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A Fascist CenturyExploding the Continuum of History

A Fascist Century: Exploding the Continuum of History [Walter Benjamin’s insight into the temporal dimension of revolution is contained within one of what became known as his ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, a series of illuminations formulated during his personal ‘moment of danger’1 – exile in Paris from the Third Reich, just months before his suicide on the Spanish border in September 1940. The idiosyncratic form of analogical thinking he developed for exploring the nature of history in the thrall of modernity (which itself can be considered emblematic of modernism),2 enabled him to recognise the powerful ideological energy that can be unleashed by the mythopoeic power of collective associative memory during a period of social and political ferment. He saw that the act of forging an allegorical link between the present and a mythically shaped and largely imagined episode from the past can result in an epic temporal trigonometry, producing a line of sight towards an alternative future. With it is born a revolutionary vision capable of blasting the space for a new political and social order out of the seemingly monolithic status quo. Suddenly the barren present becomes pregnant with the anticipation of rebirth, thereby transforming as if by a conjuring trick the endless temporal continuum which Benjamin equates with the ‘historicist’ concept of time. ‘Historicism’ as he presents it is reminiscent of the ‘ever-expanding, grey future’ in which Franz Kafka once imagined a tawdry circus act taking place ad infinitum until one member of the audience finally bursts into the ring and shouts ‘stop!’.3] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Fascist CenturyExploding the Continuum of History

Editors: Feldman, Matthew
A Fascist Century — Oct 21, 2015

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References (4)

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2008
ISBN
978-0-230-22089-8
Pages
46 –68
DOI
10.1057/9780230594135_3
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Walter Benjamin’s insight into the temporal dimension of revolution is contained within one of what became known as his ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, a series of illuminations formulated during his personal ‘moment of danger’1 – exile in Paris from the Third Reich, just months before his suicide on the Spanish border in September 1940. The idiosyncratic form of analogical thinking he developed for exploring the nature of history in the thrall of modernity (which itself can be considered emblematic of modernism),2 enabled him to recognise the powerful ideological energy that can be unleashed by the mythopoeic power of collective associative memory during a period of social and political ferment. He saw that the act of forging an allegorical link between the present and a mythically shaped and largely imagined episode from the past can result in an epic temporal trigonometry, producing a line of sight towards an alternative future. With it is born a revolutionary vision capable of blasting the space for a new political and social order out of the seemingly monolithic status quo. Suddenly the barren present becomes pregnant with the anticipation of rebirth, thereby transforming as if by a conjuring trick the endless temporal continuum which Benjamin equates with the ‘historicist’ concept of time. ‘Historicism’ as he presents it is reminiscent of the ‘ever-expanding, grey future’ in which Franz Kafka once imagined a tawdry circus act taking place ad infinitum until one member of the audience finally bursts into the ring and shouts ‘stop!’.3]

Published: Oct 21, 2015

Keywords: Socialist Revolution; Marxist Theory; Dialectical Materialism; Cultural Hegemony; Liberal Capitalism

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