The Arcades Project - Operi
The Arcades Project - Operi The Arcades Project - Operi
image. Physiognomic thought was assigned the task of "recognizing the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins even before they have crumbled" (Expose of 1935, section VI, end) . The prolegomena to a materialist physiognomies that can be gleaned from the Pas Jagen.-Werk counts among Benjamin's most prodigious conceptions. It is the programmatic harbinger of that aesthetic theory which Marxism has not been able to develop to this day. Whether Benjamin's realization of rus program was capable of fi.llfilling its promise, whether his physiognomies was equal to its materialist task, could have been proven only by the actual composition of the PasJagen-JiVerk itself. Modified concepts of history and of the writing of history are the link between both ArcadeJ sketches. Their polemical barbs are aimed at the nineteenth-century notion of progress. "Vith the exception of Schopenhauer (by no coincidence, his objective world bears the name "phantasmagoria"), idealist philosophers had turned progress into the "signature of historical process as a whole" (N13)) and by doing so had deprived it of its critical and enlighteillilent functions. Even Marx's tnlst in the unfolding of the productive forces hypostatized the concept of progress, and it must have appeal"ed untenable to Benjamin in light of the experience of the twentieth century. Similarly, the political praxis of the worker's movement had forgotten that progress in terms of proficiency and information does not necessarily mean progress for humanity itself--and that progress in the domination of nature corresponds to societal regress.21 In the first ArcadeJ sketch Benjamin already demanded "a philosophy of history that at all points has overcome the ideology of progress" (0°,5), one such as he later worked out in the historical-philosophical theses. TIlere the image of history reminds the reader more of Ludwig Klages's lethal juggling with archetypal images (UrbildCl) and phantoms than of the dialectic of the forces and the relations of production, It is that Angel of History who appears in one of the theses as an allegory of the historical materialist (in Benjamin's sense)22 and who sees all history as a catastrophe "which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of rus feet" (Illuminations, p. 259). The Angel abolishes all categories which until d,en have been used for representing history: this materialist sees the "everything 'gradual' about becoming" as refuted, and "development" is shown to be only "seeming') (1'°,6; Kl,3). But more than anything else, he denounces the "establishment of a continuity" (N9a,5) in history) because the only evidence of th:"1t continuity is that of horror, and the Angel has to do with salvation and redemption. TIle Passagen-JiVerk was supposed to bring nothing less than a "Copernican revolution" of historical perception (Fo ) 7; K1)1-3), Past history would be grounded in the present, analogous to Kanes epistemological grounding of objectivity in the depths of the subject. The frrst revolution occuncd in the relationship in which subject and object, present and past meet in historical perception: Fonnerly it was thought that a fixed point had been found in "what has been;) and one saw the present engaged in tentatively concentrating the forces of knowledge on this ground, Now this relation is to be overturned, and what has been is to become the dialectical reversal-the irnlption of awakened consciousness. Politics attains primacy over history. The facts become something that just now first happened to us, first struck us; to establish them is the affair of memory, (K1,2) The historical line of vision no longer falls from the present back onto history; instead it travels from history forward. Bejamin tried to "recognize today's life, today's forms in the life and in the appaTently secondary, lost forms" of the nineteenth century (N1,U). Our contemporary interest in a historical object seems "itself preformed in that object,
and, above ail," it feels "this object concretized in itself and upraised from its fonner being into the higher concretion of now-being lYe"tseins] (waking being!)" (K2,3). The object of history goes on changing; it becomes "historical" (in this word's emphatic sense) only when it becomes topical in a later period. Continuous relationships in tllIle, with which history deals, are superseded in Benjamin's thought by constellations in which the past coincides with the present to such an extent that the past achieves a "Now" of its "recog nizability:' Benjamin developed this "Now of Recognizability;' which he sometilnes re ferred to as his theory of knowledge (5:1148), from a double frontal position against both idealism and positivistic historicism. VVhile the latter tried to move the historical narrator back into the past, so that he could comprehend "emphatically" (solely from within) the whole of the Then, which filled "homogeneous, empty time" as a mere "mass of data" (Illuminations) p. 264), idealist constructions of history, on the other hand, usurped the prospect of the future and posited in history the existence of the natural plan of a process, which runs on autonomously and can, in principle, never be completed. Both relegate "everything about history that, from the very beginning, has been untimely, sorrowful, unsuccessful" (TrauerJPiel) p .166) to forgetting. TIle object of that materialist historical natrative Benjamin wanted to try out in the Passagen-Werk would be precisely what history started but did not carry out. That the lineaments of the past are first detectable after a certain period is not due to the historian's whim; it bespeaks an objective historical constellation: History is the object of a construct whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled by now-time fJetztzeit]. Thus, to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with now-time, which he blasted out of the continuum of history. The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome incanlate. It quoted ancient Rome. (Illumi