Awakening From The Capitalist Nightmare.

Pt 3.

"Each “now” is the now of a particular recognizability. In it truth is charged to the bursting point with time..It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on the past: rather image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation." -Walter Benjamin ( quoted in Baucom:p5)

Just as the observer absorbs the artwork into themselves,- just as the listener draws the story into the subconscious- just as the dreaming collective absorbs the phantasmagoria of the modern world -so as to find the meaning relevant to themselves -so too the historian blurs the boundaries between past and present, seeking to let the voices of the past speak to the present. In his work Benjamin presents us with a new methodology of history which is as powerful as it is simple. As always with Benjamin he presents his insights in allegory- the result is his great unfinished work the Arcades Project . Schwarz refers to this work as “part encyclopedia of the nineteenth Century, part model of a philosophy of history for the twentieth century.” (Schwartz:p1721) Benjamin was an itinerant wanderer- he spent hours wandering the streets of Berlin, Moscow, Paris, contemplating the sights. In A Berlin Chronicle he tells us, he often thought of his life as a map. Places of significance to him would stand out as the main features on the map while places of little significance fade into the background.
So too with history.

"A Highly embroiled quarter, a network of streets that I had avoided for years , was disentangled at a single stroke when one day a person dear to me moved there. It was as if a searchlight set up at this persons window dissected the area with pencils of light".- Walter Benjamin (1979:p 69)

Typically, Benjamin presents us here with a personal experience which contains within it an allegory. The tangle of streets can be taken to represent the labyrinth of the past, and our experiences and interests in the present throws spotlight on aspects of the past- particular times and places that we are drawn to- making sense of it. In the same way the Arcades of Paris comes to represent a historical map of the 19th Century and Benjamin, the wanderer , the flaneur, comes to represent the historian, who is familiar with his surroundings but allows himself to become lost within them, walking where he wills, following every whim, every distraction. For Benjamin the ruined, deserted arcades are a repository of the capitalist dream. As the items on display go out of fashion , as the arcades themselves become abandoned, turn to ruin, they loose their use value, but become valuable as repositories of allegory. This is what is left behind when a thing is no longer of use- its story.
“Allegories are in the realm of thought what ruins are in the realm of things.” (Benjamin:1979:p13)
Wandering through the arcades contemplating, writing, making random connections, following distractions Benjamin is offering us an allegory of history in the making. As Sontag puts it : for Benjamin “ To understand something is to know its topography, to know how to chart it. And how to get lost.” (Benjamin:1979:p13). Benjamin spatialised time-he conceived of the past as a space in which one could wander. Thus the historian should view the past. Familiar enough to get lost within it, and aware enough to allow oneself to be drawn to those distractions that present themselves."What for others” he stated in the Arcades project “ are deviations are for me the data that determine my course.” (Benjamin: Quoted in Schwartz:p1738) Or as Arendt put it : “It is to him aimlessly strolling through the crowd in the big cities in studied contrast to their hurried, purposeful, activity that things reveal themselves in their secret meanings"- “ The true picture of the past flits by” and only the flaneur who idly strolls receives the message.” (Benjamin:1969:p12) In this way the historian becomes aware of how the past informs the present, in ways unseen by the linear approach. One becomes aware of new constellations.

“History decays into images not stories”- Walter Benjamin (quoted in Schwartz;p1723)

When we think of the past, fragmentary images come to us first and we impose a story on those images, to create a linear narrative. Thus Benjamin’ s history “is written as an argument advanced by montage and juxtaposition rather than as a systematic presentation of evidence in support of a clearly stated thesis.” (Schwartz :1723). This is how we experience it and this is how Benjamin tries to understand it- in its immediacy- the way it speaks to us. For Benjamin the linear mode of history constructs the present status quo as the logical, and only possible outcome. But this results in the “triumphal procession” which comes to “benefit the present rulers every time”.(Benjamin:1969:p256) Instead he reminds us that “without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror.” (ibid:256) He uses the image of Paul Klee’s Angel Novelus to show us the true state of the past. “ His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he see one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.” (ibid:257) The result of this catastrophe is that masses are “sprawled underfoot” in the triumphal procession. To reclaim history we need to pick through the rubble, to discover what has been lost to us. Benjamin reminds us that our cultural heritage, which he calls the spoils of the triumphal parade, owes it’s existence “not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have create them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries.”(ibid:256) In the process of transmission however it is passed only into the hands of the victors, ensuring that “all rulers are the heirs of all those who conquered before them.”

In every age there exist voices which challenge the inevitable march of history, (Nietzche’s “fighters against history’) there are “moments of danger” which pose possible alternative outcomes . In defeat they are however discarded . It is these voices , these moments that need to be recovered, reclaimed as part of the tradition of history. We need to remember that “ the struggling, oppressed class itself is the depository of historical knowledge”.(ibid:p260) We need to recount events without distinguishing between the great and the small. Nothing is irrelevant, nothing should be overlooked- the most insignificant detail or event can have a profound effect. If we use the analogy of history as a tapestry, the historians task is too find the loose ends , the lost threads and weave them back into the tapestry. But this had been said before and was in itself is not enough. Benjamin sought a new understanding of the relationship between past and present -one in which the historian must “sieze hold of a memory as it flashes at a moments of danger”, (ibid:p255) and by drawing a connection between past and present, bring them into constellation with the present thus “exploding the continuum of history.”

