Blasting the Past: A Rereading of Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1903384CKeywords:
Walter Benjamin, history, historical materialism, historicism, progress, Karl Marx, allegory, narrativity, continuum of history, FascismAbstract
The text offers a reappraisal of Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History (Über den Begriff der Geschichte; ‘On the Concept of History’) from the perspective of global politics today and its similarities with the socio-economic and political situation in Europe and the Americas during the 1920s and 30s; more specifically, the impact of crises on the erosion of trust in liberal representative democracy and the concomitant rise of mostly rightwing populist movements and their strongmen leaders, aided to a significant degree by the media, ‘old’ and ‘new’ alike. The purpose of the text is to draw lessons from Benjamin’s vision of materialist historiography for our current political predicament.
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Anselmi, Manuel (2018), Populism. An Introduction, New York: Routledge.
Benjamin, Walter (1968), ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Hannah Arendt (ed.), Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.
De Wilde, Marc (2009), ‘Benjamin’s Politics of Remembrance. A Reading of “Über den Begriff des Geschichte”’, in Rolf J. Goebel (ed.), A Companion to the Works of Walter Benjamin. Rochester, NY: Camden House, pp. 177–194.
Etlin, Richard A. (ed.) (2002), Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Goebel, Rolf (2009), ‘Introduction. Benjamin’s Actuality’, in Rolf J. Goebel (ed.), A Companion to the Works of Walter Benjamin. Rochester, NY: Camden House, pp. 1–22.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1900), The Philosophy of History. New York: Colonial Press.
Herf, Jeffrey (2013), ‘Propaganda in Nazi Germany’, in Russ Castronovo, Jonathan Auerbach (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 91–108.
Hilmes, Michele (2013), ‘“The New Vehicles of Nationalism”. Radio Goes to War’, in Russ Castronovo, Jonathan Auerbach (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 201–220.
Leslie, Esther (2000), Walter Benjamin. Overpowering Conformism. London, UK & Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.
Lochocki, Timo (2018), The Rise of Populism in Western Europe. A Media Analysis on Failed Political Messaging. New York: Springer.
Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels (1966), The German Ideology. Parts I & III. New York: International Publishers.
Marx, Karl (1992), Capital. A Student Edition. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
–. (1971), The Grundrisse. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Mazzoleni, Gianpietro (2018), ‘Foreword’, in Mojca Pajnik, Birgit Sauer, (eds.), Populism and the Web. Communicative Practices of Parties and Movements in Europe. New York: Routledge, pp. xiv–xvi.
–. (2014), ‘Political Populism’, in Frank Esser (ed.), Mediatization of Politics. Understanding the Transformation of Western Democracies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 42–56.
Moffitt, Benjamin (2016), The Global Rise of Populism. Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Mudde, Cas, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser (2017), Populism. A Very Short Introduction. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pajnik, Mojca, Birgit Sauer (2018), ‘Populism and the Web. An Introduction to the Book’, in Mojca Pajnik, Birgit Sauer (eds.), Populism and the Web. Communicative Practices of Parties and Movements in Europe. New York: Routledge, pp. 1–13.
Esser, Frank, Toril Aalberg, Carsten Reinemann, Claes de Vreese, James Stanyer (eds.) (2019), Communicating Populism. Comparing Actor Perceptions, Media Coverage, and Effects on Citizens in Europe. New York & London: Routledge.
Sauer, Birgit, Mojca Pajnik, Susi Meret (2018), ‘Media Populism in Post-democracy. The Crossroads of Right and Left Political Parties’, in Mojca Pajnik, Birgit Sauer (eds.), Populism and the Web. Communicative Practices of Parties and Movements in Europe. New York: Routledge, pp. 157–169.
Smith, Adam (1920), Select Chapters and Passages from The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Steinberg, Michael P. (1996), ‘The Collector as Allegorist. Goods, Gods, and the Objects of History’, in Michael P. Steinberg (ed.), Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Steiner, Uwe (2004), Walter Benjamin. An Introduction to His Work and Thought. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
Tworek, Heidi J. S. (2019), News from Germany. The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wodak, Ruth (2018), ‘From “Hate Speech” to “Hate Tweets”’, in Mojca Pajnik, Birgit Sauer (eds.), Populism and the Web. Communicative Practices of Parties and Movements in Europe. New York: Routledge, pp. 157–169.
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Published
28.09.2019
How to Cite
Cvejić, Žarko (2019) “Blasting the Past: A Rereading of Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History”, Filozofija i društvo/Philosophy and Society. Belgrade, Serbia, 30(3), pp. 384–398. doi: 10.2298/FID1903384C.
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STUDIES AND ARTICLES
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Articles published in Philosophy and Society are open-access in accordance with the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License.
