Zatrzymać historię

Overview & Synopsis

This work has two strictly related objectives. Firstly, in contrast to the interpretations reducing Benjamin’s thought to the concepts of Gershom Scholem, Theodor Adorno or Bertolt Brecht, it endeavours to reach the author who opposes such readings. Rejecting canonical interpretations offers a chance not only for a better understanding of this philosophy, but, most importantly, it allows for an uncovering of a writer who radically reformulates the existing ways of thinking about politics and history. This is where the second aim of the book stems from. When read afresh, Benjamin becomes a guide in the fight for the stopping of history. The task entails critiquing historiography that maintains a vision of the present-day world, as well as its past, in a way which does not offer alternatives. One should, therefore, create a different, minority historiography, in which the oppressed gain specific faces, rather than constituting anonymous elements of pre-prepared constructions. Such a shift in perspective offers not only a better insight into the past but, most importantly, it serves (by recovering revolution and grassroots traditions, both expelled from social memory) the rebuilding of subjectivity of the classes which are oppressed today.