About the messianism in Walter Benjamin’s Theologico-Political Fragment

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the text from Walter Benjamin’s Theologico-political fragment (1991). Despite of being a short text, it presents some fundamental elements to structure the Benjamin’s arguments on history. On this fragment the figure of a messiahs who is responsible for carrying out the historical events. The messianism present on Benjamin’s work, thus, approaches to the real state of emergency proposed by himself on Theses on the Philosophy of History (In: LÖWY, 2005). A state of emergency that does not only represents the suspension of the rules, but also its complete annihilation. Likewise, the messianism reflects the potential of profanation, the removal of the sacralization of the laws on the behalf of the resumption of the common use. Benjamin’s propose goes towards a constitution of a political form, which is not limited to the simple reproduction of the status quo, but which actually represents the realization, the annihilation, of what became oppressor in the history.