Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Fragmented Academic Sensibilities

Author(s): Azade Seyhan

Source: Pacific Coast Philology, Vol. 19, No. 1/2 (Nov., 1984), pp. 22-27
Published by: Penn State University Press on behalf of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language
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WALTER
BENJAMIN
AND
THE
CRITIQUE
OF
FRAGMENTED ACADEMIC SENSIBILITIES
Azade
Seyhan
The "Epistemo-Critical Prologue"
to Walter
Benjamin's
controversial
"Habilitationsschrift"
begins
with the
following quote
from Goethe's Farbenlehre:
Neither in
knowledge
nor in reflection can
anything
whole be
put together,
since in
the former the internal is
missing
and in the latter the
external;
and so we must
necessarily
think of science as art if we
expect
to derive wholeness from it. Nor should
we look for this in the
general,
the
excessive, but,
since art is
always wholly represented
in
every
individual work of
art,
so science
ought
to reveal itself in
every
individual
object
treated.'
It is in this
redemptive spirit
that Walter
Benjamin sought
to rehabilitate the
fragmented unity
of human modes of
knowledge
in the sanatorium of artistic form.
Ironically,
this intellectual
passion
to
impose
a
graspable shape
on the world of
experience
and the elusive moments of historical coherence condemned
Benjamin
to exile in an
ideological
and institutional no man's land. He
emerged,
in the later
reception
of his
work,
as a rather
tragic figure
seen in the
conflicting
roles of aesthete
and
political theoretician, mystic
and
political avant-gardist,
a
political
thinker
accused
ofmessianism,
a Marxist denounced on
grounds
of his undialectical
position.
Oblivious to such criticism of his
work, Benjamin lovingly
collected in his discourse
all kinds of relics that could be reconstructed to
yield
a lost
totality
of
experience
and
understanding.
"For in one
sense,"
comments Fredric
Jameson, "Benjamin's
life work can be seen as a kind of vast
museum,
a
passionate collection,
of all
shapes
and varieties of
allegorical
decoration which is the
Baroque."2 Benjamin's
"Habilitationsschrift," Ursprung
des deutschen
Trauerspiels,
which was
rejected by
the
academic establishment and which barred his
entry
into the
university,
constitutes
an
attempt
at a coherent
narrative,
where
metaphysical
foundations of historical
understanding
are invested with
significance
in the
very
essence of
allegorical per-
ception.
The
fragmented
vision of
history
is restored in the
immediacy
and
totality
of the artistic form.
The
separation
that Descartes enacted in his own discursive
system
between the
reason of the intellect and the forms of
imagination
marks the intellectual climate
that has
pervaded many
of the academic
disciplines
and institutions of our time
since the establishment of modern
university department systems.
Vico's
thought,
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Walter
Benjamin
and Academic Sensibilities 23
on the other
hand,
as articulated most
comprehensively
in his
untimely Scienza nuova,
presents
a
cognitive
model of human
experience
as a
product
of
imaginative
univer-
sals and
anticipates
the
development
of a different order of
perception
that can
come to
grips
with the
fragmentation
of
contemporary
critical sensibilities. German
Romantics,
as
metaphorical
heirs of the Viconean
legacy, picked up
the strands of
this mode of
thought
where Vico had
signed
off. And
Benjamin,
one of the earliest
and most
discerning
readers of the critical
thought
of the German
Romantics,
self-consciously
stands in the tradition of German Idealism where
every major
thinker after Kant
attempted
to
complete
his
philosophical system by
an account
of art where
conflicting
drives of human
knowledge
were seen as
suspended
in a
state of
temporal
truce.
Benjamin's dissertation,
Der
Begriff
der Kunstkritik in der deutchen
Romantik,
was one
of the first
attempts
to
place
the role of the Romantic theories of art within a
philosophical
context. It is not accidental that
Benjamin,
at the time still
hoping
to
acquire
a niche for himself in
academe,
chose to write his dissertation on Romantic
criticism. This mode of
thought
offered an
epistemic
account of art and literature
that was far
superior
to the one
prevalent
in his time in academic circles.
Benjamin's
final comments in the dissertation make it
quite
clear that his interest in the aesthetic
philosophy
of the Romantic era was more than an interest in
history.
It was his
conviction that the Romantics allowed the reader to form a critical
judgement
of
the work of art and to
perpetuate
the text in
reception: "Thus,
criticism
is, contrary
to the
present conception
of its
essence,
from the
viewpoint
of its central
purpose,
not
judgement
of a
work,
but
rather,
on the one
hand,
its
completion, complement,
systemization,
and on the other its resolution in the Absolute.
...
Both
processes,
in the final
analysis
... coincide."3
Thus, interpretation
constitutes another text where the
object
of
understanding
becomes a
pretext
or
pre-pretext
for a new work of art.
