Benjamin's Materialistic Theory of Experience. Richard Wolin

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Benjamin's Materialist Theory of ExperienceAuthor(s): Richard WolinSource: Theory and Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan., 1982), pp. 17-42Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657284

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17

BENJAMIN'S MATERIALIST THEORY OF EXPERIENCE

RICHARD WOLIN

Introduction

In his early aesthetics Walter Benjaminhad pursued the problem of thedissolutionof man'scapacity for experience, i.e., the decline of his capacityto live a meaningful and fulfilled existence, from a decidedly theologicalperspective.Life in the profanecontinuum of history was deemedincapableof fulfillment a priori insofar as it was the diametricalantithesis of theMessianicage, the sphere of redeemedlife. So extreme was the oppositionbetween these two dimensions that neither could have any directandimme-diatebearingon the other. They existed ina stateof pureantithesis.Accordingto this schema,historicallife, as the antipode to the eternallife representedby the Messianicrealm, was subject to an irremediable ate of decay anddecline. It was comprehendedas "naturalhistory" whose inevitablelot, likethat of all organiclife, was ultimately death and putrefaction,an eventualreturnto the condition of inorganic ife. As such, the telos of all suchmere,unsanctified ife was death. Thisoutlook servedas the historico-philosophicalvantagepoint fromwhichBenjaminmasterfullyanalyzedthe GermanTrauer-spiele of the baroque age.1 Themanifestabsenceof all immanentmeaning olife compelledthe Baroquedramatists o conjurevoluntaristically visionofredemption through the roundabout technique of allegory.2 If one couldwith any justification speak of the problem of the "disintegrationof com-munity"in the Trauerspiel ook,3 it wouldbe the dissolutionof anintegrated,organictotality of meaning.Sucha "community"canbe said to haveexistedpreviously only in Paradise,before man was condemned to perdition byoriginal sin. For the early Benjamin,as soon as one begins surveyingtheunreconcileddomain of historical ife, one finds the continuum of experiencein a state of perpetualdisintegration.There are exceptions, however; n therealm of aesthetic experience, where the artist momentarilybreaksthroughthe mythical realm of historicallife, and in the realmof eternalrepetitionor

Berkeley, California.


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18the always-the-samedas Immergleiche), o producea fragile mageof trans-cendence.4 It becomes the task of the critic to redeem(retten) theseimagesfrom the fate of historicaloblivion that incessantlythreatens to overwhelmthem, to breathe new life into them and therebymake them relevant or thepresent.In the aesthetics of the later Benjaminthe transcendentpoint of reference- the categoryof redemption- temporarilyrecedesfrom view, but it neverdisappears ntirely from the horizon of his thought. It recedes,as it were, forstrategic reasons. Once Benjamintook up the profane cause of the classstruggle (to be sure, in his own highly idiosyncraticand stylized fashion),his theologicalimpulsesran the risk of being seriouslymisconstrued.Thusinthe thirtieshe resumedhis investigationof the problemof the disintegrationof the capacityfor qualitativeexperiencefroma quasi-sociological,materialistperspective.He made a concerted effort - not always prudent nor alwayssuccessful- to abandon his earlier"bourgeois"reverence or culturalgoodsand to assist in the annihilationof traditional,prejudicial estheticcategoriessuch as genius, creativity, and beauty,5 in favor of an approachthat takesmaterialconditions of productionand reception of works of art as its pointof departure:

The conceptof culture,as the substantive onceptof creationswhich are consideredindependent, f not from the productionprocess n whichthey originate, hen fromthe productionprocessin whichthey continue to survive, arriesa fetishistic trait.Cultureappears n a reified form. Its history would be nothingbut the sedimentformedby the curiositieswhichhave been stirredup in the consciousness f humanbeingswithoutany genuine, .e., politicalexperience.6Nevertheless,Benjamin's elf-understanding s a "historicalmaterialist"borea distinct resemblance to the metaphysically inclined "rettende Kritik"method of his early period. In both cases the theoretical adversarywas astatic, empathetic,historicistrelation to the work of art that triesto presentart "the way it really was," as a dead, lifeless object, sedimented in thehistorical past, devoid of all contemporaryrelevance or "nowtime". Themethods of "culturalhistory" turn tradition into a deadweightfrom whichhumanity must be emancipated:"Culturalhistory, to be sure,enlarges heweightof the treasure hat accumulateson the backof humanity.Yet culturalhistory does not providethe strengthto shakeoff this burden n order to beable to take control of it."7 For Benjamin,the primaryconsideration napproachingpastworksof art must be the demandof Aktualitdtor relevance.The question of how a work of art was experiencedby its contemporariessat best scholastic. Benjamin'smission therefore was simultaneously the"destructive" task of negating the false semblance of autonomy and homo-


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19geneity the realm of spirit assumesfrom the perspectiveof culturalhistory- an approachwhich reifies works of artas beautifulbut irrelevant"culturalcommodities"- and the complementary"constructive"goal of resuscitatingthose elementsof traditionthat can once more be madeserviceableorhuman-ity in its contemporaryhour of need:

Historicism presents the eternal image of the past; historical materialism presents agiven experience with the past, an experience which stands unique. The replacementof the epic element by the constructive element proves to be the condition for thisexperience. The immense forces which remain captive in historicism's 'once upon atime' are freed in this experience. To bring about the consolidation of experiencewith history, which is original [ursprunglich for every present, is the task of historicalmaterialism. It is directed towards a consciousness of the present which explodes thecontinuum of history.The historical materialist explodes the epoch out of its reified 'historical continuity',and thereby lifts life out of this epoch, and the work out of this life work.8

The science of hermeneutics originated with Schleiermacher n the earlynineteenth century. It was born out of an awareness hat as "moderns,"ourrelation to tradition (in Schleiermacher's ase, our relationto classicalanti-quity) has ceasedto be self-evident, hat our way of life hasbecome separatedfrom that of our ancestors by a chasmof misunderstanding,hat to under-stand the past throughthe eyes of the presentis to commit a grave njusticeto it (i.e., to "the way it reallywas"),and that, consequently,therearises heneed for a special type of knowledge chargedwith the responsibility ofrevealing hese misunderstandingsndtherebycreatingmoresolidgroundfora bridgebetween past and present.9 Benjamin's nvestigationof the originsand consequences of the demise of the traditionalor communal basis ofexperience proceeds from a similarimpetus (though, to be sure, minus thehistoricist implicationsof Schleiermacher's pproach).He is disturbed thatthe abyss separating he modernworld frompasthistorical ife hasexpandedto where ah entire array of tradition-boundmeaningshave become unre-cognizable,if not patently unserviceable, o us in the present.Not only doeshe fear the loss of past experience, but also the seriousimpairmentof thepresent-day capacity to assimilate experience altogether. The implacableadvanceof the forces of productionin the modern age, rapidlyrendering llremnantsof tradition obsolete, eventuallycomes to penetrateall aspects ofexistence, so that ultimately even the human faculty of perceptionitself isdiminished.Consequently,not only has the qualityof experiencedeterioratedin modern life to an unprecedenteddegree, but the subjectivecapacity todetect this development, and thus possibly redress it, has likewise beenseriouslyeroded.The problemof the rationalizationof sociallife andthe concomitantdiminu-