Ilations, p. 263) Belarnin wished to continue along tlus line in the Passagen-Werk. The present would provide the text of the book; history, the quotations in that text. "To VVTite history . . . means to cite history" (Nll,3). Benjamin's Copernican revolution of historical intuition also (and above all) meant that the traditional concept of truth was to be turned on its head: Resolute refusal of the concept of "timeless tnlth" is in order. Nevertheless) truth is not-as Marxism would have it-a merely contingent function of knowing, but is bound to a nucleus of time lying hidden witlun the knower and the known alike. This is so tnle tllat the etenlal, in any case, is far more the ruffle on a dress than some idea. (N3,2) The temporal core of history carmot be grasped as really happening, stretching fortll in the real dimension of time ; ratller it is where evolution halts for a moment, where the d}Jl.amis of what is happening coagulates into stasis) where time itself is condensed into a differential, and where a Now identifies itself as the "Now of a particular recognizabiliLy." In such a Now, "tnlth is charged to the bursting point ·with tune" (N3,1). 11le Now would have thus shown itself to be the "inmost image" (00,81) of tlle 8Tcades tllemselves, of fashion, of tlle bourgeois interior-appeaxing as the linage of all that had been, and whose cognition is tlle pith of the Pas.ragen-Werk. Benjamin invented tlle term "dialectical im ages)' for such configurations of the Now and the Then; he defined their content as a "dialectic at a standstilL" Dialectical image and dialectic at the standstill are, without a doubt, the central categories of the Passagen-Werk. Their meaning, however, remained iridescent; it never achieved any terminological consistency.2: We can distinguish at least
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and, above ail," it feels "this object concretized in itself and upraised from its fonner being<br />
into the higher concretion of now-being lYe"tseins] (waking being!)" (K2,3). <strong>The</strong> object of<br />
history goes on changing; it becomes "historical" (in this word's emphatic sense) only<br />
when it becomes topical in a later period. Continuous relationships in tllIle, with which<br />
history deals, are superseded in Benjamin's thought by constellations in which the past<br />
coincides with the present to such an extent that the past achieves a "Now" of its "recog<br />
nizability:' Benjamin developed this "Now of Recognizability;' which he sometilnes re<br />
ferred to as his theory of knowledge (5:1148), from a double frontal position against both<br />
idealism and positivistic historicism. VVhile the latter tried to move the historical narrator<br />
back into the past, so that he could comprehend "emphatically" (solely from within) the<br />
whole of the <strong>The</strong>n, which filled "homogeneous, empty time" as a mere "mass of data"<br />
(Illuminations) p. 264), idealist constructions of history, on the other hand, usurped the<br />
prospect of the future and posited in history the existence of the natural plan of a process,<br />
which runs on autonomously and can, in principle, never be completed. Both relegate<br />
"everything about history that, from the very beginning, has been untimely, sorrowful,<br />
unsuccessful" (TrauerJPiel) p .166) to forgetting. TIle object of that materialist historical<br />
natrative Benjamin wanted to try out in the Passagen-Werk would be precisely what<br />
history started but did not carry out. That the lineaments of the past are first detectable<br />
after a certain period is not due to the historian's whim; it bespeaks an objective historical<br />
constellation:<br />
History is the object of a construct whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but<br />
time filled by now-time fJetztzeit]. Thus, to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past<br />
charged with now-time, which he blasted out of the continuum of history. <strong>The</strong><br />
French Revolution viewed itself as Rome incanlate. It quoted ancient Rome. (Illumi<br />
Ilations, p. 263)<br />
Belarnin wished to continue along tlus line in the Passagen-Werk. <strong>The</strong> present would<br />
provide the text of the book; history, the quotations in that text. "To VVTite history . . .<br />
means to cite history" (Nll,3).<br />
Benjamin's Copernican revolution of historical intuition also (and above all) meant that<br />
the traditional concept of truth was to be turned on its head:<br />
Resolute refusal of the concept of "timeless tnlth" is in order. Nevertheless) truth is<br />
not-as Marxism would have it-a merely contingent function of knowing, but is<br />
bound to a nucleus of time lying hidden witlun the knower and the known alike.<br />
This is so tnle tllat the etenlal, in any case, is far more the ruffle on a dress than<br />
some idea. (N3,2)<br />
<strong>The</strong> temporal core of history carmot be grasped as really happening, stretching fortll in<br />
the real dimension of time ; ratller it is where evolution halts for a moment, where the<br />
d}Jl.amis of what is happening coagulates into stasis) where time itself is condensed into a<br />
differential, and where a Now identifies itself as the "Now of a particular recognizabiliLy."<br />
In such a Now, "tnlth is charged to the bursting point ·with tune" (N3,1). 11le Now would<br />
have thus shown itself to be the "inmost image" (00,81) of tlle 8Tcades tllemselves, of<br />
fashion, of tlle bourgeois interior-appeaxing as the linage of all that had been, and whose<br />
cognition is tlle pith of the Pas.ragen-Werk. Benjamin invented tlle term "dialectical im<br />
ages)' for such configurations of the Now and the <strong>The</strong>n; he defined their content as a<br />
"dialectic at a standstilL" Dialectical image and dialectic at the standstill are, without a<br />
doubt, the central categories of the Passagen-Werk. <strong>The</strong>ir meaning, however, remained<br />
iridescent; it never achieved any terminological consistency.2: We can distinguish at least