Rowan G. TepperWalter BenjaminProf. Gisela Brinker-Gabler14 December 2009

Chrono-/Kairo-politics of Revolution:On The Concept (and Experience) of Time in Walter Benjamin

I.“Every conception of history is invariably accompanied by a certain experience of time which is

implicit in it, conditions it, and thereby has to be elucidated.”1 Thus begins an early essay by Giorgio

Agamben, entitled “Time & History: Critique of the Instant and the Continuum,” published in the

collection Infancy and History (1978). This opening sentence makes explicit an important theoretical

principle upon which Walter Benjamin's “On The Concept of History,” and to a certain extent, The Arcades

Project, relies.. Indeed, Agamben's statement is clearly an elaboration on the penultimate sentence of Thesis

XIII of “On The Concept of History,” which reads “The concept of mankind's historical process cannot

be sundered from the concept of its progression through a homogeneous, empty time.”(SW 4: 394-5)2

Here we see clearly that the Social-Democratic3 conception of history as perpetual progress is bound up

with and dependent upon a conception of “homogeneous, empty time” – that is, time considered at once

on the model of space and an empty medium. Such is the case with any conception of history, however

many of these conceptions may depend upon a particular conception. Indeed, the inherence of many

conceptions of history in any one conception of time speaks to the limited nature of the set of possible

experiences and corresponding concepts of time. We find a telling remark in “On Some Motifs in

Baudelaire,” one of the last two pieces published in Benjamin's lifetime, in which we read, “it is experience

[Erfahrung] that accompanies one to the far reaches of time, that fills and articulates time.”4 It is experience

that gives form and content to time, and it is experience that articulates every conception of time.

It is clear then that the conception of history which is set forth for “historical materialism,” such

1 Giorgio Agamben, “Time and History: Critique of the Instant and the Continuum”, in Infancy & History: On the Destruction of Experience, Trans. Liz Heron (New York: Verso, 2007), 99-115. pg. 99.

2 All references to Benjamin's text will be parenthetical, where “SW 4” refers to the pagination in Walter Benjamin's Selected Writings, and square brackets indicate references to The Arcades Project. All other references will be cited first in the form of a footnote and subsequently in parenthetical notation.

3 [Specify]4 Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,”in Selected Writings, Volume 4, Ed. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings,

Trans. Harry Zohn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 331.

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that it would accord with the exigency of a historical moment of crisis, would likewise be indissociable

from a corresponding concept and experience of time. Benjamin's reflections in “On The Concept of

History” appear somewhat elliptical with respect to the specific characteristics of both the “historical

materialist” conception of history and the corresponding conception and experience of time. While the

essential theoretical armature for the construction of such concepts and the expression of such an

experience is certainly contained in “On The Concept of History,” (in particular, in Theses XII, XIV, XV,

XVII) and is supplemented by Convolute N of The Arcades Project, no comprehensive definition of the

concepts of history and time and no definitive description of the concomitant experience of time is to be

found, only, rather, speculations and intimations as to what such concepts and experiences could be.

These concepts are frequently presented in “On The Concept of History” in the form of a task

that the materialist historian or the revolutionary must undertake. Indeed, we can see this most clearly and

explicitly in Thesis VII, at the end of which we read “the historical materialist... regards it as his task

[Aufgabe] to brush history against the grain,” (SW 4: 392) and in Thesis VIII, “we must come to a

conception of history that accords with this insight [that the ausnehmezustand is not the exception but the

rule]. Then we will clearly see that is our task [Aufgabe] to bring about a real ausnehmezustand” (Ibid).

Furthermore, Theses XVI and A propose a concept of “a present which is not a transition,” which “the

materialist historian cannot do without,” (SW 4: 396), a “conception of the present as Jetztzeit shot through

with splinters of messianic time,” (SW 4: 397) which must be established by the historian as a consequence

of having “cease[d] to tell the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary... [and having] grasp[ed] the

constellation into which his own era has entered, along with a very specific earlier one.” (Ibid) It is thus

that one of the primary tasks undertaken in this essay will be to articulate, inasmuch as it is possible,

concepts of time and history appropriate to “historical materialism,” and to delineate the particular

experience of time to which these concepts are bound (among the constitutive elements of time and

history, the present moment, i.e. “the now,” will be of particular and decisive importance).

Charged with tasks yet to be completed, “historical materialism” is itself subject to the

contingencies of history in its undertakings. Victory is not assured. This insight sheds light upon the

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puzzling conditional dimension in the philosophical version of the puppet and dwarf allegory in Thesis I,

wherein Benjamin writes, “The puppet, called 'historical materialism,' is to win all the time. It can easily be

a match for anyone if it enlists the services of theology, which today, as we know, is small and ugly and has

to keep out of sight.” (SW 4: 389). We thus arrive at a second crucial task of this essay, which will be to

determine what services and/or concepts are provided to “historical materialism” by theology, and

consequently, to determine from which theological tradition or traditions these are to be drawn. These

tasks are complementary; they illuminate one another. As we shall see, it is using concepts drawn from

certain strains of theology that “historical materialism” can articulate and realize its proper conceptions of

time and of history. It is, moreover, wise to take seriously the hiddenness of theology in the allegory, for

while it is impossible to dispute the strong influence of mystical Jewish theology, we can readily discover

the influence of other theological traditions, whether in “On The Concept of History,” The Arcades Project,

or in other essays, most notably in “The Storyteller.” Whatever the case may be, for the experience of time

that is bound up in these concepts, theology also provides names, and particularly for the present moment.

Our third and final task will be to take up the problematics of historical change and the possibility

of revolution, that is, the specifically political dimension of the philosophy of history and of time. This is,

however, not so much a question of political theology, in Carl Schmitt's sense, even though theological

elements cannot be severed from “historical materialist” politics, insofar as such politics is founded upon

particular concepts of time and history, and even more so upon a particular experiences of time, which are

all drawn from and modeled upon those provided by theology. Agamben writes that “the original task of a

genuine revolution.... is never merely to 'change the world', but also – and above all – to 'change time,'”5

which is to say that the revolutionary task is, at its heart, to introduce a qualitative change into the concept

and experience of time. As an event occurring at a determinate time, change or revolution thus depends

upon not only Jetztzeit, which is the condition of possibility for authentic history and for the revolutionary

moment, but is, however, present in all of time. Neither does such an event have recourse to messianic

time, as such, which is held to be a time to come and for which Jetztzeit can only serve as model. Rather,

5 Agamben, “Time and History: Critique of the Instant and the Continuum,”pg. 99.

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insofar as revolution aims to qualitatively change time, its possibility depends upon “a conception of the

present as Jetztzeit shot through with splinters of messianic time.” (SW 4: 397) It is thus essential to

articulate this conception of the present in terms of the concept of kairos as a qualitative conception of

time in opposition to the empty, spatialized and homogeneous continuum of time conceived quantitatively

as chronos. What I would like to designate by the term chronopolitics would refer to the politics of time in

“normal” times, a temporal politics of the state and of capitalism – a counter-revolutionary practice –

while kairopolitics would designate a revolutionary politics premised upon the possibility of recognizing

qualitatively distinct, opportune times for action – a practice which would “blast open the continuum of

history” and change time itself.