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20tion of the capacity for qualitativeexperiencethusbecomesthe problemforthe later Benjamin. Yet, as we shall see he always harbored ambivalentfeelings aboutthe decayof traditional ife forms,feelingsthat at times appearto bemutuallycontradictory.ForBenjamin ecognized he demiseof traditionas an irreparable oss: the meaning potentials objectified in the culturalproductsof traditionalsocieties containa promiseof transcendence;hey arethe objects in which past ages have deposited their collective dreamsandlongings,their aspirations or a betterlife, whichadversehistoricalconditionshave heretoforefrustrated;and it falls due to future generations o preservesuch hopes for a better life, if not to redeem them outright. As Benjaminobserves: "Thepast carrieswith it a temporal ndex by whichit is referred oredemption. There is a secret agreementbetween past generationsand thepresent one. Ourcomingwas expected on earth. Like every generationthatprecededus, we have been endowed with a weakMessianicpower,a powertowhich the past has a claim. This claim cannot be settled cheaply. Historicalmaterialistsare aware of that."10 This illustratesthe degree to which thetheological motifs of Benjamin'searlier "redemptivecriticism"have beenpreserved n his later writing.The foremostdangerof "modernity" s that itsradicaldisrespectfor tradition runs the graverisk of totally eradicatingourlinks with tradition, thus squandering hat invaluable"temporalindex ofredemption" the past represents. An authentic sublation of past wouldnecessarilypreservethe promiseof redemptionthat has been sedimented nartefactsand ruinsof traditional ife.Yet in his more self-consciouslyMarxistwritingsBenjamindisplaysa naiveand - in view of his otherworks- highlyuncharacteristicrustin the courseof historicalprogress.This s evident aboveall in his celebrated1936 essayon"TheWork of Artin the Age of MechanicalReproduction."Here,Benjamin'spositionon tradition eemsto reverse tself: thepromessedu bonheurembodiedin the auraof traditionalworks of art is viewedas hopelesslyutopian(if notflatly reactionary).It has insteadbeen transferredo rationalizedmedia suchas photographyand film. The forces of rationalizationare conceived of asredeeming n and of themselvesthe traditionalaspiration or a better world.They aredeemed nherentlyrevolutionary.Yet, this is a positionwhich despiteand because of its boldness Benjaminfelt himself compelled to relinquish,although t has come to represent or his Marxist nterpretors he "quintessen-tial Benjamin".The merits and drawbacksof both positions go far towarddeterminingthe parametersof a materialisttheory of culture, for in manyways the thoughts raisedby Benjaminover four decadesagoremainvaluableformulations of the problems involved in trying to assess the meaning oftradition n the face of an increasingly ationalized ocialenvironment.


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21The Disintegration f ExperienceIn his 1936 essay "The Storyteller: Reflections on the Work of NikolaiLeskov,"Benjaminattempted to show, by contrasting he "epic"elementofthe story to the fortuitous characterof events in the novel, just how farexperience itself, and our capacity to convey experiences,has diminished nmodernlife. The inability of men and women to exchangeexperiences n thecontemporaryworld is merely the obverseside of the fact that the structureof experience has undergone significant and far-reaching ransformations.Today, Benjaminobserves, t has become obvious that "experiencehas fallenin value. And it looks as if it is continuingto fall into bottomlessness.Everyglance at a newspaperdemonstrates hat it has reacheda new low, that ourpicture, not only of the external world but of the moral worldas well, over-night has undergone changes which were never thought possible.""1Inkeeping with the Marxistprinciple of understanding ulturalphenomenaasthey originatewithin determinatematerialconditionsof life, Benjaminoffersthe following persuasivedepiction of the multifariousand sudden transfor-mations in the traditionalstructureof experiencearound the time of WorldWar I, transformationsso swift and extensive that it would seem almosthumanly mpossiblefor one to adaptto them:

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experienceby tactical warfare,economic experience by inflation, bodily experience by mechanicalwarfare, moral experience by those in power. A generation that had gone to schoolon a horse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in whichnothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field offorce of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body.l2The art of storytelling is a genre falling midway between the antiqueepicand the modern novel. Yet its clearaffinities with the "epic side of truth"betraythat it stands ncomparably loserto the formergenrethanto the latter.It is an art form in which meaning s unquestionably mmanent o andtrans-parentin life. It flourished n the context of what the young Lukacsreferredto as "integrated civilizations".13Its traditional representativeswere the"resident tiller of the soil" and the "trading seaman". In the latter case, thatthe tale had come from afar stamped it with an aura of authority; in theformer, it acquiredthis aurabecause its teller was a man of experienceandwisdom, whose ancestorshad dwelled in the sameregionfor countlessgenera-tions, a man steeped in the lore of all-importanttradition. A significantexpansion of the art of storytelling was brought about by the travelingjourneymenof the MiddleAges, who representeda sort of fusion of the twobasic historicaltypes of the storyteller.As Benjaminnotes, "If peasantsandseamenwere past mastersof storytelling,the artisanclass was its university.


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22In it was combinedthe lore of farawayplaces, such as a much-traveledmanbringshome, with lore of the past, as it best reveals tself to the natives of aplace."14Thatmeaning s immanent o life in the world of the storyis apparentbecausethe story always contains somethinguseful, be it in the form of practicaladvice,a kernalof wisdom, or a conventional"moral".Thatsuchknowledgeacquiresan immediate self-evidencebespeaksof a situation in which thereexists a continuity andflow to the continuumof experience,where time hasthe characterof a meaningfully ordered, organic sequence of events, andwhere even the phenomenonof death fits "meaningfully"withinthissequence.Under such conditions advice and counsel are readily communicableandseemingly step forth from life of their own accord. Benjamincontraststhissituation to the wholly different structure of experience in modern life,where events take on a desultoryandisolated,overwhelmingly rivatecharac-ter; where "experiences"are at best meaningful or the individualbut haveforfeited the attributeof universality romwhichthe elementof wisdom,the"moral"of the story, traditionallyderived. "In everycase the storyteller s aman who has counselfor hisreaders.Butif today 'havingcounsel'is beginningto have an old-fashioned ring, this is because the communicability ofexperience is decreasing. In consequence we have no counsel either forourselvesor for others."15Benjamin nsists this development s not merelyanothersymptom of "decayingvalues" or the "crisisof modernity".Rather,it has a determinatesocial originas a "concomitantsymptom of the secularproductive forces of history."16 This tendency becomes especially apparentupon examination of the social history of literarygenres.Such an analysisshows there is far more at stake than the historicalobsolescence of this orthat art form; the demise of storytelling signals a corresponding oss ofmeaning n life itself. The fabric of experiencehas ceasedto be structurednan intelligible and coherent fashion, such that one could readily extract"wisdom"or "meaning" rom its individualepisodes; t has instead becomefragmentedand discontinuous,thus rendering he veryconcept of "wisdom"problematic:"Counselwoven into the fabricof real life is wisdom.Theart ofstorytelling is reachingits end because the 'epic side of truth', wisdom; isdyingout."17Theobverseside of the declineof storytelling s the riseof thenovel.Accordingto Benjamin,"What differentiatesthe novel from all other forms of proseliterature- the fairy tale, the legend, even the novella - is that it neithercomes from oral tradition nor goes into it."18 Insofaras stories are handeddown orally from generation to generation, they become, as it were, thepropertyof the community. They represent he primarymeans of recording


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23experience in those societies where handicraft is the dominant mode ofproduction. Indeed, the distinct imprint of craftsmanship nheres in theprocess of storytelling: "traces of the storytellercling to the story the wayhandprintsof the potter cling to the clay vessel."19In the case of the novel,however, the "communal"aspect of the artisticprocess- both in termsofthe conditions of its production as well as its reception - has disappeared:"The novelist has isolated himself. The birthplaceof the novel is the solitaryindividual,who is no longerable to expresshimselfby givingexamplesof hismost important concerns, is himself uncounseled, and cannot counselothers .... In the midst of life's fullness, andthroughthe representation fthis fullness, the novel gives evidence of the profound perplexity of theliving."20Thenovelis producedby "solitary ndividuals" ndreadby "solitaryindividuals".The individual's"profoundperplexity"resultsfrom his havingbeen sunderedfrom traditionalconditions of life in a capitalist society thathas become a bellum omnium contraomnes, where the credo of self-servingindividualismhas become the dominantprincipleof conduct. Tryas he mightto integrate his private experiences within a more universal,meaningfulframework, he "hero"of the novel,from Don Quixote to "K,"is predestinedto confusion and ruin. As Benjaminnotes, "Even the first greatbook of thegenre, Don Quixote, teaches how spiritualgreatness, he boldness, the help-fulness of one of the noblest men, Don Quixote, are completely devoid ofcounsel and do not contain the slightestscintilla of wisdom."21In the backgroundof Benjamin'sdiscussion of the novel stands Lukacs'pre-Marxistwork TheTheoryof the Novel (1914). Benjaminheld TheTheoryof the Novel in esteem, and its themes echo throughout he Leskovessay. Inhis attempt to produce a typology of the novel form, Lukacscounterposesthe "integratedcivilizations"of the Homericepic (parallelingBenjamin'suseof storytelling)to the bourgeoisworld of "transcendental omelessness"as itis portrayed n the modernnovel. For Lukacs,"The novel is the epic in an agein which the extensive totality of life is no longer directly given, in whichthe immanence of meaning to life has become a problem, yet which stillthinks in terms of totality." In modern ife the wisdomof the storyhasbeensupplantedby the proliferationof information.Concomitantwith the adventof the division of labor and the universalpredominanceof the bureaucraticform of administration, he vast social stockpiling of information ndicatesthe degree to which the parametersof society have been quantitativelyextended at the expense of its formerintegralunity. Thus,we know "more"about everything,yet this knowledge is poorer in quality,it has ceasedto beconcerneddirectlywith those ultimatequestionsconcernedwith the meaningof life. The increasein quantity remainsforeverincapableof compensatingfor the decrease n quality.Theemergenceof "information"as the dominant


