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6. On the Concept of History

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Working with Walter Benjamin
This chapter is in the book Working with Walter Benjamin
Chapter 6On the Concept of HistoryIt is characteristic of philosophical writing that it must continually confront the question of representationWalter BenjaminEven if it were possible to claim that Benjamin’s On the Concept of History is simply a text to be read and understood, it will still be the case that it is a text whose presence will have complicated the demands of most strategies positioned within theories of reading.1 Hence the question: what is it to read a disjointed text? For some, in attempting to answer that question the usual equivocations about Benjamin’s relation to philosophy will be raised. As though there was an already determined sense of what comprised philosophy’s presentation. Benjamin’s texts present – for philosophy, from within philosophy – a set of problems similar to those that arise from engagements with texts as divergent as Heraclitus’ ‘Fragments’ and Pascal’s Pensées.2 In addition to its relation to the history of fragmented texts, it is also true to argue that the struc-ture of On the Concept of History registers an important formal as well as ideational relation to the ‘complete’ One-Way Street.The text – On the Concept of History – consists of a number of ‘fragments’. There are different versions of the text. Indeed, there is a version that Benjamin wrote in French and which exhibits minor though important differences from the German.3 Each of the fragments of which the overall text is comprised is either numbered or identified by letters. Nonetheless, despite this attempted ordering, it is still not pos-sible to read On the Concept of History as a simple sequence. In other words, the fragments cannot be read as though they staged a progressive or teleological development. They are not present as if they moved from beginning to end. If there is a concern that brings them together, then in this context it can be located in the way the fragments both recall and develop some of the dominant themes that are already at work in the
© 2022, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

Chapter 6On the Concept of HistoryIt is characteristic of philosophical writing that it must continually confront the question of representationWalter BenjaminEven if it were possible to claim that Benjamin’s On the Concept of History is simply a text to be read and understood, it will still be the case that it is a text whose presence will have complicated the demands of most strategies positioned within theories of reading.1 Hence the question: what is it to read a disjointed text? For some, in attempting to answer that question the usual equivocations about Benjamin’s relation to philosophy will be raised. As though there was an already determined sense of what comprised philosophy’s presentation. Benjamin’s texts present – for philosophy, from within philosophy – a set of problems similar to those that arise from engagements with texts as divergent as Heraclitus’ ‘Fragments’ and Pascal’s Pensées.2 In addition to its relation to the history of fragmented texts, it is also true to argue that the struc-ture of On the Concept of History registers an important formal as well as ideational relation to the ‘complete’ One-Way Street.The text – On the Concept of History – consists of a number of ‘fragments’. There are different versions of the text. Indeed, there is a version that Benjamin wrote in French and which exhibits minor though important differences from the German.3 Each of the fragments of which the overall text is comprised is either numbered or identified by letters. Nonetheless, despite this attempted ordering, it is still not pos-sible to read On the Concept of History as a simple sequence. In other words, the fragments cannot be read as though they staged a progressive or teleological development. They are not present as if they moved from beginning to end. If there is a concern that brings them together, then in this context it can be located in the way the fragments both recall and develop some of the dominant themes that are already at work in the
© 2022, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vi
  4. Introduction 1
  5. 1. Opening 15
  6. 2. The Meaning of Time in the Moral World 46
  7. 3. Fate and Character 69
  8. 4. Towards a Critique of Violence 94
  9. 5. Theological-Political Fragment 144
  10. 6. On the Concept of History 162
  11. Appendices
  12. A. Boredom and Distraction: The Moods of Modernity 203
  13. B. Benjamin and the Baroque: Posing the Question of Historical Time 222
  14. C. The Illusion of the Future: Notes on Benjamin and Freud 244
  15. Bibliography 255
  16. Index 264
Readers are also interested in:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748634354-008

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vi
  4. Introduction 1
  5. 1. Opening 15
  6. 2. The Meaning of Time in the Moral World 46
  7. 3. Fate and Character 69
  8. 4. Towards a Critique of Violence 94
  9. 5. Theological-Political Fragment 144
  10. 6. On the Concept of History 162
  11. Appendices
  12. A. Boredom and Distraction: The Moods of Modernity 203
  13. B. Benjamin and the Baroque: Posing the Question of Historical Time 222
  14. C. The Illusion of the Future: Notes on Benjamin and Freud 244
  15. Bibliography 255
  16. Index 264
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