakable, and that which ‘was denied to the word’ are, in this respect, the sites where the mystical foundation of politics (and law) and the magical origin of language coincide. And although it is undeniable that the notions of the magical and the mystical have varying connotations, both orbit the border between the worldly/expressible and the unsayable.65

44 As a result a tension arises – a tension which potentially comes to be and is subjected to negation only in the singular moment of the Now. Therefore, the ‘Now’, in its initiating, preserving and destructive character, is fraught with a tension in which all of its elements – time, space, dialectical movement – form an in-tense constellation. This

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instantaneous moment can be regarded as the aforementioned extraction of power. Rather than clinging to a historico-political notion – which includes philosophical as well as theological concepts – the ‘telos of historical dynamis’ can be found in this ‘force field’ (Kraftfeld), as Benjamin writes in his “Theologico-Political Fragment” (c. 1921).66 Turning back to The Arcades Project, we can now say that “the tension between dialectical opposites is greatest”67 in this ‘force field’. And with Derrida, we can add: the point where the dialectical opposite is greatest is aporetic because none of the aforementioned inverse and tense moments can ultimately suspend or arrest their own forceful movements.68 Therefore the ‘historical telos’ does not point towards an ultimate goal, aim or good, but towards a realm of potentialities. The ‘historical telos’ is, therefore, infinite or – more precisely – its directedness is an inverse infinity. 45 At this point, we can see that a structural similarity obtains, not only between the inverse infinity of the historico-political and language, but also between the former and the ethical realm. In his book Aporias (1993), Jacques Derrida elucidates the necessity of the infinite continuation of polar movements. Rather than “giving in to any dialectical [solution]”69 – even a suspension of the historical succession – he clearly indicates that we should adhere to aporias. “There”, he states in reference to some of his writings, at a precise moment […] I used the term “aporia” for a single duty that recurrently duplicates itself interminably, fissures itself, and contradicts itself without remaining the same […]. I suggested that a sort of nonpassive endurance of the aporia was the condition of responsibility and of decision.70 46 To experience Benjamin’s historical momentum could, within this spectrum, be equivalent to an endurance of this aporia. Thus, it could lead to an approximation of historical writing and political action – of the unsayable, the mystical and the political sphere. The convergence of Benjamin’s epistemological and historico-philosophical considerations and Derrida’s ethical-political concept of enduring aporias could prepare a path towards a new form of critique. As Benjamin writes in the thirteenth of his theses “On the Concept of History”, this new form of critique “must underlie any criticism of the concept of progress itself”.71 Hence, it would have to start with a general transformation of the traditional understanding of history and time: The first stage of this undertaking will be to carry over the principle of montage into history. That is, to assemble large-scale constructions out of the smallest and most precisely cut components. Indeed, to discover in the analysis of the small individual moment the crystal of the total event.72 47 In view of the metaphor of the crystal, the ‘Now’ is the crystallised historical event. It is crystallised time, and as such it represents the condition of the possibility of a politics of openness. In E.T.A. Hoffmann’s novella The Golden Pot (1814) , the crystal is a solidification charm – and charms, magic, and the unspeakable are “material of vital importance politically”73 for historical knowledge.

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WITTE, Bernd & PONZI, Mauro (eds.), Theologie und Politik: Walter Benjamin und ein Paradigma der Moderne (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2005)

ENDNOTES

1. An earlier, shorter version of this article will be published in Spanish under the title “Cristales de tiempo. Reflexiones (polítcas) sobreunahistoria del ahora”, trans. Nicolás Esteban Vargas, in: Esperanza, pero no para nosotros. Capitalismo, técnica y estética en W. Benjamin, eds. Horst Nitschak & Miguel Vatter (Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, forthcoming). I would like to thank Werner Hamacher, Sami Khatib, Caroline Sauter, María del Rosario Acosta López, Martin Saar, Jan Sieber, and Sebastian Truskolaski for their critical and fruitful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and, once again, Caroline Sauter for her patient and careful translation of parts of this text into English. 2. Why it is legitimate to explicitly understand the concept of power as force is grounded on a specific interpretation of the Aristotelian notion of dynamis. In this ontological reading, power means a relational potentiality which lies in, and in between beings and things, and which has – if actualised – an inherent possibility to initiate surrounding structures. (Cf. Aristoteles, Metaphysik, trans. Hermann Bonitz [Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1998], IX 8, 1049b 4-5, p.12-17) In his groundbreaking essay collection on Aristotle’s dynamis, Giorgio Agamben has successfully related this concept to the theories of Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. (Cf. Agamben, La potenza del pensiero. Saggi e conferenze [Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2005]). A first selection of Agamben’s essays have already been edited and translated into English by Daniel Heller-Roazen in 1999. See: Agamben, Potentialities, ed./trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). 3. Here, it must be briefly pointed out that the ways these ‘ethical reasons’ are to be understood throughout Derrida’s work differ profoundly from a traditional understanding of ethics, and thus depart from classical teleological or deontological approaches. Instead Derrida develops the idea of a quasi-transcendental, in which the transcendental not only announces the condition of possibility for the subject of cognition, but at the same time also refers to the condition of

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impossibility. Hence, ethics are located at the border of the possible and the impossible, of the conditional and unconditional. That is to say, they depart from a différance, as Derrida elucidates in Limited Inc (1988). In his intense engagement with Levinas, he works out that the question of ethics is inseparably bound to the question of alterity and thus to an openness towards the Other. It points beyond the remit of the present article to further investigate this remark. Instead, I refer to a few relevant and enlightening texts, such as: Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc., trans. Werner Rappl & Dagmar Travner (Wien: Passagen Verlag, 2001); Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics”, in: Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). An analysis of how ethics and the quasi-transcendental are correlated is provided by Matthias Fritsch in his article “Deconstructive Aporias: Quasi-Transcendental and Normative”, in: Continental Philosophy Review, No. 44: 4 (November 2011), pp. 439-468. To what extend this openness to the Other is entangled to the gift (le don), and to the question of hospitality has been worked out by Dirk Quadflieg in his article “Die Frage des Fremden. Derrida und das Paradox der absoluten Gastfreundschaft”, in: Politische Philosophie und Dekonstruktion. Beiträge zur politischen Theorie im Anschluss an Jacques Derrida, eds. Andreas Niederberger & Markus Wolf (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2007), pp. 27-38. 4. Cf. Benjamin, Walter, “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (Erste Fassung)”, in: Gesammelte Schriften I.2 (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2002), pp. 431-469 ; “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”, in: Selected Writings 3, 1935-1938, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 101-133. Henceforth referred to as GS I.2. All English-language quotes are taken from the canonical English edition: Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006). Although artworks have always been “reproducible” (GS I.2, p. 436; SW III, p. 102), in his essay Benjamin astutely analyses the new dimension of the advancing mechanisation of reproductive means, and the concomitant alteration of the status of particular works. Artworks are not only replaced by their likeness (Abbild), but rather achieve their own status through processes of ritualisation, in which they are admittedly detached from their respective ‘original’, but without retaining an ‘original’ kernel. By implementing the new techniques of reproduction, Benjamin concludes, the authenticity and originality of the artwork is irretrievably lost. The chock – being the primary characteristic of modern times – describes the advancing acceleration and transformation of established modalities of action and perception, which go hand in hand with Benjamin’s prognosis of the “decay of the aura” (GS I.2, p. 440; SW III, p. 104). At this point, any further implication or critique of Benjamin’s use of the concept of the aura, such as, for instance, Bertolt Brecht’s charge of mysticism, have to be excluded for evident reasons. (Cf. Hans Robert Jauß, “Spur und Aura. Bemerkungen zu Walter Benjamins Passagenwerk“, in: Art social und art industriel. Funktionen der Kunst im Zeitalter des Industrialismus, eds. H. R. Jauß & H. Pfeiffer et al. [München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1987], pp. 19-38.) 5. GS I.2, p. 440; SW III, p. 104. 6. GS I.2, p. 438; SW III, p. 103. 7. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland & Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1999), M 16 a, 4. Henceforth referred to as AP. It is no coincidence that this formula is embedded into the paragraph on the flâneur. Here, the flâneur and the detective are literally synchronised, and behind the flâneur’s seemingly true sublime abstention from the social environment, “in reality, hides the riveted attention of an observer who will not let the unsuspected malefactor out of his sight.” With investigative skill the flâneur perceives, uncovers, and deepens the traces of society and to this extent his ‘task’ is of socio- critical relevance (Cf. AP, M 13 a, 2). Benjamin’s terminology in this paragraph, and his remarks on ‘habitus’ and ‘social legitimation’, lead to the assumption that he might consider the flâneur as being a proto-sociological observer. The specifically ‘flaneurous’ behaviour of the flâneur, his

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interruption of the social environment, does not result in his ability to empathise with things. (On the concept of empathy, see: AP, M 17a 2, 4, 5.) It is of primary interest for my purpose here that the flâneur’s sublimity can be traced back to a rational perception of the social surroundings. Nevertheless, at this point, it must be remarked that the flâneur is undoubtedly one of the most ambivalent figures in Benjamin’s work. See for instance Carlo Salzani’s thorough study Constellations of Reading. Walter Benjamin in Figures of Actuality (Bern: Peter Lang Verlag, 2009), pp. 37-80. In her groundbreaking Dialectics of Seeing. Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press, 1989), Susan Buck-Morss also provides a short but precise portrait of this figure, cf. 304-307. See also: Nassima Sahraoui, “The Flâneur and Socio-Economic Critique”, in: Benjamin’s Figures, eds. Madeleine Kasten, Rico Sneller et al. (Nordhausen/ Leiden: Bautz Traugott, 2015), forthcoming. 8. Benjamin makes use of the concept of constellation throughout his work; for instance in One- Way Street (1928), Berlin Childhood Around 1900 (c. 1933-1938), “On the Concept of History” (1940), the “Epistemo-Critical Prologue” to his Origin of the German Mourning-Play (1928). In one of the fragments of The Arcades Project he writes: “It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather, image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation.” (AP, N 2a, 3). 9. The concept of destruction in Benjamin hints at a minor theoretical similarity between Benjamin and Heidegger. Even if Benjamin himself sharply criticised Heidegger, it is worth considering how both thinkers deal with the philosophical tradition. The point at which they briefly touch theoretically is in their respective focus on momentum. In Being and Time (1927) Heidegger writes: “But this destruction is just as far from having the negative sense of shaking off the ontological tradition. [...] On its negative side, this destruction does not relate itself toward the past; its criticism is aimed at ‘today’ and at the prevalent way of treating the history of ontology. But to bury the past in nullity (Nichtigkeit) is not the purpose of this destruction; its aim is positive; its negative function remains unexpressed and indirect.” (Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996, p. 44].) Of course Benjamin and Heidegger offer very different ways in which this ‘criticism of today’ can be pursued. For instance, Heidegger states that these times are defined by worldly abandonment (a thought that is pursued by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition, 1958) and by structural, historical regression (a thought which, despite fundamental differences, also appears in Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences, 1936). In contrast, Benjamin diagnoses not only a spiritual crisis or a Weltvergessenheit, but also the negative effects of capitalism. So while the Heideggerian Dasein can only be salvaged from oblivion through embedding itself in the (existentially actualised) ‘man’ – a notion which places him in ideological proximity to right-wing politics – Benjamin proposes the arrest of historical processes instead of their mere ontologisation. The sense in which Benjamin’s ‘increased destruction’ might also be suspected of being ‘unethical’ will be shown below, with Derrida. 10. There is an evident proximity to Derrida’s exegesis of the trace. In Of Grammatology (1967) he writes on the relation between the trace and the real: “The trace is in fact the absolute origin of sense in general. Which amounts to saying once again that there is no absolute origin of sense in general. The trace is the difference which opens appearance [l’apparaître] and signification.” (Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak [Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009], p. 65.) An excellent analysis of the philosophical overlappings on the concept of trace between Derrida, Husserl and Heidegger can be found in Paola Marrati’s Genesis and Trace: Derrida reading Husserl and Heidegger (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005). For a thorough reading of the relation between Benjamin and Husserl, see Uwe Steiner’s article “Phänomenologie der Moderne”, in: Benjamin-Studien 1, eds. Daniel Weidner & Sigrid Weigel (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2008), pp. 107-126. 11. AP, N1,1.

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12. The manifold problems around Benjamin’s very specific and even idiosyncratic reading of historical materialism, his ‘alliance’ with Bert Brecht, and his differences with the Frankfurt School could be the object of an extensive and detailed study in itself. This study can, sadly, not be provided here. 13. One could continue this thought by stating that Benjamin does not conform to a more or less classical critique of ideology in general, if ideology is merely understood as a phenomenon of consciousness, where subjects find themselves in a context of delusion out of which they can only escape through insight into a particular truth. (Cf. Georg Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, [Berlin: Luchterhand 1970].) Another example of a Marxist approach that is not primarily concerned with revealing a ‘transcendental’ truth can be found in the work of Antonio Gramsci, who attempts to deconstruct the discourse on ideology itself. Gramsci’s contemporary followers include Slavoj Žižek, Judith Butler, and Ernesto Laclau (Cf. Antonio Gramsci, Gefängnishefte, [Hamburg: Argument, 1991], and, amongst others, Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, [London: Verso, 1977].) 14. AP, N 1,1. 15. SW 4, p. 394. 16. Benjamin’s notion of the subject consists of many layers and can be approached in multiple ways. A thorough reading of how these multiple layers of Benjamin’s concept of the subject might be understood, however, exceeds the confines of the present article. 17. Gerhard Richter, “Acts of Self-Portraiture: Benjamin’s Confessional and Literary Writings”, in: The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin, ed. David S. Ferris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 224. 18. In his essay, Richter – with reference to Benjamin’s autobiographical writings – shows how Benjamin upholds the concept of the subject, rather than neglecting it as a whole. (See Richter, “Acts of Self-Portraiture”, pp. 224ff) Werner Hamacher refers to Benjamin’s autobiographical writings, too, as Richter points out (cf. ibid, p. 225). In his illuminating essay ‘The Word Wolke–If It Is One’, Hamacher confirms that “it cannot be doubted that Benjamin’s memoires represent the impetus as well as the explication, extrapolation and fulfilment of the program that his theoretical writings formulate.” (Werner Hamacher, “The Word Wolke – If It Is One”, in: Benjamin’s Grounds. New Readings of Walter Benjamin, ed. Rainer Nägele (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), p. 152. 19. SW 4, p. 394. 20. The whole quote reads as follows: “Innerhalb großer geschichtlicher Zeiträume verändert sich mit der gesamten Daseinsweise der historischen Kollektiva auch ihre Wahrnehmung. Die Art und Weise, in der die menschliche Wahrnehmung sich organisiert – das Medium, in dem sie erfolgt – ist nicht nur natürlich sondern auch geschichtlich bedingt.” (GS I.2, p. 439.) [My translation.] 21. AP, N 2,6. 22. GS I.3, p. 1243 (Ms. 474.) [My translation.] The original quotation reads as follows: “Dieses Subjekt ist beileibe kein Transzendentalsubjekt sondern die kämpfende unterdrückte Klasse in ihrer exponiertesten Situation. Historische Erkenntnis gibt es allein für sie und für sie einzig im historischen Augenblick.” In his article “Walter Benjamin and the Subject of Historical Cognition”, Sami Khatib provides a first analysis of how Benjamin’s subject of historical knowledge is intertwined with and dissociated from Kant’s transcendental subject, whose principal characteristic lies precisely in its “non-historicity”. (Cf. Sami Khatib, “Walter Benjamin and the Subject of Historical Cognition”, in: Annals of Scholarship, Special Issue “Walter Benjamin Unbound”, vol. 21.1 [2015], p. 23.) Khatib rightly assumes that Benjamin’s notion of the subject can thus only been understood “against the backdrop of Marx and Kant.” (Ibid.) 23. GS I.3, p. 1245. [My translation.] 24. AP, N 1,1.

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25. AP, N 7a,1. 26. AP, N 9,5. 27. GS I.2, p. 701; SW 4, p. 395. 28. AP, N 9,7. 29. AP, N 3,1. 30. AP, N 3,2. 31. See AP, N 3,1 and N 8a,4. In contrast to Hannah Arendt’s reading, Benjamin repeatedly polemicizes against Heidegger’s approach to a philosophy of history – not only in The Arcades Project. (Hannah Arendt, “Walter Benjamin (Essay 1968/71)”, in: Arendt und Benjamin. Texte, Briefe, Dokumente, eds. Detlev Schöttker & Erdmut Wizisla (Frankfurt/Main: 2006), pp. 45-98. 32. “For the historical index of the images not only says that they belong to a particular time; it says, above all, that they attain to legibility only at a particular time.” (AP, N 3,1.) 33. AP, N 2a,3. Werner Hamacher and Sabine Gölz provided two outstanding interpretations of Benjamin’s concept of the ‘Now’, albeit with different emphases. Hamacher focuses on the aspect of non-messianic messianicity, whereas Sabine Gölz concentrates on the inter-legibility of Benjamin’s ‘Now’ and Ingeborg Bachmann’s concept of ‘Heute’. (Werner Hamacher, “’Now’: Walter Benjamin on Historical Time”, trans. N. Rosenthal, in: Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin [London/New York: Routledge, 2005], pp. 38-68; Sabine Gölz, “Geistesgegenwart als Lichtung im Ähnlichen: Benjamins ‘Gegenwart’ – ‘Heute’ bei Bachmann”, in: Re-Acting to Ingeborg Bachmann: New Essays and Performances, eds. Caitríona Leahy & Bernadette Cronin [Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006], pp. 97-109.) 34. AP, N 10a,3. 35. AP, N 3,1. 36. See also AP, N 3,1: “In it [the Now], truth is charged to the bursting point with time. (This point of explosion, and nothing else, is the death of the intentio, which thus coincides with the birth of authentic historical time, the time of truth.” 37. At this point it is impossible to highlight all aspects of the discussion that followed the publication of Derrida’s book. Instead, I would like to point to exemplary contributions, such as the volumes Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, eds. Drucilla Cornell, Michael Rosenfeld, David Carlson (New York: Routledge, 1992); and Gewalt und Gerechtigkeit. Derrida-Benjamin, ed. Anselm Haverkamp (Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 1994). See especially Christoph Menke, “Können und Glauben. Die Möglichkeit der Gerechtigkeit”, in: Spiegelungen der Gleichheit: Politische Philosophie nach Adorno und Derrida (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2004); see also Burkhard Lindner, “Derrida. Benjamin. Holocaust”, in: global benjamin 3, eds. Klaus Garber & Ludger Rehm (München: Fink Verlag, 1999). A critique on Derrida’s reading of Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ is formulated by Giorgio Agamben in his book on the state of exception. See Giorgio Agamben, Ausnahmezustand (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2004). 38. Cf. Derrida, Jacques, “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’”, in: Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, eds. Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld et al. (New York: Routledge, 1992) [henceforth referred to as FL]: “This moment of suspense, of épokhe, this founding or revolutionary moment of law is, in law, an instant of non-law. […] But it is also the whole history of law. This moment always takes place and never takes place in presence” (FL, p. 36). What characterises this Non-Law is that it is not bound to a specific time. Benjamin already writes in his Kafka essay that it is a sort of “pre-world” (Vorwelt), in which the “law which is not practised anymore” becomes the “narrow gate of justice”. (Walter Benjamin, “Franz Kafka”, in: Gesammelte Schriften II.2 [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002], p. 437.) [My translation.] The prefix pre- points to Derrida’s deconstruction of Kafka’s famous parable “Before the Law” in Préjugés, where the protagonist ‘K.’ endures in front of the law’s gate to achieve the admission to enter. As he does not initiate this action himself, he dies before the law. (Cf. Franz Kafka, “Vor dem Gesetz”, in: Der Proceß [Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Verlag, 2009], p. 226-227; Jacques Derrida,

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“Préjugés – devant la loi”, in: La faculté de juger [Paris: Edition de Minuit, 1985]) For a brilliant and quite hyperbolic interpretation of Kafka’s parable, see Giorgio Agamben, “K.”, in: Nudità (Rome: Nottetempo, 2009). 39. FL, p. 14. 40. FL, pp. 13-14. 41. As these moments do not contain a spatial extension, this ‘unfolding expansion’ must rather be understood as an infinite ‘infolding expansion’ into their inner kernel, that is to say, the moments approximate the realm beyond chronology infinitesimally. For an account of the concepts of the infinitesimal and infinite approximation in Benjamin see: Peter Fenves, The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). 42. FL, p. 41. 43. In his enlightening article on the proletarian general strike in Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence”, Werner Hamacher has explicitly argued against this reading of Benjamin. Moreover, Hamacher focuses on the logic of de-positing acts. He points out that the dichotomic distinction between law-positing and law-conserving violence is not ultimately suspended by pure violence, but rather de-posited by pure means. (Cf. Werner Hamacher, “Afformative, Strike: Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’”, in: Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy: Destruction and Experience, eds. Andrew Benjamin & Peter Osborne [London/New York: Routledge, 1994], pp. 110-138.) 44. AP, N 11, 3. 45. AP, N 11, 3. 46. AP, N 10, 3. 47. AP, N 10a, 1. 48. AP, N 10, 3. 49. In “The Destructive Character” (1931) Walter Benjamin writes: “[t]he destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates, because it clears away the traces of our own age […]”. (SW II, p. 541) 50. AP, N 1, 1. 51. In his early essay “Fate and Character” (1919), Benjamin explains that the only way to escape the fate of an order constituted by ‘unhappiness and guilt’ is a definite breaking apart of this very order. Only in this way can happiness be obtained: “Happiness is, rather, what releases the fortunate man from the embroilment of the Fates and from the net of his own fate. Not for nothing does Hölderlin call blissful gods ‘fateless’.” (SW I, p. 203.) 52. FL, p. 14. 53. The letter can be found in: The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1910-1940, eds. Gershom Scholem & Theodor W. Adorno, trans. Manfred R. Jacobson & Evelyn M. Jacobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 79-81. Henceforth referred to as Corresp. The German edition was published as: Walter Benjamin: Briefe, eds. Gershom Scholem & Theodor W. Adorno (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1966), pp. 125-128. 54. This charge can be traced back to Buber’s overture for the first volume of the journal, in which he asserts that the Jewish youth movement has to have a certain dutiful enthusiasm for the First World War. This ‘attestation’ caused a great amount of discussion amongst German- Jewish thinkers at that time, especially those who were involved in pacifist and anarcho-socialist movements, such as Gustav Landauer and Gershom Scholem. With regards to Buber’s views, Benjamin writes: “[a]fter this conversation [with Gershom Scholem], I was in a position to decide whether I could possibly contribute to it [the journal Der Jude]. Because, in view of how intensely I disagreed with so many of the contributions to the first volume – especially their position on the European war – my awareness that, in reality, my attitude toward this journal was and could be no other than my attitude toward all politically effectual writing [politisch wirksamem Schrifttum] was obscured. The beginning of the war finally and decisively revealed this to me.” (Corresp., p.