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24form in which experienceis stored is thus a primary ymptomof the crisisofexperience, of our inability to communicateexperiencesin other than themost shallow and truncated fashion. As Benjaminnotes, "Everymorningbringsus the news of the globeandyet we arepoor in noteworthy stories."22For Benjamin, ournalismrepresentsthe deliberatesabotage of experience,its reduction to a minimum numberof superficial acts and statistics a pro-cess of distortion that aims at destroying the public's capacity for inde-pendentjudgment. Thepressattemptsto manufacturean artificialconsensus,"public opinion," by appending nsipid "psychological" xplanations o eachstory in orderto suggesthow the averageman on the street shouldinterpretevents. He notes that "by now almostnothingthat happensbenefits storytell-ing; almosteverythingbenefits information."23Thus,the fragmentary harac-ter of contemporarysocial life meets the desultoryjournalisticprocessingofexperience halfway. The story, in contrast,was devoid of all such insidiouspsychological ntentions, permittingthe materialrichnessof life to step forthunprocessed,in all its fullness, and thus allowing the listenersto judge forthemselves. In this way each story retaineda meaning (or moral) for thecommunityof listeners hat was inexhaustibleandlasting.Whereas, ccordingto Benjamin,"The value of information does not survivethe moment inwhich it was new. It lives only in that moment; it has to surrender o itcompletely and explain itself to it without losing any time."24In the formof information,experienceno longerhas anything lastingto teach us; it hassimply become another hollow facet of modernlife, an item of momentaryinterest whichwill soon ceaseto be topicalandthen be promptlydiscarded.The lack of manifestpsychologicalmotifs in the story further differentiatesit from the novel. Thestrikingabsenceof a self-evidentmeaning o life in thenovel resultsin the concertedattempt on the part of the novelist to procuremeaning synthetically or subjectively. "The 'meaningof life' is really thecenter about which the novel moves,"25observesBenjamin.Becauseof thelack of a readilyapparentmeaning o life the novel often assumes he formofa search for meaning;whereas in the world of story, where something asfundamentalas the "meaningof life" is neveropenly thrown into doubt, theproblem of meaningnever needs to become explicitly thematized. Benjamincites the following significantpassagefrom Lukacs'Theory of the Novel:"Only in the novel are meaning and life, and thus the essential and thetemporal, separated.... Only in the novel ... does there occur a creativememory which transfixes the object and transformsit."26 Here Lukdcssuggests it becomes the task of the novelist to make over experience sub-jectively; if he were merely to transmit t to the readeras he found it, in itsmere facticity, he would be simply presentinga congeriesof meaningless,discrete facts. The conscious recastingof experience,an integralpart of the


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25creative process for the novelist, is something vastly different from theacitivity of the storyteller,whom Benjamindescribesas a sort of "secularizedmedievalchronicler,"who merely takes it upon himself to describeeventsasthey happen (or as they have been said to happen), convinced that theirsignificance will shine through on its own, independent of any subjectiveinterference. The profound longingof the novel to rejuvenate he mundanecharacterof experience reachesan important summitwith Proust'smaster-piece, A La Recherche du TempsPerdu- the thresholdof the modernnovelof consciousness wherethe novel reaches he point of no return, n whichitis no longer the objective nature of the eventsthemselves hat is of foremostimportance,but the haphazardmannerin which they materializenow andagain in the memoire involuntaireof the novelist. In Proust, the power ofremembrance nvests the events of life with the aura of significancetheylacked as they occurred n mere life, life in its facticity: "Foran experiencedevent is finite - at any rate, confined to one sphereof experience;a remem-bered event is infinite, because it is only a key to everythingthat happenedbefore and after it."27 The lonelinessof the readerof the novel correspondsto the lonelinessof a world of experiencethat remainsopaque and unintel-ligible to the subject, that will not lend itself to being readilyshared.In thelanguageof the young Lukacs,the novel providesus with a substitutetotality,in compensationfor the absenceof totality in life itself. Thecapacityof thenovel to restore a semblanceof coherenceand unity to an existence other-wise notably lacking in these qualities accounts, on the psychological evel,for the tremendous popularity of this genre in the last two centuries. Itstands out as a wealth of vicarious satisfaction. As Benjamin remarks:"The novel is significant, therefore, not because it presents someone else'sfate to us, perhapsdidactically,but because this stranger's ate by virtue ofthe flame which consumes it yields us the warmthwe neverdrawfrom ourown fate. What draws the readerto the novel is the hope of warminghisshiveringife with a deathhe readsabout."28Benjamin'sdepiction of the vast structural ransformationof the traditional,integrated fabric of experience, using the story and the novel as prismstoview this process, remains extremely valuablefrom the standpoint of therequirementsof a materialist heory of culture.Yet, of especialsignificance sthat rather than attempting to reduce important changeson the plane ofaestheticformto a preconceived et of economic or sociologicaldeterminants,his account views such changeswithin the overallcontext of the total socialprocess. Whereas he genesis of an artistic genre such as the novel remainsincomprehensible unless the attendant social conditions are taken intoaccount, at the same time such forms eventuallyassumea life that is quasi-autonomous vis a vis their original material circumstances;e.g., Proust's


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26theory of the memoire involuntairealready prescribes a way out of thedilemmas - both aesthetic and lived - of the unfulfilled and fragmentedworld of experiencewith whichthe novelist finds himselfconfronted,albeit ahighly individualistic, ubjectiveway out. For his writing mplicitlyacknowl-edges that a reconciliationwith this world in its facticity (the motif under-lying the Bildungsroman)has become an objectiveimpossibility,and thus arecourse(retreat) to the sphereof pureinwardness the monologueinterieur)is the only possible solution, if a Pyrrhicone. The advantageof Benjamin'sapproachis that he employs a historico-philosophicalmethod for the studyof cultural phenomena rather than a conventional sociological one. Hisanalysis s thereforenot only synchronicbut diachronic.Significantchangeson the plane of aesthetic form are thus considered n light of the total con-stellation of interrelatedsocial and culturalforces and not simply,as in lightof the "economic actor".Thehistorico-philosophicalpproach imultaneouslyallows him to avoid the illusions of the customarybourgeoisreverenceforartistic forms as eternal and naturalcreations(paralleling he illusionsaboutthe natureof capitalismMarxobservedamongthe ranksof bourgeoispoliticaleconomists). "There were not always novels in the past, and there will notalwayshave to be; not always tragedies,not alwaysgreatepics,"29Benjaminnotes. Thus, in "The Storyteller"and other works, Benjamins ableto showhow historico-philosophical onsiderationsenter into the heart of the processof artistic production - an approachfirst adopted by Lukacsin Theoryofthe Novel and employed successfully by Benjamin n his 1925 Trauerspielstudy - rendering he seemingly sancrosanctrealm of aesthetic experiencepreyto the flux and vicissitudesof historical ife.

