Author Archive

Derrida & Sons: Marx, Benjamin, and the Specter of the Messianic

02/01/2013
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Derrida & Sons: Marx, Benjamin, and the Specter of the Messianic

Taking its cue from Derrida's late figure of a messianicité sans messianisme, a messianic without messianism, a structural messianism without religion, this article is concerned with a  materialist – if not atheist – reading of the messianic. It is in Derrida where we can grasp the paradoxical structure of a messianic promise that can...
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Nihilism, Destruction, Negativity. Walter Benjamin and the ‘Organization of Pessimism’

22/11/2012
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Nihilism, Destruction, Negativity. Walter Benjamin and the ‘Organization of Pessimism’

Equally repudiated by today’s neo-liberal, left-liberal, and neo-conservative ideologies, the legacy of nihilism takes the position of an “accursed share” (Georges Bataille). Although nihilism as a political, philosophical, and ethical concept can be traced back to the most influential strands of post-Nietzschean thought and modern continental philosophy, it retains a bad name. Contemporary philosophies...
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Towards a Politics of ‘Pure Means’: Walter Benjamin and the Question of Violence

28/08/2011
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Towards a Politics of ‘Pure Means’: Walter Benjamin and the Question of Violence

In his compelling essay on the On the Critique of Violence (1921), Benjamin dwells on the dialectic of “mythic violence” consisting of law-preserving and law-constituting violence (Gewalt), which mutually presuppose each other. While the former might be identified with today’s bio-political microphysics of power, the latter refers to the constitutive act of establishing power...
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The Time of Capital and the Messianicity of Time: Marx with Benjamin

22/11/2010
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The Time of Capital and the Messianicity of Time:  Marx with Benjamin

Whereas for traditional Marxism history was driven by ‘objective’ historical forces towards its communist telos within history, critical Marxism attempted a blast of the very horizon of capitalisthistory itself. According to Slavoj Žižek (1989), in Marxian thought this ‘non-historical “ex-timate” kernel of history’ was only touched by Walter Benjamin’s last reflections On the Concept...


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Die Ideologie und ihre Kritik. Ein Problemaufriss mit einigen Leerstellen und vielen Fußnoten

06/07/2010
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Der Kapitalismus ist in der Praxis konsequent, weil er muß. Ist er aber konsequent in der Praxis, dann ist er inkonsequent in der Ideologie. Bertolt Brecht   Ideologie wie Mundgeruch immer das, was die anderen haben. Terry Eagleton Die Frage nach der Ideologie und ihrer Kritik berührt einen zentralen Punkt marxistischer Theoriebildung, die...
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