WALTER BENJAMIN, HANNAH ARENDT

379 Pages·2013·1.86 MB·English

by  Ingo Kieslich

WALTER BENJAMIN, HANNAH ARENDT: STORYTELLING IN AND AS
THEORETICAL WRITING

By
Ingo Kieslich

Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School of Vanderbilt University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in
German
May, 2013
Nashville, Tennessee

Approved:
Professor Barbara Hahn
Professor Philip J. McFarland
Professor David C. Wood
Professor Christoph M. Zeller
Copyright © 2013 by Ingo Kieslich
All Rights Rederved
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Without the financial support of the Vanderbilt University, and specifically of the
Vanderbilt Graduate School and the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, this
work would not have been possible.
My thanks go to those who have inspired me to undertake this work, and who
have contributed to it with advice, critical questioning and human support. Without the
initial seminars on Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt given by Professor Irmela von
der Lühe at the Georg August University, Göttingen, this study could not even have
begun. I am grateful for her intellectual guidance through my years of study in Germany,
her invaluable counsel in forming the basis of my project, and her support in eventually
continuing and finishing my studies at Vanderbilt University.
My work benefited greatly from discussions, seminars and professional guidance
provided by each of the members of my dissertation committee. I wish to thank in
particular Professor Barbara Hahn for her productive and encouraging supervision,
openness to intellectual risks, and unwavering support throughout my years at Vanderbilt
University. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Professor Justus Fetscher, who
made it possible for me to attend the 2011 conference of the International Walter
Benjamin Society and present there. Rebecca Panter will always have my gratitude for
proofreading the final manuscript with unmatched thoroughness and efficiency. Finally, I
want to single out my appreciation also for Nora Brügmann who accompanied my work
through all the years with optimism, encouragement, lively debate and an always-
available sympathetic ear to listen.
iii
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1. Parallelogram of Forces with point-like origin....................................................279
2. Parallelgogram of Forces with spatial origin.......................................................280

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
Acknowledgments..............................................................................................................iii
List of Figures....................................................................................................................iv

Chapter

INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1

I. BENJAMIN: A PHENOMENOLOGY OF DEBRIS............................................15
II. BENJAMIN: SALVATION THROUGH SURRENDER.....................................46
III. BENJAMIN: THEORY AND PRAXIS OF EPIC FORMS..................................77
IV. BENJAMIN: CRISIS AND POSSIBILITIES OF THE EPIC............................107
V. THE STORYTELLER AS THEORIST: SPACE IN BENJAMIN’S
WRITING............................................................................................................132
VI. BENJAMIN: THE STORYTELLER AS THE RIGHTEOUS ONE...................166
VII. THE BREAK IN TRADITION AS THE ORIGIN OF HANNAH
ARENDT’S WRITING.......................................................................................185
VIII. ARENDT: TRADITION AS A BROKEN CONCEPT.......................................215
IX. ARENDT: TO MOVE IN THE GAP BETWEEN PAST AND
FUTURE..............................................................................................................244
X. ARENDT: THINKING BETWEEN ‘NO LONGER AND NOT YET’.............268
XI. ARENDT: WHO SAYS WHAT IS ALWAYS TELLS A STORY....................297
XII. ARENDT: THE AUTHORS OF MIRACLES....................................................327

CONCLUSION................................................................................................................362
REFERENCES................................................................................................................368

v
INTRODUCTION

In the last part of her essay on Walter Benjamin written in 1968, Hannah Arendt
includes a quote that highlights – especially because of its particular placement within the
essay – the topics and questions of the study at hand: “Die Überzeugung, welche in
meinen literarischen Versuchen mich leitet [ist], daß jede Wahrheit ihr Haus, ihren
angestammten Palast, in der Sprache hat, daß er aus den ältesten logoi errichtet ist und
daß der so gegründeten Wahrheit gegenüber die Einsichten der Einzelwissenschaften
subaltern bleiben, solange sie gleichsam nomadisierend, bald hier, bald da im
Sprachbereich sich behelfen, befangen in jener Anschauung vom Zeichencharakter der
Sprache, der ihrer Terminologie die verantwortungslose Willkür aufprägt.”1 These lines
are taken from a letter Benjamin wrote to Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1924. By and large,
the relatively short letter is about the publication of the essay “Goethes
Wahlverwandtschaften” (its first part) in Hofmannsthal’s journal Neue Deutsche Beiträge.
The first thing that attracts attention is the fact that Benjamin speaks of his work as
‘literary attempts,’ thus addressing not so much his dissertation or the habilitation thesis
Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, on which he was working at the time, but rather
his essayistic efforts and work as a translator of Charles Baudelaire. In the scope of such