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79.) [Translation modified.] An interesting genealogy of Buber’s journal can be found in Eleonore Lappin, Der Jude 1916-1928: Jüdische Moderne zwischen Partikularismus und Universalismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). 55. Corresp., p.79. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid, pp. 79-80. [Translation modified.] 60. Ibid, p. 80. [Translation modified.] 61. For the concept of magical language in Benjamin, see Winfried Menninghaus’ ground- breaking work Walter Benjamins Theorie der Sprachmagie (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1980). Menninghaus highlights that Benjamin’s usage of the term magic in the context of language must be read in close connection to his remarks on revelation, which is the “self-manifestation of something unspeakable” (p. 22.) [All translations are my own]. Thereby, however, Benjamin does not simply relapse into a form of language-mysticism, as e.g. the Romanticists do; instead, he provides the “language-immanent ground, the specific possibility to transcend a linguistic sensibility into mystical theology”, that means to “surmount” its religious connotations without finally suspending, but in “critically saving” them (p. 226). Uwe Steiner provides a thorough introduction to the magic of language in Benjamin’s writings. Cf. “Die Magie der Sprache”, in: Walter Benjamin (Stuttgart/Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 2004), pp. 42-50. 62. Corresp., p. 80. [Translation modified.] 63. Ibid. 64. Although Benjamin uses the word revelation instead of manifestation, I would tend to exclude this more or less theological reading at this point and, with it, all the implications for Political Theology, which can be drawn out of it. A broad overview of this topic is given in the volume Theologie und Politik: Walter Benjamin und ein Paradigma der Moderne, eds. Bernd Witte & Ponzi Mauro (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2005). 65. For the purpose of this article, the differences between magic and mysticism can be left aside, since I focus only on the connecting axis of both notions. In his later work, too, Benjamin does not clearly distinguish between both terms and occasionally uses them as synonyms. An illustration of how magic and mysticism differ can be found in: Gershom Scholem, “Der Name Gottes und die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala”, in: Judaica 3. Studien zur jüdischen Mystik (Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), pp. 26-31. 66. GS II.2, p. 203. 67. AP, N 10a,3. 68. I am grateful to Miguel Vatter for having pointed out the importance of deepening the question of how it is possible at all to think Benjamin’s dialectic together with Derrida’s aporias. This very important aspect cannot, however, be fully elaborated in this paper. 69. Jacques Derrida, Aporias: Dying – Awaiting (One Another at) the “Limits of Truth”, trans. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 16. Henceforth referred to as Aporias. 70. Aporias, p. 16. 71. GS I.2, p. 701; SW 4, p. 395. 72. AP, N 2,6. 73. AP, N 1,11. It is remarkable that in 1814, at the time of the publication of his novella The Golden Pot, E.T.A. Hoffmann already criticised the naïveté of the bourgeoisie. Self-evidently his point of departure lies in the Romantic tradition, unlike Marx, who wrote the preface to Capital, quoted above, in 1867. But whereas Marx still accentuates a linear time model and historical succession, at least in Hoffmann’s fairy-tales, the world consists of various realities with differing time structures. For example, within the crystal, time is almost solidified, whereas on the outside it ‘fleets’. (Cf. E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Golden Pot: A Modern Fairytale [New York: Oxford University

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Press, 1992]; see also: Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, The Process of Production of Capital, in: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org), 1995, 1999.

ABSTRACTS

The following article deconstructs certain figures of Benjamin’s thoughts on history and on epistemology – such as image, trace, crystal, standstill, the ‘Now’, and the ‘subject of historical knowledge’ – and relates them to the political dimension of his “Critique of Violence”, and to his remarks on the linguistic structure of political writing. Thereby it centres on the following questions: in what way could Benjamin’s characterisation of the singular moment, as well as his analysis of temporality provide insights into historical dynamics? Furthermore, it aims at investigating if and to what extent historico-political action is related to a certain understanding of time and power: can such action be seen as a crystallised emanation of the ‘Now’, of Jetztzeit?

INDEX

Keywords: Benjamin Walter, Derrida Jacques, history, epistemology, Marxism, deconstruction, language

AUTHOR

NASSIMA SAHRAOUI

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

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Benjamin, Negativity, and De- vitalized Life

Jonathan Short

Introduction

1 If anything is well-established in contemporary theory, it is the idea that humans are essentially non-essential. In this sense, contemporary theory has pursued with particular vigor the project of discrediting the classically (Aristotelian) humanist schema in which humans are defined as rational animals by nature. In the wake of such work it is now a commonplace that, to paraphrase Foucault, the features defining human life are not natural givens, but are themselves at stake in the historical and political activities of human beings.1 Humans are understood today as irreducibly reflexive animals whose very activity alters what it means to be human.

2 My intent in this paper2 is not to contest this conception of the human being, as it is one of the profound consequences of coming to think of human life historically, which – in turn – is one of the great achievements of modern thought. But, as I will argue here, there are two ways of thinking about the historicity of human being. For reasons I will outline below, I believe one of these ways is superior to the other. In fact, there is a danger attending one form of historical thinking that manifests itself in contemporary strands of philosophical vitalism; in these strands, I contend, non-essentiality is itself surreptitiously converted into something essential through its articulation as an ahistorical property. Against this position, I will argue for the importance of Walter Benjamin’s conception of historicity for contemporary theory and politics through what I am going to call his image of ‘de-vitalized life’. Benjamin’s de-vitalized life presents an image of life stripped of its properties. But the removal of these properties is not about merely de-essentializing life; it is simultaneously the removal of properties in order to foreground the necessity of history as the dimension or medium of human social and political constitution. Accordingly, de-vitalized life serves as a reminder of the historically destructive reduction of human life and the necessity of political (class) struggle. Benjamin’s image is therefore an index of the need for historical perception

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and action as the very thing that clears the ground of all positive idols of human nature. Benjamin manifests an acute awareness of the fact that the relation between human being and human history is fragile, in imminent jeopardy of being converted into an ideology of movement toward an already established goal, an essence presupposed and presented as though it were already accomplished. In contrast to this pre-suppositional view, for Benjamin as for Marx, if it is not to become ideological, the human historical essence must always be presented negatively.

I. An Essentialized Non-Essence

3 To begin with, it is useful to outline further the parameters of the issue to which I will argue Benjamin’s thought contributes. The idea that humans are above all historical beings, so that it is not possible to define them in terms of some given property, is mostly uncontroversial in contemporary theory. The correlate to such a view is that human beings must be defined negatively, i.e. as lacking an essence except where this is self-created, and therefore defined by no extant natural property that is not subject to historical making. However, as Roberto Esposito has convincingly argued in Immunitas (2002), there seems to be a discomfort with the negativity of this definition of the human. In response to such discomfort, a philosophical anthropology has appeared, designed to compensate for the negative by converting it into a positive essence.3 In this sense, Esposito argues, philosophical anthropology takes over the task once performed by divine theodicy, providing humanity with an interpretative (and thus comforting) self-image. In other words, if it is now impossible to define humanity as relative to the order of nature, i.e. in terms of a statically ascribed property, then philosophical anthropology appears as “the reinstatement of a shattered order”4 that ascribes to humanity a self-referentially defining property. But as Esposito comments, compensation “brings with it a gain, but never divorced from the loss that it is meant to reinstate”.5 This form of compensation is never entirely satisfactory because it always refers back to the lack that made it necessary in the first place.

4 At this point it is possible to bring Esposito’s discussion of philosophical anthropology to bear on the relation between contemporary theory and politics. In this respect, as Lorenzo Chiesa has argued provocatively, contemporary variants of ontological vitalism – despite the many differences between them – share the common feature of converting human non-essence into a positive property that overlaps with a new type of philosophical anthropology.6 According to his analysis, in contemporary theory one finds a move to define the human not by specific attributes, but by positively construed ontological capacities, each of which is carefully portrayed negatively relative to the metaphysical tradition of classical humanism. Here one could mention Catherine Malabou’s notion of plasticity7 as it appears in her work on neuroplasticity, as well as in her work on Hegel.8 One could also mention Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s notion of a constitutive power in the form of a multitude which undermines the impositions of capitalist biopolitics – a point to which I will return below.9 One could even mention Roberto Esposito’s own conception of an affirmative biopolitics, which, he suggests, could serve as an antidote to an ascendant biopolitics of immunity.10 In all these cases, one finds both the denial of human essence and a conversion of this denial into a new kind of quasi-essence – a non-property reconfigured as a generic capacity, which (because it defines the human as such), subsumes the specific conditions of humanity’s

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historical and political form. The overall problem with such post-metaphysical anthropology, in sum, is that it rushes to fill in the gap of non-essential negativity with a positive principle, albeit a dynamic and non-substantive one. At the same time, its political problem seems to be the substitution of a dynamic of history with a semi- naturalistic becoming. 5 A brief examination of Hardt and Negri’s concept of the multitude allows this problem of philosophical anthropology to be grasped more exactly. According to Hardt and Negri, the multitude, which they argue is capable of resisting and overturning capitalist globalization, must be thought on two distinct planes: on the first, the multitude exists as a purely constitutive power, a power of abstract potentiality, while on the second, it exists as contingent historical actualization. However, these “two multitudes”, they write, cannot really be separated, since if “the multitude were not already latent and implicit in our social being, we could not even imagine it as a political project; and, similarly, we can only hope to realize it today because it already exists as a real potential”.11 The theory of the multitude is one in which there are two dimensions of the multitude as a vital constituent power, one an abstract potential and the other an historical actualization, comprising what they describe as “a strange double temporality: always already and not-yet”.12 Drawing on Spinoza, they argue that the multitude in this first sense exists sub specie aeternitatis, and this is what lends to the multitude the sense of existing in the form of an “always-already”.13 6 In his incisive critique of Hardt and Negri, Benjamin Noys argues that the concept of the multitude presents an image of a fully developed human essence latent in that part of the multitude that they term “always already”.14 The problematic consequence of this presupposition, as Noys elaborates, is that present conditions that appear to block the full realization of the multitude become the latter’s self-imposed limitations; as Noys writes, the “‘relation’ of two powers is actually a singular nexus in which life as constituent power faces constituted ‘power’ as the negative limit which it has produced”.15 If everything is the result of the boundless productivity and constitutive capacity of the multitude, then even what impedes it must be nothing more than its own product at a given historical moment. The political consequence of this notion of the multitude is, as Noys elaborates, that ‘capitalist relations’ figure only as the self-imposed limit of the multitude to its own powers: they are its own powers. The collapse of negativity into [the] reversible moment of re-valorisation leaves us at risk of a monism of positivity, in which, despite all the evidence, capital is the mere expression of the underlying power of the multitude.16 7 What Noys’ criticism demonstrates is that in this model of non-essentiality, history is placed in a subordinate position with respect to an ontological principle – in this case the living vitality of the multitude – that is presupposed relative to it. Although this vital principle, formally speaking, has no substantive content, and therefore qualifies as non-essential according to the terms of classical humanism, the principle nevertheless surreptitiously provides a content – namely, an abstract image of fully realized human life – that it falls to subsequent historical (social and political) activity to substantialize. But if history already has its work cut out for it, if its task is primarily to realize something pre-given – regardless of how abstract it might be – we cannot truly think history itself as the pure medium of human self-creation, since this medium finds itself already in the debt of something prior which is conceived non-historically, as history’s other or outside. In other words, Hardt and Negri cannot adequately support their

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claim that because the multitude does not have a substantive content, it is therefore not a teleological concept. If we concede this point, then Chiesa is quite correct to charge this strand of ontological vitalism with producing what Esposito has called a compensatory philosophical anthropology in the aftermath of classically humanist (substantive) definitions of human nature. In the next section I will draw on a reading of early Marx that avoids this implicit re-essentialization, despite the fact that the young Marx is often read precisely in this essentializing way.

II. Early Marx

8 Ironically, even though Hardt and Negri draw extensively on Deleuze and Spinoza – thinkers who are deeply hostile to classical humanism – their work on the multitude parallels the humanist reading of early Marx. According to such a reading, what makes the early Marx into a humanist is that he conceives of revolutionary politics as a necessary step for the realization of Gattungswesen (‘species-essence’, or human nature). As Frank Ruda points out in a recent paper that presents a Badiouian take on Marx’s early writings, the humanist reading, much like Hardt and Negri’s multitude, “conceives of Marx as the theoretician of the sublation of alienation – a theorist of Ent- Entfremdung – which can be achieved because the constitution and disposition of human nature […] contains all the resources and possibilities which are needed”17 to overcome the alienation of the capitalist mode of production. While the early humanist Marx thus rejects a classically substantive determination of human nature, he nonetheless posits, according to Ruda, “a more general, historically-philosophically, and finally ontologically, secured machinery”18 for the historical realization of the species.

9 Nevertheless, as Ruda goes on to argue, it is possible to read the early Marx in a non- humanist way.19 Doing so involves paying attention to Marx’s emphasis on history as the medium through which humanity brings itself into existence, and thus displaces the humanist presupposition of a substantive human essence. This non-humanist reading comes into focus when one considers the manner in which it foregrounds certain aspects of Marx’s thought, as – for example – in the following passage from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844): “Nature as it comes into being in human history – in the act of creation of human society – is the true nature of man; hence nature as it comes into being through industry, though in an estranged form, is true anthropological nature”.20 In this passage, a non-humanist reading would emphasize that estrangement is subordinate to the historical action of human self-creation. Estrangement is not the correlate of a true human nature existing already ‘offstage’, but rather, points toward the possibility that humans might grasp their own historical self-creation as their very species-nature. 10 It is precisely the question of actualizing the productive historicity of human beings which makes the working class/proletariat distinction of crucial importance in Marx’s work. That is, it is only in the process of transforming itself from working class into proletariat (i.e. in actual historical activity) that humanity grasps its essence as a historically self-creating species-being. In order for this to occur, Marx argues, there must exist as its precondition a class of society that is both productive of that society and simultaneously excluded from the determinate categories of membership in that society. This is what the working class is, since the immiserated class of bourgeois/

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capitalist society is not able to partake of the riches that their labour has made possible, nor can it claim membership in humanity as conceived by the bourgeoisie. The latter, by contrast, is a ‘proper’ class, precisely because it realizes a particular (static) image of humanity as a species of aquisative individuals. As such, however, it is finite and limited, since its image of humanity is mistaken for humanity as such, yet tied to a particular form of social production, namely that of private property and capital accumulation. The working class, on the other hand, in being excluded from this particular form of humanity, is capable – from out of the historical circumstances in which it finds itself – of self-cognition as a thoroughly historical class that is capable of universal human production. In other words, the working class contains the germ of a different relationship of humanity to itself, insofar as it recognizes itself not just as an impoverished, excluded, or exploited class (the way it appears in capitalism), but as no class at all, that is, as universal humanity in the generic and negative form of its exclusion from particular (bourgeois) humanity. Only in this universal form can the working class as proletariat then recognize that its historical production is the production of humanity as such, so that its production is able to become the self-aware, universal production of humanity.21 In the section below, I turn to Benjamin’s work, arguing that his understanding of historical time, examined through the aforementioned concept of ‘devitalized life’, develops the non-humanist idea of self- creation we have been exploring via early Marx.

III. Benjamin and de-vitalized life

11 It is remarkable that we find, in Benjamin’s work, a critique of humanist readings of the early Marx on the one hand, and, on the other, a compelling expansion of the concept of historicity that the non-humanist reading of early Marx presupposes. As I will show in the following, Benjamin’s concept of historicity, which is focused on the political figure of ‘de-vitalized life’, presents an alternative model of non-essentiality that allows history to emerge as the pure medium of human self-production; in marked contrast to a vitalist ontology of life, Benjamin’s ‘de-vitalized life’ remains resolutely negative with respect to all substantive determinations of human being.

12 Accordingly, it is striking how Benjamin poses the problem of the gap between the oppressed working class and the revolutionary proletariat in his theses “ On the Concept of History” (1940). In Thesis XII he writes, “[t]he Social Democrats preferred to cast the working class in the role of a redeemer of future generations […]. This indoctrination made the working class forget both its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than by the ideal of liberated grandchildren”.22 Benjamin argues here that the political strength of the working class, which might serve to transform it into the proletariat, lies in a remembrance of what I am calling ‘de-vitalized life’, that is, an image of ancestors (or predecessors) deprived of a fully human life, rather than of future generations who will enjoy it. What is striking about the image of de-vitalized life is that it is so resolutely negative. The image refuses the utopian promises offered by the social democrats of Benjamin’s day and instead arouses, as he puts it, “hatred” and a “spirit of sacrifice”23 in the working class. The transition from working class to proletariat is not pictured as the progressive unfolding of something already promised – liberated grandchildren whose lives will enjoy full human vitality – but instead involves the deepening of

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opposition to the existing order, strengthening the proletarian resolve to abolish (negate) capitalist society. It would be tempting at this point to draw a parallel between the social democrats of Benjamin’s day and the current crop of neo-vitalists. But rather than developing this thought, I will expand instead on the link that Benjamin establishes between the negativity of de-vitalized life and his concept of historical time, for it is this which gives weight to the former. 13 As Benjamin writes elsewhere in “On the Concept of History”, “our coming was expected on earth. Then like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak messianic power, a power on which the past has a claim”. 24 This passage engages in an apparent reversal of perspective when compared to the one previously cited. If previously Benjamin emphasized a political remembrance of the de-vitalized lives of the past by proletarian subjects of the present, he now suggests that the de- vitalized lives of the past have a claim on those who come after them. But how can those who are already dead be said to retain a claim on the present, and what sort of a claim could it be? If the force of remembrance lies with the past’s expectations or even anticipations of the present, then this suggests that something more than the empirical memories of the historical heirs is at play here. 14 To get at what sort of claim the past has on the present for Benjamin, it is instructive to consider his essay of 1923, “The Task of the Translator”. Herein we find a theory of translation, articulated as a force of transposition, which sheds light on the relation between generations that I intimated above. According to Benjamin, translation is first of all a question of linguistic communicability or impartibility (Mitteilbarkeit) before it is a question of the content communicated or transmitted. This is why Benjamin states that neither the original texts, nor their translations, exist for the sake of their recipients, but just the opposite: the recipient is only a party to “meaningful” communication in an indirect way, as the contingent addressee of imparting itself. As Benjamin writes, “[t]he question of whether a work is translatable has a dual meaning. Either: Will an adequate translator ever be found among the totality of its readers? Or, more pertinently: does its nature lend itself to translation and, therefore, in view of the significance of this form, call for it?”25 Benjamin answers his question by claiming that, while the answer to the first question can only be an empirical one, the answer to the second must be answered “apodictically”, that is, a priori.26 15 In the context of making his transcendental point about language, Benjamin provides an analogy that seems to portend his future discussion of remembrance of ‘devitalized lives’ in 1940. He writes: “[o]ne might, for example, speak of an unforgettable life or moment even if all men had forgotten it. If the nature of such a life or moment required that it be unforgotten, that predicate would imply not a falsehood but merely a claim unfulfilled by men.”27 In an obviously Kantian sense, this parallel between translation and remembrance places the latter on the same ‘transcendental terrain’ as translation itself, thus foreshadowing Benjamin’s subsequent work on history and remembrance. As Werner Hamacher comments in his kaleidoscopic reading of Benjamin’s translation essay, “translatability and unforgettability are essential predicates of a language or a life, in principle indifferent to the capacities of any given subject to fulfill them”.28 As the transcendental condition for any possible translation, the demand for translatability and remembrance outstrips the empirical “horizon of finite experience” even while remaining “operative within this horizon as calls back to the ground of experience itself, to a realm of speech and action ecstatically removed

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from understanding as a structure of judgment and correspondence”.29 Thus, language remains translatable and memory remains memorable, even in the absence of the finite capacities of particular human subjects, even if in empirical terms they cannot be translated or remembered. If this is indeed the case, then neither translatability nor memorability consist principally in the transmission of contents or memories (i.e. of subjective experiences) between subjects through time, but rather in a transcendental demand for translation and for remembrance. Here, the very impartibility (Mitteilbarkeit) of works (and, by extension, lives) constitutes the demand of and for translation and memory, even if – at the level of empirical experience – the work goes untranslated and the life remains unremembered. 16 It would be possible to go further in this direction and to suggest that, for Benjamin, history itself is the medium of this demand, that history is nothing other than the impartibility (Mitteilbarkeit) – the medium of the demand for remembrance – of works and lives. This would mean that the essence of such mediality is to exceed all possible (empirical) reception, translation or remembrance, even as it makes it possible.30 Thus, as Hamacher writes, if “something’s essence defines it” as possible, then this same essentiality “indefines it and infinitizes it – as a demand infinitely in excess of every propositional actuality”.31 This being-infinitely-in-excess produces, equally, “the possibility of – and demand for – an impossibility of translation, the possibility of – and demand for – untranslatability”.32 If the translatability of language is the precondition (medium) of all communication, and history is the condition of all remembrance, then it is also possible that language will not be translated and lives will be forgotten. 17 What Hamacher calls the infinite demand for translation is fundamentally connected to what Benjamin describes as the Überleben or ‘outliving’, and the Nachleben or afterlife, of works and indeed of lives. If the essence of language is translation and that of history is memorability, then language and memory are already beyond themselves, never confined to a single work or life. Thus the essence cannot be thought of as something discreet – bound to an abstract linear point in time – but only as inherently in-finitized, self-abandoned, because it is self-transmuting and transmitting. Such outliving- afterlife is not to be confused with a hyper-vitality that allows works and lives to somehow escape their destruction and death, but rather precisely the opposite: their perishing is the very hallmark of their essentially being-beyond-themselves, and it is this feature that makes them translatable and memorable. Because of this we might say that remembrance is integrally related to translation. If the essence of language is translation, (i.e. transposition and non-coincidence), then in remembrance (which requires the medium of language) lives lost are re-membered or re-composed, leaping across their own non-coincidence or lack and taking on a different, unpredictable, but relational existence, for later generations. 18 If this is accurate, then remembrance also configures historical temporality in what Benjamin later calls a constellation. In this sense, the afterlife of language and the afterlife of lives can be articulated in terms of Benjamin’s famous depiction of the dialectical image, in the Passagen-Werk, as the relational disconnection (the apparent oxymoron is deliberate) of then and now. As Benjamin writes: “[i]t is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather, image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation”.33 Either of the first two alternatives would be but another version of historicism, an attempt to think both past and present in a linear and causal

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way. But it is against just this linear image of historical remembrance that Benjamin portrays the relation between past and present generations in the theses “On the Concept of History” as a “weak messianic power”.34 19 Thus, as Benjamin stipulates in the passage cited above, such a messianic power of remembrance is a weak power. The weakness here does not imply a lesser capacity or a power of reduced degree, but as we can now see, a factor of contingency. Benjaminian remembrance is not merely a counter-history, a history told from the perspective of the oppressed and downtrodden that would simply reverse the historical position of the victors. The specific power of ‘blasting’ that removes lives from the continuum of history that seemed to make their fate inevitable supplies much more than a merely linear narrative, no matter how unflattering to the ruling class; it also carries with it an affective, transitive charge, which disrupts and interrupts the self-assured way of understanding the course of time. However, like all such charges, it is unpredictable and can “flash up” only at that precisely “dangerous” moment when it is capable of being recognized by those in the present.35 But even though Benjamin writes in the Passagen-Werk that “each ‘now’ is the now of a particular recognizability”, 36 this is far from a prediction that explosive remembrance will result in the necessary political action. In fact, as we have seen, such contingency seems to be demanded by the very messianic structure of remembrance itself. If remembrance and translation share the same underlying structure, partake of the same demand that structures historical time, then remembrance cannot be thought to directly grasp messianic time as such. Indeed, if messianic time is just this transcendentally medial demand of impartibility, as temporalization, then the latter provides merely the occasion or site (the demand of imparting), but never the guarantee, of messianic remembrance. 20 To take this last point a little bit further, the explosive remembrance that potentially leads to political revolution is clearly distinguished by Benjamin from any kind of messianic presence or realization of a messianic state or condition. This is perhaps another sense in which we can speak of a ‘de-vitalized life’: empirical remembrance, even if it issues in revolutionary politics, must be distinguished sharply from the messiah as a figure of secular eschatology. To dispel this potential confusion, it will be enough to compare two of Benjamin’s texts that get at this point. In his preparatory notes for the theses “On the Concept of History”, the so-called “Paralipomena”, Benjamin maintains that “[w]hoever wishes to know what the situation of ‘redeemed humanity’ might actually be, what conditions are required for the development of such a situation, and when this development can be expected to occur, poses [a] question[s] to which there are no answers”.37 This statement corresponds to another formulation in an earlier text, the “Theological-Political Fragment” (c. 1921), where Benjamin expresses a very similar sentiment with respect to the messiah. There he writes that “nothing that is historical can relate itself, from its own ground, to anything messianic”.38 Benjamin’s theological language in this early text, which nonetheless parallels the political language he uses in the later “Paralipomena”, equally maintains that the Kingdom of God “is not the telos of the historical dynamic; it cannot be established as a goal”.39 In both texts Benjamin insists that it is never a question of ending historical time by bringing about a utopian (timeless) condition. This is the case not only because a future order of universal humanity is unknowable in present circumstances, but more importantly, because messianic time is vulgarized if it is thought to be a mere moment on the time-line of the present order. Such a conception fails to understand that messianic time is not on the order of sequential becoming, and

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is in this sense not something realizable; rather, such time is fundamentally ‘untimely’ because it never appears as the result of a causal historical sequence. In this regard, the image of future society in Benjamin’s work relentlessly cleaves to the negative image of the future. Consistent with this insight, ‘de-vitalized life’, despite its brief appearance in Benjamin’s theses, is not an image of a better or ‘redeemed’ humanity corresponding to a messiah who has arrived, or whose coming is promised. Instead of this, in contrast to the promissory images of vitalized life, ‘de-vitalized life’ refers us to history as negative, without content, and thus disquietingly open.

