Abstract
Benjamin's conception of history is elliptically articulated in these eighteen paragraph‑long theses. Benjamin is most interested in the relationship between the past and the present, which he formulates imagistically‑‑the past "flashes up in a moment of danger," like the image of a drowning man's life as it passes before his eyes. The task of the "materialist historian" is to redeem such images of the past that have been lost or discarded. The process of redemption is not merely mimetic; it does not reconstitute the past "wie es eigentlich gewesen," but interprets it, like the analyst shocking the patient into recognition of his patterns of behavior, it awakens the present generation to the historical nature of contemporary atrocities. A view of history informed by Messianic Judaism, materialist dialectics, and the sense of urgency many felt in Europe during the 1930s, this short piece has had an enormous influence on critics. (Scott Curtis) (Abstract via Allan Megill)