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Cutrone Beyondhistory
Cutrone Beyondhistory
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History is a way the present relates to itself. History mediates the present, and anticipates
the future. The relation of past and present in history is a social relation, a relation of
society with itself, as a function of change. The proper object of the present is history: the
present is historical; it is constituted by history. The present is history; history is the
present. As Hegel put it, the philosophical approach to history is concerned with the
eternally present: what in the past was always present. This is a function of modernity.
What is at issue is the form of the present in history, or, the form of history in the present.
Three writings, by Nietzsche, Benjamin and Adorno, respectively, reflect upon
the specific form of history in capital, and on the possibility of transcending the
historicism that emerged in the 19th century, as it continued to inform the 20th:
Nietzsches 1873 On the Use and Abuse of History for Life; Benjamins 1940 Theses
on the Philosophy of History; and Adornos 1942 Reflections on Class Theory.
Nietzsches essay inspired Benjamins; Adornos followed directly upon Benjamins.
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homogeneous and empty time of the ever-same is also, potentially, the full timeof-the-now (Jetztzeit). History is dialectical, but it is a negative dialectic of the present:
the present, in its potential for self-overcoming, disintegrates as history disintegrates into
the mere facticity of the past. Historicism is a symptom of failed self-overcoming. For
Benjamin, the task was to construct history, rather than to merely add the new to the
old (Thesis XVII). This is the contrast Adorno found between the new as the old lying
close at hand and the restlessly destructive unfolding of the ever-new that is always
the same thing, namely, prehistory. The static side of the dialectic of history is thus a
resource. The question is whether it is a resource for the emergence of the new or the
perpetuation of the old: either, or both.
Nietzsches untimeliness
The discontent of history is the source of Nietzsches untimely thought. What potential
critique of the present does history offer? Nietzsche recognized himself as a product of
19th century historicism. Nietzsche characterized as antiquarian the deadly
transformation of history into the mere facticity of the past. As a Classical philologist,
Nietzsche was well prepared to address the melancholy of modernity expressed in
historicism. As Benjamin put it, quoting Flaubert, Few people can guess how
despondent one has to be in order to resuscitate Carthage (Thesis VII). (The reference to
Carthage echoes that with which Nietzsche began his essay, the Ceterum censeo [I judge
otherwise] of Cato the Elder: Carthago delenda est [Carthage must be destroyed]. As
Nietzsche put it, this was the spirit with which his consideration of the worth and the
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Beyond history?
The question of getting beyond history relates to Nietzsches characterization of critical
history, that is, the possibility and necessity of condemning a past in creating what he
called a new nature. This is the need to forget. This is not the forgetting that might be
taken to characterize the unhistorical, animal condition (according to Nietzsche, the
unhistorical condition is that of the grazing animal, which does not speak because it
immediately forgets what it was going to say). Forgetting, in Nietzsches sense, is an
activity in service of life: it can only be considered, not unhistorical, but post- or suprahistorical, that is, a form of historical forgetting that overcomes a form of remembering.
There is a human need to forget that is not natural but develops: it is a new need.
For Benjamin, the need to forget is related to the need to redeem history.
Redeemed history could not only be potentially cited in all its moments, but also,
more importantly, forgotten. The need to remember is matched by the need to forget. So,
the question turns on the necessity for remembering that would need to be overcome in
order to make forgetting, in a transcendent sense, possible and desirable.
Benjamins concept of historical redemption in the Theses on the Philosophy of
History was informed by the correspondence he conducted with Horkheimer on the
Arcades Project (for which the Theses were drafted as an introduction), specifically
concerning redemption. Horkheimer pointed out that any redemption must be qualified:
the dead remained dead; their sacrifice could not be redeemed in certain respects. For
Benjamin, this affected the quality of history: it became the record of wasted potential, or
barbarism. This was historys standing reproach to the present.
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If, for Nietzsche, critical history means standing in judgment over history, by
contrast, for Benjamin, the critical value of history was in its judgment over the present:
history was an effect of the presents judgment of itself. What does the present need to
remember; what to forget? What does it need to judge? If Nietzsche called for the
historian to be man enough to judge the past, for Benjamin, the required strength was
to receive historys judgment and not be devastated by it: the memory of enslaved
ancestors (Thesis XII). For the nature and character of both the ancestry and the
enslavement were precisely the matters to be judged, remembered and forgotten. From
what are we descended, and from what must we free ourselves? How do we judge this?
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diagnose and potentially overcome the melancholy of modernity. But this could only be
achieved immanently, from within modernitys dialectic of history. This dialectic had,
for Adorno, two sides: dynamic and static. The dialectic of history in capital is one of
constantly generated but wasted new potentials. This is its injustice, what gives
modernity its peculiar, specific melancholy, affecting its demand for redemption. While
all of human history may have been characterized by the Messianic demand for
redemption, modern historys demand for redemption is specific and peculiar. Modern
history liquidates all prior history, however rendering it, according to Benjamin, more as
rubble (Thesis IX) than as resource.