II. The Experience of Time: Chronos & Kairos

While it remains somewhat controversial and unorthodox to associate the concept of kairos with

Benjamin's reflections on the concepts of history and time, recent years have seen the publication of a

number of studies of this association: notably, The Time That Remains (2005), by Giorgio Agamben and

Now-Time/Image-Space (1998), by Kia Lindroos. Even more recently, Suhrkamp Verlag published a selection

of Benjamin's philosophical writings under the title Kairos: Schriften zur Philosophie (2007), accompanied by

an afterword by Ralf Konersmann, entitled “Walter Benjamins philosophiche Kairologie.”6 Moreover, even

scholars who remain skeptical with respect to this interpretation, notably Michael Löwy, in Fire Alarm

(2005), find it necessary to at least acknowledge at least the appearance of a connection. Moreover, Löwy

points out that the fact that it was

In a letter to Horkheimer, written in 1941... [that] Adorno compared the conception of time of Thesis XIV with Paul Tillich's 'kairos'. The Christian socialist Tillich, a close collaborator of the Institute of Social Research of the twenties and thirties, contrasted kairos – 'full' historical time, in which each moment contains a unique opportunity, a singular constellation between relative and absolute – with chronos, formal time.7i

6 Academic interest in the concept of kairos has increased dramatically in recent years, particularly with respect to a somewhat secularized concept of kairos, which is concerned neither with theological problematics nor with its relation to Benjamin. This uptick is confirmed by the number of publications principally concerned with kairos that have appeared in roughly the past decade, although the literature does remain rather sparse. Two books of particular note have been published in English during the past decade, the first of which is a volume of essays entitled Rhetoric and Kairos (2002), edited by Philip Sipiora and James Baumlin; the second of these most notable contributions to the concept of kairos is to be found in Time For Revolution (2003), by Antonio Negri. Negri's book contains two distinct texts of approximately 100 pages each, written a decade apart. In the earlier text, “The Constitution of Time,” Negri explicitly engages Benjamin's concept of time without introducing the concept of kairos, while the other, “Kairos, Alma Venus, Multitude” is concerned exclusively with constructing a new concept of kairos, and within it we can find not one reference to Benjamin.

7 Michael Löwy, Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's “On The Concept of History,” Trans. Chris Turner (New York: Verso, 2005),

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Löwy, however, adds in a note, that: “Unlike Agamben, I do not think that Jetztzeit refers directly to

the expression ho nyn kairos which Paul uses... to refer to messianic time...”8 In my view, kairos does not in

Benjamin refer directly either to Jetztzeit or to messianic time, but rather to the concept of the present

“which is not a transition, but in which time takes a stand and has come to a standstill. For this notion

defines the very present in which he himself [the historical materialist] is writing history” (XVI, SW 4: 396,

I: 262). It is necessary, however, to first examine the concept of kairos in its various historical and

theoretical contexts, for the concept does not appear full-fledged ex nihilo in St. Paul, but rather its (at least

linguistic) use can be found first in Homer and Hesiod, and thereafter in Ancient Greek rhetoric and

philosophy, notably in Pindar, Theognis, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Pythagoras, Isocrates, Plato and

Aristotle.9 Moreover, according to Philip Sipiora and John E. Smith, kairos can be found throughout the

Old Testament, and not only in the New.10 This last claim flies in the face of Frank Kermode's assertion

that “the Hebrews lacked this antithesis [between chronos and kairos]; for Hebrew... had no word for chronos,

and so no contrast between time which is simply 'one damn thing after another' and time as concentrated

in kairoi.”11 This is of course complicated by the fact that Smith refers to the Greek Septuagint, in which the

antithesis between kairos and chronos is obviously present.`Nevertheless, the relationship between temporal

experience and the languages in which such experience is to be expressed is hardly straightforward. In light

of the fact that the capacity to experience time qualitatively, as kairos, persists, even in the absence of

clearly defined lexical and conceptual distinctions corresponding to the different modalities of temporal

experience, one cannot conclude that the absence of a word equivalent to the Greek chronos in Hebrew

necessarily denies the possibility of experiencing this contrast, and indeed of experiencing time in a

thoroughly chronological mode.

There is little, if any, scholarly disagreement concerning the concept of time as chronos. By all

pg. 87.8 Ibid, pg. 134n161.9 Philip Sipiora, “Introduction,” in Philip Sipiora & James S. Baumlin, Ed., Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History, Theory & Praxis

(Albany: SUNY Press, 2002), pp. 2-3.10 Ibid. and John E. Smith, “Time and Qualitative Time,” in Rhetoric and Kairos, 46-57.11 Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 47-8.

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accounts chronos denotes time in its quantitative aspect, and thus, “Time, so conceived, furnishes an

essential grid upon which the processes of nature and of the historical order can be plotted and to that

extent understood. Time as chronos, however, allows no features of events... to be taken into account.”12

This is to say that the conception of time as chronos is literally the same “homogeneous, empty time” that

subtends the doctrines of historical progress. Kairos, on the other hand, designates time in its qualitative

dimension, whether in the ancient conceptions of kairos as the “opportune time” or in its later

metamorphoses, from Tillich to Agamben.

Since it was to Tillich's concept of kairos that Adorno first compared Benjamin's concept of

Jetztzeit, it is only fitting to cite Tillich by way of further elucidation of distinction between and

characteristics of the concepts of kairos and chronos. In “Kairos III,” he writes:

Chronos hat es mit der meßbaren Seite des zeitliche Prozesses zu tun, mit der Uhrzeit, die durch die regelmäßig Bewe-gung der Sterne bestimmt wird, im besonderen durch die Bewegung der Erde um die Sonne. Kairos dagegen bezeich-net einzigartig Momente im zeitlichen Prozeß, Momente, in denen sich etwas Einzigartiges ereignen oder vollenden kann. In dem englischen Word “timing” steckt noch etwas von der Erfahrung, die in dem Word Karios bewahrt ist. “Timing” bedeutet, etwas zur rechten Zeit tun. Man kann den Unterscheid zwischen Chronos and Kairos auch so for-mulieren, daß man sagt, Chronos bringt das quantitative, berechenbare, wiederholdbare Element des zeitlichen Prozesses zum Ausdruck, während Kairos das qualitative erfahrungsgemäße, einzigartige Element betont.13

