Historical Benjamin

[owner-frankfurt-school@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU]

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.

The rest of this is something of an instant reply to Warren Goldstein,
which will of necessity be followed by a period of silence on both our
parts, it seems. It will also be relatively brief, partly because I have
little to argue with in what you say. I do, however, think you
misunderstand my motives and arguments in some places, and I have one or
two questions to put to you, so I'll keep this short and refer to my last
letter and your latest in passing, as it were.

I cling to my Hegelian Marxist identification, in that my focus is the
historical condition of Benjamin (this has not perhaps been emphasised).
What I have attempted to do is in the spirit of immanent critique, finding
the points where Benjamin's work cannot live up to or goes beyond its own
concept. The broad theme of the argument with regard to the early/late
debate (which is a non starter for me) is to indicate the constant problems
internal to W.B.s work, whether it is cast as idealist or materialist.
These problems mean it cannot be adequately cast as either. (By the way, a
materialist perspective does not mean that the material is the text, this
seems like semiotic idealism a la structuralism). To analyse the process of
idealist thought is not to be idealist. I am not claiming Benjamin was
right, but trying to get an historical grip on his works through their
internal contradictions.

I wasn't trying to argue that allegory is transcendent, quite the reverse.
Allegory does bring about the appearance of a resurrection, Benjamin states
this towards the end of the Trauerspiel, but it is an appearance which is
of historicality in that it retains the separation of spirit and material
world. In allegory (and I stress 'in') the realm of the spirit appears as
the ultimate meaning of the fragmented, abandoned secular world of things
through the allegorisation of allegory. But Benjamin is not interested in
this resurrection as truth. Truth is represented in the Trauerspiel by the
constellation of which allegory is a part, but truth cannot be directly
represesented. It is the sheer negativity of allegory, which gives the
historical  world as empty on the one hand and which produces an equally
empty, abstract 'spirit' on the other that points (in a quasi dialectical
manner) to the timeless fullness of truth. Likewise, the human symbol is a
conceit, it is only the unredeemed history and historicality of allegory
that can indicate truth, but it is not within the allegorical form that
this happens, it is rather through  the existence of the allegorical form.
(Hence commentary). The 'primordial form of perception' is an early
indication of the problems that the secularisation of the metaphysical
experience will produce. But note that ideas are 'unimpaired by cognitive
meaning', this is more than just an attempt to wrongfoot Kant, but part of
the perception of subjectivity (semiotic par excellence) as fallen (the
subject-object opposition). I'm not sure that this passage allows for a
distinction between such perception and Ursprache (as subsequent).
Ursprache is precisely the nonexistence of the subject-object divide.

The distinction between allegory as imagistic (visual) and the prologue
passage you cite is also part of the distinction between allegory as
historical and the image as representation of the idea. Allegory is visual,
but the representation of the idea cannot be, because it is never a direct
(or semiotic) representation. Thus 'allegory' can be such an image as
suggested above, but this is not to say that allegory can represent the
idea within its forms.

The shift to 'social psychology' I tried to reckon with in the last letter.
A couple of further points. Surrealist experience is not a combination of
Freud and Marx until the late 20s, and not integrated as such until
1929/30, after Benjamin's initial engagement with it. Benjamin's adoption
of Freud is idiosyncratic to say the least, and is not based on dream
analysis (even less than Surrealism is). Benjamin is concerned with the
manifest content of dreams, not their latent level. (See Adorno's various
pieces on W.B. in Notes to Literature). The 'shock' theory is fairly late
and fairly shortlived, it also owes more to Simmel than to freud. It is
certainly not the broad underpinning of the social psychology (I prefer
"theory of experience" - the brief use of Freud is untypical and by and
large Benjamin is uninterested in the psyche).

I agree about the 'collective dream state' and the collective awakening,
but my points on the two main stages of the dialectical image were intended
to hightlight the difficulties in this conception. The 1935 dialectical
image is undoubtedly a dream image, hence Adorno's critique, which is
accurate. 'Awakening' has a very dubious status, little more than rhetoric
at this stage. I think you misunderstand what I meant by the relation of
dream and history in the 1935 expose. The specific dreams are, as you say,
the dreams of a specific society. They are absolutely historical. Wht
Benjamin does not do at this stage is historicise the dream state. When
Adorno insists on the specific commodity character of the 19c, his point is
that dreaming itself is historical, not just the content of the dream.
Benjamin does not address this at this stage  (The relation of past and
present in the dream is also not simply comparable with that of Freud even
with a dash of Jung). 

The attempt to ground the experience of the dialectical image in modern
experience that follows 1935 is an attempt to find a socio-historical basis
for the 'metaphysical' experience and thus awakening. It has to be both
historical in its specifics and (because it offers the presence of the past
in the present and thus a different experience of history, beyond the
continuum) extra historical. This is not necessarily the same as timeless,
but it stands outside the modern experience of history. Awakening is not an
intellectual process for Benjamin, although it  will stimulate
intellectual, critical reflection. It is an imperative non cognitive
experience which is the stimulus for action. Here is the huge difference
between the dialectical image and dream analysis (even though the
dialectical image does also contain a critical reflective element, this is
incompatible with 'awakening')

"Benjamin, in the late works, is not arguing for any type of truth which
exists independently of history." Oh but in effect he is, he is, and it is
the glimpsing of this that is afforded by the dialectical image.
Remembrance alone is not enough, Benjamin had, after all, borrowed this
>from Proust and knew its failure. The revolution, or redemption, is to
redeem all of history (or make all of history "present" perhaps) but this
is not a teleological, quasi Hegelian end of history, but an end to it. It
does not come from within history, but from a glimpse of history from a
position which contains and exceeds it. The task of the historian is, by
the later works, not independent of history - you are quite right - but the
aim of the historian is to do away  with it as it is (which is to say
historicism in the modern period, but also its temporality - not just a
conception of history but an experience of it).  To this, Horkheimer's
response is 'the dead will remain dead'.

As for the contradictoriness of Benjamin, you have me bang to rights. This
is my own dilemma - a vaccilation between the irresolvable (Adorno) or as
yet unresolved (Marx) nature of those contradictions. However I am sure
that one cannot take pieces of Benjamin, or accept elements and disown
others (a la De Man and Derrida). I might seem to be arguing for Benjamin's
"unworkability" as a theoretical model (and indeed I am) but it is also to
try to grasp at least some of the nature of those contradictions - not to
solve them in theory but to comprehend them as historical.

I sense this might be the deep ground of our discussion, I look forward to
any response, no matter how far in the future!

Yours

Giles