“Angelus Novus”: The Romantic Spirit in Walter Benjamin’s History
0
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
Throughout the history of the twentieth century literary and cultural theory, perhaps no one has more exerted him/herself to the wide range of intellectual pursuits than Benjamin. The aim of this paper is to examine the ways in which the destruction motif culled from the Romantic spirit becomes a guiding principle in Benjamin’s philosophy of history. This study focuses upon Benjamin’s study of Trauerspiel and his interactions with some other theorists. Benjamin’s conception of history is basically dependant on the denial of any genetic, organic totalization that envisions a homogeneous flow of time toward a predestined telos. For Benjamin, the baroque Trauerspiel manifests itself as an exact representation of man’s historical conditions. The world of the baroque allegory is characterized by such negative terms as death, decay, and destruction, and Benjamin understood this signifies that human historicity is also under the impact of the same force. The gloomy vision of history proceeds in Benjamin’s later years into a position of extremist historical pessimism. Putting theology and historical materialism together, Benjamin constitutes his own brand of materialist historiography vividly theorized in his seminal essay, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” where the categories of messianism, apocalypse and redemption run counter to historicism’s naive idealistic faith in progress. This study also examines how the extreme interpretation of Benjamin by Paul de Man can provide a new vision to see Benjamin’s philosophy of history from a post-structuralist perspective.
Abstract
Throughout the history of the twentieth century literary and cultural theory, perhaps no one has more exerted him/herself to the wide range of intellectual pursuits than Benjamin. The aim of this paper is to examine the ways in which the destruction motif culled from the Romantic spirit becomes a guiding principle in Benjamin’s philosophy of history. This study focuses upon Benjamin’s study of Trauerspiel and his interactions with some other theorists. Benjamin’s conception of history is basically dependant on the denial of any genetic, organic totalization that envisions a homogeneous flow of time toward a predestined telos. For Benjamin, the baroque Trauerspiel manifests itself as an exact representation of man’s historical conditions. The world of the baroque allegory is characterized by such negative terms as death, decay, and destruction, and Benjamin understood this signifies that human historicity is also under the impact of the same force. The gloomy vision of history proceeds in Benjamin’s later years into a position of extremist historical pessimism. Putting theology and historical materialism together, Benjamin constitutes his own brand of materialist historiography vividly theorized in his seminal essay, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” where the categories of messianism, apocalypse and redemption run counter to historicism’s naive idealistic faith in progress. This study also examines how the extreme interpretation of Benjamin by Paul de Man can provide a new vision to see Benjamin’s philosophy of history from a post-structuralist perspective.
참고문헌 (18)
- Benjamin, Walter, "Illuminations" (1968), Schoken
- Benjamin, Walter, "The Origin of German Tragic Drama" (1977), New Left
- Benjamin, Walter, "Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, and Autobiographical Writings" (1978), Schoken
- Bloch, Ernst, "Aesthetics and Politics" (1977), New Left
- de Man, Paul, "The Resistance to Theory" (1986), U of Minnesota P
- Habermas, Jürgen, "The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity" (1987), MIT P
- Hansen, B, "Walter Benjamin and Romanticism" (2002), Continuum
- Jacobs, Carol, "Dissimulating Harmony: The Image of Interpretation in Nietzsche, Rilke, Artaud, and Benjamin" (1978), Johns Hopkins UP
- Jameson, Fredric, "The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act" (1981), Methuen
- Lacoue-Labarthe, Pilippe, "The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism" (1988), SUNY P
- Lukacs, Georg, "History and Class Consciousness" (1971), MIT P
- Nietzsche, Friedrich, "The Birth of Tragedy" (1967), Vintage
- Osbone, Peter, "Water Benjamin: Critical Evaluation in Cultural Theory" (2005), Routledge
- Riegl, Alois, "The Late Roman Art Industry" (1985), Giorgio Bretschneider
- Rosenzweig, Franz, "The Star of Redemption" (1971), Holt
- Steinberg, Michael, "Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History" (1996), Cornell UP
- Smith, Gary, "Walter Benjamin: Philosophy, Aesthetics, History" (1983), U of Chicago P
- Tiedemann, Rolf, "Historical Materialism or Political Messianism?, in Walter Benjamin: Critical Evaluation in Cultural Theory" (2005), Routledge