He continues to qualify the concept of kairos, as it is transformed in Christianity, from the right time or

opportune time to “erfüllte Zeit” (138). Here it would be apt to take note of the fact that, in German, the

crucial first sentence of Benjamin's fourteenth thesis reads “Die Geschichte ist Gegenstand einer

Konstruktion, deren Ort nicht die homogene und leere Zeit sondern die von Jetztzeit erfüllte bildet [my

emphasis].”14 Here there can be no question of a relationship of identity between Jetztzeit and kairos, for

Jetztzeit is not “erfüllte Zeit,” but rather that which fills, or fulfills, time. In other words, what we have here

is a conception of time which is made full and heterogeneous by the presence within it of Jetztzeit, which

can indeed be conceived of as a certain present-ness that inheres in every moment of time, past, present

and future. Every moment of time thus conceived would be the unique time of a unique event, kairos,

which, once past, would, by virtue of the present-ness given to it by virtue of the Jetztzeit with which it is

filled, become citable for certain specific future moments.12 Smith, pg. 49.13 Paul Tillich, “Kairos III,” in Der Widerstreit von Raum und Zeit: Schrifien zur Geschichtsphilosophie,Gesammelte Werke.(Berlin: Walter

de Gruyter, 1963), pg. 137.14 Walter Benjamin, Illuminationen (Frankfurt Am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), pg. 259.

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Here it would be instructive to introduce a theological concept which is drawn from the early

Christian mystical tradition, that is, specifically the concept of apokatastasis, which Benjamin appropriated

from Origen, and which he understands as“the entry of all souls into Paradise.”15 Michael Löwy rightly

situates the concept of apokatastasis within the “Theses;” he then continues to highlight the equivalent

concept in Jewish mystical and messianic theology, tikkun:

The redemption, the Last Judgment of Thesis III, is, then, an apokatastasis in the sense that every past victim, every at-tempt at emancipation.... will be rescued from oblivion and... recognized, honored and remembered.... apokatastasis means also, literally, the return of all things to their original state... The Jewish, messianic and cabbalistic equivalent of the Christian apokatastasis is, as Scholem argues... tikkun: redemption as the return of all things to their primal state.16ii

Given that there exists an equivalent concept in the Judaic theological tradition, the question arises as to

why Benjamin appropriates a heretical Christian doctrine. It does not appear to be a matter of chance or

whim, for the concept and term, apokatastasis, appears also within Convolute N of The Arcades Project. If it

is true that the correspondence between Benjamin's concept of “time filled full with jetztzeit” and the “full

time” of kairos is neither spurious nor accidental, but rather an intentionally concealed theological

borrowing, we may propose an answer to the question of Benjamin's appropriation of Origen's doctrine

of apokatastasis: it is because, in Origen we find a well-developed conception of kairos of which the

apokatastasis is but a special case. P. Tzamalikos, in his recent book, Origen: Philosophy of History & Eschatology

(2007), writes: “the apokatastasis which marks the 'end of prophecy' is also a 'kairos'...”17 and proceeds to

further explicate the conception of kairos in Origen:

There are two elements, which constitute the very existence of a certain occurrence. First, it is place: this is why it is said that an event takes place. Secondly, it is time: an event becomes 'reality' once the 'fullness of time' comes. Space and time then concur and constitute the reality, the historicity, of a specific event... every moment is actually a kairos which has to be 'filled full' by the appropriate action... by an action which advances the perspective of any person acting in history... all the moments of history are 'kairoi', each one it its own sense and particular significance.18

It is thus no surprise that we find references to Leskov and “The Storyteller” in the “Paralipomena”

to “On The Concept of History.” While Benjamin writes in “New Thesis H” that “The structural principle

of universal history allows it to be represented in partial histories. It is, in other words, a monadological

principle. It exists within salvation history. The idea of prose coincides with the messianic idea of universal

15 Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” in Selected Writings, Volume 3, Trans. Harry Zohn, Ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pg. 158.

16 Löwy, pg. 87.17 P. Tzamalikos, Origen: Philosophy of History & Eschatology (Boston: Brill, 2007), pg. 139.18 Ibid, pg. 140-1.

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history.” (SW 4: 404) The last sentence of the preceding is reproduced verbatim in a fragment entitled

“The Dialectical Image,” followed immediately by a parenthetical note “(the types of prose as the

spectrum of universal historical types).” (SW 4: 406) This addition suggests kairos once again by virtue of

the typological relation implied here; such a relation is closely related to the concept of kairos in Paul,

according to Agamben's reading in The Time That Remains.

It is significant to note the fact that while it departs dramatically from Origen's concept, “the term

apokatastasis was also used by the Stoics... In Stoicism, apokatastasis is the restoration of nature, in the sense

of 'recurrence' of a next identical world.”19 This connection to the Stoics s of particular interest, since,

according to Agamben's account:

For the Stoics, homogeneous, infinite, quantified time... is unreal time, which exemplifies experience as waiting and de-ferral... Against this, the Stoic posits the liberating experience of time as... emerging from the actions and decision of man. Its model is the kairos, the abrupt and sudden conjunction where.... life is fulfilled in the moment. Infinite, quanti-fied time is thus at once delimited and made present: within itself the kairos distils different time and within it the sage is... like a god in eternity.20

Which is to say that Stoicism harbors both an experience and conception of time that presents kairos as an

alternative to the experience of time corresponding to the concept of time as chronos, that is, as quantifiable

“homogeneous, empty time.” Stoicism has, therefore, both the concept and experience of kairos and the

concept of apokatastasis (in a naturalized, secularized guise) – and since the co-presence of these concepts

is evident in both Christianity and in Stoicism, and since apokatastasis has also a nearly exact correlate in

Judaism, one may rightly conclude that these concepts, as well as the experience of time upon which they

depend, cannot be seen as bound up with any single theological tradition. Rather, they are bound up with

the real experience of time.

Here we must pause; in the first place, in order to understand how, in spite of our experience of

time as qualitative, we come to always represent time on a spatial model, that is, in terms of chronos, and

second, so as to better understand how the chronos and kairos are interrelated and interdependent. In The

Time That Remains, Agamben approaches the first question in terms of the opposition between the

eschatological and the messianic conceptions of time:

19 Ibid, pg. 287.20 Agamben, “Time and History: Critique of the Moment and the Continuum,” pg. 111.

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if you represent time as a straight line and its end as a punctual instant, you end up with something perfectly representable, but absolutely unthinkable. ...if you reflect on a real experience of time, you end up with some-thing thinkable but absolutely unrepresentable. In the same manner, even though the image of messianic time as a segment situated between two eons is clear, it tells us nothing of the experience of the time that remains.21

That is to say that so long as we strive to represent time according to the spatial model of the world of

extension, the result will be a concept of time that lends itself to representation but neither to thought nor

to experience, while inasmuch as we hew close to the real experience of time the result will be both

thinkable and in accord with the real experience, but unrepresentable. As such, when either kairos or

messianic time22 is apprehended as a representation, we gain no knowledge of or access to the real

experience of time, considered in its qualitative and unique aspect. The problem is virtually analogous to a

specifically political problem presented in one of Benjamin's notes, “The existence of the classless society

cannot be thought at the same time that the struggle for it is thought.”(SW 4: 407) This is not to say that

the real experience of time is always in the modality of kairos – experience provides countless

opportunities to experience time as chronos: the experience of awaiting, to provide but one concrete

example. Moreover, kairos and chronos are equally real, and they co-exist in all but the most extreme

experiences of time.

