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Studies in Social and Political Thought Page 19

Brushing Thinking Against the Grain:Walter Benjamin and the Potentialities

of Art and History1

Jennifer Cooke

To elicit the laws of history we must leave aside kings, ministers and generals, and

select for study the homogenous, infinitesimal elements which influence the masses.

L eo Tolstoy2

It has become customary to begin papers on Walter Benjamin with admis-sions of how fragmentary his work is; how impossible it is to construe a sys-tematic argument or position which runs through his oeuvre; how mysticalhis earlier writings are. It is as though everyone is condemned forever torepeat the opening lines of Theodor Adorno's definitively entitled 'Portrait ofWalter Benjamin'.3 Additionally, there is a recent tendency to celebrate howpostmodern Benjamin is, how well his works read in a poststructuralist inter-

disciplinary climate. Mention is usually made of the various influences uponhis work of Judaism, most prominently seen in his friendship and corre-spondence with Gerhard Scholem; of Marxism, apparent in his relationshipwith Bertolt Brecht; and of his connection with the Frankfurt School theo-rists, particularly Adorno. Summarily, then, this paper begins conventionally.But a common theme that emerges from within the considerable body ofcommentary on Benjamin bears closer examination: namely, the extent towhich the many commentators who express an initial admiration for his work

finally admit to a sense of disappointment with it. This is typified by theapparent irreconcilability of the different influences discernable in his work,hence the varied attempts, in the first wave of his reception, to claim him forone position over and against another. While it is as true for Benjamin, as itis for numerous other thinkers, that his writing can be seen as a 'workingthrough' of different themes and influences, in the two of his pieces it focus-es upon, this paper will identify a project for a new way of thinking that isnot only radical, but which takes account of the political. Concentrating on

the posthumously edited and entitled 'Theses on the Philosophy of History'

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Cooke: Walter Benjamin, Art and History


Mechanical reproductions lack history; they have no authenticity. Not beingconfined to churches, museums or galleries, they detach their objects fromthe realm of tradition to 'meet the beholder halfway'.9 As a result, two thingsoccur: the authority of the object is jeopardised while, conversely, a reactiva-tion of the reproduced object is enabled. This leads to:

a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the

contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are

uniquely linked to the contemporary mass movements. Their most

powerful agent is film. Its social significance, particularly in its most

positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect,

that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage.10

These effects are part of the emancipation of art objects from ritual and tra-dition, as a result of which the 'total function of art is reversed. Instead ofbeing based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics.'11 Itis not that the content of the art work is now political, which is the argumentAdorno objected to, but that the function it serves is politicised, and thiseffect is uniquely linked to power. Benjamin never signals whether it is fun-damentally problematic to have art based on ritual and embedded in tradition.However, as will become clear by what he does emphasize, namely the newexperiential possibilities for the masses and the alterations this effects uponthem and upon reality, the resultant detachment from traditional aestheticclassifications and uses allows art to become more exoteric.

In this context, Benjamin notes that changes in sense perception are not newoccurrences, the reception of an artwork having always been circumscribedby the sense perception of society, which is in turn invariably influenced bynature and historical circumstances.12 Thus, reception of pieces is different

in different periods. The 'loss of aura' is a loss of reverence for the original:

To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a per-

ception whose 'sense of the universal equality of things' has increased

to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means

of reproduction.13

Importantly, at no point does Benjamin posit the experience of looking at,for example, a postcard of Michelangelo'sDavid as being the same as seeingthe original statue in Florence; similarly, it is accepted that pictures in news-


Studies in Social and Political ThoughtPage 20

and the better known 'The Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction', I will suggest that these later essays can, when read together,be construed as a complementary critique of art and history which Benjaminintended as an impetus to action and change.4

Benjamin's interest in film, and his affirmation of it as an art form, wereunusual among thinkers of his time. Adorno, for example, found Benjamin'stheory of cinema not 'at all convincing'.5 However, it is clear from 'The Workof Art' that Benjamin was not unaware of negative aspects of the film indus-try, such as the cult of the movie star, the financial control exerted by movie-makers and the lack of revolutionary merit in the material tackled. Followingthis admission, though, Benjamin comments:

We do not deny that in some cases today's films can also promote rev-olutionary criticism of social conditions, even of the distribution of

property. However, our present study is no more specifi cally concerned with thi s

than is the film production of Western Europe.6 (italics mine)

Inconsequential as these sentences may seem, they serve to highlightAdorno's misreading of Benjamin's essay on art. Adorno objects that 'theidea that a reactionary individual can be transformed into a member of theavant-garde through an intimate acquaintance with the films of Chaplin,strikes me as simple romanticization', but as the above quotation illustrates,it is not, as Adorno assumed, the content of a film that is important forBenjamin, but film as a phenomenon in itself.7 More precisely, it is the chal-lenge that film poses to traditional concepts of art that interests Benjamin,and from this he extrapolates the theory of 'loss of aura' as the manifestresult of mechanical reproductions of art works.

'Loss of aura' is probably the most widely known and utilized of Benjamin'sconcepts. Often placed in relation to what is identified as his morose critiqueof the evils of modernity, it is frequently interpreted to describe Benjamin'snegative view of the outcome of technological advances.8 However, I wishto argue that Benjamin's critique is, in fact, more sophisticated than this. Film,for Benjamin, marked a radical alteration in the continuity of art and aes-thetics. He questioned whether art would, as a result of its development, everbe the same again. It is in this light that I believe 'The Work of Art' shouldbe read: not as a crude polemic either for or against film, but as an assess-ment of its impact upon modern life.

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The potential for participation in film is not only manifested in the possibil-ity of being filmed, but also in the viewing experience. Whereas establishedforms of art, such as painting, require 'free-floating contemplation'23 andwere originally created for the individual to experience alone, cinema offersthe opportunity for a collective reaction resulting from the conditions inwhich it is experienced:

With regard to the screen, the critical and the receptive attitudes of the

public coincide. The decisive reason for this is that individual reactions

are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to

produce, and this is nowhere more pronounced than in the film. The

moment these responses become manifest they control each other.24

This observation alerts us to the danger inherent within the medium of film.'The distracted masses', writes Benjamin, 'absorb the work of art' contra tothe contemplative man who is absorbed by the artwork.25 Thus, film can bea tool of power utilized for control purposes, and it is this notion thatinforms the warning contained in the epilogue of the essay. Film reveals newways of seeing the world through such techniques as slow-motion and theclose-up; it allows us to travel without moving; it can help those who watchit adjust to the dangers inherent in modern life by means of exposure to theshock effect of constantly changing images. Nonetheless, it also represents amedium for manipulation.26 Benjamin notes this dual potentiality mostmarkedly when explicating the mode of distraction in which new art isabsorbed. Architecture serves as an example of a form of art that is collec-tively experienced in a state of distraction, and it underlines the habitualnature of sense perception formation. Changes in perception wrought bychanges in society and, especially for Benjamin in the 1930's, by increasingtechnologization, have to be absorbed by the individual. This is not achieved

by contemplation, but by tactile and habitual appropriation; in other words,by use. It is precisely the inattention of the masses that enables them toassimilate these new sense perceptions so easily, allowing change to occurmore rapidly:

Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent

to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception. Since,

moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle

the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to moti-

vate the masses. Today it does so in film.27



reels differ from the images available to the unarmed eye.14 What is centralto Benjamin's identification of this new experience of art is that it carrieswith it no condemnation of the desire to bring things closer, to open themup to a wider audience. What other theorists, such as Herbert Marcuse andAdorno, would label and dismiss as the commodification of art is, forBenjamin, an emancipation from tradition.15

There is superficially a questionable naivety in this position, though. WhereasAdorno would argue that the masses are produced by the dominant culture,their responses being proscribed by these mechanisms of domination,Benjamin apparently sees more potential within the new sense perception.16