Yet, the method of the Leskovessay is by no meansproblem-free.ThoughBenjaminstops short of explicitly callingfor a mobilizationof the "healthy"forces of tradition against the decrepit conditions of modernity (with itsobvious reactionary overtones), a solution of this nature seemingly lies inwait beneath the surfaceof the essay. Thereis no smallmeasureof nostalgiain his tone when he speakswistfully of the decline of the integratedfabricof experiencecharacteristic f communalsociallife; andredeemingaspectsofmodernityare nowhere to be found. Moreover, he sets of antithesesformingthe methodologicalbasis of the essay - the story andthe novel, communityand society, traditionandmodernity- only reinforcethe impression hat theauthorseeksto establishanabstractoppositionbetween"past"and"present,"compellingthe readerto choose as it were betweenone or the other,when inreality a choice so simplein naturedoes not exist. Fundamentally, hen, theantinomy establishedby Benjaminbetween traditionaland modernsocietiesis overly rigid and potentially misleading.In truth communal ife was neverso idyllic as we moderns ike to imagine t. For thesewere societiesbesetwith


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27problemsof privationand scarcity,at the mercyof nature,wheresocialrankwas decidedby birth,and in whichchannels o address njusticeandgrievanceswere virtually non-existent. The gainsmade by advanced ndustrialsocietiesin all these areas are by no means inconsequentialand their loss would betantamount to wholesale regression.In a similarvein, modern societies, byexploding the closed, tightly-knitstructureof traditionalcommunities,haveopened up a wealth of possibilities for the enhancementof the quality oflife - not only materiallybut also intellectuallyandspiritually possibilitiesthat admittedly remainlargely distorted or unfulfilled undercurrentsocialconditions, but that neverthelesswould have remained nconceivable n pastages (and that they exist as "unfulfilled"servesas a spurtoward theirfuturerealization). The dichotomous nature of Benjamin'spresentationneglectedthese importantfacts, the inclusion of which would have madethe choice atissuedecidedlymorecomplex,andrightfullyso.Correspondances, r ExperienceRecapturedIn his 1939 essay, "Some Motifs in Baudelaire,"Benjaminpursuesa similartheme, viz, the fragmentationof the continuum of experience in moderntimes as it manifests tself in aestheticexperience.Yet, in this workthe majormethodologicalshortcomingof the Leskovessay standscorrected.No longerdoes Benjaminabstractlyseek to counterposean idyllic past to the decadentpresent. Instead,he attempts to workthroughthe dilemmasof the present na more immanent fashion as far as his subject matter, the lyric poetry ofBaudelaire,will admit of such an attempt. The figureof Baudelaire ccupiedsuch a significantplace in the thought of the later Benjamin he became ofcourse the focal point of the monumentalArcadesProjecton which Benjaminlaboredfrom 1927 until his death in 1940) because he stood, in Benjamin'seyes, at the crossroadsof traditionaland modern societies and, as it were,preserved he imagesof this transition nhisverse.ThatBaudelaire onsciouslyincorporatedthe often grotesque magesof mid-nineteenthcentury city lifeinto his poetry qualifieshim as the first "modernist," he first true poet ofurbanism.Becausehe stood on the cuspbetweentwohistoricaleras,witnessingthe extirpation of the last vestigesof traditional ife on the part of modernindustrialism, Baudelairewas ideally situated to chronicle this importantprocessof transition.OnceagainBenjamin eeks to showhow the philosophyof history penetratesthe very heart of the purportedlyautonomousactivityof the artist.A primary ndication of the decline of the traditionalfabricof experience sthe experience of shocks as an inalienable feature of modern urban life.Whereas xperiencewas traditionallygovernedby the principlesof continuity


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28and repetition, makingit at least in theory something always familiar andpredictable, he shocksof city life disrupt hese familiarpatternsof experience.The predominanceof the experienceof shocks is intimatelybound up withthe emergenceof the crowd as a constant factor to be reckonedwith. Beingincessantly jostled by the mass of passersby n the city streets was a newphenomenon in nineteenth-century ife. "Fear, revulsion,and horror werethe emotions which the big city crowd arousedin those who first observedit," remarksBenjamin.30"Moving hroughthis traffic involvesthe individualin a series of shocks and collisions. At dangerouscrossingsnervousimpulsesflow through him in rapid succession, like the energyin a battery."31Theteeming city masses become a perpetualobstacle in trying to get from onepoint to another. The din of the crowd provesinimicalto the idea of havingthoughts of one's own. Whilethe hugecity crowdvastlyincreases he oppor-tunity for chance encounters, t is also the breedinggroundfor a notoriouscallousnessand indifference among men and women.32 For sheer numbersand the struggle for survivalthat characterizesurban life make it nearlyimpossible - not to mention againstone's "interests"- to deal with eachperson one happens upon in a humane and personalmanner. Even if thefigureof the crowd neverbecomesthe explicit subjectof Baudelaire's oetry(as it does for example in the novels of Victor Hugo) it servesas its ever-present background.As Benjamincomments, "The mass was the agitatedveil;through t Baudelaire aw Paris."33Benjamin'sclaim, then, is that with the advent of shock experience as anelemental force in everyday life in the mid-nineteenthcentury the entirestructureof humanexperience stransformed. nsupporthe cites the Freudianthesis from Beyond the PleasurePrinciple that "becoming conscious andleaving behind a memory trace are processes ncompatiblewith one anotherin one and the samesystem."Instead,memorytracesare "often most power-ful and most endurablewhen the incident which left them behind was onethat neverentered consciousness."Here,Freudacknowledges hat conscious-ness'srole in the protectionagainststimuli(Reizschutz)has becomeinfinitelymore important than its reception of stimuli. In modernlife consciousnessmust make itself so highly protective vis a vis the proliferationof aversivestimuli or shocks that the majorityof "memorytraces"previouslyregisteredas experiencein a directand naturalway now fail to do so. This results n theirreversible iminutionof ourcapacityto have"experiences"n the traditionalsense. Today experience has been so thoroughly reduced by and filteredthrough consciousness that what remains is an experience reduced to itsbarest essentials, an experience necessaryfor the task of mere survival.Inconsequence, not only has the human apparatusof perception itself beensignificantlyaltered,but the verycornerstoneof the traditionalconception of


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29experience,the idea of Geddchtnisor remembrance, as also been destroyed.Theexperiencesdeposited nremembrance ouldbepassedon fromgenerationto generation;and the wisdom of life was thereby preserved.But in modernlife, Geddchtnis has been supplanted by Erinnerung:the matter of factpreservationof memory traces has givenway to their disintegration n con-sciousness, in order for them to be assimilatedby consciousnessand thusstored. For otherwise the shock-character f experience would overwhelmconsciousness; experience would thus simply prove unassimilable.Only byvirtue of this mutilatingprocessof censorshipandpreformation anexperienceregister n consciousnessandthus in the strict sense saidto have been "lived".As Benjamin xplains:

The greater the character of the shock factor in particular impressions, the moreconsciously consciousness has to be alert as a screen against stimuli; the moreefficiently it is so, the less do these impressions enter experience (Erfahrung), tendingto remain in the sphere of a certain hour of one's life (Erlebnis). Perhaps the specialachievement of shock defense may be seen in its function of assigning to an incidenta precise point in time in consciousness at the cost of the integrity of its contents.34

Benjamindetects a remarkableconfirmationof Freud's theory concerningthe shock-preventative unction of consciousness n Baudelaire's elf-charac-terizationof the poetic vocationin "Lesoleil" as atype of escrime antastique(fencing);that is, a processof parrying he shocksof modern ife on the partof the poetic imagination.Elsewhere,Baudelairehas referred o the creativeprocess as "a duel in which the artist, just before being beaten, screams nfright."35In this way, Benjamin eeks to show it is not merelyin the contentof Baudelaire'swork, its imageryand motifs, that the experienceof shocksproves central, but that it has also invaded the very heart of the creativeprocessitself. So much for the illusionsof bourgeoisaestheticismconcerningthe inviolable autonomy of art. The high level of consciousnessmanifest inBaudelaire'spoetry - necessary for the sake of parrying hocks - testifiesthat Baudelaire's "work cannot merely be categorized as historical, likeanyone else's, but intended to be so and understood itself as such."36 Theinclusion of innumerable mages of decay and putrefaction- set in a lyriccontext which causesthem all the more to stand out as "shocking" wasbyno means adventitious;rather it was Baudelaire's ystematic intent. As hehimself explains in the well-known dedication to his collection of prosepoems,Spleende Paris:

Which one of us, in moments of ambition has not dreamed of the miracle of a poeticprose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and ruggedenough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie,the jibes of consciousness? It was above all, out of my exploration of huge cities, outof the medley of their innumerable interrelations, that this haunting ideal was born.37


