The past between remembrance and redemption em Walter Benjamin

Abstract

The intention of this article is to theorize Benjamin's thinking about the past, showing not only how this is the true driving force of the Theses, but also how it is only through this that a new concept of history becomes possible. In fact, the past is not finished, but it also a revolutionary past insofar as it avenges thousands of oppressed people in their encounter with the present. A past that contrasts with the official version and the tradition of the continuum, an open past, but not easy to read, implied in encrypted signals to decrypt, dreams to interpret and moments to hold. We can define the Benjaminian past as a “near past” only in the sense that, however, this proximity does not indicate a specific temporal adjacency, but only its relevance and always explosive urgency.