IV. Conclusion

21 What we have just been considering throws into relief one of the main issues dividing vitalist-inspired philosophies from Benjamin’s image of de-vitalized life and his concept of messianic history. The first, as we saw in the case of Negri, thinks the moment of revolution or politics in terms of a constituent power that is already behind the scenes and simply has to appear. It is thus a model of self-realization or actualization out of self-alienation, not unlike the humanist reading of early Marx. In contrast to this, as Benjamin – and indeed the anti-humanist version of early Marx – insists, history must be understood as the creatio ex nihilo that produces the not-yet from what has so far transpired. There is something discomfiting about this conception, since it takes away any promises that such a transformation will occur; contingency rather than certainty becomes the driving force of historical representation. Rather than the thinker of ‘mystical’ compensations, which he is sometimes portrayed as providing, Benjamin makes political disappointment into a transcendental possibility. In this sense, the image of de-vitalized life is useful as a counter-image to the various vitalist concepts of super-abundant life. In contrast to these, Benjamin notes in his “Theological-Political Fragment” that “nature is Messianic by reason of its eternal and total passing away”.40 This passage suggests that it is precisely because the messianic moment includes historical destruction (negation) that it is not only the opposite of temporal passing away. The passing away that we can locate in de-vitalized life is not just the sheer reduction or negation of life, but the transience of the living that is related, through passing away, to the weak messianic power of historical time, and through it, to the infinitizing demand for transformation. Such transformation is never certain because Benjamin introduces a gap between the course of profane history and messianic time, even as he seeks to articulate their connection. It is in this uncertain movement of displacement and connection, whose motion must be traversed negatively and without promises, that human species- essence is recognizable as what it is: as fully historical life.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BENJAMIN, Walter, Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

BENJAMIN, Walter, Selected Writings 3, 1935-1938, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006).

BENJAMIN, Walter, Selected Writings 4, 1938-1940, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003).

BENJAMIN, Walter, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland, Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1999).

CHIESA, Lorenzo, Human, Inhuman, Humanism: Badiou and Sartre, Lecture, York University, Toronto, Canada, 20 January 2014.

ESPOSITO, Roberto, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy, trans. Timothy Campbell (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2008).

ESPOSITO, Roberto, Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life (Boston: Polity Press. 2011).

FOUCAULT, Michel, History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1990).

HAMACHER, Werner, “Intensive Languages”, in: MLN, 127, 3, (2012), pp. 485-451.

MALABOU, Catherine, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic (London: Routeledge, 2004).

MALABOU, Catherine, What Should We Do With Our Brain? (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008)

MARX, Karl, Early Writings (London: Penguin Books, 1974).

NEGRI, Antonio & HARDT, Michael, Multitude: War and Democracy in an Age of Empire (London: Penguin Books, 2011).

NEGRI, Antonio & Hardt, Michael, Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

NOYS, Benjamin, The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010).RUDA, Frank, “Humanism Reconsidered, or: Life Living Life”, in: Filozofski Vestnik, 30, 2 (2009), pp. 175-193.

ENDNOTES

1. Michel Foucault, “The Right of Death and Power over Life”, in: History of Sexuality, Vol. I (New York: Vintage, 1990). 2. I would like to thank Jan Sieber and Sebastian Truskolaski for their helpful editorial suggestions and comments on a previous draft of this paper. 3. Roberto Esposito, Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life (Boston: Polity Press, 1990). 4. Esposito, Immunitas, p. 81. 5. Ibid. 6. Lorenzo Chiesa, Human, Inhuman, Humanism: Badiou and Sartre, Lecture, York University, Toronto, 20. January 2014.

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7. Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain? (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009). 8. Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic (London: Routledge, 2006). 9. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (London: Penguin Books, 2006). 10. Roberto Esposito, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). 11. Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 222. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Benjamin Noys, The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010). 15. Ibid, p. 112. 16. Ibid, p. 114. 17. Frank Ruda, “Humanism Reconsidered, or: Life living life”, in: Filozofski Vestnik (2009), p. 177. 18. Ibid, p. 177. 19. Ruda emphasizes that his non-humanist reading is distinct from the anti-humanist reading provided by Althusser and others. It is thus not completely hostile to some version of (non- classical) humanism. 20. Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844”, in: Early Writings (London: Penguin Books, 1974), p. 355. 21. Although my phrasing differs from Ruda’s Badiouian language, the point I am making runs parallel with his reading. As Ruda argues, the proletariat is “inexistent” in the conditions of bourgeois society since it is both a local possibility and a universal impossibility. Only the political abolition of that state would make universal human self-production real. See Ruda, “Humanism Reconsidered”, pp. 190-191. 22. Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”, in: Selected Writings 4, 1938-1940, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 394. 23. Ibid, p. 394. 24. Ibid, p. 390. 25. Walter Benjamin, “On the Task of the Translator”, in: Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 254. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Werner Hamacher, “Intensive Languages”, in: MLN, 127, 3 (2012), p. 488. 29. Ibid. 30. While I do not have the space here to treat this matter in sufficient detail, Benjamin’s approach to language consists of a re-worked but still recognizable Kantian transcendentalism. Much of the basis for this approach can be found in Benjamin’s 1917 essay “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”. In this early essay he argues that while the Kantian approach to the justification of knowledge (by which he means the derivation of experience from its transcendental conditions) is sound, Kant fetters his approach by confining experience to what is possible for a subject under conditions of Newtonian natural science. (See Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996], pp. 100-110). Since experience is fettered in this way, Benjamin maintains, the transcendental condition of all experience will be displaced toward a transcendental subject at the limit of empirical experience. In fact, since this transcendental

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subject still depends on language for its categorical judgments, it is language itself (and not the subject) that should occupy the position of the transcendental condition of possible experience. In turn, the existence of language acts as a portal to a new experience of temporality. Needless to say, this has the effect of making language as such transcendental, noumenal in the Kantian sense. 31. Hamacher, “Intensive Languages”, p. 491. 32. Ibid. 33. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland, Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 453. 34. Benjamin, “On Concept of History”, p. 390. 35. Ibid. 36. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 463. 37. Walter Benjamin, “Paralipomena to Concept of History”, in: Selected Writings, 1938-1940, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 402. 38. Benjamin Walter, “Theological-Political Fragment”, in: Selected Writings 3, 1935-1938, eds. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 305. 39. Benjamin, “Paralipomena”, p. 402. 40. Benjamin, “Theological-Political Fragment”, p. 306.

ABSTRACTS

This paper contends that Walter Benjamin’s image of life as ‘de-vitalized’ allows history to be thought negatively, as open and without promises or guarantees. This negative conception of history provides a valuable counterpoint to the prevalent variants of neo-vitalist thought that continue to think human being in terms of an abstract (vital) property to be realized historically. By refusing an image of redeemed humanity, Benjamin, like the early Marx, shows that the concept of history is necessary for thinking humanity non-essentially, and that, if it is to avoid becoming an abstract essence, historical time must be thought negatively.

INDEX

Keywords: Benjamin Walter, vitalism, Marx Karl, historical time, non-essentialism, politics, Esposito Roberto, Hardt and Negri

AUTHOR

JONATHAN SHORT

York University Toronto, Canada

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Die Willkür der Zeichen Zu einem sprachphilosophischen Grundmotiv Walter Benjamins

Irving Wohlfarth

Dem Andenken von Pierre Missac

I. Benjamins und die konventionalistische Sprachtheorie

“daß von meinem sehr besonderen sprachphilosophischen Standort aus es zur Betrachtungsweise des dialektischen Materialismus eine – wenn auch noch so gespannte und problematische – Vermittlung gibt. Zur Saturiertheil der bürgerlichen Wissenschaft aber gar keine“. Benjamin an Rychner, 1931 1 “Es ist gleich tödlich für den Geist”, schreibt Friedrich Schlegel im Athenäum, “ein System zu haben und keins zu haben. Er wird sich also wohl entschließen müssen, beides zu verbinden”. Daß diese Sätze, die der junge Benjamin in seiner Dissertation zitiert1, auch für sein eigenes Denken gelten, ist mit jedem neuen Band der Gesammelten Schriften zunehmend deutlich geworden. “Immer radikal, niemals konsequent”2, ging er nach seiner eigenen Formel zeitlebens vor und war dabei alles andere als inkonsequent. Sosehr der ungebrochene “Systembegriff des XIX. Jahrhunderts”3, der dem “geile[n] Drang aufs große Ganze”4 entsprang, eine jener imperialen “Phantasmagorien ” darstellte, aus denen es in seinen Augen zu “erwachen”55 galt, sowenig fehlte es seinem antisystematischen Oeuvre an innerer Systematik.

2 Schlegel sucht, heißt es in Benjamins Dissertation weiter, eine unanschauliche Intuition des Systems, und er findet sie in der Sprache. Die Terminologie ist die Sphäre, in welcher jenseits von Diskursivität und Anschaulichkeit sich sein Denken bewegt.6

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3 Die darauf folgende Darstellung des Zusammenhangs von Terminologie, Mystik und Witz bei den Brüdern Schlegel und Novalis schließt mit der Frage, ob nicht jener terminologischen Tendenz [...] für alles mystische Denken eine typische Bedeutung zukomme, deren nähere Untersuchung [...] schließlich auf das a priori, das der Terminologie jedes Denkers zugrunde liegt, führen würde.7 4 Man erhält damit einen Wink, wo das Apriori begraben sein mag, das der terminologischen Tendenz seines eigenen Denkens zugrunde liegt. Es ist nicht nur in einer ebenfalls mystischen Terminologie, sondern vor allem in den entscheidenden Motiven einer Sprachphilosophie zu suchen, die zugleich wesentliche Impulse seiner Geschichtsphilosophie mitbestimmt. Diese globale These, die hier nicht näher ausgeführt werden kann, soll im folgenden an einem einzigen sprachphilosophischen Terminus erläutert werden, der in mehrfacher Hinsicht als der – empfindliche – Nerv seines gesamten Denkens angesehen werden kann. 5 Benjamins Sprachphilosophie liegt ihrerseits nicht in systematisch abgeschlossener Gestalt vor. Sie setzt sich vielmehr aus heterogenen Denkansätzen zusammen, die unvermittelt nebeneinander fortbestehen. An erster Stelle ist das sprachtheologische Modell zu nennen, das zunächst im frühen Aufsatz “Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen” (1916) entwickelt wird. Wovon die ersten Genesiskapitel berichten, ist Benjamins kühner Bibelexegese zufolge der Sündenfall des Sprachgeistes. Dieses sprachtheologisch gewendete Motiv des verlorenen Paradieses wird im Aufsatz “ Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers” (1923) um das komplementäre Thema des wiederzugewinnenden Paradieses der einen, wahren Sprache ergänzt, die im Sündenfall verlorengegangen sein soll. Sie bilden zusammen das sprachtheologische Modell, das den geschichtsphilosophischen Rahmen des Ursprungs des deutschen Trauerspiels (1926) abgibt. Im späteren Fragment “Über das mimetische Vermögen” (1933) wird der Ursprung der menschlichen Sprache nicht mehr nach dem Vorbild der biblischen Genesisgeschichte, sondern nach einem genetisch-anthropologischen Modell eigener Prägung konstruiert. Hinweise auf einen dritten, sprachsoziologischen Ansatz sind schließlich in dem etwas später verfaßten Sammelreferat “Probleme der Sprachsoziologie” (1935) enthalten. 6 Bei aller Verschiedenheit dieser Theoriestücke deuten manche Querverbindungen auf einen inneren, wenn auch losen Zusammenhang hin. Obwohl sie auf keinen gemeinsamen Nenner zu bringen sind,8 läßt sich ohne Schwierigkeit der gemeinsame Feind namhaft machen, den sie alle mit einstimmiger Vehemenz bekämpfen. Diese bête noire ist die konventionalistische Sprachtheorie, deren Grundprämisse seit der Veröffentlichung von Ferdinand de Saussures Cours de Linguistique Generale als die These vom l'arbitraire du signe bezeichnet wird. Gilt diese These, die den alten platonischen Dialog zwischen Kratylos und Hermogenes eindeutig zugunsten des letzteren entscheidet,9 für die überwiegende Mehrzahl moderner Sprachwissenschaftler als axiomatisch, so steht für Benjamin nicht weniger fest, daß sie tief in die Irre führt. Es findet bei ihm nicht einmal eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Konventionalismus statt. Besteht Dialektik nach Hegel darin, “in die Kraft des Gegners einzutreten”, so scheint letzterer in diesem Falle keine nennenswerte Kraft zu besitzen. Die Gegenposition wird vielmehr im Vorbeigehen, ohne viel Aufhebens erledigt. “Wenn nun aber die Sprache, wie es für Einsichtige auf der Hand liegt”, fängt ein Satz aus der “Lehre vom Ähnlichen” an, “nicht ein verabredetes System von Zeichen ist [...]”10. Solche einschüchternden Formulierungen legen die Frage nahe, ob damit ein mächtiger Feind verleugnet oder

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ein lästiger Gegner ins Nichts zurückgestoßen werden soll. Handelt es sich um eine unerschütterliche Überzeugung, um eine allergische Reaktion oder gar um beides zugleich? Ist eine solche Erledigung konventionalistischer Willkür selber über alle Willkür erhaben? 7 Wie bestimmend diese Tabuisierung des Konventionalismus für Benjamins Selbstverständnis gewesen ist, geht aus einem im Jahre 1924 geschriebenen Brief an Hugo von Hofmannsthal hervor, in dem er folgende Grundsatzerklärung abgibt: Es ist von hoher Bedeutung für mich, daß Sie die Überzeugung, welche in meinen literarischen Versuchen mich leitet, so deutlich herausheben und daß Sie sie, wenn ich recht verstehe, teilen. Jene Überzeugung nämlich, daß jede Wahrheit ihr Haus, ihren angestammten Palast, in der Sprache hat, daß er aus den ältesten logoi errichtet ist und daß der so gegründeten Wahrheit gegenüber die Einsichten der Einzelwissenschaften subaltern bleiben, solange sie gleichsam nomadisierend, bald hier bald da im Sprachbereiche sich behelfen, befangen in jener Anschauung vom Zeichencharakter der Sprache, der ihrer Terminologie die verantwortungslose Willkür aufprägt. Demgegenüber erfahrt die Philosophie die segensreiche Wirksamkeit einer Ordnung, kraftwelcher ihre Einsichten jeweils ganz bestimmten Worten zustreben, deren im Begriff verkrustete Oberfläche unter ihrer magnetischen Berührung sich löst und die Formen des in ihr verschlossenen sprachlichen Lebens verrät. Für den Schriftsteller aber bedeutet dieses Verhältnis das Glück, an der Sprache, welche dergestalt vor seinen Augen sich entfaltet, den Prüfstein seiner Denkkraft zu besitzen. So versuchte ich vor Jahren, die alten Worte Schicksal und Charakter aus der terminologischen Fron zu befreien und ihres ursprünglichen Lebens im deutschen Sprachgeiste aktual habhaft zu werden.11 8 Zwei grundverschiedene Positionen, die einen archetypischen Gegensatz bilden, werden in diesem sprachphilosophischen Credo gegenübergestellt: eine Zeichentheorie der Sprache, die dem arbeitsteiligen Wissenschaftsbetrieb zugeordnet wird, und eine Offenbarungstheorie der Wahrheit, die in der Sprache selber begründet sein und ihre philologische Bestätigung12 in der schriftstellerischen Praxis finden soll. Wir werden auf die weiteren Gegensatzpaare, die sich symmetrisch um diese zwei Positionen herum gruppieren, noch zurückkommen müssen. Halten wir zunächst jedoch den prinzipiellen Antagonismus selber fest. Die eine Position, die das sprachwissenschaftliche Gegenstück zum philosophischen Nominalismus darstellt, behauptet, das Verhältnis zwischen Zeichen und Bezeichnetem sei willkürlich festgelegt. Die menschliche Sprache bilde deshalb ein verabredetes System von Zeichen, die sich einzig im Unterschied zueinander definieren. Darauf wird hier mit unverhohlenem theoretischen Affekt entgegnet, daß diese Behauptung selber bezeichnend sei, und zwar als symptomatisches Zeichen dessen, was sie bezeichnen will. Willkürlich ist Benjamin zufolge nicht so sehr die Sprache selber, als vielmehr die befangene Meinung, die sie dafür hält. Der Begriff der Willkür kehrt sich damit wie ein Bumerang gegen die sogenannte Wissenschaft, die ihn im Munde führt. Indem die Sprachwissenschaft die Sprache für willkürlich erklärt, praktiziert sie blindlings ihre eigene falsche Theorie. Beruht die Sprache nämlich nur auf äußerer Verabredung, der bei aller Immanenz der sich gegenseitig definierenden Zeichen jegliche innere Motivation abgeht, dann können solche Sprachregelungen beliebig neu getroffen werden. Insofern wirkt sich die “Anschauung vom Zeichencharakter der Sprache” zersetzend auf die Sprache selber aus. Der sprachwissenschaftliche Begriff der Willkür rechtfertigt einen willkürlichen Umgang mit der Sprache. Wo solche Beliebigkeit das Wort hat, da herrscht Benjamin zufolge die schlechte Unendlichkeit überzähliger, parasitärer Neuschöpfungen, die die Quelle trüben, aus der sie geschöpft werden.13 Man

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vergreift sich an einer unersetzlichen Erbschaft, indem man “bald hier bald da im Sprachbereiche” sich behilft.

9 Dafür ist Benjamin zufolge die Zeichentheorie der Sprache selber ein bemerkenswertes Beispiel. Sie prägt “ihrer Terminologie die verantwortungslose Willkür” auf, indem sie den Begriff der Willkür selber zu ihrem terminologischen Kernstück erhebt. Denn die Rede von der Willkür des Zeichens ist ihrerseits eine willkürliche Sprachregelung. Sie zeichnet sich vor anderen Beispielen sprachlicher Willkür dadurch aus, daß sie sich selber gleichsam illustriert. Sie beweist nicht, was sie beweisen will: daß die Zeichen willkürlich sind. (Insofern sie's doch tut, bleibt diese Einsicht “subaltem”). Sie verrät unwillkürlich, daß Zeichen willkürlich werden können; oder aber – wie wir Benjamins frühem Sprachaufsatz noch entnehmen werden – daß sie es geworden sind. So ließe sich der zentrale Gedanke der oben zitierten Briefstelle weiterspinnen. 10 Gegen diese globale Verurteilung ihres Grundaxioms, die ein metaphysisches Verdammungswort mit einem philologischen Anspruch zu vereinigen scheint, wäre freilich von Seiten der Linguistik einzuwenden, daß sie auf einer unzulässigen Sinnverdrehung beruhe, die in der Tat mehr mit dem Glück des freien Schriftstellers als mit strenger Wissenschaft zu tun habe. In der Konfrontation, die wir hier unterstellen, wird der jeweilige Vorwurf der Willkür abwechselnd von beiden Seiten erhoben und zurückgewiesen. Nicht ihr Begriff der Willkür sei willkürlich, antwortet die Sprachwissenschaft, sondern Benjamins eigenwilliger Umgang mit ihm. Der eindeutig festgelegte Sinn eines terminus technicus werde mit der Vieldeutigkeit seines alltäglichen oder literarischen Gebrauchs verwechselt. Darauf ist wiederum eine implizite Antwort aus Benjamins Brief herauszulesen. Um sie zu erhalten, braucht man lediglich den Hinweis auf die “alten Worte Schicksal und Charakter” auf den Begriff der Willkür auszudehnen. Weit entfernt, den Vorwurf der Willkür zu rechtfertigen, wäre die inkriminierte Sinnverschiebung dazu bestimmt, ein Wort – die Willkür selbst – vor seiner willkürlichen Entstellung zu retten.14 Auch in diesem Fall soll ein Wort von seiner “terminologischen Fron” befreit werden. Das soll durch eine Art freier Assoziation geschehen, die mit schlafwandlerischer Sicherheit jenseits aller subjektiven Willkür zur Objektivität der Sprache selbst zurückfindet. Ein ursprüngliches, semantisch geladenes Wort steht gegen die worttaube Terminologie auf, die das “in ihr verschlossene sprachliche Leben” weiterhin unterdrückt. 11 Solche keimfreie Terminologie dichtet Benjamin zufolge die Sprache gegen die Geschichte ab, die in ihr lebt. “Eine Wissenschaft, die sich im Protest gegen die Sprache ihrer Untersuchung ergeht”, heißt es in der Erkenntniskritischen Vorrede zum Trauerspielbuch, ist ein Unding. Worte sind, neben den Zeichen der Mathematik, das einzige Darstellungsmittel der Wissenschaft und sie selber sind keine Zeichen. Denn im Begriff, als welchem freilich das Zeichen entspräche, depotenziert sich eben dasselbe Wort, das als Idee sein Wesenhaftes besitzt. 12 Das gilt a fortiori für die Wissenschaft, welche Sprache überhaupt als ein System willkürlicher Zeichen, und damit zugleich das Mikrosystem ihrer eigenen Terminologie – d.h. Worte wie Zeichen und Willkür – grundsätzlich mißversteht.15 Metaphysisch- philologisches Eingedenken tut not, um die “im Begriff verkrustete Oberfläche” der Sprache wieder aufzubrechen. Erst durch solche Anamnesis wäre die Idee der Willkür vom Begriff der Willkür – von der Willkür des Begriffs – erlöst. Der Begriff steht nämlich im selben verfallsgeschichtlichen Verhältnis zur Idee wie das Zeichen zum Wort.

