Abstract

The chapter introduces the notion of a time to come in the work of Benjamin, Derrida and Celan and its relationship to the notion of a weak messianic power in Benjamin's theses on the concept of history. The chapter argues that the relationship between theology and historical materialism in the theses and in Benjamin's work more generally is mediated by a certain notion of the unconscious. Unsettling what it brings together, this notion makes it possible to read the theological in more prosaic terms while giving the materialist historian ways of attuning himself or herself to a certain historical unconscious.

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