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30Thus, Benjaminviews the work of Baudelaireas being of great significancebecause it representsthe first concerted attempt to destroy the affirmativeillusionsof bourgeoisaestheticism, he firstself-conscious ffort to incorporatethe contingenciesof everydayhistorical ife into the heretofore sacredpreserveof aesthetic experience - an approachwhich would subsequentlybecomeparadigmaticor the wholeof modernism.As such,Les Fleursdu Malpresentsitself as the first incarnationof de-aestheticized art:38 a post-auraticartseeking to divest itself of its elitist, class-bound rappingsand re-integratingitself with the concernsof material ife. It became more and more apparentthat all art which behaved with indifferencetowardsits social originsitselfbecame a matter of indifference. For Benjamin,then, Baudelaire'spoetrysignalsan incipient dissatisfactionwith values of l'art pour l'art, a processof disenchantment in Weber'ssense of the term as well) that would playitself out in the various "isms" of the twentieth century avant-garde,andthen reach a qualitativelynew level with the advent of the thoroughlydis-enchanted forms of photographyand film - in which the last vestiges ofaestheticismhad been relinquished orever;or so it seemed.In Benjamin'saccount of the disintegrationof the structureof experience nindustrialsociety the life situations of two social types stand out as proto-typical, those of the factory worker (not surprisingly)and the gambler.Once again, the idea of "shock-experience" s employed as the universalmetaphor throughwhich the transitionfrom traditionalto modern societiesis grasped. As Benjaminnotes: "The shock-experiencewhich the passerbyhas in the crowd corresponds to what the worker 'experiences' at hismachine."39In support of this contention he relies extensively on Marx'sseminal account of the transition from techniquesof handicraftproductionto the methods of manufactureand machineindustryin ChaptersXIV andXV of Capital L.40 Benjamin'sargument proceeds from the fact that thecontinuity of experience, so essential for handing down experiences intraditionalsocieties, has been replaced n contemporaryife by the wholesalefragmentationof experience.Yet, in the Baudelairessay Benjamin urmountsthe tendency in "The Storyteller"to idealize bygone communal forms oflife. Here,thereis no questionof nostalgia or what hasbeen lost; instead,thepast is used in an ideological-critical ense, in order to provideby way ofcontrast an index of the vast and total transformationof the quality of lifethe modern erahas wrought.Whereas nder conditionsof handicraftproduc-tion there existed a determinate equenceandlogic that connectedone act onthe partof the craftsman o the next, under the conditionsof modernfactorylabor this connection has been dissolved to the point where the worker'sactivity has been degraded o the statusof a mereappendageof the machine.For this reasonthe possibilityof the workerderivingany intrinsicsatisfaction


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31from his activity (e.g., the satisfaction that would accrue from his havingproduced the finished product in its entirety), is denied. Instead, on theassembly-linehe repeatedlyperforms he samemonotonous,partialfunction.He must force his actions to conform to the autonomous rhythm of themachine. His activity thus degenerates o that of a mindlessautomaton. It isreified, becomes thing-like.Therefore, he idea of experience,the notion thatone can become throughpracticewell-versedn the talents and skillsnecessaryfor the accomplishmentof a given task, proves anachronistic so totallyspecialized and one-sided has labor become. Moreover,with the advent ofmachineindustrylabor comes to be prizedprecisely nsofaras it has becomeunskilled;the more unskilled the worker,the lower the wage. As Benjaminaffirms,"The unskilledworkeris the one most deeply degradedby the drillof machines. His work has been sealed off from experience;practicecountsfor nothingthere."41In this way the process of rationalizationeffects a universal evelingof theconditions of experience. The onslaught of reification,42 nitially confinedto the workplace,becomes absolute and all-inclusive n modernlife; societyin its entirety is dominatedby the technical considerationsof formalreason.The man on the street betrays the symptoms of this fate no less than theworker on the assemblyline: the behaviorof both has become strictly regi-mented, strippedof its individuality,andrenderedhomogenous.As Benjaminnotes, Marx'sdescriptionof the degradationof the factory worker to thestatus of an automaton,a mere appendageof the machine,sheds"apeculiarlight on the absurd kind of uniformitywith which Poe wants to saddle thecrowd - uniformities of attire and behaviour,but alsoa uniformityof facialexpression. Those smiles provide food for thought. They are probably thefamiliarkind, as expressed n the phrase'keep smiling'; n that context theyfunction as a mimetic shock absorber."43The pedestrians n Poe's text44"act as if they had adapted themselves to the machines and could expressthemselves only automatically. Their behaviouris a reaction to shocks. Ifjostled, they bowed profusely to the jostlers."45In the arts,this processhasreached its apogee in film, where the experience of shock (rapid cutting,multiple camera angles, instantaneous shifts in time and space) has beenelevatedto a formalprinciple."Thatwhichdetermines he rhythmof produc-tion on a conveyorbelt is the basisof the rhythmof reception n a film."46For Benjamin the gambler becomes a parable for the disintegrationofcoherent experience in modern life. At first employing the gambleras anexample appears omewhatcontradictory:are not the activitiesof the laborerand the gambleras antitheticalas work and play? Yet, gamblingcan be saidto resemblefactory labor insofaras here, too, experiencecounts for nothing.


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32Eachaction on the partof the gamblers independentof the one preceding t.The result of the previous gamehas no bearingon the game that follows it.Each spin of the roulette wheel is an action unto itself. One is constantlystartingover againfrom scratch.Therefore,there can be no accumulationofknowledge or experience. As Benjaminremarks,"The manipulationof theworker at a machinehas no connection with the precedingoperationfor thevery reason that it is its exact repetition.Sinceeachoperationat the machineis just as screened off from the precedingoperationas a coup in a game ofchance is from one that preceded it, the drudgeryof the labourer s, in itsown way, a counterpart o the drudgeryof the gambler.Thework of both isequally devoid of substance."47To be sure, the drudgeryof wage labor hasnone of the adventureof gambling.But the qualityof the experience n bothcases is quite similar.Both gamblingand the laborof the workerbecome all-consumingactivities. Each ultimately comes to pervadethe very psyche ofthe subject. The experience in both cases proves ennervatingrather thansatisfying.The "futility, the emptiness, he inability o completesomething"48are characteristic ailingsof the activity of both the gamblerandthe factoryworker. This is the prototypical experience of modern man, who has been"cheatedout of his experience"; t is the model of experiencein hell whereone is never allowed to complete what one hasbegun.Baudelaire as immor-talized the figureof the gambler n his poem "Le Jeu"in Les FleursduMal,the secondand fourth stanzasof which readas follows:

Round the green ablesa friezeof liplessfaces,Of blue-cold ips,if lips,of toothlessgums,Andfingers, everedwithHell's astdisgraces,Fumblingn pockets- or deliriums.Hereyou see the hellishpicture hat one night n a dream,I sawunfoldingbeforemy clairvoyant yes;Andover n a corer of this silentcave,MyselfI saw,hunchedup, cold,muteandenvying,Envying hesepeopletheir tenaciouspassion.

As Habermashas astutely noted, Benjamin'scustomarymethod of criticismwas one that relatedconservativelyrather hancriticallyto its objects:it wasless concerned with burstingideological illusions projected by culturethanwith redeemingthose Messianicor utopian momentsof our spiritualheritagethat are incessantlyendangered n the presentby the oblivion of forgetting.For this reason he refers to Benjamin'smethod as that of rettende Kritik(redemptivecriticism).49Benjaminceaselessly soughtto make suchmomentsof tradition relevant for the present, to turn them into now-times.Adornotouches on the manifestutopian dimensionof Benjamin's hought when hementions that "Everythinghat Benjamin aidor wrote soundedas if thought,


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33instead of rejectingthe promisesof fairy tales and children'sbooks with itsdisgraceful maturity', took them so literally that real fulfillmentitself wasnow within sight of knowledge."50For Benjamin,all knowledgethat failedto concern tself with the questionof redemptionwaspartialandinferior.Benjamindetected evidence of this concern in Baudelaire'sheory of "cor-respondances".By virtue of this theory Baudelaire,accordingto Benjamin,was able to invoke images of collective experience, the last rudimentsofwhichwerebeingrapidlyextinguishedbeforehis very eyes. Modernexperiencelacked a sense of continuity that would preventthe stream of events fromdisintegratingnto a fragmented eriesof desultoryandmeaninglessncidents.It was the seeming absence of any meaningfulconnection between eventsthat had renderedthe traditionalconcept of "wisdom" nvalid.For Benjamin- and the importanceof this fact for histhoughtcannotbe overemphasized"Wherethere is experience in the strict sense of the word, certaincontentsof the individualpast combine with materialsof the collectivepast."51Onlyif this crucialrelationis maintainedcan "the secret agreementbetween pastgenerations ndthe presentone" be guaranteed.52 orit becomesthe "mission"of the present generation to redeem the thwartedhopes, aspirations,andstrugglesof its ancestors, he disconsolatetracesof whichareinscribed n ourculturalheritage. The ruthlessexpansionof rationalizationrenders his vitalheritagemore opaque and unfamiliar o us with each passingday. It was thecustomaryfunction of the great"daysof remembrance" the specialdaysoffestival, ceremony, and ritualthat were set off from the rest of the days ofthe calendar to insure theperiodic ntermingling f individualandcollectivepasts. These celebrationsservedto remind us of our "secretagreement"withthe past.Thecorrespondances f Baudelaireperforma similar unction: "Thecorrespondances re the data of remembrance not historicaldata,but dataof pre-history."53And like the festivalsof old, what makes them "greatandsignificantis the encounterwith an earlier ife."54 The correspondances rethe key to Baudelaire'suse of allegory:from the "ruins"of modernityhe isable miraculouslyto conjure forth the image of a collective past long sincefaded from memory. Such images are intended as an antidote or counter-imageto the crisis-ridden tate of modernity. "The murmurof the past maybe heard in the correspondences,and the canonicalexperienceof them hasits place in a previouslife."55 "WhatBaudelairemeant by correspondancesmay be described as an experience which seeks to establish itself in crisis-proof form. This is possible only within the realm of ritual."56Indeed,Baudelaire aswrittena poem, "Correspondances,"hat begins:

Nature is a temple whose living pillarsSometimes give forth a label of words;Man wends his way through forests of symbolsWhich look at him with their familiar glances.


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34As long-resounding echoes from afarAre mingling in a deep, dark unity,Vast as the night or as the orb of the day,Perfumes, colours, and sounds commingle.57

Thecorrespondances o not merelyevokerandom magesof past life. Rather,they arespecificallyconcernedwith recreating nanimisticrelationto nature.Naturethereby ceases to be viewedas mere fodder for technicalexploitationand is insteadregardedas in itself ensouled. The correspondances arkbackto nothing less than an urhistoricalstateof reconciliation,a statebefore thatpoint where the specieshadsucceeded nindividuatingtself vis-a-vis rimordialnature, in which man and nature existed in a condition of immediate,un-differentiatedunity. Thefirst stanzaof"Correspondances" ersonifiesnature,it invests nature with both the capacity to speak and with the capacity toreturn man's glance.Natureappearsas a partner nstead of a hostile foe. Inthis way, the correspondances ttempt to speak out againstthe unremittingtechnical mastery of the environingworld and thus recapturea relationtonature whose last traces are being extirpated with the ruthless advance ofrationalization.As Benjaminnotes: "the correspondancesrecorda conceptof experience which includes ritual elements. Only by appropriating heseelements was Baudelaireable to fathom the full meaningof a breakdownwhich he, a modern man, was witnessing."58However, it is not as if thetheory of correspondancesrecommendsthe wholesaleregressionof species-life to a prehistoricrelation to naturewherehumanitywould once more beat her mercy. Rather, in the process whereby mankindhas succeeded inemancipating tself from its originalcondition of utter thralldomto nature,it has in its overzealousness imultaneouslysucceeded in destroying thosecrucial elementsof reciprocitythroughwhich alone a condition of harmonybetween man and nature could be restored. Thus in accomplishing he sub-jugation of natureman has only succeeded n imitatingher prehistoricharsh-ness and rigidity, while repressingthose elements of correspondence hatwould constitute a prerequisite or the authentic pacificationof the strugglefor existence. The moment the history of dominationhas always tragicallyforgottenis that man, too, is partof nature.The cardinalmerit of Baudelaire'sverse was to have recognized this tragic failing and to have attempted toremedyit by producingcorrespondanceswith past collectivelife.That Baudelairehas bestowed upon naturethe capacityto returnman'sgaze("Manwends his way through a forest of symbols/Whichook at him withtheir familiarglances") s indicativeof the auraticcharacterof nature.For in"Some Motifs in Baudelaire"Benjaminhas altered the definitionof the auraas it originallyappeared n the 1936 "Workof Art" essay; and more impor-tantly, he has altered decisively his attitude toward its decline. Whereasn


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35the 1936 work he embracedwholeheartedly he processwhereby a unique,nonmechanically reproducedauratic art was sacrificed to the advance ofrationalization, in the 1939 essay he has come arround to realizingtheirrevocable destruction of meaning potentials that results from this processin fact. Thus in the later essay, he providesthe following significantrede-finition of the concept of the aura:

Experience of the aura thus rests on the transposition of a response common tohuman relationships to the relationship between the inanimate or natural object andman. The person we look at, or who feels he is being looked at, looks at us in turn.To perceive the aura of an object means to invest it with the ability to look at us inreturn.In "Some Motifs in Baudelaire"Benjaminshows himself hardly willing torelinquish he qualitiesof the aurawithout a struggle.To perceive he auraofan object meansto endow it with humanized,animatetraitsusuallyreservedfor relations among men. It means to conceive of inanimateobjectsfrater-nally rather than manipulatively, o grant them the capacity of projectingsignalsand attributes that transcendtheir simple quality of being there.Noris this merely Benjamin'sndulgence n mysticism. Rather,it bespeaksof anearlierrelation of man to naturethat modernmanhas all but repressed rommemory. Benjaminfurtherdefines the aura as "the associationswhich, athome in the memoire involuntaire,tend to cluster around the object of aperception."59Thus,it refersto an indefinite seriesof correspondencesandinterrelationsengenderedby an object rather han a fixed imageof it as such.For this reasonphotographyclearlyprovesdestructiveof the auraof objects,whereas painting, on the other hand, would preserve ts traces most faith-fully. For photography ends to fix the imageof a thingat a givenmoment intime, it consciously freezes its associations. As Benjaminobserves, "Theperpetual readiness of volitional, discursive memory, encouraged by thetechnique of mechanical reproduction, reduces the scope for the play ofimagination."60The photographis thereforeeminentlynon-auratic; t lacksthe all-importantcapacity to return the gaze. Just the reverse is true ofpainting, though. Nonmechanicallyreproducedart - especially painting -qualifies as "auratic"because it is alreadyhumanized;that is, its contourshave alreadybeen thoroughly shaped and fashionedby the humansubject.And so whenviewedby the subject,it alwaysstandsreadyto returnwhat thesubject has put into it. Thus,in contrastto the photograph,"the paintingwelook at reflects back at us that of which oureyes will neverhave theirfill ...to the eyes that will neverhave their fill of a painting,photography s ratherlike food for the hungry or drink for the thirsty."61Whereas he auraticobject incessantlycalls to mind an endless streamof associations,as if it wereactually endowed with the autonomous capacity to speakto us by meansof


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36its own aesthetic language, his is manifestlynot the case with mechanicallyreproduced,non-auraticarts such as photographyand film. Becauseit is anobject that has already been "humanized," he work of art stands as theprototype of the auraticobject; and it is the humanizedtraits with whichithas been invested that account for its capacity "to returnour gaze".Indeed,the work of art has become parthuman. As such, it falls due to mankind orediscoverthe analogous"auratic"qualities that lie dormant in unformed,inanimate nature, which, "once upon a time," also "spoke to man andreturned his gaze"; but whose secret languageof correspondencesmodernman has lost the capacity to comprehend.Only in this way will man becapableof rediscovering he key to universalhappiness,whose traceshe firstencountered n childhood, in those gloriousfairy tales where the personifiedfauna of natureappearedas his staunchally - a testimonialto the long-loststate of reconciliationbetween man and nature and an anticipation of itseventualrenewal:

The liberatingmagicwhichthe fairytale has at its disposaldoes not bringnature ntoplay in a mythical way, but points to its complicitywith liberatedman.A maturemanfeels this complicityonly occasionally, hat is, when he is happy;but the childfirst meets t in fairytales,and it makeshimhappy.62

ConcludingRemarksThe problem remains of assessing Benjamin'stheoretical significance forMarxism,but more importantly n the spirit of those philosophicaloutlookswhich,while sympathetic o the criticalenergiesandgoalsof Marxist hought,felt themselvesunable to givethemselvesover without reserve o a twentieth-century Marxism whose dogmatism and senility proved itself afresh witheach new social crisis.Thelike-mindedconceptualoutlooks that immediatelycome to mind are those of the early (pre-Stalinist)Lukacs,ErnstBloch, andthe FrankfurtSchool with whom Benjaminwas affiliatedduringthe last sixyearsof his life. As temptingas comparisonsof this sort are,they can,how-ever, also be quite misleading.For if Benjamin's hinkingproceededin thespiritof WesternMarxism,t cannotbe situatedsquarelywithin this tradition.The problem one faces with any attempt to situate his thought is that thetraditionshe takes up are so transformed n the processof beingassimilatedthat they become virtuallyunrecognizable.This insight holds not only forhis more explicitly Marxian ormulations,but for his theologicaltendenciesas well. The customary opposition (or as one is tempted to say, mutualexclusiveness) between the latter two traditions, both of which play aprominent role in his work, exemplifies the difficulties of attempting toevaluate his thinking in terms of the conventionalacademicseparationofdisciplines;Benjamin perpetuallyrefusedto capitulatebefore such artificial


