Benjamin's Materialist Theory of Experience

Author(s): Richard Wolin

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan., 1982), pp. 17-42
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657284 .
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 17

BENJAMIN'S MATERIALIST THEORY OF EXPERIENCE

RICHARD WOLIN

Introduction

In his early aesthetics Walter Benjamin had pursued the problem of the
dissolution of man's capacity for experience, i.e., the decline of his capacity
to live a meaningful and fulfilled existence, from a decidedly theological
perspective.Life in the profane continuum of history was deemedincapable
of fulfillment a priori insofar as it was the diametrical antithesis of the
Messianicage, the sphere of redeemed life. So extreme was the opposition
between these two dimensionsthat neither could have any direct and imme-
diate bearingon the other. They existed in a state of pureantithesis.According
to this schema, historical life, as the antipode to the eternal life represented
by the Messianic realm, was subject to an irremediablefate of decay and
decline. It was comprehendedas "naturalhistory" whose inevitablelot, like
that of all organic life, was ultimately death and putrefaction,an eventual
return to the condition of inorganiclife. As such, the telos of all such mere,
unsanctifiedlife was death. This outlook servedas the historico-philosophical
vantagepoint from which Benjaminmasterfullyanalyzedthe GermanTrauer-
spiele of the baroque age.1 The manifestabsenceof all immanentmeaningto
life compelled the Baroquedramatiststo conjurevoluntaristicallya vision of
redemption through the roundabout technique of allegory.2 If one could
with any justification speak of the problem of the "disintegrationof com-
munity" in the Trauerspielbook,3 it would be the dissolutionof an integrated,
organic totality of meaning. Such a "community"can be said to have existed
previously only in Paradise, before man was condemned to perdition by
original sin. For the early Benjamin, as soon as one begins surveying the
unreconcileddomain of historicallife, one finds the continuumof experience
in a state of perpetualdisintegration.There are exceptions, however;in the
realm of aesthetic experience, where the artist momentarilybreaks through
the mythical realm of historicallife, and in the realmof eternalrepetitionor

Berkeley, California.
18

the always-the-same(das Immergleiche),to produce a fragileimage of trans-

cendence.4 It becomes the task of the critic to redeem (retten) these images
from the fate of historical oblivion that incessantlythreatensto overwhelm
them, to breathe new life into them and thereby make them relevantfor the
present.

In the aesthetics of the later Benjaminthe transcendentpoint of reference

- the category of redemption- temporarilyrecedes from view, but it never
disappearsentirely from the horizon of his thought. It recedes,as it were, for
strategic reasons. Once Benjamin took up the profane cause of the class
struggle (to be sure, in his own highly idiosyncratic and stylized fashion),
his theological impulses ran the risk of being seriouslymisconstrued.Thusin
the thirties he resumedhis investigationof the problemof the disintegration
of the capacityfor qualitativeexperiencefroma quasi-sociological,materialist
perspective.He made a concerted effort - not always prudent nor always
successful - to abandonhis earlier"bourgeois"reverencefor culturalgoods
and to assist in the annihilationof traditional,prejudicialaesthetic categories
such as genius, creativity, and beauty,5 in favor of an approachthat takes
materialconditions of production and reception of works of art as its point
of departure:

The concept of culture, as the substantiveconcept of creationswhich areconsidered

independent,if not from the productionprocessin which they originate,then from
the productionprocess in which they continue to survive,carriesa fetishistic trait.
Culture appearsin a reified form. Its history would be nothing but the sediment
formed by the curiositieswhich have been stirredup in the consciousnessof human
beingswithout any genuine,i.e., politicalexperience.6

Nevertheless,Benjamin'sself-understandingas a "historicalmaterialist"bore
a distinct resemblance to the metaphysically inclined "rettende Kritik"
method of his early period. In both cases the theoretical adversarywas a
static, empathetic, historicist relation to the work of art that tries to present
art "the way it really was," as a dead, lifeless object, sedimented in the
historical past, devoid of all contemporary relevance or "nowtime". The
methods of "culturalhistory" turn tradition into a deadweightfrom which
humanity must be emancipated: "Culturalhistory, to be sure, enlargesthe
weight of the treasurethat accumulateson the back of humanity.Yet cultural
history does not provide the strengthto shake off this burdenin orderto be
able to take control of it."7 For Benjamin,the primary considerationin
approachingpast works of art must be the demandof Aktualitdtor relevance.
The question of how a work of art was experiencedby its contemporariesis
at best scholastic. Benjamin's mission therefore was simultaneously the
"destructive" task of negating the false semblance of autonomy and homo-
 19

geneity the realm of spirit assumesfrom the perspectiveof culturalhistory

- an approachwhich reifies works of art as beautiful but irrelevant"cultural
commodities" - and the complementary"constructive"goal of resuscitating
those elements of traditionthat can once morebe madeserviceablefor human-
ity in its contemporaryhour of need:

Historicism presents the eternal image of the past; historical materialism presents a
given experience with the past, an experience which stands unique. The replacement
of the epic element by the constructive element proves to be the condition for this
experience. The immense forces which remain captive in historicism's 'once upon a
time' are freed in this experience. To bring about the consolidation of experience
with history, which is original [ursprunglich] for every present, is the task of historical
materialism. It is directed towards a consciousness of the present which explodes the
continuum of history.
The historical materialist explodes the epoch out of its reified 'historical continuity',
and thereby lifts life out of this epoch, and the work out of this life work.8

The science of hermeneutics originated with Schleiermacherin the early

nineteenth century. It was born out of an awarenessthat as "moderns,"our
relation to tradition (in Schleiermacher'scase, our relation to classicalanti-
quity) has ceased to be self-evident,that our way of life has become separated
from that of our ancestors by a chasm of misunderstanding,that to under-
stand the past through the eyes of the present is to commit a graveinjustice
to it (i.e., to "the way it reallywas"), and that, consequently,there arisesthe
need for a special type of knowledge charged with the responsibility of
revealingthese misunderstandingsand thereby creatingmore solid groundfor
a bridge between past and present.9 Benjamin'sinvestigationof the origins
and consequences of the demise of the traditional or communal basis of
experience proceeds from a similar impetus (though, to be sure, minus the
historicist implications of Schleiermacher'sapproach). He is disturbed that
the abyss separatingthe modern world from past historicallife has expanded
to where ah entire array of tradition-boundmeanings have become unre-
cognizable, if not patently unserviceable,to us in the present.Not only does
he fear the loss of past experience, but also the serious impairmentof the
present-day capacity to assimilate experience altogether. The implacable
advanceof the forces of production in the modern age, rapidlyrenderingall
remnants of tradition obsolete, eventually comes to penetrateall aspects of
existence, so that ultimately even the human faculty of perception itself is
diminished.Consequently,not only has the qualityof experiencedeteriorated
in modern life to an unprecedenteddegree, but the subjective capacity to
detect this development, and thus possibly redress it, has likewise been
seriouslyeroded.

The problem of the rationalizationof social life and the concomitantdiminu-

20

tion of the capacity for qualitativeexperience thus becomes the problemfor

the later Benjamin. Yet, as we shall see he always harbored ambivalent
feelings about the decay of traditionallife forms, feelingsthat at times appear
to be mutuallycontradictory.For Benjaminrecognizedthe demise of tradition
as an irreparableloss: the meaning potentials objectified in the cultural
products of traditionalsocieties contain a promiseof transcendence;they are
the objects in which past ages have deposited their collective dreams and
longings, their aspirationsfor a better life, which adversehistoricalconditions
have heretofore frustrated;and it falls due to future generationsto preserve
such hopes for a better life, if not to redeem them outright. As Benjamin
observes: "The past carrieswith it a temporalindex by which it is referredto
redemption. There is a secret agreementbetween past generationsand the
present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generationthat
precededus, we have been endowed with a weak Messianicpower, a power to
which the past has a claim. This claim cannot be settled cheaply. Historical
materialists are aware of that."10 This illustrates the degree to which the
theological motifs of Benjamin'searlier "redemptive criticism" have been
preservedin his later writing. The foremost dangerof "modernity"is that its
radical disrespect for tradition runs the graverisk of totally eradicatingour
links with tradition, thus squanderingthat invaluable "temporal index of
redemption" the past represents. An authentic sublation of past would
necessarilypreserve the promise of redemptionthat has been sedimentedin
artefactsand ruinsof traditionallife.