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13 Zwei unversöhnliche Auffassungen der Sprache werden hier miteinander konfrontiert. Sprache wird jeweils als Verabredung aufgefaßt. Ein “verabredetes System von Zeichen” wird einem Bild der Sprache gegenübergestellt, das Benjamins Vorstellung von Geschichte als einer “geheimen Verabredung” entspricht, die “zwischen den gewesenen Geschlechtern und unserem”16 bestehe. Anstatt Zeichen wie Münzen ständig neu prägen zu müssen, empfangen wir die entscheidenden Signale von der Sprache selber: vom Kanon der sprachlichen Überlieferung. Das Verständnis von Sprache und Geschichte bedeutet nicht nur, daß wir sie, sondern daß sie sich durch uns hindurch verstehen. “In dem Aufsatz 'Über die Unverständlichkeit'”, notiert Benjamin in seiner Dissertation, will Schlegel zeigen, 'daß die Worte sich selbst oft besser verstehen, als diejenigen, von denen sie gebraucht werden, [...] daß es unter den philosophischen Worten [...] geheime Ordensverbindungen geben muß; [...] daß man die reinste und gediegenste Unverständlichkeit gerade aus der Wissenschaft und aus der Kunst erhält, die ganz eigentlich aufs Verständigen und Verständlichmachen ausgehen, aus der Philosophie und Philologie.17 14 Demgegenüber tut die Willkür eigenmächtiger Sprachregelungen der Sprache eine Gewalt an, die sie ihrer ursprünglichen Gewalt, ihrer geheimen Kräfte beraubt.18 Solche Willkür ist ein ohnmächtiges Diktat, und ihre Zeichen depotenzierte Worte. Sie ist deshalb “verantwortungslos”, weil sie keine entsprechende Antwort auf die alten Worte zu geben versteht.

15 Antworten kann jedoch nur, wer zuhört. Sprachvergessenheit, nicht Seinsvergessenheit, gilt hier als die Erbsünde. Auf das Weltbild des bürgerlichen Subjekts, das sich nach der Marxschen Formel eine Welt nach seinem Ebenbilde schafft, wird bei Benjamin mit einer Theorie der Aura geantwortet. Auch Worte werden mit dem Vermögen belehnt, “den Blick aufzuschlagen”19. Nicht – wie bei Baudelaire – die Natur, sondern die Sprache stellt die Welt symbolischer Entsprechungen dar.20 Als ein Kraftfeld magnetischer correspondances entspricht sie zugleich Benjamins Vorstellung von Geschichte. So wie philosophische “Einsichten jeweils ganz bestimmten Worten zustreben”, “so strebt, kraft eines Heliotropismus geheimer Art, das Gewesene der Sonne sich zuzuwenden, die am Himmel der Geschichte im Aufgehen ist”21, wobei unsere “eigene Epoche mit einer ganz bestimmten früheren”22 in eine einmalige Konstellation tritt. Sprache und Geschichte besitzen beide dieselbe “segensreiche Wirksamkeit einer Ordnung”, innerhalb derer geheime Ordensverbindungen und Verabredungen stattfinden. Gute Schriftsteller und Geschichtsschreiber sind die Medien solcher Ereignisse. Ihre Feder ist gleichsam die “divinatorische”23 Wünschelrute, die es zu den sprachgeschichtlichen Quellen zieht. Das glückliche Verhältnis, das sich günstigenfalls zwischen Wort und Sache, Einsicht und Sprache, Jetzt und Einst einstellt, wird also nicht willkürlich festgesetzt, sondern fällt uns, wie die tiefsten, glücklichsten Erinnerungen, unwillkürlich zu. Zufällig sind solche Einfälle, ohne darum willkürlich zu sein. Der objektive Zufall solcher Begegnungen ist so überdeterminiert wie die freie Assoziation. Die geheimen Zeichen, die dabei ausgetauscht werden, deuten auf eine “magnetische” Wahlverwandtschaft zwischen zwei (vor)bestimmten Partnern hin, die einander im Dunkeln suchen. Bestimmung (“zu finden bestimmt”24), Bestimmtheit und Stimme (“ist nicht in Stimmen, denen wir unser Ohr schenken, ein Echo von nun verstummten?”25) bilden dabei einen einzigen Zusammenhang, der ihre wortgeschichtliche Aura ausmacht. Nur dort ist das “ganz bestimmte” Wort zu entdecken, dem eine Einsicht zustrebt, wo es nicht so sehr vom

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Subjekt her bestimmt wird, als sich von selbst zu Worte meldet. “Die Wahrheit ist der Tod der Intention”26. 16 Klingt die gedrängte Erklärung, die Benjamin 1924 an Hofmannsthal abgibt, an gewisse Motive aus der deutschen Frühromantik an, so nimmt sie zugleich die Metaphorik der Fundamentalontologie vorweg.27 Ist bei Heidegger vom “Haus des Seins” die Rede, so hat bei Benjamin jede Wahrheit “ihr Haus, ihren angestammten Palast” in der Sprache. Die majestätischen Pfeiler dieses versunkenen Schlosses sind “aus den ältesten logoi errichtet” worden: Baudelaires correspondances verweisen auf “das frühere Leben” 28. Eine Serie mehr oder weniger expliziter Gegensatzpaare reiht sich an Benjamins Gegenüberstellung einer ursprünglichen mit einer sprachvergessenen Auffassung der Sprache an: Ursprache, monotheistische Wahrheit, Grund und Boden, hoher Adel, Alteingesessenheit und sichere Fundamente auf der einen Seite, beliebige Zeichen, schlechte Unendlichkeit, geistiges Nomadentum, subalterne Wissenschaft, improvisatorische Notbehelfe, Usurpation auf der anderen. So eklektisch die einzelnen Momente dieses gebündelten Gegensatzes anmuten mögen, Eklektizismus gehört innerhalb dieser Gegenüberstellung der schlechten Seite an. Das dichte ideologische Geflecht, das hier zum Vorschein kommt, deutet vielmehr darauf hin, daß die Gegenüberstellung ihrerseits einer grösseren geschichtlichen Konstellation angehört. Es ist wohl kaum ein Zufall, wenn Scholem zur gleichen Zeit damit beschäftigt ist, die Geheimtradition der jüdischen Theologie – die Kabbala – auszugraben, die eine bürgerlich assimilierte “Wissenschaft von Judentum” verschüttet hatte. Gegen “Einzelwissenschaften” und “Wissenschaftsbetrieb” setzt der Autor des Trauerspielbuchs zwei Jahre später eine “Wissenschaft vom Ursprung” ein, deren esoterische Seite weder verleugnet noch gerühmt werden soll.29 Dieser Wissenschaft vom Ursprung liegt eine jüdische Sprachtheologie zugrunde. (Letztere hat in diesem Zusammenhang ein vergleichbares Verhältnis zum akademischen Wissenschaftsbetrieb wie der Feudaladel zum aufstrebenden Bürgertum, und wird dann später einen angemessenen Bündnispartner im historischen Materialismus finden: so wenig sich jüdische Substanz durch das Bürgertum assimilieren lassen soll, so sehr soll sie sich dann dem historischen Materialismus einverleiben). Das Fundament der Wahrheit soll die – eine, feste, edle – Sprache sein. Während die seßhafte Wahrheit in ihrem angestammten Palast thront, irren die subalternen Wissenschaften, die das königliche Haus entweder verlassen oder nie gekannt haben, in der Wüste ziellos umher. Solche Metaphorik stellt eine grandiose Rollenvertauschung vor. Die etablierte Wissenschaft wird von einem jüdischen Außenseiter im Namen jener bodenständigen Werte verurteilt, die sonst zum Arsenal des Antisemitismus gehören.30 17 Wo die Wissenschaft nicht mehr in der Sprache gegründet ist, verliert sie Benjamin zufolge den Boden unter den Füßen. “Die Anschauung vom Zeichencharakter der Sprache” ist folglich kein beliebiger Irrtum, sondern die irrige Rechtfertigung einer irrenden Beliebigkeit, die auf ein ursprüngliches Irrewerden zurückgeht. Dieser Grundirrtum soll darin bestanden haben, den Grund der Sprache zu verlassen. Die Wüste, die in jenem Augenblick entsteht, der Abgrund, der sich damit auftut, ist die Beliebigkeit. Auf den brüchigen Fundamenten dieses Abgrunds, den sie verschüttet, wird dann im Laufe der Zeit die Zeichentheorie der Sprache aufgebaut. Sie besiegelt die Beliebigkeit mit einem wissenschaftlichen Alibi. Wie diese unwissende Wissenschaft sich vor dem Richtstuhl der Benjaminschen Sprachtheologie selber richtet, soll jetzt erläutert werden.

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II. Die Geburt der Willkür der Zeichen aus dem Sündenfall des Sprachgeistes

“Une Idee, une Forme, un Etre Parti de l'azur et tombe Dans un Styx bourbeux et plombé Où nul oeil du Ciel ne pénètre” 18 Gleich am Anfang des frühen Aufsatzes “Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen” wird eine “Alternative” aufgestellt, “vor der mit Sicherheit die wesentlich falsche Meinung von der Sprache” sich verraten soll. Teilt der Mensch sein geistiges Wesen durch die Namen mit, die er den Dingen gibt? Oder in ihnen? In der Paradoxie dieser Fragestellung liegt ihre Beantwortung. Wer da glaubt, der Mensch teile sein geistiges Wesen durch die Namen mit, der kann wiederum nicht annehmen, daß es sein geistiges Wesen sei, das er mitteile, – denn das geschieht nicht durch Namen von Dingen, also durch Worte, durch die er ein Ding bezeichnet. Und er kann wiederum nur annehmen, er teile eine Sache anderen Menschen mit, denn das geschieht durch das Wort, durch das ich ein Ding bezeichne. Diese Ansicht ist die bürgerliche Auffassung der Sprache, deren Unhaltbarkeit und Leere sich mit steigender Deutlichkeit im folgenden ergeben soll. Sie besagt: Das Mittel der Mitteilung ist das Wort, ihr Gegenstand die Sache, ihr Adressat ein Mensch. Dagegen kennt die andere kein Mittel, keinen Gegenstand, und keinen Adressaten der Mitteilung. Sie besagt: im Namen teilt das geistige Wesen des Menschen sich Gott mit.31 19 Als “Sprachgemeinschaft” mit Gottes Wort ist diese Namenssprache zugleich mit der Sprache der Dinge verbunden: Das menschliche Wort ist der Name der Dinge. Damit kann die Vorstellung nicht mehr aufkommen, die der bürgerlichen Ansicht der Sprache entspricht, daß das Wort zur Sache sich zufällig verhalte, daß es ein durch irgendwelche Konvention gesetztes Zeichen der Dinge (oder ihrer Erkenntnis) sei. Die Sprache gibt niemals bloße Zeichen.32 20 Die Wahl zwischen der bürgerlichen und der theologischen Auffassung der Sprache soll also ihrerseits alles andere als beliebig sein. An die Stelle der synchronen Alternative, die hier gestellt wird, tritt im weiteren Verlauf des Aufsatzes eine verfallsgeschichtliche Genealogie. Während die richtige Theorie eine kreisförmige Sprachbewegung nachzeichnet, deren Alpha und Omega (“Ursprung ist das Ziel”33) Gott selber ist, stellt sich die falsche Meinung implizit als eine letzte Konsequenz des Sündenfalls heraus.

21 Der Sündenfall des Sprachgeistes bestand in der Zersetzung der paradiesischen Ursprache, die jedes Ding bei seinem eigenen Namen nannte. Das vorbürgerliche Verhältnis Adams zu den Dingen war ein quasi feudales. Aber noblesse oblige. Indem Adam den Dingen den “Adel” ihres Namens verleiht, empfängt er zugleich ihre eigene Sprache. Benjamins Theorie der Aura wäre auch in dieser Hinsicht in seiner Sprachtheologie angelegt. Aura wäre die Ausstrahlung des göttlichen Logos, die der Schöpfung und dem Namen gemeinsam ist. Im Namen ist das Wort Gottes nicht schaffend geblieben, es ist an einem Teil empfangend, wenn auch sprachempfangend, geworden. Auf die Sprache der Dinge selbst, aus denen wiederum, lautlos und in der stummen Magie der Natur das Wort Gottes hervorstrahlt, ist diese Empfängnis gerichtet.34

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22 Die adamitische Namensgebung ist die Übersetzung einer stummen in eine wörtliche Sprache. Sie nimmt am großen Kreislauf des göttlichen Logos teil. Alle höhere Sprache ist Übersetzung der niederen, bis in der letzten Klarheit sich das Wort Gottes entfaltet, das die Einheit dieser Sprachbewegung ist.35 23 Aber das menschliche Wort nimmt innerhalb dieser logozentrischen Bewegung eine einzigartige Stelle ein. Gott wollte den Menschen nicht der Sprache unterstellen, sondern im Menschen entließ Gott die Sprache, die ihm als Medium der Schöpfung gedient hatte, frei aus sich. Gott ruhte, als er im Menschen sein Schöpferisches sich selbst überliess.36 24 Dieser sprachliche Spielraum soll jedoch nichts Spielerisches an sich haben: Das adamitische Namengeben ist so weit entfernt Spiel und Willkür zu sein, daß vielmehr gerade in ihm der paradiesische Stand sich als solcher bestätigt, der mit der mitteilenden Bedeutung der Worte noch nicht zu ringen hatte.37 25 Die Freiheit des ersten Menschen ist so lange vor der Versuchung der Willkür gefeit, als sie in der Sprache der Dinge gegründet ist. Seine Worte hören auf, die eine, wahre, ernste, motivierte, naiv-realistische, entsprechende Namenssprache zu sein, wo sie kein Fundament in der Sache mehr haben. Anstatt unmittelbar, in intentio recta bei den Dingen zu verweilen, schielt der gefallene Mensch nach Intersubjektivität.38 Zwischenmenschliche Kommunikation wäre in diesem Zusammenhang von instrumenteller Mittelbarkeit und subjektiver Herrschaft, von gegenseitiger Konkurrenz und endloser Diskussion: von mangelnder Gemeinsamkeit nicht zu trennen.

26 Mit dieser “Abkehr von jenem Anschauen der Dinge, in dem deren Sprache dem Menschen eingeht”39, vollzieht sich der Sündenfall des Sprachgeistes. Das auratische Einvernehmen zwischen Mensch und Schöpfung wird grundlos gekündigt, Freiheit wird durch Willkür, Name durch Zeichen (z)ersetzt, der “Abgrund des Geschwätzes”40 tut sich auf. L'arbitraire du signe ist m.a.W. eine Formel, die in diesem Zusammenhang den Sündenfall bezeichnet. Denn der “Verfall des seligen Sprachgeistes” 41 fällt sowohl mit dem “Triumph der Subjektivität und dem Anbruch einer Willkürherrschaft über Dinge”42, als auch mit der “Geburtsstunde”43 des Zeichens zusammen. In diesem Augenblick tritt die Sprache aus der “immanenten eigenen Magie” heraus, um “ausdrücklich, von außen gleichsam, magisch zu werden”44. Sie vertreibt sich selber aus dem Paradies und stürzt ins bodenlose, uferlose Draußen, das sie damit erfindet. Das lange Irren in der Wüste ist zugleich die große Verwirrung. Zeichen müssen sich verwirren, wo sich die Dinge verwickeln. Zur Verknechtung der Sprache im Geschwätz tritt die Verknechtung der Dinge in der Narretei fast als deren unausbleibliche Folge. In dieser Abkehr von den Dingen, die die Verknechtung war, entstand der Plan des Turmbaus und die Sprachverwirrung mit ihm.45 27 Während die richtigen Worte, die Namen, les mots justes, den Dingen Gerechtigkeit widerfahren lassen, üben gefallene Worte Gewalt über sie aus. Letztere stellen eine ohnmächtige, aber verhängnisvolle “Überbenennung”46 dar. Ist der “angestammte Palast” der Sprache aus den “ältesten Logoi” errichtet, so ist der Turm zu Babel aus lauter irren Zeichen aufgebaut. Damit ergibt sich eine weitreichende Begriffskette: Willkür, Zeichen, Verknechtung, Herrschaft, Subjektivität, Äußerlichkeit, Mittelbarkeit, Abstraktion, Urteil, Sprachverwirrung, Geschwätz, Narretei, Schuld, Bedeutung usw. Das sprachphilosophische Paradigma, das mit Benjamins Deutung des

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Sündenfalls entsteht, wird sein gesamtes Denken – und darüber hinaus Adornos Beitrag zur “kritischen Theorie”47 – wesentlich mitbestimmen.

28 Ist die Willkür der Zeichen die Signatur des Sündenfalls, was ist dann von der Zeichentheorie der Sprache zu halten? Sie ist wohl als ein weiteres Symptom des Sündenfalls und zugleich als das namenlose “Wissen” zu deuten, das ihn verdrängt. Ihre Rede von der Willkür der Zeichen wäre vielleicht weniger eine willkürliche Konstruktion als eine unwillkürlich entstellte Wahrheit. Jedenfalls weist diese Formel bei Benjamin einerseits auf das katastrophale Ereignis, welches die Geschichte überhaupt in Bewegung setzt, und andererseits auf die Wissenschaft hin, die diese “Urgeschichte des Bedeutens”4848 vergessen zu haben scheint. 29 Die geschichtsphilosophische Konsequenz, die sich aus diesem sprachphilosophischen Paradigma ergibt, ist, daß die menschliche Geschichte sofort mit der gottverlassenen Moderne einsetzt. Ist Gott tot, dann ist alles erlaubt; wo alles erlaubt ist, dort herrscht Willkür; und wenn die gottgewollte, hierarchisch gegliederte Schöpfung einen “feudalen” Eindruck macht, dann sieht die darauffolgende Willkürherrschaft entsprechend “bürgerlich” aus. Was sonst in Geschichtsbüchern als Aufstieg einer fortschrittlichen Bürgerklasse geschildert wird, die sich von feudaler Willkür emanzipiert, wird hier umgekehrt als Absturz in die Willkürherrschaft ausgelegt.49 Und wo andere im Zeichen eine entmythologisierte Sprache sehen, erblickt Benjamin eine neue, profane Dämonie.50 Die unheimliche Zeichensprache, die die gute, “immanente” Magie der Namen zugunsten einer schlechten, “ausdrücklichen” verdrängt, breitet sich so ungehemmt wie die bürgerliche Gesellschaft aus. Der stille Kreis einer begrenzten Namenssprache wird durch die wuchernde Überproduktion beliebiger Spielmarken ersetzt. Das Zeichen ist – wie bei Marx die Ware – die Urzelle eines Systems, das – wie einst Gott – die Welt nach seinem Ebenbilde schafft. 30 “Die Sprache”, schreibt Benjamin, “gibt niemals bloße Zeichen” – auch wenn der gefallene Mensch die Sprache “an einem Teile jedenfalls zum bloßen Zeichen” 51 macht. Die ursprüngliche Namenssprache ist auch nach dem Sündenfall nicht spurlos verschwunden. Ihr im Dickicht der Zeichenwelt die Treue zu halten, ist die jeweilige “Aufgabe” des Schriftstellers, des Übersetzers und des Forschers. Diese Verantwortung wird von der bürgerlichen Zeichentheorie vollends verraten. Indem sie die Sprache auf bloße Zeichen reduziert, denkt sie die letzten Spuren ihres paradiesischen Ursprungs weg. Die bürgerliche Zeichensprache ist schon schlimm genug, aber die bürgerliche Theorie der Zeichensprache macht die Situation dadurch schlimmer, daß sie die ursprüngliche Abkehr von der Namenssprache auf wissenschaftlicher Ebene wiederholt. Besteht die Katastrophe darin, daß “es 'so weiter' geht”52, dann leistet die Zeichentheorie einen wissenschaftlichen Beitrag zu ihrer Normalisierung. Sie hilft der Katastrophe nach, indem sie die schlechte Unendlichkeit der Zeichen um ein falsches Alibi vermehrt. Sie tut, als wäre nichts geschehen, und hypostastiert den Sündenfall, von dem sie nichts wissen will, indem sie ihn mit dem Normalfall verwechselt. Darin liegt der geheime Naturalismus der konventionalistischen Sprachtheorie. Die Konvention gerinnt zur zweiten Natur. Eine wertneutrale Wissenschaft nimmt die gefallene Sprache, wie sie sie vorzufinden meint, und heißt sie gut. Dafür ist ihr Begriff der Willkür selber ein entsprechendes Indiz. Er bezeichnet den Skandal ohne ihn beim Namen zu nennen, und verrät dabei mehr, als er weiß. 31 Die nachträgliche Legitimation des Sündenfalls, welche die bürgerliche Zeichentheorie unwillkürlich liefert, stellt sich somit aus sprachtheologischer Sicht als ein Vergessen

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des Vergessens dar.53 Sie ist – wie bei Marx die politische Ökonomie – eine Verdinglichung der Verdinglichung, die Verzerrung – wie beim späten Lukacs die moderne Kunst – einer verzerrten Welt. Die Katastrophe vollendet sich, indem sie ihre Spuren verwischt. Gleichwohl verrät sich die Verdrängung der Verdrängung als ein weiteres Symptom. Sie erinnert daran, daß man sich nicht mehr daran erinnert, daß man die wahre Sprache vergessen hat. 32 Eingangs wurde die Frage aufgeworfen, ob die bürgerliche Zeichentheorie, die Benjamin gleichsam im Vorbeigehen schneidet, einen mächtigen oder einen nichtigen Gegner darstellt. Die immanente, sprachtheologische Antwort müßte lauten: beides zugleich. Die Zeichentheorie, deren “Unhaltbarkeit und Leere” erwiesen werden soll, ist so grundlos wie der Abgrund, auf dem sie fußt. Dieser “Abgrund des Geschwätzes” bedeutet gleichzeitig ein irreales Nichts und eine tödliche Gefahr. Denn er droht – wie bei Baudelaire die Langeweile – “die Welt in einem Gähnen zu verschlucken”54. Kein Wunder also, wenn Benjamin das Geschwätz regelmäßig verdonnert. Er macht mit ihm kurzen Prozeß. Sein vernichtendes Urteil über die “falsche Meinung von der Sprache” klingt in der Tat an das göttliche “Gericht” an, vor dem “der geschwätzige Mensch, der Sündige”55 einst gestellt wurde, um dann durch die Wucht des richtenden Wortes aus dem Paradies vertrieben zu werden.56

