Experience and the Crisis of Tradition: History, Memory and Practice in the Philosophy of Walter Benjamin Mijael JIMÉNEZ MONROY September 2017 Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Kingston University for the award of Doctor of Philosophy 1 2 Abstract This thesis examines the notion of experience in the philosophy of Walter Benjamin. It focuses on the relationship between its constructive and disruptive features in four facets of Benjamin’s work, starting with the early writings dedicated to history and tradition and then moving towards different analyses of the reception of the work of art in modernity. Chapter I examines Benjamin’s early characterisation of experience on the basis of the transmissibility of tradition and suggests that the constructive character of experience manifests in the historical development of knowledge and truth in language. Chapter II is dedicated to The Origin of the German Mourning-Play and the shift towards an examination of the development of language from the perspective of the moments of rupture, forgetting and those deviations inherent in the transmissibility of tradition. I argue that experience appears immanently in the momentary suspension or interruption of the transmissibility of tradition: origin and allegory serve to characterise the double movement of concentrating the totality of tradition and suspending its objectivity. The ‘shattering of tradition’ that Benjamin regards to be the hallmark of modernity in his later writings is located within this dynamics. This shattering undermines the conditions for understanding the conflict out of which the present emerges, thereby producing a historiographic crisis which unsettles experience. Chapter III examines modern epic narration and the resources it develops to contests the forgetting which informs late capitalism. I specifically discuss the method of montage and the fragmentary memory associated with it to suggest that Benjamin looks at history from the standpoint of memory rather than from the perspective of tradition. Chapter IV discuses the radicalisation of the forgetting informing modernity and the possibility of developing, though momentarily, an equilibrium or interplay between technology and sensibility by means of long-term practice formed according to technical reproducibility and the principle of montage. It is finally argued that despite Benjamin’s constant emphasis on its destructive character, experience necessarily entails a cumulative or constructive dimension which Benjamin reformulates throughout his authorship in terms of tradition, memory and practice. 3 4 Acknowledgments This thesis would not have been possible without the inspiration and support from the academic staff of the CRMEP, my friends and family. I want to recognise the encouragement I received from Howard Caygill. He was genuinely interested in my work and always had generous and critical comments which made this project possible. Peter Osborne provided critical suggestions and always invited me to try new answers to the questions guiding this research. The annual seminar at the CRMEP provided a stimulating setting for presenting and discussing my work. The questions and comments I received from the staff and students attending the seminar gave me the opportunity to learn from the multiple perspectives at work. I want to thank those who supported me at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: Ángeles Eraña, Faviola Rivera, Salma Saab, Carlos Oliva and the staff of the Philosophy School and the Institute for Philosophical Research. What I owe to the UNAM and the system of public education in Mexico exceeds any mention. This project was sponsored by the CONACYT and SEP programmes for graduate studies. My friends in London have been a family away from home and more than resolute allies in multiple causes. I am thankful specially to Rubí, Luis and Emilio, Pablo, Géraldine, Héctor, Claudio and Myriam. Siân Hunter and Jen Wilton also helped me make this text more accessible. Paz joined this constellation in its final stages and certainly changed its essence with illuminating questions and answers. María De Vecchi always believed in me more than I did. To say that her work and commitment with different struggles are inspiring would be an understatement. I lack the words to express my deep admiration for her determination to bring some hope and justice for people who have been forcibly disappeared in Mexico and for their relatives. There is no way to make a fair mention to the value of those lives which violence has so radically affected in many different ways. Finally, I wish also to thank my family and friends in Mexico. I am especially grateful to my parents, Rosario Monroy and Pedro Jiménez. Nowhere else could I find a better example