Kairos emerges as an interruption of continuity and homogeneity from out of chronological time,23

for, following the definition Agamben cites from the Corpus Hippocraticum, “'chronos is that in which there is

kairos, and kairos is that in which there is a little chronos,” he continues to say that “kairos does not have

another time at its disposal; in other words, what we take hold of when we seize kairos is not another time,

but a contracted and abridged chronos.”24 This then explains several other key features of kairos present not

only Agamben's account, but throughout the historical development of the concept. These features, which

we may only touch upon in passing, include parousia, the typological relation between present, past and future,

and recapitulation. Both the typological relation and recapitulation are grounded in a relationship of contact

21 Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains, Trans. Patricia Dailey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), pg. 64.22 It is crucial at this juncture to insist not only upon the distinction between kairos, Jetztzeit and messianic time. The purported

equivalence or, at least, seamless interconnection between these three terms is asserted with undue haste by Agamben. Nevertheless, this complaint is intended merely to correct to this theoretical faux pas, for Agamben's study remains invaluable.

23 The interdependence of kairos and chronos has been highlighted by various theorists, and this is not unique to Agamben's interpretation. His account is, however, among the most lucid and concise.

24 Ibid, pp. 68-9.

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between the present and the past and future, a contraction and intensification of chronos into the qualitative

experience of the present moment as kairos.25

If it is true that kairos and chronos necessarily co-exist, kairos would appear as the ever-present

possibility of change, revolution and rupture. Moreover, and by way of a return to the Benjaminian texts

themselves, a remark in Ralf Konersmann's afterword to the selection of Benjamin's writings published

under the title, Kairos, is illustrative of the central position which the concept of kairos might well occupy in

Benjamin's thought as a whole. He writes:

Der Kairos ist der Anhaltspunkt für “die logische Zeit,” die Benjamin bereits 1920 ins Zentrum seiner philosophichen Epistemologie gestellt hat. In der Funktion einer elementaren Orientierungsfigur stellt der Kairos das Rationalitäts-muster bereit, in das die Begriffe Walter Benjamins allesamt eingelassen sind: die Allegorie und ebenso das dialektische Bild; der Name ebenso wie die Idee, die Monade ebenso wie der Ursprung, die Erkenntnis ebenso wie die Erfahrung.26

The term “logische Zeit” appears to be unique to a fragmentary text of 1920-1, entitled “Theory of

Knowledge.” That the concept of kairos is bound up with this “logical time” indicates its covert presence

in Benjamin's thought from the dawn of his career, and places kairos in relation to virtually all of

Benjamin's conceptual apparatus. This centrality, while perhaps overstated by Konersmann, is, moreover,

indicated by the conceptual nexus established in this text between truth, the “now of recognizability” and

“logical time.”27

If the experience of time as kairos is indeed the condition of possibility for any authentically

revolutionary activity, then the following note from The Arcades Project would appear at last to provide a

concrete description of this critical experience of time:

A phrase which Baudelaire coins for the consciousness of time peculiar to one intoxicated by hashish can be applied in the definition of a revolutionary historical consciousness. He speaks of a night in which he was absorbed by the effects of hashish: “Long though it seemed to have been... yet it also seemed to have lasted only a few seconds, or even to have had no place in all eternity.” [N15,1]

III. Critique of Progress & Political Theology

The traditional (metaphysical) conception of time, as a cyclic or linear medium that is infinitely

divisible into a series of instants lacking duration and quality, already present in the philosophies of

Antiquity and persisting virtually unchanged until at least the time of Hegel, can be viewed as the 25 Ibid, pg. 78.26 Ralf Konersmann, “Walter Benjamins philosophichen Kairologie,” in Walter Benjamin, Kairos: Schriften zur Philosophie

(Frankfurt Am Main: Surhkamp, 2007), 327-348. pg. 331-2.27 “Theory of Knowledge,” in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 1, Trans. Rodney Livingstone, Ed. Marcus Bullock and

Micheal W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 276-7.

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secularization of Graeco-Roman and Christian conceptions of time. The revolutionary theory of history

and politics must break with the traditional concept or experience of time, which we may designate as that

of chronological time.28 However, without having elaborated a new conception of time, historical materialism

has as its internal contradiction, “a revolutionary concept of history and a traditional experience of time.”29

It was this internal contradiction between the Social Democratic conception of history, inasmuch as it

claims to be revolutionary, and its uncritically traditional concept of time which doomed it to failure and to

misrecognition of the phenomenon of fascism. The traditional concept and experience of time supported

the ideology of progress, whose concept of historical progress was thought to be the progress “of

mankind itself (and not just advances in human ability & knowledge),” as “something boundless (in

keeping with an infinite perfectibility of humanity),” and finally, progress was thought to be “inevitable –

something that automatically pursued a straight or spiral course.” (XI, SW 4: 394) This dilution of the

revolutionary impulse by the dogmatic claims of Social Democratic theory “attaches not only to their

political tactics but to their economic views... It is one reason for the eventual breakdown of their party.

Nothing corrupted the... working class as the notion that it was moving with the current. It regarded

technological development as the driving force of the stream.” (XI, SW 4: 393). Furthermore, we read in

the following thesis that:

the subject of historical knowledge is the struggling, oppressed class itself. Marx presents it as the last enslaved class – the avenger that completes the task of liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden... The Social Democrats preferred to cast the working class in the role of a redeemer of future generations... [and] this indoctrination made the working class forget both its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice. (XII, SW 4: 394)

“We need history, but not the way a spoiled loafer in the garden of knowledge needs it.” – Nietzsche

If the activity of the working class is subordinated to the future it is because the Social Democratic,

progressive conception of history presupposes a traditional concept and experience of time, whether it

takes the form of the transcendental aesthetic in Kant or the never-ending series of negations by means of

which the Hegelian historical dialectic operates (and one must note that in Hegel, the true historical subject

is, in reality, the State) – for the future is supposed to be homologous with the past, while the present is but

