The Frankfurt School & Cultural Marxism. Walter Benjamin, history ‘flashing up at a moment of danger’
The critical theorist and philosopher Walter Benjamin committed suicide on 26th September 1940. He had been detained at the French/Spanish border and feared being handed over to the Nazis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin#Exile_and_death
Benjamin’s writings were wide ranging and complex although he was associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, sometimes referred to as cultural Marxists, and influenced by Adorno and Brecht amongst others.
Many of his writings still speak to our times perhaps particularly.
His brief piece on the Concept of History (1940) for example grapples with how historical memory is understood in the present day and is an important example:
To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm
Like numbers of important left-wing thinkers from the past Benjamin was much discussed in the period after 1968. While his writings continue to be collected- particularly the Arcades Project- one fears he has become less well-known again now.
In the age of Suella Braverman, not beyond hints at what she thinks cultural Marxism is, seizing hold of the memory of what Benjamin stood for and why he died is in itself a small act of resistance.
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