Walter Benjamin's famous allegory of the angel of history is interesting in respect to the post on catastrophe and the narrative of history. In his 'Thesis on the Philosophy of History' he talks about a Klee painting, 'Angelus Novus' (on the right), which in Benjamin's description depicts an angel about to move away from something he is looking at intently. For Benjamin, this is the angel of history: 'Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet'. The angel wants to stay, make things whole, but a storm propels him into a future to which his back is turned. This storm, for Benjamin, is 'what we call progress'.(Illuminations, 1999 edn., p. 249) The phrase to 'break with the past' springs to mind; 'progress' as violence. Angels again, too, though Benjamin sees this one as looking catastrophe in the eye, as opposed to the averted eyes of the Clama image. Benjamin also talks about the state of emergency being the rule rather than exception. It's our task to 'bring about a real state of emergency' (Illuminations, p. 248) to 'improve our position in the struggle against Facism'. How does this relate, if at all, to Naomi Klein's take on 'states' of shock?
AG
1 comment:
Native Indians have the same sense of time as Benjamin's angel of history tells us...
oh, just realize it's such an old post!
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