In the early months of 1940, Walter Benjamin informed some of his correspondents in the United States that he had just completed some “thoughts” on contemporary politics and the historical tradition. These reflections (that came to be known as his Theses On the Concept of History) were part of an ambitious project, a devastating critique of “historicism” (Historismus) as the dominant outlook that may be said to have permeated not only the German view of history but also the whole culture of the post-Enlightenment period, both in Europe and in the United States. On the one hand, Benjamin’s critique exposes the theoretical inadequacy and the ideological complicity of a dominant view of history that presented itself, essentially and inevitably, as the history of the victors. Its inclusiveness, on the other, invites a reassessment of the merits and the shortcomings of those oppositional genealogies that may be said to have tried to use history “to take possession,” in his Marxist/Messianic terms, “of the tradition of the oppressed.” This essay uses the more or less “immediately theological concepts” of Benjamin’s perspective to build on both the achievements and the drawbacks of these European antagonistic projects (especially those that looked to the “hopes” and “lessons” of America) so as to bring into a sharper focus what may be viewed as the pious duties of their romantic counterparts in the New World. These duties were in fact to be particularly problematic in the United States, a “new plebeian democracy” – as epic historian George Bancroft styled it – that had sprung from a revolutionary assertion of freedom and independence, “took its place by the side of the proudest empires,” and claimed for itself, despite the fact of its establishment on an occupied soil, not only a prominent position but also a leading role within the long continuity of historical countertraditions, putting at stake nothing less than the theo-teleo-logical future of humanity as a whole on the larger theater of world history.
The Pious Duties of Romantic Historiography
NORI, Giuseppe
2011-01-01
Abstract
In the early months of 1940, Walter Benjamin informed some of his correspondents in the United States that he had just completed some “thoughts” on contemporary politics and the historical tradition. These reflections (that came to be known as his Theses On the Concept of History) were part of an ambitious project, a devastating critique of “historicism” (Historismus) as the dominant outlook that may be said to have permeated not only the German view of history but also the whole culture of the post-Enlightenment period, both in Europe and in the United States. On the one hand, Benjamin’s critique exposes the theoretical inadequacy and the ideological complicity of a dominant view of history that presented itself, essentially and inevitably, as the history of the victors. Its inclusiveness, on the other, invites a reassessment of the merits and the shortcomings of those oppositional genealogies that may be said to have tried to use history “to take possession,” in his Marxist/Messianic terms, “of the tradition of the oppressed.” This essay uses the more or less “immediately theological concepts” of Benjamin’s perspective to build on both the achievements and the drawbacks of these European antagonistic projects (especially those that looked to the “hopes” and “lessons” of America) so as to bring into a sharper focus what may be viewed as the pious duties of their romantic counterparts in the New World. These duties were in fact to be particularly problematic in the United States, a “new plebeian democracy” – as epic historian George Bancroft styled it – that had sprung from a revolutionary assertion of freedom and independence, “took its place by the side of the proudest empires,” and claimed for itself, despite the fact of its establishment on an occupied soil, not only a prominent position but also a leading role within the long continuity of historical countertraditions, putting at stake nothing less than the theo-teleo-logical future of humanity as a whole on the larger theater of world history.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
