Benjamin’s gamble: commodifying life in the age of heroic demise
In the last years of his life Walter Benjamin’s critical project was centred on locating a threshold between Paris of the nineteenth century and Berlin of the twentieth that would reveal an affinity between two ages, which together set the parameters of modernity itself. Jointly they would emerge, f...
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| Argitaratua izan da: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/cm, |
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| Formatua: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Hizkuntza: | Anglais |
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Conserveries mémorielles
2010
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| Sarrera elektronikoa: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
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openedition-oai:revues.org:cm_441 |
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openedition |
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openedition-oai:revues.org:cm_441 en https://journals.openedition.org/cm/441 2010-04-10T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/e49n https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ Benjamin’s gamble: commodifying life in the age of heroic demise Conserveries mémorielles IHTP - Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent CELAT info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/1718-5556 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/cm Polsky, Stephanie fascism suicide Benjamin Baudelaire crowd citizen capitalism destruction redemption fascisme suicide Benjamin foule citoyen capitalisme destruction rédemption Paris Berlin In the last years of his life Walter Benjamin’s critical project was centred on locating a threshold between Paris of the nineteenth century and Berlin of the twentieth that would reveal an affinity between two ages, which together set the parameters of modernity itself. Jointly they would emerge, for Benjamin, as the ultimate arch of fascism, lending new depth to our understanding of the present historical crisis, as well as acting as an augur for future generations. He associated the rise of fascist terror with a breakdown of the threshold that separated the living from the dead, a threshold that had become increasingly ambiguous with the modern advent of global colonial warfare and the attendant call for the total mobilisation of entire civil populations. Benjamin became fascinated with charting the social narrative of the future dead, whether they existed in a celebrated state as it was the case with heroic suicide or as tragic disposable bodies that National Socialism would eventually excise by deeming them unworthy of life. It was hard to locate a singular perpetrator within the scheme of the new system of violent explosion from the body of the state. Benjamin eventually happened upon an unlikely culprit in the rise of the flâneur as a professional conspirator and his later counterpart in the fascist brown shirt. This strategy of reading the flâneur does much to explain Benjamin’s fascination with Charles Baudelaire as a figure that skirts the threshold between hero and villain. The spectre of the crowd is never far from this scene of bodily danger. Dans les dernières années de sa vie, Walter Benjamin s’est concentré sur le projet critique de localiser un seuil entre le Paris du XIXe et le Berlin du XXe qui devait révéler une affinité entre deux époques. Ensemble, elles constituaient les paramètres de la modernité. Ces époques représentent pour Benjamin la clé de voûte du fascisme et offrent des indices précieux pour une interprétation de la crise historique du temps et agissent comme un augure pour les générations futures. Benjamin associait la montée de la terreur fasciste à un effondrement du seuil séparant les morts des vivants, un seuil devenu de plus en plus ambigu avec la guerre coloniale globale et l’appel à la mobilisation générale de la population civile. Il était fasciné par le projet de recueillir les récits des morts à venir, que ce soit dans le cas du suicide héroïque ou pour les corps jetables tragiques que le national-socialisme finit par éradiquer en les déclarant indignes de vivre. Il était alors devenu difficile d’identifier un meneur unique dans la machination de ce nouveau système de violence qui jaillissait du corps de l’Etat. Finalement, Benjamin reconnut dans le flâneur une figure improbable du conspirateur ainsi que dans sa contrepartie ultérieure, les chemises brunes fascistes. Cette interprétation du flâneur peut s’expliquer par la fascination que Benjamin avait pour Baudelaire, un personnage à la limite entre héros et voyou. Le spectre de la foule n’est alors jamais loin de cette scène de danger physique. |
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OpenEdition Journal |
| language |
Anglais |
| format |
Article ou chapitre numérique |
| building |
0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/ |
| topic |
fascism suicide Benjamin Baudelaire crowd citizen capitalism destruction redemption fascisme suicide Benjamin foule citoyen capitalisme destruction rédemption |
| spellingShingle |
fascism suicide Benjamin Baudelaire crowd citizen capitalism destruction redemption fascisme suicide Benjamin foule citoyen capitalisme destruction rédemption Polsky, Stephanie Benjamin’s gamble: commodifying life in the age of heroic demise |
| description |
In the last years of his life Walter Benjamin’s critical project was centred on locating a threshold between Paris of the nineteenth century and Berlin of the twentieth that would reveal an affinity between two ages, which together set the parameters of modernity itself. Jointly they would emerge, for Benjamin, as the ultimate arch of fascism, lending new depth to our understanding of the present historical crisis, as well as acting as an augur for future generations. He associated the rise of fascist terror with a breakdown of the threshold that separated the living from the dead, a threshold that had become increasingly ambiguous with the modern advent of global colonial warfare and the attendant call for the total mobilisation of entire civil populations. Benjamin became fascinated with charting the social narrative of the future dead, whether they existed in a celebrated state as it was the case with heroic suicide or as tragic disposable bodies that National Socialism would eventually excise by deeming them unworthy of life. It was hard to locate a singular perpetrator within the scheme of the new system of violent explosion from the body of the state. Benjamin eventually happened upon an unlikely culprit in the rise of the flâneur as a professional conspirator and his later counterpart in the fascist brown shirt. This strategy of reading the flâneur does much to explain Benjamin’s fascination with Charles Baudelaire as a figure that skirts the threshold between hero and villain. The spectre of the crowd is never far from this scene of bodily danger. |
| author |
Polsky, Stephanie |
| author_facet |
Polsky, Stephanie |
| author_sort |
Polsky, Stephanie |
| title |
Benjamin’s gamble: commodifying life in the age of heroic demise |
| title_short |
Benjamin’s gamble: commodifying life in the age of heroic demise |
| title_full |
Benjamin’s gamble: commodifying life in the age of heroic demise |
| title_fullStr |
Benjamin’s gamble: commodifying life in the age of heroic demise |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Benjamin’s gamble: commodifying life in the age of heroic demise |
| title_sort |
benjamin’s gamble: commodifying life in the age of heroic demise |
| publisher |
Conserveries mémorielles |
| publishDate |
2010 |
| container_title |
URI:https://journals.openedition.org/cm |
| url |
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/cm/441 |
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1877244247920345088 |