III. Sprachgeschichte als Verfallsgeschichte

“Un Ange, imprudent voyageur Qu'a tenté l'amour du difforme, Au fond d'un cauchemar énorme Se debattant comme un nageur” Baudelaire, L'lrrémédiable “In diesem windigen Europa”57 Dostojewski 33 Benjamin schreibt 1935, sei's konstatierend, sei's beschwörend, vom Prozeß einer vollkommenen Umwälzung, den eine aus der weit zurückliegenden Zeit meines unmittelbar metaphysischen, ja theologischen Denkens stammende Gedanken- und Bildermasse durchmachen mußte, um mit ihrer ganzen Kraft meine gegenwärtige Verfassung zu nähren.58 34 Durch diesen “Umschmelzungsprozess”59 hindurch wird sein Denken dennoch – oder deswegen – von seiner frühen Sprachphilosophie weiterhin geprägt. So läßt sich beispielsweise die abschließende Deutung, die Benjamin in den “ Geschichtsphilosophischen Thesen” vom “neuen Engel” gibt, der mehrfach bei ihm vorkommt,60 als die endgültige Wiederaufnahme jenes sprachphilosophischen Motivs begreifen, dem wir bisher in seinen theologischen Jugendschriften nachgegangen sind. Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung bereit ich kehrte gern zurück denn blieb' ich auch lebendige Zeit ich hätte wenig Glück Gerhard Scholem, Gruß vom Angelus Es gibt ein Bild von Klee, das Angelus Novus heißt. Ein Engel ist darauf dargestellt, der aussieht, als wäre er im Begriff, sich von etwas zu entfernen, worauf er starrt. Seine Augen sind aufgerissen, sein Mund steht offen und seine Flügel sind ausgespannt. Der Engel der Geschichte muß so aussehen. Er hat das Antlitz der Vergangenheit zugewendet. Wo eine Kette von Begebenheiten vor uns erscheint, da

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sieht er eine einzige Katastrophe, die unablässig Trümmer auf Trümmer häuft und sie ihm vor die Füße schleudert. Er möchte wohl verweilen, die Toten wecken und das Zerschlagene zusammenfügen. Aber ein Sturm weht vom Paradiese her, der sich in seinen Flügeln verfangen hat und so stark ist, daß der Engel sie nicht mehr schließen kann. Dieser Sturm treibt ihn unaufhaltsam in die Zukunft, der er den Rücken kehrt, während der Trümmerhaufen vor ihm zum Himmel wächst. Das, was wir den Fortschritt nennen, ist dieser Sturm.61 35 Dem historischen Materialisten, der Benjamin vorschwebt, geht es darum, “ein Bild der Vergangenheit festzustellen, wie es sich im Augenblick der Gefahr dem historischen Subjekt einstellt”62. Der angelus novus, der auf die gesamte bisherige Menschheitsgeschichte starrt, ist sein hilfloser Schutzpatron. Könnte sich der Engel umdrehen, so sähe die Endlösung, auf die die Weltgeschichte – Nietzsche würde sagen: der europäische Nihilismus – hintreibt. Aber die endgültige Besiegelung des Unheils könnte ihn kaum noch überraschen.63 Denn die Vergangenheit, die der Engel der Geschichte vor sich sieht, enthält schon die Zukunft.64 Auschwitz dehnt sich gleichsam vor und hinter ihm aus. Als ein “rückwärts gewandter Prophet” kehrt er der eignen Zeit den Rücken; sein Seherblick entzündet sich an den ins Vergangene verdämmenden Gipfeln der frühem Ereignisse. Dieser Seherblick ist es, welchem die eigene Zeit deutlicher gegenwärtig ist als den Zeitgenossen, die mit ihr Schritt 'halten'.65 36 Ist aber das früheste Ereignis noch auszumachen, das hier in Betracht kommt? Die Antwort ist im Hinweis auf einen Sturm enthalten, der “vom Paradiese her” weht.

37 Zunächst erinnert der grauenhafte Anblick, der den Engel der Geschichte bannt, an die “trostlose Verworrenheit der Schädelstätte”66, auf die der grübelnde Allegoriker im Trauerspielbuch verzweifelt hinstarrt. Hier wie dort richtet sich die Weltgeschichte selber.67 Sie geht am Abgrund zugrunde, auf dem sie fußt. “Die Geschichte in allem, was sie Unzeitiges, Leidvolles, Verfehltes hat”, so lautet eine bekannte Stelle des Trauerspielbuchs, prägt sich in einem Antlitz – nein in einem Totenkopfe aus. [...] Das ist der Kern der allegorischen Betrachtung, der barocken, weltlichen Exposition der Geschichte als Leidensgeschichte der Welt: bedeutend ist sie nur in den Stationen ihres Verfalls.68 38 Dem Allegoriker stellt sich die Geschichte als eine Fehlgeburt69 dar, die weder lebens- noch sterbefähig ist. Die Stationen ihres Martyriums skandieren den Fortschritt einer ursprünglichen, andauernden Katastrophe. Die Urszene dieses Trauerspiels war jedoch dem Trauerspielbuch zufolge, das hier an den frühen Sprachaufsatz wörtlich anknüpft, nichts anderes als der Sündenfall des Sprachgeistes.

39 Der Sturm, der “vom Paradiese her” weht, kann ebenfalls nur dem Sündenfall entsprungen sein. “Denn es ist ja ein Sturm”, heißt es im “der aus dem Vergessen herweht”70; und das Vergessen hat sich mittlerweile als jene “Abkehr” von der Dingsprache herausgestellt, die den Sündenfall verschuldet. Wo die paradiesische Namenssprache “selig in sich selbst ruht”71, dort herrscht die Ruhe vor dem Sturm. Darauf folgt der Lapsus linguae, wodurch die ersten Menschen sich ihre – stürmische – Vertreibung aus dem Paradiese zuziehen. Indem sie aus der seligen Namenssprache heraustreten, lassen sie das Paradies fast schon hinter sich. Mit diesem Akt der Willkür fängt die Geschichte an. Der sogenannte Fortschritt, der sich immer weiter vom Paradies entfernt, erweist sich als die konsequente, lineare Fortsetzung einer Abkehr, die dem Paradies den Rücken dreht. Am Ende der Geschichte wird der Engel umgekehrt dem Fortschritt den Rücken kehren, um sich der Vergangenheit – und darüber hinaus

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dem Paradies – zuwenden zu können. Damit stellt er eine melancholische Form von Aura wieder her. Heißt nämlich die Aura einer Erscheinung erfahren, sie “mit dem Vermögen belehnen, den Blick aufzuschlagen”, dann geht der “Verfall der Aura”72 mit dem “Verfall des seligen Sprachgeistes” einher. Die Sprache entspricht nicht mehr den Dingen, der Augen-Blick findet nicht mehr statt, die Verabredung wird verfehlt. Ist Aufmerksamkeit Malebranche zufolge “das natürliche Gebet der Seele”73, so hat der Mensch im Sündenfall zu beten aufgehört. Die nomadisierende Diaspora der Sprache und, ineins mit dieser Sprachverwirrung, die trostlose Verworrenheit der Weltgeschichte gehen auf diese ursprüngliche Zerstreuung zurück. 40 Ist “Ursprung” das “Ziel”, dann führt die Versuchung, die “wir den Fortschritt nennen”, im Sturmschritt des Vergessens74 vom Ziele ab. Dieser unentwegte Fortschritt ist in Wahrheit der fortschreitende Sündenfall. Er weist nicht wirklich vorwärts, sondern versinkt immer tiefer in den Abgrund. Daß er die “allegorische Physiognomie der Natur-Geschichte”75 hat, besagt, daß die bisherige Menschheitsgeschichte keinen Fortschritt über die Naturgeschichte darstellt. “An Fortschritt glauben”, bemerkt Kafka, “heißt nicht glauben, daß ein Fortschritt schon geschehen ist. Das wäre kein Glauben"76. Nur eine tief gefallene Menschheit kann ihre Zurückgebliebenheit mit Fortschritt verwechseln. Nicht einmal den Abfall von der Namenssprache kann sie beim Namen nennen. Der Begriff des Fortschritts ist – wie die terminologische Rede von der Willkür des Zeichens – zu einem windigen Euphemismus geworden, der selber am Sündenfall des Sprachgeistes teilhat. 41 Ist der sogenannte Fortschritt “dieser Sturm”77, so geht er auf ein ursprüngliches Erdbeben zurück. Im Sündenfall wurde die “gemeinsame Grundlage” des Sprachgeistes mit einem Mal erschüttert.78 Auf solchen unsicheren Fundamenten wurde der Turm zu Babel dann errichtet, dessen monumentale Eitelkeit am Anfang der Geschichte wie ein Menetekel das bittere Ende schon ahnen ließ.79 Kein Wunder, wenn der Engel der Geschichte am Ende auf einen einzigen Trümmerhaufen starrt. Der “Zeit-Raum”80 der “Natur-Geschichte”81, der sich vor seinen Augen ausdehnt, ist der ausgedehnte Sündenfall. War der angestammte Palast der Wahrheit aus den ältesten logoi errichtet worden, so stellt der Trümmerhaufen der Geschichte in einem doppelten Sinn den Abfall der Geschichte dar. Der Turm zu Babel, dessen Geschwätz schon wie der Lärm der Börse klingt, und der Trümmerhaufen der Geschichte, der an die kabbalistische Symbolik der zerbrochenen Gefäße zurückerinnert, markieren den Anfang und das Ende einer Willkürherrschaft, die auf den brüchigen Fundamenten des Zeichens steht und fällt. Der Sündenfall war schon der Anfang vom Ende, das seitdem endlos weitergeht. Wie auf einem Autofriedhof werden “unablässig Trümmer auf Trümmer” gehäuft, die als Kehricht des Fortschritts sein wahres, namenloses Gesicht darstellen. Der Trümmerhaufen schreit wie ein stummer Leichenberg zum Himmel, den er zugleich verdeckt.82 Ist diese apokalyptische Müllhalde, die wie der Turm zu Babel “zum Himmel wächst”, eine letzte Allegorie des Sündenfalls, dann setzt sie sich – so “organisch” wie bei Marx das Kapital – aus einer “primitiven Akkumulation” wuchernder, totgeborener Zeichen zusammen. Das Zeichen ist das Todeszeichen, das Bruchstück, die Allegorie seiner eigenen Fehlgeburt. Die selige Namenssprache war hingegen die Mitteilung eines noch ungebrochenen symbolischen Zusammenhangs. Indem Gott dem Menschen unmittelbar von zu Mund den “Odem” einblies, gab er ihm “zugleich Leben und Geist und Sprache”. Letztere war die Sprache des geistigen “Lauts”, der eine symbolische Gemeinschaft mit der Natur herstellte.83 Im Gegensatz zu dieser paradiesischen Namenssprache, deren “prägende Gewalt”84 sie eingebüßt haben,

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“prägen” die gefallenen Zeichen ihre Willkür der Geschichte “auf”. Die lebendige Stimme wird durch eine tödliche Inschrift zum Schweigen gebracht. Wenn mit dem Trauerspiel die Geschichte in den Schauplatz wandert, so tut sie es als Schrift. Auf dem Antlitz der Natur steht “Geschichte” in der Zeichenschrift der Vergängnis.85 42 Was dem Engel der Geschichte die Sprache verschlägt, ist – sprachtheologisch betrachtet – der todtraurige Anblick der zerschlagenen, sprachlos gewordenen Sprache.86 “Wo eine Kette von Begebenheiten vor uns erscheint, da sieht er eine einzige Katastrophe [...]”. Und wo ein geregeltes System verabredeter Zeichen vor dem Semiologen erscheint, da sieht er einen Trümmerhaufen. Das Unheil, das die bürgerliche Wissenschaft nicht begreifen kann, wird durch sie stillschweigend beschönigt. Darin tut der Konventionalismus es dem Historismus gleich, den sie mit der “Diachronie” ausklammem will. “Wir”, die wir im Trümmerfeld der Geschichte lediglich eine “Kette von Begebenheiten” sehen, sind nämlich treue Schüler jenes Historismus, der sich damit begnügt, “einen Kausalnexus von verschiedenen Momenten der Geschichte zu etablieren” und “die Abfolge der Begebenheiten durch die Finger laufen zu lassen wie einen Rosenkranz”87.

43 Historistische Diachronie und strukturalistische Synchronie, die sonst immer gegeneinander ausgespielt werden, gehören hier so eng zusammen wie die zwei Instanzen – historischer Materialismus und jüdische Theologie –, die bei Benjamin über sie Gericht halten.88 Sowenig seine Sprachtheologie die bürgerliche Zeichentheorie tolerieren kann, sowenig duldet seine materialistische Geschichtsphilo- sophie den bürgerlichen Historismus. Seine Anklage lautet in beiden Fällen: Verschweigen der Katastrophe. Eine subjektive Wissenschaft, die streng objektiv zu sein meint, drückt dem realen Chaos ihre terminologische Ordnung auf und verdoppelt damit die Willkür, an der ihr Gegenstand schon leidet. Sie räumt die Spuren schön ordentlich weg, indem sie den “Zeit-Raum” des Sündenfalls nochmals verräumlicht Das geschieht entweder durch einen synchronen Querschnitt oder durch eine diachrone Übersicht. Aber der strukturalistische Querschnitt schafft seinerseits eine Übersicht, und der historistische Überblick ist umgekehrt ein Längsschnitt. Wer mit Ranke das Panorama der Vergangenheit überblicken will 'wie es eigentlich gewesen ist'89, nimmt die gottähnliche Perspektive eines allwissenden Erzählers ein. Die Diachronie schrumpft dabei zur Synchronie zusammen, die bei den Strukturalisten ebenfalls einem quasi göttlichen Blickwinkel entspricht.90 Aber diese komplementären Perspektiven entspringen in Wirklichkeit dem Sündenfall. Die Verräumlichung der Zeit, die den wissenschaftlichen Überblick ermöglicht, hat ihre Vorgeschichte im “Zeit-Raum” des deutschen Trauerspiels. Die Wahrheit der barocken Aussicht auf die “erstarrte Urlandschaft”91 der “Natur-Geschichte” geht jedoch in dem Augenblick verloren, wo die Trauer des Allegorikers durch die Neutralität einer affektleeren, wertfreien Wissenschaft ersetzt wird. 44 Die wissenschaftliche These vom arbitraire du signe erwies sich vorhin als ein weiteres Symptom jener Willkür, die Benjamin zufolge nur aus sprachtheologischer Perspektive zu diagnostizieren ist. Aber sie braucht sich lediglich beim Wort zu nehmen, um die Diagnose selber zu stellen. Sie weiß es nicht, so wäre das Marxsche Wort abzuwandeln, aber sie sagt es. Ähnliches gilt für das Verhältnis des Historismus zum historischen Materialismus. Die gefährdete Vogelperspektive des angelus novus ist die Sichtweise eines zu sich gekommenen Historismus.92 Liefert letzterer “das ewige Bild der Vergangenheit”93, so stellt die Geschichte in den Augen des Engels eine permanente

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Katastrophe dar. Nicht, daß er sie im gleichen Sinn sub specie aeternitatis betrachtet. Da er im nächsten Augenblick vom Sturm des Fortschritts fortgetrieben werden wird, ist er kaum in der Lage, die Illusion des Historismus zu teilen, die Wahrheit könne ihm “nicht davonlaufen”94. Auch von seiner prekären Warte95 aus gesehen fallen jedoch Synchronie und Diachronie zusammen. Der strukturalistische Querschnitt, der die Diachronie nicht mehr passieren läßt, wird hier zur “messianischen Stillstellung des Geschehens”96, die das falsche Kontinuum der Geschichte erstarren läßt, indem sie ihr Medusenhaupt apotropäisch gegen sie kehrt. Vor den Augen des angelus novus schrumpft die Weltgeschichte zum nackten Grauen zusammen, das den Schleier der – mechanischen – Chronologie zerreißt. Die “Kette von Begebenheiten”, die uns den Blick versperrt, stellt sich nunmehr als die mythische Verkettung eines Schuldzusammenhangs, ihr unschuldiges Nacheinander als ein heilloses Durcheinander, dar. Indem der historistische Überblick sich selber überhöht, wird er zum wahren Ausblick auf den Zeit-Raum der Geschichte. Dem Engel der Geschichte ist alles ungleich drastischer “unmittelbar” als dem komfortablen Gott des Historismus. Er erfährt am eigenen himmlischen Leibe, “wie es denn eigentlich gewesen ist”. Die “Universalgeschichte”, deren sich der Historismus befleißigt, ist nämlich bisher kein “Triumphzug”97, sondern ein einziger Trauerzug gewesen ist.98 45 “In Gottes Welt”, heißt es am Ende des Trauerspielbuchs, “erwacht der Allegoriker”99. Verkehrt sich dort der Sturz des bösen Engels mit “einem Umschwung”100 in eine erlösende Gegenbewegung, so findet sich umgekehrt der angelus novus, der kein gefallener Engel ist, in der Hölle wieder. Nicht aus dem Traum, sondern mitten drin ist er erwacht. Er könnte in diesem Sinne ein erwachter Historist, ein zu sich gekommener, aber keineswegs geretteter Allegoriker genannt werden. Der “subjektive Blick der Melancholie”101, der dem Allegoriker eigen ist, und die entsprechende “Traurigkeit”102 des Historisten sind einer objektiven Trauer gewichen. Während der Historismus die selbstbefangene Willkür103 darstellt, die sich hinter einer Fassade erhabener Objektivität verbirgt, verkörpert der fast körperlose Engel das unglückliche Bewußtsein der objektiven Willkür – der um sich greifenden Subjektivität –, die sich auf dem Trümmerfeld der Weltgeschichte austobt. Beide erinnern also auf je verschiedene Weise an die Optik des barocken Allegorikers. Der Engel, der die “facies hippocratica der Geschichte”104 mit weit offenen Augen betrachtet, erkennt sie als den Alptraum, aus dem er aufwachen möchte. Demgegenüber träumt der schlafwandelnde Historismus die “letzte Phantasmagorie des Objektiven”105 weiter und macht's dabei dem Allegoriker ebenfalls nach, der “im Sündenfall zu Hause ist”106. Es ist kein Zufall, wenn Benjamins Beschreibung des Historismus als eines “Bordell[s]”, wo man sich bei der “Hure 'Es war einmal'”107 ausgibt, an die Stelle im Trauerspielbuch anklingt, wo die Willkür allegorischen Bedeutens als “finsterer Sultan” personifiziert wird, der “im Harem der Dinge”108 herrscht. Die Genauigkeit der Parallele zwischen diesen allegorischen Darstellungen der allegorischen Verhaltensweise verweist auf einen grundlegenden Zusammenhang. 46 “Die Erinnerung des Grüblers”, notiert Benjamin im Passagen-Werk, verfügt über die ungeordnete Masse des toten Wissens. Ihm ist das menschliche Wissen Stückwerk in einem besonders prägnanten Sinn: nämlich wie der Haufen willkürlich geschnittener Stücke, aus denen man ein puzzle zusammensetzt. [...] Der Allegoriker greift bald da bald dort aus dem wüsten Fundus, den sein Wissen ihm zur Verfügung stellt, ein Stück heraus, hält es neben ein anderes und versucht,

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ob sie zu einander passen: jene Bedeutung zu diesem Bild oder dieses Bild zu jener Bedeutung.109 47 Dasselbe galt vorhin – im eingangs zitierten Brief an Hofmannsthal – für das erratische Verhalten der irrenden Einzelwissenschaften, die “bald hier bald da” im Sprachbereiche sich behelfen. An der Willkür seines Zugriffs ist das gefallene Wissen zu erkennen.110 Nicht anders verhält sich der Historismus, der beliebige Fakten aus dem wüsten Fundus seines Wissens stückweise herauskramt.111 Solche Geschichtsschreibung, heißt es an anderer Stelle weiter, hat denn auch von jeher aus dem kontinuierlichen Verlauf einen Gegenstand einfach herausgegriffen. Aber das geschah ohne Grundsatz, als Notbehelf; und ihr erstes war denn auch immer, den Gegenstand ins Kontinuum wieder einzubetten [...]. Die materialistische Geschichtsschreibung [...] greift nicht, sondern sprengt sie aus dem Verlauf heraus.112 48 Während der Engel der Geschichte das Zerschlagene gern zusammenfügen würde, zerschlägt's der Historismus noch einmal, um anschließend solche potenzierte Willkür als ihr Heilmittel auszugeben. Das doppelte Stückwerk wird zur Phantasmagorie eines organischen Ganzen zusammengefügt. Der vorwärtsgetriebene Engel möchte beim Zerschlagenen “wohl verweilen”. Der saturierte Historist schlendert hingegen wie ein “Müßiggänger im Garten des Wissens”113 herum, um eine müßige Ordnung aus der ungeordneten Masse seines toten Wissens zusammenzustellen. Jener Garten ist lediglich ein Zerrbild des längst verlorenen Paradieses. Wer in ihm lustwandelt, will vergessen, daß er in der Wüste irrt. So wie die gefallenen Zeichen eine “Parodie” der paradiesischen Namenssprache lieferten, so karikiert das gefallene Wissen des Historismus die “messianische Idee der Universalgeschichte”114.

