Benjamin’s project aimed to rescue the nineteenth century from reification through spontaneous memory

Evidence

These and other programmatic notes nevertheless have a common point of departure: to show how the historical image of the nineteenth century flares up as a spontaneous memory before the historical subject at moments of crisis; in this way, to rescue this section of the past from reification by tradition; and thus to bring energies to the present age that would encourage it to make technology into a nuptial bed for communication between humanity and the cosmos. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 810

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is a compact statement of Benjamin’s mature project (later the Arcades Project): rescue of a reified past via spontaneous memory, to release energies for the present.
• XREF: connects to: Benjamin wanted to rescue the nineteenth century from reified tradition via spontaneous memory.; Benjamin rooted his Theory of Experience in a childhood memory — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1462; Benjamin’s dialectical images are momentary patterns linking present and past, not gradual transitions — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 841 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Benjamin rooted his Theory of Experience in a childhood memory #expands (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1462
• Memory poetically completes the past self with a plenitude of being #expands (0.78)
• Benjamin’s dialectical images are momentary patterns linking present and past, not gradual transitions #expands (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 841
• Instantaneity collapses history into a permanent amnesiac present #contradicts (0.72)
• Benjamin’s thought operates on parallel discontinuous levels of allegorical meditation #expands (0.70) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 140