Walter Benjamin and the Idea of aTechnological Eros A tentative reading of ZumPlanetar ium

Irving Wohlfarth

67

(hellip) my life as well as my thought moves inextreme positions The freedom that it thereby maintains to juxtapose things and ideas that areconsidered irreconcilable receives its complexiononly through danger This danger is in generalapparent to my friends only in the guise of (hellip)lsquodangerousrsquo relations (II 1369)

(A certain lsquologicrsquo) lies in wait for the calculationsor political consequences of political or indeed anydiscourse It is as if the possibility of its ownoverturning were ventriloquizing the discourse inadvance installing within it a quasi-internalwar or still more seriously an endless one (hellip)It consists in effect of multiple fronts and frontiersA finite strategy can never formalize them totallystill less master them Whence the effect producedby the incessant passage of these fronts or frontiersIt is a paradoxical effect because the very possibility

of the passage seems to forbid any advance it seemsaporetic in itself Now it is precisely in this placeand at this moment I will even go so far as to sayon this condition that all decisions if there areany must be taken and that responsibilities aretaken (hellip) (What de Man) leaves us is the giftof an ordeal the summons to a work of readinghistorical interpretation ethico-political reflectionan interminable analysis (hellip) In the future andfor the future (hellip) responsibility if there is anyrequires the experience of the undecidable (hellip)1

(hellip) the task is not to decide once and for all butto decide at every moment But to decide2

According to Benjaminrsquos Theses on the Philosophy of History the historical materi-alist blasts (sprengt) a particular epoch out of the course of history a particular life out of the epoch and a particular work out of the lifersquos work3 And so on adinfinitum (as Benjamin puts it in another related context4) The assumption is that each fragment contains and preserves in nuce the larger whole from which it was extracted Each lsquobroken partrsquo (Bruchstuumlck) is in Benjaminrsquos terminology a Leibnizian lsquomonadrsquo a Messianic lsquoshardrsquo or lsquocrystalrsquo or in rhetorical terms asynecdochal pars pro toto The lsquoDivide and conquerrsquo practised by imperial power isto be counteracted by an altogether different process of division akin to the het-erodox theological doctrine of apokatastasis5 All souls are to go to heaven But theycan be lsquosavedrsquo only throught a process of lsquomortificationrsquo mdash resurrection as it werethrough dismemberment It isnrsquot by unrolling the red carpet of historicism that one gets to the paradise of universal history but as Kleist intuited by an altogether different route

What if one were to try to apply Benjaminrsquos theory to his own corpus by isolating one piece within his lifersquos work and one or two sentences within thatpiece Not necessarily because they had prompted the illuminating shock ofmutual lsquorecognizabilityrsquo6 postulated by that theory but rather because one wasperhaps at a loss to decide whether or not in this particular instance a lsquosecret ren-dez-vousrsquo7 had indeed occurred with and within the text in question

Allow me to take advantage of this particular rendez-vous mdash Amsterdam 1997 mdash in order to submit to you a few sentences from a short but momentouspiece of Benjaminrsquos that have always left me for one with a decidedly uneasy feeling

68 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

of indecision Written in 1925ndash26 and published in 1928 as the closing piece of a surrealist montage of texts entitled One-Way Street lsquoThis Way to the Planetariumrsquo(Zum Planetarium) may not succeed in encapsulating all of history But a lifersquos workis certainly contained within it Can one however swallow it whole And if nothow divide it up the better to save it from itself What lines have to be drawnwhat contours shaded in before one can responsibly draw the line

In the essay from which the second motto to this essay is taken Jacques Derridaoutlined what an adequate non-journalistic reading of Paul de Manrsquos problematicand occasionally infamous wartime journalism would entail traversed as it was bythe major ideological discourses of the interwar years De Manrsquos youthful aberra-tions are needless to say worlds apart from the rhapsodic envoi of One-Way StreetBut Zum Planetarium too operates in intricate lsquoborder territoryrsquo8 like thelsquodestructive characterrsquo of whom Benjamin writes lsquoWhere others encounter wallsor mountains there too he sees a wayrsquo9 It charts its way through difficultexposed terrain where opposing discourses overlap and its worst enemy is nevermore than one false step away Here more than ever inconspicuous distinctionsmake all the difference It is a matter not of Freudrsquos Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzbut of Adornorsquos Nuance ums Ganze

Who is to judge whether we are better placed to judge these matters todayThe idea that lsquohistory will judgersquo from a lsquocritical distancersquo is ususally a historicistmyth a euphemism for the ignorance indifference and optical illusion of a safedistance In his Commentaries on Poems by Brecht Benjamin anticipated that the coming devastation would relegate contemporary production to a far-distant age10

A commentary that fits too tightly today may overnight develop classical folds Today its precision may appear almost indecent tomorrow mystery may have reasserted itself (II 540)

In the wake of that lsquostormrsquo11 of subsequent lsquoreparationsrsquo and Benjaminrsquos overnightfame followed today by a wave of disenchantment mdash but does not the momentwhen lsquothe vogue had begun to ebbrsquo12 have its own revolutionary potential mdash howdo we get Benjaminrsquos corpus into political-philolog ical focus

An adequate reading of Zum Planetarium might ideally be imagined along thelines of Benjaminrsquos own Arcades Project The latter was in effect intended todemonstrate that classical philology henceforth required a Marxist method mdash onewhich had however yet to be elaborated Baudelaire would have to be re-embedded in the nineteenth century with more than historicist precision before he could be accurately blasted out of it His epoch was to be pieced together frombits and pieces studiously collected from high and low by an itinerant lsquorag-pickerrsquo

69

exploded out of their context by the ravages of history andor by a philologist who combined conservation with destruction13 The carefully arranged materialswere to speak for themselves all further commentary being rendered virtuallysuperfluous by the reciprocal shock-effects produced by such montage Like thehunchback dwarf of the Theses on the Philosophy of History theory was to be hiddenfrom the view and construction in Siegfried Giedionrsquos phrase to assume the roleof the unconscious14 One could imagine combining this method with anotherform of self-concealing theory based this time on a technique of internal citationnot unlike the one practised in Hans Kellerrsquos musical analyses which have a stringquartet isolate repeat and recombine the various motifs of a given score Such animplementation of the Arcades project has yet to see the light of day Would it notin any case take years to chart the complex no manrsquos land within which Zum Planetarium operates And would not meanwhile the truth have lsquorun awayfrom usrsquo15 Does not the Rabbi Hillel say his piece while standing on one legIncreasing ly the pressure of time imposed on Benjaminrsquos thought a poetics of compression (Verdichtung) mdash in German Romantic terms of Blitz and Witz16

His elliptical letter on Kafkarsquos work as an lsquoellipsersquo that configures the far-flungpoles of mystical tradition and urban bureaucratic and technological modernity17

describes an ellipse in a double sense performative and constative Zum Planetariumshort-circuits comparably remote extremes lsquoLa poeacutesie elle aussirsquo writes PaulCelan lsquobrucircle nos eacutetapesrsquo18 Hannah Arendt spoke in turn of Benjaminrsquos gift ofthinking poetically19 The risk was that of producing a lsquodangerously foreshortenedrsquoperspective20

(lsquoWe philologistsrsquo likewise face the pressures of time though more rarely thoseof the times and almost always from a safe position Having written Mimesisin Istanbul between 1942 and 1945 without the benefit of a research library Erich Auerbach chose as its motto Andrew Marvellrsquos lsquoHad we but world enoughand time helliprsquo At the same time he admitted that it had taken such conditions for him to realize the breath-taking project of encompassing so much world and time)

The following notes and queries represent a prolegomenon to a prolegomenonto a reading of Zum Planetarium

70 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

A confrontation with Bachofen and Klages isunavoidable much indicates of course that it canbe rigorously pursued only from the perspective ofJewish theology It is here of course that theseimportant scholars rightly sense their arch-enemy21

I (hellip) have not taken any lsquopositionrsquo on what is in(Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele)22

I have not yet had any time to concern myself withthe question of what meaning is ultimately (imErnstfall) to be extracted from (Nietzschersquos)writings Were I inclined to do so I would readup on what Klages calls lsquoNietzschersquos psychologicalachievementsrsquo23

All true creative acts are in Nietzschean terms lsquounhistoricalrsquo and thereby makehistory Faire date (lsquoto makemark a datersquo) writes Henri Focillon is to lsquojolt themomentrsquo24 But in order to measure the angle and impact of that jolt one firstneeds to reconstruct the historical circumstances in quasi-criminological seem-ingly historicist fashion Our initial task is therefore to re-embed Zum Planetariumin its larger historical and intellectual contexts and to situate it within Benjaminrsquosown corpus

We might begin by rapidly sketching in a first broad line extending roughly fromSchopenhauer via Nietzsche and Lebensphilosophie to the Freud of Das Unbehagen inder Kultur (1930) and Warum Krieg (1932) both of which were like ZumPlanetarium written under the impact of the First World War Against this back-ground Zum Planetariumemerges as an original variation on a large modern topos

According to Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung it is the Will that makes theworld go round mdash a relentless senseless life-force that is to be turned against itselfin the name of art sainthood and Nirvana Or as Freud might have put it theabnegation of Eros is to produce something akin to Thanatos Among Schopen-hauerrsquos cousins and heirs (notably Wagner a certain German Romanticism and thedeacutecadents) Thanatos is then in turn reinvested with Eros Hymnen an die NachtLiebestod etc Nietzsche proceeds to turn Schopenhauer his lsquoeducatorrsquo on hishead The metaphysical nihilism of the West having reached its extreme is to belsquotransvaluedrsquo its negation of the Will to be willed into an affirmation of the Will

71

to Power The First World War grimly documents Nietzschersquos diagnosis oflsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo In the face of a world where warring armies are henceforthequipped with the unprecedented technological capacity for mutual annihilationFreud takes the measure of the lsquodeath-driversquo In order to counteract the havocwrought by Thanatos he places his hopes in Eros the god that binds humanstogether into ever larger units Not that Eros and Thanatos can ever exist entirelyon their own They are always Freud claims lsquoalloyedrsquo (legiert) with one anotherIn Das Unbehagen in der Kultur as in Zum Planetarium they are pitted against oneanother in world-historical combat The difference between Freudrsquos and Benjaminrsquosconcluding gestures is all the more striking

Und nun ist zu erwarten dass die andere der beiden lsquohimmlischen Maumlchtersquo derewigeEros eine Anstrengung machen wird um sich im Kampf mit seinem ebenso unsterblichenGegner zu behaupten Aber wer kann den Erfolg und Ausgang voraussehen 25

Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendiges nur im Rausche der Zeugung (IV 148)

Freudrsquos measured hopes for a renewed lsquoeffortrsquo on the part of Eros contrasts sharplywith Benjaminrsquos apodictic affirmation of its powers in terms that not merely invokethe lsquoecstasy of procreationrsquo but also elliptically bring together such strange bed-fellows as Nietzsche mdash uumlberwindet has vaguely Zarathustrian echoes mdash and JewishMessianism Were there space and time these criss-crossing lines of convergence anddivergence between Benjamin and Freud could be pursued in considerable detail

Within Benjaminrsquos oeuvre a second line should be drawn linking ZumPlanetarium to

i) a review essay entitled Theorien des deutschen Faschismus (1930) but also to ii) the well-known paragraphs in the surrealism essay (1929) on lsquoimage-rsquo and

lsquobody-spacersquoiii) the opening paragraphs of Der Erzaumlhler (1935) on the decline of lsquoexperiencersquoiv) certain sections from Uumlber einige Motive bei Baudelaire (1938) on shock

aura Erfahrung and Erlebnis and the various efforts made by Lebensphilosophie todenounce an inauthentic modernity in the name of allegedly authentic norms suchas myth poetry or nature and finally to

v) the socio-political framework established in the fore- and afterword to theKunstwerk essay (1936) along with the brief but telling remarks made about zweiteTechnik in the second version of that essay (1936ndash39)

lsquoTheories of German Fascismrsquo constitutes a devastating critique of Krieg undKrieger a collection of essays written by Ernst Juumlnger and consorts whose

72 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

mystique of war Benjamin diagnoses as the transposition of art for artrsquos sake fromthe ivory tower to the battlefield mdash that is as war for warrsquos sake A line is thustraceable from Baudelaire and aestheticism via the konservative Revolution (Juumlnger)and the futurist celebration of speed and aerial bombardments (Marinetti) to the fascist lsquoaestheticization of politicsrsquo26 With Juumlnger the neo-Romantic eroticizationof death turns into a neo- and anti-Romantic mystique of modern technologicalwarfare which harks back both to fin-de-siegravecle decadence and to its Nietzscheanantidote thereby exemplifying the intimate relations that exist between theseseemingly opposite extremes This is not the place to do justice to Benjaminrsquosmagnificient essay on Juumlnger Suffice it to say for our present purposes that it establishes beyond all possible confusion a clear-cut opposition between theobscene union of Eros and Thanatos promoted by Juumlngerrsquos cult of the Fronterlebnisand Benjaminrsquos own attempt in Zum Planetarium to save the war experience for an Eros that is irrevocably at odds with Thanatos

Benjaminrsquos scattered comments on modern technological warfare can be piecedtogether into a single coherent argument a line or story that goes roughly as follows According to the Marxian dialectic new forces of production blast open(sprengen) old relations of production Where this dynamic is diverted from its lsquonatural rsquo revolutionary goal the dammed-up forces of production find an unnatural counter-revolutionary outlet in imperialist and inter-capitalist warHere too then the Will mdash alias the drives alias the productive forces mdash is chan-nelled towards Thanatos In the Communist Manifesto Marx had described theunleashing of the productive forces in terms of Goethersquos ballad lsquoThe SorcererrsquosApprenticersquo Benjamin calls the ensuing perversion of this dialectic a lsquoslaversquos revoltof technologyrsquo (III 238)27 Where in other words the revolt of the masses (eg theunited apprentices) is averted the new means of production (eg the proliferatingbrooms) revolt in their place In Marxrsquos somewhat incoherent version of the ballad28 the proletariat inherits the mantle of the feudal sorcerer (Hexenmeister) by supplanting the bourgeoisie (successively the revolutionary master of the new productive forces and their Hegelian slaveapprentice) Only a new collective master mdash the united masses mdash can regain control over the productive forcesBenjamin grounds his thinking on this Marxian gamble for at least a decade(roughly between 1925 and 1936) The conclusion of Zum Planetarium is part ofthis sequence The German uprisings that immediately followed the First WorldWar may have been abortive it argues but they momentarily succeeded in wrest-ing the slaversquos revolt of technology from the imperialist master (Pruumlgelmeister) intoproletarian hands and thereby in pointing the way to freedom29

(The short-lived Spartacist uprising mdash which Benjamin again invokes in 1940as a rare and memorable interruption of the lsquocourse of historyrsquo30 mdash did not in fact amount to the first rumblings of the German revolution as the author of

73

Zum Planetarium still hoped it would The motif of a slaversquos revolt of technologywould accordingly return to haunt his subsequent writing s Hence his final equa-tion of the revolution not with the unleashing of the productive forces but with alsquoreaching for the emergency brakersquo (I 1232))

At this point a number of other motifs should be introduced into the storyMomentarily suspending Benjaminrsquos Judaeo-Marxist taboo (Bilderverbot) on imag-ining what the classless society would look like certain passages of the surrealismessay (1929) and the second version of the essay on technical reproduction (1936)open up the lsquoimage-spacersquo31 (Bildraum) of a true mdash that is truly disenchanted mdashemancipation of the productive forces from the shackles of capitalist relations A lsquosecond technologyrsquo freed from the first would no longer be a means but a medium32not the tool of a liberated humanity but its extended body mdash a conflationin short of the time-honored philosophical opposition between physei and thesei

The Marxian dialectic between the forces and relations of production may belsquoscientific socialismrsquo but it is also a wager a promise a performative act of faithand of language It nevertheless provides the underpinning s mdash or safety-rail orlsquoascetic apprenticeshiprsquo33 mdash for the even dizzier speculation undertaken in ZumPlanetarium As will be seen it also provides a way out (a Kantian Ausgang) a one-way street out of Klagesrsquos systegraveme sans issue Not merely does the Marxian schemeenable Benjamin to draw a clear line between friend and foe but it also serves as ashield behind which he can venture out into the no manrsquos land between the frontsBut an atropaion like a pharmakos34 is a highly reversible proposition

A phrase from Benjaminrsquos essay on Juumlnger will help pose the problem In hisBrief uumlber den Humanismus (1946) Heidegger will claim that lsquothe young Germanswho were acquainted with Houmllderlin thought and lived something other in the face of death than what is publicly purveyed as German opinionrsquo35 In Theorien des deutschen Faschismus Benjamin asserts that Juumlnger and his ilk went towar lsquowith their Klages in their knapsacksrsquo (III 250) This latter allusion requiressome explanation

Benjamin who had nothing good to say about Juumlnger was a discriminatingreader of Ludwig Klages the author of two major works Der kosmogonische Eros(1922) and Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele the first volume of which was pub-lished in 1929 In a letter to Klages dated 2821923 he claims to find confirma-tion in the former work for his own thinking 36 And in a letter to Scholem writtenon 1581930 he calls the latter lsquowithout a doubt a great philosophical workrsquolsquoregardless of the context in which the author may be and remain suspectrsquoBenjamin here implicitly proposes lifting Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele out of that context and parts of the work out of the whole the better to isolate the lsquoreally new and far-reaching conceptionsrsquo hidden behind its lsquohare-brained metaphysical dualismrsquo37

74 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

On the basis of this Manichean dualism which echoed then prevalent oppositionsbetween Kultur and Zivilisation Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft etc Klages had infact bitterly opposed the First World War as the last most lethal phase of Geist in itsmillennial struggle with Seele This struggle was also one between an immemoriallsquocosmogonicrsquo Eros and an lsquourge to murderrsquo (Mordsucht) which now armed withmodern technology was committing an unprecedented rape upon the body andsoul of the earth38 We are far here from the spirit mdash the psycho-analytic Geist mdashof Freudrsquos opposition between Eros and Thanatos

How then was it possible for Juumlnger to have gone off to the First World Warcarrying mdash of all people mdash a metaphysical war-protester in his knapsack The con-tradiction while flagrant is only apparent For the deep content of all dualismslies in their form(alism) Within such abstract binary systems which oftendenounces all system sides can easily be switched so long the rigid oppositionbetween the terms remain in place It matters little whether an attitude is adoptedfor or against modern war so long as the war between the two opposing columns is main-tained Juumlnger can rewrite Klages by injecting Seele aura and Leben into the Erlebnisof modern war and championing it against an otherwise petty-minded modernityHe thereby contradicts the manifest content of Klagesrsquos scheme but remainsentirely faithful to its phantasmagorical dualism Considered from this angle his rhetoric adds up to a few permutations within a fin-de-siegravecle scheme whichsurvives the war as intact as any state bureaucracy It is in short entirely accurateto say that Juumlnger went to war with Klages in his knapsack

So far so good From here on however the frontiers between the camps are less easily demarcated In a subsequent essay on Bachofen Benjamin describes Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele as follows

Systegraveme sans issue du reste et qui se perd dans une propheacutetie menaccedilante agrave lrsquoadresse deshumains qui se sont laisseacutes eacutegarer par les insinuations de lrsquoesprit (II 230)

What exactly distinguishes Benjaminrsquos own indictment of the lsquothreatening aberrationrsquo of the moderns from being another such lsquomenacing prophecyrsquo Whatbeyond the fact that Zum Planetarium at least offers a (Kantian-Heg elian-Marxian)lsquoway outrsquo mdash but then again in comparably oracular language In 1920 Benjaminasks Klages for the next installment of his essay lsquoVom Traumbewusstseinrsquo (1914)but the sequel that matters to him notably from the late twenties on is to awakenfrom and with that dream-consiousness Similarly his version of the lsquodoctrine of the ancientsrsquo differs point by point from Klagesrsquos39 but it is from Klagesrsquos that it differs Benjaminrsquos subsequent definition of lsquoaurarsquo as lsquothe unique appearance of adistance however close it may bersquo40 the related account of lsquoecstasyrsquo propounded in

75

ZumPlanetarium in terms of an interplay of lsquofarrsquo and lsquonearrsquo as well as other centralmotifs such as lsquoimage-spacersquo and the lsquodialectical imagersquo mdash all these are so many re-eleborations of the lsquofar-reaching conceptionsrsquo he finds in Klages41 It is clear in short that Benjamin too mdash like Juumlnger mdash packed lsquoKlages in his knapsackrsquoAnd it is equally clear that Benjaminrsquos and Juumlngerrsquos respective ways of rewritingKlages of inverting and conflating his polarities are worlds apart

Already in 1926 Benjamin was aware that a lsquoreckoningrsquo (Auseinandersetzung)with Klages was due42 A decade later in connection with Adornorsquos objections tohis prospectus for the Arcades Project he planned a comparable differentiationbetween Jungrsquos and Klagesrsquos lsquoarchaic imagesrsquo and what he proposed to call thelsquodialectical imagersquo Neither Auseinandersetzung materialized at least not in theextended discursive form that this term implies But a text like Zum Planetariumis itself an intensive Auseinandersetzung an Ineinandersetzung a philosophico-literarycorps agrave corps a definitive provisional one-legged stance

Before anyone tries to decide whether Benjamin packed too much Klages intohis knapsack (but how much is too much and doesnrsquot it all depend on the packingand the rest of the baggage) it is first necessary to give some account of hismarching orders his raison drsquoeacutetat43 The writer is according to One-Way Street a lsquostrategist in the literary strugglersquo44 Where Freudrsquos account of civilization as a Kulturkampf ironically refers back in 1930 to the battle of that name that hadtaken place in the 1870s between Catholicism and liberalism the neologismLiteraturkampf is clearly coined by analogy with Klassenkampf The battle-lines arethus clearly drawn But the following strategic assessment which is intended tolsquoimprove (the position of the left) in the struggle against Fascism45 complicatesthis simple alignment of forces and militates against the institution of anotherlsquohare-brained dualismrsquo a metaphysicalrsquo mdash that is positivistic mdash lsquomaterialismrsquo46

In the international class struggle the Fascist enemy has occupied terrain whichhistorical materialism mistaking reason for rationalism has ceded without a fight mdash the world of myth ritual and all those other things between heaven andearth that are undreamt-of in materialist philosophy It is here that the writer-as-strategist intervenes mdash at the critical point where a lsquostrange interplayrsquo obtainsbetween lsquoreactionary theory and revolutionary practicersquo47 Hence Benjaminrsquosselective interest in such lsquodangerousrsquo thinkers as Georges Sorel Carl SchmittLudwig Klages and Carl Gustav Jung The list could be extended but it does notseem for better or for worse to include Martin Heidegger mdash unless that is onechooses to interpret Benjaminrsquos rare curt dismissals of the latter as symptoms of a tell-tale avoidance Benjamin invariably quotes these thinkers against their context Why though does he quote them at all The answer can only be thattheir thinking properly fragmented releases insights and resources that are nototherwise to be had lsquoThe myth of the general strikersquo lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo the

76 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

67

(hellip) my life as well as my thought moves inextreme positions The freedom that it thereby maintains to juxtapose things and ideas that areconsidered irreconcilable receives its complexiononly through danger This danger is in generalapparent to my friends only in the guise of (hellip)lsquodangerousrsquo relations (II 1369)

(A certain lsquologicrsquo) lies in wait for the calculationsor political consequences of political or indeed anydiscourse It is as if the possibility of its ownoverturning were ventriloquizing the discourse inadvance installing within it a quasi-internalwar or still more seriously an endless one (hellip)It consists in effect of multiple fronts and frontiersA finite strategy can never formalize them totallystill less master them Whence the effect producedby the incessant passage of these fronts or frontiersIt is a paradoxical effect because the very possibility

of the passage seems to forbid any advance it seemsaporetic in itself Now it is precisely in this placeand at this moment I will even go so far as to sayon this condition that all decisions if there areany must be taken and that responsibilities aretaken (hellip) (What de Man) leaves us is the giftof an ordeal the summons to a work of readinghistorical interpretation ethico-political reflectionan interminable analysis (hellip) In the future andfor the future (hellip) responsibility if there is anyrequires the experience of the undecidable (hellip)1

(hellip) the task is not to decide once and for all butto decide at every moment But to decide2

According to Benjaminrsquos Theses on the Philosophy of History the historical materi-alist blasts (sprengt) a particular epoch out of the course of history a particular life out of the epoch and a particular work out of the lifersquos work3 And so on adinfinitum (as Benjamin puts it in another related context4) The assumption is that each fragment contains and preserves in nuce the larger whole from which it was extracted Each lsquobroken partrsquo (Bruchstuumlck) is in Benjaminrsquos terminology a Leibnizian lsquomonadrsquo a Messianic lsquoshardrsquo or lsquocrystalrsquo or in rhetorical terms asynecdochal pars pro toto The lsquoDivide and conquerrsquo practised by imperial power isto be counteracted by an altogether different process of division akin to the het-erodox theological doctrine of apokatastasis5 All souls are to go to heaven But theycan be lsquosavedrsquo only throught a process of lsquomortificationrsquo mdash resurrection as it werethrough dismemberment It isnrsquot by unrolling the red carpet of historicism that one gets to the paradise of universal history but as Kleist intuited by an altogether different route

What if one were to try to apply Benjaminrsquos theory to his own corpus by isolating one piece within his lifersquos work and one or two sentences within thatpiece Not necessarily because they had prompted the illuminating shock ofmutual lsquorecognizabilityrsquo6 postulated by that theory but rather because one wasperhaps at a loss to decide whether or not in this particular instance a lsquosecret ren-dez-vousrsquo7 had indeed occurred with and within the text in question

Allow me to take advantage of this particular rendez-vous mdash Amsterdam 1997 mdash in order to submit to you a few sentences from a short but momentouspiece of Benjaminrsquos that have always left me for one with a decidedly uneasy feeling

68 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

of indecision Written in 1925ndash26 and published in 1928 as the closing piece of a surrealist montage of texts entitled One-Way Street lsquoThis Way to the Planetariumrsquo(Zum Planetarium) may not succeed in encapsulating all of history But a lifersquos workis certainly contained within it Can one however swallow it whole And if nothow divide it up the better to save it from itself What lines have to be drawnwhat contours shaded in before one can responsibly draw the line

In the essay from which the second motto to this essay is taken Jacques Derridaoutlined what an adequate non-journalistic reading of Paul de Manrsquos problematicand occasionally infamous wartime journalism would entail traversed as it was bythe major ideological discourses of the interwar years De Manrsquos youthful aberra-tions are needless to say worlds apart from the rhapsodic envoi of One-Way StreetBut Zum Planetarium too operates in intricate lsquoborder territoryrsquo8 like thelsquodestructive characterrsquo of whom Benjamin writes lsquoWhere others encounter wallsor mountains there too he sees a wayrsquo9 It charts its way through difficultexposed terrain where opposing discourses overlap and its worst enemy is nevermore than one false step away Here more than ever inconspicuous distinctionsmake all the difference It is a matter not of Freudrsquos Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzbut of Adornorsquos Nuance ums Ganze

Who is to judge whether we are better placed to judge these matters todayThe idea that lsquohistory will judgersquo from a lsquocritical distancersquo is ususally a historicistmyth a euphemism for the ignorance indifference and optical illusion of a safedistance In his Commentaries on Poems by Brecht Benjamin anticipated that the coming devastation would relegate contemporary production to a far-distant age10

A commentary that fits too tightly today may overnight develop classical folds Today its precision may appear almost indecent tomorrow mystery may have reasserted itself (II 540)

In the wake of that lsquostormrsquo11 of subsequent lsquoreparationsrsquo and Benjaminrsquos overnightfame followed today by a wave of disenchantment mdash but does not the momentwhen lsquothe vogue had begun to ebbrsquo12 have its own revolutionary potential mdash howdo we get Benjaminrsquos corpus into political-philolog ical focus

An adequate reading of Zum Planetarium might ideally be imagined along thelines of Benjaminrsquos own Arcades Project The latter was in effect intended todemonstrate that classical philology henceforth required a Marxist method mdash onewhich had however yet to be elaborated Baudelaire would have to be re-embedded in the nineteenth century with more than historicist precision before he could be accurately blasted out of it His epoch was to be pieced together frombits and pieces studiously collected from high and low by an itinerant lsquorag-pickerrsquo

69

exploded out of their context by the ravages of history andor by a philologist who combined conservation with destruction13 The carefully arranged materialswere to speak for themselves all further commentary being rendered virtuallysuperfluous by the reciprocal shock-effects produced by such montage Like thehunchback dwarf of the Theses on the Philosophy of History theory was to be hiddenfrom the view and construction in Siegfried Giedionrsquos phrase to assume the roleof the unconscious14 One could imagine combining this method with anotherform of self-concealing theory based this time on a technique of internal citationnot unlike the one practised in Hans Kellerrsquos musical analyses which have a stringquartet isolate repeat and recombine the various motifs of a given score Such animplementation of the Arcades project has yet to see the light of day Would it notin any case take years to chart the complex no manrsquos land within which Zum Planetarium operates And would not meanwhile the truth have lsquorun awayfrom usrsquo15 Does not the Rabbi Hillel say his piece while standing on one legIncreasing ly the pressure of time imposed on Benjaminrsquos thought a poetics of compression (Verdichtung) mdash in German Romantic terms of Blitz and Witz16

His elliptical letter on Kafkarsquos work as an lsquoellipsersquo that configures the far-flungpoles of mystical tradition and urban bureaucratic and technological modernity17

describes an ellipse in a double sense performative and constative Zum Planetariumshort-circuits comparably remote extremes lsquoLa poeacutesie elle aussirsquo writes PaulCelan lsquobrucircle nos eacutetapesrsquo18 Hannah Arendt spoke in turn of Benjaminrsquos gift ofthinking poetically19 The risk was that of producing a lsquodangerously foreshortenedrsquoperspective20

(lsquoWe philologistsrsquo likewise face the pressures of time though more rarely thoseof the times and almost always from a safe position Having written Mimesisin Istanbul between 1942 and 1945 without the benefit of a research library Erich Auerbach chose as its motto Andrew Marvellrsquos lsquoHad we but world enoughand time helliprsquo At the same time he admitted that it had taken such conditions for him to realize the breath-taking project of encompassing so much world and time)

The following notes and queries represent a prolegomenon to a prolegomenonto a reading of Zum Planetarium

70 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

A confrontation with Bachofen and Klages isunavoidable much indicates of course that it canbe rigorously pursued only from the perspective ofJewish theology It is here of course that theseimportant scholars rightly sense their arch-enemy21

I (hellip) have not taken any lsquopositionrsquo on what is in(Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele)22

I have not yet had any time to concern myself withthe question of what meaning is ultimately (imErnstfall) to be extracted from (Nietzschersquos)writings Were I inclined to do so I would readup on what Klages calls lsquoNietzschersquos psychologicalachievementsrsquo23

All true creative acts are in Nietzschean terms lsquounhistoricalrsquo and thereby makehistory Faire date (lsquoto makemark a datersquo) writes Henri Focillon is to lsquojolt themomentrsquo24 But in order to measure the angle and impact of that jolt one firstneeds to reconstruct the historical circumstances in quasi-criminological seem-ingly historicist fashion Our initial task is therefore to re-embed Zum Planetariumin its larger historical and intellectual contexts and to situate it within Benjaminrsquosown corpus

We might begin by rapidly sketching in a first broad line extending roughly fromSchopenhauer via Nietzsche and Lebensphilosophie to the Freud of Das Unbehagen inder Kultur (1930) and Warum Krieg (1932) both of which were like ZumPlanetarium written under the impact of the First World War Against this back-ground Zum Planetariumemerges as an original variation on a large modern topos

According to Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung it is the Will that makes theworld go round mdash a relentless senseless life-force that is to be turned against itselfin the name of art sainthood and Nirvana Or as Freud might have put it theabnegation of Eros is to produce something akin to Thanatos Among Schopen-hauerrsquos cousins and heirs (notably Wagner a certain German Romanticism and thedeacutecadents) Thanatos is then in turn reinvested with Eros Hymnen an die NachtLiebestod etc Nietzsche proceeds to turn Schopenhauer his lsquoeducatorrsquo on hishead The metaphysical nihilism of the West having reached its extreme is to belsquotransvaluedrsquo its negation of the Will to be willed into an affirmation of the Will

71

to Power The First World War grimly documents Nietzschersquos diagnosis oflsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo In the face of a world where warring armies are henceforthequipped with the unprecedented technological capacity for mutual annihilationFreud takes the measure of the lsquodeath-driversquo In order to counteract the havocwrought by Thanatos he places his hopes in Eros the god that binds humanstogether into ever larger units Not that Eros and Thanatos can ever exist entirelyon their own They are always Freud claims lsquoalloyedrsquo (legiert) with one anotherIn Das Unbehagen in der Kultur as in Zum Planetarium they are pitted against oneanother in world-historical combat The difference between Freudrsquos and Benjaminrsquosconcluding gestures is all the more striking

Und nun ist zu erwarten dass die andere der beiden lsquohimmlischen Maumlchtersquo derewigeEros eine Anstrengung machen wird um sich im Kampf mit seinem ebenso unsterblichenGegner zu behaupten Aber wer kann den Erfolg und Ausgang voraussehen 25

Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendiges nur im Rausche der Zeugung (IV 148)

Freudrsquos measured hopes for a renewed lsquoeffortrsquo on the part of Eros contrasts sharplywith Benjaminrsquos apodictic affirmation of its powers in terms that not merely invokethe lsquoecstasy of procreationrsquo but also elliptically bring together such strange bed-fellows as Nietzsche mdash uumlberwindet has vaguely Zarathustrian echoes mdash and JewishMessianism Were there space and time these criss-crossing lines of convergence anddivergence between Benjamin and Freud could be pursued in considerable detail

Within Benjaminrsquos oeuvre a second line should be drawn linking ZumPlanetarium to

i) a review essay entitled Theorien des deutschen Faschismus (1930) but also to ii) the well-known paragraphs in the surrealism essay (1929) on lsquoimage-rsquo and

lsquobody-spacersquoiii) the opening paragraphs of Der Erzaumlhler (1935) on the decline of lsquoexperiencersquoiv) certain sections from Uumlber einige Motive bei Baudelaire (1938) on shock

aura Erfahrung and Erlebnis and the various efforts made by Lebensphilosophie todenounce an inauthentic modernity in the name of allegedly authentic norms suchas myth poetry or nature and finally to

v) the socio-political framework established in the fore- and afterword to theKunstwerk essay (1936) along with the brief but telling remarks made about zweiteTechnik in the second version of that essay (1936ndash39)

lsquoTheories of German Fascismrsquo constitutes a devastating critique of Krieg undKrieger a collection of essays written by Ernst Juumlnger and consorts whose

72 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

mystique of war Benjamin diagnoses as the transposition of art for artrsquos sake fromthe ivory tower to the battlefield mdash that is as war for warrsquos sake A line is thustraceable from Baudelaire and aestheticism via the konservative Revolution (Juumlnger)and the futurist celebration of speed and aerial bombardments (Marinetti) to the fascist lsquoaestheticization of politicsrsquo26 With Juumlnger the neo-Romantic eroticizationof death turns into a neo- and anti-Romantic mystique of modern technologicalwarfare which harks back both to fin-de-siegravecle decadence and to its Nietzscheanantidote thereby exemplifying the intimate relations that exist between theseseemingly opposite extremes This is not the place to do justice to Benjaminrsquosmagnificient essay on Juumlnger Suffice it to say for our present purposes that it establishes beyond all possible confusion a clear-cut opposition between theobscene union of Eros and Thanatos promoted by Juumlngerrsquos cult of the Fronterlebnisand Benjaminrsquos own attempt in Zum Planetarium to save the war experience for an Eros that is irrevocably at odds with Thanatos

Benjaminrsquos scattered comments on modern technological warfare can be piecedtogether into a single coherent argument a line or story that goes roughly as follows According to the Marxian dialectic new forces of production blast open(sprengen) old relations of production Where this dynamic is diverted from its lsquonatural rsquo revolutionary goal the dammed-up forces of production find an unnatural counter-revolutionary outlet in imperialist and inter-capitalist warHere too then the Will mdash alias the drives alias the productive forces mdash is chan-nelled towards Thanatos In the Communist Manifesto Marx had described theunleashing of the productive forces in terms of Goethersquos ballad lsquoThe SorcererrsquosApprenticersquo Benjamin calls the ensuing perversion of this dialectic a lsquoslaversquos revoltof technologyrsquo (III 238)27 Where in other words the revolt of the masses (eg theunited apprentices) is averted the new means of production (eg the proliferatingbrooms) revolt in their place In Marxrsquos somewhat incoherent version of the ballad28 the proletariat inherits the mantle of the feudal sorcerer (Hexenmeister) by supplanting the bourgeoisie (successively the revolutionary master of the new productive forces and their Hegelian slaveapprentice) Only a new collective master mdash the united masses mdash can regain control over the productive forcesBenjamin grounds his thinking on this Marxian gamble for at least a decade(roughly between 1925 and 1936) The conclusion of Zum Planetarium is part ofthis sequence The German uprisings that immediately followed the First WorldWar may have been abortive it argues but they momentarily succeeded in wrest-ing the slaversquos revolt of technology from the imperialist master (Pruumlgelmeister) intoproletarian hands and thereby in pointing the way to freedom29

(The short-lived Spartacist uprising mdash which Benjamin again invokes in 1940as a rare and memorable interruption of the lsquocourse of historyrsquo30 mdash did not in fact amount to the first rumblings of the German revolution as the author of

73

Zum Planetarium still hoped it would The motif of a slaversquos revolt of technologywould accordingly return to haunt his subsequent writing s Hence his final equa-tion of the revolution not with the unleashing of the productive forces but with alsquoreaching for the emergency brakersquo (I 1232))

At this point a number of other motifs should be introduced into the storyMomentarily suspending Benjaminrsquos Judaeo-Marxist taboo (Bilderverbot) on imag-ining what the classless society would look like certain passages of the surrealismessay (1929) and the second version of the essay on technical reproduction (1936)open up the lsquoimage-spacersquo31 (Bildraum) of a true mdash that is truly disenchanted mdashemancipation of the productive forces from the shackles of capitalist relations A lsquosecond technologyrsquo freed from the first would no longer be a means but a medium32not the tool of a liberated humanity but its extended body mdash a conflationin short of the time-honored philosophical opposition between physei and thesei

The Marxian dialectic between the forces and relations of production may belsquoscientific socialismrsquo but it is also a wager a promise a performative act of faithand of language It nevertheless provides the underpinning s mdash or safety-rail orlsquoascetic apprenticeshiprsquo33 mdash for the even dizzier speculation undertaken in ZumPlanetarium As will be seen it also provides a way out (a Kantian Ausgang) a one-way street out of Klagesrsquos systegraveme sans issue Not merely does the Marxian schemeenable Benjamin to draw a clear line between friend and foe but it also serves as ashield behind which he can venture out into the no manrsquos land between the frontsBut an atropaion like a pharmakos34 is a highly reversible proposition

A phrase from Benjaminrsquos essay on Juumlnger will help pose the problem In hisBrief uumlber den Humanismus (1946) Heidegger will claim that lsquothe young Germanswho were acquainted with Houmllderlin thought and lived something other in the face of death than what is publicly purveyed as German opinionrsquo35 In Theorien des deutschen Faschismus Benjamin asserts that Juumlnger and his ilk went towar lsquowith their Klages in their knapsacksrsquo (III 250) This latter allusion requiressome explanation

Benjamin who had nothing good to say about Juumlnger was a discriminatingreader of Ludwig Klages the author of two major works Der kosmogonische Eros(1922) and Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele the first volume of which was pub-lished in 1929 In a letter to Klages dated 2821923 he claims to find confirma-tion in the former work for his own thinking 36 And in a letter to Scholem writtenon 1581930 he calls the latter lsquowithout a doubt a great philosophical workrsquolsquoregardless of the context in which the author may be and remain suspectrsquoBenjamin here implicitly proposes lifting Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele out of that context and parts of the work out of the whole the better to isolate the lsquoreally new and far-reaching conceptionsrsquo hidden behind its lsquohare-brained metaphysical dualismrsquo37

74 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

On the basis of this Manichean dualism which echoed then prevalent oppositionsbetween Kultur and Zivilisation Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft etc Klages had infact bitterly opposed the First World War as the last most lethal phase of Geist in itsmillennial struggle with Seele This struggle was also one between an immemoriallsquocosmogonicrsquo Eros and an lsquourge to murderrsquo (Mordsucht) which now armed withmodern technology was committing an unprecedented rape upon the body andsoul of the earth38 We are far here from the spirit mdash the psycho-analytic Geist mdashof Freudrsquos opposition between Eros and Thanatos

How then was it possible for Juumlnger to have gone off to the First World Warcarrying mdash of all people mdash a metaphysical war-protester in his knapsack The con-tradiction while flagrant is only apparent For the deep content of all dualismslies in their form(alism) Within such abstract binary systems which oftendenounces all system sides can easily be switched so long the rigid oppositionbetween the terms remain in place It matters little whether an attitude is adoptedfor or against modern war so long as the war between the two opposing columns is main-tained Juumlnger can rewrite Klages by injecting Seele aura and Leben into the Erlebnisof modern war and championing it against an otherwise petty-minded modernityHe thereby contradicts the manifest content of Klagesrsquos scheme but remainsentirely faithful to its phantasmagorical dualism Considered from this angle his rhetoric adds up to a few permutations within a fin-de-siegravecle scheme whichsurvives the war as intact as any state bureaucracy It is in short entirely accurateto say that Juumlnger went to war with Klages in his knapsack

So far so good From here on however the frontiers between the camps are less easily demarcated In a subsequent essay on Bachofen Benjamin describes Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele as follows

Systegraveme sans issue du reste et qui se perd dans une propheacutetie menaccedilante agrave lrsquoadresse deshumains qui se sont laisseacutes eacutegarer par les insinuations de lrsquoesprit (II 230)

What exactly distinguishes Benjaminrsquos own indictment of the lsquothreatening aberrationrsquo of the moderns from being another such lsquomenacing prophecyrsquo Whatbeyond the fact that Zum Planetarium at least offers a (Kantian-Heg elian-Marxian)lsquoway outrsquo mdash but then again in comparably oracular language In 1920 Benjaminasks Klages for the next installment of his essay lsquoVom Traumbewusstseinrsquo (1914)but the sequel that matters to him notably from the late twenties on is to awakenfrom and with that dream-consiousness Similarly his version of the lsquodoctrine of the ancientsrsquo differs point by point from Klagesrsquos39 but it is from Klagesrsquos that it differs Benjaminrsquos subsequent definition of lsquoaurarsquo as lsquothe unique appearance of adistance however close it may bersquo40 the related account of lsquoecstasyrsquo propounded in