28 Agamben, “Time and History: Critique of the Moment and the Continuum,” pg. 100-109.29 Ibid. pg. 99

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a moment in the continuum this homology constitutes. The Social Democratic “vulgar-Marxist conception

of the nature of labor recognizes only the progress in mastering nature, not the retrogression of society; it

already displays the technocratic features that later emerge in fascism.” (XI, SW 4: 393) It cannot possibly

see what Benjamin observes in Thesis VIII: that “the tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the

ausnehmezustand30 in which we live is not the exception but the rule.” Rather, the Social Democratic

conceptual apparatus “treats it [fascism] as a historical norm – and the current amazement that the things

we are experiencing are 'still' possible is not philosophical... is not the beginning of knowledge – unless it is

the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.” (VIII, SW 4: 392) Likewise, the

conception of time corresponding to this view of history is also untenable – thus, “We must attain to a

conception of history that accords with this insight. Then we will clearly see that it is our task to bring

about a real ausnehmezustand, and this will improve our position in the struggle against fascism.” (Ibid) And,

therefore, this task is also to attain to an experience and conception of time in accordance with the insight

that “the ausnehmezustand in which we live is not the exception but the rule,” that is, the concept and

experience of time proper to the ausnehmezustand.

In a very real sense it was by means of invoking the ausnehmezustand provision of Article 48 of the

Weimar constitution that fascism rose to power and maintained itself, indicating that the fascist

conceptions of history and time were appropriate to the ausnehmezustand. The ausnehmezustand invoked in

1933 was never lifted until the war's end. I leave the term untranslated to emphasize the fact that the term

is borrowed from the conservative jurist Carl Schmitt's Political Theology (1922), in which we read:

All significant concepts of the modem theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development-in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver-but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology.31iii

It would thus be miraculous in a certain sense if “a real ausnehmezustand” were to be actualized – as such, it

would grant sovereignty to those who brought it about, the revolutionary class, for “he is sovereign who

decides on the exception.”(Schmitt, 5) Furthermore, from a Hegelian-Marxist standpoint, the “modern 30 “State of emergency,” in Zohn's translation – it would be preferable to translate ausnehmezustand as “state of exception.”31 Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Trans. George Schwab (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

1985), pg. 36.

12

theory of the state” is equally the “modern theory of history,” and thus all the concepts of the philosophy

of history are “secularized theological concepts.” Likewise, it would stand to reason, with time. All this

suggests that the concept of history which would correspond to the ausnehmezustand, as well as the

corresponding experience of time would have to draw upon theological concepts, however secularized they

may appear. Indeed, Bram Mertens writes that Benjamin “insisted on secularizing this theology by

constructing his philosophy of history on the very profane concept of human happiness.”32 'Historical

materialism' must thereby “enlist the services of theology,” (I, SW 4: 389) if it is to articulate a concept of

history in tune with a truly revolutionary experience of time. And thus, it is unsurprising that Benjamin

sees that “in the idea of classless society, Marx secularized the idea of messianic time.” (XVIIa, SW 4: 401).

IV. History as Catastrophe

It is no coincidence that the famed image of the Angelus Novus appears immediately following

Benjamin's diagnosis of his contemporary political-historical situation as a period in which the

ausnehmezustand had paradoxically replaced the normal state from which by conventional standards would

be suspended by the invocation of the ausnehmezustand, which in this account (which is indeed by all

accounts true at least to an extent) has not only replaced the normal state; going further, the

ausnehmezustand had become the norm, in a very real sense.

The Angel of history is presented as having its back turned toward the future, its gaze forever

transfixed by the ceaselessly growing heaps of ruins which present to the angel a vision of the irreparable

past, of history as a history composed of little more than a succession of catastrophes. What's more, the

Angel, who is here an allegorical image of the materialist historian. If historical materialism's proper

concepts of history and time, including the experiences to which they correspond, is defined in terms of a

task yet to be complete, we can clearly see the cause of such angelic paralysis that is an integral element of

this image, for he does not yet have that “constructive principle,” which we may now see as having always

been the already noted incompatibility between the traditional experience of time, which the Angel

32 Bram Mertens, “'Hope, Yes, But Not For Us': Messianism and Redemption in the Work of Walter Benjamin,” in Messianism, Apocalypse & Redemption in 20th Century German Thought, Ed. Wayne Christando & Wendy Baker (Adelaide, ATF Press, 2006), 63-77. pg. 64

13

presumably retains, and the temporal conditions of possibility for both revolution and rescue.

On the other hand, while the Angel doesn't see these ruins as they appear to our eyes, as the ruins

of this or that catastrophe, he sees them rather as “one single catastrophe” that he would desperately like

to bring to a standstill, so as “to make whole what has been smashed,”33 in the course of history.. This,

however, is not a possibility open to the angel, for not only is he continually blown by winds of the story

that “we call progress,” but also because it is not granted to angels the power to decisively intercede and

therefore to bring this catastrophe to even a momentary halt. Such power is granted only to the Messiah,

whose arrival is immediately a “sign of a messianic arrest of happening... a revolutionary chance in the

fight for the oppressed past,” (SW 4: 396) which is the messianic concept that corresponds to historical

materialist's readiness “at any moment to stop time... It is this time which is experienced in authentic

revolutions, which, as Benjamin remembers, have always been lived as a halting of time and an interruption

of chronology.”34 This vigilance on the part of the materialist historian makes it possible for him to

recognize a moment as precisely the right one to “blast out of the continuum of history” and to thus make

time stand still.35

The angel is blown backward, into the future, by tempestuous winds issuing from the past, toward

which his gaze is fixed. The angel is powerless to move against the winds, which are Benjamin writes the

winds of “...what we call progress [that] is this storm.” (SW 4: 392) The italicization of both “we” and “this”

calls into question what, were he able to speak, the angel would mean, were he to utter the word

“progress.” In light of several illuminating passages in the Arcades concerning this problem, it would stand

to reason that if it is the case that “the concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe.

That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe. It is not as an ever-present possibility but what in each case is

given,” [N9a,1] which is continued in a later note in which Benjamin explicitly defines “catastrophe” as

“hav[ing] missed the opportunity,” and, in the same fragment, introduces for the first time a positive

conception of progress, proposing a new concept of progress in contrast to that which underlies the

33 This phrase should recall Origen's doctrine of apokatastasis, particular as it relates to Thesis III.34 Agamben, “Time and History: Critique of the Instant and the Continuum,” pg. 11535 We shall return to this in section VI.

14

dominant ideology of progress. Benjamin proposes to define progress, presumable as seen from the

vantage point of the angel-historian, as “the first revolutionary measure taken.” [N10,2] And if there were

any doubt as to the validity of attributing to Benjamin an alternative, positively defined concept of

progress, such doubts ought to be dispelled by one further Arcades note in which he writes: “progress has

its seat not in the continuity of elapsing time [Zeitverlaufs] but in its interferences – where the truly new

makes itself felt for the first time, with the sobriety of dawn.” [N9a,7] It is thus that the interruption of the

historical continuum by the emergence of qualitatively distinct, non-interchangeable moments, the

recognition of which within time and history is already “the first revolutionary measure taken,” for not

only do “the times” thereby change, but “time,” as such, also undergoes a fundamental change.

