(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

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KARL IVAN SOLIBAKKE
be a misrepresentation of the metaphysical undercurrent in his intellectual
legacy to give no credence to the “messianic” forces his mnemonic
goals project into the past in order to redeem the future in the “Jetzt
einer bestimmten Erkennbarkeit” (“now of a particular recognizability,”
N3,1). 5 In its immediacy, the Passagen-Werk is tantamount to remembrance,
reconstruction, and revival all in one.
IV
The Passagen-Werk joins a select group of texts about European cities
— Marseille, Naples, Moscow and Berlin — that Benjamin drafted
during his extensive travels and show him to be a master of topographical
writing. The fascination these texts radiate is linked not only to his
talent for showing how urban experience influences cultural representation
but also to his realization that the convergence of past and present
in city spaces generates the imagery for new collective identities. Having
considered the Passagen-Werk from a synchronic perspective and before
attempting to situate it within the diachronics of urban theory from Heinrich
Heine in the nineteenth century to Paul Virilio in the twenty-first, it
would be beneficial to reflect on some of the basic tenets underlying Benjamin’s
philosophy of history and historical materialism as documented
within the vast fragment.
Zur Elementarlehre des historischen Materialismus. 1) Gegenstand
der Geschichte ist dasjenige, an dem die Erkenntnis als dessen
Rettung vollzogen wird. 2) Geschichte zerfällt in Bilder, nicht in
Geschichten. 3) Wo ein dialektischer Prozeß sich vollzieht, da haben
wir es mit einer Monade zu tun. 4) Die materialistische Geschichtsdarstellung
führt eine immanente Kritik am Begriff des Fortschritts
mit sich. 5) Der historische Materialismus stützt sein Verfahren auf
die Erfahrung, den gesunden Menschenverstand, die Geistesgegenwart
und die Dialektik.
[On the elementary doctrine of historical materialism. (1) An object
of history is that through which knowledge is constituted as the
object’s rescue. (2) History decays into images, not into stories.
(3) Wherever a dialectical process is realized, we are dealing with a
monad. (4) The materialist presentation of history carries along with
it an immanent critique of the concept of progress. (5) Historical
materialism bases its procedures on long experience, common sense,
presence of mind, and dialectics. (N11,4)]
Embedded in Convolute N, this passage provides unusually coherent
parameters for appraising the project, since the guiding principles behind
Benjamin’s reconfiguration of municipal modernity are encapsulated