발터 벤야민의 일상 개념에 대한 고찰 - 파시즘 비판의 계기로서 일상

Abstract

For Benjamin, everyday life is treated without being conceptualized in the critique of fascism around 1930, when there was a shift toward materialism. The purpose of this paper is to examine Benjamin’s concept of everyday life as a moment of the critique of fascism and reconstruct its meaning as a reflection on the life demands of the oppressed. First, we look at Benjamin’s criticism of the cultural and class foundations of fascism theory in “Theories of German Fascism”. While analyzing the crisis of German society after World War I, Benjamin sees that the cultural foundation of fascism’s ‘theory of war’ is the politics of denial and forgetfulness of the war. He explains this as a denial of reflection on the ‘demand for life’ raised by the German Revolution in the context of fascism and expressionist ideology. This lack of reflection is a failure to see that the war is an inevitable consequence of imperialism-capitalism, and it also results in an anti-intellectual desire for the destruction of life that is not worth living. Additionally, in this absence of reflection, he confirms that the class roots of fascism, which denies all rationality, lie in capitalism. In explaining fascism’s apparent hostility to capitalism, fascism’s absolute power (Machtvollkommenheit) is revealed as a result of its view of technology as a ‘world-death’ inherent in the transformation of everyday life into a battlefield and as a magical solution to social contradictions. Finally, we examine everyday life as a force that deciphers and dismantles the absolute power of fascism presented by Benjamin. Benjamin’s conception of everyday life, presented as a counter-attack against the cultural and class foundations of fascism, is shaped by reflection on the lives and demands of the oppressed. In this way, in response to fascism’s isolation of the crises of fragmented life, it seeks to transform the “war” of fascism into a “revolution” by viewing the crises of everyday life as “comprehensive crises” in the context of the class struggle. On the other hand, Benjamin, who thinks about revolution from the everyday life, sees that the demands and resistance of life are formed in the opposition to the ‘better life’ and progress, and in the reflection on the conception of history that corresponds to the situation of the oppressed itself. Through this process, we aim to reveal that Benjamin’s conception of everyday life is a reflection on the demands of the lives of the oppressed, and a source of revolution and remembrance, the two pillars of his political and historical practice against fascism.