UM OLHAR BENJAMINIANO DOS CACOS E VESTÍGIOS DA MODERNIDADE E DO MODERNISMO

Abstract

Abstract

“Brushing history against the grain” (Benjamin, 1994, p.225). The proposition presented by Walter Benjamin in the Theses on the Concept of History2 - published after his death in 1940 - means the refusal to believe in the illusion of progress. It is in the name of historical materialism that Benjamin challenges the doctrines of the unlimited and continuous progress of German social democracy and Stalinist communism. The critique of progress is a theme that runs through the whole of Benjamin's work, from his writings of 1914 to the last texts in the late 1930s, impressing his distrust both in his theological essays and in his cultural or political articles. The only exception, points out Michel Löwy, are some texts from the years 1933-35, mainly the essay on The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility (Löwy, 1990).

Keywords: Progress; memory; Modernity and modernism.