Basing
his
argument
on the
Romantic
model, Benjamin
eliminated the borders between the
target
text and its
commentary. Benjamin's subsequent ongoing practice
of the elimination of borders
legitimized by
academic cannons of evaluation
eventually
obstructed his
way
to the
corridors of academe. The
conception
and
completion
of a work of art criticism that
sought
to
replace
what
appeared
to be incoherent
fragments
of the
philosophical
question
of
representation
into a new coherent narrative resulted in the
Ursprung
des deutschen
Trauerspiels,
a
testimony
to
Benjamin's penchant
for
painstaking
schol-
arship
and love for collector's items in
print.
The work was conceived and written
between December 1922 and
April
1925.
Benjamin's guiding impulse
in this
study
was the rehabilitation of a
genre
which
constituted the
philosophical expression
of an
age
of decline but was threatened
by
oblivion. His critical
insight
led
Benjamin
to the conclusion that an
analysis
of the
symbolic configuration
of this
forgotten
art form would
tap
a wealth of historical
understanding.
Like his
dissertation, Benjamin's
"Habilitationsschrift"
sought
to
reveal the
unity
of a
problematics,
a
unity
that has been dissimulated
by
diverse
traditions and
terminologies.
The critical orientation of
Benjamin's study
of the
"Trauerspiel"
was informed
by
an
emphasis
on the reconciliation of the
binary
structures of human
knowledge through
the
ubiquitous
network of artistic
categories.
It was Professor Schultz of the
University
of Frankfurt am Main who had
originally
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24 Azade
Seyhan
directed
Benjamin's
research interest toward the
Baroque tragedians
of the mid-
seventeenth
century.
Yet the critical
sensibility
that
shaped
the fruits of this research
into a
profound commentary
on the nature of art and
knowledge
was
unique
to
Benjamin.
Endless hours
spent
in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin
produced
a colossal
pile
of
excerpts
from
forgotten Baroque plays, secondary sources,
and
theological
tracts of the
period
under
study.
His close
analysis
of this material
yielded
a novel
historical
understanding
dictated
by symbolic
form. A
comprehensive
mode of
knowledge, however,
could
only
be
legislated by
an enactment of the
metaphysical
assumptions
of form: "in terms of the
concepts
of
psychology
. . . it is not
possible
to
express
the essence of a field of artistic endeavor. This can
only
be done in a
comprehensive explanation
of the
underlying concept
of its
form,
the
metaphysical
substance of which should not
simply
be found
within,
but should
appear
in
action,
like the blood
coursing through
the
body."4
The borders of this
study
which flowed into the realms of
history
and
philosophy
and
challenged
the hitherto
accepted
norms of
understanding proved
to be
nothing
less than anathema to the academic sensibilities of the established chairs at the
University
of Frankfurt. Professor Schultz found the
Ursprung appropriate
to Ger-
manistik and
passed
it on to the
departments
of aesthetics and
philosophy
of art.
The
response
was a wholesale
rejection
of the
manuscript. By
late
September
1925
Benjamin's already
strained relations with the
university
ended.
Why
did this
work,
which is
today regarded
as a monument to the
philosophy
of
symbolic form,
constitute such a
major
threat to academic norms of
understanding
and
interpretation?
There is no
simple
answer. The text itself enacts its
assumption
that "the set of
concepts
which assist in the
representation
of an idea lend it
actuality
as such a
configuration."5 Benjamin's
discourse is
multiple
in its voice and intentions.
It
represents
to the fullest the
gist
of Friedrich
Schlegel's essay ,
"fUber die Univer-
standlichkeit," ("Concerning Unintelligibility"):
"The
highest
truths of
every
kind
are
thoroughly
trivial
and, therefore, nothing
is more
necessary
than to
express
them
always
anew
and,
where
possible,
more
paradoxically,
so that it will not be
forgotten
that
they
are still there and can never be
actually spoken fully."6
The rich texture of
philosophical
and historical
perspectivism
that characterized
Benjamin's
text
was,
in
essence,
inimical to the
spirit
of
rigid
academic
segregation
of
disciplines. Ursprung
stands close to the modern notion of the text as a field of
activity
that cuts across traditional borders of
disciplines.
It does not involve the
question
of
bringing disciplines together
but rather that of
breaking
them down to
produce something new;
the
concept
of the test as a field of
production
is rendered
possible only
as a result of a shift in the traditional models of
knowledge.