V. Redemption and Historical Experience

History finds its proper foundation in an experience of time as Jetztzeit, which Benjamin conceives

“as a model of messianic time, comprises the entire history of mankind in a tremendous abbreviation”.

(SW 4: 396). Furthermore, Jetztzeit is an immediately political concept, for thought in this way, “History is

the object [Gegenstand] of a construction [Konstruktion] whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but

time filled full [Erfüllte] by now-time [Jetztzeit]. (SW 4: 395) This is time which is experienced not as a

quantity or empty duration, but as qualified, fulfilled. This is a 'full' time insofar as all historical moments

of the past are included and bear with them, as images (for, “ History decays into images, not into stories”

[N11,4]), bearing within them a “secret index by which it is referred to redemption,” images which “can be

seized only as an image that flashes up at the moment of its recognizability, and is never seen again... it is

an irretrievable image of the past which threatens to disappear in any present that does not recognize itself

as intended in that image.”(II, SW 4: 390-1) In other words, what is at stake is the salvation or redemption

of the ephemeral truth of a past moment which would be lost if not recognized at/in the proper time..Were

time conceived on a spatial model, as an empty, homogeneous continuum of disconnected instants, truth is

always lost, even if knowledge is thereby gained. In the Arcades Project, Benjamin further articulates this

mode of temporality in opposition to the tradition of phenomenology, which, even while acknowledging

15

historicity, continued to conceptualize time on the model of a continuum of discrete instants in which

lived experience [Erlebnis] occurs.

What distinguishes images from the 'essences' of phenomenology is their historical index.... [which] not only says that they belong to a particular time; it says, above all, that they attain to legibility only at a particular time... Every present day [Gegenwart] is determined by the images that are synchronic with it: each 'now' is the now of a particular recognizability. In it, truth is charged to the bursting point with time (This point of explosion, and nothing else, is the death of the intentio, which thus coincides with the birth of authentic historical time, the time of truth). ...The image that is read – which is to say, the image in the now of its recognizability – bears to the highest degree the imprint of the perilous critical moment on which all reading is founded. [N3,1]

In other words, “the 'essences' of phenomenology” amount to formal, intentional knowledge

(arising from isolated experience [Erlebnis] utilizing timeless categories, while truth can emerge at any

moment from an image – every moment can be a moment of recognition – just as every moment of the

past imparts some truth to us. The historical index of an image is its only intentional part – its truth,

actualized at the intended moment is not. It is in this way that “the chronicler who narrates events without

distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accord with the following truth: nothing that has ever

happened should be regarded as lost to history. Of course only a redeemed mankind is granted the fullness

of its past – which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has it become citable in all its moments.” (III,

SW 4: 390). Thus in each and every moment wherein an image of the past is recognized and grasped

according to its “historical index” that particular past has been redeemed, insofar as its possibilities have

been actualized and its truth communicated..36 Redemption appears as happiness in a moment of now-

time, for “the image of happiness we cherish is thoroughly colored by the time to which the course of our

own existence has assigned us. There is happiness... only in the air we have breathed, among people we

could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, the idea of happiness

is indissolubly bound up with the idea of redemption. The same applies to the idea of the past which is the

concern of history.” (II, SW 4: 389-90) Perhaps this is our “weak messianic power” – the very possibility

of happiness and historical redemption (the Theological-Political Fragment seems to support this interpretation,

while Agamben, using the Handexemplar of this thesis, sees the use of “weak” in this phrase as an allusion

to Paul – connecting to this the practice of citation). Every moment in which a past moment becomes

36 Here, it would be worthwhile to consider the correlate to historical redemption in the epistemo-metaphysical sphere, as Mertens suggests, in what he designates as Rettung der Phänomene in the Trauerspeilbuch. pg. 65-7. See also Arcades [N9,4].

16

legible, every moment of citation is “charged with now time... [which] blast[s it] out of the continuum of

history” – and this is the construction of authentic history – that is, a history constructed on the basis of a

unique moment irreducible to a temporal continuum.

The activity of citation finds in the past a certain present-ness, a past that is “charged with now-

time,” which is “blast[ed] out of the continuum of history” (XIV, SW 4: 395), and is a truly revolutionary

act – for, whereas fashion cites past epochs (albeit in the mode of the ruling class), as “the tiger's leap into

the past.... The same leap in the open air of history [as opposed to the arena of the ruling class] is the

dialectical leap Marx understood as revolution.” Every moment in history is saturated with jetztzeit and

contains the possibility of revolutionary recognition and citation, just as messianic time contains all of

history in an abridgment. Through the doorway of the present (thought in terms of Jetztzeit)

messianic time breaks through the continuum of chronological time.

VI. Jetztzeit – Blasting open the continuum – Revolution & Remembrance

In Thesis XIV Benjamin introduces the concept of Jetztzeit and explicitly links it to the

revolutionary possibilities presented when the recognition of a correspondence emerges, in the form of a

constellation or dialectical image, between the present and the Jetztzeit with which a moment of history in

the past is charged. There is thus a revolutionary dimension of time: the moment of recognition is

“blast[ed] out of the continuum of history,” as is the past moment, whose recognition in the present

introduces ruptures in the order of chronological time, which are the first conditions of possibility for the

possibility of truly revolutionary activity.

In the following thesis, Benjamin retells an account of a certain peculiar event that took place

during the July Revolution of 1830, which, it should be noted, is a rare instance of successful

insurrectionary action. The truly revolutionary significance of this episode, of which Benjamin writes as

one of the very few truly hopeful images in “On the Concept of History.” The episode in question took

place during the course of a spontaneous revolution, which swept Charles X out of power in the course of

three days. On on evening, without any form of coordination or plan, fired upon the faces of clocktowers

““at the very same hour, in different parts of the city. [And this was the expression not of an aberrant

17

notion, an isolated whim, but of a widespread, nearly general sentiment.”” [a21a,2] An anonymously

written poem closes this thesis which reads as follows:

Who would believe it! It is said that, incensed at the hour,Latter-day Joshuas, at the foot of every clocktower,Were firing on clock faces to make the day stand still. (XV, SW 4: 395)

The revolution took aimed not only for political ends, but rather, in an entirely symbolic way, the

revolutionaries aimed not only to overthrow the monarchy, but also to act upon “Joshua's Intention,” that

is, to interrupt the course of time, and likewise it was “To interrupt the course of the world – that was

