Hysterical Benjamin

[Tom Walker]

Giles Peaker wrote:

>As a very quick rejoinder to Tom Walker - historical materialism is not a
>positivist science like chemical science. Also, if the messiah is
>metaphoric in W.B., it seems to me that redemption has no agent or
>certainly  no subject, unless perhaps it is the revolution and I would be
>reluctant to see that as an actant.

Ouch. Giles' Adornian rejoinder deflates my erstwhile Brechtian vulgarity 
with disdain! Engels, among others, positively rolls over in his grave 
(figuratively speaking, of course) to hear such negation. And the dish ran 
away with the spoon. But as for the metaphorical status of Benjamin's 
messiah, I'll cite the following passage:

"Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a *weak* 
messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be 
settled cheaply. Historical materialists are aware of this."

I read "generation" as a demographic term, as in "Every child accomplishes 
something great, something irreplaceable for humanity. Every childhood, 
through its interests in technological phenomena, its curiousity for all 
sorts of inventions and machinery, binds technological achievement [the 
newest things] onto the old world of symbols."

But I suppose one man's meat is another man's metaphor. And like I said, my 
reading of W.B. is *tres* idiosyncratic.

Tom Walker, knoW Ware Communications
http://mindlink.net/knowware/
tel (604)688-8296
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