of love, strength and dignity. This thesis is dedicated to them. 5 6 Contents Preface. The Destructive and Cumulative Character of Experience 9 First Part. Experience and the Transmissibility of Tradition I. To Make Room for History 29 1. The Struggle to Conceive Doctrine 33 1.1 The Structure of Tradition: Lehre and Doktrin 38 2. The Higher Concept of Experience 43 2.1 The Dynamics of Doctrine: Unity and Openness 49 3. Language as History 55 3.1 Profane Language and Indeterminacy 56 II. Benjamin’s Ursprungsphilosophie: From the Historical Configuration of the Doctrine of Ideas to the Weight of Tradition 67 1. The Baroque and The Task of the Critic 70 1.1 Philosophical History 76 2. ‘Method is Digression’ 81 2.1 Methodological Extremism 86 2.2 Ideas and Exceptionality 90 2.3 Ideas and Historical Immersion: The Rhythm of Origin 95 3. Immanent Critique and Allegorical Seeing 100 3.1 Allegorical Synthesis 102 3.2 The Weight of Tradition 107 Second Part. Experience in Light of the Crisis of Tradition III. Experience and Memory: Epic Narration and Montage 115 1. The Crisis of Criticism 123 1.1 From Immanent to Materialist Critique 126 2. Epic Narration 130 2.1 Narration, Montage and Reminiscence 136 3. Baudelaire and the Shock-Event 143 3.1 Innervation and Recollection 145 IV. Montage as Übungsinstrument of Sensibility 153 1. The Law of Montage 162 2. The Interplay Between Sensibility and Technology 166 2.1 Auratic Perception and Experience 171 2.2 The Politicisation of Art as Infinite Task 175 3. Non-Auratic Configurations 178 3.1 Photography: Construction and Recognition 183 3.2 Epic Theatre: Interruption and Repetition 190 Conclusion. Tradition and Reproducibility 197 References 213 7 8 Preface The Destructive and Cumulative Character of Experience I This thesis is dedicated to examine four different yet interrelated presentations of the notion of experience in the work of Walter Benjamin. In these facets of the philosophy of Benjamin both experience and the concrete forms through which it is secured change according to the specificities of the present in which it is attained. Benjamin frames his investigation into the notion of experience within the context of the effects that modernity at large has on our ability to recognise the marks of the totality of history in our concrete relation to the present. However, the characterisation of modernity and the way in which the relation to the present is enacted is recast in different formulations. This thesis aims then to explore the historicity of experience as a problem that is in itself open to change in Benjamin’s works. In distinguishing between the German terms Erfahrung and Erlebnis to refer to two different forms of experience, Benjamin contests vitalists and phenomenological formulations of Erlebnis or the lived moment as an immanently meaningful form of perception or intuition opposed to the conceptual or scientific articulation of Erfahrung. Benjamin rather conceives of Erlebnis as the ephemeral moment which bears no meaning by its own unless it is associated or related to a ‘cumulative’ articulation of knowledge.1 He thus refers to the latter as Erfahrung, which includes yet also exceeds scientific knowledge. In referring to Erfahrung as spiritual, absolute or higher experience in different writings and unfinished fragments, Benjamin also distinguishes 1 Martin Jay, ‘Experience Without a Subject: Walter Benjamin and the Novel’, in Actuality of Walter Benjamin, ed. by Marcus, Laura and Nead, Lynda (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1999), pp. 194–211 (p. 195). 9 experience from the concrete realms of knowledge pertaining to specific sciences and from the general concept of scientific knowledge encompassing those specific sciences.2 Erfahrung has its roots in the verb fahren or travelling and in the prefix Er- which might mark the beginning of a process, its repetition or its conclusion. The prefix Er- thus associates the meaning of a long-term process or its repetition and conclusion with the developmental character inherent in fahren. Erfahrung acquires, therefore, the inflection of a temporally extended form of sensibility that relates the lived, ephemeral moment of the present to a ‘cumulative’ configuration of knowledge. The questions that Benjamin addresses with regard to the notion of experience (Erfahrung) concern the ways in which its ‘cumulative’ character is constructed and the multiple ways in which it manifests itself in concrete, lived moments (Erlebnis). Regarding the lived moment as lacking in proper meaning, Benjamin understands the continuous repetition of lived moments as bearing no further significance, acquiring in most contexts a negative connotation diversely associated to alienation,3 the interrelated process of innervation and enervation