Benjamin's Materialist Theology

[WARREN GOLDSTEIN]

Dear Giles,

           The key to reading Benjamin, as you suggest, is to trace central
concepts that are developed in the early work through the later works. 
You claim the position of "a Hegelian Marxist" but your focus on a truth
detached from any particular historical experience strikes me as
"Neo-Kantian"- an apriori Vernunft which is independent of an aposteriori
Verstand.  This is because your reading of the earlier works sets the
framework through which you look at the later works.  Rather I would
argue that it should be the other way around.  We should use the early
works to understand the later works but we should divorce ourselves of
the idealism of the early works in order and attempt to obtain an
understanding of theological concepts from a materialist perspective. 
Benjamin in his own words, should be viewed "as a scholar to whom the
stance of the materialist seems scientifically and humanely more
productive in everything that moves us them does that of the idealist. If I
might express it in brief: I have never been able to do research and think
in any sense other than, if you will, a theological one, namely, in accord
with the Talmudic teaching about the forty-nine levels of meaning in
every passage of Torah."(Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, pp.
372-373)  Benjamin's theological research and thought should be seen
>from a materialist perspective- the material is the text.
	The first problem is how to interpret these early metaphysical
concepts.  Rather than approaching them from a materialist perspective,
your interpretation is idealist.  This is made apparent in your discussion
of the relationship between allegory and truth.  You write: "the
Trauerspiel book attempts to read the relentless negativity of allegory and
the falseness of the 'resurrection' as a sign of truth (timeless
presence)."  You appear to argue that allegory is transcendent and
brings about a resurrection- even if a false one.  My understanding of
allegory is quite different.  It comes from a combination of reading the
Trauerspiel book in conjunction with the essay "On Language as Such..."
and "The Task of the Translator" as well as Scholem's discussion of
allegory in Jewish Mysticism.  Allegory emerges as a result of the fall of
language- its fragmentation into a multiplicity of impure languages. 
Allegory exists only in a fallen world.  Truth, on the other hand, exists
only in an Ursprache.  "If there is such a thing as a language of truth, the
tensionless and even silent depository of the ultimate truth which all
thought strives for, then this language of truth is- the true
language."(Illuminations, p. 77)  The task of the translator is to reunite
language with an Ursprache.  Allegory represents a fragmented reality. 
Allegory does not so much reveal the truth but rather it conceals the truth
which is hidden.  Or rather, the truth in allegory is broken and fragmented
and can only be interpreted.  Allegory requires that we interpret meaning.
 Thus what does that mean for the relationship between allegory and
truth?  As opposed to the symbol which gives hope of redemption, in
allegory history is unredeemed.  You focus on truth seems to draw its
source from Benjamin's discussion of Plato's Ideenlehre in the 
Erkenntiskritisiche Vorrrede to the Trauerspiel book.  In it Benjamin
writes:

"Truth is not an intent which realizes itself in empirical reality; it is the
power which determines the essence of this empirical reality.  The state
of being, beyond all phenomenality, to which alone this power belongs, is
that of the name.  This determines the manner in which ideas are given. 
But they are not so much given in a primordial language as in a primordial
form of perception, in which words possess their own nobility as
names, unimpaired by cognitive meaning."(OGTD p. 36)