1 Hannah Arendt, “Walter Benjamin,” in Arendt und Benjamin. Texte, Briefe, Dokumente, ed. Detlev
Schöttker and Erdmut Wizisla (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006), 93. Arendt has abridged the
original passage from Benjamin’s letters, which reads: “Es ist von hoher Bedeutung für mich, daß Sie
[Hugo von Hofmannsthal] die Überzeugung, welche in meinen literarischen Versuchen mich leitet, so
deutlich herausheben und daß Sie sie, wenn ich recht verstehe, teilen. Jene Überzeugung nämlich, daß jede
Wahrheit ihr Haus, ihren angestammten Palast, in der Sprache hat, daß er aus den ältesten logoi errichtet ist
und daß der so gegründeten Wahrheit gegenüber die Einsichten der Einzelwissenschaften subaltern bleiben,
solange sie gleichsam nomadisierend, bald hier, bald da im Sprachbereich sich behelfen, befangen in jener
Anschauung vom Zeichencharakter der Sprache, der ihrer Terminologie die verantwortungslose Willkür
aufprägt.” Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe, vol. 2, ed. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1996), 409.
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‘literary attempts,’ Benjamin localizes the truth within language, and he renders language
as a house, and even a palace.2 As Arendt, too, observes in her essay, these lines by
Benjamin are written in close proximity to his earlier philosophy of language and to the
study on German Baroque plays. Language, according to Benjamin’s conviction, is not
Mitteilung, communication of something, which would entail that it refers to something
exterior to language. Instead, language is for Benjamin a universal, closed system of
references – the medium of communicability per se. As a result, the things that appear to
us – qua the disclosing function that truth is – appear within language. All in all, this
methodological premise alone entails several questions that stand at the outset of the
present study: What is the strange link here between appearance, which is by extension a
phenomenology, and language? What does it mean for language to become a space for
truth to appear? What is this space in language? How can it be described? Particularly,
since in Benjamin’s statement the application of language is strongly connected to
‘literary attempts,’ and with regard to the author’s later essayistic and literary production,
this begs the question of what nature the narrative for such a space is. In what ways can a
narrative that somehow has to bring about such a space be characterized? In the context
of questions like these, the following chapters will explore narrative – or storytelling, as it
is predominantly called by Benjamin and Arendt – as a topic, but also as a compositional
element of the authors’ theoretical writing. From the perspective of theoretical reflection,

2 Compare to this statement a passage from Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations: “Unsere Sprache
kann man ansehen als eine alte Stadt: ein Gewinkel von Gässchen und Plätzen, alten und neuen Häusern,
und Häusern mit Zubauten aus verschiedenen Zeiten: und dies umgeben von einer Menge neuer Vororte
mit geraden und regelmäßigen Straßen und mit einförmigen Häusern.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus
logico-philosophicus. Werkausgabe Band 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984), 245.
Wittgenstein wrote his philosophical investigations, which were published posthumously in 1953, in the
years from 1936 to 1946.
2
this work has two major themes: it will be concerned with narrative and the ‘break in
tradition,’ as well as with narrative and space.
Arendt places the above quote at the close of her essay on Benjamin3 and makes a
bold claim: she writes that in regard to how he approached the broken tradition with his
theoretical narrative, Benjamin had much more in common with Heidegger than with the
“dialektischen Subtilitäten seiner marxistischen Freunde,” by which she refers foremost
to Adorno, but also, to a certain degree, to Brecht.4 She supports her claim with a line
from Heidegger’s essay Kants These über das Sein, in which the philosopher writes that a
“Hören auf die Überlieferung” should be one that “nicht Vergangenem nachhängt,
sondern das Gegenwärtige bedenkt.”5 She therefore juxtaposes Benjamin’s approach to
history, which reads the past strictly from (or even rather: within) the standpoint of a
constantly actualized present, with Heidegger’s ‘listening to tradition.’ At this point, the
editors of Arendt und Benjamin, in their introductory article, write that Arendt in her
argument had ‘eliminated’ the difference between Heidegger and Benjamin: “Arendt hat
den Unterschied zwischen der gegenwartsbezogenen Intention Benjamins und der
historischen Intention Heideggers in ihrem Merkur-Essay eliminiert, obwohl sie sich
Anfang der fünfziger Jahre mit Benjamins Überlegungen vertraut gemacht hatte.”6
Without wanting to engage in this debate at any length, it might be worth pointing out