75

ZumPlanetarium in terms of an interplay of lsquofarrsquo and lsquonearrsquo as well as other centralmotifs such as lsquoimage-spacersquo and the lsquodialectical imagersquo mdash all these are so many re-eleborations of the lsquofar-reaching conceptionsrsquo he finds in Klages41 It is clear in short that Benjamin too mdash like Juumlnger mdash packed lsquoKlages in his knapsackrsquoAnd it is equally clear that Benjaminrsquos and Juumlngerrsquos respective ways of rewritingKlages of inverting and conflating his polarities are worlds apart

Already in 1926 Benjamin was aware that a lsquoreckoningrsquo (Auseinandersetzung)with Klages was due42 A decade later in connection with Adornorsquos objections tohis prospectus for the Arcades Project he planned a comparable differentiationbetween Jungrsquos and Klagesrsquos lsquoarchaic imagesrsquo and what he proposed to call thelsquodialectical imagersquo Neither Auseinandersetzung materialized at least not in theextended discursive form that this term implies But a text like Zum Planetariumis itself an intensive Auseinandersetzung an Ineinandersetzung a philosophico-literarycorps agrave corps a definitive provisional one-legged stance

Before anyone tries to decide whether Benjamin packed too much Klages intohis knapsack (but how much is too much and doesnrsquot it all depend on the packingand the rest of the baggage) it is first necessary to give some account of hismarching orders his raison drsquoeacutetat43 The writer is according to One-Way Street a lsquostrategist in the literary strugglersquo44 Where Freudrsquos account of civilization as a Kulturkampf ironically refers back in 1930 to the battle of that name that hadtaken place in the 1870s between Catholicism and liberalism the neologismLiteraturkampf is clearly coined by analogy with Klassenkampf The battle-lines arethus clearly drawn But the following strategic assessment which is intended tolsquoimprove (the position of the left) in the struggle against Fascism45 complicatesthis simple alignment of forces and militates against the institution of anotherlsquohare-brained dualismrsquo a metaphysicalrsquo mdash that is positivistic mdash lsquomaterialismrsquo46

In the international class struggle the Fascist enemy has occupied terrain whichhistorical materialism mistaking reason for rationalism has ceded without a fight mdash the world of myth ritual and all those other things between heaven andearth that are undreamt-of in materialist philosophy It is here that the writer-as-strategist intervenes mdash at the critical point where a lsquostrange interplayrsquo obtainsbetween lsquoreactionary theory and revolutionary practicersquo47 Hence Benjaminrsquosselective interest in such lsquodangerousrsquo thinkers as Georges Sorel Carl SchmittLudwig Klages and Carl Gustav Jung The list could be extended but it does notseem for better or for worse to include Martin Heidegger mdash unless that is onechooses to interpret Benjaminrsquos rare curt dismissals of the latter as symptoms of a tell-tale avoidance Benjamin invariably quotes these thinkers against their context Why though does he quote them at all The answer can only be thattheir thinking properly fragmented releases insights and resources that are nototherwise to be had lsquoThe myth of the general strikersquo lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo the

76 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

of the passage seems to forbid any advance it seemsaporetic in itself Now it is precisely in this placeand at this moment I will even go so far as to sayon this condition that all decisions if there areany must be taken and that responsibilities aretaken (hellip) (What de Man) leaves us is the giftof an ordeal the summons to a work of readinghistorical interpretation ethico-political reflectionan interminable analysis (hellip) In the future andfor the future (hellip) responsibility if there is anyrequires the experience of the undecidable (hellip)1

(hellip) the task is not to decide once and for all butto decide at every moment But to decide2

According to Benjaminrsquos Theses on the Philosophy of History the historical materi-alist blasts (sprengt) a particular epoch out of the course of history a particular life out of the epoch and a particular work out of the lifersquos work3 And so on adinfinitum (as Benjamin puts it in another related context4) The assumption is that each fragment contains and preserves in nuce the larger whole from which it was extracted Each lsquobroken partrsquo (Bruchstuumlck) is in Benjaminrsquos terminology a Leibnizian lsquomonadrsquo a Messianic lsquoshardrsquo or lsquocrystalrsquo or in rhetorical terms asynecdochal pars pro toto The lsquoDivide and conquerrsquo practised by imperial power isto be counteracted by an altogether different process of division akin to the het-erodox theological doctrine of apokatastasis5 All souls are to go to heaven But theycan be lsquosavedrsquo only throught a process of lsquomortificationrsquo mdash resurrection as it werethrough dismemberment It isnrsquot by unrolling the red carpet of historicism that one gets to the paradise of universal history but as Kleist intuited by an altogether different route

What if one were to try to apply Benjaminrsquos theory to his own corpus by isolating one piece within his lifersquos work and one or two sentences within thatpiece Not necessarily because they had prompted the illuminating shock ofmutual lsquorecognizabilityrsquo6 postulated by that theory but rather because one wasperhaps at a loss to decide whether or not in this particular instance a lsquosecret ren-dez-vousrsquo7 had indeed occurred with and within the text in question

Allow me to take advantage of this particular rendez-vous mdash Amsterdam 1997 mdash in order to submit to you a few sentences from a short but momentouspiece of Benjaminrsquos that have always left me for one with a decidedly uneasy feeling

68 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

of indecision Written in 1925ndash26 and published in 1928 as the closing piece of a surrealist montage of texts entitled One-Way Street lsquoThis Way to the Planetariumrsquo(Zum Planetarium) may not succeed in encapsulating all of history But a lifersquos workis certainly contained within it Can one however swallow it whole And if nothow divide it up the better to save it from itself What lines have to be drawnwhat contours shaded in before one can responsibly draw the line

In the essay from which the second motto to this essay is taken Jacques Derridaoutlined what an adequate non-journalistic reading of Paul de Manrsquos problematicand occasionally infamous wartime journalism would entail traversed as it was bythe major ideological discourses of the interwar years De Manrsquos youthful aberra-tions are needless to say worlds apart from the rhapsodic envoi of One-Way StreetBut Zum Planetarium too operates in intricate lsquoborder territoryrsquo8 like thelsquodestructive characterrsquo of whom Benjamin writes lsquoWhere others encounter wallsor mountains there too he sees a wayrsquo9 It charts its way through difficultexposed terrain where opposing discourses overlap and its worst enemy is nevermore than one false step away Here more than ever inconspicuous distinctionsmake all the difference It is a matter not of Freudrsquos Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzbut of Adornorsquos Nuance ums Ganze

Who is to judge whether we are better placed to judge these matters todayThe idea that lsquohistory will judgersquo from a lsquocritical distancersquo is ususally a historicistmyth a euphemism for the ignorance indifference and optical illusion of a safedistance In his Commentaries on Poems by Brecht Benjamin anticipated that the coming devastation would relegate contemporary production to a far-distant age10

A commentary that fits too tightly today may overnight develop classical folds Today its precision may appear almost indecent tomorrow mystery may have reasserted itself (II 540)

In the wake of that lsquostormrsquo11 of subsequent lsquoreparationsrsquo and Benjaminrsquos overnightfame followed today by a wave of disenchantment mdash but does not the momentwhen lsquothe vogue had begun to ebbrsquo12 have its own revolutionary potential mdash howdo we get Benjaminrsquos corpus into political-philolog ical focus

An adequate reading of Zum Planetarium might ideally be imagined along thelines of Benjaminrsquos own Arcades Project The latter was in effect intended todemonstrate that classical philology henceforth required a Marxist method mdash onewhich had however yet to be elaborated Baudelaire would have to be re-embedded in the nineteenth century with more than historicist precision before he could be accurately blasted out of it His epoch was to be pieced together frombits and pieces studiously collected from high and low by an itinerant lsquorag-pickerrsquo

69

exploded out of their context by the ravages of history andor by a philologist who combined conservation with destruction13 The carefully arranged materialswere to speak for themselves all further commentary being rendered virtuallysuperfluous by the reciprocal shock-effects produced by such montage Like thehunchback dwarf of the Theses on the Philosophy of History theory was to be hiddenfrom the view and construction in Siegfried Giedionrsquos phrase to assume the roleof the unconscious14 One could imagine combining this method with anotherform of self-concealing theory based this time on a technique of internal citationnot unlike the one practised in Hans Kellerrsquos musical analyses which have a stringquartet isolate repeat and recombine the various motifs of a given score Such animplementation of the Arcades project has yet to see the light of day Would it notin any case take years to chart the complex no manrsquos land within which Zum Planetarium operates And would not meanwhile the truth have lsquorun awayfrom usrsquo15 Does not the Rabbi Hillel say his piece while standing on one legIncreasing ly the pressure of time imposed on Benjaminrsquos thought a poetics of compression (Verdichtung) mdash in German Romantic terms of Blitz and Witz16

His elliptical letter on Kafkarsquos work as an lsquoellipsersquo that configures the far-flungpoles of mystical tradition and urban bureaucratic and technological modernity17

describes an ellipse in a double sense performative and constative Zum Planetariumshort-circuits comparably remote extremes lsquoLa poeacutesie elle aussirsquo writes PaulCelan lsquobrucircle nos eacutetapesrsquo18 Hannah Arendt spoke in turn of Benjaminrsquos gift ofthinking poetically19 The risk was that of producing a lsquodangerously foreshortenedrsquoperspective20

(lsquoWe philologistsrsquo likewise face the pressures of time though more rarely thoseof the times and almost always from a safe position Having written Mimesisin Istanbul between 1942 and 1945 without the benefit of a research library Erich Auerbach chose as its motto Andrew Marvellrsquos lsquoHad we but world enoughand time helliprsquo At the same time he admitted that it had taken such conditions for him to realize the breath-taking project of encompassing so much world and time)

The following notes and queries represent a prolegomenon to a prolegomenonto a reading of Zum Planetarium

70 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

A confrontation with Bachofen and Klages isunavoidable much indicates of course that it canbe rigorously pursued only from the perspective ofJewish theology It is here of course that theseimportant scholars rightly sense their arch-enemy21

I (hellip) have not taken any lsquopositionrsquo on what is in(Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele)22

I have not yet had any time to concern myself withthe question of what meaning is ultimately (imErnstfall) to be extracted from (Nietzschersquos)writings Were I inclined to do so I would readup on what Klages calls lsquoNietzschersquos psychologicalachievementsrsquo23

All true creative acts are in Nietzschean terms lsquounhistoricalrsquo and thereby makehistory Faire date (lsquoto makemark a datersquo) writes Henri Focillon is to lsquojolt themomentrsquo24 But in order to measure the angle and impact of that jolt one firstneeds to reconstruct the historical circumstances in quasi-criminological seem-ingly historicist fashion Our initial task is therefore to re-embed Zum Planetariumin its larger historical and intellectual contexts and to situate it within Benjaminrsquosown corpus

We might begin by rapidly sketching in a first broad line extending roughly fromSchopenhauer via Nietzsche and Lebensphilosophie to the Freud of Das Unbehagen inder Kultur (1930) and Warum Krieg (1932) both of which were like ZumPlanetarium written under the impact of the First World War Against this back-ground Zum Planetariumemerges as an original variation on a large modern topos

According to Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung it is the Will that makes theworld go round mdash a relentless senseless life-force that is to be turned against itselfin the name of art sainthood and Nirvana Or as Freud might have put it theabnegation of Eros is to produce something akin to Thanatos Among Schopen-hauerrsquos cousins and heirs (notably Wagner a certain German Romanticism and thedeacutecadents) Thanatos is then in turn reinvested with Eros Hymnen an die NachtLiebestod etc Nietzsche proceeds to turn Schopenhauer his lsquoeducatorrsquo on hishead The metaphysical nihilism of the West having reached its extreme is to belsquotransvaluedrsquo its negation of the Will to be willed into an affirmation of the Will

71

to Power The First World War grimly documents Nietzschersquos diagnosis oflsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo In the face of a world where warring armies are henceforthequipped with the unprecedented technological capacity for mutual annihilationFreud takes the measure of the lsquodeath-driversquo In order to counteract the havocwrought by Thanatos he places his hopes in Eros the god that binds humanstogether into ever larger units Not that Eros and Thanatos can ever exist entirelyon their own They are always Freud claims lsquoalloyedrsquo (legiert) with one anotherIn Das Unbehagen in der Kultur as in Zum Planetarium they are pitted against oneanother in world-historical combat The difference between Freudrsquos and Benjaminrsquosconcluding gestures is all the more striking

Und nun ist zu erwarten dass die andere der beiden lsquohimmlischen Maumlchtersquo derewigeEros eine Anstrengung machen wird um sich im Kampf mit seinem ebenso unsterblichenGegner zu behaupten Aber wer kann den Erfolg und Ausgang voraussehen 25

Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendiges nur im Rausche der Zeugung (IV 148)

Freudrsquos measured hopes for a renewed lsquoeffortrsquo on the part of Eros contrasts sharplywith Benjaminrsquos apodictic affirmation of its powers in terms that not merely invokethe lsquoecstasy of procreationrsquo but also elliptically bring together such strange bed-fellows as Nietzsche mdash uumlberwindet has vaguely Zarathustrian echoes mdash and JewishMessianism Were there space and time these criss-crossing lines of convergence anddivergence between Benjamin and Freud could be pursued in considerable detail

Within Benjaminrsquos oeuvre a second line should be drawn linking ZumPlanetarium to

i) a review essay entitled Theorien des deutschen Faschismus (1930) but also to ii) the well-known paragraphs in the surrealism essay (1929) on lsquoimage-rsquo and

lsquobody-spacersquoiii) the opening paragraphs of Der Erzaumlhler (1935) on the decline of lsquoexperiencersquoiv) certain sections from Uumlber einige Motive bei Baudelaire (1938) on shock

aura Erfahrung and Erlebnis and the various efforts made by Lebensphilosophie todenounce an inauthentic modernity in the name of allegedly authentic norms suchas myth poetry or nature and finally to

v) the socio-political framework established in the fore- and afterword to theKunstwerk essay (1936) along with the brief but telling remarks made about zweiteTechnik in the second version of that essay (1936ndash39)

lsquoTheories of German Fascismrsquo constitutes a devastating critique of Krieg undKrieger a collection of essays written by Ernst Juumlnger and consorts whose

72 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

mystique of war Benjamin diagnoses as the transposition of art for artrsquos sake fromthe ivory tower to the battlefield mdash that is as war for warrsquos sake A line is thustraceable from Baudelaire and aestheticism via the konservative Revolution (Juumlnger)and the futurist celebration of speed and aerial bombardments (Marinetti) to the fascist lsquoaestheticization of politicsrsquo26 With Juumlnger the neo-Romantic eroticizationof death turns into a neo- and anti-Romantic mystique of modern technologicalwarfare which harks back both to fin-de-siegravecle decadence and to its Nietzscheanantidote thereby exemplifying the intimate relations that exist between theseseemingly opposite extremes This is not the place to do justice to Benjaminrsquosmagnificient essay on Juumlnger Suffice it to say for our present purposes that it establishes beyond all possible confusion a clear-cut opposition between theobscene union of Eros and Thanatos promoted by Juumlngerrsquos cult of the Fronterlebnisand Benjaminrsquos own attempt in Zum Planetarium to save the war experience for an Eros that is irrevocably at odds with Thanatos

Benjaminrsquos scattered comments on modern technological warfare can be piecedtogether into a single coherent argument a line or story that goes roughly as follows According to the Marxian dialectic new forces of production blast open(sprengen) old relations of production Where this dynamic is diverted from its lsquonatural rsquo revolutionary goal the dammed-up forces of production find an unnatural counter-revolutionary outlet in imperialist and inter-capitalist warHere too then the Will mdash alias the drives alias the productive forces mdash is chan-nelled towards Thanatos In the Communist Manifesto Marx had described theunleashing of the productive forces in terms of Goethersquos ballad lsquoThe SorcererrsquosApprenticersquo Benjamin calls the ensuing perversion of this dialectic a lsquoslaversquos revoltof technologyrsquo (III 238)27 Where in other words the revolt of the masses (eg theunited apprentices) is averted the new means of production (eg the proliferatingbrooms) revolt in their place In Marxrsquos somewhat incoherent version of the ballad28 the proletariat inherits the mantle of the feudal sorcerer (Hexenmeister) by supplanting the bourgeoisie (successively the revolutionary master of the new productive forces and their Hegelian slaveapprentice) Only a new collective master mdash the united masses mdash can regain control over the productive forcesBenjamin grounds his thinking on this Marxian gamble for at least a decade(roughly between 1925 and 1936) The conclusion of Zum Planetarium is part ofthis sequence The German uprisings that immediately followed the First WorldWar may have been abortive it argues but they momentarily succeeded in wrest-ing the slaversquos revolt of technology from the imperialist master (Pruumlgelmeister) intoproletarian hands and thereby in pointing the way to freedom29

(The short-lived Spartacist uprising mdash which Benjamin again invokes in 1940as a rare and memorable interruption of the lsquocourse of historyrsquo30 mdash did not in fact amount to the first rumblings of the German revolution as the author of

73

Zum Planetarium still hoped it would The motif of a slaversquos revolt of technologywould accordingly return to haunt his subsequent writing s Hence his final equa-tion of the revolution not with the unleashing of the productive forces but with alsquoreaching for the emergency brakersquo (I 1232))

At this point a number of other motifs should be introduced into the storyMomentarily suspending Benjaminrsquos Judaeo-Marxist taboo (Bilderverbot) on imag-ining what the classless society would look like certain passages of the surrealismessay (1929) and the second version of the essay on technical reproduction (1936)open up the lsquoimage-spacersquo31 (Bildraum) of a true mdash that is truly disenchanted mdashemancipation of the productive forces from the shackles of capitalist relations A lsquosecond technologyrsquo freed from the first would no longer be a means but a medium32not the tool of a liberated humanity but its extended body mdash a conflationin short of the time-honored philosophical opposition between physei and thesei

The Marxian dialectic between the forces and relations of production may belsquoscientific socialismrsquo but it is also a wager a promise a performative act of faithand of language It nevertheless provides the underpinning s mdash or safety-rail orlsquoascetic apprenticeshiprsquo33 mdash for the even dizzier speculation undertaken in ZumPlanetarium As will be seen it also provides a way out (a Kantian Ausgang) a one-way street out of Klagesrsquos systegraveme sans issue Not merely does the Marxian schemeenable Benjamin to draw a clear line between friend and foe but it also serves as ashield behind which he can venture out into the no manrsquos land between the frontsBut an atropaion like a pharmakos34 is a highly reversible proposition

A phrase from Benjaminrsquos essay on Juumlnger will help pose the problem In hisBrief uumlber den Humanismus (1946) Heidegger will claim that lsquothe young Germanswho were acquainted with Houmllderlin thought and lived something other in the face of death than what is publicly purveyed as German opinionrsquo35 In Theorien des deutschen Faschismus Benjamin asserts that Juumlnger and his ilk went towar lsquowith their Klages in their knapsacksrsquo (III 250) This latter allusion requiressome explanation

Benjamin who had nothing good to say about Juumlnger was a discriminatingreader of Ludwig Klages the author of two major works Der kosmogonische Eros(1922) and Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele the first volume of which was pub-lished in 1929 In a letter to Klages dated 2821923 he claims to find confirma-tion in the former work for his own thinking 36 And in a letter to Scholem writtenon 1581930 he calls the latter lsquowithout a doubt a great philosophical workrsquolsquoregardless of the context in which the author may be and remain suspectrsquoBenjamin here implicitly proposes lifting Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele out of that context and parts of the work out of the whole the better to isolate the lsquoreally new and far-reaching conceptionsrsquo hidden behind its lsquohare-brained metaphysical dualismrsquo37

74 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

On the basis of this Manichean dualism which echoed then prevalent oppositionsbetween Kultur and Zivilisation Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft etc Klages had infact bitterly opposed the First World War as the last most lethal phase of Geist in itsmillennial struggle with Seele This struggle was also one between an immemoriallsquocosmogonicrsquo Eros and an lsquourge to murderrsquo (Mordsucht) which now armed withmodern technology was committing an unprecedented rape upon the body andsoul of the earth38 We are far here from the spirit mdash the psycho-analytic Geist mdashof Freudrsquos opposition between Eros and Thanatos

How then was it possible for Juumlnger to have gone off to the First World Warcarrying mdash of all people mdash a metaphysical war-protester in his knapsack The con-tradiction while flagrant is only apparent For the deep content of all dualismslies in their form(alism) Within such abstract binary systems which oftendenounces all system sides can easily be switched so long the rigid oppositionbetween the terms remain in place It matters little whether an attitude is adoptedfor or against modern war so long as the war between the two opposing columns is main-tained Juumlnger can rewrite Klages by injecting Seele aura and Leben into the Erlebnisof modern war and championing it against an otherwise petty-minded modernityHe thereby contradicts the manifest content of Klagesrsquos scheme but remainsentirely faithful to its phantasmagorical dualism Considered from this angle his rhetoric adds up to a few permutations within a fin-de-siegravecle scheme whichsurvives the war as intact as any state bureaucracy It is in short entirely accurateto say that Juumlnger went to war with Klages in his knapsack

So far so good From here on however the frontiers between the camps are less easily demarcated In a subsequent essay on Bachofen Benjamin describes Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele as follows

Systegraveme sans issue du reste et qui se perd dans une propheacutetie menaccedilante agrave lrsquoadresse deshumains qui se sont laisseacutes eacutegarer par les insinuations de lrsquoesprit (II 230)

What exactly distinguishes Benjaminrsquos own indictment of the lsquothreatening aberrationrsquo of the moderns from being another such lsquomenacing prophecyrsquo Whatbeyond the fact that Zum Planetarium at least offers a (Kantian-Heg elian-Marxian)lsquoway outrsquo mdash but then again in comparably oracular language In 1920 Benjaminasks Klages for the next installment of his essay lsquoVom Traumbewusstseinrsquo (1914)but the sequel that matters to him notably from the late twenties on is to awakenfrom and with that dream-consiousness Similarly his version of the lsquodoctrine of the ancientsrsquo differs point by point from Klagesrsquos39 but it is from Klagesrsquos that it differs Benjaminrsquos subsequent definition of lsquoaurarsquo as lsquothe unique appearance of adistance however close it may bersquo40 the related account of lsquoecstasyrsquo propounded in

75

ZumPlanetarium in terms of an interplay of lsquofarrsquo and lsquonearrsquo as well as other centralmotifs such as lsquoimage-spacersquo and the lsquodialectical imagersquo mdash all these are so many re-eleborations of the lsquofar-reaching conceptionsrsquo he finds in Klages41 It is clear in short that Benjamin too mdash like Juumlnger mdash packed lsquoKlages in his knapsackrsquoAnd it is equally clear that Benjaminrsquos and Juumlngerrsquos respective ways of rewritingKlages of inverting and conflating his polarities are worlds apart

Already in 1926 Benjamin was aware that a lsquoreckoningrsquo (Auseinandersetzung)with Klages was due42 A decade later in connection with Adornorsquos objections tohis prospectus for the Arcades Project he planned a comparable differentiationbetween Jungrsquos and Klagesrsquos lsquoarchaic imagesrsquo and what he proposed to call thelsquodialectical imagersquo Neither Auseinandersetzung materialized at least not in theextended discursive form that this term implies But a text like Zum Planetariumis itself an intensive Auseinandersetzung an Ineinandersetzung a philosophico-literarycorps agrave corps a definitive provisional one-legged stance

Before anyone tries to decide whether Benjamin packed too much Klages intohis knapsack (but how much is too much and doesnrsquot it all depend on the packingand the rest of the baggage) it is first necessary to give some account of hismarching orders his raison drsquoeacutetat43 The writer is according to One-Way Street a lsquostrategist in the literary strugglersquo44 Where Freudrsquos account of civilization as a Kulturkampf ironically refers back in 1930 to the battle of that name that hadtaken place in the 1870s between Catholicism and liberalism the neologismLiteraturkampf is clearly coined by analogy with Klassenkampf The battle-lines arethus clearly drawn But the following strategic assessment which is intended tolsquoimprove (the position of the left) in the struggle against Fascism45 complicatesthis simple alignment of forces and militates against the institution of anotherlsquohare-brained dualismrsquo a metaphysicalrsquo mdash that is positivistic mdash lsquomaterialismrsquo46

In the international class struggle the Fascist enemy has occupied terrain whichhistorical materialism mistaking reason for rationalism has ceded without a fight mdash the world of myth ritual and all those other things between heaven andearth that are undreamt-of in materialist philosophy It is here that the writer-as-strategist intervenes mdash at the critical point where a lsquostrange interplayrsquo obtainsbetween lsquoreactionary theory and revolutionary practicersquo47 Hence Benjaminrsquosselective interest in such lsquodangerousrsquo thinkers as Georges Sorel Carl SchmittLudwig Klages and Carl Gustav Jung The list could be extended but it does notseem for better or for worse to include Martin Heidegger mdash unless that is onechooses to interpret Benjaminrsquos rare curt dismissals of the latter as symptoms of a tell-tale avoidance Benjamin invariably quotes these thinkers against their context Why though does he quote them at all The answer can only be thattheir thinking properly fragmented releases insights and resources that are nototherwise to be had lsquoThe myth of the general strikersquo lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo the

76 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

of indecision Written in 1925ndash26 and published in 1928 as the closing piece of a surrealist montage of texts entitled One-Way Street lsquoThis Way to the Planetariumrsquo(Zum Planetarium) may not succeed in encapsulating all of history But a lifersquos workis certainly contained within it Can one however swallow it whole And if nothow divide it up the better to save it from itself What lines have to be drawnwhat contours shaded in before one can responsibly draw the line

In the essay from which the second motto to this essay is taken Jacques Derridaoutlined what an adequate non-journalistic reading of Paul de Manrsquos problematicand occasionally infamous wartime journalism would entail traversed as it was bythe major ideological discourses of the interwar years De Manrsquos youthful aberra-tions are needless to say worlds apart from the rhapsodic envoi of One-Way StreetBut Zum Planetarium too operates in intricate lsquoborder territoryrsquo8 like thelsquodestructive characterrsquo of whom Benjamin writes lsquoWhere others encounter wallsor mountains there too he sees a wayrsquo9 It charts its way through difficultexposed terrain where opposing discourses overlap and its worst enemy is nevermore than one false step away Here more than ever inconspicuous distinctionsmake all the difference It is a matter not of Freudrsquos Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzbut of Adornorsquos Nuance ums Ganze

Who is to judge whether we are better placed to judge these matters todayThe idea that lsquohistory will judgersquo from a lsquocritical distancersquo is ususally a historicistmyth a euphemism for the ignorance indifference and optical illusion of a safedistance In his Commentaries on Poems by Brecht Benjamin anticipated that the coming devastation would relegate contemporary production to a far-distant age10

A commentary that fits too tightly today may overnight develop classical folds Today its precision may appear almost indecent tomorrow mystery may have reasserted itself (II 540)

In the wake of that lsquostormrsquo11 of subsequent lsquoreparationsrsquo and Benjaminrsquos overnightfame followed today by a wave of disenchantment mdash but does not the momentwhen lsquothe vogue had begun to ebbrsquo12 have its own revolutionary potential mdash howdo we get Benjaminrsquos corpus into political-philolog ical focus

An adequate reading of Zum Planetarium might ideally be imagined along thelines of Benjaminrsquos own Arcades Project The latter was in effect intended todemonstrate that classical philology henceforth required a Marxist method mdash onewhich had however yet to be elaborated Baudelaire would have to be re-embedded in the nineteenth century with more than historicist precision before he could be accurately blasted out of it His epoch was to be pieced together frombits and pieces studiously collected from high and low by an itinerant lsquorag-pickerrsquo

69

exploded out of their context by the ravages of history andor by a philologist who combined conservation with destruction13 The carefully arranged materialswere to speak for themselves all further commentary being rendered virtuallysuperfluous by the reciprocal shock-effects produced by such montage Like thehunchback dwarf of the Theses on the Philosophy of History theory was to be hiddenfrom the view and construction in Siegfried Giedionrsquos phrase to assume the roleof the unconscious14 One could imagine combining this method with anotherform of self-concealing theory based this time on a technique of internal citationnot unlike the one practised in Hans Kellerrsquos musical analyses which have a stringquartet isolate repeat and recombine the various motifs of a given score Such animplementation of the Arcades project has yet to see the light of day Would it notin any case take years to chart the complex no manrsquos land within which Zum Planetarium operates And would not meanwhile the truth have lsquorun awayfrom usrsquo15 Does not the Rabbi Hillel say his piece while standing on one legIncreasing ly the pressure of time imposed on Benjaminrsquos thought a poetics of compression (Verdichtung) mdash in German Romantic terms of Blitz and Witz16

His elliptical letter on Kafkarsquos work as an lsquoellipsersquo that configures the far-flungpoles of mystical tradition and urban bureaucratic and technological modernity17

describes an ellipse in a double sense performative and constative Zum Planetariumshort-circuits comparably remote extremes lsquoLa poeacutesie elle aussirsquo writes PaulCelan lsquobrucircle nos eacutetapesrsquo18 Hannah Arendt spoke in turn of Benjaminrsquos gift ofthinking poetically19 The risk was that of producing a lsquodangerously foreshortenedrsquoperspective20

(lsquoWe philologistsrsquo likewise face the pressures of time though more rarely thoseof the times and almost always from a safe position Having written Mimesisin Istanbul between 1942 and 1945 without the benefit of a research library Erich Auerbach chose as its motto Andrew Marvellrsquos lsquoHad we but world enoughand time helliprsquo At the same time he admitted that it had taken such conditions for him to realize the breath-taking project of encompassing so much world and time)

The following notes and queries represent a prolegomenon to a prolegomenonto a reading of Zum Planetarium

70 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

A confrontation with Bachofen and Klages isunavoidable much indicates of course that it canbe rigorously pursued only from the perspective ofJewish theology It is here of course that theseimportant scholars rightly sense their arch-enemy21

I (hellip) have not taken any lsquopositionrsquo on what is in(Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele)22

I have not yet had any time to concern myself withthe question of what meaning is ultimately (imErnstfall) to be extracted from (Nietzschersquos)writings Were I inclined to do so I would readup on what Klages calls lsquoNietzschersquos psychologicalachievementsrsquo23

All true creative acts are in Nietzschean terms lsquounhistoricalrsquo and thereby makehistory Faire date (lsquoto makemark a datersquo) writes Henri Focillon is to lsquojolt themomentrsquo24 But in order to measure the angle and impact of that jolt one firstneeds to reconstruct the historical circumstances in quasi-criminological seem-ingly historicist fashion Our initial task is therefore to re-embed Zum Planetariumin its larger historical and intellectual contexts and to situate it within Benjaminrsquosown corpus

We might begin by rapidly sketching in a first broad line extending roughly fromSchopenhauer via Nietzsche and Lebensphilosophie to the Freud of Das Unbehagen inder Kultur (1930) and Warum Krieg (1932) both of which were like ZumPlanetarium written under the impact of the First World War Against this back-ground Zum Planetariumemerges as an original variation on a large modern topos

According to Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung it is the Will that makes theworld go round mdash a relentless senseless life-force that is to be turned against itselfin the name of art sainthood and Nirvana Or as Freud might have put it theabnegation of Eros is to produce something akin to Thanatos Among Schopen-hauerrsquos cousins and heirs (notably Wagner a certain German Romanticism and thedeacutecadents) Thanatos is then in turn reinvested with Eros Hymnen an die NachtLiebestod etc Nietzsche proceeds to turn Schopenhauer his lsquoeducatorrsquo on hishead The metaphysical nihilism of the West having reached its extreme is to belsquotransvaluedrsquo its negation of the Will to be willed into an affirmation of the Will

71

to Power The First World War grimly documents Nietzschersquos diagnosis oflsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo In the face of a world where warring armies are henceforthequipped with the unprecedented technological capacity for mutual annihilationFreud takes the measure of the lsquodeath-driversquo In order to counteract the havocwrought by Thanatos he places his hopes in Eros the god that binds humanstogether into ever larger units Not that Eros and Thanatos can ever exist entirelyon their own They are always Freud claims lsquoalloyedrsquo (legiert) with one anotherIn Das Unbehagen in der Kultur as in Zum Planetarium they are pitted against oneanother in world-historical combat The difference between Freudrsquos and Benjaminrsquosconcluding gestures is all the more striking

Und nun ist zu erwarten dass die andere der beiden lsquohimmlischen Maumlchtersquo derewigeEros eine Anstrengung machen wird um sich im Kampf mit seinem ebenso unsterblichenGegner zu behaupten Aber wer kann den Erfolg und Ausgang voraussehen 25

Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendiges nur im Rausche der Zeugung (IV 148)

Freudrsquos measured hopes for a renewed lsquoeffortrsquo on the part of Eros contrasts sharplywith Benjaminrsquos apodictic affirmation of its powers in terms that not merely invokethe lsquoecstasy of procreationrsquo but also elliptically bring together such strange bed-fellows as Nietzsche mdash uumlberwindet has vaguely Zarathustrian echoes mdash and JewishMessianism Were there space and time these criss-crossing lines of convergence anddivergence between Benjamin and Freud could be pursued in considerable detail

Within Benjaminrsquos oeuvre a second line should be drawn linking ZumPlanetarium to

i) a review essay entitled Theorien des deutschen Faschismus (1930) but also to ii) the well-known paragraphs in the surrealism essay (1929) on lsquoimage-rsquo and

lsquobody-spacersquoiii) the opening paragraphs of Der Erzaumlhler (1935) on the decline of lsquoexperiencersquoiv) certain sections from Uumlber einige Motive bei Baudelaire (1938) on shock

aura Erfahrung and Erlebnis and the various efforts made by Lebensphilosophie todenounce an inauthentic modernity in the name of allegedly authentic norms suchas myth poetry or nature and finally to

v) the socio-political framework established in the fore- and afterword to theKunstwerk essay (1936) along with the brief but telling remarks made about zweiteTechnik in the second version of that essay (1936ndash39)

lsquoTheories of German Fascismrsquo constitutes a devastating critique of Krieg undKrieger a collection of essays written by Ernst Juumlnger and consorts whose

72 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

mystique of war Benjamin diagnoses as the transposition of art for artrsquos sake fromthe ivory tower to the battlefield mdash that is as war for warrsquos sake A line is thustraceable from Baudelaire and aestheticism via the konservative Revolution (Juumlnger)and the futurist celebration of speed and aerial bombardments (Marinetti) to the fascist lsquoaestheticization of politicsrsquo26 With Juumlnger the neo-Romantic eroticizationof death turns into a neo- and anti-Romantic mystique of modern technologicalwarfare which harks back both to fin-de-siegravecle decadence and to its Nietzscheanantidote thereby exemplifying the intimate relations that exist between theseseemingly opposite extremes This is not the place to do justice to Benjaminrsquosmagnificient essay on Juumlnger Suffice it to say for our present purposes that it establishes beyond all possible confusion a clear-cut opposition between theobscene union of Eros and Thanatos promoted by Juumlngerrsquos cult of the Fronterlebnisand Benjaminrsquos own attempt in Zum Planetarium to save the war experience for an Eros that is irrevocably at odds with Thanatos

Benjaminrsquos scattered comments on modern technological warfare can be piecedtogether into a single coherent argument a line or story that goes roughly as follows According to the Marxian dialectic new forces of production blast open(sprengen) old relations of production Where this dynamic is diverted from its lsquonatural rsquo revolutionary goal the dammed-up forces of production find an unnatural counter-revolutionary outlet in imperialist and inter-capitalist warHere too then the Will mdash alias the drives alias the productive forces mdash is chan-nelled towards Thanatos In the Communist Manifesto Marx had described theunleashing of the productive forces in terms of Goethersquos ballad lsquoThe SorcererrsquosApprenticersquo Benjamin calls the ensuing perversion of this dialectic a lsquoslaversquos revoltof technologyrsquo (III 238)27 Where in other words the revolt of the masses (eg theunited apprentices) is averted the new means of production (eg the proliferatingbrooms) revolt in their place In Marxrsquos somewhat incoherent version of the ballad28 the proletariat inherits the mantle of the feudal sorcerer (Hexenmeister) by supplanting the bourgeoisie (successively the revolutionary master of the new productive forces and their Hegelian slaveapprentice) Only a new collective master mdash the united masses mdash can regain control over the productive forcesBenjamin grounds his thinking on this Marxian gamble for at least a decade(roughly between 1925 and 1936) The conclusion of Zum Planetarium is part ofthis sequence The German uprisings that immediately followed the First WorldWar may have been abortive it argues but they momentarily succeeded in wrest-ing the slaversquos revolt of technology from the imperialist master (Pruumlgelmeister) intoproletarian hands and thereby in pointing the way to freedom29

(The short-lived Spartacist uprising mdash which Benjamin again invokes in 1940as a rare and memorable interruption of the lsquocourse of historyrsquo30 mdash did not in fact amount to the first rumblings of the German revolution as the author of

73

Zum Planetarium still hoped it would The motif of a slaversquos revolt of technologywould accordingly return to haunt his subsequent writing s Hence his final equa-tion of the revolution not with the unleashing of the productive forces but with alsquoreaching for the emergency brakersquo (I 1232))

At this point a number of other motifs should be introduced into the storyMomentarily suspending Benjaminrsquos Judaeo-Marxist taboo (Bilderverbot) on imag-ining what the classless society would look like certain passages of the surrealismessay (1929) and the second version of the essay on technical reproduction (1936)open up the lsquoimage-spacersquo31 (Bildraum) of a true mdash that is truly disenchanted mdashemancipation of the productive forces from the shackles of capitalist relations A lsquosecond technologyrsquo freed from the first would no longer be a means but a medium32not the tool of a liberated humanity but its extended body mdash a conflationin short of the time-honored philosophical opposition between physei and thesei

The Marxian dialectic between the forces and relations of production may belsquoscientific socialismrsquo but it is also a wager a promise a performative act of faithand of language It nevertheless provides the underpinning s mdash or safety-rail orlsquoascetic apprenticeshiprsquo33 mdash for the even dizzier speculation undertaken in ZumPlanetarium As will be seen it also provides a way out (a Kantian Ausgang) a one-way street out of Klagesrsquos systegraveme sans issue Not merely does the Marxian schemeenable Benjamin to draw a clear line between friend and foe but it also serves as ashield behind which he can venture out into the no manrsquos land between the frontsBut an atropaion like a pharmakos34 is a highly reversible proposition

A phrase from Benjaminrsquos essay on Juumlnger will help pose the problem In hisBrief uumlber den Humanismus (1946) Heidegger will claim that lsquothe young Germanswho were acquainted with Houmllderlin thought and lived something other in the face of death than what is publicly purveyed as German opinionrsquo35 In Theorien des deutschen Faschismus Benjamin asserts that Juumlnger and his ilk went towar lsquowith their Klages in their knapsacksrsquo (III 250) This latter allusion requiressome explanation

Benjamin who had nothing good to say about Juumlnger was a discriminatingreader of Ludwig Klages the author of two major works Der kosmogonische Eros(1922) and Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele the first volume of which was pub-lished in 1929 In a letter to Klages dated 2821923 he claims to find confirma-tion in the former work for his own thinking 36 And in a letter to Scholem writtenon 1581930 he calls the latter lsquowithout a doubt a great philosophical workrsquolsquoregardless of the context in which the author may be and remain suspectrsquoBenjamin here implicitly proposes lifting Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele out of that context and parts of the work out of the whole the better to isolate the lsquoreally new and far-reaching conceptionsrsquo hidden behind its lsquohare-brained metaphysical dualismrsquo37

74 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

On the basis of this Manichean dualism which echoed then prevalent oppositionsbetween Kultur and Zivilisation Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft etc Klages had infact bitterly opposed the First World War as the last most lethal phase of Geist in itsmillennial struggle with Seele This struggle was also one between an immemoriallsquocosmogonicrsquo Eros and an lsquourge to murderrsquo (Mordsucht) which now armed withmodern technology was committing an unprecedented rape upon the body andsoul of the earth38 We are far here from the spirit mdash the psycho-analytic Geist mdashof Freudrsquos opposition between Eros and Thanatos

How then was it possible for Juumlnger to have gone off to the First World Warcarrying mdash of all people mdash a metaphysical war-protester in his knapsack The con-tradiction while flagrant is only apparent For the deep content of all dualismslies in their form(alism) Within such abstract binary systems which oftendenounces all system sides can easily be switched so long the rigid oppositionbetween the terms remain in place It matters little whether an attitude is adoptedfor or against modern war so long as the war between the two opposing columns is main-tained Juumlnger can rewrite Klages by injecting Seele aura and Leben into the Erlebnisof modern war and championing it against an otherwise petty-minded modernityHe thereby contradicts the manifest content of Klagesrsquos scheme but remainsentirely faithful to its phantasmagorical dualism Considered from this angle his rhetoric adds up to a few permutations within a fin-de-siegravecle scheme whichsurvives the war as intact as any state bureaucracy It is in short entirely accurateto say that Juumlnger went to war with Klages in his knapsack

So far so good From here on however the frontiers between the camps are less easily demarcated In a subsequent essay on Bachofen Benjamin describes Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele as follows

Systegraveme sans issue du reste et qui se perd dans une propheacutetie menaccedilante agrave lrsquoadresse deshumains qui se sont laisseacutes eacutegarer par les insinuations de lrsquoesprit (II 230)

What exactly distinguishes Benjaminrsquos own indictment of the lsquothreatening aberrationrsquo of the moderns from being another such lsquomenacing prophecyrsquo Whatbeyond the fact that Zum Planetarium at least offers a (Kantian-Heg elian-Marxian)lsquoway outrsquo mdash but then again in comparably oracular language In 1920 Benjaminasks Klages for the next installment of his essay lsquoVom Traumbewusstseinrsquo (1914)but the sequel that matters to him notably from the late twenties on is to awakenfrom and with that dream-consiousness Similarly his version of the lsquodoctrine of the ancientsrsquo differs point by point from Klagesrsquos39 but it is from Klagesrsquos that it differs Benjaminrsquos subsequent definition of lsquoaurarsquo as lsquothe unique appearance of adistance however close it may bersquo40 the related account of lsquoecstasyrsquo propounded in

75

ZumPlanetarium in terms of an interplay of lsquofarrsquo and lsquonearrsquo as well as other centralmotifs such as lsquoimage-spacersquo and the lsquodialectical imagersquo mdash all these are so many re-eleborations of the lsquofar-reaching conceptionsrsquo he finds in Klages41 It is clear in short that Benjamin too mdash like Juumlnger mdash packed lsquoKlages in his knapsackrsquoAnd it is equally clear that Benjaminrsquos and Juumlngerrsquos respective ways of rewritingKlages of inverting and conflating his polarities are worlds apart

Already in 1926 Benjamin was aware that a lsquoreckoningrsquo (Auseinandersetzung)with Klages was due42 A decade later in connection with Adornorsquos objections tohis prospectus for the Arcades Project he planned a comparable differentiationbetween Jungrsquos and Klagesrsquos lsquoarchaic imagesrsquo and what he proposed to call thelsquodialectical imagersquo Neither Auseinandersetzung materialized at least not in theextended discursive form that this term implies But a text like Zum Planetariumis itself an intensive Auseinandersetzung an Ineinandersetzung a philosophico-literarycorps agrave corps a definitive provisional one-legged stance

