Each Thing a Thief: Walter Benjamin on the Agency of Objects

In this article Julia Ng addresses the question of material agency. Drawing on an idea that emerges from Marx's reading of Shakespeare's Timon to the effect that humanity's relationship to objects is characterized by "cannibalism," a usurious relationship based on exploitation and thievery, Ng argues that Benjamin's unique mixing of materialism and the theological serves as an answer to the dilemma of cannibalism and human nature. Looking in particular at Benjamin's 1931 essay on Karl Kraus—which also discusses Timon—Ng shows that for Benjamin, there is a redemption for this cannibalism, one that is found through recourse to the idea of letting "justice befall the object as such" and, by extension, through the development of a positive determination of life as such as well.