Bearing in mind that 'The Work of Art' essay was written earlier than eitherAdorno's or Marcuse's expositions of culture, Benjamin shows perspicacity

in anticipating their later arguments. Through the rising importance of theexhibition value of a work, as opposed to its cult value, the 'work of artbecomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we areconscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental'.17 Inthe preceding paragraphs, he has delineated the functions of art which havecharacterised earlier epochs, incorporating cult and ritualistic values, anddemonstrated how, only with the Renaissance, had the 'cult of beauty' arrivedand given rise to what we know as aesthetics. What is named 'art', in both itsproduction and its reception, is, after all, contingent upon the society doingthe naming; in a footnote to this discussion, Benjamin cites Brecht, writingabout the alteration of art once it has become a commodity. It is not the case,then, that Benjamin is unaware of the commodification of art, but rather thathe sees how it effects a transformation both of the art work itself and of theway in which it is perceived.18 The new medium of film is, for him, the pri-mary example of this: it can 'extend our comprehension of the necessitiesthat rule our lives' and liberate perception by bursting apart the 'prison-

world' of 'locked-up' reality.19 The accessibility of cinema makes everyoneinto 'somewhat of an expert',20 allowing the 'audience to take the position ofa critic'.21 Furthermore, each person has, potentially, the opportunity to befilmed, albeit probably only as an extra. This last point is elucidated by anassessment of the rising opportunities for publication theoretically availableto all. Although the tone here is initially ambiguous, a revealingly vitriolicfootnote is provided in which Aldous Huxley is cited, condemning the expan-sion of publication possibilities inherent in the explosion of print culture.Benjamin's commentary on this lengthy extract is concise: 'this mode ofobservation is obviously not progressive'.22

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However, in its mobilization of Messianic themes, the 'Theses' is not a piecethat one could imagine Max Horkheimer allowing into print in the Institute'sname.32 More than a critique of current thought, the 'Theses' proposes a newway of thinking that is, I will argue, deeply committed to the political.However, although theorists such as Susan Buck-Morss and Michael Lwyare right in identifying a revolutionary aspect to the 'Theses', they are wrong,I think, in positing Benjamin as someone who was awaiting the 'revolution' inthe practical terms envisaged by his contemporaries.33 Ironically, Lwy him-self notes, with some surprise, that Benjamin was 'attracted neither by theRussian October Revolution nor by the German Revolution of 1918-19'.34

Unless thinking is to change, the 'Theses' informs us, the revolution willalways be within the wrong terms and will ultimately lead to a 'servile inte-gration in an uncontrollable apparatus' such as that Benjamin recognised

as having effectively disempowered the politicians attempting to opposeFascism at the time of his writing.35 To elucidate the type of thinking that isbeing advocated here, it will be helpful to turn to the polemic against tradi-tional historicism contained within the 'Theses'.

History that is construed as linear and causal leads implicitly to a belief inprogress. The problems with progress are twofold: firstly, it constructs themovement of history and the present as part of the 'infinite perfectibility ofmankind'; and, secondly, it appears irresistible, unstoppable.36 The first ofthese postulates, for a German Jewish thinker writing under the shadow ofNazism in the late 1930s, is obviously a lie, while the second leads to aninconceivable and fatalistic apathy. History, Benjamin perceived, is only con-catenated retrospectively, establishing causality a posteriori; and yet it is pre-sented factually, as truth. Traditional historicism provides the narrative of thevictors, and does so as if there were no other narratives to be recounted. Thisleads to Benjamin's much quoted formulation: 'There is no document of civ-

ilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism'.37 However,neither traditional historicism nor historical materialism, the latter advocatedby Benjamin as a replacement for the former, will ever be able to recount 'theway it really was'.38 The role, then, of this reconceived history is not to tell usabout the past as something knowable in all its moments. Such knowledge,Benjamin believed, would only be available to a 'redeemed mankind'.39

This critique of historicism has led some theorists, such as Axel Honneth, torecognise in the 'Theses' a project for recouping the past of the oppressed;but this view can be misleading.40 As careful as the historical materialist is



It is fitting that the warning about the potential for a Fascist appropriation offilm follows this insight, for, while Benjamin asserts that this new experiencewill help man with 'the tasks which face the human apparatus of percep-tion at the turning points of history', Fascism too can utilize film.28 In thepropaganda images of monster rallies, the masses can be confronted withthemselves aestheticized.29 Fascism can produce politics as aesthetic;Benjamin suggests in the final line of 'The Work of Art' that communism willrespond by politicising art. Clearly, film is a political tool.