Yet in his more self-consciouslyMarxistwritings Benjamindisplays a naive

and - in view of his other works - highly uncharacteristictrust in the course
of historical progress.Thisis evident above all in his celebrated1936 essay on
"The Workof Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction."Here, Benjamin's
position on traditionseemsto reverseitself: thepromessedu bonheurembodied
in the aura of traditionalworks of art is viewed as hopelesslyutopian (if not
flatly reactionary).It has instead been transferredto rationalizedmedia such
as photography and film. The forces of rationalizationare conceived of as
redeemingin and of themselvesthe traditionalaspirationfor a better world.
They aredeemedinherentlyrevolutionary.Yet, this is a position which despite
and because of its boldness Benjaminfelt himself compelled to relinquish,
althoughit has come to representfor his Marxistinterpretorsthe "quintessen-
tial Benjamin".The merits and drawbacksof both positions go far toward
determiningthe parametersof a materialisttheory of culture, for in many
ways the thoughts raisedby Benjaminover four decadesago remainvaluable
formulations of the problems involved in trying to assess the meaning of
traditionin the face of an increasinglyrationalizedsocial environment.
 21

The Disintegrationof Experience

In his 1936 essay "The Storyteller: Reflections on the Work of Nikolai

Leskov," Benjaminattempted to show, by contrastingthe "epic" element of
the story to the fortuitous characterof events in the novel, just how far
experience itself, and our capacity to convey experiences,has diminishedin
modern life. The inability of men and women to exchangeexperiencesin the
contemporaryworld is merely the obverse side of the fact that the structure
of experience has undergone significant and far-reachingtransformations.
Today, Benjaminobserves,it has become obvious that "experiencehas fallen
in value. And it looks as if it is continuing to fall into bottomlessness.Every
glance at a newspaperdemonstratesthat it has reacheda new low, that our
picture, not only of the external world but of the moralworld as well, over-
night has undergone changes which were never thought possible.""1 In
keeping with the Marxist principle of understandingcultural phenomenaas
they originatewithin determinatematerialconditions of life, Benjaminoffers
the following persuasivedepiction of the multifariousand sudden transfor-
mations in the traditionalstructureof experience around the time of World
War I, transformationsso swift and extensive that it would seem almost
humanlyimpossiblefor one to adapt to them:

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience
by tactical warfare, economic experience by inflation, bodily experience by mechanical
warfare, moral experience by those in power. A generation that had gone to school
on a horse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which
nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field of
force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body.l2

The art of storytelling is a genre falling midway between the antique epic
and the modern novel. Yet its clear affinities with the "epic side of truth"
betraythat it standsincomparablycloserto the formergenre than to the latter.
It is an art form in which meaningis unquestionablyimmanentto and trans-
parent in life. It flourishedin the context of what the young Lukacsreferred
to as "integrated civilizations".13Its traditional representativeswere the
"resident tiller of the soil" and the "trading seaman". In the latter case, that
the tale had come from afar stamped it with an aura of authority; in the
former, it acquired this aura because its teller was a man of experience and
wisdom, whose ancestorshad dwelled in the same regionfor countless genera-
tions, a man steeped in the lore of all-importanttradition. A significant
expansion of the art of storytelling was brought about by the traveling
journeymen of the Middle Ages, who representeda sort of fusion of the two
basic historical types of the storyteller. As Benjaminnotes, "If peasantsand
seamen were past mastersof storytelling, the artisanclass was its university.
22

In it was combined the lore of farawayplaces, such as a much-traveledman

bringshome, with lore of the past, as it best revealsitself to the nativesof a
place."14

That meaningis immanentto life in the world of the story is apparentbecause

the story always contains something useful, be it in the form of practical
advice, a kernal of wisdom, or a conventional"moral".That such knowledge
acquires an immediate self-evidencebespeaks of a situation in which there
exists a continuity and flow to the continuumof experience,where time has
the character of a meaningfully ordered, organic sequence of events, and
where even the phenomenonof deathfits "meaningfully"within this sequence.
Under such conditions advice and counsel are readily communicable and
seemingly step forth from life of their own accord. Benjamincontrasts this
situation to the wholly different structure of experience in modern life,
where events take on a desultoryand isolated,overwhelminglyprivatecharac-
ter; where "experiences"are at best meaningfulfor the individualbut have
forfeited the attribute of universalityfrom which the element of wisdom, the
"moral"of the story, traditionallyderived. "In every case the storytelleris a
man who has counsel for his readers.But if today 'havingcounsel' is beginning
to have an old-fashioned ring, this is because the communicability of
experience is decreasing. In consequence we have no counsel either for
ourselves or for others."15 Benjamininsists this developmentis not merely
another symptom of "decayingvalues" or the "crisisof modernity".Rather,
it has a determinatesocial origin as a "concomitant symptom of the secular
productive forces of history."16 This tendency becomes especially apparent
upon examination of the social history of literary genres. Such an analysis
shows there is far more at stake than the historical obsolescence of this or
that art form; the demise of storytelling signals a correspondingloss of
meaningin life itself. The fabric of experiencehas ceased to be structuredin
an intelligible and coherent fashion, such that one could readily extract
"wisdom" or "meaning"from its individualepisodes;it has instead become
fragmentedand discontinuous,thus renderingthe very concept of "wisdom"
problematic:"Counselwoven into the fabricof reallife is wisdom. The art of
storytelling is reachingits end because the 'epic side of truth', wisdom; is
dying out."17

The obverseside of the declineof storytellingis the riseof the novel. According
to Benjamin, "What differentiates the novel from all other forms of prose
literature - the fairy tale, the legend, even the novella - is that it neither
comes from oral tradition nor goes into it."18 Insofar as stories are handed
down orally from generation to generation, they become, as it were, the
property of the community. They representthe primarymeans of recording
 23

experience in those societies where handicraft is the dominant mode of

production. Indeed, the distinct imprint of craftsmanshipinheres in the
process of storytelling: "traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way
handprintsof the potter cling to the clay vessel."19In the case of the novel,
however, the "communal"aspect of the artistic process - both in terms of
the conditions of its production as well as its reception - has disappeared:
"The novelist has isolated himself. The birthplaceof the novel is the solitary
individual,who is no longer able to expresshimself by givingexamplesof his
most important concerns, is himself uncounseled, and cannot counsel
others .... In the midst of life's fullness, and throughthe representationof
this fullness, the novel gives evidence of the profound perplexity of the
living."20The novel is producedby "solitaryindividuals"andreadby "solitary
individuals".The individual's"profound perplexity" results from his having
been sundered from traditionalconditions of life in a capitalist society that
has become a bellum omnium contra omnes, where the credo of self-serving
individualismhas become the dominantprincipleof conduct. Try as he might
to integrate his private experiences within a more universal, meaningful
framework,the "hero"of the novel, fromDon Quixote to "K," is predestined
to confusion and ruin. As Benjaminnotes, "Even the first great book of the
genre, Don Quixote, teaches how spiritualgreatness,the boldness, the help-
fulness of one of the noblest men, Don Quixote, are completely devoid of
counsel and do not contain the slightestscintillaof wisdom."21