"The idea is a monad….an indistinct abbreviation of the rest of the world of ideas…every single monad contains in an indistinct way all others." (Benjamin; quoted in Gilloch;p71)

The historicist sees the present moment as a transition between the past and the present, and the past as a “homogenous empty time” which he fills with a mass of facts. Benjamin however sees the present, in fact each moment, as a frozen image - “in which time stands still and has come to a stop”- “where thinking suddenly halts in a constellation pregnant with tensions” and the past as “filled with the presence of the here and now.”( Benjamin: 1968:p161) Each moment represent “ a revolutionary chance in the struggle with the repressed past.” (ibid). Just as objects are fragments-monads- of a greater constellation- an idea they embody, so to is the frozen image of each moment is a fragment of the greater constellation of history. Each fragment can only be understood in its relation to all other fragments. As does a crystal, each fragment holds within it the seeds of the greater whole. Thus rather then arranging these images in chronological order which sees each image only in relation to the preceding, imposing a chain of cause and effect- each moment leading seemingly naturally to the next and inevitably forward into the future, Benjamin proposes they should be arranged in news way which emphasizes their relation to all other images, to all other moments. In this way previously hidden connections come to light and new connections, new constellations, new possibilities are revealed- the potential for change inherent in each moment, and their connection with the present moment become clear, making alternative futures possible. Thus “the task of the historical materialist is to set to work an engagement of history original to every new present.”(Benjamin:1979:p 352).“Nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost to history… only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments.” ( Benjamin:1968:p254)

"They alone possess the earth who live from the power of the cosmos." -Hillel (quoted in Benjamin:1979:p103)

Much has been lost in the triumphal procession. The saddest loss for Benjamin is the loss of our “ecstatic contact with the universe”(ibid:p103). With the advent of the scientific worldview this experience is come to be seen as irrational and unnecessary. We no longer value the spiritual, the mystical side of life. The view that matter is inert and exists only for human exploitation has come to dominate and led to the us the situation where “because the lust for profit of the ruling class sought satisfaction through it, technology betrayed man and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath.” (ibid :104) Technology has become the mastery of nature, rather than as it should be- “the mastery of our relationship with nature.”(ibid:104)

Society is still caught in the grip of the capitalist induced sleep. The Enlightenment promise of progress under capitalism has become nightmare, relieved only by the distracting, illusory Phantasmagoria of consumerist capitalism. “Today the most real, the mercantile gaze into the heart of things is the advertisement. It abolishes the space where contemplation moved and all but hits us between the eyes with things as a car, growing to gigantic proportions, careens at us out of a film screen.” (Benjamin;1979; p88) This is even more true today than in Benjamin’s time. In those days the forces of fascism were a tangible enemy whose distortions and lies could be actively opposed. Today we do not have such an obvious foe. We face a much more subtle foe which has convinced the masses of its benignity- the cold impersonal power of greed which dominates modern capitalism. With the demise of Communism , and the accompanying disillusionment with Marxism, progressive forces in the world lack a coherent , unifying alternative to capitalism.

"He must be alert to every humiliation done to him and so discipline himself that his suffering becomes no longer the downhill road of grief , but the rising path of revolt."-Walter Benjamin (1979:p56)

Benjamin offers us a way forward. His surrealist –inspired world view reminds us that the world is alive with possibilities. His poetical, mystical writings speak to us powerfully today. Many of his themes are even more relevant than in his own time : domination by forces of consumption and commodification, the shock and overstimulation of living in the modern city, the proliferation of new technologies, ‘supersaturation’ by images and its effect on human consciousness, the need for new understandings of history drawing in the “counter-histories” of marginalized groups, the destructive capacity of science, the illusion of progress , the need for a new paradigm to transcend the alienating dualism of modernism, and the search for meaning in a world seemingly devoid of it are all themes common in post-modern philosophy. His manner of crossing boundaries between the disciplines is also a post-modern trend, in fact he is considered by many to provide a model for modern day interdisciplinary studies. He does not offer us any grand theory, any sweeping answers, instead he offers us stories, allegories, almost Zen in nature.( “All decisive blows are struck left-handed” (Benjamin :1979: p13)) He draws from his own experience, that of wanderer, mystic, radical, exile, storyteller, flaneur, with “the counsel woven into the fabric of real-life.” He speaks to our subconscious and remind us of our mystical, magical connection to the universe and the political consequences of that connection. He argues that we have a responsibility to act- To halt the triumphal procession and “to wrest tradition away from the conformism that is about to empower it.” We do this by politicizing art, we do this by seeking new constellations, we do this by opening our awareness to the voices of the living objects, and the lost voices of the past that are ever present in the ruins that surround us. We do this by “blasting open the continuum of history.” We do this by willing ourself to wake from the sleep into which the phantasmagoria of consumerism has lulled us. Our task is to disrupt the transmission of the document of barbarism that is history -to “brush history against the grain.”(ibid:p257)