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37boundaries.Indeed, in his philosophical ast will and testament, the "Theseson the Philosophy of History," Benjaminopenly advocates that historicalmaterialism nlist the servicesof theology if it wishesto be victorious:

The story is told of an automaton constructed in such a way that it could play awinning game of chess, answering each move of an opponent with a countermove. Apuppet in Turkish attire and with a hookah in its mouth sat before a chessboardplaced on a large table. A system of mirrors created the illusion that this table wastransparent from all sides. Actually, a little hunchback who was an expert chess playersat inside and guided the puppet's hand by means of strings. One can imagine aphilosophical counterpart to this device. The puppet called 'historical materialism' isto win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services oftheology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.63Yet, although Benjamin'sparableof the puppet in Turkish attireseems toimply that the powers of theology must be subordinated o the imperativesof historicalmaterialism, n truth the obversepropositionholds: for it is thepuppet that stands for historical materialism,while the controlling factor,which governs the puppet's movements and guide it to victory, is the littlehunchback "theology," "which today, as we know, is wizened and has tokeep out of sight." This brilliantallegory captures the quintessenceof therelation between Marxismand theology in Benjamin'sown thinking. Butdespite this insight the basic hermeneuticaldifficulties in dealingwith histhought do not simply dissolve. The parable ervesmerelyas a tool by meansof which the self-consciouslyhermeticaspects of Benjamin'sdiscoursemightbe probed and uncovered. Perhapsthose who would respondby inquiring,"Yes, but is it worth all the trouble?,"are within their rights. Yet, if itteaches us anything Benjamin'sapproachdemonstrates hat for us men andwomen of thescientificera,who like our truthsservedup clearly,empirically,and without frills,nevertheless,by virtue of our universalpreferencefor thescientific model of truth, a good part of truth- that partof the truthwhichtranscendsthe limits of rational quantification- has thereby been disqual-ified from the domainof "seriousdiscourse".Benjamin'spurportedfascina-tion with the arcane s in no way gratuitousor merelyidiosyncratic.Rather,above all it recognizesthat "actual" truth is not synonomouswith a truthimmediatelygeneralizableor apparent;and in historicalages that are partic-ularly dark (such as the one Benjamin ived through and which eventuallykilled him), the light of truth must of necessity seek refuge in regionsfarremoved romthe Weltlaufn general.One can say with a fair degreeof certainty that Benjamin's elevance s notto be found in those of his writingsmost avowedlyMarxist; .e., essayssuchas "The Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction"and "TheAuthoras Producer,"whichwerewrittenunderthe influenceof the Brechtian


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38side of Benjamin's self-professed "Janus-face"(the other side being histheological dimension). That his "Workof Art" essay has over the yearsacquiredthe status of a watershed n the history of Marxistaesthetics s notin the least undeserved.Its recognition hat the forcesof rationalizationhaveso thoroughlypenetratedthe conditions of the productionand reception ofworks of art in this century,to the point wherethe survivalof a vastarrayoftraditional artistic forms - the story, classicaltragedy,lyric poetry, etc. -has beenjeopardized,rightfullyremainsan importantpoint of departure orthe study of art and culture n all its contemporarymanifestations.However,the specific conclusions drawnby Benjamin, hat mechanicallyreproduced,mass art is intrinsicallyrevolutionaryandthat, conversely,autonomousart isinherently bourgeoisand reactionary,can only seem in retrospectextremelynaive andmisguided.AsAdornopointed out in response, echnicallyadvancedart lends itself just as easily to manipulativeand demagogicemployment (asthe culture industry in the West and Nazi Germanyhave demonstrated);moreover,authentic autonomous art of the twentieth century submitsto aprocess of rationalizationand thus proceeds to divest itself of the auraofbourgeois autonomous art and its undesirableaffirmativeattributes (as iswell illustratedby the examplesof Kafka andSch6nberg).64Thus,Benjaminoverestimatesthe revolutionarypotential contained in mechanically repro-duced art as much as he underestimates hat of de-auraticized wentieth-century autonomous art. Ultimately, the shortcomingsof the "Marxist"Benjaminarethathe sacrificedhis characteristic, peculativemode of theoriz-ing for the sakeof an extremelyundialecticalandsimplisticversionof histori-cal materialism.Following the lead of Brecht (whose Marxism,one mightnote, was not itself distinguished or its theoreticalsophistication),Benjamintended to hypostatizehackneyedMarxistconceptssuchas "technique"65 nd"the masses,"suppressing he reflectiveevaluationof such notions that couldalone prevent them from degenerating nto the sacrosanctplatitudes theyhavebecome.Thus, one is facedwith an apparentparadoxbecauseBenjamin's elevance orthe project of historicalmaterialism s not to be sought in that aspectof histhought he himself viewed as most compatiblewith the Marxisttradition.66Oras Adorno once remarkedncisively n a letter to Benjamin oncerning hefirst draft of the Baudelaire rticle:"Yourstudyof Goethe'sElectiveAffinities(1921-22) and your Baroquebook are better Marxism han the wine dutyandthe deductionof phantasmagoriaromthe behaviour f the feuilltonists."67The Benjaminone is left with is the one who tried in his later years toassimilatehis earlieresotericmode of thoughtto a theoreticalframework hatwas both materialistand exoteric in nature- the Benjaminof "SomeMotifsin Baudelaire" nd related studies such as the "Theseson the Philosophyof


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39History". This is the Benjaminwho refrained rom comportinghimself one-sidedly as either a Marxist or metaphysicalthinker per se, whose thoughtinstead can be located at the forbiddencrossroadsof these two theoreticalpoles. Thisis the Benjaminwho conceivedof himself as a redeemerof historicalJetztzeiten or now-times, those uncommon images of redeemed life whosetraces occasionally grace the continuum of history. For it falls due to thecritic or historical materialist o preservesuch imagesin the face of the fateof historical oblivion incessantly threatening to overwhelm them; imageswhose traces Benjaminfound embedded in Baudelaire'scorrespondances,Leskov's stories, seventeenth-century Trauerspiele, and the "aura" oftraditional works of art. In this sense Benjaminsays it is the task of thehistorical materialist"to brushhistory againstthe grain."68The pathleadingtoward reconciledlife is not to be found flowingwith the historicalcurrent- which leads only to renewedcatastrophe but ratheragainst t. Its tracesand manifestationsare alwaysthe exception. As Benjamin emarkedn 1940,"Nothing has corruptedthe Germanworkingclass so much as the notion itwas movingwith the current."69ThusBenjaminviewedhimselfas a redeemerof those momentsof tradition n which the key to emancipationwasencoded,moments in which humanity's collective longing for a better life had beendeposited;it becomes our task to preserve hese moments in the face of theone-sided and distorted treatment they receive at the hands of the officialguardiansof the annalsof tradition,appointedby the rulingclass to ensurethat the forcesof traditionarehandeddown in a manner hat accordswith itsinterests.As Benjaminobserves:

In every era the attempt must be made anew to wresttraditionaway froma con-formismthat is about to overpowert. TheMessiah omes not only as the redeemer,he comes as the subduer of Antichrist.Only that historianwill have the gift offanningthe sparkof hope in the pastwho is firmlyconvinced venthe deadwill notbe safe from the enemyif he wins. Andthisenemyhasnot ceased o be victorious.70

The eschatalogical one of Benjamin's ast reflections is in no smallmeasurelinkedto the unspeakable vents of the NationalSocialistera.At thisjuncturein history the possibility that the utopian promiseembodiedin the relics oftradition would be forevereffaced from the memory of humanityappearedindeed all too real. It is above all in the tensions between Benjamin's ctivityas a "redemptivecritic" and the Marxist raditionthat the significanceof hiswork resides.Benjamin's everence or the semanticpotentials nvested n theproducts of tradition stands in sharpcontrast with the main trends of thematerialist legacy. The disparagementof the content of tradition in con-ventional Marxist discourse echoes clearly in the use of the epithet "pre-history" to characterizeall history before the advent of socialism. While heidea of socialism as representinga decisive break with the historicalpast is