In my reading of 'The Work of Art', Benjamin offers neither a lamentation,nor a celebration, of new art forms, but an analysis of film: its historicalprecedents; its effects; its potential. Ultimately, the essay is about the powerthat can be exercised by those in control of art: a power which now, thanks

to art's increased accessibility via new forms of mass enjoyment provision,has had its traditional ritual and cult form expressions altered, and its poten-tial for appropriation by Fascism as well as by Hollywood considerablyextended. Adorno, who cannot see beyond the banality of Charlie Chaplinfilms, misses this critique and thus, I argue, misapprehends the thrust of boththe warning, and the suggestions for reappropriating the medium, thatBenjamin lays out. I f 'The Work of Art' is to be taken for its stated purpose,'as a weapon' against Fascism, then the 'Theses on the Philosophy ofHistory', to which I will now turn, can be read as no less of an attack uponcomplacent thinking.30

Many interpretations of the 'Theses', the huge variety of which at the veryleast demonstrate the richness of the text, unearth earlier works ofBenjamin's to illuminate his conceptions of remembrance, history and time.While these are undoubtedly useful, it is outside of the scope of this closereading of just two texts to investigate other parts of Benjamin's oeuvre.

There is also a reluctance, on my part, to transplant themes that Benjaminidentified in the writing of others and employ them reflexively to interpret hisown work, although concomitantly, denial of the immense influence thatProust and Baudelaire exerted over Benjamin would be impossible. The'Theses' is essentially about thinking: how to think the past, the present andthe future. It provides, in some respects, a perfect example of a FrankfurtSchool critique of positivism and instrumental reason, and it is therefore nosurprise that an essay which shares many of the concerns of the 'Theses','Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian', was first published in Zeitschrift furSozialforschung, the journal of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research.31

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now which he blasted out of the continuum of history. The French

Revolution viewed itself as Rome incarnate.46

History, to reiterate this central point, is a construction filled by the presenceof 'now-time'. Thus Jetztzeit is not, as could have been mistakenly assumed,the time of the future that is to be ushered in by the Messiah. Robespierre, aman in a moment of danger, sees in Rome the France of the EighteenthCentury and this impetus of Jetztzeitpropels Rome out of the annals of lin-ear historicity. I t is a constellation of the past flashing up into the present andthus revolutionising present time and the present conception of the past.Montage is a good description for this constellation, which is powerfulenough to throw linear time into stasis; Benjamin calls it variously a 'monad',a 'Messianic cessation of happening', and a 'revolutionary chance in the fight

for an oppressed past'.47

In this sense, then, the historical materialist is an activist. For him or her, thepresent is a place which offers the opportunity of a 'unique experience withthe past' when s/he 'grasps the constellation which his own era has formedwith a definite earlier one'.48 A relationship with the past must include thetwo times, past and present; being thought simultaneously, they will beimbued with the Jetztzeit that will arrest linear thinking and time. The SocialDemocrats are reproved for making the working class think of the future,thus displacing the remembrance of their oppressed ancestors which wouldenable a 'with' experience to erupt. For the 'with' moment can consolidatetime. Perhaps the best explanation of this is given as an anecdote in HannahArendt's introductory essay toIlluminations, in which she describes Benjamin'sfascination with two grains of wheat displayed in the Jewish section of amuseum, upon which someone had inscribed the complete Shema Israel.49

These pieces of wheat, nourishment in seed form, additionally encapsulated

nourishment for the Jewish soul. Similarly, when the historical materialistblasts a specific life or time out of the continuum of history:

the lifework is preserved in this work and at the same time cancelled

[A ufheben]; in the lifework, the era; and in the era, the entire course of

history. The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains

time as a precious but tasteless seed.50

Thus the present, when it is Jetztzeit, can contain 'the entire history ofmankind in an enormous abridgement'.51The Judaic practice of preparative