3 The third and last part of Arendt’s essay is more or less identical with a presentation she gave on July 26th,
1967, in Freiburg, Germany. Present in the audience was Martin Heidegger. Detlev Schöttker, Erdmut
Wizisla, “Hannah Arendt und Walter Benjamin. Konstellationen, Debatten, Vermittlungen,” in Arendt und
Benjamin. Texte, Briefe, Dokumente, ed. idem (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006), 24.
4 Arendt, “Walter Benjamin,” 93.
5 Ibid. Also: Martin Heidegger, Kants These über das Sein (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1962), 8.
6 Detlev Schöttker, Erdmut Wizisla, “Hannah Arendt und Walter Benjamin,” 30.
3
that Wizisla and Schöttker seem to presuppose that Arendt wanted to draw Benjamin
closer to Heidegger’s view of history. They provide some of Benjamin’s well-known
statements in the context of his “kopernikanische Wendung des Eingedenkens,”7
eventually concluding: “Es ging Benjamin im Gegensatz zu Heidegger und Arendt um
die Erkenntnis der Gegenwart.”8 This equally bold claim indicates that somehow Arendt
had disregarded Benjamin’s insights into the concept of history, against her better
judgment. But this is the question here: did she not perhaps rather try to bring Heidegger
closer to Benjamin? Heidegger, incidentally, was among the audience when Arendt first
read these passages in Freiburg in 1967. I would argue that she was therefore also
addressing Heidegger with her remarks, with whom – philosophically speaking – she had
a score to settle anyway. In this context, it should be considered that Arendt’s whole
work can, in some of her decisive philosophical and theoretical decisions, be read as a
critical response and complement to Heidegger’s philosophy: for example, by
complementing death, as the focal point of being, with the concept of natality. This has
widespread consequences, not the least of which is that Arendt brings a political
perspective to a phenomenological and existential approach. Besides this, the main
argument with her comparison of Benjamin with Heidegger is to repudiate a classic
(Marxist) concept of dialectics in Benjamin – for which she has some quite convincing
points.

7 Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, Hermann Schweppenhäuser, et al.
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972-1989), 491. Gesammelte Schriften hereafter cited as GS with
volume and page number.
8 Detlev Schöttker, Erdmut Wizisla, “Hannah Arendt und Walter Benjamin,” 29.
4
The above digression demonstrates how much of the following work will unfold
as a constant interplay of commentary and reflection. By probing the most relevant texts
of both authors and following their lead for a certain way, this study intends to establish a
network of concepts and thoughts that allows me to reflect on the formation of narrative
in recent modernity, when it is confronted with the dissolution of its own tradition. What
the heterogeneous constellation of friends and intellectual concepts displayed in Arendt’s
essay on Benjamin thus reveals, is also her own difficult relation to tradition, which she
consequently renders as ‘broken.’ She adopts parts of Heidegger’s and Benjamin’s
approaches to the past, but nevertheless finds herself after the war in a fundamentally
original situation, in which she regards the break in tradition as an ‘accomplished’ fact.9
In this situation, the constitution and location of truth is in question for her, as well; and,
subsequently, questions concerning its representation come up. In Arendt, it initially
seems that the ‘house’ and even ‘palace’ which truth may, according to Benjamin, find in
language, has given way to an ‘abyss’10 and then to her concept of the ‘gap between past
and future.’11 Similarly to Benjamin, Arendt cherishes the notion of storytelling
throughout her work, so that there arises the question of narrative in connection with that
of the space where truth may appear.
The setting for the questions introduced here spans across the work of the two
authors; Benjamin, who died in 1940, had a different perspective on the dissolution of

9 Hannah Arendt, Denktagebuch, vol. 1, ed. Ursula Lodz and Ingeborg Nordmann (Munich and Zurich:
Piper, 2002), 300.
10 Hannah Arendt, Die verborgene Tradition. Essays (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 11.
11 Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin
Books, 1993).
5