The Promise of Memory: History and Politics in Marx, Benjamin, and Derrida

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Abbreviations ix Exordium xi Introduction 1 One Benjamin’s Reading of Marx 11 Remembering the Instituting Violence of Capitalism The Primacy of Politics over History Revising the Question of History Benjamin’s Critique of Marx’s Teleo-Logic Messianic Time: Seizing the Moment Secularizing Messianism Four Issues in the “Theses” Two Derrida’s Reading of Marx 55 Benjamin and Derrida: Common Starting Points Two Ways to Inherit Marx’s Promise The Empirical and the Transcendental The Promise of Repetition Four Features of the Quasi-Transcendental Modernity, Trauma, and Deferred Action Responsibility in Disjointed Times Why Marx’s Messianism Needs the Messianic How to Tell Good from Bad Ghosts Postutopian Marxism: Kantian and Deconstructive Contents Three The Critique of Violence 103 Law as Violent Means Oscillation of Instituting and Conserving Power Parliamentary and Radical Democracy: How to Make the Revolution Permanent Victor-History and Its Messianic Cessation Depositing: The Finitude of Power Pure Means: The Proletarian Strike Benjamin’s Utopian Ambiguities Depositing and Iterability in the Founding of a State Justice and Singularity: Derrida’s Objections to Benjamin’s Critique The Disunity of Victor-History Four The Claim of the Dead on the Living 157 Critique of Cultural History Commodified Culture as Fetish Reading the Voice of the Nameless in History Constructing a Montage of History’s Rags The Anteriority of Responsibility The Absolute Victim Why Derrida’s Injunction Needs Benjamin’s Claim Why Benjamin’s Claim Needs Derrida’s Injunction Notes 197 Bibliography 231 Index 247 CONTENTS vi ...