[also] Baudelaire's deepest intention The intention of Joshua.... From this intention... sprang the ever

renewed attempts to cut the world to the heart.”37

It is of the utmost importance that not only did the gunmen choose clocktower faces to bear the

brunt of their wrath, but also that, as has already been mentioned, the same identical action occurred in

numerous and distant locales within Paris. Insofar as we are concerned with the first point, that is, with

their idiosyncratic choice of target, J. M. Baker Jr. notes, in an essay entitled “Vacant Holidays: The

Theological Remainder in Leopardi, Baudelaire, and Benjamin,” that “Prior to Baudelaire, Marx and Engels

had already noted the resentment workers bore toward the factory bell and clock.20 And from their

vantage point utopia, or the liberation from working time, would consist in the ability to influence

historical time, to change the economy of time.”38

Among the most intriguing remarks found in this thesis is the statement that, by virtue of the

regular, yearly recurrence of holidays, “which are days of remembrance.” The German word used for

“rememberance,”

Eingedenken, [which is] a uniquely evocative word which is translated either as remembrance or mindfulness, and which lies somewhere in between the two. The act... seeks to perform a small but never insignificant restitutio in integrum, if only by doing as little as simply refusing to accept the finality of past suffering. Eingedenken can therefore be called messianic... most importantly because it asserts the necessity of a messianic redemption at some point, lest the catastrophe that is the history of human suffering continues for all eternity.”(Mertens, 75)

Thus, “calendars do not measure time as clocks do.” (SW 4: 393), for these “days of remembrance” not

37 This passage can be found both in “Central Park,” Selected Writings, Volume 4: 170 & [J50,2]38 J. M. Baker Jr. “Vacant Holidays: The Theological Remainder in Leopardi, Baudelaire, and Benjamin,” in MLN, Vol. 121, No.

5 (Dec. 2006), 1190-1220.

18

only interrupt capitalist labor processes, which the clock, conversely regulates, but introduce a

heterogeneous element into time with each holiday. Furthermore, it is not by chance that Baudelaire has

twice been mentioned in so many paragraphs, for we find that in “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire” a

passage can be found which clearly specifies this difference in the measurement of time, for “Although

chronological reckoning subordinates duration to regularity, it cannot prevent heterogeneous conspicuous

fragments from remaining within it. Combining recognition of a quality with measurement of

quantity is the accomplishment of calendars” [my emphasis]39

VII. The Present As Rupture and Interruption

Kairos, though as the revolutionary present, the present conceived on the model of jetztzeit (which

inheres in the past, future and present – i.e. in history) as the moment blasted out of the continuum of

history, is precisely that concept for which Benjamin has no name. It is the very present announced as a

task in Thesis XVI as an interruptive moment “in which time takes a stand and has come to a standstill”

(SW 4: 396). It is in this moment that in no way interchangeable with any other that truth emerges as

though in a flash, as a direct consequence of the fact that, in opposition to “the relation of what-has-been

[Gewesene] to the now [Jetzt] is dialectical: is not progression [Verlauf] but image, suddenly emergent,”

[N2a,3], time conceived on the basis of ordered, regular chronological time is essentially composed of little

more than an infinite succession of infinitely brief moment, which projected onto a spatial model

produces the image of a continuum. This is the time of modernity, of the clock, which is entirely alien to

theology as Benjamin understands it. It is a theology containing the concept and at very least acquainted

with the experience of kairos that determines the every move of historical materialism. Indeed, the concept

of kairos in both the rhetorical and theological traditions designates also the opportune time for action – and

therefore, a politics of kairos. At the forefront of history is the present conceived as kairos - “a conception

of the present as now-time shot through with splinters of messianic time.” (Thesis A)

Taken together, the concepts of kairos, Jetztzeit and messianic time underpin a truly materialist

historiography and politics as constitutive elements of “revolutionary time” – a time comprised of

39 Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” in SW 4, pg. 331.

19

heterogeneous, qualitatively distinct moments, in their capacity for noncontemporaneous correspondence

and their fundamentally disruptive quality viz-à-viz the continuum that history establishes between distinct

moments. Moments best denoted as kairoi are those moments in history in which the past is superimposed

upon the present, moments in which continuity is not merely disrupted, but rather, as Benjamin writes in

uncharacteristically violent terms such instances “blast open the continuum of history.” Historical

materialism for Benjamin, as opposed to Marx, is equally not to be conceived of as a science, or even on

the model of science – for “nothing is lost to history” (Thesis III), and the redemptive activity of memory

has every historical moment for material. The “material” at stake for the historical materialist ought thus to

be conceived broadly as to include the materials of history, whether ruins or carefully preserved artifacts –

it is thus that the conception of time as “filled full with Jetztzeit” gives to every moment a secret, almost

magnetic, charge, a revolutionary potential, which can be unleashed at the appointed time (kairos, once again)

so as to introduce a rupture and sever the continuity, which is both the condition of possibility for the

Historicist concept and understanding of history, and thereby to make present what was thought of as

irretrievably lost to the past. Consequently, the events filling the past lose their unchangeable nature and

can, by means of the fundamentally theological practice of Remembrance. In this way, even what was

thought to be irretrievably lost can still find redemption. This is, of course, absolutely congruous with what

we find in an important note drawn from Convolute N of the Arcades which reads: “What science has

'determined,' remembrance can modify. Such mindfulness can make the incomplete (happiness) into

something complete, and the complete (suffering) into something incomplete. That is theology; but in

remembrance we have an experience that forbids us to conceive of history as fundamentally atheological,

little as it may be granted us to try to write it with immediately theological concepts.” [N8,1]

Again we find yet another indication that the concepts which would be of most use to the project

of producing a concept of history which no longer imposes an extrinsic order upon events but rather takes

close and careful account of the potentialities latent, as Jetztzeit, in each and every moment of history. Such

a concept would be truly materialist historiography, for it would take account of all of the materials

provided by every moment as it recedes into the past. However, the theological notions of apokatastasis and

20

of the tikkun, do preserve the hope that, at the end of history, all that has been lost to time will be

recovered in a final restitutio in integratum.

VIII. Conclusion: Awakening to a Kairology

Benjamin concludes the exposée of 1935, an essay which outlines a sketch of The Arcades Project as

a whole, with the following two sentences: “Every epoch, in fact, not only dreams the one to follow, but, in

dreaming, precipitates its awakening. It bears its end within itself and unfolds it – as Hegel already noticed

– by cunning.”40 These lines highlight a concept and experience common to all men, that is, that of

“Awakening.” We must look to certain notes in the Arcades concerning the moment of awakening,

particularly the one which follows, in which Benjamin writes “The moment of awakening would be

identical with the 'now of recognizability.'” [N3a,3] If Konersmann's claim that Benjamin's early concept

of “logishe Zeit,” is something of an alias or antiquated term for kairos, then not only is the moment of

Awakening also immediately identical to the “now of recognizability,” but it is also the most fundamental

experience we have of time in the modality of kairos. Taking a slight degree of interpretive liberty, the

moment of awakening would a be related, if not identical, to Baudelaire's experience of time while

intoxicated with Hashish.

