Walter Benjamins Eschatologie der Katastrophe: Fortschritt, Unterbrechung und das Ende der Geschichte

Abstract

Abstract The paper analyses Walter Benjamin’s conceptions of time in the context of Anthropocene thought. In the paper, I study Benjamin’s figures of time and discuss their contribution to understanding the Anthropocene as a critical present. I analyse Walter Benjamin’s temporalities of modernity, focusing progress and primal history (Urgeschichte) in the light of Benjamin’s idea of catastrophe. I start by explaining Benjamin’s ideas in the context of the Anthropocene discourse. I then proceed to the analysis of specific figures of time, namely of primal history (Urgeschichte), progress, catastrophe and nowtime (Jetztzeit). Questioning the ambiguity of Benjamin’s concept of history, I show a hypothetical, in Benjamin’s sense revolutionary side of the Anthropocene time. In the light of Benjamin’s thought, the latter depicts the utopian, to some extent apocalyptical horizon of the absent border between man and nature.