The (in)actuality of Walter Benjamin: On the relation between the temporal and the social in Benjamin's work

Abstract

This paper addresses the relation between the social and the temporal. Its goal is to investigate the ways in which collective embeddedness interferes with the experience of time. To address this relation, I engage the concept of actuality in the work of Walter Benjamin. On the one hand, Benjamin's work offers a wealth of inspiring, intriguing, and elaborated reflections on the relation between actuality and temporality; on the other hand, as I will argue, it is flawed by decisive and illustrative mistakes and ambivalences. Consequently, the article has a double aim: By pointing toward fundamental theoretical problems and ambivalences at the basis of Benjamin's work, it hopes to say something new about the relation between the social and the temporal.