Before anyone tries to decide whether Benjamin packed too much Klages intohis knapsack (but how much is too much and doesnrsquot it all depend on the packingand the rest of the baggage) it is first necessary to give some account of hismarching orders his raison drsquoeacutetat43 The writer is according to One-Way Street a lsquostrategist in the literary strugglersquo44 Where Freudrsquos account of civilization as a Kulturkampf ironically refers back in 1930 to the battle of that name that hadtaken place in the 1870s between Catholicism and liberalism the neologismLiteraturkampf is clearly coined by analogy with Klassenkampf The battle-lines arethus clearly drawn But the following strategic assessment which is intended tolsquoimprove (the position of the left) in the struggle against Fascism45 complicatesthis simple alignment of forces and militates against the institution of anotherlsquohare-brained dualismrsquo a metaphysicalrsquo mdash that is positivistic mdash lsquomaterialismrsquo46

In the international class struggle the Fascist enemy has occupied terrain whichhistorical materialism mistaking reason for rationalism has ceded without a fight mdash the world of myth ritual and all those other things between heaven andearth that are undreamt-of in materialist philosophy It is here that the writer-as-strategist intervenes mdash at the critical point where a lsquostrange interplayrsquo obtainsbetween lsquoreactionary theory and revolutionary practicersquo47 Hence Benjaminrsquosselective interest in such lsquodangerousrsquo thinkers as Georges Sorel Carl SchmittLudwig Klages and Carl Gustav Jung The list could be extended but it does notseem for better or for worse to include Martin Heidegger mdash unless that is onechooses to interpret Benjaminrsquos rare curt dismissals of the latter as symptoms of a tell-tale avoidance Benjamin invariably quotes these thinkers against their context Why though does he quote them at all The answer can only be thattheir thinking properly fragmented releases insights and resources that are nototherwise to be had lsquoThe myth of the general strikersquo lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo the

76 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

exploded out of their context by the ravages of history andor by a philologist who combined conservation with destruction13 The carefully arranged materialswere to speak for themselves all further commentary being rendered virtuallysuperfluous by the reciprocal shock-effects produced by such montage Like thehunchback dwarf of the Theses on the Philosophy of History theory was to be hiddenfrom the view and construction in Siegfried Giedionrsquos phrase to assume the roleof the unconscious14 One could imagine combining this method with anotherform of self-concealing theory based this time on a technique of internal citationnot unlike the one practised in Hans Kellerrsquos musical analyses which have a stringquartet isolate repeat and recombine the various motifs of a given score Such animplementation of the Arcades project has yet to see the light of day Would it notin any case take years to chart the complex no manrsquos land within which Zum Planetarium operates And would not meanwhile the truth have lsquorun awayfrom usrsquo15 Does not the Rabbi Hillel say his piece while standing on one legIncreasing ly the pressure of time imposed on Benjaminrsquos thought a poetics of compression (Verdichtung) mdash in German Romantic terms of Blitz and Witz16

His elliptical letter on Kafkarsquos work as an lsquoellipsersquo that configures the far-flungpoles of mystical tradition and urban bureaucratic and technological modernity17

describes an ellipse in a double sense performative and constative Zum Planetariumshort-circuits comparably remote extremes lsquoLa poeacutesie elle aussirsquo writes PaulCelan lsquobrucircle nos eacutetapesrsquo18 Hannah Arendt spoke in turn of Benjaminrsquos gift ofthinking poetically19 The risk was that of producing a lsquodangerously foreshortenedrsquoperspective20

(lsquoWe philologistsrsquo likewise face the pressures of time though more rarely thoseof the times and almost always from a safe position Having written Mimesisin Istanbul between 1942 and 1945 without the benefit of a research library Erich Auerbach chose as its motto Andrew Marvellrsquos lsquoHad we but world enoughand time helliprsquo At the same time he admitted that it had taken such conditions for him to realize the breath-taking project of encompassing so much world and time)

The following notes and queries represent a prolegomenon to a prolegomenonto a reading of Zum Planetarium

70 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

A confrontation with Bachofen and Klages isunavoidable much indicates of course that it canbe rigorously pursued only from the perspective ofJewish theology It is here of course that theseimportant scholars rightly sense their arch-enemy21

I (hellip) have not taken any lsquopositionrsquo on what is in(Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele)22

I have not yet had any time to concern myself withthe question of what meaning is ultimately (imErnstfall) to be extracted from (Nietzschersquos)writings Were I inclined to do so I would readup on what Klages calls lsquoNietzschersquos psychologicalachievementsrsquo23

All true creative acts are in Nietzschean terms lsquounhistoricalrsquo and thereby makehistory Faire date (lsquoto makemark a datersquo) writes Henri Focillon is to lsquojolt themomentrsquo24 But in order to measure the angle and impact of that jolt one firstneeds to reconstruct the historical circumstances in quasi-criminological seem-ingly historicist fashion Our initial task is therefore to re-embed Zum Planetariumin its larger historical and intellectual contexts and to situate it within Benjaminrsquosown corpus

We might begin by rapidly sketching in a first broad line extending roughly fromSchopenhauer via Nietzsche and Lebensphilosophie to the Freud of Das Unbehagen inder Kultur (1930) and Warum Krieg (1932) both of which were like ZumPlanetarium written under the impact of the First World War Against this back-ground Zum Planetariumemerges as an original variation on a large modern topos

According to Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung it is the Will that makes theworld go round mdash a relentless senseless life-force that is to be turned against itselfin the name of art sainthood and Nirvana Or as Freud might have put it theabnegation of Eros is to produce something akin to Thanatos Among Schopen-hauerrsquos cousins and heirs (notably Wagner a certain German Romanticism and thedeacutecadents) Thanatos is then in turn reinvested with Eros Hymnen an die NachtLiebestod etc Nietzsche proceeds to turn Schopenhauer his lsquoeducatorrsquo on hishead The metaphysical nihilism of the West having reached its extreme is to belsquotransvaluedrsquo its negation of the Will to be willed into an affirmation of the Will

71

to Power The First World War grimly documents Nietzschersquos diagnosis oflsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo In the face of a world where warring armies are henceforthequipped with the unprecedented technological capacity for mutual annihilationFreud takes the measure of the lsquodeath-driversquo In order to counteract the havocwrought by Thanatos he places his hopes in Eros the god that binds humanstogether into ever larger units Not that Eros and Thanatos can ever exist entirelyon their own They are always Freud claims lsquoalloyedrsquo (legiert) with one anotherIn Das Unbehagen in der Kultur as in Zum Planetarium they are pitted against oneanother in world-historical combat The difference between Freudrsquos and Benjaminrsquosconcluding gestures is all the more striking

Und nun ist zu erwarten dass die andere der beiden lsquohimmlischen Maumlchtersquo derewigeEros eine Anstrengung machen wird um sich im Kampf mit seinem ebenso unsterblichenGegner zu behaupten Aber wer kann den Erfolg und Ausgang voraussehen 25

Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendiges nur im Rausche der Zeugung (IV 148)

Freudrsquos measured hopes for a renewed lsquoeffortrsquo on the part of Eros contrasts sharplywith Benjaminrsquos apodictic affirmation of its powers in terms that not merely invokethe lsquoecstasy of procreationrsquo but also elliptically bring together such strange bed-fellows as Nietzsche mdash uumlberwindet has vaguely Zarathustrian echoes mdash and JewishMessianism Were there space and time these criss-crossing lines of convergence anddivergence between Benjamin and Freud could be pursued in considerable detail

Within Benjaminrsquos oeuvre a second line should be drawn linking ZumPlanetarium to

i) a review essay entitled Theorien des deutschen Faschismus (1930) but also to ii) the well-known paragraphs in the surrealism essay (1929) on lsquoimage-rsquo and

lsquobody-spacersquoiii) the opening paragraphs of Der Erzaumlhler (1935) on the decline of lsquoexperiencersquoiv) certain sections from Uumlber einige Motive bei Baudelaire (1938) on shock

aura Erfahrung and Erlebnis and the various efforts made by Lebensphilosophie todenounce an inauthentic modernity in the name of allegedly authentic norms suchas myth poetry or nature and finally to

v) the socio-political framework established in the fore- and afterword to theKunstwerk essay (1936) along with the brief but telling remarks made about zweiteTechnik in the second version of that essay (1936ndash39)

lsquoTheories of German Fascismrsquo constitutes a devastating critique of Krieg undKrieger a collection of essays written by Ernst Juumlnger and consorts whose

72 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

mystique of war Benjamin diagnoses as the transposition of art for artrsquos sake fromthe ivory tower to the battlefield mdash that is as war for warrsquos sake A line is thustraceable from Baudelaire and aestheticism via the konservative Revolution (Juumlnger)and the futurist celebration of speed and aerial bombardments (Marinetti) to the fascist lsquoaestheticization of politicsrsquo26 With Juumlnger the neo-Romantic eroticizationof death turns into a neo- and anti-Romantic mystique of modern technologicalwarfare which harks back both to fin-de-siegravecle decadence and to its Nietzscheanantidote thereby exemplifying the intimate relations that exist between theseseemingly opposite extremes This is not the place to do justice to Benjaminrsquosmagnificient essay on Juumlnger Suffice it to say for our present purposes that it establishes beyond all possible confusion a clear-cut opposition between theobscene union of Eros and Thanatos promoted by Juumlngerrsquos cult of the Fronterlebnisand Benjaminrsquos own attempt in Zum Planetarium to save the war experience for an Eros that is irrevocably at odds with Thanatos

Benjaminrsquos scattered comments on modern technological warfare can be piecedtogether into a single coherent argument a line or story that goes roughly as follows According to the Marxian dialectic new forces of production blast open(sprengen) old relations of production Where this dynamic is diverted from its lsquonatural rsquo revolutionary goal the dammed-up forces of production find an unnatural counter-revolutionary outlet in imperialist and inter-capitalist warHere too then the Will mdash alias the drives alias the productive forces mdash is chan-nelled towards Thanatos In the Communist Manifesto Marx had described theunleashing of the productive forces in terms of Goethersquos ballad lsquoThe SorcererrsquosApprenticersquo Benjamin calls the ensuing perversion of this dialectic a lsquoslaversquos revoltof technologyrsquo (III 238)27 Where in other words the revolt of the masses (eg theunited apprentices) is averted the new means of production (eg the proliferatingbrooms) revolt in their place In Marxrsquos somewhat incoherent version of the ballad28 the proletariat inherits the mantle of the feudal sorcerer (Hexenmeister) by supplanting the bourgeoisie (successively the revolutionary master of the new productive forces and their Hegelian slaveapprentice) Only a new collective master mdash the united masses mdash can regain control over the productive forcesBenjamin grounds his thinking on this Marxian gamble for at least a decade(roughly between 1925 and 1936) The conclusion of Zum Planetarium is part ofthis sequence The German uprisings that immediately followed the First WorldWar may have been abortive it argues but they momentarily succeeded in wrest-ing the slaversquos revolt of technology from the imperialist master (Pruumlgelmeister) intoproletarian hands and thereby in pointing the way to freedom29

(The short-lived Spartacist uprising mdash which Benjamin again invokes in 1940as a rare and memorable interruption of the lsquocourse of historyrsquo30 mdash did not in fact amount to the first rumblings of the German revolution as the author of

73

Zum Planetarium still hoped it would The motif of a slaversquos revolt of technologywould accordingly return to haunt his subsequent writing s Hence his final equa-tion of the revolution not with the unleashing of the productive forces but with alsquoreaching for the emergency brakersquo (I 1232))

At this point a number of other motifs should be introduced into the storyMomentarily suspending Benjaminrsquos Judaeo-Marxist taboo (Bilderverbot) on imag-ining what the classless society would look like certain passages of the surrealismessay (1929) and the second version of the essay on technical reproduction (1936)open up the lsquoimage-spacersquo31 (Bildraum) of a true mdash that is truly disenchanted mdashemancipation of the productive forces from the shackles of capitalist relations A lsquosecond technologyrsquo freed from the first would no longer be a means but a medium32not the tool of a liberated humanity but its extended body mdash a conflationin short of the time-honored philosophical opposition between physei and thesei

The Marxian dialectic between the forces and relations of production may belsquoscientific socialismrsquo but it is also a wager a promise a performative act of faithand of language It nevertheless provides the underpinning s mdash or safety-rail orlsquoascetic apprenticeshiprsquo33 mdash for the even dizzier speculation undertaken in ZumPlanetarium As will be seen it also provides a way out (a Kantian Ausgang) a one-way street out of Klagesrsquos systegraveme sans issue Not merely does the Marxian schemeenable Benjamin to draw a clear line between friend and foe but it also serves as ashield behind which he can venture out into the no manrsquos land between the frontsBut an atropaion like a pharmakos34 is a highly reversible proposition

A phrase from Benjaminrsquos essay on Juumlnger will help pose the problem In hisBrief uumlber den Humanismus (1946) Heidegger will claim that lsquothe young Germanswho were acquainted with Houmllderlin thought and lived something other in the face of death than what is publicly purveyed as German opinionrsquo35 In Theorien des deutschen Faschismus Benjamin asserts that Juumlnger and his ilk went towar lsquowith their Klages in their knapsacksrsquo (III 250) This latter allusion requiressome explanation

Benjamin who had nothing good to say about Juumlnger was a discriminatingreader of Ludwig Klages the author of two major works Der kosmogonische Eros(1922) and Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele the first volume of which was pub-lished in 1929 In a letter to Klages dated 2821923 he claims to find confirma-tion in the former work for his own thinking 36 And in a letter to Scholem writtenon 1581930 he calls the latter lsquowithout a doubt a great philosophical workrsquolsquoregardless of the context in which the author may be and remain suspectrsquoBenjamin here implicitly proposes lifting Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele out of that context and parts of the work out of the whole the better to isolate the lsquoreally new and far-reaching conceptionsrsquo hidden behind its lsquohare-brained metaphysical dualismrsquo37

74 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

On the basis of this Manichean dualism which echoed then prevalent oppositionsbetween Kultur and Zivilisation Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft etc Klages had infact bitterly opposed the First World War as the last most lethal phase of Geist in itsmillennial struggle with Seele This struggle was also one between an immemoriallsquocosmogonicrsquo Eros and an lsquourge to murderrsquo (Mordsucht) which now armed withmodern technology was committing an unprecedented rape upon the body andsoul of the earth38 We are far here from the spirit mdash the psycho-analytic Geist mdashof Freudrsquos opposition between Eros and Thanatos

How then was it possible for Juumlnger to have gone off to the First World Warcarrying mdash of all people mdash a metaphysical war-protester in his knapsack The con-tradiction while flagrant is only apparent For the deep content of all dualismslies in their form(alism) Within such abstract binary systems which oftendenounces all system sides can easily be switched so long the rigid oppositionbetween the terms remain in place It matters little whether an attitude is adoptedfor or against modern war so long as the war between the two opposing columns is main-tained Juumlnger can rewrite Klages by injecting Seele aura and Leben into the Erlebnisof modern war and championing it against an otherwise petty-minded modernityHe thereby contradicts the manifest content of Klagesrsquos scheme but remainsentirely faithful to its phantasmagorical dualism Considered from this angle his rhetoric adds up to a few permutations within a fin-de-siegravecle scheme whichsurvives the war as intact as any state bureaucracy It is in short entirely accurateto say that Juumlnger went to war with Klages in his knapsack

So far so good From here on however the frontiers between the camps are less easily demarcated In a subsequent essay on Bachofen Benjamin describes Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele as follows

Systegraveme sans issue du reste et qui se perd dans une propheacutetie menaccedilante agrave lrsquoadresse deshumains qui se sont laisseacutes eacutegarer par les insinuations de lrsquoesprit (II 230)

What exactly distinguishes Benjaminrsquos own indictment of the lsquothreatening aberrationrsquo of the moderns from being another such lsquomenacing prophecyrsquo Whatbeyond the fact that Zum Planetarium at least offers a (Kantian-Heg elian-Marxian)lsquoway outrsquo mdash but then again in comparably oracular language In 1920 Benjaminasks Klages for the next installment of his essay lsquoVom Traumbewusstseinrsquo (1914)but the sequel that matters to him notably from the late twenties on is to awakenfrom and with that dream-consiousness Similarly his version of the lsquodoctrine of the ancientsrsquo differs point by point from Klagesrsquos39 but it is from Klagesrsquos that it differs Benjaminrsquos subsequent definition of lsquoaurarsquo as lsquothe unique appearance of adistance however close it may bersquo40 the related account of lsquoecstasyrsquo propounded in

75

ZumPlanetarium in terms of an interplay of lsquofarrsquo and lsquonearrsquo as well as other centralmotifs such as lsquoimage-spacersquo and the lsquodialectical imagersquo mdash all these are so many re-eleborations of the lsquofar-reaching conceptionsrsquo he finds in Klages41 It is clear in short that Benjamin too mdash like Juumlnger mdash packed lsquoKlages in his knapsackrsquoAnd it is equally clear that Benjaminrsquos and Juumlngerrsquos respective ways of rewritingKlages of inverting and conflating his polarities are worlds apart

Already in 1926 Benjamin was aware that a lsquoreckoningrsquo (Auseinandersetzung)with Klages was due42 A decade later in connection with Adornorsquos objections tohis prospectus for the Arcades Project he planned a comparable differentiationbetween Jungrsquos and Klagesrsquos lsquoarchaic imagesrsquo and what he proposed to call thelsquodialectical imagersquo Neither Auseinandersetzung materialized at least not in theextended discursive form that this term implies But a text like Zum Planetariumis itself an intensive Auseinandersetzung an Ineinandersetzung a philosophico-literarycorps agrave corps a definitive provisional one-legged stance

Before anyone tries to decide whether Benjamin packed too much Klages intohis knapsack (but how much is too much and doesnrsquot it all depend on the packingand the rest of the baggage) it is first necessary to give some account of hismarching orders his raison drsquoeacutetat43 The writer is according to One-Way Street a lsquostrategist in the literary strugglersquo44 Where Freudrsquos account of civilization as a Kulturkampf ironically refers back in 1930 to the battle of that name that hadtaken place in the 1870s between Catholicism and liberalism the neologismLiteraturkampf is clearly coined by analogy with Klassenkampf The battle-lines arethus clearly drawn But the following strategic assessment which is intended tolsquoimprove (the position of the left) in the struggle against Fascism45 complicatesthis simple alignment of forces and militates against the institution of anotherlsquohare-brained dualismrsquo a metaphysicalrsquo mdash that is positivistic mdash lsquomaterialismrsquo46

In the international class struggle the Fascist enemy has occupied terrain whichhistorical materialism mistaking reason for rationalism has ceded without a fight mdash the world of myth ritual and all those other things between heaven andearth that are undreamt-of in materialist philosophy It is here that the writer-as-strategist intervenes mdash at the critical point where a lsquostrange interplayrsquo obtainsbetween lsquoreactionary theory and revolutionary practicersquo47 Hence Benjaminrsquosselective interest in such lsquodangerousrsquo thinkers as Georges Sorel Carl SchmittLudwig Klages and Carl Gustav Jung The list could be extended but it does notseem for better or for worse to include Martin Heidegger mdash unless that is onechooses to interpret Benjaminrsquos rare curt dismissals of the latter as symptoms of a tell-tale avoidance Benjamin invariably quotes these thinkers against their context Why though does he quote them at all The answer can only be thattheir thinking properly fragmented releases insights and resources that are nototherwise to be had lsquoThe myth of the general strikersquo lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo the

76 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

A confrontation with Bachofen and Klages isunavoidable much indicates of course that it canbe rigorously pursued only from the perspective ofJewish theology It is here of course that theseimportant scholars rightly sense their arch-enemy21

I (hellip) have not taken any lsquopositionrsquo on what is in(Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele)22

I have not yet had any time to concern myself withthe question of what meaning is ultimately (imErnstfall) to be extracted from (Nietzschersquos)writings Were I inclined to do so I would readup on what Klages calls lsquoNietzschersquos psychologicalachievementsrsquo23

All true creative acts are in Nietzschean terms lsquounhistoricalrsquo and thereby makehistory Faire date (lsquoto makemark a datersquo) writes Henri Focillon is to lsquojolt themomentrsquo24 But in order to measure the angle and impact of that jolt one firstneeds to reconstruct the historical circumstances in quasi-criminological seem-ingly historicist fashion Our initial task is therefore to re-embed Zum Planetariumin its larger historical and intellectual contexts and to situate it within Benjaminrsquosown corpus

We might begin by rapidly sketching in a first broad line extending roughly fromSchopenhauer via Nietzsche and Lebensphilosophie to the Freud of Das Unbehagen inder Kultur (1930) and Warum Krieg (1932) both of which were like ZumPlanetarium written under the impact of the First World War Against this back-ground Zum Planetariumemerges as an original variation on a large modern topos

According to Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung it is the Will that makes theworld go round mdash a relentless senseless life-force that is to be turned against itselfin the name of art sainthood and Nirvana Or as Freud might have put it theabnegation of Eros is to produce something akin to Thanatos Among Schopen-hauerrsquos cousins and heirs (notably Wagner a certain German Romanticism and thedeacutecadents) Thanatos is then in turn reinvested with Eros Hymnen an die NachtLiebestod etc Nietzsche proceeds to turn Schopenhauer his lsquoeducatorrsquo on hishead The metaphysical nihilism of the West having reached its extreme is to belsquotransvaluedrsquo its negation of the Will to be willed into an affirmation of the Will

71

to Power The First World War grimly documents Nietzschersquos diagnosis oflsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo In the face of a world where warring armies are henceforthequipped with the unprecedented technological capacity for mutual annihilationFreud takes the measure of the lsquodeath-driversquo In order to counteract the havocwrought by Thanatos he places his hopes in Eros the god that binds humanstogether into ever larger units Not that Eros and Thanatos can ever exist entirelyon their own They are always Freud claims lsquoalloyedrsquo (legiert) with one anotherIn Das Unbehagen in der Kultur as in Zum Planetarium they are pitted against oneanother in world-historical combat The difference between Freudrsquos and Benjaminrsquosconcluding gestures is all the more striking

Und nun ist zu erwarten dass die andere der beiden lsquohimmlischen Maumlchtersquo derewigeEros eine Anstrengung machen wird um sich im Kampf mit seinem ebenso unsterblichenGegner zu behaupten Aber wer kann den Erfolg und Ausgang voraussehen 25

Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendiges nur im Rausche der Zeugung (IV 148)

Freudrsquos measured hopes for a renewed lsquoeffortrsquo on the part of Eros contrasts sharplywith Benjaminrsquos apodictic affirmation of its powers in terms that not merely invokethe lsquoecstasy of procreationrsquo but also elliptically bring together such strange bed-fellows as Nietzsche mdash uumlberwindet has vaguely Zarathustrian echoes mdash and JewishMessianism Were there space and time these criss-crossing lines of convergence anddivergence between Benjamin and Freud could be pursued in considerable detail

Within Benjaminrsquos oeuvre a second line should be drawn linking ZumPlanetarium to

i) a review essay entitled Theorien des deutschen Faschismus (1930) but also to ii) the well-known paragraphs in the surrealism essay (1929) on lsquoimage-rsquo and

lsquobody-spacersquoiii) the opening paragraphs of Der Erzaumlhler (1935) on the decline of lsquoexperiencersquoiv) certain sections from Uumlber einige Motive bei Baudelaire (1938) on shock

aura Erfahrung and Erlebnis and the various efforts made by Lebensphilosophie todenounce an inauthentic modernity in the name of allegedly authentic norms suchas myth poetry or nature and finally to

v) the socio-political framework established in the fore- and afterword to theKunstwerk essay (1936) along with the brief but telling remarks made about zweiteTechnik in the second version of that essay (1936ndash39)

lsquoTheories of German Fascismrsquo constitutes a devastating critique of Krieg undKrieger a collection of essays written by Ernst Juumlnger and consorts whose

72 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

mystique of war Benjamin diagnoses as the transposition of art for artrsquos sake fromthe ivory tower to the battlefield mdash that is as war for warrsquos sake A line is thustraceable from Baudelaire and aestheticism via the konservative Revolution (Juumlnger)and the futurist celebration of speed and aerial bombardments (Marinetti) to the fascist lsquoaestheticization of politicsrsquo26 With Juumlnger the neo-Romantic eroticizationof death turns into a neo- and anti-Romantic mystique of modern technologicalwarfare which harks back both to fin-de-siegravecle decadence and to its Nietzscheanantidote thereby exemplifying the intimate relations that exist between theseseemingly opposite extremes This is not the place to do justice to Benjaminrsquosmagnificient essay on Juumlnger Suffice it to say for our present purposes that it establishes beyond all possible confusion a clear-cut opposition between theobscene union of Eros and Thanatos promoted by Juumlngerrsquos cult of the Fronterlebnisand Benjaminrsquos own attempt in Zum Planetarium to save the war experience for an Eros that is irrevocably at odds with Thanatos

Benjaminrsquos scattered comments on modern technological warfare can be piecedtogether into a single coherent argument a line or story that goes roughly as follows According to the Marxian dialectic new forces of production blast open(sprengen) old relations of production Where this dynamic is diverted from its lsquonatural rsquo revolutionary goal the dammed-up forces of production find an unnatural counter-revolutionary outlet in imperialist and inter-capitalist warHere too then the Will mdash alias the drives alias the productive forces mdash is chan-nelled towards Thanatos In the Communist Manifesto Marx had described theunleashing of the productive forces in terms of Goethersquos ballad lsquoThe SorcererrsquosApprenticersquo Benjamin calls the ensuing perversion of this dialectic a lsquoslaversquos revoltof technologyrsquo (III 238)27 Where in other words the revolt of the masses (eg theunited apprentices) is averted the new means of production (eg the proliferatingbrooms) revolt in their place In Marxrsquos somewhat incoherent version of the ballad28 the proletariat inherits the mantle of the feudal sorcerer (Hexenmeister) by supplanting the bourgeoisie (successively the revolutionary master of the new productive forces and their Hegelian slaveapprentice) Only a new collective master mdash the united masses mdash can regain control over the productive forcesBenjamin grounds his thinking on this Marxian gamble for at least a decade(roughly between 1925 and 1936) The conclusion of Zum Planetarium is part ofthis sequence The German uprisings that immediately followed the First WorldWar may have been abortive it argues but they momentarily succeeded in wrest-ing the slaversquos revolt of technology from the imperialist master (Pruumlgelmeister) intoproletarian hands and thereby in pointing the way to freedom29

(The short-lived Spartacist uprising mdash which Benjamin again invokes in 1940as a rare and memorable interruption of the lsquocourse of historyrsquo30 mdash did not in fact amount to the first rumblings of the German revolution as the author of

73

Zum Planetarium still hoped it would The motif of a slaversquos revolt of technologywould accordingly return to haunt his subsequent writing s Hence his final equa-tion of the revolution not with the unleashing of the productive forces but with alsquoreaching for the emergency brakersquo (I 1232))

At this point a number of other motifs should be introduced into the storyMomentarily suspending Benjaminrsquos Judaeo-Marxist taboo (Bilderverbot) on imag-ining what the classless society would look like certain passages of the surrealismessay (1929) and the second version of the essay on technical reproduction (1936)open up the lsquoimage-spacersquo31 (Bildraum) of a true mdash that is truly disenchanted mdashemancipation of the productive forces from the shackles of capitalist relations A lsquosecond technologyrsquo freed from the first would no longer be a means but a medium32not the tool of a liberated humanity but its extended body mdash a conflationin short of the time-honored philosophical opposition between physei and thesei

The Marxian dialectic between the forces and relations of production may belsquoscientific socialismrsquo but it is also a wager a promise a performative act of faithand of language It nevertheless provides the underpinning s mdash or safety-rail orlsquoascetic apprenticeshiprsquo33 mdash for the even dizzier speculation undertaken in ZumPlanetarium As will be seen it also provides a way out (a Kantian Ausgang) a one-way street out of Klagesrsquos systegraveme sans issue Not merely does the Marxian schemeenable Benjamin to draw a clear line between friend and foe but it also serves as ashield behind which he can venture out into the no manrsquos land between the frontsBut an atropaion like a pharmakos34 is a highly reversible proposition

A phrase from Benjaminrsquos essay on Juumlnger will help pose the problem In hisBrief uumlber den Humanismus (1946) Heidegger will claim that lsquothe young Germanswho were acquainted with Houmllderlin thought and lived something other in the face of death than what is publicly purveyed as German opinionrsquo35 In Theorien des deutschen Faschismus Benjamin asserts that Juumlnger and his ilk went towar lsquowith their Klages in their knapsacksrsquo (III 250) This latter allusion requiressome explanation

Benjamin who had nothing good to say about Juumlnger was a discriminatingreader of Ludwig Klages the author of two major works Der kosmogonische Eros(1922) and Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele the first volume of which was pub-lished in 1929 In a letter to Klages dated 2821923 he claims to find confirma-tion in the former work for his own thinking 36 And in a letter to Scholem writtenon 1581930 he calls the latter lsquowithout a doubt a great philosophical workrsquolsquoregardless of the context in which the author may be and remain suspectrsquoBenjamin here implicitly proposes lifting Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele out of that context and parts of the work out of the whole the better to isolate the lsquoreally new and far-reaching conceptionsrsquo hidden behind its lsquohare-brained metaphysical dualismrsquo37

74 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

On the basis of this Manichean dualism which echoed then prevalent oppositionsbetween Kultur and Zivilisation Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft etc Klages had infact bitterly opposed the First World War as the last most lethal phase of Geist in itsmillennial struggle with Seele This struggle was also one between an immemoriallsquocosmogonicrsquo Eros and an lsquourge to murderrsquo (Mordsucht) which now armed withmodern technology was committing an unprecedented rape upon the body andsoul of the earth38 We are far here from the spirit mdash the psycho-analytic Geist mdashof Freudrsquos opposition between Eros and Thanatos

How then was it possible for Juumlnger to have gone off to the First World Warcarrying mdash of all people mdash a metaphysical war-protester in his knapsack The con-tradiction while flagrant is only apparent For the deep content of all dualismslies in their form(alism) Within such abstract binary systems which oftendenounces all system sides can easily be switched so long the rigid oppositionbetween the terms remain in place It matters little whether an attitude is adoptedfor or against modern war so long as the war between the two opposing columns is main-tained Juumlnger can rewrite Klages by injecting Seele aura and Leben into the Erlebnisof modern war and championing it against an otherwise petty-minded modernityHe thereby contradicts the manifest content of Klagesrsquos scheme but remainsentirely faithful to its phantasmagorical dualism Considered from this angle his rhetoric adds up to a few permutations within a fin-de-siegravecle scheme whichsurvives the war as intact as any state bureaucracy It is in short entirely accurateto say that Juumlnger went to war with Klages in his knapsack

So far so good From here on however the frontiers between the camps are less easily demarcated In a subsequent essay on Bachofen Benjamin describes Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele as follows

Systegraveme sans issue du reste et qui se perd dans une propheacutetie menaccedilante agrave lrsquoadresse deshumains qui se sont laisseacutes eacutegarer par les insinuations de lrsquoesprit (II 230)

What exactly distinguishes Benjaminrsquos own indictment of the lsquothreatening aberrationrsquo of the moderns from being another such lsquomenacing prophecyrsquo Whatbeyond the fact that Zum Planetarium at least offers a (Kantian-Heg elian-Marxian)lsquoway outrsquo mdash but then again in comparably oracular language In 1920 Benjaminasks Klages for the next installment of his essay lsquoVom Traumbewusstseinrsquo (1914)but the sequel that matters to him notably from the late twenties on is to awakenfrom and with that dream-consiousness Similarly his version of the lsquodoctrine of the ancientsrsquo differs point by point from Klagesrsquos39 but it is from Klagesrsquos that it differs Benjaminrsquos subsequent definition of lsquoaurarsquo as lsquothe unique appearance of adistance however close it may bersquo40 the related account of lsquoecstasyrsquo propounded in

75

ZumPlanetarium in terms of an interplay of lsquofarrsquo and lsquonearrsquo as well as other centralmotifs such as lsquoimage-spacersquo and the lsquodialectical imagersquo mdash all these are so many re-eleborations of the lsquofar-reaching conceptionsrsquo he finds in Klages41 It is clear in short that Benjamin too mdash like Juumlnger mdash packed lsquoKlages in his knapsackrsquoAnd it is equally clear that Benjaminrsquos and Juumlngerrsquos respective ways of rewritingKlages of inverting and conflating his polarities are worlds apart

Already in 1926 Benjamin was aware that a lsquoreckoningrsquo (Auseinandersetzung)with Klages was due42 A decade later in connection with Adornorsquos objections tohis prospectus for the Arcades Project he planned a comparable differentiationbetween Jungrsquos and Klagesrsquos lsquoarchaic imagesrsquo and what he proposed to call thelsquodialectical imagersquo Neither Auseinandersetzung materialized at least not in theextended discursive form that this term implies But a text like Zum Planetariumis itself an intensive Auseinandersetzung an Ineinandersetzung a philosophico-literarycorps agrave corps a definitive provisional one-legged stance

Before anyone tries to decide whether Benjamin packed too much Klages intohis knapsack (but how much is too much and doesnrsquot it all depend on the packingand the rest of the baggage) it is first necessary to give some account of hismarching orders his raison drsquoeacutetat43 The writer is according to One-Way Street a lsquostrategist in the literary strugglersquo44 Where Freudrsquos account of civilization as a Kulturkampf ironically refers back in 1930 to the battle of that name that hadtaken place in the 1870s between Catholicism and liberalism the neologismLiteraturkampf is clearly coined by analogy with Klassenkampf The battle-lines arethus clearly drawn But the following strategic assessment which is intended tolsquoimprove (the position of the left) in the struggle against Fascism45 complicatesthis simple alignment of forces and militates against the institution of anotherlsquohare-brained dualismrsquo a metaphysicalrsquo mdash that is positivistic mdash lsquomaterialismrsquo46

In the international class struggle the Fascist enemy has occupied terrain whichhistorical materialism mistaking reason for rationalism has ceded without a fight mdash the world of myth ritual and all those other things between heaven andearth that are undreamt-of in materialist philosophy It is here that the writer-as-strategist intervenes mdash at the critical point where a lsquostrange interplayrsquo obtainsbetween lsquoreactionary theory and revolutionary practicersquo47 Hence Benjaminrsquosselective interest in such lsquodangerousrsquo thinkers as Georges Sorel Carl SchmittLudwig Klages and Carl Gustav Jung The list could be extended but it does notseem for better or for worse to include Martin Heidegger mdash unless that is onechooses to interpret Benjaminrsquos rare curt dismissals of the latter as symptoms of a tell-tale avoidance Benjamin invariably quotes these thinkers against their context Why though does he quote them at all The answer can only be thattheir thinking properly fragmented releases insights and resources that are nototherwise to be had lsquoThe myth of the general strikersquo lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo the

76 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

to Power The First World War grimly documents Nietzschersquos diagnosis oflsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo In the face of a world where warring armies are henceforthequipped with the unprecedented technological capacity for mutual annihilationFreud takes the measure of the lsquodeath-driversquo In order to counteract the havocwrought by Thanatos he places his hopes in Eros the god that binds humanstogether into ever larger units Not that Eros and Thanatos can ever exist entirelyon their own They are always Freud claims lsquoalloyedrsquo (legiert) with one anotherIn Das Unbehagen in der Kultur as in Zum Planetarium they are pitted against oneanother in world-historical combat The difference between Freudrsquos and Benjaminrsquosconcluding gestures is all the more striking

Und nun ist zu erwarten dass die andere der beiden lsquohimmlischen Maumlchtersquo derewigeEros eine Anstrengung machen wird um sich im Kampf mit seinem ebenso unsterblichenGegner zu behaupten Aber wer kann den Erfolg und Ausgang voraussehen 25

Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendiges nur im Rausche der Zeugung (IV 148)

Freudrsquos measured hopes for a renewed lsquoeffortrsquo on the part of Eros contrasts sharplywith Benjaminrsquos apodictic affirmation of its powers in terms that not merely invokethe lsquoecstasy of procreationrsquo but also elliptically bring together such strange bed-fellows as Nietzsche mdash uumlberwindet has vaguely Zarathustrian echoes mdash and JewishMessianism Were there space and time these criss-crossing lines of convergence anddivergence between Benjamin and Freud could be pursued in considerable detail

Within Benjaminrsquos oeuvre a second line should be drawn linking ZumPlanetarium to

i) a review essay entitled Theorien des deutschen Faschismus (1930) but also to ii) the well-known paragraphs in the surrealism essay (1929) on lsquoimage-rsquo and

lsquobody-spacersquoiii) the opening paragraphs of Der Erzaumlhler (1935) on the decline of lsquoexperiencersquoiv) certain sections from Uumlber einige Motive bei Baudelaire (1938) on shock

aura Erfahrung and Erlebnis and the various efforts made by Lebensphilosophie todenounce an inauthentic modernity in the name of allegedly authentic norms suchas myth poetry or nature and finally to

v) the socio-political framework established in the fore- and afterword to theKunstwerk essay (1936) along with the brief but telling remarks made about zweiteTechnik in the second version of that essay (1936ndash39)

lsquoTheories of German Fascismrsquo constitutes a devastating critique of Krieg undKrieger a collection of essays written by Ernst Juumlnger and consorts whose

72 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

mystique of war Benjamin diagnoses as the transposition of art for artrsquos sake fromthe ivory tower to the battlefield mdash that is as war for warrsquos sake A line is thustraceable from Baudelaire and aestheticism via the konservative Revolution (Juumlnger)and the futurist celebration of speed and aerial bombardments (Marinetti) to the fascist lsquoaestheticization of politicsrsquo26 With Juumlnger the neo-Romantic eroticizationof death turns into a neo- and anti-Romantic mystique of modern technologicalwarfare which harks back both to fin-de-siegravecle decadence and to its Nietzscheanantidote thereby exemplifying the intimate relations that exist between theseseemingly opposite extremes This is not the place to do justice to Benjaminrsquosmagnificient essay on Juumlnger Suffice it to say for our present purposes that it establishes beyond all possible confusion a clear-cut opposition between theobscene union of Eros and Thanatos promoted by Juumlngerrsquos cult of the Fronterlebnisand Benjaminrsquos own attempt in Zum Planetarium to save the war experience for an Eros that is irrevocably at odds with Thanatos

Benjaminrsquos scattered comments on modern technological warfare can be piecedtogether into a single coherent argument a line or story that goes roughly as follows According to the Marxian dialectic new forces of production blast open(sprengen) old relations of production Where this dynamic is diverted from its lsquonatural rsquo revolutionary goal the dammed-up forces of production find an unnatural counter-revolutionary outlet in imperialist and inter-capitalist warHere too then the Will mdash alias the drives alias the productive forces mdash is chan-nelled towards Thanatos In the Communist Manifesto Marx had described theunleashing of the productive forces in terms of Goethersquos ballad lsquoThe SorcererrsquosApprenticersquo Benjamin calls the ensuing perversion of this dialectic a lsquoslaversquos revoltof technologyrsquo (III 238)27 Where in other words the revolt of the masses (eg theunited apprentices) is averted the new means of production (eg the proliferatingbrooms) revolt in their place In Marxrsquos somewhat incoherent version of the ballad28 the proletariat inherits the mantle of the feudal sorcerer (Hexenmeister) by supplanting the bourgeoisie (successively the revolutionary master of the new productive forces and their Hegelian slaveapprentice) Only a new collective master mdash the united masses mdash can regain control over the productive forcesBenjamin grounds his thinking on this Marxian gamble for at least a decade(roughly between 1925 and 1936) The conclusion of Zum Planetarium is part ofthis sequence The German uprisings that immediately followed the First WorldWar may have been abortive it argues but they momentarily succeeded in wrest-ing the slaversquos revolt of technology from the imperialist master (Pruumlgelmeister) intoproletarian hands and thereby in pointing the way to freedom29

(The short-lived Spartacist uprising mdash which Benjamin again invokes in 1940as a rare and memorable interruption of the lsquocourse of historyrsquo30 mdash did not in fact amount to the first rumblings of the German revolution as the author of

73

Zum Planetarium still hoped it would The motif of a slaversquos revolt of technologywould accordingly return to haunt his subsequent writing s Hence his final equa-tion of the revolution not with the unleashing of the productive forces but with alsquoreaching for the emergency brakersquo (I 1232))

At this point a number of other motifs should be introduced into the storyMomentarily suspending Benjaminrsquos Judaeo-Marxist taboo (Bilderverbot) on imag-ining what the classless society would look like certain passages of the surrealismessay (1929) and the second version of the essay on technical reproduction (1936)open up the lsquoimage-spacersquo31 (Bildraum) of a true mdash that is truly disenchanted mdashemancipation of the productive forces from the shackles of capitalist relations A lsquosecond technologyrsquo freed from the first would no longer be a means but a medium32not the tool of a liberated humanity but its extended body mdash a conflationin short of the time-honored philosophical opposition between physei and thesei

The Marxian dialectic between the forces and relations of production may belsquoscientific socialismrsquo but it is also a wager a promise a performative act of faithand of language It nevertheless provides the underpinning s mdash or safety-rail orlsquoascetic apprenticeshiprsquo33 mdash for the even dizzier speculation undertaken in ZumPlanetarium As will be seen it also provides a way out (a Kantian Ausgang) a one-way street out of Klagesrsquos systegraveme sans issue Not merely does the Marxian schemeenable Benjamin to draw a clear line between friend and foe but it also serves as ashield behind which he can venture out into the no manrsquos land between the frontsBut an atropaion like a pharmakos34 is a highly reversible proposition

A phrase from Benjaminrsquos essay on Juumlnger will help pose the problem In hisBrief uumlber den Humanismus (1946) Heidegger will claim that lsquothe young Germanswho were acquainted with Houmllderlin thought and lived something other in the face of death than what is publicly purveyed as German opinionrsquo35 In Theorien des deutschen Faschismus Benjamin asserts that Juumlnger and his ilk went towar lsquowith their Klages in their knapsacksrsquo (III 250) This latter allusion requiressome explanation

Benjamin who had nothing good to say about Juumlnger was a discriminatingreader of Ludwig Klages the author of two major works Der kosmogonische Eros(1922) and Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele the first volume of which was pub-lished in 1929 In a letter to Klages dated 2821923 he claims to find confirma-tion in the former work for his own thinking 36 And in a letter to Scholem writtenon 1581930 he calls the latter lsquowithout a doubt a great philosophical workrsquolsquoregardless of the context in which the author may be and remain suspectrsquoBenjamin here implicitly proposes lifting Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele out of that context and parts of the work out of the whole the better to isolate the lsquoreally new and far-reaching conceptionsrsquo hidden behind its lsquohare-brained metaphysical dualismrsquo37

