Benjamin's Magic

In: Telos, Issue 119, p. 58-74

Abstract

Traces Walter Benjamin's use of the word "magic" to shed light on his theoretical path from a preoccupation with pure language to a later fixation on history. His concept of magic clarifies numerous themes that are woven throughout his work, from mysticism, to death, to the eventual reduction of magic to strategies involved in using words to propel people to political action. Benjamin's early sense of the magical quality of pure language, its fundamental ambiguity, & its effect on people are examined, along with his notion of magic as the space in which "material reality communes with itself in language." Attention is given to the absence of magic in major works produced in the 1920s & its reappearance in 1930 as a spatialized term situated in a past experience of distance from objects of art. It is noted that his last essay, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," introduces the notion that true magic denies death in "flashes" of the past. Benjamin's distinctions between good magic, false magic, & correct magic are discussed. J. Lindroth