In the background of Benjamin's discussion of the novel stands Lukacs'

pre-Marxistwork The Theoryof the Novel (1914). Benjaminheld The Theory
of the Novel in esteem, and its themes echo throughoutthe Leskovessay. In
his attempt to produce a typology of the novel form, Lukacscounterposes
the "integratedcivilizations"of the Homeric epic (parallelingBenjamin'suse
of storytelling) to the bourgeoisworld of "transcendentalhomelessness"as it
is portrayedin the modernnovel. For Lukacs,"The novel is the epic in an age
in which the extensive totality of life is no longer directly given, in which
the immanence of meaning to life has become a problem, yet which still
thinks in terms of totality." In modernlife the wisdom of the story has been
supplantedby the proliferationof information.Concomitantwith the advent
of the division of labor and the universalpredominanceof the bureaucratic
form of administration,the vast social stockpiling of informationindicates
the degree to which the parametersof society have been quantitatively
extended at the expense of its former integralunity. Thus,we know "more"
about everything,yet this knowledge is poorer in quality, it has ceased to be
concerned directly with those ultimate questionsconcernedwith the meaning
of life. The increase in quantity remainsforeverincapableof compensating
for the decreasein quality. The emergenceof "information"as the dominant
24

form in which experience is stored is thus a primarysymptom of the crisisof

experience, of our inability to communicate experiences in other than the
most shallow and truncated fashion. As Benjaminnotes, "Every morning
bringsus the news of the globe and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories."22
For Benjamin,journalism representsthe deliberate sabotage of experience,
its reduction to a minimum number of superficialfacts and statistics a pro-
cess of distortion that aims at destroying the public's capacity for inde-
pendent judgment. The pressattempts to manufacturean artificialconsensus,
"public opinion," by appendinginsipid "psychological"explanationsto each
story in order to suggesthow the averageman on the street should interpret
events. He notes that "by now almost nothing that happensbenefits storytell-
ing; almost everythingbenefits information."23Thus, the fragmentarycharac-
ter of contemporarysocial life meets the desultoryjournalisticprocessingof
experience halfway. The story, in contrast, was devoid of all such insidious
psychologicalintentions, permittingthe materialrichnessof life to step forth
unprocessed,in all its fullness, and thus allowing the listeners to judge for
themselves. In this way each story retained a meaning (or moral) for the
community of listenersthat was inexhaustibleand lasting.Whereas,according
to Benjamin, "The value of information does not survive the moment in
which it was new. It lives only in that moment; it has to surrenderto it
completely and explain itself to it without losing any time."24 In the form
of information,experience no longer has anythinglasting to teach us; it has
simply become another hollow facet of modern life, an item of momentary
interestwhich will soon cease to be topical and then be promptly discarded.

The lack of manifest psychologicalmotifs in the story further differentiates

it from the novel. The strikingabsenceof a self-evidentmeaningto life in the
novel results in the concerted attempt on the part of the novelist to procure
meaning synthetically or subjectively. "The 'meaning of life' is really the
center about which the novel moves,"25observesBenjamin.Because of the
lack of a readilyapparentmeaningto life the novel often assumesthe form of
a search for meaning; whereas in the world of story, where something as
fundamentalas the "meaningof life" is neveropenly throwninto doubt, the
problem of meaningnever needs to become explicitly thematized. Benjamin
cites the following significant passage from Lukacs' Theory of the Novel:
"Only in the novel are meaning and life, and thus the essential and the
temporal, separated .... Only in the novel ... does there occur a creative
memory which transfixes the object and transforms it."26 Here Lukdcs
suggests it becomes the task of the novelist to make over experience sub-
jectively; if he were merely to transmitit to the readeras he found it, in its
mere facticity, he would be simply presenting a congeries of meaningless,
discrete facts. The conscious recastingof experience, an integralpart of the
 25

creative process for the novelist, is something vastly different from the
acitivity of the storyteller,whom Benjamindescribesas a sort of "secularized
medieval chronicler,"who merely takes it upon himself to describeevents as
they happen (or as they have been said to happen), convinced that their
significance will shine through on its own, independent of any subjective
interference. The profound longing of the novel to rejuvenatethe mundane
characterof experience reaches an important summit with Proust'smaster-
piece, A La Recherche du TempsPerdu - the thresholdof the modernnovel
of consciousness- where the novel reachesthe point of no return,in which it
is no longer the objective nature of the events themselvesthat is of foremost
importance, but the haphazardmanner in which they materializenow and
again in the memoire involuntaireof the novelist. In Proust, the power of
remembranceinvests the events of life with the aura of significance they
lacked as they occurredin mere life, life in its facticity: "For an experienced
event is finite - at any rate, confined to one sphereof experience;a remem-
bered event is infinite, because it is only a key to everythingthat happened
before and after it."27 The loneliness of the readerof the novel corresponds
to the loneliness of a world of experience that remainsopaque and unintel-
ligible to the subject, that will not lend itself to being readily shared. In the
languageof the young Lukacs,the novel providesus with a substitute totality,
in compensationfor the absence of totality in life itself. The capacity of the
novel to restore a semblance of coherence and unity to an existence other-
wise notably lacking in these qualities accounts, on the psychologicallevel,
for the tremendous popularity of this genre in the last two centuries. It
stands out as a wealth of vicarious satisfaction. As Benjamin remarks:
"The novel is significant, therefore, not because it presents someone else's
fate to us, perhapsdidactically,but because this stranger'sfate by virtue of
the flame which consumes it yields us the warmth we never draw from our
own fate. What draws the reader to the novel is the hope of warminghis
shiveringlife with a death he readsabout."28

Benjamin'sdepiction of the vast structuraltransformationof the traditional,

integrated fabric of experience, using the story and the novel as prismsto
view this process, remains extremely valuable from the standpoint of the
requirementsof a materialisttheory of culture.Yet, of especialsignificanceis
that rather than attempting to reduce important changes on the plane of
aesthetic formto a preconceivedset of economic or sociologicaldeterminants,
his account views such changeswithin the overall context of the total social
process. Whereasthe genesis of an artistic genre such as the novel remains
incomprehensible unless the attendant social conditions are taken into
account, at the same time.such forms eventually assume a life that is quasi-
autonomous vis a vis their original material circumstances;e.g., Proust's
26

theory of the memoire involuntairealready prescribes a way out of the

dilemmas - both aesthetic and lived - of the unfulfilled and fragmented
world of experiencewith which the novelist finds himself confronted, albeit a
highly individualistic,subjectiveway out. For his writingimplicitly acknowl-
edges that a reconciliation with this world in its facticity (the motif under-
lying the Bildungsroman)has become an objective impossibility,and thus a
recourse(retreat) to the sphereof pureinwardness(the monologue interieur)
is the only possible solution, if a Pyrrhicone. The advantageof Benjamin's
approach is that he employs a historico-philosophicalmethod for the study
of cultural phenomena rather than a conventional sociological one. His
analysisis therefore not only synchronicbut diachronic.Significantchanges
on the plane of aesthetic form are thus consideredin light of the total con-
stellation of interrelatedsocial and culturalforces and not simply, as in light
of the "economicfactor".Thehistorico-philosophicalapproachsimultaneously
allows him to avoid the illusions of the customarybourgeois reverencefor
artistic forms as eternal and naturalcreations(parallelingthe illusions about
the natureof capitalismMarxobservedamongthe ranksof bourgeoispolitical
economists). "There were not always novels in the past, and there will not
always have to be; not always tragedies,not alwaysgreatepics,"29Benjamin
notes. Thus, in "The Storyteller"and other works, Benjaminis able to show
how historico-philosophicalconsiderationsenter into the heart of the process
of artistic production - an approachfirst adopted by Lukacs in Theory of
the Novel and employed successfully by Benjaminin his 1925 Trauerspiel
study - renderingthe seemingly sancrosanctrealm of aesthetic experience
prey to the flux and vicissitudesof historicallife.

Yet, the method of the Leskov essay is by no means problem-free.Though

Benjaminstops short of explicitly callingfor a mobilizationof the "healthy"
forces of tradition against the decrepit conditions of modernity (with its
obvious reactionary overtones), a solution of this nature seemingly lies in
wait beneath the surface of the essay. There is no smallmeasureof nostalgia
in his tone when he speaks wistfully of the decline of the integratedfabric
of experiencecharacteristicof communalsocial life; and redeemingaspects of
modernity are nowhere to be found. Moreover,the sets of antithesesforming
the methodologicalbasis of the essay - the story and the novel, community
and society, traditionand modernity- only reinforcethe impressionthat the
authorseeks to establishan abstractoppositionbetween "past"and "present,"
compelling the readerto choose as it were between one or the other, when in
reality a choice so simple in nature does not exist. Fundamentally,then, the
antinomy establishedby Benjaminbetween traditionaland modern societies
is overly rigid and potentially misleading.In truth communallife was never
so idyllic as we modernslike to imagineit. For these were societies beset with
 27

problems of privationand scarcity, at the mercy of nature,where social rank

was decidedby birth, and in which channelsto addressinjusticeand grievances
were virtually non-existent. The gains made by advancedindustrialsocieties
in all these areas are by no means inconsequentialand their loss would be
tantamount to wholesale regression.In a similar vein, modern societies, by
exploding the closed, tightly-knit structureof traditionalcommunities,have
opened up a wealth of possibilities for the enhancement of the quality of
life - not only materiallybut also intellectuallyand spiritually- possibilities
that admittedly remain largely distorted or unfulfilled under current social
conditions, but that neverthelesswould have remainedinconceivablein past
ages (and that they exist as "unfulfilled"serves as a spurtoward their future
realization). The dichotomous nature of Benjamin'spresentationneglected
these important facts, the inclusion of which would have made the choice at
issue decidedlymore complex, and rightfullyso.