74 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

On the basis of this Manichean dualism which echoed then prevalent oppositionsbetween Kultur and Zivilisation Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft etc Klages had infact bitterly opposed the First World War as the last most lethal phase of Geist in itsmillennial struggle with Seele This struggle was also one between an immemoriallsquocosmogonicrsquo Eros and an lsquourge to murderrsquo (Mordsucht) which now armed withmodern technology was committing an unprecedented rape upon the body andsoul of the earth38 We are far here from the spirit mdash the psycho-analytic Geist mdashof Freudrsquos opposition between Eros and Thanatos

How then was it possible for Juumlnger to have gone off to the First World Warcarrying mdash of all people mdash a metaphysical war-protester in his knapsack The con-tradiction while flagrant is only apparent For the deep content of all dualismslies in their form(alism) Within such abstract binary systems which oftendenounces all system sides can easily be switched so long the rigid oppositionbetween the terms remain in place It matters little whether an attitude is adoptedfor or against modern war so long as the war between the two opposing columns is main-tained Juumlnger can rewrite Klages by injecting Seele aura and Leben into the Erlebnisof modern war and championing it against an otherwise petty-minded modernityHe thereby contradicts the manifest content of Klagesrsquos scheme but remainsentirely faithful to its phantasmagorical dualism Considered from this angle his rhetoric adds up to a few permutations within a fin-de-siegravecle scheme whichsurvives the war as intact as any state bureaucracy It is in short entirely accurateto say that Juumlnger went to war with Klages in his knapsack

So far so good From here on however the frontiers between the camps are less easily demarcated In a subsequent essay on Bachofen Benjamin describes Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele as follows

Systegraveme sans issue du reste et qui se perd dans une propheacutetie menaccedilante agrave lrsquoadresse deshumains qui se sont laisseacutes eacutegarer par les insinuations de lrsquoesprit (II 230)

What exactly distinguishes Benjaminrsquos own indictment of the lsquothreatening aberrationrsquo of the moderns from being another such lsquomenacing prophecyrsquo Whatbeyond the fact that Zum Planetarium at least offers a (Kantian-Heg elian-Marxian)lsquoway outrsquo mdash but then again in comparably oracular language In 1920 Benjaminasks Klages for the next installment of his essay lsquoVom Traumbewusstseinrsquo (1914)but the sequel that matters to him notably from the late twenties on is to awakenfrom and with that dream-consiousness Similarly his version of the lsquodoctrine of the ancientsrsquo differs point by point from Klagesrsquos39 but it is from Klagesrsquos that it differs Benjaminrsquos subsequent definition of lsquoaurarsquo as lsquothe unique appearance of adistance however close it may bersquo40 the related account of lsquoecstasyrsquo propounded in

75

ZumPlanetarium in terms of an interplay of lsquofarrsquo and lsquonearrsquo as well as other centralmotifs such as lsquoimage-spacersquo and the lsquodialectical imagersquo mdash all these are so many re-eleborations of the lsquofar-reaching conceptionsrsquo he finds in Klages41 It is clear in short that Benjamin too mdash like Juumlnger mdash packed lsquoKlages in his knapsackrsquoAnd it is equally clear that Benjaminrsquos and Juumlngerrsquos respective ways of rewritingKlages of inverting and conflating his polarities are worlds apart

Already in 1926 Benjamin was aware that a lsquoreckoningrsquo (Auseinandersetzung)with Klages was due42 A decade later in connection with Adornorsquos objections tohis prospectus for the Arcades Project he planned a comparable differentiationbetween Jungrsquos and Klagesrsquos lsquoarchaic imagesrsquo and what he proposed to call thelsquodialectical imagersquo Neither Auseinandersetzung materialized at least not in theextended discursive form that this term implies But a text like Zum Planetariumis itself an intensive Auseinandersetzung an Ineinandersetzung a philosophico-literarycorps agrave corps a definitive provisional one-legged stance

Before anyone tries to decide whether Benjamin packed too much Klages intohis knapsack (but how much is too much and doesnrsquot it all depend on the packingand the rest of the baggage) it is first necessary to give some account of hismarching orders his raison drsquoeacutetat43 The writer is according to One-Way Street a lsquostrategist in the literary strugglersquo44 Where Freudrsquos account of civilization as a Kulturkampf ironically refers back in 1930 to the battle of that name that hadtaken place in the 1870s between Catholicism and liberalism the neologismLiteraturkampf is clearly coined by analogy with Klassenkampf The battle-lines arethus clearly drawn But the following strategic assessment which is intended tolsquoimprove (the position of the left) in the struggle against Fascism45 complicatesthis simple alignment of forces and militates against the institution of anotherlsquohare-brained dualismrsquo a metaphysicalrsquo mdash that is positivistic mdash lsquomaterialismrsquo46

In the international class struggle the Fascist enemy has occupied terrain whichhistorical materialism mistaking reason for rationalism has ceded without a fight mdash the world of myth ritual and all those other things between heaven andearth that are undreamt-of in materialist philosophy It is here that the writer-as-strategist intervenes mdash at the critical point where a lsquostrange interplayrsquo obtainsbetween lsquoreactionary theory and revolutionary practicersquo47 Hence Benjaminrsquosselective interest in such lsquodangerousrsquo thinkers as Georges Sorel Carl SchmittLudwig Klages and Carl Gustav Jung The list could be extended but it does notseem for better or for worse to include Martin Heidegger mdash unless that is onechooses to interpret Benjaminrsquos rare curt dismissals of the latter as symptoms of a tell-tale avoidance Benjamin invariably quotes these thinkers against their context Why though does he quote them at all The answer can only be thattheir thinking properly fragmented releases insights and resources that are nototherwise to be had lsquoThe myth of the general strikersquo lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo the

76 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

mystique of war Benjamin diagnoses as the transposition of art for artrsquos sake fromthe ivory tower to the battlefield mdash that is as war for warrsquos sake A line is thustraceable from Baudelaire and aestheticism via the konservative Revolution (Juumlnger)and the futurist celebration of speed and aerial bombardments (Marinetti) to the fascist lsquoaestheticization of politicsrsquo26 With Juumlnger the neo-Romantic eroticizationof death turns into a neo- and anti-Romantic mystique of modern technologicalwarfare which harks back both to fin-de-siegravecle decadence and to its Nietzscheanantidote thereby exemplifying the intimate relations that exist between theseseemingly opposite extremes This is not the place to do justice to Benjaminrsquosmagnificient essay on Juumlnger Suffice it to say for our present purposes that it establishes beyond all possible confusion a clear-cut opposition between theobscene union of Eros and Thanatos promoted by Juumlngerrsquos cult of the Fronterlebnisand Benjaminrsquos own attempt in Zum Planetarium to save the war experience for an Eros that is irrevocably at odds with Thanatos

Benjaminrsquos scattered comments on modern technological warfare can be piecedtogether into a single coherent argument a line or story that goes roughly as follows According to the Marxian dialectic new forces of production blast open(sprengen) old relations of production Where this dynamic is diverted from its lsquonatural rsquo revolutionary goal the dammed-up forces of production find an unnatural counter-revolutionary outlet in imperialist and inter-capitalist warHere too then the Will mdash alias the drives alias the productive forces mdash is chan-nelled towards Thanatos In the Communist Manifesto Marx had described theunleashing of the productive forces in terms of Goethersquos ballad lsquoThe SorcererrsquosApprenticersquo Benjamin calls the ensuing perversion of this dialectic a lsquoslaversquos revoltof technologyrsquo (III 238)27 Where in other words the revolt of the masses (eg theunited apprentices) is averted the new means of production (eg the proliferatingbrooms) revolt in their place In Marxrsquos somewhat incoherent version of the ballad28 the proletariat inherits the mantle of the feudal sorcerer (Hexenmeister) by supplanting the bourgeoisie (successively the revolutionary master of the new productive forces and their Hegelian slaveapprentice) Only a new collective master mdash the united masses mdash can regain control over the productive forcesBenjamin grounds his thinking on this Marxian gamble for at least a decade(roughly between 1925 and 1936) The conclusion of Zum Planetarium is part ofthis sequence The German uprisings that immediately followed the First WorldWar may have been abortive it argues but they momentarily succeeded in wrest-ing the slaversquos revolt of technology from the imperialist master (Pruumlgelmeister) intoproletarian hands and thereby in pointing the way to freedom29

(The short-lived Spartacist uprising mdash which Benjamin again invokes in 1940as a rare and memorable interruption of the lsquocourse of historyrsquo30 mdash did not in fact amount to the first rumblings of the German revolution as the author of

73

Zum Planetarium still hoped it would The motif of a slaversquos revolt of technologywould accordingly return to haunt his subsequent writing s Hence his final equa-tion of the revolution not with the unleashing of the productive forces but with alsquoreaching for the emergency brakersquo (I 1232))

At this point a number of other motifs should be introduced into the storyMomentarily suspending Benjaminrsquos Judaeo-Marxist taboo (Bilderverbot) on imag-ining what the classless society would look like certain passages of the surrealismessay (1929) and the second version of the essay on technical reproduction (1936)open up the lsquoimage-spacersquo31 (Bildraum) of a true mdash that is truly disenchanted mdashemancipation of the productive forces from the shackles of capitalist relations A lsquosecond technologyrsquo freed from the first would no longer be a means but a medium32not the tool of a liberated humanity but its extended body mdash a conflationin short of the time-honored philosophical opposition between physei and thesei

The Marxian dialectic between the forces and relations of production may belsquoscientific socialismrsquo but it is also a wager a promise a performative act of faithand of language It nevertheless provides the underpinning s mdash or safety-rail orlsquoascetic apprenticeshiprsquo33 mdash for the even dizzier speculation undertaken in ZumPlanetarium As will be seen it also provides a way out (a Kantian Ausgang) a one-way street out of Klagesrsquos systegraveme sans issue Not merely does the Marxian schemeenable Benjamin to draw a clear line between friend and foe but it also serves as ashield behind which he can venture out into the no manrsquos land between the frontsBut an atropaion like a pharmakos34 is a highly reversible proposition

A phrase from Benjaminrsquos essay on Juumlnger will help pose the problem In hisBrief uumlber den Humanismus (1946) Heidegger will claim that lsquothe young Germanswho were acquainted with Houmllderlin thought and lived something other in the face of death than what is publicly purveyed as German opinionrsquo35 In Theorien des deutschen Faschismus Benjamin asserts that Juumlnger and his ilk went towar lsquowith their Klages in their knapsacksrsquo (III 250) This latter allusion requiressome explanation

Benjamin who had nothing good to say about Juumlnger was a discriminatingreader of Ludwig Klages the author of two major works Der kosmogonische Eros(1922) and Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele the first volume of which was pub-lished in 1929 In a letter to Klages dated 2821923 he claims to find confirma-tion in the former work for his own thinking 36 And in a letter to Scholem writtenon 1581930 he calls the latter lsquowithout a doubt a great philosophical workrsquolsquoregardless of the context in which the author may be and remain suspectrsquoBenjamin here implicitly proposes lifting Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele out of that context and parts of the work out of the whole the better to isolate the lsquoreally new and far-reaching conceptionsrsquo hidden behind its lsquohare-brained metaphysical dualismrsquo37

74 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

On the basis of this Manichean dualism which echoed then prevalent oppositionsbetween Kultur and Zivilisation Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft etc Klages had infact bitterly opposed the First World War as the last most lethal phase of Geist in itsmillennial struggle with Seele This struggle was also one between an immemoriallsquocosmogonicrsquo Eros and an lsquourge to murderrsquo (Mordsucht) which now armed withmodern technology was committing an unprecedented rape upon the body andsoul of the earth38 We are far here from the spirit mdash the psycho-analytic Geist mdashof Freudrsquos opposition between Eros and Thanatos

How then was it possible for Juumlnger to have gone off to the First World Warcarrying mdash of all people mdash a metaphysical war-protester in his knapsack The con-tradiction while flagrant is only apparent For the deep content of all dualismslies in their form(alism) Within such abstract binary systems which oftendenounces all system sides can easily be switched so long the rigid oppositionbetween the terms remain in place It matters little whether an attitude is adoptedfor or against modern war so long as the war between the two opposing columns is main-tained Juumlnger can rewrite Klages by injecting Seele aura and Leben into the Erlebnisof modern war and championing it against an otherwise petty-minded modernityHe thereby contradicts the manifest content of Klagesrsquos scheme but remainsentirely faithful to its phantasmagorical dualism Considered from this angle his rhetoric adds up to a few permutations within a fin-de-siegravecle scheme whichsurvives the war as intact as any state bureaucracy It is in short entirely accurateto say that Juumlnger went to war with Klages in his knapsack

So far so good From here on however the frontiers between the camps are less easily demarcated In a subsequent essay on Bachofen Benjamin describes Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele as follows

Systegraveme sans issue du reste et qui se perd dans une propheacutetie menaccedilante agrave lrsquoadresse deshumains qui se sont laisseacutes eacutegarer par les insinuations de lrsquoesprit (II 230)

What exactly distinguishes Benjaminrsquos own indictment of the lsquothreatening aberrationrsquo of the moderns from being another such lsquomenacing prophecyrsquo Whatbeyond the fact that Zum Planetarium at least offers a (Kantian-Heg elian-Marxian)lsquoway outrsquo mdash but then again in comparably oracular language In 1920 Benjaminasks Klages for the next installment of his essay lsquoVom Traumbewusstseinrsquo (1914)but the sequel that matters to him notably from the late twenties on is to awakenfrom and with that dream-consiousness Similarly his version of the lsquodoctrine of the ancientsrsquo differs point by point from Klagesrsquos39 but it is from Klagesrsquos that it differs Benjaminrsquos subsequent definition of lsquoaurarsquo as lsquothe unique appearance of adistance however close it may bersquo40 the related account of lsquoecstasyrsquo propounded in

75

ZumPlanetarium in terms of an interplay of lsquofarrsquo and lsquonearrsquo as well as other centralmotifs such as lsquoimage-spacersquo and the lsquodialectical imagersquo mdash all these are so many re-eleborations of the lsquofar-reaching conceptionsrsquo he finds in Klages41 It is clear in short that Benjamin too mdash like Juumlnger mdash packed lsquoKlages in his knapsackrsquoAnd it is equally clear that Benjaminrsquos and Juumlngerrsquos respective ways of rewritingKlages of inverting and conflating his polarities are worlds apart

Already in 1926 Benjamin was aware that a lsquoreckoningrsquo (Auseinandersetzung)with Klages was due42 A decade later in connection with Adornorsquos objections tohis prospectus for the Arcades Project he planned a comparable differentiationbetween Jungrsquos and Klagesrsquos lsquoarchaic imagesrsquo and what he proposed to call thelsquodialectical imagersquo Neither Auseinandersetzung materialized at least not in theextended discursive form that this term implies But a text like Zum Planetariumis itself an intensive Auseinandersetzung an Ineinandersetzung a philosophico-literarycorps agrave corps a definitive provisional one-legged stance

Before anyone tries to decide whether Benjamin packed too much Klages intohis knapsack (but how much is too much and doesnrsquot it all depend on the packingand the rest of the baggage) it is first necessary to give some account of hismarching orders his raison drsquoeacutetat43 The writer is according to One-Way Street a lsquostrategist in the literary strugglersquo44 Where Freudrsquos account of civilization as a Kulturkampf ironically refers back in 1930 to the battle of that name that hadtaken place in the 1870s between Catholicism and liberalism the neologismLiteraturkampf is clearly coined by analogy with Klassenkampf The battle-lines arethus clearly drawn But the following strategic assessment which is intended tolsquoimprove (the position of the left) in the struggle against Fascism45 complicatesthis simple alignment of forces and militates against the institution of anotherlsquohare-brained dualismrsquo a metaphysicalrsquo mdash that is positivistic mdash lsquomaterialismrsquo46

In the international class struggle the Fascist enemy has occupied terrain whichhistorical materialism mistaking reason for rationalism has ceded without a fight mdash the world of myth ritual and all those other things between heaven andearth that are undreamt-of in materialist philosophy It is here that the writer-as-strategist intervenes mdash at the critical point where a lsquostrange interplayrsquo obtainsbetween lsquoreactionary theory and revolutionary practicersquo47 Hence Benjaminrsquosselective interest in such lsquodangerousrsquo thinkers as Georges Sorel Carl SchmittLudwig Klages and Carl Gustav Jung The list could be extended but it does notseem for better or for worse to include Martin Heidegger mdash unless that is onechooses to interpret Benjaminrsquos rare curt dismissals of the latter as symptoms of a tell-tale avoidance Benjamin invariably quotes these thinkers against their context Why though does he quote them at all The answer can only be thattheir thinking properly fragmented releases insights and resources that are nototherwise to be had lsquoThe myth of the general strikersquo lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo the

76 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

Zum Planetarium still hoped it would The motif of a slaversquos revolt of technologywould accordingly return to haunt his subsequent writing s Hence his final equa-tion of the revolution not with the unleashing of the productive forces but with alsquoreaching for the emergency brakersquo (I 1232))

At this point a number of other motifs should be introduced into the storyMomentarily suspending Benjaminrsquos Judaeo-Marxist taboo (Bilderverbot) on imag-ining what the classless society would look like certain passages of the surrealismessay (1929) and the second version of the essay on technical reproduction (1936)open up the lsquoimage-spacersquo31 (Bildraum) of a true mdash that is truly disenchanted mdashemancipation of the productive forces from the shackles of capitalist relations A lsquosecond technologyrsquo freed from the first would no longer be a means but a medium32not the tool of a liberated humanity but its extended body mdash a conflationin short of the time-honored philosophical opposition between physei and thesei

The Marxian dialectic between the forces and relations of production may belsquoscientific socialismrsquo but it is also a wager a promise a performative act of faithand of language It nevertheless provides the underpinning s mdash or safety-rail orlsquoascetic apprenticeshiprsquo33 mdash for the even dizzier speculation undertaken in ZumPlanetarium As will be seen it also provides a way out (a Kantian Ausgang) a one-way street out of Klagesrsquos systegraveme sans issue Not merely does the Marxian schemeenable Benjamin to draw a clear line between friend and foe but it also serves as ashield behind which he can venture out into the no manrsquos land between the frontsBut an atropaion like a pharmakos34 is a highly reversible proposition

A phrase from Benjaminrsquos essay on Juumlnger will help pose the problem In hisBrief uumlber den Humanismus (1946) Heidegger will claim that lsquothe young Germanswho were acquainted with Houmllderlin thought and lived something other in the face of death than what is publicly purveyed as German opinionrsquo35 In Theorien des deutschen Faschismus Benjamin asserts that Juumlnger and his ilk went towar lsquowith their Klages in their knapsacksrsquo (III 250) This latter allusion requiressome explanation

Benjamin who had nothing good to say about Juumlnger was a discriminatingreader of Ludwig Klages the author of two major works Der kosmogonische Eros(1922) and Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele the first volume of which was pub-lished in 1929 In a letter to Klages dated 2821923 he claims to find confirma-tion in the former work for his own thinking 36 And in a letter to Scholem writtenon 1581930 he calls the latter lsquowithout a doubt a great philosophical workrsquolsquoregardless of the context in which the author may be and remain suspectrsquoBenjamin here implicitly proposes lifting Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele out of that context and parts of the work out of the whole the better to isolate the lsquoreally new and far-reaching conceptionsrsquo hidden behind its lsquohare-brained metaphysical dualismrsquo37

74 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

On the basis of this Manichean dualism which echoed then prevalent oppositionsbetween Kultur and Zivilisation Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft etc Klages had infact bitterly opposed the First World War as the last most lethal phase of Geist in itsmillennial struggle with Seele This struggle was also one between an immemoriallsquocosmogonicrsquo Eros and an lsquourge to murderrsquo (Mordsucht) which now armed withmodern technology was committing an unprecedented rape upon the body andsoul of the earth38 We are far here from the spirit mdash the psycho-analytic Geist mdashof Freudrsquos opposition between Eros and Thanatos

How then was it possible for Juumlnger to have gone off to the First World Warcarrying mdash of all people mdash a metaphysical war-protester in his knapsack The con-tradiction while flagrant is only apparent For the deep content of all dualismslies in their form(alism) Within such abstract binary systems which oftendenounces all system sides can easily be switched so long the rigid oppositionbetween the terms remain in place It matters little whether an attitude is adoptedfor or against modern war so long as the war between the two opposing columns is main-tained Juumlnger can rewrite Klages by injecting Seele aura and Leben into the Erlebnisof modern war and championing it against an otherwise petty-minded modernityHe thereby contradicts the manifest content of Klagesrsquos scheme but remainsentirely faithful to its phantasmagorical dualism Considered from this angle his rhetoric adds up to a few permutations within a fin-de-siegravecle scheme whichsurvives the war as intact as any state bureaucracy It is in short entirely accurateto say that Juumlnger went to war with Klages in his knapsack

So far so good From here on however the frontiers between the camps are less easily demarcated In a subsequent essay on Bachofen Benjamin describes Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele as follows

Systegraveme sans issue du reste et qui se perd dans une propheacutetie menaccedilante agrave lrsquoadresse deshumains qui se sont laisseacutes eacutegarer par les insinuations de lrsquoesprit (II 230)

What exactly distinguishes Benjaminrsquos own indictment of the lsquothreatening aberrationrsquo of the moderns from being another such lsquomenacing prophecyrsquo Whatbeyond the fact that Zum Planetarium at least offers a (Kantian-Heg elian-Marxian)lsquoway outrsquo mdash but then again in comparably oracular language In 1920 Benjaminasks Klages for the next installment of his essay lsquoVom Traumbewusstseinrsquo (1914)but the sequel that matters to him notably from the late twenties on is to awakenfrom and with that dream-consiousness Similarly his version of the lsquodoctrine of the ancientsrsquo differs point by point from Klagesrsquos39 but it is from Klagesrsquos that it differs Benjaminrsquos subsequent definition of lsquoaurarsquo as lsquothe unique appearance of adistance however close it may bersquo40 the related account of lsquoecstasyrsquo propounded in

75

ZumPlanetarium in terms of an interplay of lsquofarrsquo and lsquonearrsquo as well as other centralmotifs such as lsquoimage-spacersquo and the lsquodialectical imagersquo mdash all these are so many re-eleborations of the lsquofar-reaching conceptionsrsquo he finds in Klages41 It is clear in short that Benjamin too mdash like Juumlnger mdash packed lsquoKlages in his knapsackrsquoAnd it is equally clear that Benjaminrsquos and Juumlngerrsquos respective ways of rewritingKlages of inverting and conflating his polarities are worlds apart

Already in 1926 Benjamin was aware that a lsquoreckoningrsquo (Auseinandersetzung)with Klages was due42 A decade later in connection with Adornorsquos objections tohis prospectus for the Arcades Project he planned a comparable differentiationbetween Jungrsquos and Klagesrsquos lsquoarchaic imagesrsquo and what he proposed to call thelsquodialectical imagersquo Neither Auseinandersetzung materialized at least not in theextended discursive form that this term implies But a text like Zum Planetariumis itself an intensive Auseinandersetzung an Ineinandersetzung a philosophico-literarycorps agrave corps a definitive provisional one-legged stance

Before anyone tries to decide whether Benjamin packed too much Klages intohis knapsack (but how much is too much and doesnrsquot it all depend on the packingand the rest of the baggage) it is first necessary to give some account of hismarching orders his raison drsquoeacutetat43 The writer is according to One-Way Street a lsquostrategist in the literary strugglersquo44 Where Freudrsquos account of civilization as a Kulturkampf ironically refers back in 1930 to the battle of that name that hadtaken place in the 1870s between Catholicism and liberalism the neologismLiteraturkampf is clearly coined by analogy with Klassenkampf The battle-lines arethus clearly drawn But the following strategic assessment which is intended tolsquoimprove (the position of the left) in the struggle against Fascism45 complicatesthis simple alignment of forces and militates against the institution of anotherlsquohare-brained dualismrsquo a metaphysicalrsquo mdash that is positivistic mdash lsquomaterialismrsquo46

In the international class struggle the Fascist enemy has occupied terrain whichhistorical materialism mistaking reason for rationalism has ceded without a fight mdash the world of myth ritual and all those other things between heaven andearth that are undreamt-of in materialist philosophy It is here that the writer-as-strategist intervenes mdash at the critical point where a lsquostrange interplayrsquo obtainsbetween lsquoreactionary theory and revolutionary practicersquo47 Hence Benjaminrsquosselective interest in such lsquodangerousrsquo thinkers as Georges Sorel Carl SchmittLudwig Klages and Carl Gustav Jung The list could be extended but it does notseem for better or for worse to include Martin Heidegger mdash unless that is onechooses to interpret Benjaminrsquos rare curt dismissals of the latter as symptoms of a tell-tale avoidance Benjamin invariably quotes these thinkers against their context Why though does he quote them at all The answer can only be thattheir thinking properly fragmented releases insights and resources that are nototherwise to be had lsquoThe myth of the general strikersquo lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo the

76 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

On the basis of this Manichean dualism which echoed then prevalent oppositionsbetween Kultur and Zivilisation Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft etc Klages had infact bitterly opposed the First World War as the last most lethal phase of Geist in itsmillennial struggle with Seele This struggle was also one between an immemoriallsquocosmogonicrsquo Eros and an lsquourge to murderrsquo (Mordsucht) which now armed withmodern technology was committing an unprecedented rape upon the body andsoul of the earth38 We are far here from the spirit mdash the psycho-analytic Geist mdashof Freudrsquos opposition between Eros and Thanatos

How then was it possible for Juumlnger to have gone off to the First World Warcarrying mdash of all people mdash a metaphysical war-protester in his knapsack The con-tradiction while flagrant is only apparent For the deep content of all dualismslies in their form(alism) Within such abstract binary systems which oftendenounces all system sides can easily be switched so long the rigid oppositionbetween the terms remain in place It matters little whether an attitude is adoptedfor or against modern war so long as the war between the two opposing columns is main-tained Juumlnger can rewrite Klages by injecting Seele aura and Leben into the Erlebnisof modern war and championing it against an otherwise petty-minded modernityHe thereby contradicts the manifest content of Klagesrsquos scheme but remainsentirely faithful to its phantasmagorical dualism Considered from this angle his rhetoric adds up to a few permutations within a fin-de-siegravecle scheme whichsurvives the war as intact as any state bureaucracy It is in short entirely accurateto say that Juumlnger went to war with Klages in his knapsack

So far so good From here on however the frontiers between the camps are less easily demarcated In a subsequent essay on Bachofen Benjamin describes Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele as follows

Systegraveme sans issue du reste et qui se perd dans une propheacutetie menaccedilante agrave lrsquoadresse deshumains qui se sont laisseacutes eacutegarer par les insinuations de lrsquoesprit (II 230)

What exactly distinguishes Benjaminrsquos own indictment of the lsquothreatening aberrationrsquo of the moderns from being another such lsquomenacing prophecyrsquo Whatbeyond the fact that Zum Planetarium at least offers a (Kantian-Heg elian-Marxian)lsquoway outrsquo mdash but then again in comparably oracular language In 1920 Benjaminasks Klages for the next installment of his essay lsquoVom Traumbewusstseinrsquo (1914)but the sequel that matters to him notably from the late twenties on is to awakenfrom and with that dream-consiousness Similarly his version of the lsquodoctrine of the ancientsrsquo differs point by point from Klagesrsquos39 but it is from Klagesrsquos that it differs Benjaminrsquos subsequent definition of lsquoaurarsquo as lsquothe unique appearance of adistance however close it may bersquo40 the related account of lsquoecstasyrsquo propounded in

75

ZumPlanetarium in terms of an interplay of lsquofarrsquo and lsquonearrsquo as well as other centralmotifs such as lsquoimage-spacersquo and the lsquodialectical imagersquo mdash all these are so many re-eleborations of the lsquofar-reaching conceptionsrsquo he finds in Klages41 It is clear in short that Benjamin too mdash like Juumlnger mdash packed lsquoKlages in his knapsackrsquoAnd it is equally clear that Benjaminrsquos and Juumlngerrsquos respective ways of rewritingKlages of inverting and conflating his polarities are worlds apart

Already in 1926 Benjamin was aware that a lsquoreckoningrsquo (Auseinandersetzung)with Klages was due42 A decade later in connection with Adornorsquos objections tohis prospectus for the Arcades Project he planned a comparable differentiationbetween Jungrsquos and Klagesrsquos lsquoarchaic imagesrsquo and what he proposed to call thelsquodialectical imagersquo Neither Auseinandersetzung materialized at least not in theextended discursive form that this term implies But a text like Zum Planetariumis itself an intensive Auseinandersetzung an Ineinandersetzung a philosophico-literarycorps agrave corps a definitive provisional one-legged stance

Before anyone tries to decide whether Benjamin packed too much Klages intohis knapsack (but how much is too much and doesnrsquot it all depend on the packingand the rest of the baggage) it is first necessary to give some account of hismarching orders his raison drsquoeacutetat43 The writer is according to One-Way Street a lsquostrategist in the literary strugglersquo44 Where Freudrsquos account of civilization as a Kulturkampf ironically refers back in 1930 to the battle of that name that hadtaken place in the 1870s between Catholicism and liberalism the neologismLiteraturkampf is clearly coined by analogy with Klassenkampf The battle-lines arethus clearly drawn But the following strategic assessment which is intended tolsquoimprove (the position of the left) in the struggle against Fascism45 complicatesthis simple alignment of forces and militates against the institution of anotherlsquohare-brained dualismrsquo a metaphysicalrsquo mdash that is positivistic mdash lsquomaterialismrsquo46

In the international class struggle the Fascist enemy has occupied terrain whichhistorical materialism mistaking reason for rationalism has ceded without a fight mdash the world of myth ritual and all those other things between heaven andearth that are undreamt-of in materialist philosophy It is here that the writer-as-strategist intervenes mdash at the critical point where a lsquostrange interplayrsquo obtainsbetween lsquoreactionary theory and revolutionary practicersquo47 Hence Benjaminrsquosselective interest in such lsquodangerousrsquo thinkers as Georges Sorel Carl SchmittLudwig Klages and Carl Gustav Jung The list could be extended but it does notseem for better or for worse to include Martin Heidegger mdash unless that is onechooses to interpret Benjaminrsquos rare curt dismissals of the latter as symptoms of a tell-tale avoidance Benjamin invariably quotes these thinkers against their context Why though does he quote them at all The answer can only be thattheir thinking properly fragmented releases insights and resources that are nototherwise to be had lsquoThe myth of the general strikersquo lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo the

76 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

ZumPlanetarium in terms of an interplay of lsquofarrsquo and lsquonearrsquo as well as other centralmotifs such as lsquoimage-spacersquo and the lsquodialectical imagersquo mdash all these are so many re-eleborations of the lsquofar-reaching conceptionsrsquo he finds in Klages41 It is clear in short that Benjamin too mdash like Juumlnger mdash packed lsquoKlages in his knapsackrsquoAnd it is equally clear that Benjaminrsquos and Juumlngerrsquos respective ways of rewritingKlages of inverting and conflating his polarities are worlds apart

Already in 1926 Benjamin was aware that a lsquoreckoningrsquo (Auseinandersetzung)with Klages was due42 A decade later in connection with Adornorsquos objections tohis prospectus for the Arcades Project he planned a comparable differentiationbetween Jungrsquos and Klagesrsquos lsquoarchaic imagesrsquo and what he proposed to call thelsquodialectical imagersquo Neither Auseinandersetzung materialized at least not in theextended discursive form that this term implies But a text like Zum Planetariumis itself an intensive Auseinandersetzung an Ineinandersetzung a philosophico-literarycorps agrave corps a definitive provisional one-legged stance

Before anyone tries to decide whether Benjamin packed too much Klages intohis knapsack (but how much is too much and doesnrsquot it all depend on the packingand the rest of the baggage) it is first necessary to give some account of hismarching orders his raison drsquoeacutetat43 The writer is according to One-Way Street a lsquostrategist in the literary strugglersquo44 Where Freudrsquos account of civilization as a Kulturkampf ironically refers back in 1930 to the battle of that name that hadtaken place in the 1870s between Catholicism and liberalism the neologismLiteraturkampf is clearly coined by analogy with Klassenkampf The battle-lines arethus clearly drawn But the following strategic assessment which is intended tolsquoimprove (the position of the left) in the struggle against Fascism45 complicatesthis simple alignment of forces and militates against the institution of anotherlsquohare-brained dualismrsquo a metaphysicalrsquo mdash that is positivistic mdash lsquomaterialismrsquo46

In the international class struggle the Fascist enemy has occupied terrain whichhistorical materialism mistaking reason for rationalism has ceded without a fight mdash the world of myth ritual and all those other things between heaven andearth that are undreamt-of in materialist philosophy It is here that the writer-as-strategist intervenes mdash at the critical point where a lsquostrange interplayrsquo obtainsbetween lsquoreactionary theory and revolutionary practicersquo47 Hence Benjaminrsquosselective interest in such lsquodangerousrsquo thinkers as Georges Sorel Carl SchmittLudwig Klages and Carl Gustav Jung The list could be extended but it does notseem for better or for worse to include Martin Heidegger mdash unless that is onechooses to interpret Benjaminrsquos rare curt dismissals of the latter as symptoms of a tell-tale avoidance Benjamin invariably quotes these thinkers against their context Why though does he quote them at all The answer can only be thattheir thinking properly fragmented releases insights and resources that are nototherwise to be had lsquoThe myth of the general strikersquo lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo the

76 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

lsquocollective unconsciousrsquo the lsquosovereignrsquo who decides on the lsquostate of exceptionrsquo mdashsuch notions cannot in Benjaminrsquos eyes be taken over tel quel but they cannot beabandoned to the other side The task is thus to reclaim on behalf of an extendedbut by no means ecumenical left those energies that it cannot afford to do withoutLike the translator the writer-strateg ist works between the lines A double agentoperating on several seemingly contradictory fronts at once he attempts to redrawthe frontiers in order to find a way through the ruins The cryptic machinations ofhis incognito hunchback dwarf are emblematic of such a Messianic politics

All of Benjaminrsquos major writing s pursue this general strategy which is clearlyat work in Zum Planetarium In an age when Klages and Juumlnger are equating ecstasy(Rausch) with the lost world of the ancients or with the war Erlebnis Benjaminconflating Surrealist and Communist manifestoes speaks of lsquowinning the powersof ecstasy (Rausch) for the revolutionrsquo48 Today in an age when neo-liberalism isbusy burying Marx along with Lenin and Stalin and only the last diehards stilldare to invoke the revolution it is worth observing that the literary and politicalstrategy pursued by Benjamin proved in his hands to be unambiguous product-ive and unerring as the circumstances permitted49 lsquoOnce he was assured of even-tual failurersquo he elliptically wrote of Kafka and perhaps also of himself lsquoeverythingsucceeded along the way as in a dreamrsquo50 What times were these to misquoteBrecht when success and failure were so inextricable Dark times mdash but not yetfurther darkened by our fin-de-siegravecle disenchantment

But is not Benjaminrsquos dialectic of Rausch which is in his eyes a dialectic ofawakening 51 perhaps still all-too-intoxicating The most symptomatic remarkmade at the last Benjamin congress was Helmut Lethenrsquos lsquoBenjaminrsquo he assertedlsquois a drug if you are still addicted you had better switch to methadonersquo This enig-matic advice sounds like a latter-day variation on Max Weberrsquos counsel to thosewho yearn for a new religious Erlebnis mdash namely to go back to the ever-open arms of the old religions52 Without necessarily disagreeing with either Weber orLethen Zum Planetarium takes the opposite tack claiming the lsquoominous aberra-tionrsquo of the moderns (Benjamin is claiming in Klagesrsquos wake) to have shrugged offthe collective experience of Rausch (Or he might have added since to havedamned it by association with Nazi rallies or other pseudo-religious sects)

My own uneasiness with certain moments of Benjaminrsquos text does not lie withthis overall proposition which is I suspect profoundly true (even if its politicsare I fear not to be recklessly unleashed (entfesselt) upon our present world mdash butif not now when) Nor does my malaise lie with its seemingly eclectic borrow-ings from Klages Marx and other strange bedfellows or with its sweeping histor-ical generalizations and nebulous potentially reactionary categories which wouldseem to belong to a type of Kulturgeschichte that Benjamin elsewhere denounces53

After all the criticrsquos concern as opposed to the philologistrsquos is not the materials

77

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

that go into a work as the lsquoliving flamersquo that burns them up54 Nor I confess amI particularly perturbed by the patently lsquomasculinistrsquo strain in Benjaminrsquos dis-course Today thanks to feminism (which owes much to projects such asBenjaminrsquos of rewriting and remaking history from below) this strain lies open for all to see Indeed standard feminist critiques have meanwhile tended toobscure the necessity for another less predictable feminist angle on Benjaminrsquostexts mdash one which might also help us come to terms with the large and difficultproblem of their lsquodatednessrsquo Here too Benjamin pointed the way both by privi-leging the moment at which the vogue had receded and by diagnosing the out-moded in terms of the necessary but problematic efforts of any given present todissociate itself from the most recent past55

Before I cite the sentences that do bother me let me try to redescribeBenjaminrsquos overall position in such a way as to indicate how one might want to take issue with it at an equally general and fundamental level The surrealismessay sums it up by coining the much-cited notion of lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo56

Each term of this elliptical chiastic oxymoron is essential to the other and the resulting tension destabilizes the frontiers between the two Profane illumi-nation Benjamin resists all appeals to some archaic source of inspiration and casts his lot with a historically irreversible but still embryonic process of enlight-enment Profane illumination mystical traditions still survive in damaged form as the paradoxical condition for modes of secularization that are otherwiserepressed in theory as in practice by standard Weberian models of lsquodisenchant-mentrsquo Ellipsis oxymoron synecdoche and chiasmus are in short not merely figures of speech but figures of thought mdash Benjaminrsquos image-space his no manrsquos land

Uumlber das mimetische Vermoumlgen (1933) and Zum Planetarium are two interrelatedcases in point In the first text Benjamin postulates the persistence of a age-oldfaculty the ability to seize resemblances Far from having withered away in thedisenchanted world this faculty is he claims both preserved and destroyed sub-limated and liquidated in the medium of language Zum Planetarium makes a similar claim Collective ecstatic union with the cosmos has not forfeited its claims upon humanity as most moderns fondly imagine sorry rationalist individualists that they mdash we mdash are Nein (diese Erfahrung) wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig hellip Oracular accents are audible here that echo the mystico-political invoca-tions of lsquoactualityrsquo towards the end of the Theologisch-Politisches Fragment and thesurrealism essay 57 mdash envois that return the reader to his own present Not unlikeNietzschersquos lsquoDionysus hymnsrsquo such dithyrambic passages describe in both con-stative and performative senses the rhythmic climax of the sexual act58 Therhythm of actuality coincides with that of Eros Sublimated and liquidated in themedium of language cosmogonic Eros is actually enacted in the image-space of

78 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

Benjaminrsquos own prose It is worlds apart from the distorted expression thatKlagesrsquos Eros finds in Juumlngerrsquos neo-primitive blood-lust mdash a return of therepressed which allegedly sets loose the Urmensch who turns out to be der innereSchweinehund Nor could it ever get satisfaction from an orgone box mdash eventhough from the standpoint of Zum Planetarium Wilhelm Reichrsquos experimentswere not perhaps without a certain crackpot profundity

It is with an entirely but no less extravagant form of science that Benjaminidentifies the medium within which the encounter between modern man and the cosmos is to take place Just as the lsquomimetic facultyrsquo finds its highest use and its most comprehensive archive in language so Klagesrsquos lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo will find its modern consummation in an unleashed technology With this latterclaim Benjamin turns Klages on his head He redefines Klagesrsquos arch-enemies as the only means of preserving mdash by properly liquidating mdash what Klages holds most dear To cross Klages with Kant hegel and Marx mdash with Auf-klaumlrung(lsquothe way out of self-incurred immaturityrsquo) and Geist (the lsquospirit of technicsrsquo conceived as the Hegelian lsquospiritrsquo that lsquoheals its own woundsrsquo thanks to a liberat-ing Marxian dialectic between forces and relations of production) mdash and to cross the enlightenment with Klages this is the way to the planetarium Benjaminsteeps himself in Klagesrsquos and Bachofenrsquos worlds of myth aura and ritual the better to distance himself of them59 This is also what he aims and by his own confession fails to achieve with theology mdash to be the blotter that would finally be able to blot out60 In an obviously disenchanted world myth and theology far from being the mutually exclusive forces that they once were become inBenjaminrsquos eyes indispensable resources The precondition is that they be trans-formed almost beyond recognition One forgetting one disenchantment is to cure another

lsquoWhat one wants to destroyrsquo Benjamin elsewhere writes lsquoone must not merelyknow to complete the job one must have experienced itrsquo (III 265) Zarathustrarsquosparable lsquoVon den drei Verwandlungenrsquo likewise instructs his disciples to be suc-cessively a camel (the beast of burden who loads the past on his back) a lion (thebeast of prey who marauds the flock) and a reborn child (who will have blissfullyforgotten)61 But who ever reached that promised land or otherwise lsquocompletedthe jobrsquo

A mock-Nietzschean subtitle to Zum Planetarium might read lsquoDie Neugeburtdes Eros aus dem Geiste der Technikrsquo Or in the language of the bumper stickerlsquoMake love not war with the cosmosrsquo

Tame errant brave new moderns we may be but can we really mdash imErnstfall mdashaccept this I confess I do not know I constantly change my mind What doesseem clear however is that the ellipse it describes is no isolated extravagance onBenjaminrsquos part It is not to be counted among the lsquoingeniously briljantrsquo paradoxes

79

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

that are according to Hannah Arendt uncharacteristic of his essential insights62

It is on the contrary as intrinsic to his thinking as the other master-tropes thatHayden White found at work in the great historiographical constructions of thenineteenth century63

What Zum Planetariumattempts to do mdash and actually rhetorically performs mdashis to span the great world-historical divide that separates cosmogony from cos-mology astrology from astronomy myth from enlightenment Gemeinschaft fromGesellschaft and thereby to heal the rift on which the modern world is builtBenjamin wants the best of both worlds mdash preservation and destruction the break and the continuity It is as if continuity had at all costs to be maintainedacross the break as if the future of the human species required that the umbilicalcord attaching it to its ancient origins never be simply severed It is for this reasonthat Benjaminrsquos philosophy of history refuses standard modern conceptions ofprogress enlightenment and disenchantment which are all predicated on suchseverance It is for the same reason that his theory of language cannot counte-nance a notion of the sign that rests on a radical arbitrary discontinuity betweenword and thing We are faced here with the extraordinary inner coherence of Benjaminrsquos scattered heterogeneous corpus It stands and falls together To that extent we cannot reject Zum Planetarium as an extravaganza and endorse therest Such a statement admittedly runs counter to Benjaminrsquos own proposition thatlife-works are there to be blasted apart and cited against themselves It does nothowever contradict the ensuing conclusion that each part encapsulates the whole