exhorted to be about the dangers of empathising with the victors, a histori-cal narrative which instead recounts the details of those crushed by history'svictors will not escape the problem of linearity, but merely invert it. For, 'Thetrue picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image whichflashes up at the instant it can be recognized and is never seen again.'41 Toacknowledge this interruption of the present by the past is 'to seize holdof a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger'.42 Yes, memory of thepast is important, but not in a static sense of retelling: rather, in the dynam-ic possibilities it has in relation to knowledge of the present. It is, indeed, the'tradition of the oppressed' which teaches that the 'state of emergency inwhich we live' is not an exception, as in Carl Schmitt's right wing formulation,but a rule; memory can reveal the present state of politics.43 The remem-brance spoken of in the 'Theses', in connection with Jewish prayers for the

dead and calendar days which serve as a 'time-lapse camera', is an action anda particularised activity, not a memory in the sense of something passivelyreceived or transmittable.44 It is in this sense also a preparation, a being readyfor, so that we are in a state to recognize the past when it flashes up at thatmoment of danger. Once remembrance is interpreted as an active state ofpreparation, the Messianic references in the 'Theses' become less esoteric. Ifthe final message with which Benjamin closes is directly Judaic, it is a clearone, for all that: the state of preparation in which the Jews exist provides thethreshold over which the Messiah may cross at any moment. This is not anotiose waiting but an active being. It is a being open to the future without pre-dicting it or predicating it upon past events.

Having criticised the 'empty, homogenous' time of historicism, Benjaminintroduces the concept of Jetztzeit, the 'now-time'. Kia Lindroos is right toquibble about the gloss given to this word in the English translations ofBenjamin's Illuminations; it is simply wrong to equate the term with the mysti-

calnunc stans.45 Attention to the text demonstrates that Jetztzeitis neither anentity outside time, nor a condition in which there is no future and no past.Following on from this, a second alteration by Lindroos to the English trans-lation of Thesis XIV throws into sharper relief the montage element inher-ent in Benjamin's conception of Jetztzeit. With her amendments, the textreads as follows:

History is the object of a construction whose site is not homogenous,

empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now [Jetztzeit]. Thus,

to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with the time of the

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This attempt must fail, because the materialist theory of social devel-

opment cannot be simply fitted into the anarchist conception of

Jetztzeiten which intermittently come crashing through fate as if from

above. An anti-evolutionary conception of history cannot be tacked

ontoa historical materialism, which takes account of progress not

only in the dimension of the forces of production, but in that of dom-

ination too.58

Unhappy as I am about the terminology utilized to describe the movementof Jetztzeit in this excerpt, there is a legitimate point being made here aboutforms of history. For Habermas is arguing that, if traditional historicalempiricism is dismissed, then the ability to judge the changes in society is alsolost. Returning to the 'Theses' will clarify this point. 'Historicism rightly cul-

minates in universal history', Benjamin writes, and, if we return to the con-tention that the 'Theses' is about thinking, then it can be argued thatBenjamin is not seeking to condone the abolition of 'additive' history; he isnot suggesting that history books be destroyed.59 What he is in fact callingfor, in warning against a nave belief in the narratives of victory that com-prise historical accounts, is a method of thinking history that presents it assomething other than a causal chain of events.

Habermas is not alone, however, in exhibiting reticence towards Benjamin'swork. Darko Suvin has seen, in the arrested moment of thought, a block tothe future,60 which Gillian Rose also recognises when she writes thatBenjamin's thinking 'is restricted to the stasis of desertion'.61 However,others have noted how recent theorists' works seem often to echo many ofthe concerns which Benjamin recorded in the 'Theses'. Both MatthiasFritsch62 and Maria Sepulveda Santos,63 for example, have identified similar-ities between Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, with regard to the latter's stress

upon responsibility towards a past that can only ever be experienced in thepresent; while Lindroos notes that Benjamin's critique of universal historyprefigures Jean-Franois Lyotard's heralding of the collapse of traditionalgrand narratives.64 However, although generally interesting, the question as towhether today's critical theorists can collaborate with Benjamin is not thetopic under scrutiny in this paper, which has been shaped, in part, as aresponse to Gillian Rose's claim, inThe Melancholy Science, that 'missing fromthe Marxism of both men [Benjamin and Adorno] is any notion of humanactivity or praxis'.65 Reading Benjamin, it is clear that he was not a Marxist inany simple sense of the term, despite the efforts of Buck-Morss and Terry