Correspondances,or ExperienceRecaptured

In his 1939 essay, "Some Motifs in Baudelaire,"Benjaminpursuesa similar

theme, viz, the fragmentation of the continuum of experience in modern
times as it manifestsitself in aesthetic experience.Yet, in this work the major
methodologicalshortcomingof the Leskov essay standscorrected.No longer
does Benjaminabstractlyseek to counterpose an idyllic past to the decadent
present. Instead, he attempts to work throughthe dilemmasof the presentin
a more immanent fashion as far as his subject matter, the lyric poetry of
Baudelaire,will admit of such an attempt. The figureof Baudelaireoccupied
such a significant place in the thought of the later Benjamin(he became of
course the focal point of the monumentalArcadesProjecton which Benjamin
labored from 1927 until his death in 1940) because he stood, in Benjamin's
eyes, at the crossroadsof traditional and modern societies and, as it were,
preservedthe imagesof this transitionin his verse.That Baudelaireconsciously
incorporated the often grotesqueimages of mid-nineteenthcentury city life
into his poetry qualifieshim as the first "modernist,"the first true poet of
urbanism.Becausehe stood on the cuspbetween two historicaleras,witnessing
the extirpation of the last vestiges of traditionallife on the part of modern
industrialism, Baudelaire was ideally situated to chronicle this important
process of transition.Once againBenjaminseeks to show how the philosophy
of history penetrates the very heart of the purportedlyautonomous activity
of the artist.

A primaryindication of the decline of the traditionalfabric of experienceis

the experience of shocks as an inalienable feature of modern urban life.
Whereasexperiencewas traditionallygovernedby the principlesof continuity
28

and repetition, making it at least in theory something always familiar and

predictable,the shocks of city life disruptthese familiarpatternsof experience.
The predominanceof the experience of shocks is intimately bound up with
the emergenceof the crowd as a constant factor to be reckonedwith. Being
incessantly jostled by the mass of passersbyin the city streets was a new
phenomenon in nineteenth-centurylife. "Fear, revulsion, and horror were
the emotions which the big city crowd arousedin those who first observed
it," remarksBenjamin.30"Movingthrough this traffic involvesthe individual
in a series of shocks and collisions. At dangerouscrossingsnervousimpulses
flow through him in rapid succession, like the energy in a battery."31The
teeming city masses become a perpetual obstacle in trying to get from one
point to another. The din of the crowd proves inimical to the idea of having
thoughts of one's own. While the huge city crowd vastly increasesthe oppor-
tunity for chance encounters,it is also the breedingground for a notorious
callousness and indifference among men and women.32 For sheer numbers
and the struggle for survival that characterizesurban life make it nearly
impossible - not to mention against one's "interests"- to deal with each
person one happens upon in a humane and personal manner. Even if the
figure of the crowd never becomes the explicit subjectof Baudelaire'spoetry
(as it does for example in the novels of Victor Hugo) it serves as its ever-
present background. As Benjamin comments, "The mass was the agitated
veil; throughit Baudelairesaw Paris."33

Benjamin'sclaim, then, is that with the advent of shock experience as an

elemental force in everyday life in the mid-nineteenthcentury the entire
structureof humanexperienceis transformed.In supporthe cites the Freudian
thesis from Beyond the Pleasure Principle that "becoming conscious and
leaving behind a memory trace are processesincompatiblewith one another
in one and the same system." Instead,memory tracesare "often most power-
ful and most endurablewhen the incident which left them behind was one
that never entered consciousness."Here, Freudacknowledgesthat conscious-
ness's role in the protection againststimuli (Reizschutz)has become infinitely
more important than its reception of stimuli. In modern life consciousness
must make itself so highly protective vis a vis the proliferation of aversive
stimuli or shocks that the majority of "memorytraces"previouslyregistered
as experience in a direct and naturalway now fail to do so. This resultsin the
irreversiblediminutionof our capacity to have"experiences"in the traditional
sense. Today experience has been so thoroughly reduced by and filtered
through consciousness that what remains is an experience reduced to its
barest essentials, an experience necessary for the task of mere survival.In
consequence, not only has the human apparatusof perception itself been
significantlyaltered,but the very cornerstoneof the traditionalconception of
 29

experience, the idea of Geddchtnisor remembrance,has also been destroyed.

The experiencesdepositedin remembrancecould be passedon from generation
to generation;and the wisdom of life was thereby preserved.But in modern
life, Geddchtnis has been supplanted by Erinnerung: the matter of fact
preservationof memory traces has given way to their disintegrationin con-
sciousness, in order for them to be assimilatedby consciousness and thus
stored. For otherwise the shock-characterof experience would overwhelm
consciousness; experience would thus simply prove unassimilable.Only by
virtue of this mutilatingprocessof censorshipandpreformationcan experience
registerin consciousnessand thus in the strict sense said to have been "lived".
As Benjaminexplains:

The greater the character of the shock factor in particular impressions, the more
consciously consciousness has to be alert as a screen against stimuli; the more
efficiently it is so, the less do these impressions enter experience (Erfahrung), tending
to remain in the sphere of a certain hour of one's life (Erlebnis). Perhaps the special
achievement of shock defense may be seen in its function of assigning to an incident
a precise point in time in consciousness at the cost of the integrity of its contents.34

Benjamin detects a remarkableconfirmation of Freud's theory concerning

the shock-preventativefunction of consciousnessin Baudelaire'sself-charac-
terizationof the poetic vocation in "Le soleil"as a type of escrimefantastique
(fencing); that is, a process of parryingthe shocks of modernlife on the part
of the poetic imagination.Elsewhere,Baudelairehas referredto the creative
process as "a duel in which the artist, just before being beaten, screamsin
fright."35In this way, Benjaminseeks to show it is not merely in the content
of Baudelaire'swork, its imageryand motifs, that the experience of shocks
proves central, but that it has also invaded the very heart of the creative
process itself. So much for the illusions of bourgeoisaestheticismconcerning
the inviolable autonomy of art. The high level of consciousnessmanifest in
Baudelaire'spoetry - necessary for the sake of parryingshocks - testifies
that Baudelaire's "work cannot merely be categorized as historical, like
anyone else's, but intended to be so and understood itself as such."36 The
inclusion of innumerableimages of decay and putrefaction - set in a lyric
context which causes them all the more to stand out as "shocking"- was by
no means adventitious;rather it was Baudelaire'ssystematic intent. As he
himself explains in the well-known dedication to his collection of prose
poems, Spleen de Paris:

Which one of us, in moments of ambition has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic
prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and rugged
enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie,
the jibes of consciousness? It was above all, out of my exploration of huge cities, out
of the medley of their innumerable interrelations, that this haunting ideal was born.37
30

Thus, Benjaminviews the work of Baudelaireas being of great significance

because it representsthe first concerted attempt to destroy the affirmative
illusions of bourgeoisaestheticism,the firstself-consciouseffort to incorporate
the contingenciesof everydayhistoricallife into the heretofore sacredpreserve
of aesthetic experience - an approach which would subsequently become
paradigmaticfor the whole of modernism.As such, Les Fleurs du Mal presents
itself as the first incarnation of de-aestheticizedart:38 a post-auratic art
seeking to divest itself of its elitist, class-boundtrappingsand re-integrating
itself with the concerns of materiallife. It became more and more apparent
that all art which behaved with indifferencetowards its social origins itself
became a matter of indifference. For Benjamin,then, Baudelaire'spoetry
signals an incipient dissatisfactionwith values of l'art pour l'art, a process
of disenchantment(in Weber'ssense of the term as well) that would play
itself out in the various "isms" of the twentieth century avant-garde,and
then reach a qualitatively new level with the advent of the thoroughly dis-
enchanted forms of photography and film - in which the last vestiges of
aestheticismhad been relinquishedforever;or so it seemed.

