ENGLISH

A Weak Messianic Power: Figures of a Time to Come in Benjamin, Derrida, and Celan

By Michael G. Levine

Book information

Publisher
Fordham University Press
Year
2014
ISBN
9780823255108, 0823255107, 9780823255115, 0823255115, 9780823255146, 082325514X
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
2 MB (2393631 bytes)
Edition
1st
Pages
177\191
Time added
2015-12-23 22:00:00
-- 1892-1940. DerridaBenjaminJacques. CelanPaul. LITERARY CRITICISM -- GenerWalter

Description

In his famous theses on the philosophy of history, Benjamin writes: “We have been endowed with a weak messianic power to which the past has a claim.” This claim addresses us not just from the past but from what will have belonged to it only as a missed possibility and unrealized potential. For Benajmin, as for Celan and Derrida, what has never been actualized remains with us, not as a lingering echo but as a secretly insistent appeal. Because such appeals do not pass through normal channels of communication, they require a special attunement, perhaps even a mode of unconscious receptivity. Levine examines the ways in which this attunement is cultivated in Benjamin’s philosophical, autobiographical, and photohistorical writings; Celan’s poetry and poetological addresses; and Derrida’s writings on Celan.

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