A Weak Messianic Power: Figures of a Time to Come in Benjamin, Derrida, and Celan (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780823255108)

In his famous theses on the philosophy of history, Benjamin writes: "We have been endowed with a weak messianic power to which the past has a claim." This claim addresses us not just from the past but from what will have belonged to it only as a missed possibility and unrealized potential. For Benajmin, as for Celan and Derrida, what has never been actualized remains with us, not as a lingering echo but as a secretly insistent appeal. Because such appeals do not pass through normal channels of communication, they require a special attunement, perhaps even a mode of unconscious receptivity. Levine examines the ways in which this attunement is cultivated in Benjamin's philosophical, autobiographical, and photohistorical writings; Celan's poetry and poetological addresses; and Derrida's writings on Celan.

Author: Michael G. Levine
ISBN-10: 0823255107
ISBN-13: 9780823255108
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/11/2013
Pages: 192
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d