I argued in 1979 on the basis of the paralipomena to Benjaminrsquos Theses on thePhilosophy of History that one mdash if not the mdash basic figure of Benjaminrsquos thinkingis constituted by the Messianic triad Paradise Paradise Lost Paradise RegainedThis claim has been borne out by Lieven de Cauterrsquos recent dissertation in whichBenjaminrsquos entire corpus is shown to be rigorously structured by a network of vertical and horizontal triads64 Zum Planetarium too elliptically retells the greattriadic story65 The underlying scheme goes roughly as follows

1 ParadiseMyth collective ecstatic communion with the cosmos 2 FallDemythologization bourgeois society Copernican science the lsquomenac-

ing aberrationrsquo of the moderns 3 Redemption on the basis of the Fall renewed community in the medium of

the classless society a third post-Kantian Copernican turn renewed communionwith the cosmos through a lsquosecond technologyrsquo

Given that Jewish monotheism defines itself as Benjamin often recalls inopposition to pagan myth the fact that myth here occupies the place of paradisewould seem to pose a considerable theological problem But Scholemrsquos andBenjaminrsquos whole interest in Jewish mysticism derived in part from the fact that it reintroduced myth into Jewish theology and thereby helped heal the breach

80 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

between them The fact that Zum Planetarium proposes to sum up the doctrine ofthe ancients with something like the brevity that Rabbi Hillel brought to the definition of Judaism amounts to an oblique and playful refusal of bygone alter-natives The opposition between Jew and Greek is Benjaminrsquos gesture intimatesno longer compelling The task is rather to win pagan powers for JewishMessianism

The two sentences from Zum Planetarium that most trouble me concern thetransition from the second stage to the third mdash the pivotal moment at which theFall prefigures Redemption and does so precisely at its most fallen In connectionwith Jewish Sabbatianism Gershom Scholem called this theological figurelsquoredemption through sinrsquo66 Here are the troublesome sentences

Nein (die Erfahrung kosmischen Rausches) wird je und je von neuem faumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letzten Krieg aufsfuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrter Vermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war

And

In den Vernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit ein Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah67

Has Benjamin in these particular sentences packed too much Klages into hisknapsack True this is inverted Klages and not the same inverted Klages asJuumlngerrsquos Is this sufficient answer In 1935 Benjamin would himself claim in hisessay The storyteller that the First World War had left the survivors of trench war-fare poorer not richer in communicable experience and that the concomitantinflation of the telltale word Erlebnis mdash as in Juumlngerrsquos Fronterlebnis and Der Kriegals inneres Erlebnis mdash unwittingly confirmed the all-pervasive devaluation of trueexperience (Erfahrung )68 And yet here in Zum Planetarium he no less unequivo-cally invokes the experience of the First World War Not merely does he (to adapthis own formula for the Fleurs du Mal)69 give the war Erlebnis the weight of anErfahrung but he even calls it an Erfahrung70

And what a one It figures here as a near-epileptic convulsion of the collectivebody mdash one that is strangely evocative of the lsquodialectical annihilationrsquo dithyram-bically invoked at the end of the surrealism essay But this latter annihilation takesplace far from the lsquonights of annihilationrsquo of the First World War Its arena is thelsquoimage- and body-spacersquo (Bild- und Leibraum) of revolutionary action which tears

81

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

body and soul part into a new body politic

der Raum mit einem Wort in welchem der politische Materialismus und die physischeKreatur den inneren Menschen die Psyche das Individuum oder was sonst wir ihnenvorwerfen wollen nach dialektischer Gerechtigkeit so dass kein Glied ihm unzerrissenbleibt miteinander teilen (II 309)71

Teilen (like the French partager) has two opposite complementary meanings Bothare mobilized here To divide the so-called in-dividual from his inwardness is to share him out inside out As in apokatastasis dismemberment goes hand in hand with resurrection Revolution is synonymous here with a quasi-Dionysiandance with Hegelrsquos bacchantischer Taumel lsquoprofane illuminationrsquo lsquoholy-soberrsquo72

ecstasy The polis is the space in which one is beside oneselfThe paradox is immense ZumPlanetariumdescribes the collective trauma of the First

World War in terms comparable to those in which the surrealism essay evokes thecollective effervescence of a revolutionary process Crazy though such a parallel would seemto be we have already encountered the logic behind it In diverting the productiveforces from their lsquonatural rsquo goal war mdash the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo mdash pervertsthe (pro)creative forces of a collective techno-cosmogonic eros Unlike JuumlngerCaillois and Bataille73 Benjamin is never tempted to (neo-)romanticize modernwar as some reckless glorious poetic equivalent to a potlatch ceremony ZumPlanetarium does however present the First World War as the terrible perversionof an irrepressible need As Benjamin describes it this collective urge reassertsitself with the imperious regularity of the sexual drive with which it may in somesense be conflated Its fulfilment lsquofalls due ever and anewrsquo (je und je von neuem faumlllig) Eros obliges (a)morally lsquoThat claimrsquo mdash as Benjamin says in a quite different context mdash lsquocannot be settled cheaplyrsquo74 In the absence of any other outlet (ie the revolution) a pent-up cosmogonic Eros is channelled intoThanatos75 The implication is that such perversion contains a coming techno-cosmogonic Eros mdash that is simultaneously prevents and harbors forestalls and promises travesties and prefigures it The further implication would seem to be thatlived experience however distorted contains a form of knowledge with whicheven the best theory cannot compete The war was a rendez-vous manqueacute with thecosmic powers with technology and the collective body mdash but it was (Benjamindares to speculate) a rendez-vous nonetheless In Derridean terms it is as if it had ventriloquized or vampirized its own utopian possibility As Benjamin willlater claim in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo the phantasmagoricallsquodream-imagesrsquo of an epoch always hold out the distorted promise of utopia76

They betray and contain it in the double sense of both these words In this sense

82 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

the nightmare of the First World War contained a dream-image of a cosmo-technological Eros

In claiming that the rape of mother earth perpetrated by the First World Warmarked a failed encounter Zum Planetarium hints that this encounter (therebyandor nevertheless) contained a lsquosecret assignationrsquo77 The implication seems tobe that the First World War afforded the only access to such Eros available to modern errant modernity

Heaven help us if this is true mdash which does not necessarily mean that it is notAccording to some rabbis the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by war andcatastrophe78 lsquoMay the Messiah comersquo said another lsquobut I do not want to see himrsquo

With and against Klages Benjamin translates a model of revolution or ratherof aborted revolution derived from Marx to the sphere of a collective technologicalEros He also transposes the struggle of Eros and Thanatos to the arena of modernhistory as Freudrsquos essay in collective psycho-analysis Das Unbehagen in der Kulturwill do in 1930 The lsquomiseryrsquo of the psychic economy there diagnosed by Freudclosely parallels the lsquocrisesrsquo of the political economy analysed by Marx The drives according to freud and the productive forces according to Marx are inhibited diverted perverted or otherwise repressed but they remain irrepressibleand invariably find one outlet or another however neurotic barbaric and self-destructive the outcome may be Likewise the author of Zum Planetariumimplicitly conceives the First World War in terms of a great collective return ofthe repressed mdash the twisted expression of a collective Eros whose summonsmodernity has been ignoring at its peril79

All this may sound wild too wild But it is our own wildness that is at stake mdashthat repressed irrepressible part of ourselves that Georges Bataille called la partmaudite lsquoI say to yoursquo says Zarathustra lsquoone must have chaos in one to give birthto a dancing star I say to you you still have chaos in yoursquo80 One way or anotherthat chaos will out on this the clinicians and the prophets are agreed Everythingdepends on what we do with our collective anarchy

All this may still sound far too wild mdash and what is more historically playedout An lsquoecstatic component lives in every revolutionary actrsquo according toBenjaminrsquos essay on surrealism but it has to be subordinated to lsquomethodical anddisciplined preparationrsquo81 But as Benjamin was to observe in 1940 communistdiscipline turned out to be the lsquoservile integrationrsquo of the lsquomass basisrsquo in lsquouncon-trollable apparatusrsquo82 And meanwhile Fascism was rallying the masses and gener-ating its collective Rausch its epileptic bliss83 If as Benjamin intimates the FirstWorld War was a collective return of the repressed Fascism could be seen asanother such return It would have been the eternal return of a collective urge mdashan urge for the collective Was then the author of Zum Planetarium seeking toforestall this new paroxym of (what Nietzsche had called) lsquoEuropean nihilismrsquo

83

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

In the name of another (lsquoJewgreekrsquo) nihilism that was incommensurable both withits lsquoactiversquo and its lsquoreactiversquo Nietzschean namesakes84 Is the language of ZumPlanetarium contaminated by those other nihilisms Or can it be said converselythat humanity would continue to pay a terrifying price for considering cosmo-gonic eros expendable

Benjamin would later assert that Fourierrsquos much-ridiculed utopian fantasies ofa procreative intercourse between nature and mankind prove to be lsquosurprising lysoundrsquo when juxtaposed with the capitalist and pseudo-socialist lsquoexploitation of naturersquo85 Can the equivalent be said of his own version of Rausch and cosmo-genic eros when compared on the one hand with Klages and Hitler on the otherwithi positivist disenchantment and its ensuing fantasmagorias Or should onerather say that white magic is not a sound antidote to black magic and lookinstead for other less heady alternatives Including palliatives of the social-democratic reformist kind (lsquomethadonersquo) that provoked Benjaminrsquos anger Butsocial-democracy mdash and communism too mdash had capitulated to the enemy atmany levels To be a match for the enemy mdash this was what Benjaminrsquos strategysought to address The various meanings of the word match sum up the problem

Benjaminrsquos charaterization of the First World War places him in what I have mdashborrowing a term that dates from the war mdash called a lsquono manrsquos landrsquo between thefronts In claiming that it was an attempt to woo the cosmos he parts company withmost moderns including the vast majority within his own camp And in declaringthat this courtship was an atrocious travesty he distances himself with Juumlnger whocan barely tell the difference between a bridal bed and a blood-bath86 The difficultquestion remains whether ZumPlanetariumdoes not go too far But where exactly isthat Out on a limb mdash the torn limb perhaps of the surrealism essay

Benjaminrsquos subsequent letter on Kafka and his Theses on the Philosophy of History mdash one of whose emblems is the mute wide-eyed horror of the lsquoangel of historyrsquo mdash indicate that he would not have risked a comparable interpretation of the Second World War In Zum Planetarium however he seems to have wantedto lsquosaversquo the First World War mdash even from his own soberer judgment

One recognizes here the figure from which we started apokatastasis Everythingaccording to Benjaminrsquos version of this heretical doctrine is finally destined to besaved An infinite positivity is to be gained through an infinite process of negativecritical judgments87 But does every cloud have a silver lining mdash even after lsquothe sunwent down and not merely itrsquo88 Is all evil convertible Even the utter negativityof the First World War89 In what order of triage Whose collective epileptic blissWhat of the lsquopity of it allrsquo of which the war poet Wilfred Owen spoke But whoknew that pity better than Benjamin

And who are the bearers of this message Firstly the ancient lsquopeoples and gen-erationsrsquo (Geschlechter lsquogenerationsrsquo in every sense) Secondly the moderns mdash not

84 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

on starry nights that induce Schwaumlrmerei but on the (differently Romantic) nightswhen one is lsquoflown over by stars that are the work of human handsrsquo90 Thirdly acoming humanity prefigured by the proletarian vanguard of a human species stillstruggling to be born Thus speaks Zum Planetarium loud and clear Here too theMessianic triad is at work

As the vogue on which Benjaminrsquos mature thought was borne recedes the pre-vailing tendency will surely be to consign a text like this however admiringly andregretfully to the genre of prose poetry mdash perhaps also to the lsquopoetic politicsrsquo fromwhich the author of the surrealism essay emphatically dissociated himself91

Without wishing to swim with the present neo-liberal stream and thereby with acentrism which confuses all extremes I wonder whether certain parts of ZumPlanetarium do not amount at times to a kind of left-wing Klages To neutralizethe text by pigeon-holing it would however be to perpetrate over its dead bodywhat Benjamin called lsquohistoricismrsquo and thereby to perpetuate the world-historicalaberration that it denounces Given that its concern lies with archaic trans-individual dimensions of collective experience how could such a text fail to provoke massive resistance on the part of our isolated ego

But we donrsquot elude such experience (dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr sowenig hellip) however much it may elude us So at least Benjaminrsquos text would haveus believe In which case onersquos uneasiness with it could be diagnosed mdash inNietzschean rather than Freudian terms mdash as a malaise in the face of excess

How then make an informed critical decision about ZumPlanetarium Isnrsquot itsPathos practically untranslatable even into present-day German Doesnrsquot thepeculiar idiom that Benjamin forged for himself recede with each passing day toan ever more distant indeed sunken past Could it conceivably there undergo alsquosea-changersquo92

The historical materialist after Benjmainrsquos heart always speaks fromwhere he is(fuumlr seine Person)93 Born into a quite different but no less divided context thanBenjamin the present writer is too English not to find Zum Planetarium a mouth-ful and too German a Jew not to admire the power and the glory of its languageI read Benjaminrsquos no manrsquos land from my own

But is not far more research needed into the discursive field hastily evokedabove before any valid let alone final decision can be reached Now doubt Whatthough if the case had to be decided here and now Isnrsquot it after all how onealways has to decide mdash hic Rhodos hic salta on one leg In that case faithlesslychanging sides like the allegorist at the end of the Trauerspiel book I would provi-sionally say this Instead of asking what we can save of Zum Planetarium let usrather ask what it can salvage of us And since we happen to have some time tothink it over let us not be too quick to decide

85

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

A year and a half ago in connection with a seminar and conference on camps genocide and literature a colleague and I circulated an enquecircte concerningthe much-discussed lsquouniquenessrsquo of the Shoah and its impact on culture I herebypropose to canvass responses to Zum Planetarium Who knows They might provide clues to our present relation to Benjamin and to much else besides

Not that we automatically form a cohesive group by virtue of having joined aBenjamin association At the last international Benjamin conference in 1992Burkhardt Lindner soberly observed that a lsquowersquo no longer existed as it once hadamong Benjaminrsquos most committed readers I would not know how to contest that claim We also know however that Benjamin has the lsquoMessianic powerrsquo togather his readers around him in something like the way that Dostoieveskirsquos Idiotas read by Benjamin acts as the self-effacing center of a gravitational field94 Cansomething of the collective eros invoked in Zum Planetarium be recreated aroundit Your responses (or lack of them) could provide an empirical test

The experiment I am proposing may seem ludicrous especially from the standpoint of its subject How can a poll ever resolve the hermeneutic philo-sophical and political problems raised in the foregoing pages But does notBenjamin tell us that we can conjure up the shades of the past only by taking thepresent by the horns however meager that present may be95 In that spirit I wishto enquire if where and how present-day readers of ZumPlanetariumdraw the line

You will have received my questionnaire with the last Benjamin Bulletin I append it here to encourage laggards to respond If responses are forthcoming I plan to assemble them into an appropriate publication andor incorporate theminto a larger research project and to report back on the results at the next WalterBenjamin congress

86 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

Postscript Stop press

In a hospital at Cracow saluting exercises arebeing performed with men laid low by gas poisoning or sufficiently mended from stomachwounds Wonders never cease The old ornamentsdecorate the new essence of death And since thisdying is still too fresh from the laboratory for newornaments to have been invented the powers thatbe cannot do without the old ones For there shallbe not merely sweetness but also decorum But thefact remains that the old order needs the new deathfor its self-preservation and would rather owe itsposition and insignia to chemicals than step downOur victorious culture is thus hopelessly condemnedto death by poison Having expended its imagination on inventions mankind can no longerbegin to imagine their effects Otherwise contritionwould have used them to commit suicide But sincemankind has also expended its dignity on them itnow lives and dies for all those powers that turnthe progress of its inventions against it Theunimaginability of what we daily live throughthe incompatibility of power and the meansused to establish it this is our condition andthe techno-romantic adventure upon which we have embarked will whatever its outcome put anend to it96

So ends Das techno-romantische Abenteuer a short piece written by Karl Kraus inMarch 1918 The resemblances between Krausrsquos and Benjaminrsquos accounts of themodern lsquoconditionrsquo are striking While Kraus refused all party-political affiliationshe can nevertheless be plausibly enlisted in the cause of what Benjmain callslsquoantropolog ical materialismrsquo97

87

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

The Pathos of Zum Planetarium and Das techno-romantische Abenteuer is that of the vulnerable human creature exposed to the onslaught of modern military technology As Benjamin tells the story the resulting trauma exceeded the pos-sibilities of narrative experience

For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience bytactical warfare economic experience by inflation bodily experience by mechanical warfare moral experience by those in power A generation that had gone to school on ahorse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothingremained unchanged but the clouds and beneath those clouds in a force-field of destructive torrents and explosions was the tiny fragile human body98

Where Kraus opposes Godrsquos Creation and the Last Judgment to this modernApocalypse of mangled bodies Benjamin imagines a revolutionary counterpart orantidote to it mdash an unprecedented collective interpenetration of physis andtechne99 In its own way each diagnoses revisits Marxrsquos prognoses The nineteenthcentury Benjamin concludes (in 1939)

did not know how to respond with a new social order to the new technical powers Thisis why the last word remained with the confusing permutations between old and newthat lay at the heart of (its) phantasmagories (V 76ndash77)

The dialectic between the forces and relations of production failed in short toproduce collective liberation In the twentieth century wars took over the task ofcontaining the new forces of production within the old relations And as Kraushere observes they also contained the new masss-production of death within theincreasing ly phantasmagorical rituals of the older order The lsquowondersrsquo of which he speaks are miracles of anachronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit) Old-style military deco-rum and neo-archaic warrior rhetoric as Kraus and Benjamin describe them arecalculated to mask the terrifying realities of the modern killing fields The newtechnological forces of destruction (applied science remote control gassing) aredraped in paraphernalia (full military honors decorations etc) with which theyare in principle incompatible Old lsquoornamentrsquo is obscenely coupled with newlsquoessencersquo100

The question I have been asking can be reformulated as follows In attempingto save the techno-romantic adventure of the First World War from itself is Zum Planetarium embarking on a dangerous techno-romantic adventure of its own

88 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

The most urgent concern today is of course the present state of the lsquoencounterbetweeen planetray technics and contemporary manrsquo At once hyper-real and derealized adventurist and computerized censored and televised todayrsquos wars canno longer even pretend to be re-enchanted techno-romantic adventures except atthe level of StarWars real or imaginary

But can we even imagine the real Already in 1918 Kraus confronted thelsquounimaginability of what we daily live throughrsquo Die Unvorstellbarkeit der taumlglicherlebten Dinge erlebt (in Benjaminrsquos terminology) as opposed to erfahren Modernwar is no longer warfare it is lived but not experienced because not imaginedAccording to Kraus such lsquounimaginabilityrsquo was in fact a failure of the collectiveimagination Forty-five years and another World War later Hannah Arendt wouldcall it the lsquobanality of evilrsquo

The unspeakable banality of evil is a failure of speech Arendt and Kraus bothtrace the terrifying inability to imagine the real to the debasement of languageinto clicheacute mdash into mechanical reproduction in more than one sense Here too thedialectis between the forces and relations of (re)production masks and unmasksitself in ornament Kraus sees a deep unclear uncanny connection between lsquocatastrophes and the editorrsquos officersquo A world war here or there is he claims aminor matter compared with the lsquointellectual self-mutilation of mankind throughthe agency of its pressrsquo101

This is the condition lsquoThat it lsquogoes on this wayrsquo is the catastrophersquo (I 683)Contrary to the apocalyptic end of Das techno-romantische Abenteuer it seems safe toassume that the techno-romantic adventure will not put an end to this conditionAnd this despite all the lsquodeath by poisonrsquo that it administers

In that case the real danger might be to continue to play safe What if lsquoour triumphant culturersquo marked one techno-political adventure mdash one version of disenchantment mdash one form of prose mdash one particular wager mdash to the exclu-sion of another Rejecting the scientific certainties of the moderns as a lsquomenacingaberrationrsquo Benjamin proposes an alternative certainty The permanent state of emergency that we call normality or even progress can be ended mdash so his Theses on the Philosophy of History claim mdash only if a real state of emergency isbrought about102 ZumPlanetarium suggets how Namely by a techno-revolutionaryleap of the imagination that humanity has so far failed to make

Meine Damen und Herren Benjaminrsquos claims on us lsquocannot be settled cheaplyHistorical materialists are aware of thatrsquo103

Faites vos jeux Messieursdames rien ne va plus You might begin by answering thefollowing questionnaire

June 1999

89

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

Appendix

Zum Planetar ium

Wenn man wie einst Hillel die juumldische Lehre die Lehre der Antike in allerKuumlrze auf einem Beine fussend auszusprechen haumltte der Satz muumlsste lautenlsquoDenen allein wird die Erde gehoumlren die aus den Kraumlften des Kosmos lebenrsquo Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen als seineHingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung die der spaumltere kaum kennt Ihr Versinken kuumlndigt schon in der Bluumlte der Astronomie zu Beginn der Neuzeitsich an Kepler Kopernikus Tycho de Brahe waren gewiss nicht von wis-senschaftlichen Impulsen allein getrieben Aber dennoch liegt im auss-chliesslichen Betonen einer optischen Verbundenheit mit dem Weltall zu dem dieAstronomie sehr bald gefuumlhrt hat ein Vorzeichen dessen was kommen mussteAntiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders im Rausche Ist dochRausch die Erfahrung in welcher wir allein des Allernaumlchsten und desAllerfernsten und nie des einen ohne den andern uns versichern Das will abersagen dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaftkommunizieren kann Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren diese Erfahrungfuumlr belanglos fuumlr abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwaumlrmerei in schoumlnen Sternennaumlchten anheimzustellen Nein sie wird je und je von neuemfaumlllig und dann entgehen Voumllker und Geschlechter ihr so wenig wie es am letztenKrieg aufs fuumlrchterlichste sich bekundet hat der ein Versuch zu neuer nie erhoumlrterVermaumlhlung mit den kosmischen Gewalten war Menschenmassen Gase elek-trische Kraumlfte wurden ins freie Feld geworfen Hochfrequenzstroumlme durchfuhrendie Landschaft neue Gestirne gingen am Himmel auf und Meerestiefen braustenvon Propellern und allenthalben grub man Opferschaumlchte in die Muttererde Diesgrosse Werben um den Kosmos vollzog zum ersten Male sich in planetarischemMassstab naumlmlich im Geiste der Technik Weil aber die Profitg ier der herrschen-den Klasse an ihr ihren Willen zu buumlssen gedachte hat die Technik die Menschheitverraten und das Brautlager in ein Blutmeer verwandelt Naturbeherrschung so lehren die Imperialisten ist Sinn aller Technik Wer moumlchte aber einemPruumlgelmeister trauen der Beherrschung der Kinder durch die Erwachsenen fuumlrden Sinn der Erziehung erklaumlren wuumlrde Ist nicht Erziehung vor allem die uner-laumlssliche Ordnung des Verhaumlltnisses zwischen den Generationen und also wennman von Beherrschung reden will Beherrschung der Generationsverhaumlltnisse undnicht der Kinder Und so auch Technik nicht Naturbeherrschung Beherrschung

90 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

vom Verhaumlltnis von Natur und Menschheit Menschen als Spezies stehen zwar seitJahrtausenden am Ende ihrer Entwick-lung Menschheit als Spezies aber steht anderen Anfang Ihr organisiert in der Technik sich eine Physis in welcher ihrKontakt mit dem Kosmos sich neu und anders bildet als in Voumllkern und FamilienGenug an die Erfahrung von Geschwindigkeiten zu erinnern kraft deren nun dieMenschheit zu unabsehbaren Fahrten ins Innere der Zeit sich ruumlstet um dort aufRhythmen zu stossen an denen Kranke wie vordem auf hohen Gebirgen oder ansuumldlichen Meeren sich kraumlftigen werden Die Lunaparks sind eine Vorform vonSanatorien Der Schauer echter kosmischer Erfahrung ist nicht an jenes winzigeNaturfragment gebunden das wir lsquoNaturrsquo zu nenen gewohnt sind In denVernichtungsnaumlchten des letzten Krieges erschuumltterte den Gliederbau derMenschheit das Gefuumlhl das dem Gluumlck des Epileptikers gleichsah Und dieRevolten die ihm folgten waren der erste Versuch den neuen Leib in ihre Gewaltzu bringen Die Macht des Proletariats ist der Gradmesser seiner GesundungErgreift ihn dessen Disziplin nicht bis ins Mark so wird kein pazifistischesRaisonnement ihn retten Den Taumel der Vernichtung uumlberwindet Lebendigesnur im Rausche der Zeugung

(IV 146ndash48)

91

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

This Way To The Planetar ium

If one had to sum up the teaching of the ancients as Hillel once condensed thatof the Jews namely while standing on one leg the upshot would have to readlsquoThey alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmosrsquoNothing distinguishes the ancients from the moderns as much as their surrenderto a cosmic experience hardly known to subsequent epochs The dwindling of this experience is announced by the rise of astronomy at the beginning of the modern era Kepler Copernicus and Tycho Brahe were certainly not actuated byscientific impulses alone Nevertheless the exclusive emphasis on an optical con-nection with the universe to which astronomy very soon led was a sign of thingsto come The ancientsrsquo commerce with the cosmos had a quite different characterthat of the ecstatic trance Only in this experience do we assure ourselves of what is closest and what is furthest and never the one without the other Thismeans however that ecstatic communication with the cosmos can occur onlywithin a community It is the menacing aberration of the moderns to regard suchexperience as inconsequential and avoidable as something confined to effusiveindividuals on fine starry nights No its hour comes ever and anew and neithernations nor generations can elude it This was made terrifying ly clear by the lastwar which attempted a new unheard-of union with the cosmic powers Humanmasses gases electrical forces were hurled into the open country high-frequencycurrents criss-crossed the landscape new constellations arose in the sky aerialspace and ocean depths throbbed to the vibrations of propellers and everywheresacrificial shafts were dug into Mother Earth This immense courtship of the cosmos was enacted for the first time on a planetary scale namely in the spirit oftechnology But because the ruling classrsquos lust for profit thought to have its waywith it technology betrayed humanity and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath Mastery over nature so the imperialists teach is the goal of all technologyBut who would trust a school-master who proclaimed the aim of education to bethe mastery of children by adults Is not education above all the indispensableordering of the relationship between the generations and therefore if we are still to use the term mastery of those relations not of the children Likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature andmankind Human beings as a species completed their evolution thousands of yearsago but mankind as a species stands at its beginning In technology a physis isorganizing itself in which mankindrsquos contact with the cosmos takes on new anddifferent forms from those it assumed in nations and in families One need merelyrecall the experience of velocities whereby mankind is now preparing itself forincalculable journeys into the interior of time there to encounter rhythms fromwhich the sick will gain strength as they once did on high mountains or Southern

92 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

seas The big dippers anticipate the sanatoria of the future The paroxysm of genuine cosmic experience is not tied to that tiny fragment of nature that we areaccustomed to call lsquoNaturersquo During the nightly annihilations of the last war thehuman frame was convulsed by a feeling akin to the bliss of the epileptic And the revolts that followed it were mankindrsquos first bid to bring the new body undercontrol The power of the proletariat is the measure of its recovery If it is not possessed by such discipline to its very core no pacifist reasoning will save it Theliving overcome the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation104

93

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

Questionnaire on Benjaminrsquos prose piece Zum Planetar ium

The following questionnaire is being circulated among members of theInternational Walter Benjamin Assocation among representatives of differentintellectual disciplines and cultural traditions and among readers from all walksof life in order to solicit responses to a short little-discussed text of Benjaminrsquosthe concluding piece in Einbahnstrasse (One-Way Street) The issues it raises aresurely momentous enough to warrant such importunity

The aim of the exercise being to elicit responses not to interfere with them the questions have been kept as brief neutral and open-ended as possible Shouldsome or all of them nevertheless cramp your style please ignore them with or with-out explanation and respond as you see fit in either English French or German

Some members of the Association may recall my own preliminary account ofthis text at the Amsterdam conference in July 1997 now published in the firstvolume of Benjamin Studies along with the other plenary lectures In any eventplease respond initially only to Benjaminrsquos text without referring to my piece orindeed to any other secondary literature Separate comments on my commentarywould however be most welcome The distinction is admittedly somewhat artifi-cial inasmuch as the questionnaire is inevitably colored by my own relation to thetext You are nevertheless requested to adhere to the suggested protocol as closelyas possible and in the interests of the aforementioned neutrality to allow me tosay no more at this stage The success of the experiment depends on your collective partici-pation The experimenter warmly thanks the guinea pigs in advance

Please (re)read ZumPlanetariummore than once preferably in German or withthe original text beside you and track your responses over time (hours days weeksor months however long it takes) before embarking on the questionnaire

1 Had you read Zum Planetarium before What wasis your first impressionHas it changed meanwhile Are you now sure where you stand vis-agrave-vis the text

2 In what language(s) did you read it What modifications if any wouldyou suggest to the translation(s) you consulted What got lost in translation Is the loss significant Were there any gains

3 Zum Planetarium makes a bold statement Did you feel the need to take aposition on it If not why not If so please state your position andor offer asextensive a reading of the text as possible (The length of your response isentirely up to you You are requested to consider this issue carefully and to justify your decision)

94 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

4 To the best of your knowledge what lsquosubjectiversquo factors idiosyncraticassociations etc affected your engagement or non-engagement with the text

5 How and where is this text to be situated What lsquoobjectiversquo knowledgeframes of reference contexts etc did you have at your disposal

6 Does a spontaneous reading of the text have its inherent limits If sowhat prior work would be required before a more informed assessment could bemade If possible please add a bibliographical contribution to the requisitearchive

7 Do you see a point to this questionnaire Would you have framed it differently Has it asked the right questions

8 Are you willing to have your response appear in part or in full in a reporton the present experiment which might be published in Benjamin Studies or elsewhere andor in a booklength collection of your contributions

Please send your answers both in manuscript form and on diskette (preferably on a Word program) along with two or three quotable sentencesabout yourself to

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

95

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

Umfrage zu Benjamins Prosastuumlck Zum Planetar ium

Folgender Fragebogen wird an Mitglieder der Walter Benjamin Gesellschaftan Vertreter verschiedener intellektuellen Disziplinen und kulturellen Traditionenund schliesslich auch an eine bunte Auswahl anderer moumlglicher Kontrahenten verschickt um Stellungnahmen zu einem kurzen bislang wenig kommentiertenText Walter Benjamins zu sammeln dem Schlussstuumlck von Einbahnstrasse DieFragen die dieses Prosastuumlck aufwirft duumlrften weitreichend genug sein um einederartige Bitte zu rechtfertigen

Da der Zweck der Uumlbung darin liegt Reaktionen anzuregen ohne sie invorbestimmte Bahnen zu lenken wurde der Fragebogen moumlglichst knapp neutralund offen gehalten Sollten einzelne Fragen oder gar der ganze Fragebogen Ihnendennoch nicht zusagen werden Sie gebeten Stoumlrendes stillschweigend zu uumlberge-hen oder Ihr Unbehagen daran zu begruumlnden und ansonsten so zu verfahren wie Sie es fuumlr richtig halten Antwort sollten in deutscher englischer oder franzouml-sischer Sprache verfasst werden

Diejenigen Mitglieder der Benjamin-Gesellschaft die am AmsterdamerKongress vom Juli 1997 teilgenommen haben werden meine eigenen vorlaumlufigenUumlberlegungen zum Planetarium vielleicht noch in Erinnerung haben (Samt denanderen damals gehaltenen Plenarvortraumlgen liegen sie inzwischen im ersten Bandder Benjamin Studien vor) Wie dem auch sei Bitte befassen Sie sich zunaumlchst nur mitBenjamins Text ohne sich auf meinen Artikel (oder auf sonstige Sekundaumlrliteratur)zu beziehen Ein gesonderter Kommentar zu meinem Kommentar waumlre jedoch einewillkommene Zutat Es handelt sich hierbei freilich um eine etwas kuumlnstlicheUnterscheidung da der Fragebogen aus meinem eigenen Verhaumlltnis zum Text her-vorgegangen ist Dennoch werden Sie gebeten sich an die vorgeschlagene Vorlagemoumlglichst streng zu halten Das Experiment soll um der genannten Neutralitaumltwillen vorlaumlufig nicht weiter erlaumlutert werden Dessen Erfolg haumlngt von Ihrer kollektivenTeilnahme ab Der Experimentator dankt den Versuchskaninchen sehr herzlich im voraus

Bitte lesen Sie Zum Planetarium mehrmals durch vorzugsweise auf deutschoder mit danebenliegendem Originaltext und verfolgen Sie dabei Ihre eigenenReaktionen (uumlber Stunden Tage Wochen oder Monate je nachdem) bevor Sie anden Fragebogen herangehen

1 Hatten Sie Zum Planetarium schon einmal gelesen Was war oder ist Ihrerster Eindruck gewesen Hat er sich inzwischen geaumlndert Sind Sie sich jetztdaruber im klaren wie Sie zum Texte stehen

2 In welcher Sprache haben Sie den Text gelesen Falls Sie eine Uumlbersetzungherangezogen haben welche Aumlnderungen wuumlrden Sie vorschlagen Was geht in

96 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

der Uumlbersetzung verloren Ist der Verlust ein empfindlicher Gibt es ebenfallseinen Gewinn

3 Der Text stellt eine kuumlhne These auf Fuumlhlten Sie sich genoumltigt zu ihrStellung zu nehmen Wenn nicht warum nicht Wenn ja bitte stellen Sie IhrePosition bzw Ihre Deutung des Textes moumlglichst ausfuumlhrlich dar (Die LaumlngeIhrer Antwort wird Ihnen anheimgestellt Bitte uumlberlegen Sie sich derenImplikationen und begruumlnden Sie Ihre Wahl)

4 Welche lsquosubjektivenrsquo Faktoren idiosynkratischen Assoziationen uswhaben Ihre Auseinandersetzung mit dem Text bzw Ihren Entschluss sich mitihm nicht zu befassen Ihres Wissens mitbestimmt

5 Wie und wo ist der Text einzuordnen Welche lsquoobjektivenrsquoBezugsrahmen groumlsseren Zusammenhaumlnge usw standen Ihnen zur Verfuumlgung

6 Hat die spontane Lektuumlre eines derartigen Textes ihre inhaumlrentenGrenzen Wenn ja welche Recherchen waumlren erforderlich um eine adaumlquatere Einschaumltzung vorzubereiten Wenn moumlglich bitte fuumlgen Sie einenbibliographischen Beitrag zum erwuumlnschten Archiv bei

7 Hat die Beantwortung dieses Fragebogens fuumlr Sie einen Sinn gehabtHaumltten Sie ihn anders konzipiert Sind die richtigen Fragen gestellt worden

8 Sind Sie bereit Ihren Beitrag ganz oder auszugsweise in einem Berichtuumlber dieses Experiment der in Benjamin Studien oder anderswo erscheinen wuumlrdeundoder in einer umfassenderen Sammlung veroumlffentlichen zu lassen

Bitte schicken Sie Manuskripte und Diskette (vorzugsweise auf Word-Program) samt einer knappen zitierbaren Selbstbeschreibung an

Irving Wohlfarth17 rue Beaunier75014 Paris

97

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida lsquoLike the sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell Paul de Manrsquos Warrsquotrans Peggy Kamuf in Responses On Paul de Manrsquos Wartime Journalism ed WernerHamcher et al Nebraska and London 1989 134 151 (translation slightly modified)Derrida adds that actual military wars oversimplify all such discursive confrontationswhich typically take place on several divided fronts at once (133) All discourse is double-edged as is the double edge lsquoitselfrsquo (147) Hence the difficulty and necessity ofdeciding on mdash for example mdash de Manrsquos lsquoearly writingsrsquo It would Derrida imagines takelsquoa great philologico-political symposiumrsquo (150) to do so In De lrsquoesprit (paris 1987) hemaster-minds such a ghostly colloquy on Geist in Heidegger it includes among muchelse an imaginary symposiumrsquo between heidegger Husserl and Valeacutery (97ndash100)Whatever place the participants in such symposia occupy and however they demarcatethemselves from one another they necessarily belong in Derridarsquos eyes to the same all-inclusive lsquoprogramrsquo of Western metaphysics lsquoOne has only the choice between the terrifying contaminations that it assigns Even if all the complicities are not equivalentthey are irreduciblersquo (66) The metaphysical program thus comes to program another that of demonstrating formalizing in short deconstructing its mechanisms ruses andconstraints (87) The present article will not needless to say try to demarcate Benjaminwithin mdash or from mdash this double program It does however seek to initiate a political-philological symposium around a magnificently troublesome text Withoutknowing whether it is thereby commiting itself to the above-mentioned programs it tries to ask whether Zum Planetarium is not implicated in a larger discursiveSchuldzusammenhang With a precision that Hannah Arendt called somnambulistic an uncanny logic did at all events impel Benjaminrsquos life and work towards what he called the lsquocenter (hellip) of all dangersrsquo (Illuminations (hereafter I ) ed Hannah Arendttrans Harry Zohn New York 1968 7 204) The lsquocrossing of the waysrsquo to which Derrida refers (De lrsquoesprit 176 182) is also at the center of Benjmainrsquos interests (cf for example on Kafka as the lsquocrossroads of the roads of my thoughtrsquo TheCorrespondence of Walter Benjamin (hereafter C ) trans MR and EM Jacobson Chicago1994 455) Will someone one day be able to determine whether and how these heterogeneous cross-roads intersect with one another

2 C 300

3 I 265 lsquoEr setzt sich damit gegen die Universalhistoriker auf eine unverkennbare Weiseab Sein Objekt ist ein monadologisches Der Ertrag seiner Konstruktion liegt darin dassim Werk das Lebenswerk im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesammteGeschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt is und aufgehobenrsquo (I 1251)

4 Cf V 573

98 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

5 Cf on apokatastasis my lsquoEt Cetera The Historian as Rag-Pickerrsquo in New GermanCritique no 39 Fall 1986 142ndash168

6 Cf I 1243

7 Cf I 256

8 Cf VI 528

9 Reflections (hereafter R ) ed Peter Demetz trans Edmund Jephcott New York 1986 302

10 lsquo(hellip) dass naumlmlich schon der kommende Tag Vernichtungen von so riesigem Ausmassbringen kann dass wir von gestrigen Texten und Produktionen wie durch Jahrhunderteuns geschieden sehenrsquo (II 540)

11 Cf I 259ndash60

12 One-Way Street (hereafter OWS) trans Edmunt Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter London1979 229

13 Cf My lsquoNo-Manrsquos-Land On Walter Benjaminrsquos lsquoDestructive Characterrsquorsquo DiacriticsBaltimore June 1978 47ndash65 Republished in Walter Benjaminrsquos Philosophy ed AndrewBenjamin London and New York 1994 155ndash82

14 Cit in lsquoParis Capital of the Nineteenth Centuryrsquo (R 147) and my essay lsquolsquoConstructionhas the Role of the Unconsciousrsquo Fantasmagorias of the Master Builder (with constantreference to Giedion Nietzsche Weber Ibsen Benjamin)rsquo in Nietzsche An lsquoArchitecture of our Mindsrsquo ed I Wohlfarth and A Kostka Los Angeles 1999 141ndash198

15 Cf I 257

16 Cf I 48ndash50 I 1233 V 570

17 Cf I 144ndash45

18 Paul Celan Gesammelte Werke ed Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert Frankfurt amMain 1983 III 194

19 I 50

99

20 Cf I 148 (translatian modified) and I 1223

21 C 288 (translation slightly modified)

22 C 366

23 C 394 (translation slightly modified)

24 lsquo(hellip) faire date ce nrsquoest pas intervenir passivement dans la chronologie crsquoest brusquerle momentrsquo (cit I 1230)

25 Sigmund Freud Gesammelte Werke XIV 506 (lsquoAnd now it is to be expected that theother of the two lsquoheavenly powersrsquo eternal Eros will make an effort to assert itself in the struggle with its equally immortal adversary But who can predict the succes or theoutcomersquo) The last sentence was added as an afterthought

26 I 244

27 Cf I 244

28 Cf my essay lsquoDer Zauberlehrling oder Die Entfesselung der Produktivkraumlfte Zueinem Motiv bei Goethe Marx und Benjaminrsquo in Walter Benjamin Aumlsthetik undGeschichtsphilosophie ed G Raulet und U Steiner Bern 1998 165ndash98

29 Any adequate account of the discursive mine-field through which Zum Planetariumpicks its way will no doubt have to take into account Martin Heidegger rsquos attempt to concieve the lsquoencounter of planetary technics and modern manrsquo in terms that point beyond the opposition between capitalism and Marxism mdash an attempt which led himbetween 1933 and 1935 to affirm the lsquoinner truth and greatness of National Socialismrsquo(Einfuumlhrung in die Metaphysik Tuumlbingen 1976 152) I leave it to others or another occasion to convene an lsquoimaginary symposiumrsquo mdash see note 1 mdash between the discourse ofVerirrung (Benjamin) and that of Irrnis (Heidegger)

30 Cf I 262

31 OWS 238

32 Cf on this distinction my lsquoWalter Benjamin le lsquomeacutediumrsquo de lrsquohistoirersquo in EtudesGermaniques JanuaryndashMarch 1996 99ndash158 As early as 1916 Benjamin describes the language of technology from the lsquospecialized language of techniciansrsquo (OWS 107)

100 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

33 Cf I 237

34 Cf Jacques Derrida lsquoLa pharmacie de Platonrsquo in La Disseacutemination Paris 1972 69ndash197

35 Freideutschen Jugend lsquoDarum haben die jungen Deutschen die von Houmllderlin wusstenangesichts des Todes Anderes gedacht und gelebt als das was die Oumlffentlichkeit alsdeutsche Meinung ausgabrsquo (Martin Heidegger Brief uumlber den Humanismus Frankfurt amMain 1951 35)

36 Text und Kritik Munich 3132 24

37 C 366 The anti-semitic overtones implicit in the opposition between Geist and Seelecannot have escaped Benjamin who championed Geist and the maligned figure of the literat until the outbreak of the First World War and of whose thesis on German BaroqueTraurspiel Erich Rothacker an influential academic and editor was to observe Geist kannman nicht habilitieren (lsquoYou canrsquot tenure spiritrsquo) The further opposition between Geist andesprit (and correlatively between Dichtung and litteacuterature) purveyed from the twenties onby a chauvinist Romanistik is discussed by Michael Nerlich in lsquoVictor KlempererRomanist oder warum sollte nicht einmal ein Wunder geschehenrsquo (Lendemains 82ndash831996 3ndash34 especially 17ndash19)