As Roland
Barthes
points out,
interdisciplinary activity,
valued
today
as an
important aspect
of
research,
cannot be
accomplished by simple
confrontations between various
specialized
branches of knowl-
edge. Interdisciplinary
work is not
peaceful operation:
it
begins effectively
when the
solidarity
of the old
disciplines
breaks
down,
a
process
made more
violent,
perhaps by
the
jolts
of fashion to the benefit of a new
object
and a new
language,
neither of which
is the domain of those branches of
knowledge
that one
calmly sought
to
confront.7
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Walter
Benjamin
and Academic Sensibilities 25
What
Benjamin
tried to
accomplish
in the
Ursprung
was
nothing
short of
writing
a narrative that accounted for a
totalizing
mode of
knowledge
reconstituted in
artistic form. In the
emblematic-allegorical temper
of the
Baroque spirit, Benjamin
saw the link to the esoteric
speculation
of German Romanticism
which,
in
turn,
constituted the
necessary continuity
with his
preceding
studies.
By explaining
the
process
of
cognitive
construction in terms
analogous
to the creation of
metaphor,
Novalis had stressed the
validity
of artistic
conceptualization
in the act of
knowing.
Benjamin
followed the same
path.
But he was in the land of canonized academic
values where
interdisciplinaryactivity
was
punishable by
banishment.
Hegel's phenomenology
had succeeded in
dramatizing
the moves of abstract
thought
on the chessboard of
history.
It had rendered
philosophical
discourse as
an
unfolding
dramatic
experience.
To this
dynamic
dramatization of
conceptual
moves,
Nietzsche's Die Geburt der
Tragidie
had added an intricate texture of
profes-
sional
philology, lyrical
narration and the
insight
into the dialectical
possibilities
governing
the
procedures
of
poetic cognition.
In
agreeing
to
participate
in the
academic
game, Benjamin actually
strove to
align
himself with the
Hegelian spirit
of
enacting
the formal statement in idiom and the
rearrangement
of
experience
in
narrative. The final
product
that
emerges
from
Benjamin's
effort is a
product
of
painstaking synthesis.
He tried to reconcile the technical demands and formal
posture
of a "Habilitationsschrift" with the broader
questions
of
metaphysics, art,
and
interpretation.
From an academic
point
of
view,
the German
baroque
drama was
the
object
of disinterested
examination, yet
from an
epistemological-structural per-
spective,
these obscure texts
provided
the occasion for a
progressive
move of reflec-
tions on the nature of aesthetic
understanding,
the
metaphysical assumptions
of
allegory,
on
language
in
general,
and on the
problem, pivotal
in
Benjamin's
dis-
course,
of the relations between a work of art and the
analytic commentary
of which
it constitutes the
target.
What
Benjamin polemicizes against
is the
unscrupulous
divorce between the
scholarly styles
of critical
analysis
and the autonomous
objects
of such
analysis,
a
split particularly damaging
in the realm of arts and letters.
Classification
may
locate and
capture from,
but form
generates category
and consti-
tutes in its
configurations
the
crystallization
of abstract
thought. Benjamin
claims
that idea is that moment in the
very being
of a word
("im
Wesen des
Wortes")
where the word has become a
symbol,
"the idea is
something linguistic,
it is that
element of the
symbolic
essence of
any
word"
(Origina, p. 36).
"It is the task of the
philosopher,"
states
Benjamin,
"to
restore, by representation,
the
primacy
of the
symbolic
character of the
word,
in which the idea is
given
self-consciousness"
(loc.
cit.).
It is this
capacity
of a
language
of a
higher
order of
signification
to
symbolize
as well as be transformed into a
symbol
itself that enables critical discourse to enact
ideas. Thus the
particular
is redeemed and restored to
understanding
in the manifold
of
representation
in the
symbol
which allows
genuine
reconciliation to endure in time.
What
Benjamin,
in
effect,
sets
up
in the
concept
of the "idea" is a mode of
cognitive
construction that
attempts
to reconcile the
competing procedures
of ana-
lytic
and
synthetic imagination. Here, too, Benjamin
draws
upon
Novalis's theoret-
ical-poetic
model. The
procedures
of this formal
synthsis
cut
through
the
literary
and historical
catagories
of conventional
theory.
To be redeemed into the truth of
criticism or
philosophy,
the world of
empirical experience
must be
dismantled,
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26 Azade
Seyhan
rediscovered,
deconstructed so as to be rearticulated and drawn into a concrete
constellation of
tropic
discourse. The
activity
of this
configuration
demands confor-
mity
to the inner
logic
of the world of
objects,
thus
rejecting
the elusive
grounds
of
subjective
idealism even when the
object
is transformed
by
the
potency
of creative
nominalism. But the
energy
of this
magic
articulation which
generates
ideas has to
be
recharged
in
philosophical thought:
Ideas are
displayed,
without
intention,
in the act of
naming,
and
they
have to be
renewed in
philosophical contemplation.
