Benjamin repurposed Goethe’s genotype concept from nature into Jewish history.

Evidence

The fact that the daring creations of the nineteenth century presented themselves as phantasmagorias made the epoch a mythical one. To speak of the protohistory of the nineteenth century, therefore, meant not only to bring the Goethean concept of genotype out of its heathen context in nature and into the Jewish contexts of history'. It also pointed to the dark side of the epoch, its demonic, opaque, unredeemed character. Protohistory of the nineteenth century’ also suggested the secular enlightenment which could be drawn from its mythical elements, and from them alonefor example, a bright, everyday sense of wonder, which was what made architectural structures that were flooded with light into what they were. In the dialectical image,' a note to the Passagen-Werk read, room is to be made for the “dream of a thing”regardless of the liquidation of the myth in the dialectical image.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 840

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Benjamin’s proprietary term ‘protohistory of the nineteenth century’ as a secular enlightenment drawn from the epoch’s mythical elements.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the language of ‘genotype’ and ‘dialectical image’ — connects to Adorno’s later aesthetic theory and Benjamin’s messianic-historical impulse.
• SEED: Angle: how a natural-scientific German concept (Goethe’s ‘genotype’) got deliberately relocated into a Jewish-historical register — a concrete case of Benjamin’s theological materialist method.