49 Dieselbe Antithetik, die die Einsicht des Engels von der Blindheit des Historismus trennt, unterscheidet das geschärfte Bewußtsein, das der Allegoriker vom “Abgrund zwischen bildlichem Sein und Bedeuten” hat, von der “unbeteiligten Süffisanz, die in der scheinbar verwandten Intention des Zeichens sich findet”115. Ein Abgrund zwischen Zeichen und Bezeichnetem hatte sich im Sündenfall erstmals aufgetan, als die Sprache sich selber fremd geworden war. Von da an sollte das Wort “etwas mitteilen (außer sich selbst)”116. Damit war im Ansatz die weitere Kluft gegeben, die in der Allegorie Bild und Bedeutung trennt. Alles kommt seitdem darauf an, ob die Menschen sich im Abgrund häuslich einrichten oder aber das schmerzliche Bewußtsein der Entfremdung wachhalten. Beide Möglichkeiten sind von vornherein gegeben. Entweder gedenkt der erwachende Allegoriker des weltgeschichtlichen Ursprungs, der seiner “Trauer Einsatz und Ausgang zugleich weist”117, oder er verliert mit dem Bewußtsein des Unheils die Perspektive der Erlösung. Im zweiten Fall wird der allegorische Weltzustand verschleiert, indem er nochmals allegorisiert wird. Allegorie der Allegorie – eine solche Formel, die man der Schlegelsehen “Ironie der Ironie”118 an die Seite stellen könnte, hätte in diesem Zusammenhang einen doppelten Sinn. Man kann darunter entweder die schlechte Unendlichkeit oder aber das gute Ende der Allegorie verstehen. Entweder bedeutet die Allegorie, zu deren Definition es gehört, von etwas anderem (allos) zu reden, ihrerseits etwas anderes als sie ist, und zwar das “Nichtsein” dessen, was sie “vorstellt”119. Damit ginge das Nichts des Bösen – wie am Ende des Trauerspielbuchs – im Sein des Guten unter. Die Allegorie wäre eine präfigurative Figur, die ihr Ende in sich trägt. Oder aber sie potenziert sich selber, geht immer so weiter, und hebt sich damit auf andere, falsche Weise auf. Das Subjekt hätte sich nunmehr seiner Entfremdung so weit entfremdet, daß es diese seine doppelte Leere für “gesättigtes

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Sein”120 halten könnte. Dieses Schema, das später von der Frankfurter Schule auf die Eindimensionalität der spätbürgerlichen Konsumgesellschaft übertragen worden ist, gilt zunächst bei Benjamin für den wissenschaftlichen Komfort sowohl der bürgerlichen Zeichentheorie als auch des Historismus. Ihre gemeinsame Ursünde wurde vorhin als ein Vergessen des Vergessens bezeichnet. Die Semiologie, die die Sprache in ein formales System reiner Differenzen aufteilt, vergißt darüber die große ontologische Differenz, die zwischen einer unmittelbaren Namenssprache und einer Sprache prädikativer Ur-teile und kommunikativer Mit-teilung besteht. Und der Historiker, der sich an die Fakten verliert, übersieht dabei die eine Katastrophe, die aus ihnen herauszulesen ist. Beide sind schlechte, selbstvergessene Allegoriker, die dem Abgrund umso hoffnungsloser verfallen, je weniger sie von ihm wissen wollen. 50 Fassen wir unseren Kommentar zusammen. Der Sturm des Fortschritts, der Benjamins angelus novus vorwärtstreibt, erscheint gegen den Hintergrund seiner frühen Sprachphilosophie als eine schreckliche Parodie auf das göttliche “Einblasen des Odems”, das dem ersten Menschen Leben, Geist und Sprache verlieh. An die Stelle der inspirierten Namen tritt im Sündenfall die Inflation der Zeichen. Was wir den Fortschritt nennen, wäre nichts anderes als dieses windige “Geschwätz”. Flatus vocis hatten die Nominalisten den mittelalterlichen Begriffsrealismus abwertend genannt. Ihre Wiederaufnahme einer konventionalistischen Sprachtheorie ging mit der vielgerühmten Emanzipation des bürgerlichen Individuums einher. Diese epochale Wende wird beim frühen Benjamin von einer sprachphilosophisch gedeuteten Version des Sündenfalls überblendet. Wem Namen Schall und Rauch, und Universalien will- kürliche Spielmarken,121 sind, der läßt Schutt und Trümmer hinter sich. Philosophiegeschichtlich betrachtet wäre der Sturm des Fortschritts der losgelassene Nominalismus, dessen eigener flatus vocis am Ende die haecceitas verwüstet, die er ursprünglich gegen den mittelalterlichen Realismus geltend machte. In der “ Erkenntniskritischen Vorrede” zum Trauerspielbuch wird deshalb nicht der Nominalismus, sondern ein adamitischer Platonismus mit der “Rettung” des “Einzelnen”122 beauftragt – ein philosophiegeschichtlicher Anachronismus, der zugleich den aktuellen Impuls der damaligen Philosophie teilt, “zu den Sachen selbst” zurückzukehren. Benjamins “Platonismus” ist ebenfalls – über alle Differenzen oder Korrektive hinweg – seinem späteren “historischen Materialismus” wahlverwandt. Die Sehnsucht nach der himmlischen Ruhe einer entrückten Namens- und Ideensphäre,123 die den Verkehr der Zeichensprachen noch nicht oder nicht mehr kennt, ist mit dem revolutionären Impuls zusammenzudenken, eine messianische “Stillstellung des Geschehens”124 im Sinne eines Generalstreiks herbeizuführen. Wenn der Fortschritt zur unkontrollierbaren Dynamik einer Naturkatastrophe geworden ist, dann kann die Revolution nicht mehr als die “Lokomotive” der geschichtlichen Dialektik, sondern nur noch als “Griff [...] nach der Notbremse”125 oder als “Um- kehr” 126 gedacht werden. Benjamins Geschichtsphilosphie kehrt mit dieser Feststellung zu ihren sprachphilosophischen Anfängen zurück. 51 Seine allegorische Deutung des Kleeschen Engels läßt sich in diesem Zusammenhang als die geschichtsphilosophische Variation eines sprachphilosophischen Paradigmas verstehen, das seinerseits auf die biblische Genesis-Geschichte zurückgeht. Die Geschichte, die sie erzählt, läßt Geschichte überhaupt mit dem Sündenfall des Sprachgeistes anfangen. Erzählen wir ein letztes Mal diese folgenreiche Geschichte nach. Im Sündenfall tritt der Name aus der “immanenten eigenen Magie” heraus, “um ausdrücklich, von außen gleichsam, magisch zu werden”127. Was wir sonst

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Säkularisierung nennen, ist demzufolge Dämonie. Mit der Profanierung der Sprache entsteht eine “ausdrückliche” Magie, die den Dingen ihre “verantwortungslose Willkür aufprägt”. Äußerlichkeit, Schrift, und eine Art schwarzer Magie fallen mit dem Anbruch dieser Willkürherrschaft zusammen. Daraus resultiert eine nicht enden wollende “Narretei”. Die selbstbezogene Zeichensprache, die kein fundamentum in re mehr hat, erzeugt einen phantasmagorischen Beziehungswahn, der jeden echten Bezugs zur Wirklichkeit entbehrt. Deshalb wirkt er so tödlich auf sie ein. Aber der Fluch, den er über sie ausbreitet, hat einen doppeldeutigen Charakter. Er ist zugleich das Wirklichste und das Unwirklichste von der Welt. “Nur um ein Geringes” wird der Messias eine “entstellte” Welt “zurechtstellen”128 müssen, weil das Böse selber ein bloßes “Nichts”129 ist. Aber das Nichts droht zugleich die Welt zu vernichten. Das ist die theologische Dialektik von Sein und Nichts, der Doppelboden eines grundlosen – d.h. bodenlosen oder aber inexistenten – Abgrunds, die Paradoxie eines Sturms, der dem schlechten “Odem” des Geschwätzes entspringt. 52 Das windige Geschwätz einer “leeren Subjektivität”130 bläst durch eine “homogene und leere Zeit”131 hindurch. So sieht rückblickend der Motor des Fortschritts aus. Es ist, als hätte die Geschichte im Augenblick des Sündenfalls zu ticken angefangen.132 Die schlechte Unendlichkeit der Zeichen zeitigt die abgründige Zeitstruktur, die dem Marsch des Fortschritts zugrundeliegt. Ist der Name, der die Dinge ein für allemal nennt, in der vollendeten Zeit zu Hause, so entspricht das Zeichen, das sie überbenennt, einer höllischen Zeit, die “immer wieder von vorn” anfängt133. Die “ewige Wiederkunft” 134 von Zeichen und Sekunden stellt eine höllische Parodie auf den Kreislauf des Logos dar. An die Stelle des ewig in sich kreisenden Worts tritt eine lineare Logik eiserner Konsequenzen, deren fortschreitende Geschichte sich ihrerseits im Kreise dreht. Fortschritt ist von Schicksal, die Kette der Ereignisse von mythischer Verkettung, nicht mehr zu unterscheiden. Seit dem Sündenfall ist alles, was vorfällt, dessen “unausbleibliche Folge”135. Die Chronologie der Natur-Geschichte steht unter dem Zeichen Saturns, der – wie Chronos – seine Kinder frißt. Sind Sprache und Zeit einmal aus ihrer vollendeten Immanenz herausgetreten, dann kennen sie nur noch die beliebige Pünktlichkeit, die quantitative Ausdehnung, einer langwierigen, langweiligen Katastrophe. Seitdem die ersten Menschen infolge ihrer Abkehr von den Dingen aus dem Paradies vertrieben wurden, beschäftigen sie sich damit, die Zeit zu vertreiben, indem sie sie zur weiteren Zerstreuung mit sinnlosen Bedeutungen vollstopfen. Geschichte wäre insofern – nach Theodor Lessings Formel – “Sinngebung des Sinnlosen”, als solcher Sinn – Benjamins Sprachphilosophie zufolge – mit der Sinnleere zusammenfällt, die er übertönen will. Bietet der spleen bei Baudelaire “den Schwarm der Sekunden” gegen “die Kraft des Eingedenkens” auf136, so bietet seinerseits der Historismus, der ebenfalls an “acedia”137 leidet, “die Masse der Fakten auf, um die homogene und leere Zeit auszufüllen”138. So geht die Apokalypse beliebig weiter, die kein Ende nehmen will, weil sie kein Telos hat. Das sprachphilosophische Paradigma, welches Zeichen, Willkür, Mittel, Urteil, Abstraktion, Bedeutung und Geschwätz im Sündenfall des Worts zusammenfallen läßt, wird um eine geschichtsphilosophische Konstruktion ergänzt, die ihrerseits die Geschichte mit dem Fortschritt des Sündenfalls, mit permanenter Katastrophe und ewiger Wiederkunft, mit Vergessen und Langeweile gleichsetzt.

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53 Die Geburt der Geschichte aus dem Sündenfall des Sprachgeistes – man mag davon halten, was man will. Wie muß aber die Geschichte aussehen, damit man auf eine solche Idee verfällt?

IV. Benjamins Geschichtsphilosophie als moderner Antimodernismus?

“Das ist Theologie; aber im Eingedenken machen wir eine Erfahrung, die uns verbietet, die Geschichte grundsätzlich atheologisch zu begreifen, so wenig wir sie in unmittelbar theologischen Begriffen zu schreiben versuchen dürfen”. 54 Ihre Ableitung aus dem Sündenfall läßt die Geschichte nur noch als Natur-, Ur- und Vorgeschichte, und damit schon als post-histoire erscheinen. Mit der Modeme einsetzend, setzt sie sich unentwegt mit der sogenannten Postmodeme fort. “Soviel Bedeutung, soviel Todverfallenheit”: soviel neue Termini, soviel zusätzliche Willkür. Was der Engel der Geschichte vor sich sieht, schließt die Zukunft ein, von der er sich abwendet. Im Zeitalter der Autofriedhöfe, des Atommülls und der neuen Leichenberge bleibt das allegorische Denkbild des Trümmerhaufens allzu unverjährt. Da aber der Sturm, der die Trümmer hinterläßt, aus dem “Vergessen” herweht, stand zu erwarten, daß das geschichtstheologische Eingedenken das jenen Anblick festhielt, selber früher oder später auf dem geschichtlichen Trümmerhaufen landen würde. Das stumme Grauen des neuen Engels ist zwar mit keinerlei philosophischem Staunen zu verwechsein.139 Aber es ist bei aller Sprachlosigkeit eine eminent sprach- und geschichtsphilosophische Angelegenheit.

55 An der Geschichtsphilosophie ist jedoch inzwischen allerorten ein wachsendes Unbehagen angemeldet worden. Einen instruktiven deutschen Beleg für diesen internationalen Trend liefert Odo Marquards Aufsatzsammlung Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie140. In einem jüngst erschienenen Aufsatz “Die arbeitslose Angst. Antimodernismus in der postmodernen Gesellschaft”141, der als ein weiteres Zeichen der Zeit hier kurz berücksichtigt werden soll, unterscheidet Marquard drei Grundformen der neueren Geschichtsphilosophie – eine “promodernistische Variante” (Hegel), eine “präterital antimodernistische” (Rousseau) und eine “futural antimodernistische” (Marx) – und stellt folgende These auf: Die gegenwärtigen westlichen und speziell bundesrepublikanischen Revolten gegen das Bestehende – also etwa Stundentenbewegung, Friedensbewegung, grüne Welle – sind Fortsetzungen des Antimodernismus unter Verwendung der Zukunft und schließlich der Natur als Mittel: sie stehen in einer Tradition, die man die Tradition des futurisierten Antimodernismus nennen kann. 56 Antimodernismus – ein Begriff, der bezeichnenderweise der jüngsten Kirchengeschichte entstamme – sei die paradoxe Signatur einer heute wieder grassierenden romantisch-revolutionären Geschichtsphilosophie, die die Gegenwart als “das Zeitalter des Verfalls durch Fortschritt” bestimme. Diese “Hölle auf Erden” werde im Namen einer vergangenen heilen Welt oder einer künftigen Utopie verurteilt. Der Aufstieg dieses Antimodernismus von der Zukunft her bis zur puren Selbstverständlichkeit erfolgt vom 19. ins 20. Jahrhundert hinein: z.B. durch

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Aufnahme des Marxismus nun auch ins theologische Denken, das antimodernistisch bleibt, obwohl es jetzt nicht mehr die Vergangenheit sondern die Zukunft anbetet. Das ist jener Vorgang, den ich nenne: die Futurisierung des Antimodernismus: durch ihn kommt endgültig heraus, was die Geschichtsphilosophie grundsätzlich ist: Antimodernismus. 57 Solch moderner Antimodernismus verstricke sich zunehmend in Widersprüche, indem er sein Unbehagen an der Kultur krampfhaft ausagiere.

58 Die sprach- und geschichtsphilosphische Grundfigur, die wir hier in ihrer paradigmatischen Reinheit zu rekonstruieren versuchten, scheint sich als das Musterbeispiel eines derartigen modernen Antimodemismus anzubieten. Fallen doch Fortschritt und Verfall im Sündenfall zusammen, der die Natur in Mitleidenschaft zieht: Nach dem Sündenfall aber ändert sich mit Gottes Wort, das den Acker verflucht, das Ansehen der Natur im tiefsten. Nun beginnt ihre andere Stummheit, die wir mit der tiefen Traurigkeit der Natur meinen.142 59 Isolierte Motive sind in der Tat vor ideologischem Mißbrauch nicht gefeit. Für sich allein genommen könnte die stumme Klage der Natur den Eindruck erwecken, ihr Fürsprecher sehne sich nach guten alten vortechnologischen Zeiten zurück. Der Protest gegen die Instrumentalisierung der Natur würde sie dann ihrerseits im Sinne Marquards als Mittel mißbrauchen, um Technik als solche zu diffamieren. Benjamins Beschwörung einer trauernden Natur, die in den “Abgrund der Mittelbarkeit”143 gestürzt worden sei, muß jedoch im Zusammenhang mit anderen Motiven gelesen werden, wo die Technik als Hebamme aufgefaßt wird, welche die Kräfte der Natur entbindet.144 Läßt sich – um ein weiteres Beispiel zu nennen – der “Verfall der Aura” tatsächlich auf den “Verfall des seligen Sprachgeistes” zurückführen, so wird später im Namen eines echten, revolutionären Fortschritts, der aus der Verfallsgeschichte herausführen könnte, der “Zertrümmerung der Aura”145 das Wort geredet. Zwar würde der Engel der Geschichte lieber aus der Geschichte nach Hause zurückkehren. Aber Benjamins Geschichtsphilosophie ist auch hier nicht auf eine Verfallstheorie zu reduzieren. Die “Umkehr”, die dem falschen Fortschritt den Rücken kehrt, soll die Kehrseite des echten sein. Ein solches Schema könnte bei Marquard allenfalls als die mehr oder weniger geglückte Verbindung einer “präterital” mit einer “futural” antimodernistischen Geschichtsphilosophie eingestuft werden. Was wäre aber damit gewonnen? Wie, wenn das neudeutsche Begriffsraster einer solchen Diskursanalyse eine Neuauflage des historisch-strukturalistischen Panoptikons wäre? Ist die Verabschiedung der Geschichtsphilosophie wirklich die vordringlichste Aufgabe? Wissen nicht die wildesten Ökologiefreaks, die zumindest den Trümmerhaufen nicht aus den Augen verlieren, da besser Bescheid?

60 Inwieweit die verschiedenen geschichtsphilosophischen Motive, von denen nur eines hier zur Diskussion stand, sich bei Benjamin zu einem kohärenten Ganzen zusammenfügen lassen, wäre einer Untersuchung wert.146 Soviel scheint jedoch jetzt schon festzustehen: Benjamins bruchstückhafte Geschichtsphilosophie ist kaum in gängige Schemata hineinzuzwingen. Wo Marquard die positiven Errungenschaften der Modeme mit unanfechtbarer Ausgewogenheit gegen die “neue Negativierung der modernen Welt” ausspielt, setzt Benjamin auf die wahlverwandte Radikalität positiver und negativer Extreme. Bestehende – und künftige – Antinomien werden dabei stillschweigend abgebaut. Ein messianischer Elan, der vielleicht am ehesten mit dem dithyrambischen Jasagen eines Nietzsche zu vergleichen wäre, paart sich mit einer

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destruktiven Energie, die ihrerseits zu messianisch ist, um sich von der Trägheit des Bestehenden entkräften zu lassen. Ist eine Auseinandersetzung zwischen Benjamins emphatischen Impulsen, die kaum mit sich reden lassen, und Marquards ausgemachter Skepsis, die sich überall bestätigt findet, überhaupt denkbar? Oder werden beide Positionen durch einander lediglich provoziert? 61 Der Umgang mit der Geschichtsphilosophie – davon zeugte schon die Sprachlosigkeit des Benjaminsehen Engels – ist heute schwieriger geworden. Aber ihre voreilige Verabschiedung – das weiß auch Marquard auf seine Art147 – ist nicht minder problematisch.148 So widersprüchlich ein Antimodemismus sein mag, der von der Modeme zehrt, Benjamin wußte, daß es Widersprüche gibt, denen enthoben zu sein man “nicht einmal im Traum wünschen” kann149. “Die ausgebildetste Zivilisation und die modernste Kultur”, schrieb er 1931 an Scholem, gehören nicht nur zu meinem privaten Komfort, sondern sie sind zum Teil geradezu Mittel meiner Produktion. [...] Aber willst du mir wirklich verwehren, mit meiner kleinen Schreibfabrik, die da mitten im Westen liegt, ganz einfach aus dem gebieterischen Bedürfnis, von einer Nachbarschaft, die ich, aus Gründen, hinzunehmen habe, mich zu unterscheiden – willst du mir mit dem Hinweis, das sei ja nichts als ein Fetzen Tuch, verwehren, die rote Fahne zum Fenster herauszuhängen?150

V. Schluss

“Es ist, als wäre ich in eine Festzeit eingetreten und ich muß in dem was sich Ihnen eröffnet hat die Offenbarung verehren. Denn es ist doch nicht anders daß das was Ihnen zugekommen ist Ihnen allein eben an Sie gerichtet worden sein muß und wieder für einen Augenblick in unser Leben getreten ist”151 Benjamin an Scholem, 1917 “denn wirklich, im Innersten, Verborgnen geht es nicht so weiter sondern von einem Extrem ins andere”152 62 Im skeptischen Klima, das heute vorherrscht, traut sich keiner das Pathos solcher erleuchteter, “konstatierontologischer” Aussagen mehr zu. Um sicher zu sein, wie es “wirklich, im Innersten, Verborgnen” zugeht, muß man – wie der Allegoriker am Ende des Trauerspielbuchs – erfahren haben, daß Willkür nicht das letzte, sondern nur das vorletzte Wort haben kann. “Gänzlich auf sich selbst gestellt”, fand sich jener “nicht mehr spielerisch in erdhafter Dingwelt sondern ernsthaft unterm Himmel” wieder153. Zwischen diesem Himmel, unter dem der Allegoriker “zur Auferstehung treulos überspringt”, und dem “freie[n] Himmel der Geschichte”, unter dem der “Sprung” der “Revolution” – noch 1940 – stattfinden kann,154 besteht eine weitreichende Kontinuität. Walter Benjamin stellt den reinen – und in diesem Jahrhundert vielleicht einzigartigen – Fall eines solchen tragenden theologisch-politischen Urvertrauens dar. Ob diese exterritoriale, “gänzlich auf sich selbst gestellte” Grundhaltung eher dazu prädestiniert ist, Offenbarungen zu empfangen, als Einsichten zu verdrängen, das ist die große Frage. Sie ist womöglich die heutige Gestalt der Gretchenfrage. Benjamin mit psychologischen

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Argumenten beizukommen, ist indessen schwierig. Geht er doch davon aus, das Unwillkürliche auf seiner Seite zu haben.

63 Sein Hinweis auf die sprachtheologische “Überzeugung”, die ihn in seinen literarischen Versuchen leite, kann – so unsere These – nicht ernst genug genommen werden. Es gibt in seinen Schriften keine Zeile, die nicht von ihr getragen wäre. Gewiß, ein antikonventionalistisches Vorurteil wurde immer schon gerade von solchen Schriftstellern gehegt, die zu ihrer Muse hielten.155 Benjamins Überzeugung ist nicht jedoch als die arbeitsteilige Lebenslüge eines freien Schriftstellers abzutun. Sie ist vielmehr für seine intellektuelle Haltung und seine biographischen Entscheidungen durch sämtliche Phasen hindurch bestimmend gewesen. Worum es hier geht, ist gerade ein – bestimmtes – Ethos der Bestimmung: das unwillkürliche Verhältnis, welches gewisse Einsichten mit “ganz bestimmten” Worten, gewisse Augenblicke und Epochen mit “ganz bestimmten früheren” im “Innersten, Verborgnen” miteinander unterhalten. Es geht darum, der empfängliche Adressat einer an keinen anderen als einen selbst ergangenen (“Ihnen allein eben an Sie gerichtet”) Stimme zu sein. Ließ Benjamin seine eigene Bestimmung zum Gegenstand scharfer Auseinandersetzungen mit ausgewählten Freunden werden, so stand doch beinahe für alle Beteiligten fest, daß es diese Bestimmung gab. Und wenn sein Leben zu einem von seinen eigentlichen Zielen abgelenkten Leidensweg, zum Zickzack des Vertriebenen werden sollte, so bestand für ihn dennoch kein Zweifel, daß er einen jeweils bestimmten Weg zu gehen hatte. Seinem sprachphilosophischen Selbstverständnis nach hatte der Weg dieses unbeirrten Flaneurs einen ursprünglichen Sinn, der – diesseits des fatalen Gegensatzes zwischen Sinn und Sinnlosigkeit – im Palast der Sprache angesiedelt war. Auch wenn das Lauschen einer erschütterten Tradition seiner Kafka-Deutung zufolge nur noch “Undeutlichstes” ausmachen konnte156, so drang doch mehr bei Benjamin als bei Kafka von der “kaiserlichen Botschaft”157 durch. Er war zum Beispiel davon überzeugt, daß auch der sogenannte Fortschritt nicht “so weiter” geht, sondern “von einem Extrem ins andere”. “Zum Begriff der Rettung”, notierte er in seinen späten Aufzeichnungen: “der Wind des Absoluten in den Segeln des Begriffs”158. Hat nicht sogar der Engel der Geschichte mitten im Sturm des Fortschritts etwas von diesem Wind in seinen schriftrollartigen Flügeln? Denn erstens gibt es den Engelsboten noch, und zweitens verzweifelt er zumindest nicht an den Fundamenten seiner Verzweiflung. Noch in der “abgestumpften”159 Nüchternheit 160 seines materialistischen Spätstils hallt Benjamins altes metaphysisches Pathos nach. Und dieses Pathos fällt mit seiner Verurteilung jeglicher Willkür strikt zusammen. 64 Die produktive Rolle, die die These vom arbitraire du signe bei der Erneuerung ganzer Disziplinen und der Kritik gängiger Ideologien161 seither gespielt hat, zeigt freilich an, daß der Begriff der Willkür keiner ist, der sich von selbst erledigt. Die Frage ist vielmehr, ob Benjamins summarische Abfertigung der Willkür-These ihrerseits ebenso summarisch zu verabschieden ist. Etwa – wie man es sich bei Gerard Genette vorstellen könnte – als eine reichlich verspätete Episode innerhalb der ehrwürdigen, harmlosen, ebenso unterhaltsamen wie unwissenschaftlichen Geschichte eines offenbar unausrottbaren “Kratylismus”. Hat Benjamin einen Dichterglauben, eine Dichterlüge zu seinem Credo gemacht? Greift seine Ablehnung der Willkür-These? Kann seine Sprachphilosophie ihren wissenschaftlichen Anspruch rechtfertigen? Ist der Posten wirklich ein verlorener? Adorno bemerkte einmal, daß die Debatte zwischen Kratylos

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und Hermegenes noch offensteht. Vorliegener Beitrag versteht sich als eine kleine Vorarbeit zu iher Wiederaufnahme.