38 In the Foreword to the first edition of his essay collection Mensch und Erde (1920)Klages voices the hope that lsquonach den Greueln des europaumlischen Krieges dieser und jenereine Betrachtungsweise wenigstens bedenkenswert finde die ihrem Traumlger anderthalbJahre vorher den Satz aufzwang lsquoDie lsquoZivilisationrsquo traumlgt die Zuumlge entfesselter Mordsucht unddie Fuumllle der Erde verdorrt vor ihrem giftigen Anhauchrsquo (lsquo(hellip) after the horrors of theEuropean war some may find at least worthy of consideration a viewpoint that constrainedits author to write one and a half years beforehand ldquoCivilizationrsquo has the features of anincrontollable murdurous urge and the fullness of the earth withers under its pestilentialbreathrsquorsquo) (Mensch und Erde Jena 1937 8) The origins of the war lie according to Klagesin civilization itself in progress technology science capital Judeo-Christianity GeistThe unleashing of the productive forces is potentially the unleashing of mass murder andworld war In 1915 Klages writes lsquoKeine lsquoGoumltterrsquo sind in diesem Kriege dabei undniemals noch haben auf solche Weise lsquoGoumltterrsquo Blut getrunken Sondern was sich hier derMenschen zu ihrem Verderben bedient ist (hellip) lsquoSatanrsquo (hellip) lsquoJahversquo (hellip) Mammonrsquo (lsquoNo lsquogodsrsquo are present in this war and never have lsquogodsrsquo drunk blood this way What here uses mankind for its own ruin is (hellip) lsquoSatanrsquo (hellip) lsquoJahversquo (hellip) Mammonrsquo (cit HE Schroumlder Ludwig Klages Das Werk I Bonn 1972 643) Written in 1913 thetitle essay of Klagesrsquos collection was published in the Festschrift der Freideutschen Jugend zur Jahrhunderfeier auf dem Hohen Meissner Benjamin was closely bound up

101

with the Freideutschen Jugend until it was dissolved by the outbreak of the First World War

39 Cf for example the following passage from Mensch und Erde lsquoWir sagten die alten Voumllker haumltten kein Interesse gehabt die Natur durch Versuche auszuspaumlhen sie inMaschinen hineinzuknechten und listig durch sich selbst zu besiegen jetzt fuumlgen wirhinzu sie haumltten es als (hellip) Verruchtheit (hellip) verabscheut Wald und Quell Fels undGrotte waren fuumlr sie ja heiligen Lebens voll von den Gipfeln hoher Berge wehten dieSchauer der Goumltter (daran nicht aus Mangel an lsquoNaturgefuumlhlrsquo bestieg man sie nicht)Gewitter und Hagelschlag griffen drohend oder verheissend in das Spiel der Schlachtenein Wenn die Griechen einen Strom uumlberbruumlckten so boten sie dem Flussgott fuumlr dieEigenmaumlchtigkeit des Menschen um Verzeihung und spendeten Trankopfer Baumfrevel wurde im alten Germanien blutig gesuumlhnt Fremd geworden dem planetarischen Stroumlmen sieht der heutige Mensch in alledem nur kindlichenAberglauben Er vergisst dass die deutenden Phantasmen verwehende Bluumlten waren am Baum eines Innenlebens welches tieferes Wissen barg als all seine Wissenschaft dasWissen von der weltschaffenden Webekraft allverbindender Liebe Nur wenn sie in der Menschheit wiederwuumlchse moumlchten vielleicht die Wunden vernarben die ihr muttermoumlrderisch der Geist geschlagenrsquo (lsquoWe said that the ancient peoples had no interest in scrutinizing nature through experiment in subjecting her to machinery and cunningly turning her against herself we now add that they would have considered this with abhorence as depravity Wood and spring cliff and grotto were for them instinct with holy life fear of the gods wafted down from the mountain tops (this is why they did not climb them mdash not out of a deficient lsquofeeling for naturersquo) Storms and hail intervened in the fortunes of battle as threat orpromise When the Greek bridged a stream they craved forgiveness for human presumption from the river god and offered libations among the old Germans sacrilege against trees was atoned for in blood A stranger to the flow of planetary life modern man sees in all this mere childish superstition He forgets that these interpretive fantasms were fleeting blooms on the tree of an inner life which harboreddeeper knowledge than all his science knowledge of the world-creating powers woven by an all-binding love Only if this love were to revive among men would the wounds heal that the spirit matricidally inflicted on itrsquo) (op cit 39ndash40) This last sentence contrasts with Hegel rsquos claim that only the spirit can heal its own wounds

40 I 224

41 Cf on lsquoaurarsquo in Klages and Benjamin Werner Fuld lsquoDie Aurarsquo in Akzente 31979Benjaminrsquos affinities with Klages are briefly but suggestively discussed by RolfWiggershaus in Die Frankfurter Schule (Munich and Vienna 1987 224ndash26)

102 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

42 In his review of Carl Albrecht Bernoullirsquos Johann Jacob Bachofen und das NatursymbolBenjamin approvingly notes that the author engages in a discussion (Auseinandersetzung) of Klagesrsquos lsquowholesale (ausweglos) rejection of the given lsquotechnicalrsquo mechanizedrsquo state of the worldrsquo lsquoAn Auseinandersetzungrsquo Benjamin goes on lsquowhich has not avoided the philosophical or rather theological center out of which Klages directs (richtet) his doomday prophecy with a violence that makes the efforts of other pundits (Kulturrichter) of the kind produced by the George circle look obsolete We will certainly not be able to call this Auseinan-dersetzung succesful We are however far more strictly persuaded of its necessity than Bernoulli himself He task thus still remains to be donersquo (III 44)

43 This latter term was coined by Valeacutery and cited by Benjamin in their respective essayson Baudelaire Cf I 164

44 OWS 66

45 I 259

46 OWS 239

47 OWS 265

48 Cf OWS 236

49 lsquoTo respond correctly mdash ie with lsquosomething correctrsquo (mit lsquoRichtigemrsquo) mdash to false circumstancesrsquo writes Benjamin in 1931 lsquothis is not something that is available (gegeben)to me Nor is it at all desirable as long as one exists as a seperate individual and is disposed to do sorsquo (C 377 translation modified) What is thus still lsquogivenrsquo to him is adouble Marxist-Messianic conviction the times are out of joint and one can be dans le vraionly collectively

50 I 148 (translation slightly modified)

51 Cf OWS 236ndash37 and GS V 580

52 Cf lsquoScience as a Vocationrsquo in From Max Weber Essays in Sociology ed and trans HansH Gerth and C Wright Mills New York 1958 155

53 Cf my lsquoSmashing the Kaleidoscope Walter Benjaminrsquos Critique of Cultural Historyrsquoin Walter Benjamin and the Question of Modernity ed MSteinberg Cornell 1995 190ndash205

103

54 Cf GS I 126

55 Cf R 148

56 Cf OWS 227 ff

57 Cf OWS 156 239

58 Benjaminrsquos prose has yet to receive the metrical analysis it invites The standard word-order of Zum Planetarium is regularly altered for the sake of rhythmic effect as if to confirm Flaubertrsquos claim that good prose tends of its own accord towards verse lsquoImGeiste der Technikrsquo the optional final lsquoersquo added to Geist helps if anything to embed technology in the immemorial rhythms of the cosmos A question arises here to whichthere could no doubt only be an elliptical response what relations could conceivably existbetween the ancient rhythms mimed in Zum Planetarium and the new ones that it extrapolates from modern scientific journeys into time

59 In December 1934 Adorno visibly somewhat disquieted by Benjaminrsquos interest inKlages and Jung encouraged him to exercise his ability to distance himself mostunequivocally from what seemed closest to his intellectual heart Benjamin unreservedlyagreed (Adorno-Benjamin Briefwechsel 1928ndash1940 Frankfurt am Main 1994 83ndash84 101)

60 Cf GS V 588

61 Also Sprach Zarathustra Part 1

62 I 43

63 Cf Hayden White Metahistory The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe(Baltimore and London 1973)

64 Cf my lsquoOn the Messianic Structure of Benjaminrsquos Last Reflectionsrsquo Glyph 3Baltimore 1978 148-212 and Lieven de Cauter De Dwerg in de Schaakautomaat BenjaminsVerborgen Leer Louvain 1996 Benjaminrsquos lsquotheology of prostitutionrsquo as de Cauter reconstructs it in his sixth chapter is governed by precisely the same logic as ZumPlanetarium alienation at its extreme limit holds out a Messianic promise

65 Cf on the grands reacutecits Jean-Franccedilois Lyotard La Condition Postmoderne(Paris 1979)

66 Gershom Scholem The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York 1971) 78ndash141

104 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

67 Similar problems are posed by the account of divine violence notably lsquoGodrsquos judgment on the company of Korahrsquo in The Critique of Violence and the phrases lsquowhere (hellip) the victim livedrsquo in The Destructive Character (OWS 151 158)

68 Cf I 84

69 Cf I 196

70 The question may be put as follows Benjaminrsquos account of the First World War maylsquobrush history against the grainrsquo (I 259) but is it history from below Cf on this latterissue Krieg im Frieden Die umkaumlmpfte Erinnerung an den Ersten Weltkrieg ed B Ulrich andB Ziemann Frankfurt am Main 1997 The editors show how interpretations of the meaning of the Kriegserlebnis varied across the political spectrum leaving little room forcomplexity contradictions or ambivalence From this point of view Benjamin and Juumlngerwould not be that far apart both knew what it meant

71 lsquo(hellip) the space in a word in which political materialism and the physical creaturedivide up between them the inner man the psyche the individual or whatever else wewish to throw to them with dialectical justice so that no limb remains unrentrsquo (OWS239 translation slightly modified)

72 Heilignuumlchtern a term of Houmllderlinrsquos cited in Benjaminrsquos dissertation (I 104)

73 Cf La Part Maudite (Paris 1949) in which Bataille develops his own version of a cosmogonic eros in terms of a lsquogeneralrsquo as opposed to a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy of deacutepensesacrifice destruction etc War figures in this scheme as a lsquocatastrophic expenditure ofexcess energyrsquo This applies not merely to Aztec rituals but also to the First and SecondWorld Wars Modern industry initially absorbed its own excess hence the relative peacefrom 1815 to 1914 thereafter excess production generated war (Oeuvres Complegravetes Paris1976 VII 31ff) In fragments of an abandoned version of La Part Maudite Batailleuncritically quotes from Juumlngerrsquos Der Krieg unsere Mutter in order to exemplify the equivalence of war ritual sacrifice and the mystical life (251ff) Cf also Roger Cailloisrsquosdiscussion of Juumlnger in LrsquoHomme et le Sacreacute Paris 1993 especially in the section entitledlsquoGuerre et Sacreacutersquo (219ndash242) which likewise extends Bataillersquos notion of deacutepense to modernwar The following excerpt from Juumlnger (or an associate) cited by Benjamin in Theorien desdeutschen Faschismus represents the Fascist counterpart to Bataillersquos distinction between alsquogeneralrsquo and a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy lsquo(Der Krieg) entzieht sich jener Oumlkonomie welcheder Verstand uumlbt in seiner Vernunft ist etwas Unmenschliches Massloses Gigantischesetwas was an einen vulkanischen Prozess eine elementare Eruption erinnert (hellip)rsquo lsquoSo redselig ist ein Freier der schlecht umarmtrsquo (lsquoOnly a bad lover is that talkativersquo) comments Benjamin mdash in maly accents that would recall a separate commentary

105

(III 241) Unlike Caillois and Bataille he does not maintain a neutral stance towardsJuumlngerrsquos equation of modern war with elemental excess The following passage from hisBaudelaire essay implicitly situates this equation within a larger ideological contextlsquoSince the end of the last century philosophy has made a series of attempts to lay hold of lsquotruersquo experience as opposed to the kind that manifests itself in the standardized denatured life of the civilized masses It is customary to classify these efforts under theheading of Lebensphilosophie Their point of departure understandably enough was notmanrsquos life in society What they invoked was poetry preferably nature and most recentlythe age of myths Diltheyrsquos book Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung represents one of the earliest of these efforts which end with Klages and Jung both made common cause with Fascismrsquo (I 158) In this perspective Juumlnger and Bataille may be said to have addedwar and eros to the rubric that neo-Romantic ideology had hitherto filled with poetrynature and myth The neo-Romantic cult of war would be one more attempt to save thesacred in a disenchanted world a quest for the blaue Blume of German Romanticism in the land of technology (cf I 235)

74 I 256

75 In the formulation lsquoWeil aber die Profitgier der herrschenden Klasse an ihr ihrenWillen zu buumlssen gedachtersquo the expression seine Lust buumlssen has been modified in thissense Thereby the imperialist will to power is implicitly concieved as distorted lustGedachte indicates its intention and failure to get satisfaction The effect is to reactivatethe original meaning of buumlssen it is the profit-urge not merely its victims that will endup paying the bill mdash a reversal that is again reminiscent of The Sorcererrsquos Apprentice and the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo Several questions remain however How successful isthe alliance between Marx and Klages in this particular instance Stylistically and hencepolitically What light does it cast on Benjaminrsquos lsquoanthropological materialismrsquoCapitalist greed appears here as a quasi-allegorical figure which lsquohas its wayrsquo with its victims mdash a deadly sin in the guise of say Jack the Ripper Here too the delicate question of lsquocontaminationrsquo arises Are not sexual and economic motifs also conflated inanti-semitic caricature But is this not also and differently mdash true of say BrechtrsquosMackie Messer But is he not saved by ironical lsquoestrangement effectsrsquo that are absent fromBenjaminrsquos personification of the profit-motive

76 Cf R 148

77 I 265 (translation modified)

78 But lsquoa great rabbirsquo mdash in fact Gershom Scholem mdash lsquoonce said that (the Messiah) did not wish to change the world by force but would only make a slight adjustmentrsquo (I 134)

106 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

79 Freudrsquos own reflections on the First World War in lsquoZeitgemaumlsses uumlber Krieg und Todrsquo(1915) and lsquoWarum Kriegrsquo (1933) are a far cry from such lsquoFreudianrsquo metapyschologyWar is for Freud a case of collective regression an entirely negative return of therepressed Freud who claimed to have no personal acquaintance with the lsquooceanic

feeingrsquo would have been even warier of lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo While he too postulates a progressive world-historical repression of sexuality (in Das Unbehagen in der Kulturas in Die kulturelle Sexualmoral und die moderne Nervositaumlt) he refrains from offering any dramatic collective cure for the resulting woes He merely endorses certainsocial and sexual reforms which may help lighten mankindrsquos burden

80 Also sprach Zarathustra lsquoZarathustras Vorredersquo section 5

81 OWS 236

82 I 260

83 The Third Reich was also a fertile breeding-ground for megalomaniac anti-technological cosmologies that illustrate where dualisms agrave la Klages could lead Cf Hans-Juumlrgen Syberbergrsquos Hitler ein Film aus Deutschland which exhibits a lsquofairground barker-cum-magicianrsquo Himmlerrsquos masseur his astrologist and a lsquocosmologistrsquowho wants to lsquoannihilate the superstition of science technology and false religionsrsquo(Reinbek 1978 135 138 165ndash67)

84 Cf on Nietzschersquos distinction between active and reactive nihilism The Will to Power(ed Walter Kaufmann New York 1968 3ndash82)

85 I 261 Benjamin speaks here of a kind of lsquolaborrsquo which is capable of lsquodeliveringrsquonature of the creations which lie dormant in her lsquowombrsquo

86 Cf the chapter lsquoErosrsquo in Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Ernst Juumlnger Werke Stuttgart V I 38ndash43) Benjaminrsquos image of a bridal bed that has turned into a blood-bath is evocative of the lsquobombastrsquo (Schwulst) that he had analysed in the case ofBaroque Trauerspiel In the closing lines of lsquoThe Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproductionrsquo such baroque imagery is more completely fused with the sober accents ofMarxist reason lsquoImperialist war is a revolt of technology (hellip) Instead of channelling riverssociety diverts a human stream into a bed of trenches instead of dropping seeds from airplanes it drops incendiary bombs over cities and through gas warfare aura is abolishedin a new way(hellip) Such is the aestheticizing of politics perpetrated by Fascism Communismresponds by politicizing artrsquo (I 244 italics Benjaminrsquos translation modified) In both cases technological Eros (lsquoseeds from airplanesrsquo the lsquobridal bedrsquo) is pitted against itsthanatological equivalent (lsquoa bed of trenchesrsquo the lsquoblood bathrsquo)

107

87 In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel speaks likewise of the lsquomagic powerrsquoof Geist which by staying with (verweilen) the negative converts it into pure positivity(Die Phaumlnomenologie des Geistes ed Johannes Hoffmeister Hamburg 1952 30)

88 Celan op cit III 169

89 In his essays lsquoDie Nation als Ideal und Wirklichkeit rsquo (1921) and lsquoDas hilfloseEuroparsquo (1922) Robert Musil also seeks to save the Erlebnis of the First World War(Gesammelte Werke II Hamburg 1978 1059ndash1090) As recalled by Musil it marks a rareand powerful experience of mystico-national community an explosive rejection of bourgeois life a will to disorder and lsquometaphysical Krachrsquo more lsquocarnavelesquersquo thanlsquoDionysianrsquo in character in short a lsquoflight from peacersquo This short-lived experience whichwas followed by an eerie return to normality is not lsquoover withrsquo (erledigt) Musilrsquos own concluding plea for the establishment of a lsquonaturalrsquo social order no longer based onanachronistic ideals of state- and nationhood seems a rather tame resolution of the warErlebnis as he himself describes it

90 Celan loccit III 186

91 To dismiss the politics of surrealism as lsquopoeticrsquo is itself in Benjaminrsquos eyes to perpetrate an all too conventionally lsquopoeticrsquo politics mdash one that speaks the language of the lsquoas ifrsquo and adorns its progressist programs with metaphors and images which takeneither politics nor poetry seriously A truly poetic politics on the other hand releases theliteral and figurative the material and surreal energies of the image into a collectivelsquoimage-spacersquo (OWS 237ndash38)

92 Cf in this connection Hannah Arendtrsquos meditation on the passage from The TempestlsquoFull fathom five thy father lies helliprsquo in the third section (lsquoThe Pearl Diverrsquo) of her essay onBenjamin (I 38ndash51)

93 I 264

94 Cf my lsquoThe Politics of Youth Walter Benjaminrsquos Reading of The Idiotrsquo DiacriticsBaltimore winter 1992 161ndash71

95 Cf GS III 259

96 lsquoIn einem Krakauer Spital werden mit solchen die an einer Gasvergiftung darniederliegen oder von einem Bauchschuss soweit hergestellt sind Salutieruumlbungengemacht Wunder uumlber Wunder Es sind die alten Ornamente zum neuen Wesen desTodes Aber da dieser frisch aus der Retorte entsprungen noch keine neuen erfinden

108 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

konnte so kann die Macht der allten Ornamente nicht entbehren Denn nicht alleindulce auch decorum muss es sein Nur dass die Macht den neuen Tod zu ihrer Erhaltungbraucht nur dass die alte Herrschaft nicht lieber abdankt als ihre Stellung der Chemie zu verdanken dass die Insignien auf die Chemikalien angewiesen sind mdash das ises was unsere siegende Kultur unrettbar dem Gifttod geweiht hat Die Menschheit dieihre Phantasie an die Erfindungen verausgabt hat kann sich deren Wirksamkeit nichtmehr vorstellen mdash sonst wuumlrde sie aus Reue eben damit Selbstmord veruumlben Aber da sieauch ihre Menschenwuumlrde in die Erfindungen verausgabt hat so lebt und stirbt sie fuumlralle Macht die sich solchen Fortschritts gegen sie bedient Die Unvorstellbarkeit dertaumlglich erlebten Dinge die Unvereinbarkeit der Macht und der Mittel sie durchzusetzen dassist der Zustand und das technoromantische Abenteuer in das wir uns eingelassen habenwird wie immer es ausgeht dem Zustand ein Ende machenrsquo (Weltgericht Frankfurt amMain 1968 120ndash21) In his essay on Kraus Benjmain cites the opening of anotherclosely related speech delivered by Kraus against the War in December 1914 In diesergrossen Zeit (Weltgericht 7ndash18 GS II 336ndash38)

97 Benjamin explicitly enlists Hebel Buumlchner Nietzsche Rimbaud and the surrealistsand implicitly himself in this cause

98 I 84

99 lsquoOnly when in technology body and image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily collective innervation and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge has reality surpassed itself to the extentdemanded by the Communist Manifestorsquo (OWS 239)

100 lsquoOrnament is crimersquo claimed Adolf Loos in an apparently different context The lsquoold ornamentsrsquo denounced by Kraus are to the lsquonew essencersquo of dying what the historicist faccedilades of nineteenth century architecture were accounting to SiegfriedGiedeon to the underlying steel construction Like construction destruction is relegated to the lsquorole of the unconsciousrsquo See note 14

101 Kraus op cit 13

102 I 259

103 I 256

104 OWS 103ndash04 I have seen fit to modify EF Jephcottrsquos andor Kingsley Shorterrsquosexcellent translation

109

33 Cf I 237

34 Cf Jacques Derrida lsquoLa pharmacie de Platonrsquo in La Disseacutemination Paris 1972 69ndash197

35 Freideutschen Jugend lsquoDarum haben die jungen Deutschen die von Houmllderlin wusstenangesichts des Todes Anderes gedacht und gelebt als das was die Oumlffentlichkeit alsdeutsche Meinung ausgabrsquo (Martin Heidegger Brief uumlber den Humanismus Frankfurt amMain 1951 35)

36 Text und Kritik Munich 3132 24

37 C 366 The anti-semitic overtones implicit in the opposition between Geist and Seelecannot have escaped Benjamin who championed Geist and the maligned figure of the literat until the outbreak of the First World War and of whose thesis on German BaroqueTraurspiel Erich Rothacker an influential academic and editor was to observe Geist kannman nicht habilitieren (lsquoYou canrsquot tenure spiritrsquo) The further opposition between Geist andesprit (and correlatively between Dichtung and litteacuterature) purveyed from the twenties onby a chauvinist Romanistik is discussed by Michael Nerlich in lsquoVictor KlempererRomanist oder warum sollte nicht einmal ein Wunder geschehenrsquo (Lendemains 82ndash831996 3ndash34 especially 17ndash19)

38 In the Foreword to the first edition of his essay collection Mensch und Erde (1920)Klages voices the hope that lsquonach den Greueln des europaumlischen Krieges dieser und jenereine Betrachtungsweise wenigstens bedenkenswert finde die ihrem Traumlger anderthalbJahre vorher den Satz aufzwang lsquoDie lsquoZivilisationrsquo traumlgt die Zuumlge entfesselter Mordsucht unddie Fuumllle der Erde verdorrt vor ihrem giftigen Anhauchrsquo (lsquo(hellip) after the horrors of theEuropean war some may find at least worthy of consideration a viewpoint that constrainedits author to write one and a half years beforehand ldquoCivilizationrsquo has the features of anincrontollable murdurous urge and the fullness of the earth withers under its pestilentialbreathrsquorsquo) (Mensch und Erde Jena 1937 8) The origins of the war lie according to Klagesin civilization itself in progress technology science capital Judeo-Christianity GeistThe unleashing of the productive forces is potentially the unleashing of mass murder andworld war In 1915 Klages writes lsquoKeine lsquoGoumltterrsquo sind in diesem Kriege dabei undniemals noch haben auf solche Weise lsquoGoumltterrsquo Blut getrunken Sondern was sich hier derMenschen zu ihrem Verderben bedient ist (hellip) lsquoSatanrsquo (hellip) lsquoJahversquo (hellip) Mammonrsquo (lsquoNo lsquogodsrsquo are present in this war and never have lsquogodsrsquo drunk blood this way What here uses mankind for its own ruin is (hellip) lsquoSatanrsquo (hellip) lsquoJahversquo (hellip) Mammonrsquo (cit HE Schroumlder Ludwig Klages Das Werk I Bonn 1972 643) Written in 1913 thetitle essay of Klagesrsquos collection was published in the Festschrift der Freideutschen Jugend zur Jahrhunderfeier auf dem Hohen Meissner Benjamin was closely bound up

101

with the Freideutschen Jugend until it was dissolved by the outbreak of the First World War

39 Cf for example the following passage from Mensch und Erde lsquoWir sagten die alten Voumllker haumltten kein Interesse gehabt die Natur durch Versuche auszuspaumlhen sie inMaschinen hineinzuknechten und listig durch sich selbst zu besiegen jetzt fuumlgen wirhinzu sie haumltten es als (hellip) Verruchtheit (hellip) verabscheut Wald und Quell Fels undGrotte waren fuumlr sie ja heiligen Lebens voll von den Gipfeln hoher Berge wehten dieSchauer der Goumltter (daran nicht aus Mangel an lsquoNaturgefuumlhlrsquo bestieg man sie nicht)Gewitter und Hagelschlag griffen drohend oder verheissend in das Spiel der Schlachtenein Wenn die Griechen einen Strom uumlberbruumlckten so boten sie dem Flussgott fuumlr dieEigenmaumlchtigkeit des Menschen um Verzeihung und spendeten Trankopfer Baumfrevel wurde im alten Germanien blutig gesuumlhnt Fremd geworden dem planetarischen Stroumlmen sieht der heutige Mensch in alledem nur kindlichenAberglauben Er vergisst dass die deutenden Phantasmen verwehende Bluumlten waren am Baum eines Innenlebens welches tieferes Wissen barg als all seine Wissenschaft dasWissen von der weltschaffenden Webekraft allverbindender Liebe Nur wenn sie in der Menschheit wiederwuumlchse moumlchten vielleicht die Wunden vernarben die ihr muttermoumlrderisch der Geist geschlagenrsquo (lsquoWe said that the ancient peoples had no interest in scrutinizing nature through experiment in subjecting her to machinery and cunningly turning her against herself we now add that they would have considered this with abhorence as depravity Wood and spring cliff and grotto were for them instinct with holy life fear of the gods wafted down from the mountain tops (this is why they did not climb them mdash not out of a deficient lsquofeeling for naturersquo) Storms and hail intervened in the fortunes of battle as threat orpromise When the Greek bridged a stream they craved forgiveness for human presumption from the river god and offered libations among the old Germans sacrilege against trees was atoned for in blood A stranger to the flow of planetary life modern man sees in all this mere childish superstition He forgets that these interpretive fantasms were fleeting blooms on the tree of an inner life which harboreddeeper knowledge than all his science knowledge of the world-creating powers woven by an all-binding love Only if this love were to revive among men would the wounds heal that the spirit matricidally inflicted on itrsquo) (op cit 39ndash40) This last sentence contrasts with Hegel rsquos claim that only the spirit can heal its own wounds

40 I 224

41 Cf on lsquoaurarsquo in Klages and Benjamin Werner Fuld lsquoDie Aurarsquo in Akzente 31979Benjaminrsquos affinities with Klages are briefly but suggestively discussed by RolfWiggershaus in Die Frankfurter Schule (Munich and Vienna 1987 224ndash26)

102 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

42 In his review of Carl Albrecht Bernoullirsquos Johann Jacob Bachofen und das NatursymbolBenjamin approvingly notes that the author engages in a discussion (Auseinandersetzung) of Klagesrsquos lsquowholesale (ausweglos) rejection of the given lsquotechnicalrsquo mechanizedrsquo state of the worldrsquo lsquoAn Auseinandersetzungrsquo Benjamin goes on lsquowhich has not avoided the philosophical or rather theological center out of which Klages directs (richtet) his doomday prophecy with a violence that makes the efforts of other pundits (Kulturrichter) of the kind produced by the George circle look obsolete We will certainly not be able to call this Auseinan-dersetzung succesful We are however far more strictly persuaded of its necessity than Bernoulli himself He task thus still remains to be donersquo (III 44)

43 This latter term was coined by Valeacutery and cited by Benjamin in their respective essayson Baudelaire Cf I 164

44 OWS 66

45 I 259

46 OWS 239

47 OWS 265

48 Cf OWS 236

49 lsquoTo respond correctly mdash ie with lsquosomething correctrsquo (mit lsquoRichtigemrsquo) mdash to false circumstancesrsquo writes Benjamin in 1931 lsquothis is not something that is available (gegeben)to me Nor is it at all desirable as long as one exists as a seperate individual and is disposed to do sorsquo (C 377 translation modified) What is thus still lsquogivenrsquo to him is adouble Marxist-Messianic conviction the times are out of joint and one can be dans le vraionly collectively

50 I 148 (translation slightly modified)

51 Cf OWS 236ndash37 and GS V 580

52 Cf lsquoScience as a Vocationrsquo in From Max Weber Essays in Sociology ed and trans HansH Gerth and C Wright Mills New York 1958 155

53 Cf my lsquoSmashing the Kaleidoscope Walter Benjaminrsquos Critique of Cultural Historyrsquoin Walter Benjamin and the Question of Modernity ed MSteinberg Cornell 1995 190ndash205

103

54 Cf GS I 126

55 Cf R 148

56 Cf OWS 227 ff

57 Cf OWS 156 239

58 Benjaminrsquos prose has yet to receive the metrical analysis it invites The standard word-order of Zum Planetarium is regularly altered for the sake of rhythmic effect as if to confirm Flaubertrsquos claim that good prose tends of its own accord towards verse lsquoImGeiste der Technikrsquo the optional final lsquoersquo added to Geist helps if anything to embed technology in the immemorial rhythms of the cosmos A question arises here to whichthere could no doubt only be an elliptical response what relations could conceivably existbetween the ancient rhythms mimed in Zum Planetarium and the new ones that it extrapolates from modern scientific journeys into time

59 In December 1934 Adorno visibly somewhat disquieted by Benjaminrsquos interest inKlages and Jung encouraged him to exercise his ability to distance himself mostunequivocally from what seemed closest to his intellectual heart Benjamin unreservedlyagreed (Adorno-Benjamin Briefwechsel 1928ndash1940 Frankfurt am Main 1994 83ndash84 101)

60 Cf GS V 588

61 Also Sprach Zarathustra Part 1

62 I 43

63 Cf Hayden White Metahistory The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe(Baltimore and London 1973)

64 Cf my lsquoOn the Messianic Structure of Benjaminrsquos Last Reflectionsrsquo Glyph 3Baltimore 1978 148-212 and Lieven de Cauter De Dwerg in de Schaakautomaat BenjaminsVerborgen Leer Louvain 1996 Benjaminrsquos lsquotheology of prostitutionrsquo as de Cauter reconstructs it in his sixth chapter is governed by precisely the same logic as ZumPlanetarium alienation at its extreme limit holds out a Messianic promise

65 Cf on the grands reacutecits Jean-Franccedilois Lyotard La Condition Postmoderne(Paris 1979)

66 Gershom Scholem The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York 1971) 78ndash141

104 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

67 Similar problems are posed by the account of divine violence notably lsquoGodrsquos judgment on the company of Korahrsquo in The Critique of Violence and the phrases lsquowhere (hellip) the victim livedrsquo in The Destructive Character (OWS 151 158)

68 Cf I 84

69 Cf I 196

70 The question may be put as follows Benjaminrsquos account of the First World War maylsquobrush history against the grainrsquo (I 259) but is it history from below Cf on this latterissue Krieg im Frieden Die umkaumlmpfte Erinnerung an den Ersten Weltkrieg ed B Ulrich andB Ziemann Frankfurt am Main 1997 The editors show how interpretations of the meaning of the Kriegserlebnis varied across the political spectrum leaving little room forcomplexity contradictions or ambivalence From this point of view Benjamin and Juumlngerwould not be that far apart both knew what it meant

71 lsquo(hellip) the space in a word in which political materialism and the physical creaturedivide up between them the inner man the psyche the individual or whatever else wewish to throw to them with dialectical justice so that no limb remains unrentrsquo (OWS239 translation slightly modified)

72 Heilignuumlchtern a term of Houmllderlinrsquos cited in Benjaminrsquos dissertation (I 104)

73 Cf La Part Maudite (Paris 1949) in which Bataille develops his own version of a cosmogonic eros in terms of a lsquogeneralrsquo as opposed to a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy of deacutepensesacrifice destruction etc War figures in this scheme as a lsquocatastrophic expenditure ofexcess energyrsquo This applies not merely to Aztec rituals but also to the First and SecondWorld Wars Modern industry initially absorbed its own excess hence the relative peacefrom 1815 to 1914 thereafter excess production generated war (Oeuvres Complegravetes Paris1976 VII 31ff) In fragments of an abandoned version of La Part Maudite Batailleuncritically quotes from Juumlngerrsquos Der Krieg unsere Mutter in order to exemplify the equivalence of war ritual sacrifice and the mystical life (251ff) Cf also Roger Cailloisrsquosdiscussion of Juumlnger in LrsquoHomme et le Sacreacute Paris 1993 especially in the section entitledlsquoGuerre et Sacreacutersquo (219ndash242) which likewise extends Bataillersquos notion of deacutepense to modernwar The following excerpt from Juumlnger (or an associate) cited by Benjamin in Theorien desdeutschen Faschismus represents the Fascist counterpart to Bataillersquos distinction between alsquogeneralrsquo and a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy lsquo(Der Krieg) entzieht sich jener Oumlkonomie welcheder Verstand uumlbt in seiner Vernunft ist etwas Unmenschliches Massloses Gigantischesetwas was an einen vulkanischen Prozess eine elementare Eruption erinnert (hellip)rsquo lsquoSo redselig ist ein Freier der schlecht umarmtrsquo (lsquoOnly a bad lover is that talkativersquo) comments Benjamin mdash in maly accents that would recall a separate commentary

105

(III 241) Unlike Caillois and Bataille he does not maintain a neutral stance towardsJuumlngerrsquos equation of modern war with elemental excess The following passage from hisBaudelaire essay implicitly situates this equation within a larger ideological contextlsquoSince the end of the last century philosophy has made a series of attempts to lay hold of lsquotruersquo experience as opposed to the kind that manifests itself in the standardized denatured life of the civilized masses It is customary to classify these efforts under theheading of Lebensphilosophie Their point of departure understandably enough was notmanrsquos life in society What they invoked was poetry preferably nature and most recentlythe age of myths Diltheyrsquos book Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung represents one of the earliest of these efforts which end with Klages and Jung both made common cause with Fascismrsquo (I 158) In this perspective Juumlnger and Bataille may be said to have addedwar and eros to the rubric that neo-Romantic ideology had hitherto filled with poetrynature and myth The neo-Romantic cult of war would be one more attempt to save thesacred in a disenchanted world a quest for the blaue Blume of German Romanticism in the land of technology (cf I 235)

74 I 256

75 In the formulation lsquoWeil aber die Profitgier der herrschenden Klasse an ihr ihrenWillen zu buumlssen gedachtersquo the expression seine Lust buumlssen has been modified in thissense Thereby the imperialist will to power is implicitly concieved as distorted lustGedachte indicates its intention and failure to get satisfaction The effect is to reactivatethe original meaning of buumlssen it is the profit-urge not merely its victims that will endup paying the bill mdash a reversal that is again reminiscent of The Sorcererrsquos Apprentice and the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo Several questions remain however How successful isthe alliance between Marx and Klages in this particular instance Stylistically and hencepolitically What light does it cast on Benjaminrsquos lsquoanthropological materialismrsquoCapitalist greed appears here as a quasi-allegorical figure which lsquohas its wayrsquo with its victims mdash a deadly sin in the guise of say Jack the Ripper Here too the delicate question of lsquocontaminationrsquo arises Are not sexual and economic motifs also conflated inanti-semitic caricature But is this not also and differently mdash true of say BrechtrsquosMackie Messer But is he not saved by ironical lsquoestrangement effectsrsquo that are absent fromBenjaminrsquos personification of the profit-motive

76 Cf R 148

77 I 265 (translation modified)

78 But lsquoa great rabbirsquo mdash in fact Gershom Scholem mdash lsquoonce said that (the Messiah) did not wish to change the world by force but would only make a slight adjustmentrsquo (I 134)

106 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

79 Freudrsquos own reflections on the First World War in lsquoZeitgemaumlsses uumlber Krieg und Todrsquo(1915) and lsquoWarum Kriegrsquo (1933) are a far cry from such lsquoFreudianrsquo metapyschologyWar is for Freud a case of collective regression an entirely negative return of therepressed Freud who claimed to have no personal acquaintance with the lsquooceanic

feeingrsquo would have been even warier of lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo While he too postulates a progressive world-historical repression of sexuality (in Das Unbehagen in der Kulturas in Die kulturelle Sexualmoral und die moderne Nervositaumlt) he refrains from offering any dramatic collective cure for the resulting woes He merely endorses certainsocial and sexual reforms which may help lighten mankindrsquos burden

80 Also sprach Zarathustra lsquoZarathustras Vorredersquo section 5

81 OWS 236

82 I 260

83 The Third Reich was also a fertile breeding-ground for megalomaniac anti-technological cosmologies that illustrate where dualisms agrave la Klages could lead Cf Hans-Juumlrgen Syberbergrsquos Hitler ein Film aus Deutschland which exhibits a lsquofairground barker-cum-magicianrsquo Himmlerrsquos masseur his astrologist and a lsquocosmologistrsquowho wants to lsquoannihilate the superstition of science technology and false religionsrsquo(Reinbek 1978 135 138 165ndash67)

84 Cf on Nietzschersquos distinction between active and reactive nihilism The Will to Power(ed Walter Kaufmann New York 1968 3ndash82)

85 I 261 Benjamin speaks here of a kind of lsquolaborrsquo which is capable of lsquodeliveringrsquonature of the creations which lie dormant in her lsquowombrsquo

86 Cf the chapter lsquoErosrsquo in Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Ernst Juumlnger Werke Stuttgart V I 38ndash43) Benjaminrsquos image of a bridal bed that has turned into a blood-bath is evocative of the lsquobombastrsquo (Schwulst) that he had analysed in the case ofBaroque Trauerspiel In the closing lines of lsquoThe Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproductionrsquo such baroque imagery is more completely fused with the sober accents ofMarxist reason lsquoImperialist war is a revolt of technology (hellip) Instead of channelling riverssociety diverts a human stream into a bed of trenches instead of dropping seeds from airplanes it drops incendiary bombs over cities and through gas warfare aura is abolishedin a new way(hellip) Such is the aestheticizing of politics perpetrated by Fascism Communismresponds by politicizing artrsquo (I 244 italics Benjaminrsquos translation modified) In both cases technological Eros (lsquoseeds from airplanesrsquo the lsquobridal bedrsquo) is pitted against itsthanatological equivalent (lsquoa bed of trenchesrsquo the lsquoblood bathrsquo)

107

87 In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel speaks likewise of the lsquomagic powerrsquoof Geist which by staying with (verweilen) the negative converts it into pure positivity(Die Phaumlnomenologie des Geistes ed Johannes Hoffmeister Hamburg 1952 30)

88 Celan op cit III 169

89 In his essays lsquoDie Nation als Ideal und Wirklichkeit rsquo (1921) and lsquoDas hilfloseEuroparsquo (1922) Robert Musil also seeks to save the Erlebnis of the First World War(Gesammelte Werke II Hamburg 1978 1059ndash1090) As recalled by Musil it marks a rareand powerful experience of mystico-national community an explosive rejection of bourgeois life a will to disorder and lsquometaphysical Krachrsquo more lsquocarnavelesquersquo thanlsquoDionysianrsquo in character in short a lsquoflight from peacersquo This short-lived experience whichwas followed by an eerie return to normality is not lsquoover withrsquo (erledigt) Musilrsquos own concluding plea for the establishment of a lsquonaturalrsquo social order no longer based onanachronistic ideals of state- and nationhood seems a rather tame resolution of the warErlebnis as he himself describes it

90 Celan loccit III 186

91 To dismiss the politics of surrealism as lsquopoeticrsquo is itself in Benjaminrsquos eyes to perpetrate an all too conventionally lsquopoeticrsquo politics mdash one that speaks the language of the lsquoas ifrsquo and adorns its progressist programs with metaphors and images which takeneither politics nor poetry seriously A truly poetic politics on the other hand releases theliteral and figurative the material and surreal energies of the image into a collectivelsquoimage-spacersquo (OWS 237ndash38)

92 Cf in this connection Hannah Arendtrsquos meditation on the passage from The TempestlsquoFull fathom five thy father lies helliprsquo in the third section (lsquoThe Pearl Diverrsquo) of her essay onBenjamin (I 38ndash51)

93 I 264

94 Cf my lsquoThe Politics of Youth Walter Benjaminrsquos Reading of The Idiotrsquo DiacriticsBaltimore winter 1992 161ndash71

95 Cf GS III 259

96 lsquoIn einem Krakauer Spital werden mit solchen die an einer Gasvergiftung darniederliegen oder von einem Bauchschuss soweit hergestellt sind Salutieruumlbungengemacht Wunder uumlber Wunder Es sind die alten Ornamente zum neuen Wesen desTodes Aber da dieser frisch aus der Retorte entsprungen noch keine neuen erfinden

108 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

konnte so kann die Macht der allten Ornamente nicht entbehren Denn nicht alleindulce auch decorum muss es sein Nur dass die Macht den neuen Tod zu ihrer Erhaltungbraucht nur dass die alte Herrschaft nicht lieber abdankt als ihre Stellung der Chemie zu verdanken dass die Insignien auf die Chemikalien angewiesen sind mdash das ises was unsere siegende Kultur unrettbar dem Gifttod geweiht hat Die Menschheit dieihre Phantasie an die Erfindungen verausgabt hat kann sich deren Wirksamkeit nichtmehr vorstellen mdash sonst wuumlrde sie aus Reue eben damit Selbstmord veruumlben Aber da sieauch ihre Menschenwuumlrde in die Erfindungen verausgabt hat so lebt und stirbt sie fuumlralle Macht die sich solchen Fortschritts gegen sie bedient Die Unvorstellbarkeit dertaumlglich erlebten Dinge die Unvereinbarkeit der Macht und der Mittel sie durchzusetzen dassist der Zustand und das technoromantische Abenteuer in das wir uns eingelassen habenwird wie immer es ausgeht dem Zustand ein Ende machenrsquo (Weltgericht Frankfurt amMain 1968 120ndash21) In his essay on Kraus Benjmain cites the opening of anotherclosely related speech delivered by Kraus against the War in December 1914 In diesergrossen Zeit (Weltgericht 7ndash18 GS II 336ndash38)

97 Benjamin explicitly enlists Hebel Buumlchner Nietzsche Rimbaud and the surrealistsand implicitly himself in this cause

98 I 84

99 lsquoOnly when in technology body and image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily collective innervation and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge has reality surpassed itself to the extentdemanded by the Communist Manifestorsquo (OWS 239)

100 lsquoOrnament is crimersquo claimed Adolf Loos in an apparently different context The lsquoold ornamentsrsquo denounced by Kraus are to the lsquonew essencersquo of dying what the historicist faccedilades of nineteenth century architecture were accounting to SiegfriedGiedeon to the underlying steel construction Like construction destruction is relegated to the lsquorole of the unconsciousrsquo See note 14

101 Kraus op cit 13

102 I 259

103 I 256

104 OWS 103ndash04 I have seen fit to modify EF Jephcottrsquos andor Kingsley Shorterrsquosexcellent translation

109

with the Freideutschen Jugend until it was dissolved by the outbreak of the First World War