remembrance, which allows the recognition of this blast when it occurs, illu-minates why it is that the puppet representing historical materialism in ThesisI is secretly aided in his game of chess by the wizened hunchback of theolo-gy. To win at chess one needs to be attentive to the moves of one's opponent.As Arendt and Irving Wolhfarth have highlighted, the figure of the hunch-back who inaugurates the 'Theses' was not new to Benjamin.52 He is the lit-tle man who punishes one for inattention, for clumsiness, and thus it is thathe can provide the winning moves in a chess game, for as theology he is pre-pared, and as the hunchback he is observant and alert. Elements central tothe Judaic tradition are thus demonstrated as being essential to the project ofhistorical materialism.

A second allegorical figure, the angel of history in Thesis IX, has stimulated

much commentary, and even lent itself to several book titles.53 Paul Klee'spainting, Angelus Novus, which served as its inspiration, was in Benjamin'spossession. Interpretations of the angel tend to focus on one particularaspect, but when considered together these various accounts do more justiceto the complexity of the allegory. For Gillian Rose, following the Messianicallusions of the Theses, the rising debris which the angel contemplates withhorror is the product of a world without redemption.54 For others too, thedescription of the angel highlights loss, but also constitutes an invocation toremembrance.55 Robert Alter, however, interprets the storm from paradisethat represents progress as a bitterly ironic image. All these emphases areimportant. But I would disagree with Alter's contention that the angel hasbeen robbed of its traditional function as a result of its removal from the'realm of revelation and divine messages'.56 I would argue that a concep-tion of the angel as messenger, as harbinger, is essential to a faithful readingof the image. The angel of history-as-catastrophe serves as a warning of howthe situation will continue unless we begin to think history differently.

Directly after this section comes the reproof directed towards the SocialDemocrats and, implicitly, towards the politicians of Communism in Russia,all of whom 'betray their own cause'.57 Benjamin is not suggesting that theangel's view of history should be adopted, but rather the condition of pre-pared remembrance, detailed in Theses XIV-XVII, that has been discussedabove.

In his essay 'Consciousness-Raising or Redemptive Criticism - TheContemporaneity of Walter Benjamin', Jrgen Habermas questionsBenjamin's ability effectively to marry historical materialism and theology:

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must be rescued from historicism and turned from an impotent retelling ofevents into an active form of thought and preparation. To be aware of theideology concealed behind presentations of art and of history is to open adoor to criticism which embodies an impetus to think differently and there-by to exploit the potentialities of both phenomena. I t can be argued thatBenjamin failed to outline a project for revolution. But it was his hope, I con-tend, that to think differently, to brush thinking against the grain, should bea proactive preparation, an enabling of the past radically to interact with, andalter, the present, which might, at the very least, allow the possibility of a gen-uine revolutionary moment.

Jennifer Cooke, having completed an MA in Critical Theory, has recentlyembarked upon a DPhil in English Literature at Sussex. She is researching the

ways in which optical instruments, such as mirrors, glasses, telescopes, mag-nifying glasses and kaleidoscopes, reflect and refract the concept of lookingin the literature into which they are incorporated.

Notes

1. This title is taken from the line: '[A historical materialist] regards it as his task to

brush history against the grain' in Walter Benjamin, 'Theses on the Philosophy of

History', Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn (London: Pimlico,

1999), p. 248.

2. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Vol. 2 (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 977.

3. Theodor W. Adorno, 'A Portrait of Walter Benjamin', Prisms (London: Neville

Spearman, 1967), p. 229.

4. Both essays appear inI lluminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn (London:

Pimlico, 1999). From herein they shall be referred to as 'The Work of Art' and

'Theses' for the sake of brevity.

5. Theodor W. Adorno & Walter Benjamin, The Complete Correspondence1928-1940, ed.

Henri Lonitz, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), p. 130.6. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, pp. 224-225.

7. Theodor W. Adorno & Walter Benjamin, The Complete Correspondence, p. 130.

8. See, for example, Michael Lwy, 'On Changing the World: Essays in Political

Philosophy from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin' (London: Humanities Press, 1993),

pp. 178-179 and Axel Honneth, 'A Communicative Disclosure of the Past: On the

Relation Between Anthropology and Philosophy of History in Walter Benjamin',New

Formations, No. 20, Summer 1993, pp. 88-89.

9. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, p. 214.

10. Ibid., p. 215.

11. Ibid., p. 218.



Eagleton to rescue this aspect of his thought.66 However, this was probablyalso the case with several other members of the Frankfurt School. As Suvinnotes, Thesis X is critical, without naming any group in particular, of the vul-gar Marxism practised in the 1930s and reflects the general sense of disap-pointment with the uses of Marx which underpinned much of the work pro-duced by the Institute for Social Research.67 But, in the 'Theses', Benjaminoffers a new, and I think persuasive, form of thinking which reconceives his-tory as a tool for the present, and also for the future. In order that processesof societal change may escape the conditions that lead inevitably towards areincorporation into the 'uncontrollable apparatus' which presents history aspart of the long road towards progress, a new thinking of past, present andfuture is proposed. If society were really to think in that manner of prepara-tive remembrance that the 'Theses' advocates, then thinking would itself be a

form of action, a form of active remembrance that contains both a 'with'experience of the past and an openness to the future. Both the 'Theses' and'The Work of Art' can be read as warnings about conventional forms ofthought, and interpreted as calls to uncover the motives of those who offerus images of the way things are, as in the aestheticized politics of Fascism, orrecords of the way things were, exemplified by narratives of linear causal his-tory. 'The Work of Art' fulfils performatively Tolstoy's demand, as expressedin my epigraph; it examines the influences that pertain to the masses and, inso doing, exposes the potential for change, for both oppressor andoppressed, that technology can bring to bear upon the construction of theseinfluences. In 'The Work of Art', Benjamin steadfastly refuses to condemnfilm as a trivial art form, demonstrating his awareness of the potential for amisuse of the medium that any political mobilization of aesthetics wouldentail. Today, when broadcasting relies increasingly heavily upon images tosupport reportage and convey pathos, this remains just as pertinent a warn-ing as it was in the 1930s. It is the function of art, in addition to possible

changes in its form, which alters in each different epoch of society, and thefunctional aspect of art cannot be considered without a concomitant consid-eration of power and whom it is wielded by. In the 'Theses', the annals of his-tory are exposed as being clandestinely inscribed with the power of the vic-tors, which renders them a record of civilized progress as opposed to aremembrance of oppression. Benjamin's anti-evolutionary conception ofhistory throws into relief this one-sided and linear tendency. Through theiranalyses of aesthetics and history, both essays propound interpretations ofthe present moment as one to be utilized. On the one hand, the aestheticiza-tion of film by Fascism must be responded to while, on the other, history

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35. Walter Benjamin, I lluminations, p. 250.

36. Ibid., p. 250.

37. Ibid., p. 248.

38. Ibid., p. 247.

39. Ibid., p. 246.

40. Axel Honneth, 'A Communicative Disclosure of the Past: On the Relation

Between Anthropology and Philosophy of History in Walter Benjamin'. See in par-

ticular p. 91 and Honneth's concept of the 'moral debt' towards the past.


42. Ibid., p. 247.

43. Ibid., pp. 248-249.

44. Ibid., pp. 255 & 253 respectively.

45. Kia Lindroos, 'Scattering Community: Benjamin on Experience, Narrative and

History', Philosophy and Social Cri ti cism, Vol. 27 (6), footnote 7, p. 39.

46. Kia Lindroos, 'Scattering Communities', p. 39, and Walter Benjamin, I lluminations,pp. 252-253. It is the first clause that is altered. InI ll uminations it reads 'History is the

subject of a structure'.


48. Ibid., p. 255.

49. Hannah Arendt 'Walter Benjamin: 1892-1940', Illuminations, p. 17.


51. Ibid., p. 255.

52. Hannah Arendt, 'Walter Benjamin: 1892-1940', Illuminations, pp. 11-13, and Irving

Wohlfarth, 'On the Messianic Structure of Walter Benjamin's Last Reflections',Glyph

3(London: John Hopkins University Press, 1978) p. 159.