Time inheres not only in movements, but also in stoppages and ruptures; time does not pass as a

uniform flow. Moreover, it would stand to reason that, in radical opposition to the time designated by

chronos, each and every moment is qualitatively distinct from every other, however infinitesimal the

difference may be. It is by seizing hold of a moment, fully cognizant of the power which inheres in its

qualitative dimension that makes revolution possible, not as a means to inaugurate a new chronology, but

to effect “a qualitative alteration of time (a kairology),[which] would have the weightiest consequence and

would alone be immune to absorption into the reflux of restoration.”41 For this to be possible, the proper

time must come, for at all other times, “revolutions are [rather] attemps by the passengers on this train [of

world history] – namely the human race – to activate the emergency break.”(XVIIa, SW 4: 402)

40 Walter Benjamin, “Exposé of 1935,” in The Arcades Project, Ed. Rolf Tiedemann, Trans. Howard Eiland & Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pg. 13.

41 Agamben, “Time and History: Critique of the Instant and the Continuum,” pg. 115.

21

Revolutionary praxis truly worthy of the name would aim to interrupt and continually disrupt

chronology and to, in its place, inaugurate a kairology. That is, according to Kia Lindroos, whose Now-

Time/Image-Space (1998) was among the earliest thoroughgoing interpretations of Benjamin to truly

mobilize the concept of kairos, as opposed to merely highlighting its similarity, as one would a mere

curiosity. She begins defining the term kairology in loosely, by means of its opposition to chronology, such

that: “kairology differs from chronology... through emphasizing singular moments in history or in the

present.”42 In a chapter dedicated to Benjamin's famed fourteenth thesis, the very same thesis which, nearly

seventy years ago, provoked the very first intimation as to the implicit presence of the concept and

experience of kairos, Lindroos writes:

A kairological approach “emphasizes breaks, ruptures, non-synchronized moments and multiple temporal dimensions.... [and] brings forth qualitative differences in time, as they have the possibility to become actualized... in temporally changing situations. The variety of moments... produce a different view on time and its dimensions [than the chronological perspective] ...the present and its experiences are temporarily 'frozen' in any historical or current material and phenomena. This 'condensed time' creates another perspective on time, and these moments of temporal insight are possible to decipher as 'seeds of the present.'43

The unspoken task inherited by us, directly from Walter Benjamin, would be expand his insights and

reflections on time and history further into the domain of politics. It would be task of articulating a kairo-

politics, which would oppose every chronopoltical strategy of reguarlizing and homogenizing time, subdividing

time ad infinitum, and wielding time conceived as chronos as an instrument of oppression, which we can see

at work today insofar as measurable time is used to control the lives of workers even when they take leave

of their workplace. The properly revolutionary political praxis would be essentially kairopolitical.

42 Kia Lindroos, Now-Time/Image-Space: Temporalization of Politics in Walter Benjamin's Philosophy and Art (Jyväskylä: SoPhi, 1998, pg. 11.

43 Ibid, pg. 85

22

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i Adorno's letter reads: “Es ist kein Zufall wohl dass danach die XIV. These dem χαιρός unseres Tillich nicht ganz unähnlich sieht.” – Adorno an Horkheimer 12.6.1941 “It is no coincidence at all that after Thesis XIV, our Tillich's kairos does not seem dissimilar.” Theodor W. Adorno, Briefe und Briefwechsel, Band 4: Theodor W. Adorno – Max Horkheimer: Briefwechsel 1927-1969, Teil 2: 1938-1944, Hrsg. Theodor W. Adorno Archiv, Christoph Gödde & Henri Lonitz (Frankfurt Am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), pp. 144-5.

Tillich: “...in this dynamic thinking in terms of creation, time is all-decisive, not empty time, pure expiration; not mere duration either, but rather qualitatively fulfilled time, the moment that is creation and fate. We call this fulfilled moment, themoment of time approaching us as fate and decision, Kairos.” (Paul Tillich, The Interpretation of History, pg 129.)

Kairos “was chosen [as a term] to remind philosophy of the necessity of dealing with history, not in terms of its logical and categorical structures only, but also in terms of its dynamics. And, above all, kairos should express the feeling of many people in central Europe after the First World War that a moment of history had appeared which was pregnant with a new understanding of the meaning of history and life.”(Paul Tillich Systematic Theology Volume Three, pg. 369)

Scholem, “Characterized [Paul] as 'the most outstanding example known to us of a revolutionary Jewish mystic.... [and he] seems to suggest, albeit in a cryptic fashion, that Benjamin may have identified with Paul.” (Agamben, The Time That Remains, pg. 144).

ii We find the following in the Arcades: Modest methodological proposal for the cultural-historical dialectic. It is very easy to establish oppositions, according to determinate points o view, within the various “fields” of any epoch, such that on one side lies the “productive,” “forward-looking,” “lively,” “positive” part of the epoch, and on the other side the abortive, retrograde, and obsolescent. The very contours of the positive element will appear distinctly only insofar as this element is set off against the negative. On the other hand, every negation has its value solely as background or the delineation of the lively, the positive. It is therefore of decisive importance that a new partition be applied to this initially excluded, negative component so that, by a displacement of the angle of vision (but not of the criteria!), a positive element emerges anew in it too – something different that previously signified. And so on, ad infinitum, until the entire past is brought into the present in a historical apokatastasis. [N1a,3](459)

iiiBenjamin had previously engaged with Schmitt's ideas in the Trauerspielbuch, and whose influence Benjamin acknowledged in a letter to Schmitt of December 1930:

“Esteemed Professor Schmitt, You will receive any day now from the publisher my book The Origin of the German Mourning Play.... You will very quickly recognize how much my book is indebted to you for its presentation of the doctrine of sovereignty in the seventeenth century. Perhaps I may also say, in addition, that I have also derived from your later works, especially the "Diktatur," a confirmation of my modes of research in the philosophy of art from yours in the philosophy of the state. If the reading of my book allows this feeling to emerge in an intelligible fashion, then the purpose of my sending it to you will be achieved. With my expression of special admiration Your very humble Walter Benjamin [GS 1: 3.8871]” in Samuel Weber, “Taking Exception to Decision,” in diacritics, Volume 22, No. 3-4: Commemorating Walter Benjamin (Autumn-Winter 1992), pp. 5-18. pg. 5.

It should be noted, if only in passing, that Political Theology II, first published in 1969, amounts to a defense and reaffirmation of this general claim, against arguments that “political theology” had become obsolete. Here, Benjamin would be in agreement with Schmitt, for the theological dimensions of politics and history could never be conclusively cut off, or dissevered.