39 Cf for example the following passage from Mensch und Erde lsquoWir sagten die alten Voumllker haumltten kein Interesse gehabt die Natur durch Versuche auszuspaumlhen sie inMaschinen hineinzuknechten und listig durch sich selbst zu besiegen jetzt fuumlgen wirhinzu sie haumltten es als (hellip) Verruchtheit (hellip) verabscheut Wald und Quell Fels undGrotte waren fuumlr sie ja heiligen Lebens voll von den Gipfeln hoher Berge wehten dieSchauer der Goumltter (daran nicht aus Mangel an lsquoNaturgefuumlhlrsquo bestieg man sie nicht)Gewitter und Hagelschlag griffen drohend oder verheissend in das Spiel der Schlachtenein Wenn die Griechen einen Strom uumlberbruumlckten so boten sie dem Flussgott fuumlr dieEigenmaumlchtigkeit des Menschen um Verzeihung und spendeten Trankopfer Baumfrevel wurde im alten Germanien blutig gesuumlhnt Fremd geworden dem planetarischen Stroumlmen sieht der heutige Mensch in alledem nur kindlichenAberglauben Er vergisst dass die deutenden Phantasmen verwehende Bluumlten waren am Baum eines Innenlebens welches tieferes Wissen barg als all seine Wissenschaft dasWissen von der weltschaffenden Webekraft allverbindender Liebe Nur wenn sie in der Menschheit wiederwuumlchse moumlchten vielleicht die Wunden vernarben die ihr muttermoumlrderisch der Geist geschlagenrsquo (lsquoWe said that the ancient peoples had no interest in scrutinizing nature through experiment in subjecting her to machinery and cunningly turning her against herself we now add that they would have considered this with abhorence as depravity Wood and spring cliff and grotto were for them instinct with holy life fear of the gods wafted down from the mountain tops (this is why they did not climb them mdash not out of a deficient lsquofeeling for naturersquo) Storms and hail intervened in the fortunes of battle as threat orpromise When the Greek bridged a stream they craved forgiveness for human presumption from the river god and offered libations among the old Germans sacrilege against trees was atoned for in blood A stranger to the flow of planetary life modern man sees in all this mere childish superstition He forgets that these interpretive fantasms were fleeting blooms on the tree of an inner life which harboreddeeper knowledge than all his science knowledge of the world-creating powers woven by an all-binding love Only if this love were to revive among men would the wounds heal that the spirit matricidally inflicted on itrsquo) (op cit 39ndash40) This last sentence contrasts with Hegel rsquos claim that only the spirit can heal its own wounds

40 I 224

41 Cf on lsquoaurarsquo in Klages and Benjamin Werner Fuld lsquoDie Aurarsquo in Akzente 31979Benjaminrsquos affinities with Klages are briefly but suggestively discussed by RolfWiggershaus in Die Frankfurter Schule (Munich and Vienna 1987 224ndash26)

102 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

42 In his review of Carl Albrecht Bernoullirsquos Johann Jacob Bachofen und das NatursymbolBenjamin approvingly notes that the author engages in a discussion (Auseinandersetzung) of Klagesrsquos lsquowholesale (ausweglos) rejection of the given lsquotechnicalrsquo mechanizedrsquo state of the worldrsquo lsquoAn Auseinandersetzungrsquo Benjamin goes on lsquowhich has not avoided the philosophical or rather theological center out of which Klages directs (richtet) his doomday prophecy with a violence that makes the efforts of other pundits (Kulturrichter) of the kind produced by the George circle look obsolete We will certainly not be able to call this Auseinan-dersetzung succesful We are however far more strictly persuaded of its necessity than Bernoulli himself He task thus still remains to be donersquo (III 44)

43 This latter term was coined by Valeacutery and cited by Benjamin in their respective essayson Baudelaire Cf I 164

44 OWS 66

45 I 259

46 OWS 239

47 OWS 265

48 Cf OWS 236

49 lsquoTo respond correctly mdash ie with lsquosomething correctrsquo (mit lsquoRichtigemrsquo) mdash to false circumstancesrsquo writes Benjamin in 1931 lsquothis is not something that is available (gegeben)to me Nor is it at all desirable as long as one exists as a seperate individual and is disposed to do sorsquo (C 377 translation modified) What is thus still lsquogivenrsquo to him is adouble Marxist-Messianic conviction the times are out of joint and one can be dans le vraionly collectively

50 I 148 (translation slightly modified)

51 Cf OWS 236ndash37 and GS V 580

52 Cf lsquoScience as a Vocationrsquo in From Max Weber Essays in Sociology ed and trans HansH Gerth and C Wright Mills New York 1958 155

53 Cf my lsquoSmashing the Kaleidoscope Walter Benjaminrsquos Critique of Cultural Historyrsquoin Walter Benjamin and the Question of Modernity ed MSteinberg Cornell 1995 190ndash205

103

54 Cf GS I 126

55 Cf R 148

56 Cf OWS 227 ff

57 Cf OWS 156 239

58 Benjaminrsquos prose has yet to receive the metrical analysis it invites The standard word-order of Zum Planetarium is regularly altered for the sake of rhythmic effect as if to confirm Flaubertrsquos claim that good prose tends of its own accord towards verse lsquoImGeiste der Technikrsquo the optional final lsquoersquo added to Geist helps if anything to embed technology in the immemorial rhythms of the cosmos A question arises here to whichthere could no doubt only be an elliptical response what relations could conceivably existbetween the ancient rhythms mimed in Zum Planetarium and the new ones that it extrapolates from modern scientific journeys into time

59 In December 1934 Adorno visibly somewhat disquieted by Benjaminrsquos interest inKlages and Jung encouraged him to exercise his ability to distance himself mostunequivocally from what seemed closest to his intellectual heart Benjamin unreservedlyagreed (Adorno-Benjamin Briefwechsel 1928ndash1940 Frankfurt am Main 1994 83ndash84 101)

60 Cf GS V 588

61 Also Sprach Zarathustra Part 1

62 I 43

63 Cf Hayden White Metahistory The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe(Baltimore and London 1973)

64 Cf my lsquoOn the Messianic Structure of Benjaminrsquos Last Reflectionsrsquo Glyph 3Baltimore 1978 148-212 and Lieven de Cauter De Dwerg in de Schaakautomaat BenjaminsVerborgen Leer Louvain 1996 Benjaminrsquos lsquotheology of prostitutionrsquo as de Cauter reconstructs it in his sixth chapter is governed by precisely the same logic as ZumPlanetarium alienation at its extreme limit holds out a Messianic promise

65 Cf on the grands reacutecits Jean-Franccedilois Lyotard La Condition Postmoderne(Paris 1979)

66 Gershom Scholem The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York 1971) 78ndash141

104 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

67 Similar problems are posed by the account of divine violence notably lsquoGodrsquos judgment on the company of Korahrsquo in The Critique of Violence and the phrases lsquowhere (hellip) the victim livedrsquo in The Destructive Character (OWS 151 158)

68 Cf I 84

69 Cf I 196

70 The question may be put as follows Benjaminrsquos account of the First World War maylsquobrush history against the grainrsquo (I 259) but is it history from below Cf on this latterissue Krieg im Frieden Die umkaumlmpfte Erinnerung an den Ersten Weltkrieg ed B Ulrich andB Ziemann Frankfurt am Main 1997 The editors show how interpretations of the meaning of the Kriegserlebnis varied across the political spectrum leaving little room forcomplexity contradictions or ambivalence From this point of view Benjamin and Juumlngerwould not be that far apart both knew what it meant

71 lsquo(hellip) the space in a word in which political materialism and the physical creaturedivide up between them the inner man the psyche the individual or whatever else wewish to throw to them with dialectical justice so that no limb remains unrentrsquo (OWS239 translation slightly modified)

72 Heilignuumlchtern a term of Houmllderlinrsquos cited in Benjaminrsquos dissertation (I 104)

73 Cf La Part Maudite (Paris 1949) in which Bataille develops his own version of a cosmogonic eros in terms of a lsquogeneralrsquo as opposed to a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy of deacutepensesacrifice destruction etc War figures in this scheme as a lsquocatastrophic expenditure ofexcess energyrsquo This applies not merely to Aztec rituals but also to the First and SecondWorld Wars Modern industry initially absorbed its own excess hence the relative peacefrom 1815 to 1914 thereafter excess production generated war (Oeuvres Complegravetes Paris1976 VII 31ff) In fragments of an abandoned version of La Part Maudite Batailleuncritically quotes from Juumlngerrsquos Der Krieg unsere Mutter in order to exemplify the equivalence of war ritual sacrifice and the mystical life (251ff) Cf also Roger Cailloisrsquosdiscussion of Juumlnger in LrsquoHomme et le Sacreacute Paris 1993 especially in the section entitledlsquoGuerre et Sacreacutersquo (219ndash242) which likewise extends Bataillersquos notion of deacutepense to modernwar The following excerpt from Juumlnger (or an associate) cited by Benjamin in Theorien desdeutschen Faschismus represents the Fascist counterpart to Bataillersquos distinction between alsquogeneralrsquo and a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy lsquo(Der Krieg) entzieht sich jener Oumlkonomie welcheder Verstand uumlbt in seiner Vernunft ist etwas Unmenschliches Massloses Gigantischesetwas was an einen vulkanischen Prozess eine elementare Eruption erinnert (hellip)rsquo lsquoSo redselig ist ein Freier der schlecht umarmtrsquo (lsquoOnly a bad lover is that talkativersquo) comments Benjamin mdash in maly accents that would recall a separate commentary

105

(III 241) Unlike Caillois and Bataille he does not maintain a neutral stance towardsJuumlngerrsquos equation of modern war with elemental excess The following passage from hisBaudelaire essay implicitly situates this equation within a larger ideological contextlsquoSince the end of the last century philosophy has made a series of attempts to lay hold of lsquotruersquo experience as opposed to the kind that manifests itself in the standardized denatured life of the civilized masses It is customary to classify these efforts under theheading of Lebensphilosophie Their point of departure understandably enough was notmanrsquos life in society What they invoked was poetry preferably nature and most recentlythe age of myths Diltheyrsquos book Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung represents one of the earliest of these efforts which end with Klages and Jung both made common cause with Fascismrsquo (I 158) In this perspective Juumlnger and Bataille may be said to have addedwar and eros to the rubric that neo-Romantic ideology had hitherto filled with poetrynature and myth The neo-Romantic cult of war would be one more attempt to save thesacred in a disenchanted world a quest for the blaue Blume of German Romanticism in the land of technology (cf I 235)

74 I 256

75 In the formulation lsquoWeil aber die Profitgier der herrschenden Klasse an ihr ihrenWillen zu buumlssen gedachtersquo the expression seine Lust buumlssen has been modified in thissense Thereby the imperialist will to power is implicitly concieved as distorted lustGedachte indicates its intention and failure to get satisfaction The effect is to reactivatethe original meaning of buumlssen it is the profit-urge not merely its victims that will endup paying the bill mdash a reversal that is again reminiscent of The Sorcererrsquos Apprentice and the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo Several questions remain however How successful isthe alliance between Marx and Klages in this particular instance Stylistically and hencepolitically What light does it cast on Benjaminrsquos lsquoanthropological materialismrsquoCapitalist greed appears here as a quasi-allegorical figure which lsquohas its wayrsquo with its victims mdash a deadly sin in the guise of say Jack the Ripper Here too the delicate question of lsquocontaminationrsquo arises Are not sexual and economic motifs also conflated inanti-semitic caricature But is this not also and differently mdash true of say BrechtrsquosMackie Messer But is he not saved by ironical lsquoestrangement effectsrsquo that are absent fromBenjaminrsquos personification of the profit-motive

76 Cf R 148

77 I 265 (translation modified)

78 But lsquoa great rabbirsquo mdash in fact Gershom Scholem mdash lsquoonce said that (the Messiah) did not wish to change the world by force but would only make a slight adjustmentrsquo (I 134)

106 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

79 Freudrsquos own reflections on the First World War in lsquoZeitgemaumlsses uumlber Krieg und Todrsquo(1915) and lsquoWarum Kriegrsquo (1933) are a far cry from such lsquoFreudianrsquo metapyschologyWar is for Freud a case of collective regression an entirely negative return of therepressed Freud who claimed to have no personal acquaintance with the lsquooceanic

feeingrsquo would have been even warier of lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo While he too postulates a progressive world-historical repression of sexuality (in Das Unbehagen in der Kulturas in Die kulturelle Sexualmoral und die moderne Nervositaumlt) he refrains from offering any dramatic collective cure for the resulting woes He merely endorses certainsocial and sexual reforms which may help lighten mankindrsquos burden

80 Also sprach Zarathustra lsquoZarathustras Vorredersquo section 5

81 OWS 236

82 I 260

83 The Third Reich was also a fertile breeding-ground for megalomaniac anti-technological cosmologies that illustrate where dualisms agrave la Klages could lead Cf Hans-Juumlrgen Syberbergrsquos Hitler ein Film aus Deutschland which exhibits a lsquofairground barker-cum-magicianrsquo Himmlerrsquos masseur his astrologist and a lsquocosmologistrsquowho wants to lsquoannihilate the superstition of science technology and false religionsrsquo(Reinbek 1978 135 138 165ndash67)

84 Cf on Nietzschersquos distinction between active and reactive nihilism The Will to Power(ed Walter Kaufmann New York 1968 3ndash82)

85 I 261 Benjamin speaks here of a kind of lsquolaborrsquo which is capable of lsquodeliveringrsquonature of the creations which lie dormant in her lsquowombrsquo

86 Cf the chapter lsquoErosrsquo in Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Ernst Juumlnger Werke Stuttgart V I 38ndash43) Benjaminrsquos image of a bridal bed that has turned into a blood-bath is evocative of the lsquobombastrsquo (Schwulst) that he had analysed in the case ofBaroque Trauerspiel In the closing lines of lsquoThe Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproductionrsquo such baroque imagery is more completely fused with the sober accents ofMarxist reason lsquoImperialist war is a revolt of technology (hellip) Instead of channelling riverssociety diverts a human stream into a bed of trenches instead of dropping seeds from airplanes it drops incendiary bombs over cities and through gas warfare aura is abolishedin a new way(hellip) Such is the aestheticizing of politics perpetrated by Fascism Communismresponds by politicizing artrsquo (I 244 italics Benjaminrsquos translation modified) In both cases technological Eros (lsquoseeds from airplanesrsquo the lsquobridal bedrsquo) is pitted against itsthanatological equivalent (lsquoa bed of trenchesrsquo the lsquoblood bathrsquo)

107

87 In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel speaks likewise of the lsquomagic powerrsquoof Geist which by staying with (verweilen) the negative converts it into pure positivity(Die Phaumlnomenologie des Geistes ed Johannes Hoffmeister Hamburg 1952 30)

88 Celan op cit III 169

89 In his essays lsquoDie Nation als Ideal und Wirklichkeit rsquo (1921) and lsquoDas hilfloseEuroparsquo (1922) Robert Musil also seeks to save the Erlebnis of the First World War(Gesammelte Werke II Hamburg 1978 1059ndash1090) As recalled by Musil it marks a rareand powerful experience of mystico-national community an explosive rejection of bourgeois life a will to disorder and lsquometaphysical Krachrsquo more lsquocarnavelesquersquo thanlsquoDionysianrsquo in character in short a lsquoflight from peacersquo This short-lived experience whichwas followed by an eerie return to normality is not lsquoover withrsquo (erledigt) Musilrsquos own concluding plea for the establishment of a lsquonaturalrsquo social order no longer based onanachronistic ideals of state- and nationhood seems a rather tame resolution of the warErlebnis as he himself describes it

90 Celan loccit III 186

91 To dismiss the politics of surrealism as lsquopoeticrsquo is itself in Benjaminrsquos eyes to perpetrate an all too conventionally lsquopoeticrsquo politics mdash one that speaks the language of the lsquoas ifrsquo and adorns its progressist programs with metaphors and images which takeneither politics nor poetry seriously A truly poetic politics on the other hand releases theliteral and figurative the material and surreal energies of the image into a collectivelsquoimage-spacersquo (OWS 237ndash38)

92 Cf in this connection Hannah Arendtrsquos meditation on the passage from The TempestlsquoFull fathom five thy father lies helliprsquo in the third section (lsquoThe Pearl Diverrsquo) of her essay onBenjamin (I 38ndash51)

93 I 264

94 Cf my lsquoThe Politics of Youth Walter Benjaminrsquos Reading of The Idiotrsquo DiacriticsBaltimore winter 1992 161ndash71

95 Cf GS III 259

96 lsquoIn einem Krakauer Spital werden mit solchen die an einer Gasvergiftung darniederliegen oder von einem Bauchschuss soweit hergestellt sind Salutieruumlbungengemacht Wunder uumlber Wunder Es sind die alten Ornamente zum neuen Wesen desTodes Aber da dieser frisch aus der Retorte entsprungen noch keine neuen erfinden

108 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

konnte so kann die Macht der allten Ornamente nicht entbehren Denn nicht alleindulce auch decorum muss es sein Nur dass die Macht den neuen Tod zu ihrer Erhaltungbraucht nur dass die alte Herrschaft nicht lieber abdankt als ihre Stellung der Chemie zu verdanken dass die Insignien auf die Chemikalien angewiesen sind mdash das ises was unsere siegende Kultur unrettbar dem Gifttod geweiht hat Die Menschheit dieihre Phantasie an die Erfindungen verausgabt hat kann sich deren Wirksamkeit nichtmehr vorstellen mdash sonst wuumlrde sie aus Reue eben damit Selbstmord veruumlben Aber da sieauch ihre Menschenwuumlrde in die Erfindungen verausgabt hat so lebt und stirbt sie fuumlralle Macht die sich solchen Fortschritts gegen sie bedient Die Unvorstellbarkeit dertaumlglich erlebten Dinge die Unvereinbarkeit der Macht und der Mittel sie durchzusetzen dassist der Zustand und das technoromantische Abenteuer in das wir uns eingelassen habenwird wie immer es ausgeht dem Zustand ein Ende machenrsquo (Weltgericht Frankfurt amMain 1968 120ndash21) In his essay on Kraus Benjmain cites the opening of anotherclosely related speech delivered by Kraus against the War in December 1914 In diesergrossen Zeit (Weltgericht 7ndash18 GS II 336ndash38)

97 Benjamin explicitly enlists Hebel Buumlchner Nietzsche Rimbaud and the surrealistsand implicitly himself in this cause

98 I 84

99 lsquoOnly when in technology body and image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily collective innervation and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge has reality surpassed itself to the extentdemanded by the Communist Manifestorsquo (OWS 239)

100 lsquoOrnament is crimersquo claimed Adolf Loos in an apparently different context The lsquoold ornamentsrsquo denounced by Kraus are to the lsquonew essencersquo of dying what the historicist faccedilades of nineteenth century architecture were accounting to SiegfriedGiedeon to the underlying steel construction Like construction destruction is relegated to the lsquorole of the unconsciousrsquo See note 14

101 Kraus op cit 13

102 I 259

103 I 256

104 OWS 103ndash04 I have seen fit to modify EF Jephcottrsquos andor Kingsley Shorterrsquosexcellent translation

109

42 In his review of Carl Albrecht Bernoullirsquos Johann Jacob Bachofen und das NatursymbolBenjamin approvingly notes that the author engages in a discussion (Auseinandersetzung) of Klagesrsquos lsquowholesale (ausweglos) rejection of the given lsquotechnicalrsquo mechanizedrsquo state of the worldrsquo lsquoAn Auseinandersetzungrsquo Benjamin goes on lsquowhich has not avoided the philosophical or rather theological center out of which Klages directs (richtet) his doomday prophecy with a violence that makes the efforts of other pundits (Kulturrichter) of the kind produced by the George circle look obsolete We will certainly not be able to call this Auseinan-dersetzung succesful We are however far more strictly persuaded of its necessity than Bernoulli himself He task thus still remains to be donersquo (III 44)

43 This latter term was coined by Valeacutery and cited by Benjamin in their respective essayson Baudelaire Cf I 164

44 OWS 66

45 I 259

46 OWS 239

47 OWS 265

48 Cf OWS 236

49 lsquoTo respond correctly mdash ie with lsquosomething correctrsquo (mit lsquoRichtigemrsquo) mdash to false circumstancesrsquo writes Benjamin in 1931 lsquothis is not something that is available (gegeben)to me Nor is it at all desirable as long as one exists as a seperate individual and is disposed to do sorsquo (C 377 translation modified) What is thus still lsquogivenrsquo to him is adouble Marxist-Messianic conviction the times are out of joint and one can be dans le vraionly collectively

50 I 148 (translation slightly modified)

51 Cf OWS 236ndash37 and GS V 580

52 Cf lsquoScience as a Vocationrsquo in From Max Weber Essays in Sociology ed and trans HansH Gerth and C Wright Mills New York 1958 155

53 Cf my lsquoSmashing the Kaleidoscope Walter Benjaminrsquos Critique of Cultural Historyrsquoin Walter Benjamin and the Question of Modernity ed MSteinberg Cornell 1995 190ndash205

103

54 Cf GS I 126

55 Cf R 148

56 Cf OWS 227 ff

57 Cf OWS 156 239

58 Benjaminrsquos prose has yet to receive the metrical analysis it invites The standard word-order of Zum Planetarium is regularly altered for the sake of rhythmic effect as if to confirm Flaubertrsquos claim that good prose tends of its own accord towards verse lsquoImGeiste der Technikrsquo the optional final lsquoersquo added to Geist helps if anything to embed technology in the immemorial rhythms of the cosmos A question arises here to whichthere could no doubt only be an elliptical response what relations could conceivably existbetween the ancient rhythms mimed in Zum Planetarium and the new ones that it extrapolates from modern scientific journeys into time

59 In December 1934 Adorno visibly somewhat disquieted by Benjaminrsquos interest inKlages and Jung encouraged him to exercise his ability to distance himself mostunequivocally from what seemed closest to his intellectual heart Benjamin unreservedlyagreed (Adorno-Benjamin Briefwechsel 1928ndash1940 Frankfurt am Main 1994 83ndash84 101)

60 Cf GS V 588

61 Also Sprach Zarathustra Part 1

62 I 43

63 Cf Hayden White Metahistory The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe(Baltimore and London 1973)

64 Cf my lsquoOn the Messianic Structure of Benjaminrsquos Last Reflectionsrsquo Glyph 3Baltimore 1978 148-212 and Lieven de Cauter De Dwerg in de Schaakautomaat BenjaminsVerborgen Leer Louvain 1996 Benjaminrsquos lsquotheology of prostitutionrsquo as de Cauter reconstructs it in his sixth chapter is governed by precisely the same logic as ZumPlanetarium alienation at its extreme limit holds out a Messianic promise

65 Cf on the grands reacutecits Jean-Franccedilois Lyotard La Condition Postmoderne(Paris 1979)

66 Gershom Scholem The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York 1971) 78ndash141

104 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

67 Similar problems are posed by the account of divine violence notably lsquoGodrsquos judgment on the company of Korahrsquo in The Critique of Violence and the phrases lsquowhere (hellip) the victim livedrsquo in The Destructive Character (OWS 151 158)

68 Cf I 84

69 Cf I 196

70 The question may be put as follows Benjaminrsquos account of the First World War maylsquobrush history against the grainrsquo (I 259) but is it history from below Cf on this latterissue Krieg im Frieden Die umkaumlmpfte Erinnerung an den Ersten Weltkrieg ed B Ulrich andB Ziemann Frankfurt am Main 1997 The editors show how interpretations of the meaning of the Kriegserlebnis varied across the political spectrum leaving little room forcomplexity contradictions or ambivalence From this point of view Benjamin and Juumlngerwould not be that far apart both knew what it meant

71 lsquo(hellip) the space in a word in which political materialism and the physical creaturedivide up between them the inner man the psyche the individual or whatever else wewish to throw to them with dialectical justice so that no limb remains unrentrsquo (OWS239 translation slightly modified)

72 Heilignuumlchtern a term of Houmllderlinrsquos cited in Benjaminrsquos dissertation (I 104)

73 Cf La Part Maudite (Paris 1949) in which Bataille develops his own version of a cosmogonic eros in terms of a lsquogeneralrsquo as opposed to a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy of deacutepensesacrifice destruction etc War figures in this scheme as a lsquocatastrophic expenditure ofexcess energyrsquo This applies not merely to Aztec rituals but also to the First and SecondWorld Wars Modern industry initially absorbed its own excess hence the relative peacefrom 1815 to 1914 thereafter excess production generated war (Oeuvres Complegravetes Paris1976 VII 31ff) In fragments of an abandoned version of La Part Maudite Batailleuncritically quotes from Juumlngerrsquos Der Krieg unsere Mutter in order to exemplify the equivalence of war ritual sacrifice and the mystical life (251ff) Cf also Roger Cailloisrsquosdiscussion of Juumlnger in LrsquoHomme et le Sacreacute Paris 1993 especially in the section entitledlsquoGuerre et Sacreacutersquo (219ndash242) which likewise extends Bataillersquos notion of deacutepense to modernwar The following excerpt from Juumlnger (or an associate) cited by Benjamin in Theorien desdeutschen Faschismus represents the Fascist counterpart to Bataillersquos distinction between alsquogeneralrsquo and a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy lsquo(Der Krieg) entzieht sich jener Oumlkonomie welcheder Verstand uumlbt in seiner Vernunft ist etwas Unmenschliches Massloses Gigantischesetwas was an einen vulkanischen Prozess eine elementare Eruption erinnert (hellip)rsquo lsquoSo redselig ist ein Freier der schlecht umarmtrsquo (lsquoOnly a bad lover is that talkativersquo) comments Benjamin mdash in maly accents that would recall a separate commentary

105

(III 241) Unlike Caillois and Bataille he does not maintain a neutral stance towardsJuumlngerrsquos equation of modern war with elemental excess The following passage from hisBaudelaire essay implicitly situates this equation within a larger ideological contextlsquoSince the end of the last century philosophy has made a series of attempts to lay hold of lsquotruersquo experience as opposed to the kind that manifests itself in the standardized denatured life of the civilized masses It is customary to classify these efforts under theheading of Lebensphilosophie Their point of departure understandably enough was notmanrsquos life in society What they invoked was poetry preferably nature and most recentlythe age of myths Diltheyrsquos book Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung represents one of the earliest of these efforts which end with Klages and Jung both made common cause with Fascismrsquo (I 158) In this perspective Juumlnger and Bataille may be said to have addedwar and eros to the rubric that neo-Romantic ideology had hitherto filled with poetrynature and myth The neo-Romantic cult of war would be one more attempt to save thesacred in a disenchanted world a quest for the blaue Blume of German Romanticism in the land of technology (cf I 235)

74 I 256

75 In the formulation lsquoWeil aber die Profitgier der herrschenden Klasse an ihr ihrenWillen zu buumlssen gedachtersquo the expression seine Lust buumlssen has been modified in thissense Thereby the imperialist will to power is implicitly concieved as distorted lustGedachte indicates its intention and failure to get satisfaction The effect is to reactivatethe original meaning of buumlssen it is the profit-urge not merely its victims that will endup paying the bill mdash a reversal that is again reminiscent of The Sorcererrsquos Apprentice and the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo Several questions remain however How successful isthe alliance between Marx and Klages in this particular instance Stylistically and hencepolitically What light does it cast on Benjaminrsquos lsquoanthropological materialismrsquoCapitalist greed appears here as a quasi-allegorical figure which lsquohas its wayrsquo with its victims mdash a deadly sin in the guise of say Jack the Ripper Here too the delicate question of lsquocontaminationrsquo arises Are not sexual and economic motifs also conflated inanti-semitic caricature But is this not also and differently mdash true of say BrechtrsquosMackie Messer But is he not saved by ironical lsquoestrangement effectsrsquo that are absent fromBenjaminrsquos personification of the profit-motive

76 Cf R 148

77 I 265 (translation modified)

78 But lsquoa great rabbirsquo mdash in fact Gershom Scholem mdash lsquoonce said that (the Messiah) did not wish to change the world by force but would only make a slight adjustmentrsquo (I 134)

106 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

79 Freudrsquos own reflections on the First World War in lsquoZeitgemaumlsses uumlber Krieg und Todrsquo(1915) and lsquoWarum Kriegrsquo (1933) are a far cry from such lsquoFreudianrsquo metapyschologyWar is for Freud a case of collective regression an entirely negative return of therepressed Freud who claimed to have no personal acquaintance with the lsquooceanic

feeingrsquo would have been even warier of lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo While he too postulates a progressive world-historical repression of sexuality (in Das Unbehagen in der Kulturas in Die kulturelle Sexualmoral und die moderne Nervositaumlt) he refrains from offering any dramatic collective cure for the resulting woes He merely endorses certainsocial and sexual reforms which may help lighten mankindrsquos burden

80 Also sprach Zarathustra lsquoZarathustras Vorredersquo section 5

81 OWS 236

82 I 260

83 The Third Reich was also a fertile breeding-ground for megalomaniac anti-technological cosmologies that illustrate where dualisms agrave la Klages could lead Cf Hans-Juumlrgen Syberbergrsquos Hitler ein Film aus Deutschland which exhibits a lsquofairground barker-cum-magicianrsquo Himmlerrsquos masseur his astrologist and a lsquocosmologistrsquowho wants to lsquoannihilate the superstition of science technology and false religionsrsquo(Reinbek 1978 135 138 165ndash67)

84 Cf on Nietzschersquos distinction between active and reactive nihilism The Will to Power(ed Walter Kaufmann New York 1968 3ndash82)

85 I 261 Benjamin speaks here of a kind of lsquolaborrsquo which is capable of lsquodeliveringrsquonature of the creations which lie dormant in her lsquowombrsquo

86 Cf the chapter lsquoErosrsquo in Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Ernst Juumlnger Werke Stuttgart V I 38ndash43) Benjaminrsquos image of a bridal bed that has turned into a blood-bath is evocative of the lsquobombastrsquo (Schwulst) that he had analysed in the case ofBaroque Trauerspiel In the closing lines of lsquoThe Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproductionrsquo such baroque imagery is more completely fused with the sober accents ofMarxist reason lsquoImperialist war is a revolt of technology (hellip) Instead of channelling riverssociety diverts a human stream into a bed of trenches instead of dropping seeds from airplanes it drops incendiary bombs over cities and through gas warfare aura is abolishedin a new way(hellip) Such is the aestheticizing of politics perpetrated by Fascism Communismresponds by politicizing artrsquo (I 244 italics Benjaminrsquos translation modified) In both cases technological Eros (lsquoseeds from airplanesrsquo the lsquobridal bedrsquo) is pitted against itsthanatological equivalent (lsquoa bed of trenchesrsquo the lsquoblood bathrsquo)

107

87 In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel speaks likewise of the lsquomagic powerrsquoof Geist which by staying with (verweilen) the negative converts it into pure positivity(Die Phaumlnomenologie des Geistes ed Johannes Hoffmeister Hamburg 1952 30)

88 Celan op cit III 169

89 In his essays lsquoDie Nation als Ideal und Wirklichkeit rsquo (1921) and lsquoDas hilfloseEuroparsquo (1922) Robert Musil also seeks to save the Erlebnis of the First World War(Gesammelte Werke II Hamburg 1978 1059ndash1090) As recalled by Musil it marks a rareand powerful experience of mystico-national community an explosive rejection of bourgeois life a will to disorder and lsquometaphysical Krachrsquo more lsquocarnavelesquersquo thanlsquoDionysianrsquo in character in short a lsquoflight from peacersquo This short-lived experience whichwas followed by an eerie return to normality is not lsquoover withrsquo (erledigt) Musilrsquos own concluding plea for the establishment of a lsquonaturalrsquo social order no longer based onanachronistic ideals of state- and nationhood seems a rather tame resolution of the warErlebnis as he himself describes it

90 Celan loccit III 186

91 To dismiss the politics of surrealism as lsquopoeticrsquo is itself in Benjaminrsquos eyes to perpetrate an all too conventionally lsquopoeticrsquo politics mdash one that speaks the language of the lsquoas ifrsquo and adorns its progressist programs with metaphors and images which takeneither politics nor poetry seriously A truly poetic politics on the other hand releases theliteral and figurative the material and surreal energies of the image into a collectivelsquoimage-spacersquo (OWS 237ndash38)

92 Cf in this connection Hannah Arendtrsquos meditation on the passage from The TempestlsquoFull fathom five thy father lies helliprsquo in the third section (lsquoThe Pearl Diverrsquo) of her essay onBenjamin (I 38ndash51)

93 I 264

94 Cf my lsquoThe Politics of Youth Walter Benjaminrsquos Reading of The Idiotrsquo DiacriticsBaltimore winter 1992 161ndash71

95 Cf GS III 259

96 lsquoIn einem Krakauer Spital werden mit solchen die an einer Gasvergiftung darniederliegen oder von einem Bauchschuss soweit hergestellt sind Salutieruumlbungengemacht Wunder uumlber Wunder Es sind die alten Ornamente zum neuen Wesen desTodes Aber da dieser frisch aus der Retorte entsprungen noch keine neuen erfinden

108 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

konnte so kann die Macht der allten Ornamente nicht entbehren Denn nicht alleindulce auch decorum muss es sein Nur dass die Macht den neuen Tod zu ihrer Erhaltungbraucht nur dass die alte Herrschaft nicht lieber abdankt als ihre Stellung der Chemie zu verdanken dass die Insignien auf die Chemikalien angewiesen sind mdash das ises was unsere siegende Kultur unrettbar dem Gifttod geweiht hat Die Menschheit dieihre Phantasie an die Erfindungen verausgabt hat kann sich deren Wirksamkeit nichtmehr vorstellen mdash sonst wuumlrde sie aus Reue eben damit Selbstmord veruumlben Aber da sieauch ihre Menschenwuumlrde in die Erfindungen verausgabt hat so lebt und stirbt sie fuumlralle Macht die sich solchen Fortschritts gegen sie bedient Die Unvorstellbarkeit dertaumlglich erlebten Dinge die Unvereinbarkeit der Macht und der Mittel sie durchzusetzen dassist der Zustand und das technoromantische Abenteuer in das wir uns eingelassen habenwird wie immer es ausgeht dem Zustand ein Ende machenrsquo (Weltgericht Frankfurt amMain 1968 120ndash21) In his essay on Kraus Benjmain cites the opening of anotherclosely related speech delivered by Kraus against the War in December 1914 In diesergrossen Zeit (Weltgericht 7ndash18 GS II 336ndash38)

97 Benjamin explicitly enlists Hebel Buumlchner Nietzsche Rimbaud and the surrealistsand implicitly himself in this cause

98 I 84

99 lsquoOnly when in technology body and image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily collective innervation and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge has reality surpassed itself to the extentdemanded by the Communist Manifestorsquo (OWS 239)

100 lsquoOrnament is crimersquo claimed Adolf Loos in an apparently different context The lsquoold ornamentsrsquo denounced by Kraus are to the lsquonew essencersquo of dying what the historicist faccedilades of nineteenth century architecture were accounting to SiegfriedGiedeon to the underlying steel construction Like construction destruction is relegated to the lsquorole of the unconsciousrsquo See note 14

101 Kraus op cit 13

102 I 259

103 I 256

104 OWS 103ndash04 I have seen fit to modify EF Jephcottrsquos andor Kingsley Shorterrsquosexcellent translation

109

54 Cf GS I 126

55 Cf R 148

56 Cf OWS 227 ff

57 Cf OWS 156 239

58 Benjaminrsquos prose has yet to receive the metrical analysis it invites The standard word-order of Zum Planetarium is regularly altered for the sake of rhythmic effect as if to confirm Flaubertrsquos claim that good prose tends of its own accord towards verse lsquoImGeiste der Technikrsquo the optional final lsquoersquo added to Geist helps if anything to embed technology in the immemorial rhythms of the cosmos A question arises here to whichthere could no doubt only be an elliptical response what relations could conceivably existbetween the ancient rhythms mimed in Zum Planetarium and the new ones that it extrapolates from modern scientific journeys into time

59 In December 1934 Adorno visibly somewhat disquieted by Benjaminrsquos interest inKlages and Jung encouraged him to exercise his ability to distance himself mostunequivocally from what seemed closest to his intellectual heart Benjamin unreservedlyagreed (Adorno-Benjamin Briefwechsel 1928ndash1940 Frankfurt am Main 1994 83ndash84 101)

60 Cf GS V 588

61 Also Sprach Zarathustra Part 1

62 I 43

63 Cf Hayden White Metahistory The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe(Baltimore and London 1973)

64 Cf my lsquoOn the Messianic Structure of Benjaminrsquos Last Reflectionsrsquo Glyph 3Baltimore 1978 148-212 and Lieven de Cauter De Dwerg in de Schaakautomaat BenjaminsVerborgen Leer Louvain 1996 Benjaminrsquos lsquotheology of prostitutionrsquo as de Cauter reconstructs it in his sixth chapter is governed by precisely the same logic as ZumPlanetarium alienation at its extreme limit holds out a Messianic promise

65 Cf on the grands reacutecits Jean-Franccedilois Lyotard La Condition Postmoderne(Paris 1979)

66 Gershom Scholem The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York 1971) 78ndash141

104 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

67 Similar problems are posed by the account of divine violence notably lsquoGodrsquos judgment on the company of Korahrsquo in The Critique of Violence and the phrases lsquowhere (hellip) the victim livedrsquo in The Destructive Character (OWS 151 158)

68 Cf I 84

69 Cf I 196

70 The question may be put as follows Benjaminrsquos account of the First World War maylsquobrush history against the grainrsquo (I 259) but is it history from below Cf on this latterissue Krieg im Frieden Die umkaumlmpfte Erinnerung an den Ersten Weltkrieg ed B Ulrich andB Ziemann Frankfurt am Main 1997 The editors show how interpretations of the meaning of the Kriegserlebnis varied across the political spectrum leaving little room forcomplexity contradictions or ambivalence From this point of view Benjamin and Juumlngerwould not be that far apart both knew what it meant

71 lsquo(hellip) the space in a word in which political materialism and the physical creaturedivide up between them the inner man the psyche the individual or whatever else wewish to throw to them with dialectical justice so that no limb remains unrentrsquo (OWS239 translation slightly modified)

72 Heilignuumlchtern a term of Houmllderlinrsquos cited in Benjaminrsquos dissertation (I 104)

73 Cf La Part Maudite (Paris 1949) in which Bataille develops his own version of a cosmogonic eros in terms of a lsquogeneralrsquo as opposed to a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy of deacutepensesacrifice destruction etc War figures in this scheme as a lsquocatastrophic expenditure ofexcess energyrsquo This applies not merely to Aztec rituals but also to the First and SecondWorld Wars Modern industry initially absorbed its own excess hence the relative peacefrom 1815 to 1914 thereafter excess production generated war (Oeuvres Complegravetes Paris1976 VII 31ff) In fragments of an abandoned version of La Part Maudite Batailleuncritically quotes from Juumlngerrsquos Der Krieg unsere Mutter in order to exemplify the equivalence of war ritual sacrifice and the mystical life (251ff) Cf also Roger Cailloisrsquosdiscussion of Juumlnger in LrsquoHomme et le Sacreacute Paris 1993 especially in the section entitledlsquoGuerre et Sacreacutersquo (219ndash242) which likewise extends Bataillersquos notion of deacutepense to modernwar The following excerpt from Juumlnger (or an associate) cited by Benjamin in Theorien desdeutschen Faschismus represents the Fascist counterpart to Bataillersquos distinction between alsquogeneralrsquo and a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy lsquo(Der Krieg) entzieht sich jener Oumlkonomie welcheder Verstand uumlbt in seiner Vernunft ist etwas Unmenschliches Massloses Gigantischesetwas was an einen vulkanischen Prozess eine elementare Eruption erinnert (hellip)rsquo lsquoSo redselig ist ein Freier der schlecht umarmtrsquo (lsquoOnly a bad lover is that talkativersquo) comments Benjamin mdash in maly accents that would recall a separate commentary

105

(III 241) Unlike Caillois and Bataille he does not maintain a neutral stance towardsJuumlngerrsquos equation of modern war with elemental excess The following passage from hisBaudelaire essay implicitly situates this equation within a larger ideological contextlsquoSince the end of the last century philosophy has made a series of attempts to lay hold of lsquotruersquo experience as opposed to the kind that manifests itself in the standardized denatured life of the civilized masses It is customary to classify these efforts under theheading of Lebensphilosophie Their point of departure understandably enough was notmanrsquos life in society What they invoked was poetry preferably nature and most recentlythe age of myths Diltheyrsquos book Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung represents one of the earliest of these efforts which end with Klages and Jung both made common cause with Fascismrsquo (I 158) In this perspective Juumlnger and Bataille may be said to have addedwar and eros to the rubric that neo-Romantic ideology had hitherto filled with poetrynature and myth The neo-Romantic cult of war would be one more attempt to save thesacred in a disenchanted world a quest for the blaue Blume of German Romanticism in the land of technology (cf I 235)

74 I 256

75 In the formulation lsquoWeil aber die Profitgier der herrschenden Klasse an ihr ihrenWillen zu buumlssen gedachtersquo the expression seine Lust buumlssen has been modified in thissense Thereby the imperialist will to power is implicitly concieved as distorted lustGedachte indicates its intention and failure to get satisfaction The effect is to reactivatethe original meaning of buumlssen it is the profit-urge not merely its victims that will endup paying the bill mdash a reversal that is again reminiscent of The Sorcererrsquos Apprentice and the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo Several questions remain however How successful isthe alliance between Marx and Klages in this particular instance Stylistically and hencepolitically What light does it cast on Benjaminrsquos lsquoanthropological materialismrsquoCapitalist greed appears here as a quasi-allegorical figure which lsquohas its wayrsquo with its victims mdash a deadly sin in the guise of say Jack the Ripper Here too the delicate question of lsquocontaminationrsquo arises Are not sexual and economic motifs also conflated inanti-semitic caricature But is this not also and differently mdash true of say BrechtrsquosMackie Messer But is he not saved by ironical lsquoestrangement effectsrsquo that are absent fromBenjaminrsquos personification of the profit-motive

76 Cf R 148

77 I 265 (translation modified)

78 But lsquoa great rabbirsquo mdash in fact Gershom Scholem mdash lsquoonce said that (the Messiah) did not wish to change the world by force but would only make a slight adjustmentrsquo (I 134)

106 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

79 Freudrsquos own reflections on the First World War in lsquoZeitgemaumlsses uumlber Krieg und Todrsquo(1915) and lsquoWarum Kriegrsquo (1933) are a far cry from such lsquoFreudianrsquo metapyschologyWar is for Freud a case of collective regression an entirely negative return of therepressed Freud who claimed to have no personal acquaintance with the lsquooceanic

feeingrsquo would have been even warier of lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo While he too postulates a progressive world-historical repression of sexuality (in Das Unbehagen in der Kulturas in Die kulturelle Sexualmoral und die moderne Nervositaumlt) he refrains from offering any dramatic collective cure for the resulting woes He merely endorses certainsocial and sexual reforms which may help lighten mankindrsquos burden