In Benjamin'saccount of the disintegrationof the structureof experiencein

industrial society the life situations of two social types stand out as proto-
typical, those of the factory worker (not surprisingly)and the gambler.
Once again, the idea of "shock-experience"is employed as the universal
metaphor through which the transition from traditionalto modern societies
is grasped. As Benjaminnotes: "The shock-experiencewhich the passerby
has in the crowd corresponds to what the worker 'experiences' at his
machine."39 In support of this contention he relies extensively on Marx's
seminal account of the transitionfrom techniques of handicraftproduction
to the methods of manufactureand machine industry in ChaptersXIV and
XV of Capital L.40 Benjamin'sargument proceeds from the fact that the
continuity of experience, so essential for handing down experiences in
traditionalsocieties, has been replacedin contemporarylife by the wholesale
fragmentationof experience.Yet, in the Baudelaireessay Benjaminsurmounts
the tendency in "The Storyteller" to idealize bygone communal forms of
life. Here, there is no question of nostalgiafor what has been lost; instead, the
past is used in an ideological-criticalsense, in order to provide by way of
contrast an index of the vast and total transformationof the quality of life
the modern era has wrought.Whereasunder conditions of handicraftproduc-
tion there existed a determinatesequenceand logic that connected one act on
the part of the craftsmanto the next, underthe conditions of modernfactory
labor this connection has been dissolved to the point where the worker's
activity has been degradedto the status of a mere appendageof the machine.
For this reasonthe possibility of the workerderivingany intrinsicsatisfaction
 31

from his activity (e.g., the satisfaction that would accrue from his having
produced the finished product in its entirety), is denied. Instead, on the
assembly-linehe repeatedly performsthe samemonotonous, partialfunction.
He must force his actions to conform to the autonomous rhythm of the
machine. His activity thus degeneratesto that of a mindlessautomaton.It is
reified, becomes thing-like.Therefore,the idea of experience,the notion that
one can become throughpracticewell-versedin the talents and skills necessary
for the accomplishmentof a given task, proves anachronistic- so totally
specialized and one-sided has labor become. Moreover,with the advent of
machine industry labor comes to be prized preciselyinsofaras it has become
unskilled; the more unskilled the worker, the lower the wage. As Benjamin
affirms, "The unskilled worker is the one most deeply degradedby the drill
of machines. His work has been sealed off from experience;practice counts
for nothing there."41

In this way the process of rationalizationeffects a universalleveling of the

conditions of experience. The onslaught of reification,42initially confined
to the workplace,becomes absolute and all-inclusivein modern life; society
in its entirety is dominated by the technicalconsiderationsof formalreason.
The man on the street betrays the symptoms of this fate no less than the
worker on the assembly line: the behaviorof both has become strictly regi-
mented, stripped of its individuality,and renderedhomogenous.As Benjamin
notes, Marx's description of the degradationof the factory worker to the
status of an automaton, a mere appendageof the machine,sheds "a peculiar
light on the absurd kind of uniformity with which Poe wants to saddle the
crowd - uniformitiesof attire and behaviour,but also a uniformityof facial
expression. Those smiles provide food for thought. They are probably the
familiarkind, as expressedin the phrase 'keep smiling';in that context they
function as a mimetic shock absorber."43The pedestriansin Poe's text44
"act as if they had adapted themselves to the machines and could express
themselves only automatically. Their behaviouris a reaction to shocks. If
jostled, they bowed profusely to the jostlers."45 In the arts, this processhas
reached its apogee in film, where the experience of shock (rapid cutting,
multiple camera angles, instantaneous shifts in time and space) has been
elevatedto a formalprinciple."Thatwhich determinesthe rhythm of produc-
tion on a conveyorbelt is the basis of the rhythm of receptionin a film."46

For Benjamin the gambler becomes a parable for the disintegration of

coherent experience in modern life. At first employing the gambler as an
example appearssomewhatcontradictory:are not the activitiesof the laborer
and the gambleras antithetical as work and play? Yet, gamblingcan be said
to resemble factory labor insofar as here, too, experiencecounts for nothing.
32

Eachaction on the part of the gambleris independentof the one precedingit.

The result of the previousgame has no bearingon the game that follows it.
Each spin of the roulette wheel is an action unto itself. One is constantly
startingover again from scratch. Therefore,there can be no accumulationof
knowledge or experience. As Benjaminremarks,"The manipulation of the
worker at a machine has no connection with the precedingoperationfor the
very reason that it is its exact repetition. Since each operationat the machine
is just as screened off from the precedingoperation as a coup in a game of
chance is from one that preceded it, the drudgeryof the laboureris, in its
own way, a counterpartto the drudgeryof the gambler.The work of both is
equally devoid of substance."47To be sure, the drudgeryof wage labor has
none of the adventureof gambling.But the quality of the experiencein both
cases is quite similar.Both gamblingand the labor of the workerbecome all-
consuming activities. Each ultimately comes to pervade the very psyche of
the subject. The experience in both cases proves ennervatingrather than
satisfying.The "futility, the emptiness,the inabilityto completesomething"48
are characteristicfailings of the activity of both the gamblerand the factory
worker. This is the prototypical experience of modern man, who has been
"cheated out of his experience";it is the model of experience in hell where
one is never allowed to complete what one has begun. Baudelairehas immor-
talized the figure of the gamblerin his poem "Le Jeu" in Les Fleursdu Mal,
the second and fourth stanzasof which readas follows:

Roundthe greentablesa friezeof liplessfaces,

Of blue-coldlips, if lips, of toothlessgums,
And fingers,feveredwith Hell'slast disgraces,
Fumblingin pockets - or deliriums.

Hereyou see the hellishpicturethat one nightin a dream,

I sawunfoldingbeforemy clairvoyanteyes;
And overin a corer of this silent cave,
MyselfI saw,hunchedup, cold, mute and envying,
Envyingthese people theirtenaciouspassion.

As Habermashas astutely noted, Benjamin'scustomarymethod of criticism

was one that related conservativelyratherthan criticallyto its objects: it was
less concerned with bursting ideological illusions projected by culture than
with redeemingthose Messianicor utopian moments of our spiritualheritage
that are incessantly endangeredin the present by the oblivion of forgetting.
For this reason he refers to Benjamin'smethod as that of rettende Kritik
(redemptivecriticism).49Benjaminceaselesslysought to make such moments
of tradition relevant for the present, to turn them into now-times. Adorno
touches on the manifest utopian dimension of Benjamin'sthought when he
mentions that "Everythingthat Benjaminsaid or wrote soundedas if thought,
 33

instead of rejectingthe promisesof fairy tales and children'sbooks with its

disgraceful'maturity', took them so literally that real fulfillment itself was
now within sight of knowledge."50For Benjamin,all knowledge that failed
to concernitself with the question of redemptionwas partialand inferior.

Benjamindetected evidence of this concern in Baudelaire'stheory of "cor-

respondances".By virtue of this theory Baudelaire,accordingto Benjamin,
was able to invoke images of collective experience, the last rudiments of
which werebeingrapidlyextinguishedbeforehis very eyes. Modernexperience
lacked a sense of continuity that would prevent the stream of events from
disintegratinginto a fragmentedseriesof desultoryand meaninglessincidents.
It was the seeming absence of any meaningful connection between events
that had renderedthe traditionalconcept of "wisdom"invalid. For Benjamin
- and the importanceof this fact for his thoughtcannot be overemphasized-
"Wherethere is experience in the strict sense of the word, certain contents
of the individualpast combine with materialsof the collective past."51Only
if this crucial relation is maintainedcan "the secret agreementbetween past
generationsandthe presentone" be guaranteed.52Forit becomesthe "mission"
of the present generation to redeem the thwarted hopes, aspirations,and
strugglesof its ancestors,the disconsolatetracesof which are inscribedin our
cultural heritage. The ruthless expansion of rationalizationrendersthis vital
heritagemore opaque and unfamiliarto us with each passingday. It was the
customaryfunction of the great"days of remembrance"- the specialdays of
festival, ceremony, and ritual that were set off from the rest of the days of
the calendar- to insurethe periodicinterminglingof individualand collective
pasts. These celebrationsserved to remind us of our "secretagreement"with
the past. The correspondancesof Baudelaireperforma similarfunction: "The
correspondancesare the data of remembrance- not historicaldata, but data
of pre-history."53And like the festivals of old, what makesthem "greatand
significant is the encounter with an earlierlife."54 The correspondancesare
the key to Baudelaire'suse of allegory: from the "ruins"of modernityhe is
able miraculously to conjure forth the image of a collective past long since
faded from memory. Such images are intended as an antidote or counter-
image to the crisis-riddenstate of modernity. "The murmurof the past may
be heard in the correspondences,and the canonical experience of them has
its place in a previous life."55 "WhatBaudelairemeant by correspondances
may be described as an experience which seeks to establish itself in crisis-
proof form. This is possible only within the realm of ritual."56 Indeed,
Baudelairehas written a poem, "Correspondances," that begins:

Nature is a temple whose living pillars

Sometimes give forth a label of words;
Man wends his way through forests of symbols
Which look at him with their familiar glances.
34

As long-resounding echoes from afar

Are mingling in a deep, dark unity,
Vast as the night or as the orb of the day,
Perfumes, colours, and sounds commingle.57

The correspondancesdo not merely evoke randomimagesof past life. Rather,

they are specificallyconcernedwith recreatingan animisticrelationto nature.
Nature thereby ceases to be viewed as mere fodder for technicalexploitation
and is instead regardedas in itself ensouled. The correspondanceshark back
to nothing less than an urhistoricalstate of reconciliation,a state before that
point where the specieshad succeededin individuatingitself vis-a-visprimordial
nature, in which man and nature existed in a condition of immediate, un-
differentiatedunity. The first stanzaof"Correspondances"personifiesnature,
it invests nature with both the capacity to speak and with the capacity to
return man's glance. Nature appearsas a partnerinstead of a hostile foe. In
this way, the correspondancesattempt to speak out againstthe unremitting
technical mastery of the environingworld and thus recapturea relation to
nature whose last traces are being extirpated with the ruthless advance of
rationalization.As Benjaminnotes: "the correspondancesrecord a concept
of experience which includes ritual elements. Only by appropriatingthese
elements was Baudelaireable to fathom the full meaning of a breakdown
which he, a modern man, was witnessing."58However, it is not as if the
theory of correspondancesrecommendsthe wholesale regressionof species-
life to a prehistoricrelation to nature where humanity would once more be
at her mercy. Rather, in the process whereby mankind has succeeded in
emancipatingitself from its originalcondition of utter thralldomto nature,
it has in its overzealousnesssimultaneouslysucceeded in destroying those
crucial elements of reciprocitythrough which alone a condition of harmony
between man and nature could be restored. Thus in accomplishingthe sub-
jugation of nature man has only succeededin imitatingher prehistoricharsh-
ness and rigidity, while repressingthose elements of correspondencethat
would constitute a prerequisitefor the authentic pacification of the struggle
for existence. The moment the history of dominationhas always tragically
forgottenis that man, too, is partof nature.The cardinalmerit of Baudelaire's
verse was to have recognized this tragic failing and to have attempted to
remedyit by producingcorrespondanceswith past collective life.

That Baudelairehas bestowed upon nature the capacityto returnman'sgaze

("Man wends his way through a forest of symbols/Whichlook at him with
their familiarglances")is indicative of the auraticcharacterof nature.For in
"Some Motifs in Baudelaire"Benjaminhas altered the definition of the aura
as it originallyappearedin the 1936 "Workof Art" essay; and more impor-
tantly, he has altered decisively his attitude toward its decline. Whereasin
 35

the 1936 work he embracedwholeheartedlythe process whereby a unique,

nonmechanically reproduced auratic art was sacrificed to the advance of
rationalization, in the 1939 essay he has come arround to realizing the
irrevocabledestruction of meaning potentials that results from this process
in fact. Thus in the later essay, he provides the following significantrede-
finition of the concept of the aura:

Experience of the aura thus rests on the transposition of a response common to

human relationships to the relationship between the inanimate or natural object and
man. The person we look at, or who feels he is being looked at, looks at us in turn.
To perceive the aura of an object means to invest it with the ability to look at us in
return.

In "Some Motifs in Baudelaire"Benjamin shows himself hardly willing to

relinquishthe qualities of the aurawithout a struggle.To perceivethe auraof
an object means to endow it with humanized,animatetraitsusually reserved
for relations among men. It means to conceive of inanimate objectsfrater-
nally rather than manipulatively,to grant them the capacity of projecting
signalsand attributes that transcendtheir simple quality of being there. Nor
is this merely Benjamin'sindulgencein mysticism. Rather, it bespeaks of an
earlierrelation of man to nature that modernman has all but repressedfrom
memory. Benjamin further defines the aura as "the associations which, at
home in the memoire involuntaire,tend to cluster around the object of a
perception."59Thus, it refers to an indefinite series of correspondencesand
interrelationsengenderedby an object ratherthan a fixed imageof it as such.
For this reason photographyclearlyprovesdestructiveof the auraof objects,
whereas painting, on the other hand, would preserveits traces most faith-
fully. For photographytends to fix the image of a thing at a given moment in
time, it consciously freezes its associations. As Benjamin observes, "The
perpetual readiness of volitional, discursive memory, encouraged by the
technique of mechanical reproduction, reduces the scope for the play of
imagination."60The photographis therefore eminently non-auratic;it lacks
the all-importantcapacity to return the gaze. Just the reverse is true of
painting, though. Nonmechanicallyreproducedart - especially painting -
qualifies as "auratic"because it is already humanized; that is, its contours
have already been thoroughly shaped and fashioned by the human subject.
And so when viewed by the subject,it always standsreadyto returnwhat the
subject has put into it. Thus, in contrastto the photograph,"the paintingwe
look at reflects back at us that of which our eyes will neverhave their fill ...
to the eyes that will never have their fill of a painting,photographyis rather
like food for the hungry or drink for the thirsty."61 Whereasthe auratic
object incessantly calls to mind an endless streamof associations,as if it were
actually endowed with the autonomous capacity to speak to us by meansof
36

its own aesthetic language,this is manifestly not the case with mechanically
reproduced,non-auraticarts such as photographyand film. Because it is an
object that has already been "humanized,"the work of art stands as the
prototype of the auratic object; and it is the humanizedtraits with which it
has been invested that account for its capacity "to returnour gaze". Indeed,
the work of art has become part human. As such, it falls due to mankindto
rediscoverthe analogous "auratic"qualities that lie dormant in unformed,
inanimate nature, which, "once upon a time," also "spoke to man and
returned his gaze"; but whose secret language of correspondencesmodern
man has lost the capacity to comprehend. Only in this way will man be
capable of rediscoveringthe key to universalhappiness,whose traceshe first
encounteredin childhood, in those glorious fairy tales where the personified
fauna of nature appearedas his staunch ally - a testimonial to the long-lost
state of reconciliationbetween man and nature and an anticipation of its
eventualrenewal:

The liberatingmagicwhich the fairytale has at its disposaldoes not bringnatureinto

play in a mythical way, but points to its complicitywith liberatedman. A mature
man feels this complicity only occasionally,that is, when he is happy;but the child
first meetsit in fairytales,and it makeshim happy.62

ConcludingRemarks

The problem remains of assessing Benjamin'stheoretical significance for

Marxism,but more importantlyin the spirit of those philosophicaloutlooks
which, while sympatheticto the criticalenergiesand goals of Marxistthought,
felt themselvesunable to give themselvesover without reserveto a twentieth-
century Marxism whose dogmatism and senility proved itself afresh with
each new social crisis.The like-mindedconceptualoutlooks that immediately
come to mind are those of the early (pre-Stalinist)Lukacs, ErnstBloch, and
the FrankfurtSchool with whom Benjaminwas affiliated duringthe last six
years of his life. As tempting as comparisonsof this sort are, they can, how-
ever, also be quite misleading. For if Benjamin'sthinking proceeded in the
spiritof WesternMarxism,it cannot be situated squarelywithin this tradition.
The problem one faces with any attempt to situate his thought is that the
traditionshe takes up are so transformedin the process of being assimilated
that they become virtually unrecognizable.This insight holds not only for
his more explicitly Marxianformulations,but for his theological tendencies
as well. The customary opposition (or as one is tempted to say, mutual
exclusiveness) between the latter two traditions, both of which play a
prominent role in his work, exemplifies the difficulties of attempting to
evaluate his thinking in terms of the conventional academic separationof
disciplines;Benjaminperpetually refused to capitulate before such artificial
 37

boundaries.Indeed, in his philosophicallast will and testament, the "Theses

on the Philosophy of History," Benjaminopenly advocates that historical
materialismenlist the servicesof theology if it wishes to be victorious:

The story is told of an automaton constructed in such a way that it could play a
winning game of chess, answering each move of an opponent with a countermove. A
puppet in Turkish attire and with a hookah in its mouth sat before a chessboard
placed on a large table. A system of mirrors created the illusion that this table was
transparent from all sides. Actually, a little hunchback who was an expert chess player
sat inside and guided the puppet's hand by means of strings. One can imagine a
philosophical counterpart to this device. The puppet called 'historical materialism' is
to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of
theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.63

Yet, although Benjamin'sparable of the puppet in Turkish attire seems to

imply that the powers of theology must be subordinatedto the imperatives
of historical materialism,in truth the obverse proposition holds: for it is the
puppet that stands for historical materialism,while the controlling factor,
which governs the puppet's movements and guide it to victory, is the little
hunchback "theology," "which today, as we know, is wizened and has to
keep out of sight." This brilliant allegory captures the quintessenceof the
relation between Marxism and theology in Benjamin'sown thinking. But
despite this insight the basic hermeneuticaldifficulties in dealing with his
thought do not simply dissolve. The parableservesmerely as a tool by means
of which the self-consciouslyhermetic aspects of Benjamin'sdiscoursemight
be probed and uncovered. Perhapsthose who would respond by inquiring,
"Yes, but is it worth all the trouble?," are within their rights. Yet, if it
teaches us anything Benjamin'sapproachdemonstratesthat for us men and
women of the scientific era, who like our truths servedup clearly,empirically,
and without frills, nevertheless,by virtue of our universalpreferencefor the
scientific model of truth, a good part of truth - that part of the truth which
transcendsthe limits of rational quantification- has thereby been disqual-
ified from the domain of "seriousdiscourse".Benjamin'spurportedfascina-
tion with the arcaneis in no way gratuitousor merely idiosyncratic.
Rather,
above all it recognizes that "actual" truth is not synonomous with a truth
immediately generalizableor apparent;and in historical ages that are partic-
ularly dark (such as the one Benjaminlived through and which eventually
killed him), the light of truth must of necessity seek refuge in
regions far
removedfrom the Weltlaufin general.

One can say with a fair degree of certainty that Benjamin'srelevanceis not
to be found in those of his writingsmost avowedly Marxist;i.e., essays such
as "The Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction" and "The
Authoras Producer,"which werewrittenunder the influence of the Brechtian
38

side of Benjamin's self-professed "Janus-face" (the other side being his

theological dimension). That his "Work of Art" essay has over the years
acquiredthe status of a watershedin the history of Marxistaestheticsis not
in the least undeserved.Its recognitionthat the forces of rationalizationhave
so thoroughlypenetratedthe conditions of the productionand reception of
works of art in this century, to the point where the survivalof a vast arrayof
traditional artistic forms - the story, classical tragedy, lyric poetry, etc. -
has been jeopardized,rightfully remainsan important point of departurefor
the study of art and culturein all its contemporarymanifestations.However,
the specific conclusions drawn by Benjamin,that mechanicallyreproduced,
mass art is intrinsicallyrevolutionaryand that, conversely,autonomousart is
inherently bourgeois and reactionary,can only seem in retrospectextremely
naive and misguided.As Adornopointed out in response,technically advanced
art lends itself just as easily to manipulativeand demagogicemployment (as
the culture industry in the West and Nazi Germanyhave demonstrated);
moreover, authentic autonomous art of the twentieth century submits to a
process of rationalizationand thus proceeds to divest itself of the aura of
bourgeois autonomous art and its undesirableaffirmativeattributes (as is
well illustratedby the examples of Kafka and Sch6nberg).64Thus, Benjamin
overestimates the revolutionarypotential contained in mechanically repro-
duced art as much as he underestimatesthat of de-auraticizedtwentieth-
century autonomous art. Ultimately, the shortcomings of the "Marxist"
Benjaminare that he sacrificedhis characteristic,speculativemode of theoriz-
ing for the sake of an extremelyundialecticaland simplisticversionof histori-
cal materialism.Following the lead of Brecht (whose Marxism,one might
note, was not itself distinguishedfor its theoreticalsophistication),Benjamin
tended to hypostatize hackneyedMarxistconcepts such as "technique"65and
"the masses,"suppressingthe reflectiveevaluationof such notions that could
alone prevent them from degeneratinginto the sacrosanct platitudes they
have become.

Thus, one is faced with an apparentparadoxbecauseBenjamin'srelevancefor

the project of historical materialismis not to be sought in that aspect of his
thought he himself viewed as most compatible with the Marxisttradition.66
Or as Adorno once remarkedincisivelyin a letter to Benjaminconcerningthe
first draftof the Baudelairearticle:"Yourstudy of Goethe'sElectiveAffinities
(1921-22) and your Baroque book are better Marxismthan the wine duty
andthe deductionof phantasmagoria fromthe behaviourof the feuilltonists."67
The Benjamin one is left with is the one who tried in his later years to
assimilatehis earlieresoteric mode of thought to a theoreticalframeworkthat
was both materialistand exoteric in nature - the Benjaminof "Some Motifs
in Baudelaire"and related studies such as the "Theses on the Philosophy of
 39

History". This is the Benjaminwho refrainedfrom comportinghimself one-

sidedly as either a Marxist or metaphysical thinker per se, whose thought
instead can be located at the forbidden crossroadsof these two theoretical
poles. This is the Benjaminwho conceivedof himselfas a redeemerof historical
Jetztzeiten or now-times, those uncommon images of redeemed life whose
traces occasionally grace the continuum of history. For it falls due to the
critic or historical materialistto preservesuch images in the face of the fate
of historical oblivion incessantly threatening to overwhelm them; images
whose traces Benjamin found embedded in Baudelaire'scorrespondances,
Leskov's stories, seventeenth-century Trauerspiele, and the "aura" of
traditional works of art. In this sense Benjaminsays it is the task of the
historical materialist"to brush history againstthe grain."68The path leading
toward reconciled life is not to be found flowing with the historical current
- which leads only to renewed catastrophe- but ratheragainstit. Its traces
and manifestationsare always the exception. As Benjaminremarkedin 1940,
"Nothing has corruptedthe Germanworking class so much as the notion it
was movingwith the current."69Thus Benjaminviewed himself as a redeemer
of those momentsof traditionin which the key to emancipationwas encoded,
moments in which humanity's collective longing for a better life had been
deposited;it becomes our task to preservethese moments in the face of the
one-sided and distorted treatment they receive at the hands of the official
guardiansof the annals of tradition, appointed by the ruling class to ensure
that the forces of traditionare handed down in a mannerthat accordswith its
interests.As Benjaminobserves:

In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest traditionaway from a con-
formismthat is about to overpowerit. The Messiahcomesnot only as the redeemer,
he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historianwill have the gift of
fanningthe sparkof hope in the past who is firmlyconvincedeven the dead will not
be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceasedto be victorious.70

The eschatalogicaltone of Benjamin'slast reflections is in no small measure

linked to the unspeakableevents of the NationalSocialistera.At this juncture
in history the possibility that the utopian promise embodied in the relics of
tradition would be forever effaced from the memory of humanity appeared
indeed all too real. It is above all in the tensions between Benjamin'sactivity
as a "redemptivecritic" and the Marxisttraditionthat the significanceof his
work resides. Benjamin'sreverencefor the semanticpotentialsinvestedin the
products of tradition stands in sharp contrast with the main trends of the
materialist legacy. The disparagementof the content of tradition in con-
ventional Marxist discourse echoes clearly in the use of the epithet "pre-
history" to characterizeall history before the advent of socialism. Whilethe
idea of socialism as representinga decisive break with the historical past is
40

one Benjaminwould certainlyendorse,in the usualMarxistaccounts tradition

seems less dialectically preservedin the process of Aufhebung than merely
cancelled and suppressed.The total devaluation of the bourgeois and pre-
bourgeois past in history writingin existing "socialist"societies would appear
to bearout this claim, as would Marxisthistoriographyin general.This disdain
for tradition is also evident in the unreflective employment of the Marxist
method of ideology critique,in which the contents of culturalexpressionsare
deemed illusory and valuelessin and of themselves,mere ideologicaleffluxes
of the economic base. Benjamin'sappreciationof the value of traditionthus
stands as an important corrective to such tendencies. His critical studies
demonstrate that products of culture are in no way reducible to the status
of "epiphenomena,"but contain at the same time a promesse du bonheur
which future generationsmust preserveand redeem.