In this passage, Benjamin holds on to an idealistic conception of truth-
which exists in the name.  However, he argues that truth does not
belong to an Ursprache but a "primordial form of perception."  The
separation of language from names here is confusing.  But ultimately
language is derived from names.  The power to name stems from a
primordial form of perception.  This primordial form of perception which
preexists even the Ursprache enables one to recognize truth.  Your
argument that "the 'recognition' of the truth" "is the moment of
metaphysical experience" it based on these early readings which
Benjamin himself moved away from in his later works (see below).    
	My argument that the allegory is not based on visual images is
grounded in the following passage: "Here it is not a question of the
actualization of images in visual terms; but rather, in philosophical
contemplation, the idea is released from the heart of reality as the word,
reclaiming its namegiving rights."(OGTD, p. 37)  This seems to contradict
the passage that "the written word tends towards the visual'. OGTD
175-6).  But I think the way out of it that allegorical thinking which is
expressed through language is visual only in contemplation.  These
visual images which are created as a result of language take place in
thought rather than an external reality which is the focus of the
dialectical image.
	In order to systematize Benjamin and how he deals with the
question of metaphysical experience, I think we have to understand his
theory on a few different levels.  In the 1916 essay on Experience,
Benjamin attempts to ground metaphysics in experience.  This is an
argument against Kant who argued that reason enables us to perceive
metaphysical ideas whereas experience is empirical.  More importantly,
in the early works, as some of the above quotations indicate, Benjamin
grounds metaphysics in language.  Metaphysical ideas, including that of
truth, can only be expressed through language- through the name.
	In 1926, Benjamin shift to surrealism brings him in a different
direction.  Surrealist experience combines a mixture of Freudian social
psychology and Marxism.  Benjamin's conception of experience moves
away from Neo-Kantianism towards a social psychology which is based
on Freud.  Benjamin's theory of dreams is based on a combination of
Freud's Traumdeutung and Jung collective unconscious.  His later theory
of experience argues that the fall in experience in modern society is
based on the need of the unconscious to protect itself against the stimuli
of shock (Freud).  Whereas Benjamin' early theory of experience is an
argument against Kant, his later theory of experience is tied to social
psychology.  Benjamin's desire for human beings to be able to regain the
capacity to experience is a desire for reenchantment.  Metaphysical
experience is no longer based on idealist notions of truth but on the
theory of dreams and experience provided by social psychology. 
Benjamin's theory of collective awakening is also derived from social
psychology. Society is living in a dream state and that it must collectively
wake up from this dream (an odd mixture of Jung's collective
unconscious together with Marx).  The dialectical image is in relation
some type of agent of social awakening.  It is true that Benjamin writes
that the dialectical image is a dream image.  However, this position is
somewhat contradictory.  The dream is a product of the unconscious
which is based on the past.(see Freud, Traumdeutung, p. 504)  The
dialectical image, on the other hand, is associated with historical
awakening.  However, this does not mean that the dreaming is not
historical.  Benjamin interest in dreaming is not only individual but
collective.  If society is living in a dream state, this must be associated
with a collective unconscious which is tied to the past. 
	I am beginning to understand by what you mean with by
temporality.  But I think I my misunderstanding of what you have been
arguing is a result of semantics.  Benjamin, in the Theses is arguing
against historicism- a linear presentation of history.  His conception of
history is quite different. "A historical materialist approaches a historical
subject only where he encounters it as a monad."(Ill., p. 263)  This
monad exists in the past and must be brought into the present through
Vergegenwartigung (making the past present).  This is done trough
remembrance (Eingedenken).  Part of the position that you are taking
sounds exactly what Benjamin is arguing against in the Theses that of
historicism which holds on to a conception of historical truth: "The true
picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image
which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never
seen again. `The truth will not run away from us': in the historical outlook
of historicism these words of Gottfried Keller mark the exact point where
historical materialism cuts through historicism."(Ill, p. 265)  Benjamin, in
the late works, is not arguing for any type of truth which exists
independently from history.  He is against a linear conception of history
which views history as even and uniform.  The past, for him, exists side
by side with the present.  The task of the historical materialist is to find
those monads or dialectical images of the past and bring them into the
present.  This is the means by which historical awakening is achieved. 
This is not independent from history; it is a different conception of
history. 
	Benjamin's position, as you point out, is indeed contradictory. 
And this is what makes him so interesting.  I tend to agree with you that
these contradictions can not be reconciled.  However, this is not the
position of Marx or of Benjamin, but that of Adorno in Negative Dialectics.
 As we are both aware Benjamin incorporated concepts from the
reactionary romantics into his own theory- particular the collective
unconscious of Jung.  Yet Benjamin refunctioned it into something
revolutionary- that of collective awakening.  What the Generation of 1914
had in common whether they were reactionary or revolutionary
romantics- was a contempt the existing order.  Benjamin's Marxism was
at times forced, but his class analysis was not.  His contempt for
commodity society and the elite which benefit from it seems quite natural.


Sincerely,

Warren Goldstein


P.S.  Can you give me the reference for the first draft of `Imperial
Panorama'? (the gift to Scholem (1923) The 'downhill road of hate'
transformed to 'the rising path of prayer')