80 Also sprach Zarathustra lsquoZarathustras Vorredersquo section 5

81 OWS 236

82 I 260

83 The Third Reich was also a fertile breeding-ground for megalomaniac anti-technological cosmologies that illustrate where dualisms agrave la Klages could lead Cf Hans-Juumlrgen Syberbergrsquos Hitler ein Film aus Deutschland which exhibits a lsquofairground barker-cum-magicianrsquo Himmlerrsquos masseur his astrologist and a lsquocosmologistrsquowho wants to lsquoannihilate the superstition of science technology and false religionsrsquo(Reinbek 1978 135 138 165ndash67)

84 Cf on Nietzschersquos distinction between active and reactive nihilism The Will to Power(ed Walter Kaufmann New York 1968 3ndash82)

85 I 261 Benjamin speaks here of a kind of lsquolaborrsquo which is capable of lsquodeliveringrsquonature of the creations which lie dormant in her lsquowombrsquo

86 Cf the chapter lsquoErosrsquo in Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Ernst Juumlnger Werke Stuttgart V I 38ndash43) Benjaminrsquos image of a bridal bed that has turned into a blood-bath is evocative of the lsquobombastrsquo (Schwulst) that he had analysed in the case ofBaroque Trauerspiel In the closing lines of lsquoThe Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproductionrsquo such baroque imagery is more completely fused with the sober accents ofMarxist reason lsquoImperialist war is a revolt of technology (hellip) Instead of channelling riverssociety diverts a human stream into a bed of trenches instead of dropping seeds from airplanes it drops incendiary bombs over cities and through gas warfare aura is abolishedin a new way(hellip) Such is the aestheticizing of politics perpetrated by Fascism Communismresponds by politicizing artrsquo (I 244 italics Benjaminrsquos translation modified) In both cases technological Eros (lsquoseeds from airplanesrsquo the lsquobridal bedrsquo) is pitted against itsthanatological equivalent (lsquoa bed of trenchesrsquo the lsquoblood bathrsquo)

107

87 In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel speaks likewise of the lsquomagic powerrsquoof Geist which by staying with (verweilen) the negative converts it into pure positivity(Die Phaumlnomenologie des Geistes ed Johannes Hoffmeister Hamburg 1952 30)

88 Celan op cit III 169

89 In his essays lsquoDie Nation als Ideal und Wirklichkeit rsquo (1921) and lsquoDas hilfloseEuroparsquo (1922) Robert Musil also seeks to save the Erlebnis of the First World War(Gesammelte Werke II Hamburg 1978 1059ndash1090) As recalled by Musil it marks a rareand powerful experience of mystico-national community an explosive rejection of bourgeois life a will to disorder and lsquometaphysical Krachrsquo more lsquocarnavelesquersquo thanlsquoDionysianrsquo in character in short a lsquoflight from peacersquo This short-lived experience whichwas followed by an eerie return to normality is not lsquoover withrsquo (erledigt) Musilrsquos own concluding plea for the establishment of a lsquonaturalrsquo social order no longer based onanachronistic ideals of state- and nationhood seems a rather tame resolution of the warErlebnis as he himself describes it

90 Celan loccit III 186

91 To dismiss the politics of surrealism as lsquopoeticrsquo is itself in Benjaminrsquos eyes to perpetrate an all too conventionally lsquopoeticrsquo politics mdash one that speaks the language of the lsquoas ifrsquo and adorns its progressist programs with metaphors and images which takeneither politics nor poetry seriously A truly poetic politics on the other hand releases theliteral and figurative the material and surreal energies of the image into a collectivelsquoimage-spacersquo (OWS 237ndash38)

92 Cf in this connection Hannah Arendtrsquos meditation on the passage from The TempestlsquoFull fathom five thy father lies helliprsquo in the third section (lsquoThe Pearl Diverrsquo) of her essay onBenjamin (I 38ndash51)

93 I 264

94 Cf my lsquoThe Politics of Youth Walter Benjaminrsquos Reading of The Idiotrsquo DiacriticsBaltimore winter 1992 161ndash71

95 Cf GS III 259

96 lsquoIn einem Krakauer Spital werden mit solchen die an einer Gasvergiftung darniederliegen oder von einem Bauchschuss soweit hergestellt sind Salutieruumlbungengemacht Wunder uumlber Wunder Es sind die alten Ornamente zum neuen Wesen desTodes Aber da dieser frisch aus der Retorte entsprungen noch keine neuen erfinden

108 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

konnte so kann die Macht der allten Ornamente nicht entbehren Denn nicht alleindulce auch decorum muss es sein Nur dass die Macht den neuen Tod zu ihrer Erhaltungbraucht nur dass die alte Herrschaft nicht lieber abdankt als ihre Stellung der Chemie zu verdanken dass die Insignien auf die Chemikalien angewiesen sind mdash das ises was unsere siegende Kultur unrettbar dem Gifttod geweiht hat Die Menschheit dieihre Phantasie an die Erfindungen verausgabt hat kann sich deren Wirksamkeit nichtmehr vorstellen mdash sonst wuumlrde sie aus Reue eben damit Selbstmord veruumlben Aber da sieauch ihre Menschenwuumlrde in die Erfindungen verausgabt hat so lebt und stirbt sie fuumlralle Macht die sich solchen Fortschritts gegen sie bedient Die Unvorstellbarkeit dertaumlglich erlebten Dinge die Unvereinbarkeit der Macht und der Mittel sie durchzusetzen dassist der Zustand und das technoromantische Abenteuer in das wir uns eingelassen habenwird wie immer es ausgeht dem Zustand ein Ende machenrsquo (Weltgericht Frankfurt amMain 1968 120ndash21) In his essay on Kraus Benjmain cites the opening of anotherclosely related speech delivered by Kraus against the War in December 1914 In diesergrossen Zeit (Weltgericht 7ndash18 GS II 336ndash38)

97 Benjamin explicitly enlists Hebel Buumlchner Nietzsche Rimbaud and the surrealistsand implicitly himself in this cause

98 I 84

99 lsquoOnly when in technology body and image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily collective innervation and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge has reality surpassed itself to the extentdemanded by the Communist Manifestorsquo (OWS 239)

100 lsquoOrnament is crimersquo claimed Adolf Loos in an apparently different context The lsquoold ornamentsrsquo denounced by Kraus are to the lsquonew essencersquo of dying what the historicist faccedilades of nineteenth century architecture were accounting to SiegfriedGiedeon to the underlying steel construction Like construction destruction is relegated to the lsquorole of the unconsciousrsquo See note 14

101 Kraus op cit 13

102 I 259

103 I 256

104 OWS 103ndash04 I have seen fit to modify EF Jephcottrsquos andor Kingsley Shorterrsquosexcellent translation

109

67 Similar problems are posed by the account of divine violence notably lsquoGodrsquos judgment on the company of Korahrsquo in The Critique of Violence and the phrases lsquowhere (hellip) the victim livedrsquo in The Destructive Character (OWS 151 158)

68 Cf I 84

69 Cf I 196

70 The question may be put as follows Benjaminrsquos account of the First World War maylsquobrush history against the grainrsquo (I 259) but is it history from below Cf on this latterissue Krieg im Frieden Die umkaumlmpfte Erinnerung an den Ersten Weltkrieg ed B Ulrich andB Ziemann Frankfurt am Main 1997 The editors show how interpretations of the meaning of the Kriegserlebnis varied across the political spectrum leaving little room forcomplexity contradictions or ambivalence From this point of view Benjamin and Juumlngerwould not be that far apart both knew what it meant

71 lsquo(hellip) the space in a word in which political materialism and the physical creaturedivide up between them the inner man the psyche the individual or whatever else wewish to throw to them with dialectical justice so that no limb remains unrentrsquo (OWS239 translation slightly modified)

72 Heilignuumlchtern a term of Houmllderlinrsquos cited in Benjaminrsquos dissertation (I 104)

73 Cf La Part Maudite (Paris 1949) in which Bataille develops his own version of a cosmogonic eros in terms of a lsquogeneralrsquo as opposed to a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy of deacutepensesacrifice destruction etc War figures in this scheme as a lsquocatastrophic expenditure ofexcess energyrsquo This applies not merely to Aztec rituals but also to the First and SecondWorld Wars Modern industry initially absorbed its own excess hence the relative peacefrom 1815 to 1914 thereafter excess production generated war (Oeuvres Complegravetes Paris1976 VII 31ff) In fragments of an abandoned version of La Part Maudite Batailleuncritically quotes from Juumlngerrsquos Der Krieg unsere Mutter in order to exemplify the equivalence of war ritual sacrifice and the mystical life (251ff) Cf also Roger Cailloisrsquosdiscussion of Juumlnger in LrsquoHomme et le Sacreacute Paris 1993 especially in the section entitledlsquoGuerre et Sacreacutersquo (219ndash242) which likewise extends Bataillersquos notion of deacutepense to modernwar The following excerpt from Juumlnger (or an associate) cited by Benjamin in Theorien desdeutschen Faschismus represents the Fascist counterpart to Bataillersquos distinction between alsquogeneralrsquo and a lsquorestrictedrsquo economy lsquo(Der Krieg) entzieht sich jener Oumlkonomie welcheder Verstand uumlbt in seiner Vernunft ist etwas Unmenschliches Massloses Gigantischesetwas was an einen vulkanischen Prozess eine elementare Eruption erinnert (hellip)rsquo lsquoSo redselig ist ein Freier der schlecht umarmtrsquo (lsquoOnly a bad lover is that talkativersquo) comments Benjamin mdash in maly accents that would recall a separate commentary

105

(III 241) Unlike Caillois and Bataille he does not maintain a neutral stance towardsJuumlngerrsquos equation of modern war with elemental excess The following passage from hisBaudelaire essay implicitly situates this equation within a larger ideological contextlsquoSince the end of the last century philosophy has made a series of attempts to lay hold of lsquotruersquo experience as opposed to the kind that manifests itself in the standardized denatured life of the civilized masses It is customary to classify these efforts under theheading of Lebensphilosophie Their point of departure understandably enough was notmanrsquos life in society What they invoked was poetry preferably nature and most recentlythe age of myths Diltheyrsquos book Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung represents one of the earliest of these efforts which end with Klages and Jung both made common cause with Fascismrsquo (I 158) In this perspective Juumlnger and Bataille may be said to have addedwar and eros to the rubric that neo-Romantic ideology had hitherto filled with poetrynature and myth The neo-Romantic cult of war would be one more attempt to save thesacred in a disenchanted world a quest for the blaue Blume of German Romanticism in the land of technology (cf I 235)

74 I 256

75 In the formulation lsquoWeil aber die Profitgier der herrschenden Klasse an ihr ihrenWillen zu buumlssen gedachtersquo the expression seine Lust buumlssen has been modified in thissense Thereby the imperialist will to power is implicitly concieved as distorted lustGedachte indicates its intention and failure to get satisfaction The effect is to reactivatethe original meaning of buumlssen it is the profit-urge not merely its victims that will endup paying the bill mdash a reversal that is again reminiscent of The Sorcererrsquos Apprentice and the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo Several questions remain however How successful isthe alliance between Marx and Klages in this particular instance Stylistically and hencepolitically What light does it cast on Benjaminrsquos lsquoanthropological materialismrsquoCapitalist greed appears here as a quasi-allegorical figure which lsquohas its wayrsquo with its victims mdash a deadly sin in the guise of say Jack the Ripper Here too the delicate question of lsquocontaminationrsquo arises Are not sexual and economic motifs also conflated inanti-semitic caricature But is this not also and differently mdash true of say BrechtrsquosMackie Messer But is he not saved by ironical lsquoestrangement effectsrsquo that are absent fromBenjaminrsquos personification of the profit-motive

76 Cf R 148

77 I 265 (translation modified)

78 But lsquoa great rabbirsquo mdash in fact Gershom Scholem mdash lsquoonce said that (the Messiah) did not wish to change the world by force but would only make a slight adjustmentrsquo (I 134)

106 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

79 Freudrsquos own reflections on the First World War in lsquoZeitgemaumlsses uumlber Krieg und Todrsquo(1915) and lsquoWarum Kriegrsquo (1933) are a far cry from such lsquoFreudianrsquo metapyschologyWar is for Freud a case of collective regression an entirely negative return of therepressed Freud who claimed to have no personal acquaintance with the lsquooceanic

feeingrsquo would have been even warier of lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo While he too postulates a progressive world-historical repression of sexuality (in Das Unbehagen in der Kulturas in Die kulturelle Sexualmoral und die moderne Nervositaumlt) he refrains from offering any dramatic collective cure for the resulting woes He merely endorses certainsocial and sexual reforms which may help lighten mankindrsquos burden

80 Also sprach Zarathustra lsquoZarathustras Vorredersquo section 5

81 OWS 236

82 I 260

83 The Third Reich was also a fertile breeding-ground for megalomaniac anti-technological cosmologies that illustrate where dualisms agrave la Klages could lead Cf Hans-Juumlrgen Syberbergrsquos Hitler ein Film aus Deutschland which exhibits a lsquofairground barker-cum-magicianrsquo Himmlerrsquos masseur his astrologist and a lsquocosmologistrsquowho wants to lsquoannihilate the superstition of science technology and false religionsrsquo(Reinbek 1978 135 138 165ndash67)

84 Cf on Nietzschersquos distinction between active and reactive nihilism The Will to Power(ed Walter Kaufmann New York 1968 3ndash82)

85 I 261 Benjamin speaks here of a kind of lsquolaborrsquo which is capable of lsquodeliveringrsquonature of the creations which lie dormant in her lsquowombrsquo

86 Cf the chapter lsquoErosrsquo in Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Ernst Juumlnger Werke Stuttgart V I 38ndash43) Benjaminrsquos image of a bridal bed that has turned into a blood-bath is evocative of the lsquobombastrsquo (Schwulst) that he had analysed in the case ofBaroque Trauerspiel In the closing lines of lsquoThe Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproductionrsquo such baroque imagery is more completely fused with the sober accents ofMarxist reason lsquoImperialist war is a revolt of technology (hellip) Instead of channelling riverssociety diverts a human stream into a bed of trenches instead of dropping seeds from airplanes it drops incendiary bombs over cities and through gas warfare aura is abolishedin a new way(hellip) Such is the aestheticizing of politics perpetrated by Fascism Communismresponds by politicizing artrsquo (I 244 italics Benjaminrsquos translation modified) In both cases technological Eros (lsquoseeds from airplanesrsquo the lsquobridal bedrsquo) is pitted against itsthanatological equivalent (lsquoa bed of trenchesrsquo the lsquoblood bathrsquo)

107

87 In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel speaks likewise of the lsquomagic powerrsquoof Geist which by staying with (verweilen) the negative converts it into pure positivity(Die Phaumlnomenologie des Geistes ed Johannes Hoffmeister Hamburg 1952 30)

88 Celan op cit III 169

89 In his essays lsquoDie Nation als Ideal und Wirklichkeit rsquo (1921) and lsquoDas hilfloseEuroparsquo (1922) Robert Musil also seeks to save the Erlebnis of the First World War(Gesammelte Werke II Hamburg 1978 1059ndash1090) As recalled by Musil it marks a rareand powerful experience of mystico-national community an explosive rejection of bourgeois life a will to disorder and lsquometaphysical Krachrsquo more lsquocarnavelesquersquo thanlsquoDionysianrsquo in character in short a lsquoflight from peacersquo This short-lived experience whichwas followed by an eerie return to normality is not lsquoover withrsquo (erledigt) Musilrsquos own concluding plea for the establishment of a lsquonaturalrsquo social order no longer based onanachronistic ideals of state- and nationhood seems a rather tame resolution of the warErlebnis as he himself describes it

90 Celan loccit III 186

91 To dismiss the politics of surrealism as lsquopoeticrsquo is itself in Benjaminrsquos eyes to perpetrate an all too conventionally lsquopoeticrsquo politics mdash one that speaks the language of the lsquoas ifrsquo and adorns its progressist programs with metaphors and images which takeneither politics nor poetry seriously A truly poetic politics on the other hand releases theliteral and figurative the material and surreal energies of the image into a collectivelsquoimage-spacersquo (OWS 237ndash38)

92 Cf in this connection Hannah Arendtrsquos meditation on the passage from The TempestlsquoFull fathom five thy father lies helliprsquo in the third section (lsquoThe Pearl Diverrsquo) of her essay onBenjamin (I 38ndash51)

93 I 264

94 Cf my lsquoThe Politics of Youth Walter Benjaminrsquos Reading of The Idiotrsquo DiacriticsBaltimore winter 1992 161ndash71

95 Cf GS III 259

96 lsquoIn einem Krakauer Spital werden mit solchen die an einer Gasvergiftung darniederliegen oder von einem Bauchschuss soweit hergestellt sind Salutieruumlbungengemacht Wunder uumlber Wunder Es sind die alten Ornamente zum neuen Wesen desTodes Aber da dieser frisch aus der Retorte entsprungen noch keine neuen erfinden

108 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

konnte so kann die Macht der allten Ornamente nicht entbehren Denn nicht alleindulce auch decorum muss es sein Nur dass die Macht den neuen Tod zu ihrer Erhaltungbraucht nur dass die alte Herrschaft nicht lieber abdankt als ihre Stellung der Chemie zu verdanken dass die Insignien auf die Chemikalien angewiesen sind mdash das ises was unsere siegende Kultur unrettbar dem Gifttod geweiht hat Die Menschheit dieihre Phantasie an die Erfindungen verausgabt hat kann sich deren Wirksamkeit nichtmehr vorstellen mdash sonst wuumlrde sie aus Reue eben damit Selbstmord veruumlben Aber da sieauch ihre Menschenwuumlrde in die Erfindungen verausgabt hat so lebt und stirbt sie fuumlralle Macht die sich solchen Fortschritts gegen sie bedient Die Unvorstellbarkeit dertaumlglich erlebten Dinge die Unvereinbarkeit der Macht und der Mittel sie durchzusetzen dassist der Zustand und das technoromantische Abenteuer in das wir uns eingelassen habenwird wie immer es ausgeht dem Zustand ein Ende machenrsquo (Weltgericht Frankfurt amMain 1968 120ndash21) In his essay on Kraus Benjmain cites the opening of anotherclosely related speech delivered by Kraus against the War in December 1914 In diesergrossen Zeit (Weltgericht 7ndash18 GS II 336ndash38)

97 Benjamin explicitly enlists Hebel Buumlchner Nietzsche Rimbaud and the surrealistsand implicitly himself in this cause

98 I 84

99 lsquoOnly when in technology body and image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily collective innervation and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge has reality surpassed itself to the extentdemanded by the Communist Manifestorsquo (OWS 239)

100 lsquoOrnament is crimersquo claimed Adolf Loos in an apparently different context The lsquoold ornamentsrsquo denounced by Kraus are to the lsquonew essencersquo of dying what the historicist faccedilades of nineteenth century architecture were accounting to SiegfriedGiedeon to the underlying steel construction Like construction destruction is relegated to the lsquorole of the unconsciousrsquo See note 14

101 Kraus op cit 13

102 I 259

103 I 256

104 OWS 103ndash04 I have seen fit to modify EF Jephcottrsquos andor Kingsley Shorterrsquosexcellent translation

109

(III 241) Unlike Caillois and Bataille he does not maintain a neutral stance towardsJuumlngerrsquos equation of modern war with elemental excess The following passage from hisBaudelaire essay implicitly situates this equation within a larger ideological contextlsquoSince the end of the last century philosophy has made a series of attempts to lay hold of lsquotruersquo experience as opposed to the kind that manifests itself in the standardized denatured life of the civilized masses It is customary to classify these efforts under theheading of Lebensphilosophie Their point of departure understandably enough was notmanrsquos life in society What they invoked was poetry preferably nature and most recentlythe age of myths Diltheyrsquos book Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung represents one of the earliest of these efforts which end with Klages and Jung both made common cause with Fascismrsquo (I 158) In this perspective Juumlnger and Bataille may be said to have addedwar and eros to the rubric that neo-Romantic ideology had hitherto filled with poetrynature and myth The neo-Romantic cult of war would be one more attempt to save thesacred in a disenchanted world a quest for the blaue Blume of German Romanticism in the land of technology (cf I 235)

74 I 256

75 In the formulation lsquoWeil aber die Profitgier der herrschenden Klasse an ihr ihrenWillen zu buumlssen gedachtersquo the expression seine Lust buumlssen has been modified in thissense Thereby the imperialist will to power is implicitly concieved as distorted lustGedachte indicates its intention and failure to get satisfaction The effect is to reactivatethe original meaning of buumlssen it is the profit-urge not merely its victims that will endup paying the bill mdash a reversal that is again reminiscent of The Sorcererrsquos Apprentice and the lsquoslaversquos revolt of technologyrsquo Several questions remain however How successful isthe alliance between Marx and Klages in this particular instance Stylistically and hencepolitically What light does it cast on Benjaminrsquos lsquoanthropological materialismrsquoCapitalist greed appears here as a quasi-allegorical figure which lsquohas its wayrsquo with its victims mdash a deadly sin in the guise of say Jack the Ripper Here too the delicate question of lsquocontaminationrsquo arises Are not sexual and economic motifs also conflated inanti-semitic caricature But is this not also and differently mdash true of say BrechtrsquosMackie Messer But is he not saved by ironical lsquoestrangement effectsrsquo that are absent fromBenjaminrsquos personification of the profit-motive

76 Cf R 148

77 I 265 (translation modified)

78 But lsquoa great rabbirsquo mdash in fact Gershom Scholem mdash lsquoonce said that (the Messiah) did not wish to change the world by force but would only make a slight adjustmentrsquo (I 134)

106 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

79 Freudrsquos own reflections on the First World War in lsquoZeitgemaumlsses uumlber Krieg und Todrsquo(1915) and lsquoWarum Kriegrsquo (1933) are a far cry from such lsquoFreudianrsquo metapyschologyWar is for Freud a case of collective regression an entirely negative return of therepressed Freud who claimed to have no personal acquaintance with the lsquooceanic

feeingrsquo would have been even warier of lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo While he too postulates a progressive world-historical repression of sexuality (in Das Unbehagen in der Kulturas in Die kulturelle Sexualmoral und die moderne Nervositaumlt) he refrains from offering any dramatic collective cure for the resulting woes He merely endorses certainsocial and sexual reforms which may help lighten mankindrsquos burden

80 Also sprach Zarathustra lsquoZarathustras Vorredersquo section 5

81 OWS 236

82 I 260

83 The Third Reich was also a fertile breeding-ground for megalomaniac anti-technological cosmologies that illustrate where dualisms agrave la Klages could lead Cf Hans-Juumlrgen Syberbergrsquos Hitler ein Film aus Deutschland which exhibits a lsquofairground barker-cum-magicianrsquo Himmlerrsquos masseur his astrologist and a lsquocosmologistrsquowho wants to lsquoannihilate the superstition of science technology and false religionsrsquo(Reinbek 1978 135 138 165ndash67)

84 Cf on Nietzschersquos distinction between active and reactive nihilism The Will to Power(ed Walter Kaufmann New York 1968 3ndash82)

85 I 261 Benjamin speaks here of a kind of lsquolaborrsquo which is capable of lsquodeliveringrsquonature of the creations which lie dormant in her lsquowombrsquo

86 Cf the chapter lsquoErosrsquo in Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Ernst Juumlnger Werke Stuttgart V I 38ndash43) Benjaminrsquos image of a bridal bed that has turned into a blood-bath is evocative of the lsquobombastrsquo (Schwulst) that he had analysed in the case ofBaroque Trauerspiel In the closing lines of lsquoThe Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproductionrsquo such baroque imagery is more completely fused with the sober accents ofMarxist reason lsquoImperialist war is a revolt of technology (hellip) Instead of channelling riverssociety diverts a human stream into a bed of trenches instead of dropping seeds from airplanes it drops incendiary bombs over cities and through gas warfare aura is abolishedin a new way(hellip) Such is the aestheticizing of politics perpetrated by Fascism Communismresponds by politicizing artrsquo (I 244 italics Benjaminrsquos translation modified) In both cases technological Eros (lsquoseeds from airplanesrsquo the lsquobridal bedrsquo) is pitted against itsthanatological equivalent (lsquoa bed of trenchesrsquo the lsquoblood bathrsquo)

107

87 In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel speaks likewise of the lsquomagic powerrsquoof Geist which by staying with (verweilen) the negative converts it into pure positivity(Die Phaumlnomenologie des Geistes ed Johannes Hoffmeister Hamburg 1952 30)

88 Celan op cit III 169

89 In his essays lsquoDie Nation als Ideal und Wirklichkeit rsquo (1921) and lsquoDas hilfloseEuroparsquo (1922) Robert Musil also seeks to save the Erlebnis of the First World War(Gesammelte Werke II Hamburg 1978 1059ndash1090) As recalled by Musil it marks a rareand powerful experience of mystico-national community an explosive rejection of bourgeois life a will to disorder and lsquometaphysical Krachrsquo more lsquocarnavelesquersquo thanlsquoDionysianrsquo in character in short a lsquoflight from peacersquo This short-lived experience whichwas followed by an eerie return to normality is not lsquoover withrsquo (erledigt) Musilrsquos own concluding plea for the establishment of a lsquonaturalrsquo social order no longer based onanachronistic ideals of state- and nationhood seems a rather tame resolution of the warErlebnis as he himself describes it

90 Celan loccit III 186

91 To dismiss the politics of surrealism as lsquopoeticrsquo is itself in Benjaminrsquos eyes to perpetrate an all too conventionally lsquopoeticrsquo politics mdash one that speaks the language of the lsquoas ifrsquo and adorns its progressist programs with metaphors and images which takeneither politics nor poetry seriously A truly poetic politics on the other hand releases theliteral and figurative the material and surreal energies of the image into a collectivelsquoimage-spacersquo (OWS 237ndash38)

92 Cf in this connection Hannah Arendtrsquos meditation on the passage from The TempestlsquoFull fathom five thy father lies helliprsquo in the third section (lsquoThe Pearl Diverrsquo) of her essay onBenjamin (I 38ndash51)

93 I 264

94 Cf my lsquoThe Politics of Youth Walter Benjaminrsquos Reading of The Idiotrsquo DiacriticsBaltimore winter 1992 161ndash71

95 Cf GS III 259

96 lsquoIn einem Krakauer Spital werden mit solchen die an einer Gasvergiftung darniederliegen oder von einem Bauchschuss soweit hergestellt sind Salutieruumlbungengemacht Wunder uumlber Wunder Es sind die alten Ornamente zum neuen Wesen desTodes Aber da dieser frisch aus der Retorte entsprungen noch keine neuen erfinden

108 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

konnte so kann die Macht der allten Ornamente nicht entbehren Denn nicht alleindulce auch decorum muss es sein Nur dass die Macht den neuen Tod zu ihrer Erhaltungbraucht nur dass die alte Herrschaft nicht lieber abdankt als ihre Stellung der Chemie zu verdanken dass die Insignien auf die Chemikalien angewiesen sind mdash das ises was unsere siegende Kultur unrettbar dem Gifttod geweiht hat Die Menschheit dieihre Phantasie an die Erfindungen verausgabt hat kann sich deren Wirksamkeit nichtmehr vorstellen mdash sonst wuumlrde sie aus Reue eben damit Selbstmord veruumlben Aber da sieauch ihre Menschenwuumlrde in die Erfindungen verausgabt hat so lebt und stirbt sie fuumlralle Macht die sich solchen Fortschritts gegen sie bedient Die Unvorstellbarkeit dertaumlglich erlebten Dinge die Unvereinbarkeit der Macht und der Mittel sie durchzusetzen dassist der Zustand und das technoromantische Abenteuer in das wir uns eingelassen habenwird wie immer es ausgeht dem Zustand ein Ende machenrsquo (Weltgericht Frankfurt amMain 1968 120ndash21) In his essay on Kraus Benjmain cites the opening of anotherclosely related speech delivered by Kraus against the War in December 1914 In diesergrossen Zeit (Weltgericht 7ndash18 GS II 336ndash38)

97 Benjamin explicitly enlists Hebel Buumlchner Nietzsche Rimbaud and the surrealistsand implicitly himself in this cause

98 I 84

99 lsquoOnly when in technology body and image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily collective innervation and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge has reality surpassed itself to the extentdemanded by the Communist Manifestorsquo (OWS 239)

100 lsquoOrnament is crimersquo claimed Adolf Loos in an apparently different context The lsquoold ornamentsrsquo denounced by Kraus are to the lsquonew essencersquo of dying what the historicist faccedilades of nineteenth century architecture were accounting to SiegfriedGiedeon to the underlying steel construction Like construction destruction is relegated to the lsquorole of the unconsciousrsquo See note 14

101 Kraus op cit 13

102 I 259

103 I 256

104 OWS 103ndash04 I have seen fit to modify EF Jephcottrsquos andor Kingsley Shorterrsquosexcellent translation

109

79 Freudrsquos own reflections on the First World War in lsquoZeitgemaumlsses uumlber Krieg und Todrsquo(1915) and lsquoWarum Kriegrsquo (1933) are a far cry from such lsquoFreudianrsquo metapyschologyWar is for Freud a case of collective regression an entirely negative return of therepressed Freud who claimed to have no personal acquaintance with the lsquooceanic

feeingrsquo would have been even warier of lsquocosmogonic erosrsquo While he too postulates a progressive world-historical repression of sexuality (in Das Unbehagen in der Kulturas in Die kulturelle Sexualmoral und die moderne Nervositaumlt) he refrains from offering any dramatic collective cure for the resulting woes He merely endorses certainsocial and sexual reforms which may help lighten mankindrsquos burden

80 Also sprach Zarathustra lsquoZarathustras Vorredersquo section 5

81 OWS 236

82 I 260

83 The Third Reich was also a fertile breeding-ground for megalomaniac anti-technological cosmologies that illustrate where dualisms agrave la Klages could lead Cf Hans-Juumlrgen Syberbergrsquos Hitler ein Film aus Deutschland which exhibits a lsquofairground barker-cum-magicianrsquo Himmlerrsquos masseur his astrologist and a lsquocosmologistrsquowho wants to lsquoannihilate the superstition of science technology and false religionsrsquo(Reinbek 1978 135 138 165ndash67)

84 Cf on Nietzschersquos distinction between active and reactive nihilism The Will to Power(ed Walter Kaufmann New York 1968 3ndash82)

85 I 261 Benjamin speaks here of a kind of lsquolaborrsquo which is capable of lsquodeliveringrsquonature of the creations which lie dormant in her lsquowombrsquo

86 Cf the chapter lsquoErosrsquo in Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Ernst Juumlnger Werke Stuttgart V I 38ndash43) Benjaminrsquos image of a bridal bed that has turned into a blood-bath is evocative of the lsquobombastrsquo (Schwulst) that he had analysed in the case ofBaroque Trauerspiel In the closing lines of lsquoThe Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproductionrsquo such baroque imagery is more completely fused with the sober accents ofMarxist reason lsquoImperialist war is a revolt of technology (hellip) Instead of channelling riverssociety diverts a human stream into a bed of trenches instead of dropping seeds from airplanes it drops incendiary bombs over cities and through gas warfare aura is abolishedin a new way(hellip) Such is the aestheticizing of politics perpetrated by Fascism Communismresponds by politicizing artrsquo (I 244 italics Benjaminrsquos translation modified) In both cases technological Eros (lsquoseeds from airplanesrsquo the lsquobridal bedrsquo) is pitted against itsthanatological equivalent (lsquoa bed of trenchesrsquo the lsquoblood bathrsquo)

107

87 In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel speaks likewise of the lsquomagic powerrsquoof Geist which by staying with (verweilen) the negative converts it into pure positivity(Die Phaumlnomenologie des Geistes ed Johannes Hoffmeister Hamburg 1952 30)

88 Celan op cit III 169

89 In his essays lsquoDie Nation als Ideal und Wirklichkeit rsquo (1921) and lsquoDas hilfloseEuroparsquo (1922) Robert Musil also seeks to save the Erlebnis of the First World War(Gesammelte Werke II Hamburg 1978 1059ndash1090) As recalled by Musil it marks a rareand powerful experience of mystico-national community an explosive rejection of bourgeois life a will to disorder and lsquometaphysical Krachrsquo more lsquocarnavelesquersquo thanlsquoDionysianrsquo in character in short a lsquoflight from peacersquo This short-lived experience whichwas followed by an eerie return to normality is not lsquoover withrsquo (erledigt) Musilrsquos own concluding plea for the establishment of a lsquonaturalrsquo social order no longer based onanachronistic ideals of state- and nationhood seems a rather tame resolution of the warErlebnis as he himself describes it

90 Celan loccit III 186

91 To dismiss the politics of surrealism as lsquopoeticrsquo is itself in Benjaminrsquos eyes to perpetrate an all too conventionally lsquopoeticrsquo politics mdash one that speaks the language of the lsquoas ifrsquo and adorns its progressist programs with metaphors and images which takeneither politics nor poetry seriously A truly poetic politics on the other hand releases theliteral and figurative the material and surreal energies of the image into a collectivelsquoimage-spacersquo (OWS 237ndash38)

92 Cf in this connection Hannah Arendtrsquos meditation on the passage from The TempestlsquoFull fathom five thy father lies helliprsquo in the third section (lsquoThe Pearl Diverrsquo) of her essay onBenjamin (I 38ndash51)

93 I 264

94 Cf my lsquoThe Politics of Youth Walter Benjaminrsquos Reading of The Idiotrsquo DiacriticsBaltimore winter 1992 161ndash71

95 Cf GS III 259

96 lsquoIn einem Krakauer Spital werden mit solchen die an einer Gasvergiftung darniederliegen oder von einem Bauchschuss soweit hergestellt sind Salutieruumlbungengemacht Wunder uumlber Wunder Es sind die alten Ornamente zum neuen Wesen desTodes Aber da dieser frisch aus der Retorte entsprungen noch keine neuen erfinden

108 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

konnte so kann die Macht der allten Ornamente nicht entbehren Denn nicht alleindulce auch decorum muss es sein Nur dass die Macht den neuen Tod zu ihrer Erhaltungbraucht nur dass die alte Herrschaft nicht lieber abdankt als ihre Stellung der Chemie zu verdanken dass die Insignien auf die Chemikalien angewiesen sind mdash das ises was unsere siegende Kultur unrettbar dem Gifttod geweiht hat Die Menschheit dieihre Phantasie an die Erfindungen verausgabt hat kann sich deren Wirksamkeit nichtmehr vorstellen mdash sonst wuumlrde sie aus Reue eben damit Selbstmord veruumlben Aber da sieauch ihre Menschenwuumlrde in die Erfindungen verausgabt hat so lebt und stirbt sie fuumlralle Macht die sich solchen Fortschritts gegen sie bedient Die Unvorstellbarkeit dertaumlglich erlebten Dinge die Unvereinbarkeit der Macht und der Mittel sie durchzusetzen dassist der Zustand und das technoromantische Abenteuer in das wir uns eingelassen habenwird wie immer es ausgeht dem Zustand ein Ende machenrsquo (Weltgericht Frankfurt amMain 1968 120ndash21) In his essay on Kraus Benjmain cites the opening of anotherclosely related speech delivered by Kraus against the War in December 1914 In diesergrossen Zeit (Weltgericht 7ndash18 GS II 336ndash38)

97 Benjamin explicitly enlists Hebel Buumlchner Nietzsche Rimbaud and the surrealistsand implicitly himself in this cause

98 I 84

99 lsquoOnly when in technology body and image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily collective innervation and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge has reality surpassed itself to the extentdemanded by the Communist Manifestorsquo (OWS 239)

100 lsquoOrnament is crimersquo claimed Adolf Loos in an apparently different context The lsquoold ornamentsrsquo denounced by Kraus are to the lsquonew essencersquo of dying what the historicist faccedilades of nineteenth century architecture were accounting to SiegfriedGiedeon to the underlying steel construction Like construction destruction is relegated to the lsquorole of the unconsciousrsquo See note 14

101 Kraus op cit 13

102 I 259

103 I 256

104 OWS 103ndash04 I have seen fit to modify EF Jephcottrsquos andor Kingsley Shorterrsquosexcellent translation

109

87 In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel speaks likewise of the lsquomagic powerrsquoof Geist which by staying with (verweilen) the negative converts it into pure positivity(Die Phaumlnomenologie des Geistes ed Johannes Hoffmeister Hamburg 1952 30)

88 Celan op cit III 169

89 In his essays lsquoDie Nation als Ideal und Wirklichkeit rsquo (1921) and lsquoDas hilfloseEuroparsquo (1922) Robert Musil also seeks to save the Erlebnis of the First World War(Gesammelte Werke II Hamburg 1978 1059ndash1090) As recalled by Musil it marks a rareand powerful experience of mystico-national community an explosive rejection of bourgeois life a will to disorder and lsquometaphysical Krachrsquo more lsquocarnavelesquersquo thanlsquoDionysianrsquo in character in short a lsquoflight from peacersquo This short-lived experience whichwas followed by an eerie return to normality is not lsquoover withrsquo (erledigt) Musilrsquos own concluding plea for the establishment of a lsquonaturalrsquo social order no longer based onanachronistic ideals of state- and nationhood seems a rather tame resolution of the warErlebnis as he himself describes it

90 Celan loccit III 186

91 To dismiss the politics of surrealism as lsquopoeticrsquo is itself in Benjaminrsquos eyes to perpetrate an all too conventionally lsquopoeticrsquo politics mdash one that speaks the language of the lsquoas ifrsquo and adorns its progressist programs with metaphors and images which takeneither politics nor poetry seriously A truly poetic politics on the other hand releases theliteral and figurative the material and surreal energies of the image into a collectivelsquoimage-spacersquo (OWS 237ndash38)

92 Cf in this connection Hannah Arendtrsquos meditation on the passage from The TempestlsquoFull fathom five thy father lies helliprsquo in the third section (lsquoThe Pearl Diverrsquo) of her essay onBenjamin (I 38ndash51)

93 I 264

94 Cf my lsquoThe Politics of Youth Walter Benjaminrsquos Reading of The Idiotrsquo DiacriticsBaltimore winter 1992 161ndash71

95 Cf GS III 259

96 lsquoIn einem Krakauer Spital werden mit solchen die an einer Gasvergiftung darniederliegen oder von einem Bauchschuss soweit hergestellt sind Salutieruumlbungengemacht Wunder uumlber Wunder Es sind die alten Ornamente zum neuen Wesen desTodes Aber da dieser frisch aus der Retorte entsprungen noch keine neuen erfinden

108 Wohlfarth Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros

konnte so kann die Macht der allten Ornamente nicht entbehren Denn nicht alleindulce auch decorum muss es sein Nur dass die Macht den neuen Tod zu ihrer Erhaltungbraucht nur dass die alte Herrschaft nicht lieber abdankt als ihre Stellung der Chemie zu verdanken dass die Insignien auf die Chemikalien angewiesen sind mdash das ises was unsere siegende Kultur unrettbar dem Gifttod geweiht hat Die Menschheit dieihre Phantasie an die Erfindungen verausgabt hat kann sich deren Wirksamkeit nichtmehr vorstellen mdash sonst wuumlrde sie aus Reue eben damit Selbstmord veruumlben Aber da sieauch ihre Menschenwuumlrde in die Erfindungen verausgabt hat so lebt und stirbt sie fuumlralle Macht die sich solchen Fortschritts gegen sie bedient Die Unvorstellbarkeit dertaumlglich erlebten Dinge die Unvereinbarkeit der Macht und der Mittel sie durchzusetzen dassist der Zustand und das technoromantische Abenteuer in das wir uns eingelassen habenwird wie immer es ausgeht dem Zustand ein Ende machenrsquo (Weltgericht Frankfurt amMain 1968 120ndash21) In his essay on Kraus Benjmain cites the opening of anotherclosely related speech delivered by Kraus against the War in December 1914 In diesergrossen Zeit (Weltgericht 7ndash18 GS II 336ndash38)

97 Benjamin explicitly enlists Hebel Buumlchner Nietzsche Rimbaud and the surrealistsand implicitly himself in this cause

98 I 84

99 lsquoOnly when in technology body and image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily collective innervation and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge has reality surpassed itself to the extentdemanded by the Communist Manifestorsquo (OWS 239)

100 lsquoOrnament is crimersquo claimed Adolf Loos in an apparently different context The lsquoold ornamentsrsquo denounced by Kraus are to the lsquonew essencersquo of dying what the historicist faccedilades of nineteenth century architecture were accounting to SiegfriedGiedeon to the underlying steel construction Like construction destruction is relegated to the lsquorole of the unconsciousrsquo See note 14

101 Kraus op cit 13

102 I 259

103 I 256

104 OWS 103ndash04 I have seen fit to modify EF Jephcottrsquos andor Kingsley Shorterrsquosexcellent translation

109

konnte so kann die Macht der allten Ornamente nicht entbehren Denn nicht alleindulce auch decorum muss es sein Nur dass die Macht den neuen Tod zu ihrer Erhaltungbraucht nur dass die alte Herrschaft nicht lieber abdankt als ihre Stellung der Chemie zu verdanken dass die Insignien auf die Chemikalien angewiesen sind mdash das ises was unsere siegende Kultur unrettbar dem Gifttod geweiht hat Die Menschheit dieihre Phantasie an die Erfindungen verausgabt hat kann sich deren Wirksamkeit nichtmehr vorstellen mdash sonst wuumlrde sie aus Reue eben damit Selbstmord veruumlben Aber da sieauch ihre Menschenwuumlrde in die Erfindungen verausgabt hat so lebt und stirbt sie fuumlralle Macht die sich solchen Fortschritts gegen sie bedient Die Unvorstellbarkeit dertaumlglich erlebten Dinge die Unvereinbarkeit der Macht und der Mittel sie durchzusetzen dassist der Zustand und das technoromantische Abenteuer in das wir uns eingelassen habenwird wie immer es ausgeht dem Zustand ein Ende machenrsquo (Weltgericht Frankfurt amMain 1968 120ndash21) In his essay on Kraus Benjmain cites the opening of anotherclosely related speech delivered by Kraus against the War in December 1914 In diesergrossen Zeit (Weltgericht 7ndash18 GS II 336ndash38)

97 Benjamin explicitly enlists Hebel Buumlchner Nietzsche Rimbaud and the surrealistsand implicitly himself in this cause

98 I 84

99 lsquoOnly when in technology body and image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily collective innervation and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge has reality surpassed itself to the extentdemanded by the Communist Manifestorsquo (OWS 239)

100 lsquoOrnament is crimersquo claimed Adolf Loos in an apparently different context The lsquoold ornamentsrsquo denounced by Kraus are to the lsquonew essencersquo of dying what the historicist faccedilades of nineteenth century architecture were accounting to SiegfriedGiedeon to the underlying steel construction Like construction destruction is relegated to the lsquorole of the unconsciousrsquo See note 14

101 Kraus op cit 13

102 I 259

103 I 256

104 OWS 103ndash04 I have seen fit to modify EF Jephcottrsquos andor Kingsley Shorterrsquosexcellent translation

109