US Presidential Election one year on: taking ‘control of memory, as it flashes at a moment of danger’ (Walter Benjamin)
America voted for its next President on 5th November 2024. The archaic Electoral College system that is used did not on that occasion prevent Trump being promptly declared the winner.
We have seen the film before. Political and economic crisis of various dimensions created a situation where a lurch to autocracy was and is now very possible.
The critical theorist and philosopher Walter Benjamin committed suicide 84 years ago 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 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) It grapples with how historical memory is understood in the present day:
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.
Perhaps now is the time to revisit his work…
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