(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

THE LEGACY OF BENJAMIN’S MESSIANISM
197
the urgency to terminate deferral and to grasp the messianic potential of
every moment in the present.
Benjamin’s messianism is structured according to a triadic scheme of
paradise, fall, and redemption. Directed against the determinism prevalent
in an idealist philosophy of history and the belief in progress inherent
in historicism, Benjamin’s messianic triad does not proceed as a teleological
evolution. Instead it is marked by discontinuities that disrupt a
linear chronology and open up a different relationship to the past. Rather
than conceiving of a temporal continuum leading to an eschatological
goal, Benjamin reveals “splinters” (SW 4:397) and “sparks” (SW 4:391)
that interrupt the “homogenous empty time” (SW 4:261) and prefigure
a redemption that is yet to come. These manifestations of discontinuity
form the point of departure and main focus of Giorgio Agamben’s own
thinking, inspiring his revision of some key aspects of Benjamin’s messianism:
the discontinuity of time and tradition, the end of history, the fate of
language, and the interruption of the reign of an oppressive law based on
mythical authority rather than justice. A close reading of Agamben’s treatment
of these aspects of Benjamin’s messianism in dialogue and dispute
with other contenders of his legacy confirms the validity of Habermas’s
insight into the source of Benjamin’s continuous relevance and brings the
conflicts and controversies raised by his thinking à l’ordre du jour.
The Gap in Time
In Habermas’s scheme, Hannah Arendt represents the most conservative
of Benjamin’s heirs. Habermas calls her “an intelligent and undaunted
apologist” of a “neo-conservative Benjamin” whom she defends against
the ideological claims of his friends. 7 It is surprising, therefore, that
Agamben, this most radical of Benjamin’s inheritors today, seems to have
been introduced to his thought by way of Arendt’s writings. In a 1970
letter to Arendt, Agamben writes: “I am a young writer and essayist for
whom discovering your books last year has represented a decisive experience.
May I express here my gratitude to you, and that of those who,
along with me, in the gap between past and future, feel all the urgency
of working in the direction you pointed out?” 8 In this letter, Agamben,
twenty-six years old, assures Arendt of his intention of continuing to work
in the direction she has shown and situates himself in a “gap between past
and future.” He is clearly referring to Arendt’s foreword to her book of
essays Between Past and Future, whose original title, “The Gap between
Past and Future,” 9 gives notice of the space of thought that the following
“exercises in political thinking” occupy. In this foreword Arendt describes
the conditions of the handing down of an inheritance in modernity when
transmissibility itself has become problematic. Arendt’s “gap in time” designates
a break in the linear chronological flow as an intermediate period,