53. For example: Karen Remmler, Waking the Dead: Correspondences Between Walter

Benjamin's Concept of Remembrance and Ingeborg Bachmann's Ways of D ying (California:

Ariadne Press, 1996) and Jonathan Boyarin, Storm from Paradise: The Poli ti cs of Jewish

Memory(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992).

54. Gillian Rose, Judaism and Moderni ty: Phil osophical Essays(Oxford: Blackwell, 1993),

p. 9 & p. 209.

55. See in this context: Karen Remmler, Wak ing the Dead, p. 33, and Jonathan

Boyarin, Storm from Paradise, p. xvi.

56. Robert Alter, Necessary A ngels: Tradition and Moderni ty in Kafk a, Benjamin and Scholem

(Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 114.


58. Jrgen Habermas, 'Consciousness-Raising or Redemptive Criticism - The

Contemporaneity of Walter Benjamin', New German Crit ique, No. 17, Spring 1978,

p. 50.


60. Darko Suvin, 'The Arrested Moment in Benjamin's "Theses": Epistemology vs.

Politics, I mage vs. Story',Neohelicon, Vol. 28 (1), 2001, pp. 192-193.



12. Ibid., p. 216.

13. Ibid., p. 217.

14. Ibid., p. 217.

15. See, for example, Max Horkheimer & Theodor W. Adorno, 'The Culture

Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception' in Dialectic of Enl ightenment, trans. John

Cumming (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972) and Herbert Marcuse, 'The Conquest

of the Unhappy Consciousness: Repressive Desublimation' in One-Dimensional Man

(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988).

16. For Adorno's position see Theodor W. Adorno & Walter Benjamin, The Complete

Correspondence, p. 130.

17. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, p. 219.

18. Ibid., footnote 9, p. 239.

19. Ibid., p. 229.

20. Ibid., p. 225.

21. Ibid., p. 222.22. Ibid., p. 241. It should be noted here that the use of 'progressive' in this context

is different to the concept of progress criticised below in connection with the

'Theses'.

23. Ibid., p. 220.

24. Ibid., p. 228.

25. Ibid., p. 232.

26. Ibid., pp. 229-230 & footnote 19, p. 243.

27. Ibid., p. 223.

28. Ibid., p. 223.

29. Ibid., footnote 21, pp. 243-244.

30. Ibid., p. 212.

31. Walter Benjamin, 'Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian', The Frank furt School

Reader, eds. Andrew Arato & Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, 1982).

32. Interesting in this respect is the speed with which it was published posthumous-

ly by Adorno and Horkheimer, despite the Institute's reticence towards Benjamin's

work in his lifetime. This might be due to Adorno's observation on the 'Theses' that:

'none of Benjamin's works show him closer to our intentions than this. This relates

above all to the conception of history as permanent catastrophe, the critique of

progress and mastery of nature, and the place of culture.' Quoted in Rolf

Wiggershaus,The Frank furt School, trans. Michael Robertson (Cambridge: Polity Press,

1994), p. 311.

33. See Susan Buck-Morss, 'Walter Benjamin - Revolutionary Writer (I)', New Left

Review, No. 128, August 1981, pp. 50-75, and Susan Buck-Morss, 'Walter Benjamin -

Revolutionary Writer (II)', New Left Review, No. 129, September-October 1981, pp.

77-95. For Michael Lwy, seeOn Changing the World: E ssays in Poli ti cal Phi losophy from

Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin(London: Humanities Press, 1993).

34. Michael Lwy,On Changing the World, p. 147.

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61. Gillian Rose, Judaism and Modernity, p. 209.

62. Matthias Fritsch, 'History, Violence, Responsibility', Rethinking H istory, Vol. 5 (2),

2001, pp. 285-304.

63. Maria Sepulveda Santos, 'Memory and Narrative in Social Theory: The

Contributions of Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin', Time and Society, Vol. 10 (2),

2001, pp. 163-189.

64. Kia Lindroos, 'Scattering Communities', pp. 33-39.

65. Gillian Rose, The Melancholy Science(London: Macmillan, 1978), p. 37.

66. Susan Buck-Morss, op. cit., and Terry Eagleton,Walter Benjamin(London: Verso,

1981).

67. Darko Suvin, 'The Arrested Moment in Benjamin's "Theses"', p. 192.

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