Modern history ruins prior forms of redemption, in favor of what is, for Benjamin,
a specious form of remembering: history as the accumulation of mere facts. What would
be its opposite? The traditional Messianic eschatological end of time is matched by
the modern monstrous abbreviation that summarizes the entire history of humanity
(Thesis XVIII) in capital: an appropriation of all of history that threatens to become its
barbarization. For Benjamin, this must be countered by a constructed constellation, in
which the demand for the redemption of history transforms the time of the present into
one of potential secular redemption: not the negation of time as in the coming of the
Messiah, but the redemption of time, in time (Addendum A). This would amount to the
effective transformation of history, a fulfillment of the here-and-now appearing as a
charged past that has the ability to leap into the open sky of history (Thesis XIV) as
opposed to subordination to a chain of events (Thesis IX) or causal nexus
(Addendum A). Neither celestial redemption outside of time nor secular time without
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Where, for Nietzsche, a future changed condition must come if humanity is to survive,
for Benjamin, if history is to be redeemed, humanity must be transformed. (Benjamin:
Humanity is preparing to outlive culture, if need be; this is Nietzsches strange goal.)
As Adorno concluded his Reflections on Class Theory, This means, however,
that dehumanization is also its opposite. . . . Even if the dynamic at work was always the
same, its end today is not the end. The transformation of humanity envisioned by
Benjamin and Adorno, appropriating Nietzsches discontent in history, was one that
would transcend all historical culture hitherto. Benjamin and Adorno matched
Nietzsches rumination with Marx and Engelss Manifesto. The self-overcoming of the
entire history of civilization and of its process of transmission (which cannot be
avoided but only reversed, pointing not to the future but the past) would be against the
grain of the historical progress that can only be regarded as regression: the inversion
of the meaning of history; the end of history as the end of pre-history in the present, or,
the potential redemption of the history of civilization that capital makes possible of itself.
The dialectic of memory and forgetting involves changes in both the forms of
remembering and the process of forgetting. A form of remembrance is a way of
forgetting. It serves a certain way of life. To remember is to forget in a certain way; to
forget is to overcome a certain need to remember, and to overcome the past in a certain
way. If the present is an effect of history, then it is in the way the past causes the present.
Why is the past, in modernity (according to Benjamin, following Nietzsche),
citable in all of its moments? Because all of history is (potentially) negated by capital
just as it is (potentially) fulfilled by it. The question is the possibility and necessity of
the appropriation of all of history in capital. The mode of appropriation of the past in
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capital, its process of transmission, is the society prevailing throughout all of history:
barbarism. This means that all moments of the past potentially become culpable in
capital, by becoming the endless resource of the present: history. Capital is the literal
Aufhebung of history. But can capital become the Selbst-aufhebung of history? Or does
modern history exhibit, rather, a dynamic that is alien to all of history, as it was practiced
hitherto (prior to the challenge of modernity)? Is capital the potential for redemption in
history, or its ultimate denial, its final liquidation? The fundamental ambivalence of
history in capital is the key to what it is: an injustice to be made good. This is what
capital has promised humanity at the end of history. Can it be fulfilled? Will it? |
Adorno, Theodor W., Reflections on Class Theory, trans. Rodney Livingstone, Can
One Live after Auschwitz, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2003), 93110.
Benjamin, Walter, Theses on the Philosophy of History, trans. Harry Zohn,
Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken, 1968), 255266; On
the Concept of History, trans. Dennis Redmond (2005), available on-line at:
<http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm>;
Paralipomena to On the Concept of History, Selected Writings vol. 4 193840
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2006), 40111.
Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, trans. Ian Johnston
(2010), available on-line at: <http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/nietzsche/
history.htm>; On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, trans. Peter
Preuss (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1980).
ChrisCutrone,Beyondhistory?Nietzsche,BenjaminandAdorno
Adorno,ReflectionsonClassTheory
Accordingto[Marxian]theory,historyisthehistoryofclassstruggles.Buttheconceptofclass
isboundupwiththeemergenceoftheproletariat....Byexposingthehistoricalnecessitythat
hadbroughtcapitalismintobeing,politicaleconomybecamethecritiqueofhistoryasawhole.
...Allhistoryisthehistoryofclassstrugglesbecauseitwasalwaysthesamething,namely,
prehistory.Thisgivesusapointerastohowwecanrecognizewhathistoryis.Fromthemost
recentformofinjustice,asteadylightreflectsbackonhistoryasawhole.Onlyinthiswaycan
theoryenableustousethefullweightofhistorytogainaninsightintothepresentwithout
succumbinginresignationtotheburdenofthepast.[Marxismhasbeenpraised]onaccountof
itsdynamism....Dynamismismerelyonesideofdialectic:itisthesidepreferredbythebelief
inpracticality....Theother,lesspopularaspectofdialecticisitsstaticside....Thelawthat,
accordingtotheHegeliandialectic,governstherestlesslydestructiveunfoldingoftheevernew
consistsinthefactthatateverymomenttheevernewisalsotheoldlyingcloseathand.The
newdoesnotadditselftotheoldbutistheoldindistress.