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40one Benjaminwould certainlyendorse, n the usualMarxistaccountstraditionseems less dialecticallypreserved n the process of Aufhebung than merelycancelled and suppressed.The total devaluationof the bourgeois and pre-bourgeois past in history writing n existing"socialist"societieswould appearto bearout this claim,as would Marxisthistoriographyn general.Thisdisdainfor tradition is also evident in the unreflectiveemployment of the Marxistmethod of ideology critique, n whichthe contents of culturalexpressionsaredeemedillusory and valueless n and of themselves,mereideologicaleffluxesof the economic base. Benjamin'sappreciationof the value of traditionthusstands as an important corrective to such tendencies. His critical studiesdemonstratethat products of culture are in no way reducibleto the statusof "epiphenomena,"but contain at the same time a promessedu bonheurwhichfuturegenerationsmust preserveand redeem.NOTES

1. WalterBenjamin, Originof German TragicDrama (London, 1977).2. For a discussion of the contrasting historico-philosophical relations to the questionof meaning in allegory and symbol, cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method,63-73.3. Cf. Sandor Radnoti's essay "The EarlyAesthetics of WalterBenjamin,"InternationalJournal of Sociology (Spring, 1977), 76-123. See especially his concluding remarks.4. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Illuminations (New York, 1973),253.5. It should be noted that even in Benjamin's early period, in his two most importantworks, the Trauerspiel study and the Elective Affinities essay, the former tookpolemical aim at the traditional category of "beauty" while the latter attempted todiscredit the category of "genius". His own relation to the categories of criticismand art history had always been anything but conventional.6. Benjamin, "Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian," The Essential FrankfurtSchool Reader, ed. A. Arato and E. Gebhardt (New York, 1978), 233. Benjamin'soccasional Brechtian equation of "genuine" experience with "political" experiencehad an extremely deleterious effect on several of his later writings, in particular,"The Author as Producer" (Ibid., 254-269) and his brilliant but flawed "The Workof Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."7. Ibid., 234. 8. Ibid., 277. 9. Cf. Gadamer, 162ff.10. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," 254.11. Benjamin, "The Storyteller," Illuminations, 83.12. Ibid., 83-84.13. Cf. Georg Lukaics,Theory of the Novel (Cambridge, 1971).14. Benjamin, 84.15. Ibid., 85. 16. Ibid., 86. 17. Ibid., 87. 18. Ibid.19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., 92. 21. Ibid., 87.22. Benjamin's istaste orjournalismderived npart romhis contactwith the Austrianwriter Karl Kraus, an inveterate foe of the journalistic mentality. For Benjamin'sfurther thoughts on the subject see his 1931 essay "KarlKraus," Reflections (NewYork, 1978), 239 ff.23. Benjamin, "The Storyteller," 89.24. Ibid., 90. 25. Ibid., 99. 26. Ibid.27. Cf. Benjamin's essay "The Image of Proust," Illuminations, 202.28. Benjamin, "The Storyteller," 101.29. Benjamin, "The Author as Producer," Arato and Gebhardt, 258.30. Benjamin, "Some Motifs in Baudelaire," Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in theEra of High Capitalism (London, 1973), 131.31. Ibid., 132.32. Cf. Benjamin's long citation from Engels' The Condition of the WorkingClass inEngland, which reads in part, ". . . they crowd one another as though they had


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41nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement isthe tacit one, that each is to keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not todelay the opposing stream of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honouranother with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation ofeach in his private interest, becomes the more repellent and offensive the morethese individuals are crowded together within a limited space." Ibid., 121.33. Ibid., 123.34. Ibid., 117 (emphasis added). The triumph of Errinerung over Gedachtnis accountsfor the importance of Proust in Benjamin's thinking. Specifically, he values Proust'scritique of Bergson's concept of the memoire pure. Proust's claim is that authenticexperience is not a product of the voluntary memory but rather registers onlythrough the memoire involuntaire; thus the distorting traits of conscious memorycan only be circumvented by relying on the (repressed) faculty of the subconscious,involuntary memory, the organizing principle of Proust'sgreatwork A La Recherchedu Temps Perdu. The importance of the idea of Geddchtnis or remembrance inBenjamin's thought has been explored at length by Irving Wohlfarth in '"TheMessianic Structure of Walter Benjamin's Last Reflections," Glyph 3 (1978),148-212.35. Benjamin, "Some Motifs in Baudelaire," 117.36. Ibid., 116-117.37. CharlesBaudelaire, Paris Spleen (New York, 1971), ix-x.38. I have pursued this theme in connection with Adorno's work in "The De-Aesthet-icization of Art: On Adomo'sAesthetische Theorie," Telos 41 (Fall, 1979), 105-128.39. Benjamin, 134.40. Karl Marx, Capital I (Moscow, n.d.), 318-402. 41. Benjamin, 133.42. At this point a brief note on the subtle terminological differences that exist between"rationalization" and "reification" would be in order. By "rationalization" I meanthe process first observed by Max Weber whereby all personal and affective con-siderations are eliminated from the operation of social organizations (e.g., businessconcerns, politics, the legal sphere, etc.), and instead social action is governed bypredictable, clearly defined sets of rational and calculable formal rules. By "reifica-tion" I intend the etymological (verdinglichen: literally, to turn into a thing) andMarxian ("social relations among men turning into relations between things")definitions; in contrast, for example, to the pioneering, yet too general, use to whichthe term is put in Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness, where "reification"(synonomous with the Marxian notion of "commodity fetishism") is deemed the"central structural principle of capitalist society". Therefore, "reification" can bededuced from "rationalization," whereas the contrary proposition does not neces-sarily hold. Thus, the phenomenon of bureaucracy, for example, is an outgrowth of"rationalization" which gives rise to "reified" relations between persons; herereification is merely a result rather than a prime mover. Cf. Andrew Arato, "Lukacs'Theory of Reification," Telos 11 (Spring, 1972), 25-66.

43. Benjamin, 133. 44. Ibid., 126-128. 45. Ibid., 133-134.46. Ibid., 132. 47. Ibid., 134-135.48. Ibid., 134.49. Cf. Jurgen Habermas, "Bewusstmachende oder rettende Kritik - die AktualitatWalterBenjamins,"ZurAktualitat WalterBenjamins,ed. Siegfried Unseld (Frankfurt,1972), 175-223.50. Theodor Adomo, Prisms (London, 1976), 230.51. Benjamin, 113. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 141.54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid., 140.57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., 139. 59. Ibid., 145.60. Ibid., 146. In this statement the reversal of Benjamin's earlier, unilaterally positivevaluation of the "technique of mechanical reproduction" becomes especially clear.Here photography is associated with the process of "volitional, discursive memory"which Benjamin, following Proust's emphasis on the memoire involuntaire, disdained.61. Ibid., 146-147.62. Benjamin, "The Storyteller," 102.63. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," 253.64. Cf. Adomo's reply to Benjamin inAesthetics andPolitics (London, 1977), 120-126.At the same time, the drawbacks of Adorno's position should also be pointed out;especially that he generally refrained from conceding any emancipatory potentialto the new media of mass communication such as film, thereby acquiescing bydefault to the manipulative stranglehold over these media exercised by the cultureindustry, which he had otherwise criticized so outspokenly.65. The idealization of the notion of artistic technique by Benjamin represents anunreflective transposition of the Marxian faith in the autonomous virtues of the"forces of production" from the economic to the aesthetic sphere.


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4266. That this is the case should prove little cause for astonishment, however. After all,has not the most vital and consequential writing on Marx in this century - such as

the basic texts of Western Marxism - come from individuals who found it necessaryto distance themselves thoroughly from the ossified doctrines of Marxist orthodoxy?67. Cf. Adorno, 131. Here, Adoro is referring specifically to Benjamin's habitualpractice in the first draft of his Baudelaire study of drawing immediate, mechanicalparallels between cultural phenomena and recent economic developments (such asthe "wine duty").68. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," 257.69. Ibid., 258. 70. Ibid., 255.

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Benjamin's Materialistic Theory of Experience. Richard Wolin

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