ENDNOTES

1. Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, (hiernach GS), hrsg. v. Rolf Tiedemann und Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt a. M.: 1974 ff.), Bd. I.1., S. 48. 2. Walter Benjamin, Briefe, (hiernach B), hrsg. v. Gershom Scholem und Theodor W. Adorno (Frankfurt a. M.: 1966), S. 425. Vgl. dazu Verf., “'Immer radikal, niemals konsequent ...'. Zur theologisch-politischen Standortbestimmung Walter Benjamins”, in: Antike und Moderne. Zu Walter Benjamins 'Passagen', hrsg. v. Norbert W. Bolz und Richard Faber (Würzburg, 1986), S. 116-137. 3. GS, I.1, S. 207 . 4. GS, III., S. 286 . 5. GS, V.1, S. 59 und 580 . 6. GS, I.1, S. 47. 7. GS, I.1, S. 50. 8. Die Verschiedenheit dieser theoretischen Idiome untereinander wird von Benjamin kaum reflektiert. Ließe sie sich im Ernst unter Hinweis auf die Sprachzersplitterung erklären, die einem jener Idiome zufolge auf den Sündenfall zurückzuführen ist? 9. Vgl. jedoch zu Saussures eigener Position: Jean Starobinski, Les mots sous les mots. Les anagrammes de Ferdinand de Saussure (Paris, 1971); und Gérard Genette, Mimologiques. Voyages en Cratylie (Paris, 1976), S. 414-416. Saussure kommt bei Benjamin an einer einzigen, nichtssagenden Stelle vor (GS, III., S. 468). 10. GS, II.1, S. 207. “Für Einsichtige” wird in der überarbeiteten Fassung “Über das mimetische Vermögen” gestrichen. Vgl. dazu Scholems Bemerkung, daß die theologische Inspiration seiner Texte ihre besondere Form begründet, “die so viele wichtige Sätze Benjamins [...] mit der Aura des ex cathedra umkleidet. Seine Feinde sprachen schon früh von der 'Konstatierontologie' in seinen Schriften. [...] Seine Sätze haben oft genug die autoritäre Haltung von Offenbarungsworten [...]” (Walter Benjamin und sein Engel (Frankfurt a. M., 1983), S. 35). Benjamins charakteristischer Sprachgestus geht in der Tat aus seiner Sprachtheologie stringent hervor. Sein bedingter Anspruch auf Absolutheit wird gleich im ersten Abschnitt des Trauerspielbuchs sorgfältig begründet, wo die Notwendigkeit einer relativen “Esoterik” relativ exoterisch dargelegt wird. (Vgl. GS, I.1, S. 207-209, und auch GS, IV.2, S. 906) 11. B, 1, S. 329. 12. Benjamins “Lehre vom Ähnlichen” geht in diesem Sinne von einer Auffassung der Sprache aus, die “mystischen oder theologischen Sprachtheorien engstens verwandt” ist, “ohne darum jedoch empirischer Philologie fremd zu sein” (GS, II.1, S.208). 13. “Die Einführung neuer Terminologien”, heißt es in der “Erkenntniskritischen Vorrede” zum Trauerspielbuch, “[...] ist [...] bedenklich. Solche Terminologien – ein mißglücktes Benennen, an welchem das Meinen mehr Anteil hat als die Sprache – entraten der Objektivität, welche die

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Geschichte den Hauptprägungen der philosophischen Betrachtungen gegeben hat” (GS, I.1, S. 217). 14. Eine solche Entstellung der Entstellung könnte als der messianische Ruck gedeutet werden, der die Wahrheit der Sprache wiederherstellt. Der Messias wird dem Kafka-Aufsatz zufolge die “ entstellte” Welt “nur um ein Geringes [...] zurechtstellen” müssen (GS, II.2, S. 432). 15. Zwei Fragen drängen sich in diesem Zusammenhang auf. 1. Wie, wenn der sprachwissenschaftliche Begriff der Willkür seine semantische Vorgeschichte keineswegs leugnet, und deshalb keine willkürliche, zufällige Wortwahl darstellt? Vgl. dazu den aufschlußreichen Aufsatz “Saussure, Je signe et la democratie” von Roland Barthes, in: L'Aventure sémiologique (Paris, 1984), S. 221-226, der die “bürgerlichen” Implikate einer konventionalistischen Semiologie auf andere Weise sichtbar macht. 2. Inwieweit bleibt Benjamins eigener Umgang mit der Idee der Willkür der historischen Philologie treu, der er hier das Wort zu reden scheint? Schlägt man in Grimms Wörterbuch nach, um etwas über die Geschichte dieses Wortes “im deutschen Sprachgeiste” zu erfahren, so entdeckt man, daß es ursprünglich “ohne tadelnden Sinn” mit freier Wahl oder Entschließung gleichbedeutend war. Erst von der zweiten Hälfte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts an wird Willkür im Gegensatz zum bewußten, vernünftigen Willen definiert. Man ist versucht, an diesem Bedeutungswechsel ein Stück Geschichte abzulesen. Grimms Belege legen die Vermutung nahe, daß das Wort in dem geschichtlichen Augenblick negativ besetzt wird, wo das Bürgertum im Namen einer allgemeinen, gesetzgebenden Vernunft feudale Privilegien verurteilt. Stimmt diese Vermutung, dann ergibt sich folgende Paradoxie. Der pejorative Gebrauch des Wortes entspringt dem bürgerlichen Befreiungskampf gegen feudales Unrecht, um dann bei Benjamin gegen das Bürgertum gekehrt zu werden. Spricht Benjamin in der “Aufgabe des Übersetzers” vom “heilige[n] Wachstum” der Sprachen “bis ans messianische Ende ihrer Geschichte” (GS, IV.1, S. 14), so scheint das “Aufleben” dieses Wortes bei Benjamin unterirdisch mit der Dialektik des Klassenkampfes zu kommunizieren. 16. GS, I.2, S. 694. 17. GS, I.1, S. 49. 18. Diese Entkräftung der Sprache – so ließe sich Benjamins Überlegung weiterspinnen – wird durch eine Linguistik rationalisiert, welche die synchrone Struktur der Sprache unter Ausklammerung ihrer diachronen Geschichte herausarbeitet. Unter dem formalistischen Blick erstarren die “Formen des in ihr verschlossenen Lebens”. Der Strukturalismus überblickt räumliche Formen, aber übersieht dabei die zeitlichen Kräfte, die sie beleben. 19. GS, I.2, S. 647. Benjamin definiert Aura auch als “einmalige Erscheinung einer Feme, so nah sie sein mag” (GS, I.2, S. 480). Die Erfahrung der Aura beruht auf der “Übertragung einer in der menschlichen Gesellschaft geläufigen Reaktionsform auf das Verhältnis des Unbelebten oder der Natur zum Menschen”. Aber “Worte können auch ihre Aura haben. Karl Kraus hat sie so beschrieben: 'Je näher man ein Wort ansieht, desto ferner sieht es zurück'” (a.a.O., S. 646-647). 20. Die Sprache wird in der “Lehre vom Ähnlichen” als ein “Medium” beschrieben, “in dem sich die Dinge nicht mehr direkt wie früher in dem Geist des Sehers oder Priesters sondern in ihren Essenzen, flüchtigsten und feinsten Substanzen, ja Aromen begegnen und zu einander in Beziehung treten” (GS, II.1, S. 209). 21. GS, I.2, S. 694-695. 22. GS, I.2, S. 704. 23. GS, I.1, S. 89. 24. GS, II.1, S. 204. 25. GS, I.2, S. 693. 26. GS, I.1, S. 216. 27. Die Zeilen, die Benjamin 1924 an Hofmannsthal richtet, könnten Hannah Arendt zufolge “aus einer Schrift von Heidegger aus den vierziger oder fünfziger Jahren” stammen (Benjamin, Brecht (München, 1971), S. 58). Vgl. zu einer ähnlichen Problematik Hermann Mörchen, Adorno und

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Heidegger: Untersuchung zu einer philosophischen Kommunikationsverweigerung (Stuttgart, 1981). Gegenseitige Allergien sprechen am allerletzten gegen solche eventuellen Familienähnlichkeiten. Was eher zu denken gibt, ist Adornos Bemerkung, daß unsere Großeltern auf alten Photos alle gleich aussehen. 28. Vgl. die Eingangsstrophen von zwei Baudelaire-Gedichten: La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers. (Correspondances) J'ai longtemps habile sous de vastes portiques Que les soleils marins teignaient de mille feux, Et que leurs grands piliers droits et majestueux, Rendaient pareils. le soir, aux grottes basaltiques. (La Vie anterieure) Einen weiteren Vergleich bietet die Stelle aus Shakespeares “Sturm” an, die Arendt in ihrem Benjamin-Aufsatz zitiert: Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made, These are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Benjamins Charakterisierung der Aura als “ein 'vergessenes Menschliches'” (B, 2, 849) wäre hier anzuschließen, sowie der Satz von Novalis: “In allen Prädikaten, in denen wir das Fossil sehen, sieht es uns” (zit., GS, I.1, S. 55). 29. GS, I.1, S. 227 und 207. Vgl. zum “Wissenschaftsbetrieb”: B, 2, S. 523. 30. Vgl. zur analogen Rollenvertauschung, die im Dornröschen enthalten ist, das Benjamin seiner gescheiterten Habilitationsschrift nachschickt, Verf., “Hors d'Oeuvre”, in: Walter Benjamin, Origine du drame baroque allemand (Paris, 1985), S. 7-21. 31. GS, II.1, S. 143-144. 32. A.a.O., S. 150. Vgl. zur Problematik des Sprachsündenfalls Verf., “Sur quelques motifs juifs chez Benjamin”, in: Revue d'Esthétique (Paris, Oktober 1981), S. 141-161. 33. Zit., GS, I.2, S. 701. 34. GS, II.1, S. 150. Namen und Ideen sind “nicht sowohl in einer Ursprache, denn in einem Urvernehmen” gegeben, “in welchem die Worte ihren benennenden Adel unverloren an die erkennende Bedeutung besitzen. [...] Im empirischen Vernehmen, in welchem die Worte sich zersetzt haben, eignet nun neben ihrer mehr oder weniger verborgenen symbolischen Seite ihnen eine offenkundige profane Bedeutung. Sache des Philosophen ist es, den symbolischen Charakter des Wortes, in welchem die Idee zur Selbstverständigung kommt, die das Gegenteil aller nach aussen gerichteten Mitteilung ist, durch Darstellung in seinen Primat wieder einzusetzen” (GS, I.1, S. 216-217). 35. GS, II.1, S. 157. 36. A.a.O., S. 149. 37. GS, I.1, S. 217. 38. Vgl. dagegen die Kritik am sprachwissenschaftlichen Formalismus bei M. Bakhtin und/oder V.N. Voloshinov, in: Marxismus und Sprachphilosophie: Grundlegende Probleme der soziologischen Methode in der Sprachwissenschaft (Berlin, 1971). Während Benjamin die bürgerliche Sprachwissenschaft unter anderem als eine Theorie zwischenmenschlicher Mitteilung verurteilt, wird sie von Bakhtin/ Voloshinov angegriffen, weil sie keine solche Theorie erstellt. Sie leide

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nämlich am selben “Monologismus” wie die adamitische Sprachtheorie. In Wahrheit geraten die Worte unterwegs zu den Dingen – so Bakhtin/ Voloshinov – in ein dialogisches Kraftfeld. Eine adamitische Situation zu unterstellen, in der eine einzige Stimme die Dinge bezeichne, sei deshalb eine willkürliche Fiktion. Während Bakhtin/ Voloshinov den – stalinistischen – Monologismus im Namen eines emanzipatorischen Dialogismus angreifen, greift Benjamin im Kampf gegen das “Geschwätz” einer “ewig diskutierenden Klasse” auf die monologische Autorität des höheren Machtworts oft zurück. “Ohne die Anwesenden anzuschauen”, schreibt Gershom Scholem von seinem Auftreten im “Sprechsaal der Jugend”, “sprach er mit großer Intensität und durchaus druckfertig in eine obere Ecke des Saales hinein, die er die ganze Zeit über unverwandt fixierte” (Walter Benjamin – die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt, 1975), S. 10). Auch das Kunstwerk nimmt Benjamin zufolge keine “Rücksicht auf den Aufnehmenden”: “Denn kein Gedicht gilt dem Leser, kein Bild dem Beschauer, keine Symphonie der Hörerschaft” (GS, IV.1, S. 9). 39. GS, II.1, S. 154. 40. A.a.O. 41. A.a.O., S. 153. 42. GS, I.1, S. 407. 43. GS, II.1, S. 153. 44. A.a.O. 45. GS, II.1, S. 154. 46. GS, II.1, S. 155. 47. Vgl. etwa zur Problematik des Zeichens: Max Horkheimer und Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung (Frankfurt, 1978), S. 19 ff. Das Zeichen wird hier nicht mehr dem Namen, sondern dem Bilde gegenübergestellt. Dabei werden zwei sprachphilosophische Motive Benjamins – das Zeichen und das mimetische Vermögen – zusammengedacht. 48. GS, I.1, S. 342. 49. In seinem Aufsatz “Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn” legt Nietzsche den Gedanken nahe, daß die bürgerliche Auffassung der Sprache als ein System verabredeter Zeichen mit der bürgerlichen Theorie des gesellschaftlichen Vertrags konvergiert. Letzterer soll seine Kontrahenten vor der gesetzlosen Willkür schützen, die vorangegangen sei. Das System verabredeter Zeichen wäre in diesem Sinn der Versuch, Ordnung ins Chaos der Sprachverwirrung hineinzubringen. Verkehrschaos und Verkehrsordnung, Willkür und Verabredung wären Wechselbegriffe. 50. Einerseits hebt Benjamin die magische Komponente der profanen, scheinbar entzauberten Zeichensprache hervor. (Etwa in Analogie zur Freudschen Wiederkehr des Verdrängten – einem Modell, das auch der Dialektik der Aufklärung zugrunde liegt). Andererseits stellt er im Aufsatz “ Über das mimetische Vermögen” das Modell einer gelungenen Entmythologisierung auf. Als das “vollkommenste Archiv der unsinnlichen Ähnlichkeit” ist die Sprache “ein Medium, in welches ohne Rest die früheren Kräfte mimetischer Hervorbringung und Auffassung hineingewandert sind, bis sie so weit gelangten, die der Magie zu liquidieren” (GS, II.1, S. 213). Die zwei großen Paradigmen, die einander hier gegenüberstehen, lassen sich schwerlich unter einen Hut bringen. Im einen Falle hätte keine Entmythologisierung stattfinden sollen, denn sie konnte nur eine Verfallsgeschichte sein. Im anderen Fall wird eine positive Alternative vorgestellt. Eine exemplarische Entmythologisierung soll schon innerhalb der Sprache stattgefunden haben. Es handelt sich dabei eben nicht um einen “Verfall”, sondern um eine “Transformierung” (a.a.O., S. 211) des mimetischen Vermögens: gelungene Sublimierung, anstatt mißlungener Verdrängung. – Wie weit Benjamins mimetische Sprachauffassung vom Konventionalismus abführen kann, geht besonders deutlich aus seinen Gesprächen mit Jean Selz hervor: “Eines Tages”, berichtet dieser, “ überraschte er mich mit der verblüffenden Behauptung, alle Wörter, gleich welcher Sprache, glichen in ihrem Schriftbild dem Ding, das sie bezeichneten. [...] Dann sprach er das deutsche

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Wort 'rot' vor sich hin und fand: 'Das Wort 'rot' ist so etwas wie ein Schmetterling, der sich auf jede Nuance der roten Farbe niedersetzt'. Ein wenig später zog das rote Taschentuch seine Aufmerksamkeit an, und er machte die Bemerkung: 'Für mich steht es zwischen 'torche' (Fackel) und 'torchon' (Handtuch)'. So stellte er zwischen zwei Wörtern wieder eine Beziehung her, die sich von ihrem gemeinsamen Ursprung aus (torquere, tordre) im Sinn voneinander entfernt hatten. [...] Einem Won einen Auftrieb zu geben, am Zusammenstoß zweier Wörter ihre innerste Übereinstimmung blitzartig zu zeigen und die Dinge zu zwingen, ihr Geheimnis preiszugeben, waren in seinen Augen wesentliche Aufgaben des Schriftstellers” (Über Walter Benjamin (Frankfurt, 1968), S. 40-41). Diese letzte Formulierung verweist wieder auf die grundsätzliche Parallele zwischen Benjamins Sprach- und Geschichtsphilosophie. Die “geheime Verabredung”, die zwischen “Geschlechtern” besteht, erstreckt sich auch auf Wörter. Sie findet im flüchtigen Augenblick einer unwillkürlichen Erinnerung statt. Ist der “Sinnzusammenhang” eines Textes der “Fundus”, aus dem ein “Bild” “blitzhaft” zum Vorschein kommt (GS, II.1, S. 209), so “blitzt” “ das wahre Bild der Vergangenheit” aus dem linearen Verlauf der Geschichte “auf” (GS, I.2., S. 695). – Die von Selz überlieferten Spekulationen sind Beispiele jenes ”Kratylismus”, dessen lange Geschichte Gerard Genette in einem eindrucksvollen Buch (Mimologiques, Paris 1975) ausführlich dokumentiert hat. Sein Untertitel lautet: Voyage en Cratylie. Für Genette, der am arbitraire du signe nicht zweifelt, ist der ”Kratylismus” im Grunde ein poetischer Kinderglaube, der streng wissenschaftlichen Kriterien nicht standhält. Auf die Grundsatzdebatte, die sich aus einer Gegenüberstellung zwischen Genettes und Benjamins Positionen ergibt, werden wir an anderer Stelle eingehen. 51. GS, II.1, S. 153. 52. GS, I.2, S. 683. 53. Das wäre die “Genese” einer Linguistik, die von genetischen Fragen nichts wissen will. Sie klammert jegliche Diachronie aus, die sie mit “Historismus” gleichsetzt, um die synchrone Struktur der Sprache herausarbeiten zu können. Demgegenüber entwickelt die Erkennmiskritische Vorrede zum Trauerspielbuch eine Ideenlehre, die solche Alternativen nicht anerkennt. In der “kristallinischen Simultaneität” (GS, I.1, S. 218) der Idee soll die “Totalität ihrer Geschichte vollendet” daliegen (a.a.O., S. 226). Benjamins eigene Kritik des Historismus taucht in diesem Zusammenhang schon auf (a.a.O., S. 234). 54. ll ferait volontiers de la terre un debris Et dans un bäillement avalerait le monde; (Baudelaire, Au Lecteur) 55. GS, II.1, S. 153. 56. Eine der vielen profanen Gegenfragen, die die hier inkriminierte Sprachwissenschaft aufwerfen könnte: Wie wäre wohl die paradiesische Namenssprache, deren innigster Anteil am göttlichen Logos der “Eigenname” (GS, II.1, S. 149) sei, linguistisch zu erfassen? Da sie dem “ Urteil” vorausgeht, das als “Wissen um Gut und Böse” (GS, I.1, S. 407) erst im Sündenfall entsteht, scheint sich diese vollkommenste aller Sprachen auf eine gewisse Anzahl (“Deren benannte Vielheit ist zählbar”, GS, II.1, S. 218) von Hauptwörtern zu beschränken, die wohl alle letztlich im Namen des einen wahren Gottes gründen. Wie die Engel, die “vor Gott ihren Hymnus” (GS, II.1, S. 246) singen, spricht Adam mit jedem Worte ein Halleluja aus, das am “ununterbrochene[n] Strom ” (GS, II.1, S. 157) des göttlichen Logos teilnimmt. Diese Ursprache kennt keinen Aufschub. Keine Syntax kommt dazwischen, um ihre Kontinuität zu unterbrechen. Zwischen Name und Ding, die zwei Modi des göttlichen Logos sind, soll ein unmittelbares Verhältnis herrschen. Benjamins monologische Sprachtheologie ist m.a.W. der reine Fall einer metaphysique de Ia présence. Vgl. dazu u.a. Jacques Derridas Abhandlung “La Mythologie Blanche” (in: Marges de Ia Philosophie (Paris, 1972)), insbesondere den Abschnitt “Les Fleurs de la Rhetorique: L'Heliotrope” (S. 295 ff.), wo eine schon bei Aristoteles vorkommende Bevorzugung des Hauptworts auf ihre metaphysischen Prämissen hin untersucht wird. – Die grammatikalische Dimension der Sprache

