There were many parts that stuck out to me, but I’ll just focus on a couple towards the last few pages. This part in section XVI (page 262) really struck me: “Historicism gives the ‘eternal’ image of the past; historical materialism supplies a unique experience to the past.” It reminded me a lot of Fasolt, from page 39: “The way to extricate oneself from history’s spell many therefore not lie in books at all. Perhaps the only way is through experienced.” I feel like one of the issues both Fasolt and Benjamin have with the iron cage/historicism is that it presents history in a very flat, supposedly unbiased form. Benjamin argues that historicism empathizes with the victors (page 256) and is not unbiased at all. Though we accept it as fact, it is really a political position we are taking. Historical materialism, however, has a different approach – through experience. “To be subject to that authority is to be violated, to feel the urge to disagree, make points of which the examiner could not have been aware, and generally to rebel against he claim that any examiner can ever speak for the examinee” (Fasolt 39) touches on what I think Benjamin means by experience. History can’t be learned merely from reading a textbook and learning “facts.” One must “blast open the continuum of history” (page 262) or as Benjamin says later: “A historian who takes this as his point of departure {not making something historical “posthumously” by looking back at something that happened a thousand years ago} stops telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary. Instead, he grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one.” Instead of looking at a string of events in order (like Hegel’s march towards the end of history) Benjamin seems to encourage the view of “constellations,” little pockets of time that take into account that we are viewing things from the present.
This class has acted like a “constellation” or an experience with history. We’ve focused on a cluster of events (World War II, the Reformation, the present via the Tea Party) and made connections between them all. History has begun to take on a whole new (if more complicated) meaning, one that I’m slowly being to understand and really appreciate. Is this going to make it a lot harder to talk to my high school friends about our past experiences in AP US history and history in general? Hell yes. But I look forward to those difficult conversations now, rather than dreading them like I did before.
One last section I was really glad Benjamin included was the short section XVIII (page 263), where he discussed the concept of time with the scale of a 24 hour day accounting for the whole existence of the earth. “‘On this scale, the history of civilized mankind would fill one-fifth of the last second of the last hour.’” We discussed this a bit in the astronomy class I took last semester, and it’s something that still utterly blows my mind. Though it seems like humans have lived for a great amount of time, we don’t even account for a second compared to how much time has passed since the beginning of life on Earth. The question I have is whether this understanding of time is for better or for worse. Does it allow us to humbly accept how unimportant certain things are in the long run? Or does that allow for us to too easily forget errors we have made? Does it show how great we despite our limited time? Or does it show that we have become too prideful in ourselves? I wish Benjamin had included more in this section but alas, you can’t have everything. I have more questions than answers at the end of this, but I like that. If I had all the answers, what fun would that be?
That's interesting! Time sure is something that we don't necessarily think about as it passes but those questions you raise are something to think about. The pondering of those questions is more fun then the actual answers people would give you so keep on your thinking cap!
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