NOTES

1. Walter Benjamin, Origin of German TragicDrama (London, 1977).

2. For a discussion of the contrasting historico-philosophical relations to the question
of meaning in allegory and symbol, cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method,
63-73.
3. Cf. Sandor Radnoti's essay "The Early Aesthetics of Walter Benjamin," International
Journal of Sociology (Spring, 1977), 76-123. See especially his concluding remarks.
4. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Illuminations (New York, 1973),
253.
5. It should be noted that even in Benjamin's early period, in his two most important
works, the Trauerspiel study and the Elective Affinities essay, the former took
polemical aim at the traditional category of "beauty" while the latter attempted to
discredit the category of "genius". His own relation to the categories of criticism
and art history had always been anything but conventional.
6. Benjamin, "Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian," The Essential Frankfurt
School Reader, ed. A. Arato and E. Gebhardt (New York, 1978), 233. Benjamin's
occasional Brechtian equation of "genuine" experience with "political" experience
had an extremely deleterious effect on several of his later writings, in particular,
"The Author as Producer" (Ibid., 254-269) and his brilliant but flawed "The Work
of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."
7. Ibid., 234. 8. Ibid., 277. 9. Cf. Gadamer, 162ff.
10. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," 254.
11. Benjamin, "The Storyteller," Illuminations, 83.
12. Ibid., 83-84.
13. Cf. Georg Lukaics, Theory of the Novel (Cambridge, 1971).
14. Benjamin, 84.
15. Ibid., 85. 16. Ibid., 86. 17. Ibid., 87. 18. Ibid.
19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., 92. 21. Ibid., 87.
22. Benjamin'sdistastefor journalismderivedin partfromhis contact with the Austrian
writer Karl Kraus, an inveterate foe of the journalistic mentality. For Benjamin's
further thoughts on the subject see his 1931 essay "Karl Kraus," Reflections (New
York, 1978), 239 ff.
23. Benjamin, "The Storyteller," 89.
24. Ibid., 90. 25. Ibid., 99. 26. Ibid.
27. Cf. Benjamin's essay "The Image of Proust," Illuminations, 202.
28. Benjamin, "The Storyteller," 101.
29. Benjamin, "The Author as Producer," Arato and Gebhardt, 258.
30. Benjamin, "Some Motifs in Baudelaire," Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the
Era of High Capitalism (London, 1973), 131.
31. Ibid., 132.
32. Cf. Benjamin's long citation from Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in
England, which reads in part, ". . . they crowd one another as though they had
 41

nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement is
the tacit one, that each is to keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to
delay the opposing stream of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honour
another with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of
each in his private interest, becomes the more repellent and offensive the more
these individuals are crowded together within a limited space." Ibid., 121.
33. Ibid., 123.
34. Ibid., 117 (emphasis added). The triumph of Errinerung over Gedachtnis accounts
for the importance of Proust in Benjamin's thinking. Specifically, he values Proust's
critique of Bergson's concept of the memoire pure. Proust's claim is that authentic
experience is not a product of the voluntary memory but rather registers only
through the memoire involuntaire; thus the distorting traits of conscious memory
can only be circumvented by relying on the (repressed) faculty of the subconscious,
involuntary memory, the organizing principle of Proust's great work A La Recherche
du Temps Perdu. The importance of the idea of Geddchtnis or remembrance in
Benjamin's thought has been explored at length by Irving Wohlfarth in '"The
Messianic Structure of Walter Benjamin's Last Reflections," Glyph 3 (1978),
148-212.
35. Benjamin, "Some Motifs in Baudelaire," 117.
36. Ibid., 116-117.
37. Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen (New York, 1971), ix-x.
38. I have pursued this theme in connection with Adorno's work in "The De-Aesthet-
icization of Art: On Adomo'sAesthetische Theorie," Telos 41 (Fall, 1979), 105-128.
39. Benjamin, 134.
40. Karl Marx, Capital I (Moscow, n.d.), 318-402. 41. Benjamin, 133.
42. At this point a brief note on the subtle terminological differences that exist between
"rationalization" and "reification" would be in order. By "rationalization" I mean
the process first observed by Max Weber whereby all personal and affective con-
siderations are eliminated from the operation of social organizations (e.g., business
concerns, politics, the legal sphere, etc.), and instead social action is governed by
predictable, clearly defined sets of rational and calculable formal rules. By "reifica-
tion" I intend the etymological (verdinglichen: literally, to turn into a thing) and
Marxian ("social relations among men turning into relations between things")
definitions; in contrast, for example, to the pioneering, yet too general, use to which
the term is put in Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness, where "reification"
(synonomous with the Marxian notion of "commodity fetishism") is deemed the
"central structural principle of capitalist society". Therefore, "reification" can be
deduced from "rationalization," whereas the contrary proposition does not neces-
sarily hold. Thus, the phenomenon of bureaucracy, for example, is an outgrowth of
"rationalization" which gives rise to "reified" relations between persons; here
reification is merely a result rather than a prime mover. Cf. Andrew Arato, "Lukacs'
Theory of Reification," Telos 11 (Spring, 1972), 25-66.
43. Benjamin, 133. 44. Ibid., 126-128. 45. Ibid., 133-134.
46. Ibid., 132. 47. Ibid., 134-135.48. Ibid., 134.
49. Cf. Jurgen Habermas, "Bewusstmachende oder rettende Kritik - die Aktualitat
Walter Benjamins," ZurAktualitat WalterBenjamins, ed. Siegfried Unseld (Frankfurt,
1972), 175-223.
50. Theodor Adomo, Prisms (London, 1976), 230.
51. Benjamin, 113. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 141.
54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid., 140.
57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., 139. 59. Ibid., 145.
60. Ibid., 146. In this statement the reversal of Benjamin's earlier, unilaterally positive
valuation of the "technique of mechanical reproduction" becomes especially clear.
Here photography is associated with the process of "volitional, discursive memory"
which Benjamin, following Proust's emphasis on the memoire involuntaire, disdained.
61. Ibid., 146-147.
62. Benjamin, "The Storyteller," 102.
63. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," 253.
64. Cf. Adomo's reply to Benjamin inAesthetics andPolitics (London, 1977), 120-126.
At the same time, the drawbacks of Adorno's position should also be pointed out;
especially that he generally refrained from conceding any emancipatory potential
to the new media of mass communication such as film, thereby acquiescing by
default to the manipulative stranglehold over these media exercised by the culture
industry, which he had otherwise criticized so outspokenly.
65. The idealization of the notion of artistic technique by Benjamin represents an
unreflective transposition of the Marxian faith in the autonomous virtues of the
"forces of production" from the economic to the aesthetic sphere.
42

66. That this is the case should prove little cause for astonishment, however. After all,
has not the most vital and consequential writing on Marx in this century - such as
the basic texts of Western Marxism - come from individuals who found it necessary
to distance themselves thoroughly from the ossified doctrines of Marxist orthodoxy?
67. Cf. Adorno, 131. Here, Adoro is referring specifically to Benjamin's habitual
practice in the first draft of his Baudelaire study of drawing immediate, mechanical
parallels between cultural phenomena and recent economic developments (such as
the "wine duty").
68. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," 25 7.
69. Ibid., 258. 70. Ibid., 255.

Theory and Society 11 (1982) 17-42

0304-2421/82/0000-0000/$2.75 ? 1982 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company