#quote
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Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written.
(Walter Benjamin)
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The nature of this melancholy becomes clearer, once one asks the question, with whom does the historical writer of historicism actually empathize. The answer is irrefutably with the victor. Those who currently rule are however the heirs of all those who have ever been victorious. Empathy with the victors thus comes to benefit the current rulers every time.
Walter Benjamin (via orioleorgans)
![The following quote is a precedes Giorgio Agamben’s study of the Homo Sacer and the state of exception. So timely as protests and increasing government failure abound.
beetleinabox:
BBC image of the Tahrir Square protest camp (interactive version available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12434787).
Walter Benjamin writes:
The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of exception” [Ausnahmezustand] in which we live is the rule. We must attain a conception of history that accords with this insight. Then we will clearly see that it is our task to bring about a real state of exception, and this will improve our position in the struggle against fascism. One reason fascism has a chance is that, in the name of progress, its opponents treat it as a historical norm. — The astonishment [Das Staunen darüber] that the things we are experiencing are “still” possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This astonishment is not the beginning of knowledge — unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable (Walter Benjamin, eight thesis from “On the Concept of History”, trans. Harry Zohn (translation slightly modified), written between February and May 1940, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume IV (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), p 392.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lgp78qkK311qb9yj1o1_500.jpg)
The following quote is a precedes Giorgio Agamben’s study of the Homo Sacer and the state of exception. So timely as protests and increasing government failure abound.
BBC image of the Tahrir Square protest camp (interactive version available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12434787).
Walter Benjamin writes:
The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of exception” [Ausnahmezustand] in which we live is the rule. We must attain a conception of history that accords with this insight. Then we will clearly see that it is our task to bring about a real state of exception, and this will improve our position in the struggle against fascism. One reason fascism has a chance is that, in the name of progress, its opponents treat it as a historical norm. — The astonishment [Das Staunen darüber] that the things we are experiencing are “still” possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This astonishment is not the beginning of knowledge — unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable (Walter Benjamin, eight thesis from “On the Concept of History”, trans. Harry Zohn (translation slightly modified), written between February and May 1940, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume IV (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), p 392.
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The genuine picture may be old, but the genuine thought is new. It is of the present. This present may be meager, granted. But no matter what it is like, one must firmly tale it by the horns to be able to consult the past. It is the bull whose blood must fill the pit if the shades of the departed are to appear at its edge
Walter Benjamin, Schriften II
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Posthumous fame is too odd a thing to be blamed upon the blindness of the world or to the corruption of a literary milieu. Nor can it be said that it is the bitter reward of those who were ahead of their time—as though history were a race track on which some contenders run so swiftly that they simply disappear from the spectator’s range of vision. On the contrary, posthumous fame is usually preceded by the highest recognition among one’s peers…Walter Benjamin had won such recognition early, and not only amoung those whose names at hat time were still unknown, such as Gerhard Scholem, the friend of his youth, and Theodore Wiesengrund Adorno, his first and only disciple, who together are responsible for his posthumous collection of his works and letters…We cannot know if there is such a thing as altogether unappreciated genius, or whether it is the daydream of those who are not geniuses; but we can be reasonably sure that posthumous fame will be their lot.
Hannah Arendt, Introduction to Illuminations
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