(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

INTRODUCTION: BENJAMIN’S ACTUALITY
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In this sense our time seems actually quite capable of opening up the
“now of recognizability” in which Benjamin’s thought attains new legibility.
Strictly speaking, however, Bürger’s question — whether our time is
the now-time in which Benjamin’s thoughts attain a higher legibility than
they did in their own era — must indeed be answered in the negative. But
this is not, as Bürger suggests, because our time appropriates the past only
in haphazard and fragmentary ways; as I have argued, this is an attitude
that we thoroughly share with Benjamin’s era. The true reason, rather, is
that according to Benjamin’s “Über den Begriff der Geschichte,” any truly
authentic and complete reading of history must remain a utopian projection,
one that can be accomplished only in a messianic future: “Freilich
fällt erst der erlösten Menschheit ihre Vegangenheit vollauf zu. Das will
sagen: erst der erlösten Menschheit ist ihre Vergangenheit in jedem ihrer
Momente zitierbar geworden” (GS I.2:694; “Of course only a redeemed
mankind is granted the fullness of its past — which is to say, only for a
redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments,” SW
4:390). From this messianic perspective, any present — not just our
own late-capitalist postmodernity — can only attain a partial, distorted,
and temporary understanding of its past. But if this is true, then we may
perhaps conclude that every present’s engagement with endangered and
neglected facets of history contributes in its own modest way to the fullness
of the past attaining its legibility in a future that is unpredictable but
may surprisingly occur at any moment. Thus each and every one of our
readings of Benjamin, incomplete as it necessarily is, may add a tiny bit
to a utopian legibility of his texts in their full significance at some other,
later, time that lies beyond our own horizons of comprehension and thus
remains unfathomable.
IV
Benjamin’s reflections on translation, legibility, the now of recognizability,
and dialectics at a standstill outline his recurrent master-trope of actualization/actuality.
I have reviewed it here as the programmatic framework
for the kind of reading of Benjamin’s writings themselves that is espoused
by the contributions to this Companion. The guiding principle for selecting
the topics of this volume has been the assumption that Benjamin’s
work can be made significant for today in a manner that accords with,
and often draws directly on, his own notion of actuality. If, for Benjamin,
moments of the past contain an internal dynamic of meaning that when
blasted out of the continuum of homogeneous and empty time attains
new meaning in a later time, then the contributions to this volume pursue
a similar task with respect to Benjamin’s own work. As advanced introductions
they examine Benjamin’s central texts, themes, terminologies,
and genres in their original contexts — cultural, sociopolitical, literary,