In this
renewal,
the
primordial
mode of
ap-
prehending
words is restored. And
so,
in the course of its
history,
which has so often
been an
object
of
scorn, philosophy
is
-
and
rightly
so
-
a
struggle
for the
representation
of a limited number of words which
always
remain the same
-
a
struggle
for the
representation
of ideas.
(Origin, p. 37.)
Benjamin's attempt
at this
demystification
of
metaphysics represents
an
ingenious
response
to a
problem
which had also obsessed Nietzsche's
analytic
and
synthetic
configurations
of human
knowledge.
The
question
to be addressed
by
all
philosophi-
cal
speculation
is: how are we to think of
totality
and
specificity, historicity
and
simultaneity together?
This
problem
constitutes the essence of
Benjamin's
notion
of the idea
("Idee")
as a constellation of
phenomena,
the
highest
common de-
nominator of the structures of
understanding
which aims to transcend
pure
con-
tingency
as well as closed
systems
in the
symbolic gesture:
"Philosophical history,
the science of
origin,
is the form
which,
in the remotest extremes
and the
apparent
excesses of the
process
of
development,
reveals the
configuration
of
the idea- the sum total of all
possiblejuxtapositions
of such
opposites"( Origin, p. 47).
Like all scholars committed to
challenging
the
authority
of traditional
metaphysics,
Benjamin perceived
that not
only
the humanities but also all critical
intelligence
itself resides in this moment of the
temporal
truce of dialectic forces of human
knowledge,
a
precarious
balance which the isolationist
policies
of academic
depart-
ments cannot sustain. What
Benjamin's
critical effort
consistently
strove to illustrate
was that an
epistemological
crisis is
only
resolved when it becomes the
subject
of
a
larger,
renewed narrative that accounts for both the now lost coherence of the
first narrative as well as the reasons for its
fragmentation. Benjamin
demonstrates
this
Hegelian concept
with his
interpretation
of the word
"origin" ("Ursprung").
Origin
constitutes not a fixed
point
in time and
space,
but a dialectic move of
temporal
restoration:
The term
origin
is not intended to describe the
process by
which the existent came
into
being,
but rather to describe that which
emerges
from the
process
of
becoming
and
disappearance. Origin
is an
eddy
in the stream of
becoming,
and in its current it
swallows the material involved in the
process
of
genesis.
That which is
original
is never
revealed in the naked and manifest existence of the
factual;
its
rhythm
is
apparent only
to
a
dual insight. On the one hand it needs to be recognized as a process of restoration
and
reestablishment, but, on the other
hand, and
precisely
because of this, as
something
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Walter
Benjamin
and Academic Sensibilities 27
imperfect
and
incomplete.
There takes
place
in
every original phenomenon
a determi-
nation of the form in which an idea will
constantly
confront the historical
world,
until
it is revealed
fulfilled,
in the
totality
of its
history. Origin
is
not, therefore,
discovered
by
the examination of actual
findings,
but it is related to their
history
and their sub-
sequent development.
The
principles
of
philosophical contemplation
are recorded in
the dialectic which is inherent in
origin.
The dialectic shows
singularity
and
repetition
to be conditioned
by
one another in all essentials.
(Origin, pp. 45-46)
What the academic readers
of Benjamin's major
critical
texts,
Der
Begriff
der
Kunstkritik in den deutschen
Romantik, Ursprung
des deutschen
Trauerspiels,
and Goethes
Wahlverwandtschaflen
failed to
see,
in most
instances,
was
Benjamin's
demonstration
of the
symbolic
mode as the
crystallization
of the
temporally captured spirit
of
history,
of the stations of
fragmentation
and
recovery,
of the
reconciliatory posture
of
simultaneity
and
progress.
In its
daring
enactment of the
problematic relationship
between
art, knowledge,
and
history, Benjamin's
narrative
captures
the essence of
German
philosophical
discourse since Kant.
University of Washington
Notes
1.Walter
Benjamin,
The
Origin of
German
Tragic Drama,
trans
John Osborne, (Lon-
don:
NLB, 1977),
27.
2.Fredric
Jameson,
Marxism and Form:
Twentieth-Century
Dialectical Theories
ofLiter-
ature, (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton
University Press, 1971),
68.
3.Benjamin,
Schriflen,
II, (Frankfurt
a. M.:
Suhrkamp, 1955),
483-84
(translation
mine).
4.
Origin,
39.
5.Origin, 34; subsequent page
references in
parentheses.
6.Friedrich
Schlegel,
Kritische
Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, II,
ed. Hans
Eichner,
(Munchen
Paderborn Wien:
Schoningh, 1967),
366
(translation mine).
7.Roland Barthes,
"From Work to
Text,"
in Textual
Strategies,
ed.
Josue
V.
Harari,
(Ithaca,
NY: Cornell
University Press, 1979),
73.
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