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fällt ebenfalls im Aufsatz “Über das mimetische Vermögen” aus. Vom Strukturalismus her gesehen wird die Diachronie auf Kosten des Systems privilegiert. Im Sinne Roman Jakobsons käme nur der metaphorische, nicht der metonyme Pol der Sprache vor, was – bei einem Gegner der Amnesie! – einem Typus von Aphasie entspräche, die Jakobsen le trouble de Ia continuite nennt (“ Deux aspects du Iangage et deux types d'aphasie”, in: Essais de Linguistique Generale (Paris, 1963), S. 43-67, insbes. S. 56-67). Vgl. dazu Derrida, a.a.O., S. 255. 57. Zit., GS, II.1, S. 240. 58. B, 2, S. 659. 59. GS, II.2, S. 689. Mit dieser Metapher beschreibt Benjamin ein Jahr zuvor nicht sich, sondern Sowjetrußland. Aber sein Programm besteht eben darin, sein Denken der Revolution anzugleichen. 60. Vgl. dazu Scholem, a.a.O., S. 35-72. 61. GS, I.2, S. 697-698. 62. A.a.O., S. 695. 63. “Das Staunen darüber, daß die Dinge, die wir erleben, im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert 'noch' möglich sind, ist kein philosophisches” (a.a.O., S. 697). 64. Analog hat Kafka “in dem Spiegel, den die Vorwelt ihm in Gestalt der Schuld entgegenhielt, die Zukunft in Gestalt des Gerichts erscheinen sehen” (GS, II.2, S. 427) 65. GS, I.3, S. 1235. 66. GS, I.1, S. 405. 67. Angesichts dieses Unheils greift auch Brecht, der plumpe Materialist, auf religiöse Bilder zurück: “Bedenkt das Dunkel und die große Kälte I In diesem Tale, das vor Jammer schallt” (zit., GS, I.2, S. 696). 68. GS, I.1, S. 343. 69. Diese Mißgestalt wäre vielleicht mit dem Motiv des Buckels in Beziehung zu setzen. Ist die Weltgeschichte eine Fehlgeburt, so ähnelt der Bucklige einem Fötus. Als das “Urbild” einer “ Entstellung”, die dem Vergessen entspringt (GS, II.2, S. 431), verkörpert auch der Buckel “ Unzeitiges, Leidvolles, Verfehltes von Beginn an”. Der Rückstand des Vergessens, den er auf dem Rücken trägt, ist die Schuld der Weltgeschichte. Vgl. dazu Verf., “'Märchen für Dialektiker'. Walter Benjamin und sein bucklicht Männlein”, in: Walter Benjamin und die Kinderliteratur, hrsg. von Klaus Doderer (Weinheim, 1988). 70. GS, II.2, S. 436. 71. GS, II.1, S. 153. 72. GS, I.2, S. 479. 73. Zit., GS, II.2, S. 432. 74. “Aber das Vergessen betrifft immer das Beste”, schreibt Benjamin im Zusammenhang mit Kafka, “denn es betrifft die Möglichkeit der Erlösung” (GS, II.2, S. 434). 75. GS, I.1, S. 313-314. 76. Zit., GS, II.2, S. 428. 77. Ist das erste Anzeichen dieses Sturms das Geräusch der fallenden Blätter, die am “Baum der 'Erkenntnis'” (GS, I.1, S. 407) hängen? “Wie das Rascheln in gefallenen Blättern” klingt jedenfalls bei Kafka das Lachen Odradeks, das Benjamin als die Stimme des Vergessenen deutet. Es wäre das Gegenstück zur Klage der – ebenfalls vergessenen – Natur. “Die Klage ist aber der undifferenzierteste, ohnmächtige Ausdruck der Sprache, sie enthält fast nur den sinnlichen Hauch; und wo auch nur Pflanzen rauschen, klingt immer eine Klage mit” (GS, II.1, S. 153). 78. GS, II.1, S. 154. 79. Der letzte Satz von “Paris, die Hauptstadt des XIX. Jahrhunderts” wäre hier einzublenden: “ Mit der Erschütterung der Warenwirtschaft beginnen wir, die Monumente der Bourgeoisie als

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Ruinen zu erkennen, noch ehe sie zerfallen sind.” Der Turm zu Babel könnte fast als das Urbild solcher Monumente angesehen werden. 80. GS, I.1, S. 313-314. 81. A.a.O., S. 35. 82. Vgl. dazu den “Ausfall aller Eschatologie” (a.a.O., S. 259) im deutschen Trauerspiel und den Ausfall der Sterne bei Baudelaire (GS, V.1, S. 417, 421). 83. GS, II.1, S. 147. 84. GS, I.1, S. 216. 85. GS, I.1, S. 353. Diese Metaphorik klingt schon einige Seiten vorher an: “Soviel Bedeutung, soviel Todverfallenheit, weil am tiefsten der Tod die zackige Demarkationslinie zwischen Physis und Bedeutung eingräbt” (a.a.O., S. 343). Es paßt zur todverfallenen Schrift der (natur-)geschichtlichen Welt, daß die “festlich begangene” Sprache der messianischen Welt die “ Fesseln der Schrift gesprengt hat”. Mit dieser wiederhergestellten Einheit von Leben, Geist und Sprache, die dem Sündenfall vorausging, ist die “Verwirrung” geschlichtet, die “vom Turm zu Babel herrührt”. Die Universalgeschichte, die es erst in der messianischen Welt geben kann, ist also keine geschriebene. Sie ist nichts anderes als die wiedergefundene Universalsprache, “in die jeder Text einer lebenden oder toten zu übersetzen ist” (GS, I.3, S. 1238-1239). Daraus erklärt sich zugleich die messianische Funktion, die der Entzifferung der Schrift zukommt. “Umkehr ist die Richtung des Studiums”, heißt es im Kafka-Aufsatz, “die das Dasein in Schrift verwandelt” (GS, II. 2, S. 437). Es reicht allerdings nicht aus, die Schrift als “Abcbuch” wie ein “Schüler” abzulesen. Damit begnügt sich der Historismus, der die Begebenheiten nachbuchstabiert. Das graphologische “Vexierbild” soll vielmehr aus dem “buchstäblichen Text” herausgelesen werden (GS, II.1, S. 208-209). Eine solche Lektüre übt der rückgewandte Engel, der die Geschichte “gegen den Strich” (GS, I.2, S. 697) liest. – Zwischen solcher “Graphologie” und der “Grammatologie” besteht ein prinzipieller Gegensatz. Mit seiner Gegenüberstellung von Logos/Leben und Schrift/ Tod knüpft Benjamin an die “logozentrische” Metaphysik an, die Derrida in De la Grammatologie (Paris, 1967) auf ihre Unterdrückung der Schrift hin untersucht hat. Daß der behauptete Gegensatz zwischen Wort und Schrift mit der Unterscheidung zwischen “guter” und “schlechter” Schrift zusammenfällt, scheint sich auch bei Benjamin zu bestätigen. So wird z. B. die “prägende” Gewalt des Namens gegen die sich “aus-” oder “aufprägende” Willkür des Zeichens ausge- spielt. Für diese Fragestellung bietet Benjamins Aufsatz “Zur Kritik der Gewalt” ein besonders aufschlußreiches Material. – Wir wollen an anderer Stelle den fälligen Versuch unternehmen, Benjamin mit Derrida zu konfrontieren. Es sei hier nur angemerkt, 1.) daß Benjamin erklärtermaßen mit onto-theologischen Gegensatzpaaren operiert und vor einer metaphysique de la présence keineswegs zurückscheut; 2.) daß er sich hinsichtlich des historischen Materialismus selber zunehmend gefragt hat, inwieweit die “Theologie”, deren Schrift er auslöschen wollte (GS, I.3, S. 1235), noch tragfähig war; 3.) daß sie es bei ihm in einem völlig unwahrscheinlichen Maße tatsächlich noch war – ein enigmatischer Befund, von dem keine Konfrontation zwischen Benjamin und Derrida absehen sollte. 86. Von einer Perspektive aus gesehen, die die Geschichte als Sprachzerfall erscheinen läßt, erweist die überspannte Sprachmoral eines Karl Kraus – wie Fouriers Naturphilosophie – ihren “ überraschend gesunden Sinn”. (Vgl. GS, I.2, S. 699) 87. GS, I.2, S. 704. 88. Vgl. zur Zusammenarbeit von Theologie und Materialismus GS, I.2, S. 693. 89. Zit., a.a.O., S. 695. Alles ist Ranke zufolge “unmittelbar zu Gott”. Aber der messianische Augenblick einer solchen Übersicht ist nach Benjamin noch nicht gekommen. Die Position des Chronisten, “welcher die Ereignisse hererzählt, ohne große und kleine zu unterscheiden”, fällt “ erst der erlösten Menschheit” zu (a.a.O., S. 694). 90. Vgl. zum theologischen totum simul der strukturalistischen panorographie Derridas Aufsatz “ Force et Signification”, in: L'Ecriture et Ia Différence (Paris, 1967), S. 9-49. Derrida führt aus, wie die

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Zeit dabei verräumlicht und die Kraft verflacht wird. Benjamin hätte diese Kritik aufgrund ganz anderer Prämissen unterschreiben können. Es ist die “Zeit der Hölle”, die “im Raum säkularisiert ” wird (GS, I.1, S. 406). Solche “Säkularisierung der Zeit im Raum” entspricht sowohl der “ allegorischen Anschauung”, als auch dem “naturwissenschaftlichen Weltbild” (GS, V.1, S. 590). 91. GS, I.1, S. 343. 92. Folgender Satz von Maxime du Camp steht als Motto zum zweiten Éxpose der Passagenarbeit: “L'histoire est comme Janus, elle a deux visages: qu'elle regarde le passé ou le présent, elle voit les mêmes choses” (zit., GS, V.1, S. 60). Ein solcher Janusblick mag dem “ Seherblick” des “rückwärts gewandten Propheten” fast bis zum Verwechseln ähnlich erscheinen. Er soll jedoch die Grundillusion des Historismus versinnbildlichen, aus der es gerade zu erwachen gilt. Daß die Phantasmagorie des Immergleichen der Wahrheit zum Greifen nahe kommt, die der Engel der Geschichte vor Augen hat, ist aus dem Verhältnis gleichzeitiger Nähe und Ferne zu erklären, die Traum und Erwachen zueinander unterhalten. 93. GS, I.2, S. 702. 94. A.a.O., S. 695. 95. Vgl. dazu Benjamins Selbstbeschreibung im Jahre 1931: “Ein Schiffbrüchiger, der auf einem Wrack treibt, indem er auf die Spitze des Mastbaums klettert, der schon zermürbt ist. Aber er hat die Chance, von dort zu seiner Rettung ein Signal zu geben” (B, 2, S. 532). 96. GS, I.2, S. 703. 97. A.a.O., S. 696. 98. “Die Vielheit der Historien ist der Vielheit der Sprachen ähnlich. Universalgeschichte im heutigen Sinn kann immer nur eine Art von Esperanto sein. Die Idee der Universalgeschichte ist eine messianische” (GS, I.3, S. 1238). 99. GS, I.1, S. 406. 100. A.a.O. 101. A.a.O. 102. GS, I.2, S. 696. 103. “Wie ein Kranker, der im Fieber liegt, alle Worte, die ihm vernehmbar werden, in die jagenden Vorstellungen des Deliriums verarbeitet, so greift der Zeitgeist die Zeugnisse von früheren oder von entlegenen Geisteswelten auf, um sie an sich zu reißen und lieblos in sein selbstbefangenes Phantasieren einzuschließen” (GS, I.1, S. 234). So lautet Benjamins früheste Diagnose des Historismus, der anstelle der “eingestandenen Subjektivität” der Baudelaireschen “tout pour moi devient allégorie” eine “trügerische Objektivität” (GS, I.1, S. 407) aufrecht erhält. Sprachtheologisch betrachtet ist solche egozentrische Gedankenflucht ein weiteres Symptom des Sündenfalls. 104. GS, I.1, S. 343. 105. A.a.O., S. 406. Eine “letzte Phantasmagorie des Objektiven” stellt auch Blanquis Schrift L'Eternité par les Astres dar, die eine naturwissenschaftliche Lehre von der ewigen Wiederkehr enthält. “Ce Iivre parachève la constellation des fantasmagories du siècle par une dernière fantasmagorie à caractère cosmique, qui implicitement comprend la critique la plus acerbe de toutes les autres” (GS, V.1, S. 75). “In der Idee der ewigen Wiederkunft überschlägt der Historismus des 19ten Jahrhunderts sich selbst” (a.a.O., S,.174). “Wie Stürzende im Fallen sich überschlagen”, hieß es im Trauerspielbuch, “so fiele von Sinnbild zu Sinnbild die allegorische Intention dem Schwindel ihrer grundlosen Tiefe anheim, müßte nicht gerade im äußersten unter ihnen so sie umspringen, daß all ihre Finsternis, Hoffart, und Gottferne nichts als Selbsttäuschung erscheint” (GS, I.1, S. 405). Der Historismus, der in Blanquis allegorischer Naturwissenschaft sein äußerstes Sinnbild findet, steht auf der Schwebe des Erwachens. Aber die Finsternis wird sich diesmal nicht als bloße Selbsttäuschung erweisen. 106. A.a.O., S. 407.

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107. GS, I.2, S. 702. 108. GS, I.1, S. 360. 109. GS, V.1, S. 466. “Vorhersagen”, fährt Benjamin fort, “läßt das Ergebnis sich nie; denn es gibt keine natürliche Vermittelung zwischen den beiden. Ebenso aber steht es mit Ware und Preis. [...] In der Tat heißt die Bedeutung der Ware Preis; eine andere hat sie, als Ware, nicht. Darum ist der Allegoriker mit der Ware in seinem Element”. Zahlreiche Notizen des Passagen-Werks stellen eine Beziehung zwischen Allegorie und Warenproduktion her. Die Vermutung, daß die nachparadiesischen Menschen, die sich durch Zeichen verständigen, in der Wüste der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft irren, findet darin eine retrospektive Bestätigung. 110. “Eine Bedeutung, einen Sinn auszustrahlen”, ist das Ding seit dem Sündenfall “ganz unfähig; an Bedeutung kommt ihm das zu, was der Allegoriker ihm verleiht; er legt's in ihn hinein und langt hinunter [...]” (GS, I.1, S. 359). Er “meidet darin keineswegs die Willkür als drastische Bekundung von der Macht des Wissens” (a.a.O., S. 360). 111. Das ist der Gestus des Lumpensammlers. Der Historist ist der schlechte, der historische Materialist der gute Lumpensammler. Vgl. dazu Verf., “Et cetera? Der Historiker als Lumpensammler”, in: Passagen. Walter Benjamins Urgeschichte des XIX. Jahrhunderts, hrsg. von Norbert Bolz und Bernd Witte (München, 1984), S. 70-95, insb. S. 84. 112. GS, V.1, S. 594. 113. Zit. GS, I.2, S. 700. 114. GS, I.3, S. 1238. 115. GS, I.1, S. 342. Als “das Zeichen, das gegen seine Bedeutung scharf abgesetzt ist” (GS, V.1, S. 473), ist die Allegorie die mise en abyme des Abgrunds, der dem Zeichen innewohnt. Aber nicht im Sinne des Strukturalismus, der im Zeichen nicht das Gewordensein, sondern nur das Sosein der Sprache erblickt und mit dem Abgrund qua struktureller Differenz umzugehen weiß. Sondern im Sinne eines geschärften Organs für das Außersichsein der Sprache. Während der Allegoriker die Willkür seiner Zeichen verzweifelt unterstreicht, geht das Bewußtsein ihrer Leere im sonstigen Verkehr der Zeichen unter. Die Bahn des Fortschritts wäre dieser zubetonierte Abgrund. – Daraus ergibt sich folgende Antinomie des bürgerlichen Bewußtseins. Während ihre Ästhetik die Allegorie zugunsten des Symbols entwertet (GS, I.1, S. 336 ff.), weil die schöne Seele von der unschönen Willkür nichts wissen will, besteht ihre Semiologie ebenso ausschließlich auf der Willkür des Zeichens, weil sie die “symbolische Funktion” (GS, II.1, S. 156) der Sprache nicht wahrhaben will. Demnach muß das Symbol innerhalb der Ästhetik, die Willkür innerhalb der Semiologie bekämpft werden. Denn die Allegorie wird im ersten Fall ausgeschlossen, im zweiten aber eingebürgert, und in beiden Fällen verkannt. Da diese Antinomie im alltäglichen Bewußtsein vermutlich die Struktur der Sartreschen mauvaise foi hat, die je nach Bedarf von einem Pol zum andern oszilliert, tritt sie wohl am ehesten in der Form von schillernden Kompromißbildungen in Erscheinung. 116. GS, II.1, S. 153. 117. GS, I.1, S. 409. 118. Vgl. zu dieser Problematik den Aufsatz “Rhetoric of Temporality” von Paul de Man, in: Interpretation: Theory and Practice, hrsg. von Charles Singleton (Baltimore, 1983), S. 191-209); und Verf. “L'esthétique comme préfiguration du matérialisme historique: La Theorie du Roman et Origine du Drame Baroque Allemand”, in: Le tournant esthétique en philosophie, hrsg. von Gérard Raulet (Paris, 1988). Vgl. auch zur Schlegelschen “Willkür des Dichters”, die “kein Gesetz über sich leide ”, als subjektive oder objektive Ironie (GS, I.1, S. 82 ff.) 119. GS, I.1, S. 406. 120. A.a.O., S. 407. 121. Vgl. dazu a.a.O., S. 220 ff. Auch in der Kontroverse zwischen Realismus und Nominalismus, die Benjamin in der Erkenntniskritischen Vorrede zum Trauerspielbuch wieder aufnimmt, werfen beide Seiten einander Willkür vor. Willkür heißt dem Nominalisten die

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Hypostasierung von Allgemeinbegriffen, dem Platoniker Benjamin dagegen der Nominalismus selber, der sämtliche Universalien in den “Strudel” seiner “Skepsis”, sprich: den Abgrund des Sündenfalls hineinzieht. 122. A.a.O., S. 227. 123. A.a.O., S. 227-228. 124. GS, I.2, S. 703. 125. GS, I.3, S. 1232. 126. GS, II.2, S. 437. 127. GS, II.1, S. 153. 128. GS, II.2, S. 432. 129. GS, I.1, S. 406. “Also hat das Wissen von dem Bösen gar keinen Gegenstand. Dies ist nicht in der Welt” (a.a.O., S. 407). 130. A.a.O., S. 407. 131. GS, I.2, S. 701. 132. Der Surrealist, der in diesem monotonen Ticken einen Wecker hört, “der jede Minute sechzig Sekunden lang anschlägt” (GS, II.1, S. 310), hat ein ähnliches Verhältnis zur Zeit wie der Allegoriker zur Sprache. 133. Vgl. GS, I.2, S. 636. 134. GS, I.1, S. 313. 135. GS, II.1, S. 154. 136. GS, I.2, S. 641. 137. A.a.O., S. 696. 138. A.a.O., S. 702. 139. Vgl. GS, I.2, S. 697. 140. Frankfurt 1982 (erste Auflage 1973). Siehe insbes. Marquardts programmatische Einleitung, die Geschichtsphilosophie mit “Gegenneuzeit” (S. 19) gleichsetzt, und folgende für die hier unternommene Benjamin-Deutung zutreffende Bemerkung macht: “Wenn die Neuzeit – nach einer möglichen Definition – die Neutralisierung der biblischen Eschatologie ist, so ist die Geschichtsphilosophie die Rache der neutralisierten Eschatologie an dieser Neutralisierung” (S. 16). 141. In der Zeit vom 19. Dezember 1986, S. 13-14. 142. GS, II.1, S. 155. 143. A.a.O., S. 154. 144. Vgl. etwa GS, I.2, S. 699 und GS, IV.1, S. 146-148. 145. GS, I.2, S. 653. 146. Wie ist z. B. der frühe Sprachaufsatz, der hier zugrundegelegt wurde, mit dem “Theologisch-politischen Fragment” (GS, II.1, S. 203-204) zusammenzudenken? Steht die Welt dort im Zeichen des Sündenfalls, so strahlt hier die Schöpfung so herrlich wie am ersten Tag. Erinnert dieser Zwiespalt an den polaren Gegensatz zwischen Allegorie und Symbol, so stehen diese Pole wohlgemerkt in einem komplementären Verhältnis zueinander: “Während im Symbol mit der Verklärung des Untergangs das transfigurierte Antlitz der Natur im Licht der Erlösung flüchtig sich offenbart, liegt in der Allegorie die facies hippocratica der Geschichte als erstarrte Urlandschaft vor Augen” (GS, I.1., S. 343, Hervorhebung von mir, I.W.). 147. A.a.O., S. 21 ff. 148. Vgl. dazu den differenzierten “Exkurs zu Benjamins Geschichtsphilosophischen Thesen”, in: Jürgen Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Frankfurt, 1986), S. 21-26. 149. B, 2, S. 793. 150. A.a.O., S. 531. 151. B, 1, S. 157. 152. GS, IV.2, S. 1001.

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153. GS, I.1, S. 406. 154. A.a.O., und GS, I.2, S. 701. 155. Vgl. Genette a.a.O. Genette zitiert folgenden Satz Charles Nodiers als das “Motto eines jeden Kratylismus”: “Quand [le poète et le linguiste] ne s'entendent pas entre eux, c'est qu'il y a un des deux qui n'a pas compris son art et qui n'en sait pas la portée” (S. 180). Dazu fragt Genette skeptisch: “Mais lequel?”. Sein Buch entscheidet sich allerdings eindeutig für die konventionalistische Wissenschaft und dementiert damit sein eigenes Motto: “Chaque débat est un jeune et vieux débat; lors même que nous jugeons l'antérieur, il continue de circuler en nous” (Judith Schlanger, Penser la bouche pleine). Denn er faßt den Kratylismus als eine “literarische Gattung” auf, die sich als solche “unter dem entscheidenden Schock [...] der Geburt der Linguistik ” hat einbekennen müssen, dabei “(fast) jeden wissenschaftlichen Anspruch” aufgegeben hat, und somit unwiderlegbar geworden ist (S. 427-428). Genette verhält sich dem Kratylismus gegenüber mit der Nachsicht eines großzügigen Siegers, der den verführerischen Charme seines unvernünftigen Gegners keineswegs verkennt. 156. B, 2, S. 762. 157. Vgl. GS, II.2, S. 676-677. Daß der Adressat der kaiserlichen Botschaft abschließend meint, sie sei ein Traum (“Du aber sitzst an Deinem Fenster und erträumst sie Dir, wenn der Abend kommt”), wird von Benjamin kaum berücksichtigt. Ohne die Geschichte deuten zu wollen, spricht er von Kafka als dem “Angeredeten”. Die Frage ist jedoch, ob er sich die Anrede lediglich eingeredet hat. In der Parabel “Vor dem Gesetz” wird eine andere Variation dieser Problematik durchgespielt. Diesmal hat der “Mann vom Lande” eine Bestimmung, die angeblich ihm allein vorbehalten ist. Aber was hat er davon? 158. GS, V.1, S. 591. 159. “Über den abgestumpften Schluß materialistischer Untersuchungen (im Gegensatz zum Abschluß des Barockbuches)” (GS, I.2, S. 690). 160. Vgl. zum Begriff der Nüchternheit bei Benjamin Verf., “The Politics of Prose and the Art of Awakening: Walter Benjamin's Version of a German Romantic Motif”, in: Glyph 7 (Baltimore, 1980), S. 131-148. 161. Gerade weil der Konventionalismus kein natürliches Verhältnis zwischen Zeichen und Bezeichnetem gelten läßt, ist er imstande, falsche Naturalisierungen gesellschaftlicher Verhältnisse zu entlarven. Erscheint er aus sprachtheologischer Sicht als ein Fetischismus des Zeichens, so ist er in ideologiekritischer Hinsicht geeignet, Fetischismen abzubauen.

ABSTRACTS

In his article “Die Willkür der Zeichen” (originally published in: Perspektiven kritischer Theorie. Festschrift für Hermann Schweppenhäuser, ed. Christoph Türcke [Lüneburg, 1988], pp. 124-73) Iriving Wohlfarth retraces the role of the conventionalist theory of language within Benjamin's philosophy of language. In this perspective, the central premise of all modern linguistics, namely what Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de Linguistique Generale terms the “arbitrary nature of the sign”, appears as a symptom of what Benjamin calls “the Fall of the spirit of language”, its reduction to a mere means of signification and communication.

INDEX

Keywords: philosophy of language, philosophy of history, Benjamin Walter, de Saussure Ferdinand

Anthropology & Materialism, Special Issue | I | 2017