Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Conformism here refers to the energies of conventional inter- pretation. These ensnare tradition and the receivers of tradition in tales devised or at least approved by the ruling class and its ideology-mongers. The accumulated experience of the oppressed is overwritten in histories that re-transmit the existing balance of power: business as usual. Long dead Benjamin is himself now part of transmissible tradition. Using here the phrase ‘overpowering conformism’ flags a desire to wrest Benjamin from a conformism inherent in those appropriations that excise him from a culture of engaged political critique. ‘Overpowering conformism’ suggests a confrontation with domesticating readings of Benjamin’s work. Wresting Benjamin’s writings from the conformism that threatens to overpower their reception is the task. Such an assignment is aided by taking cognizance of Benjamin’s onslaught on a second conformism mentioned in ‘?ber den Begriff der Geschichte’ – the conformity of reformist theory and practice. Reformism is still the conformity that overpowers the supposedly critically-minded. Nowadays it is frequently reformist-minded theorists who see reflected in Benjamin their own defeatist melancholy and desperate half-hope that ameliorated by their wishful thinking things might just work out for the best in the end somehow. No major shake-ups intended. This is quite contrary to Benjamin’s intent. In his final notes on the concept of history Benjamin attacks reformist political tactics and economic delusions for their bypassing of the insurgent self-organized moment of proletarian revolution. (LL)