Publication Details
| The Substantivity of History: Walter Benjamin amid cardboard kings, old books, and metallic constructions | |
| Title in the language of publication: | Вещественность истории: Вальтер Беньямин среди картонных королей, старых книг и металлических конструкций |
| Author: |
Nikita Zagvozdkin
Master’s Student, University of Wuppertal.
Address: Gaußstraße 20, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany.
E-mail: zagvnd@gmail.com
|
| Issue: |
P. 43–72.
|
| Language: | Russian |
| Document type: | Research Article |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.31119/essephts.2019.4.1.2 |
Abstract
The article discusses the range of images and simultaneously thought figures that Walter Benjamin continuously used during various periods of his work to constitute and conceive the relation between things and history. For this purpose, the following points of attraction of his thought and imagination are empathized in the variety of insights, suggestions, and interconnections, which form the field of Benjamin’s philosophy: props of the Baroque theater, collections of old books, and metallic constructions shaping the landscape of early capitalistic industry. Each one of these groups is considered to express a certain mode of reification of history, which introduces it into the boundaries of human practice, giving thereby one a promise of salvation in the problematic situation of epoch. The allegorical condensation of time within the stage props makes it dramatically amendable; the inclusion of objects into the context of involuntary memory (Proust) gives one a chance to reclaim past experiences in a meaningful integrity of impression; the outdated symbols of class domination of bourgeoisie wake the revolutionary subject from its ideological dream and constellate the image of future utopia. In all three cases, the reality of the transformation of history into an object and its messianic potential are identified as general framework of Benjamin’s account on the subject. Yet, each synthesis of time and substantiality imposes its own perspective: dramatically aesthetical, mnemonically transcendental, and socially political. Accordingly, the analyzed texts differ thematically and in terms of methodic prerequisites of their organization, as well as in terms of the cited personalities. At the end of the article, this complex of discrepancies is traced back to the language of Benjamin’s writing since the philosopher tends to simultaneously separate and conjoin elements of his thinking, treating the emerging whole as an elaborate intellectual mosaic. Therefore, the structure and form of the article are grasped as a methodological reflection of the examined subject matter.
Keywords
Benjamin, history, things, reification, German tragic drama, collecting, ruins of bourgeoisie, commodity fetishism, photography, fragment.
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© Nikita Zagvozdkin, 2019
