Filozofija i drustvo 2019 Volume 30, Issue 3, Pages: 384-398
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1903384C
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Blasting the past: A rereading of Walter Benjamin’s theses on the philosophy of history
Cvejić Žarko (Faculty of Media and Communication, Singidunum University, Belgrade)
The text offers a reappraisal of Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy
of History (Über den Begriff der Geschichte; ‘On the Concept of History’)
from the perspective of global politics today and its similarities with the
socio-economic and political situation in Europe and the Americas during the
1920s and 30s; more specifically, the impact of crises on the erosion of
trust in liberal representative democracy and the concomitant rise of mostly
rightwing populist movements and their strongmen leaders, aided to a
significant degree by the media, ‘old’ and ‘new’ alike. The purpose of the
text is to draw lessons from Benjamin’s vision of materialist historiography
for our current political predicament.
Keywords: Walter Benjamin, history, historical materialism, historicism, progress, Karl Marx, allegory, narrativity, continuum of history, Fascism